A los muchachos de Colombia

This is an essay by Fernando Vallejo, a Colombian writer who became a Mexican citizen. It was read by him during a speech given at the Ibero-American meeting of Writers, in Bogotá, in the year 2000. The original text in Spanish can be found at the following links: El Tiempo and Verdades Parciales.

Death as a strangler, by Adolf Rethel

“To the boys of Colombia:

You who had the bad luck of being born, and in the craziest country on the planet, do not go with the flow, do not let yourselves be dragged along by its madness. For although madness helps us bear the burden of life, it can also add unhappiness.

Heaven and happiness do not exist. They are tales told by your parents to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the harsh reality: this slaughterhouse to which we came to die, and that's when we don't kill and eat animals, our kindred. Because animals are also our kindred, and not just man, as Christ believed. Any creature that has a nervous system capable of feeling and suffering is our kindred: dogs, horses, cows, rats. My dog ​​brothers, my horse brothers, my cow sisters, my rat brothers, who are also part of Colombia. That is, part of you. That is, part of me.

Therefore, do not reproduce. Do not do unto others what was done unto you. Do not pay with the same coin, evil with evil, since imposing life is the ultimate crime. Leave those who do not exist, who are not asking to exist, in the peace of nothingness. Ultimately, that's where we all go back to. Why so much fuss?

The fatherland of which you are part because of chance, of which we are part because of chance, is a bankrupt country in disarray. A few poor ruins of what little it once was. Thousands kidnapped, thousands and thousands murdered, millions of unemployed, millions of exiles, millions of displaced peoples, the countryside in ruins, the industry in ruins, the justice system in ruins, the future interrupted: that's what you have. I sympathize. They were worse to you than to me.

And, just like me, who one day had to leave precisely because of what I say today (alive, it seems), you will probably have to leave too. However, no one will welcome you anywhere, because no place needs us or wants us.

A Colombian passport at an international airport causes terror: “Who could it be? Why are you here? What do you bring? Cocaine? Will you stay here?” No. We did not come into the world to stay. We came to pass through it, like the wind, only to die later. Sometimes the passage of this wind causes damage and has a name: its name is Pablo Escobar, its name is Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, its name is Carlos Castaño, its name is Tirofijo, its name is Gaviria, its name is Samper, its name is Pastrana. You must learn to call infamy by its names.

When I was born, I found here a war between conservatives and liberals that devastated the countryside and killed thousands. Today, the war continues, but the participants have changed: it is everyone against everyone and no one knows who killed who anymore. Nobody knows, nobody cares, nobody wants to find out. Why? For what? Why, if no murderer will be punished in the country of impunity? Why, if our president goes on a pilgrimage to embrace our main criminal, as if saying with the iniquity of this embrace: “kill, steal, extort, destroy, kidnap, but do it fully so that you take what is left of Colombia!”

And here we go, through the streets of this congested country, among dogs and abandoned children, dodging from potholes, bullets and taxes levied by the government and by FARC. But where are we going? Where do we intend to get to? There are many of us and we no longer stand each other or fit in. We became a nuisance to others, whose water we are drinking, whose air we are breathing, contaminating the rivers, clogging the streets. The air will run out, the water will run out, the streets will no longer be enough, and those great and fantastic Colombian rivers that, when I was born, were teeming with fish, have also been killed by us. Today, Colombia's rivers are sewers that flow out to the sea, an outlet for sewage.

Do not reproduce because no one gave you that right. Who could give it to you? God? The same God who is so good and who takes care of the abandoned children and dogs that fill the streets of Colombia? Let him look for employment! God doesn't work. That's why on the seventh day he sat down to rest... The Pope is the one responsible for the abandoned children and dogs that fill the streets of Colombia.

I have lived in despair and it seems to me that you'll have to live the same way. One day, I had to leave, without wanting to, and it seems to me that you'll have to do the same, too. The destiny of today's Colombians is to leave. Of course, if they don't kill us first. And, to those who manage to leave, do not dream that you will be able to escape, because wherever you are, Colombia will follow you. It will follow you as it followed me, day after day, night after night, wherever I was, with its madness. Some moment of fleeting joy experienced here and unrepeatable elsewhere will accompany you until death.”