This article appears in the December 8, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Mexican Choruses Join in Defense of Humanity
[Print version of this article]
Nov. 30—More than four dozen singers from several choruses in the Mexican city of Hermosillo, in Sonora state, performed a concert for world peace on the evening of Nov. 29, having come together as “Sonora Choruses for Peace” to address “the danger of a general nuclear war that could break out around the Russia-Ukraine conflict and around the new conflict in the Middle East.” In their statement, the choruses emphasized that:
We were inspired to convene this choral movement for peace by the call of various political and religious leaders of the world for all parties involved in the war in Ukraine, the Middle East and other wars to hold peace negotiations now, without preconditions, to dedicate ourselves to the elimination of poverty and the construction of a new international security architecture and fair and dignified economic development for all nations.
The concert of Classical music, also broadcast on Zoom, featured Mozart’s canon Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant Us Peace), Schiller and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and Handel’s Canticorum Jubilo (Let us Sing Aloud!). The idea for the event was initiated by Hugo López Ochoa, the regional delegate of the international Schiller Institute, and developed by a diverse group of collaborating Sonoran leaders: Dr. Enrique López Ochoa, President of the Opera Para Todos Foundation; René Blancarte Barceló, an events promoter and communicologist; Alfonso Padilla Ayala, Professor of Effective Communication at the Technological Institute of Sonora (also listing himself on the invitation as “Tenor”); and Alberto Sánchez Flores, former Director of Programmatic and Budgetary Monitoring of the Executive Office of the State of Sonora.
The event occurred only after overcoming obstacles. López Ochoa had begun organizing for “Sonora Choruses for Peace” last May. Three tentatively agreed-upon venues for the concert were canceled—clearly for political reasons—as the time came close to the scheduled performance dates, forcing postponement until a new venue could be found. Another 50-person chorus was set to participate on the earlier dates but had a previous obligation for Nov. 29.
Educating the Emotions
As seen in the photo, the concert was held on the steps of the entrance to the beautiful University of Sonora (UNISON) before an audience of some two hundred. Unlike many universities beset with ugly “brutalist” architecture, UNISON recalls Colonial Mexico’s fight for Renaissance architecture. (In the mid-1500s, Mexico’s first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, used Leon Battista Alberti’s 1452 book, On Architecture, and his Renaissance influence is seen in all the colonial cities.) The university building is new and modern, but its identity harkens to great accomplishments of the past. Inside, stained glass images of Miguel Cervantes and scenes from his masterwork, Don Quixote, recall the Classical tradition.
Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who six months ago initiated the growing International Peace Coalition, sent a message of greetings from Germany, asserting that, 78 years after the end of World War II, the world again risks a global catastrophe, should the escalation of the regional wars in Ukraine and in Gaza not be averted.
We must organize a strong international movement of people who will make sure that, in the age of nuclear weapons, war is eliminated once and for all as a means of conflict resolution. It must be replaced by dialogue and negotiation, because we are the human species, capable of creative reason, and therefore must be able to guarantee our long-term survivability.
Classical culture and classical music in particular are more suited than anything else to educate our emotions to the level of reason, and make us truly human. So, let’s build choruses all over the world, to overcome barbarism and create a future of humanity based on love. Then war will vanish.
Organizing for Beauty
Every improvement in the political sphere must start from the ennoblement of character and the best instrument to achieve this is beautiful art.
—Federico Schiller, poet of freedom
Under this banner, the concert organizers called on all the choirs of universities and public, private, religious, or secular schools and institutions, and churches, to join in performance.
The strength of this idea will be to demonstrate that Mexicans can put aside ideologies and political differences to fight for an objective superior to any other: the survival of humanity. This could inspire others to do the same in other cities around the country and the world.
Only the beauty of universal classical music, which generates the most powerful creative mental processes … [can] achieve the miracle of preventing [humanity’s] disappearance as a result of the irrationality of a nuclear war between the superpowers, at a time when the global clamor for peace and for a Just World Economic Order for all nations is growing.
And that is why we make our own the call of Federico Schiller to the humanity of his time: May this great historical moment of humanity not find men and women too small. Join this mobilization for peace!
