August 13, 2024, El Espectador
Dear white, pink, black, blue or violet girl,
I feel that from so much naming and looking for you, from so much walking to the squares and lighting candles for you, we are already friends; We are thousands, millions, who ask you to resist. From day one you have been brave and you know that without you we could not carry out this imperfect miracle that we call life. There are no intentions, capitals or strategies that can serve us, if you give up.
I decided to write to you like this, with open words and in front of everyone, because I must ask your forgiveness; I have told you a thousand times that you can count on me, but I have not known how to take care of you as I should and I have not been able to prevent you from being mistreated. Some shoot at you, others tell you that you are nothing more than a utopia, and you are still in the crosshairs of snipers hidden in the pockets and predictions of the skeptics.
You have been vulnerable, heroic and persistent, and it is normal that you often feel tired, because you are a girl older than time, and the burden of history weighs heavily. You have been trying for centuries to heal the wounds caused by those who fight in the name of a god, for a princess or for the rights of the people; those who kill to raise or tear down walls, borders and fortunes; the owners of revenge, of kilos and kilometers of gold and heroin; the maniacs of accumulating deaths, battles and wealth. They have stabbed you with spears, put you in cages, traps and prisons, and dropped bombs from planes that break bodies and clouds; you have been raped in Gaza and Viet Nam, in Ukraine and in Cauca; they have tortured you in El Salvador and in Auschwitz, in Haiti and Sinaloa; they broke your wings in the Peloponnese, in Bosnia and in New York, in Franco’s Spain, in the mushroom of Hiroshima and in the Santiago of the dictatorship. They have killed you in I don’t know how many decrees and executions, by legal and clandestine provisions, in declarations of war and unfulfilled promises; But you, dear white, pink, black, blue or violet girl, never forget that you have all the right in the world to go from port to port and from mountain to mountain, without anyone stopping you.
We will continue to demand that they do not shoot you, that they do not lie to you or ignore you; and where you do not exist you will have to be built, and as many times as you are defeated we will give you strength to rise.
Dear white, pink, black, blue or violet girl, don’t give up! Because if one day there is no one left, nothing will have been worth it; and the gods will mourn their defeat and ask themselves – now hopelessly – why they were so wrong and what they were doing in their Olympus, in their Heaven or in their Yanna, while here on earth the warriors by trade, the apathetic ones of always and the hurt ones of times, closed the oxygen of hope to you. You and I know that sadness, minutes or repentance will be of no use to us if one day the sun stops rising, and the world is left only with the roar of silence or fire.
Dear white, pink, black, blue or violet girl, Pax, peace, peace, paix or salam… all the hope in the world fits in your letters, and thousands of hands will have to write to you as many times as necessary – as Éluard did with Liberty – until you become a habit, until you are the most important lesson in the schools and the strongest choice in the squares; until it is unthinkable that you do not exist and every inhabitant of this planet is souled and unarmed.
Dear Paz, child of so many colors, challenges and blessings, no matter where and how the winds blow, you live!