APPARENTLY IRREMEDIABLE VIOLENCE
Fernando Vallejo once said that Colombia is a country that is murderous by nature and that the solution to the condemnation of being murdered is simply to leave the country, emphasizing that the homeland will not abandon us, because we were born in it and in one way or another we inherited its meanness. Since we were children, we see the presence of violence in our environment every day, without fail, either because we see it through a screen or because we experience it firsthand. It has done so much harm to us and is so embedded that it even becomes normalized, but does this necessarily mean that we have the gene for violence because we were born in a land stained by blood since ancient times?
We could automatically resort to the simplicity of assuming that we are uncontrollable beings and that we are fed up with selfishness in all spheres of our existence as a nation; violence, drug trafficking, parapolitics, guerrillas, paramilitarism, poverty, femicides... Better said, unfortunately the list of cases is innumerable, to the point that there are days when, no matter how far removed we are from these types of situations, we get fed up with the saturation of violence and injustice and say "what the hell is wrong with people in this country?" or that when we see how hateful and divisive speeches constantly win, more than one thinks "damn, I want to get out of here!" It is no wonder that we come to feel as a society that it is no longer worth fighting for this country to improve. However, these types of reactions are the ultimate proof that we cannot homogenize ourselves in the idea that we are violent because that is how we were born and that we cannot be fixed, because empathy is still there.
The real problem
The real problem occurs when we normalize violent acts. When we begin to see an act of violence as a situation that cannot be fixed and so we turn a blind eye, or when we assume that making fun of other people's misfortunes on social media is “black humor.” At that moment we are giving up our true humanity, because we believe that it is normal to see a man harass a woman in a shopping center, or to see a robbery on the Transmilenio and the blame falls on the robbed person because “he got carried away,” all this just because “we are used to it.”
In Colombia we are killing ourselves because we have a serious case of brainwashing in supposed values that are totally obsolete and a social construction that has sown the seeds of violence and discrimination by all the damn classes; that if you are not the son of the richest family, then you have no right to a job or decent health care, that if you do not live in a city, then you simply cannot have access to a water supply or a quality education, and perhaps the worst case of all and which is probably the disastrous result of all the above: if you do not use violence to get what you want you are screwed, because as in this country "the clever one lives off the fool" and being sensible is difficult there is no other way to get ahead. It is not the gene of violence, it is that the social and political structures of our country blind people to the point that they cannot see beyond their limitations and end up resorting to the path of the unwary.
Obviously, violence in our country is so deeply rooted in its fibers that getting rid of it sounds completely utopian, but it is not impossible. Obviously we are not going to eradicate it from Colombian reality overnight, but it is something that, like everything in life, has a solution and the solution is ourselves, especially the youth.
We have the power
It may sound very cliché and all that nonsense, but it is simply the truth. History has shown on multiple occasions that we are capable of evolving as humanity, it has left evidence that new generations with the right amount of rebellion bring new ideas and refresh the panorama, giving us a glimpse of hope, even if this is often overshadowed by violence itself. Obviously, ending a problem as big as this requires a lot of time (entire generations), but as the great sages of Colombian malt fermentation say, “the best things in life take time,” and we are the ones who fortunately have the tools to start the change, even if it is small, but that becomes an evident and increasingly stronger change.
Although it may be difficult or seem distant at times, we have to accept that this profound problem is not a game, that it is a page that our society is crying out to change. We need to be aware that it is also in our hands to transform the reality in which we live, to think about who we really are, what we are made of and what we are capable of; let us not leave here without leaving an indelible mark on our own history and if we are going to complain about what happens, it is better that it is because we are going to contribute to fixing what makes us uncomfortable. Let us be love and that bravery that is in our being and let us take the reins of our country where it is, until the day comes when the bullets finally stop blinding dreams.
