The Resistance of the Saffron

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 
They think that there is no spirit left, that they have been able to pulverize the yearnings, and uprooted the saffron from the field. They think they have left the trees barkless, helpless on eroded land. They believe that everything is an avalanche. But every wild cypress tree, sprouting up in the rocks, shows them the opposite. They think that they have silenced the song of the goldfinch, but the flocks crossing the horizon show them that there are trills impossible to kill and that there are beauties and dazzling liberties that no hatred can obscure.

They think that they have been able to contain the windstorms, to bend the force of the seas, that they bought the essence of the storms for half a cent, just as they were bought. But, the salt water breeze that caresses the shore shows them that there is no money that can buy the vastness of the sea.
They think that the ancient mountain ranges of the blooming America are concrete skyscrapers and conceit, like the houses where they live; built with the sweat and dignity of the worker; bought with the disloyalty and betrayal of the sellout.
That’s what they believe. They believe that everything can be sold and everything can be bought, as they have been. They believe they have the power to change the nature of love. That they were able to defeat it, wither it, and with that to defeat us. Because only those who love are invincible. Because only those who feel, love and dream and devote themselves can commit themselves to the life that is the sustenance of the peoples; the peoples who are the vitality of Latin America aboriginal.
They think they were able to make us forget, that they erased our memory, and that we are going to sell ourselves out as they did. They think that we are going to become traitors, sell ourselves to highest bidder and that we will also stab in the back with the disloyalty of the lackeys. Like they themselves.
They think that we will get tired of fighting, and that we will turn our backs, and our cries will become murmurs that will calm down, silently covering up the treacherous ways of the ungrateful; and that we will be like them: perverse and abettors.
They think that we will auction the rebellion, that we will give it away or that we will drop it in any skyscraper’s elevator, or even worse that we are going to encrypt it in the safe of corrupt bank. They believe that we will spit the faces of our ancestors and that the names of our heroes and heroines will be buried forever in the bottom of the abyss. Bribing them. That’s what they believe. That’s what they want.
They believe that our bonfire will be extinguished, like a flash in the pan; but it is the molting rock of an erupting volcano. They believe they are pushing us toward an abyss where we will fall to our death. But they do not know that we are made of ravines and bluffs; of clay, and that we are soil, the Pachamama (Mother Earth). That we are made from the root of conacaste (ear pod tree) and madre cacao (cacao shade tree). That our course follows the echo of the goldfinches’ song breaking the silence in the mountains of an ancient America which refuses to renounce to its native and autonomous soul.
They believe that by being intimidated, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured and murdered they have defeated us. But they still ignore the resistance of the saffron that embellish the open fields, which no traitor will ever be able to dry up.
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Ilka Oliva Corado @ilkaolivacorado contacto@cronicasdeunainquilina.wordpress.com

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