Estoy agregando mi trabajo final del 3r cuatrimestre de Literatura, en el cual debia hacer un ensayo sobre el discurso que Gabriel Garcia Marquez presento en la premiacion del Nobel. Es un trabajo sencillo, pero me gusta, y lo dejare como recuerdo de algo que hice estando en el vagon del tren Latinoamericano, lo hice con el corazon...lo ironico es que es en Ingles, pero lo traducire y lo agregare despues. Gracias a Don Gabriel, por sus maravillosas historias, que despiertan en los amantes de las letras el orgullo de ser Latinos!!
Latin America claims: We are alive!
Latin America, loudly and proudly, has talked in the voice of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A voice coming from the heart of this beautiful and amazing land and that has been latent, surviving since our ancestors walked freely in it. Legends, stories, discoveries, conquer and wars, as irrefutable testimony, have left its trail of glory and pain in this land.
Since the Spaniards and Portuguese came to our land, they were amazed and fascinated with our uncountable wealth, and began to weave fantastic and incredible stories about the new world recently discovered by them. But this amazing discovery, also awoke their greed, and this became the main motivation to continue the quest, although that journey had finished with hundreds of lives, although they had left their blood, skins and bones in our land, they had to achieve their plan: steal our gold, kill our people, bury our culture, mute our voices. The price paid has been high and still is.
The voice, the cry that comes with pain and strength from the bowels of our people, those people who sometimes silent, others eloquent and noisy, were witnesses, protagonists of independences, revolutions, triumphs and defeats, still suffering the after-effects, which as a legacy of injustice, have left in our continent and its people a veil that covers our reality. Although, the voice still have the freedom to imagine…to create…
However, this creative imagination that people uses to escape from reality, to build fantastic and unreal worlds, has been used by our leaders for his own glory and conceit. These leaders, acting in complicity or as mere pawns in a chess game; with kings, queens, bishops and towers located in distant and cold lands, from where they conspire to have our popular wisdom, sunk into the deepest and darkest ignorance, showing to those kingdoms, who remained muted by convenience, that everything is permissible under the same roof, no matter how many lives would end up, how many sacrifices are made, the only thing that matters is demonstrate that the end justifies the means.
However, even those who have manipulated our dreams, distorted our voices in the name of ¨freedom´, using their insane power, their greed and arrogance; they were not able to keep us quiet. Not even those powerful, distant, cold and silent kingdoms, who handled many of these leaders as puppets, have been able to stop the power of our voices, which like eagles, have used the storm to rise higher and shout from up above that we are here, that we are people with courage, honor, wisdom and we have never lost the faith and hope and we continue to struggle.
World-renowned voices as Marquez, Neruda, Borges, Ruben Dario and others, have risen to our Latin America where only eagles dare, enlighten with their words, their lyrics, their poetry and their fantastic stories, the minds and hearts of those who until this century, had been part ,unconscious and silent, of that infamous chess game, where we haven’t play even the less important role. These invaluable voices have succeeded with their talent, earning the respect that our amazing land and his unique and amazing history and traditions deserve.
With this simple and humble essay, based in my point of view about ¨The Solitude of Latin America lecture given by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982, I took for granted the freedom to add my voice and my claim to the thousands of Latin-Americans, as Marquez, that have had the courage to make themselves feel and never forget his words. I am joining to the clamor of The Solitude of Latin America, but I am doing it with an honest, clear and loud voice: We worth, we are here and we are alive!!
Annette Duarte
8-230-602
Universidad Latina
