A PICK AND A SHOVEL. Of solidarity, empathy and courage

Ago102024

A PICK AND A SHOVEL. Of solidarity, empathy and courage

A PICK AND A SHOVEL.
Of solidarity, empathy and courage

August 2024.

Solidarity with what is distant – and I am not talking about geography, but about its place in information – is not only comfortable. Furthermore, it allows the most absurd and contradictory positions (such as justifying the murder of civilians, mostly children, who ignore that the present hell is not momentary, but also a promise of the future).

Solidarity with what is distant does not require commitment: it is others who suffer and die. For them the alms of momentary attention, the heated discussion (ha) about one or two States, the historical references that favor each position. Solidarity with those close to us, on the other hand, demands something more than a comment on social networks. In the strange little world of progressivism, the Kurds, Palestine and Ukraine, are closer than Ostula and its stubborn resistance; the indigenous communities from the Isthmus that rebel against the fate of being converted into customs guards on the new southern border of the American Union (because that, and nothing else, is that megaproject); the ecological destruction called “Mayan Train”; the dispossession of water throughout the geography; the imposition of thermoelectric plants; the rebellions against looting, impositions and destruction of the environment;… and the Seekers.

And no, it is not about ignoring, due to geography, an injustice anywhere on the planet. No, it is about understanding and feeling that solidarity is not a fashion and a pose, but a commitment that curses.

Like the ear, the look… and the word.

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Of the absences, the most terrible and inhuman is the one that has no explanation.

Missing people, their relevance and the indifference they provoke up above, are conclusive proof that frivolity and cynicism are virtues in the political work of the right… and the progressive left.

The existence of people who seek truth and justice for those who are missing is what marks the vaunted modernity up above: the hell in which these disappearances are brewing is terrible; and it is wonderful that those who seek revalue human dignity with their efforts.

In recent years, the most terrible and wonderful thing that this geography has given birth to is the profession of “seeker.”

What is the minimum to meet this demand for truth and justice for the disappeared? What is the “floor”, as management experts would say, in that request? A bone fragment? The shred of a faded blouse? A shoe without its pair? A resolution from the judiciary, the police, the government in power: “what could be done”? The lonely, desperate, useless blinking GPS signal?

A speech that, of course, ends with “I am committed to letting the truth be known before my government ends, no matter who falls”?

The seekers not only look for their absentees, they also look for the shame, dignity and humanity that was lost with a government position, a line in the Excel table of payroll payment for surrenders.

Those who refuse to respond to the Seekers’ demand, what are they afraid of? What is the basis for them to affirm that “the majority of them, disappeared by their own free will”? Have they already investigated and are those absent voluntarily? So why not tell the Seekers: “Madam, your son, daughter, left because she found a partner” or “because you didn’t understand her”?

Don’t they have high technology (drones, satellites, geo-radars, digitized files)? If not, why don’t they buy or rent, or borrow that equipment. Look in online stores… or on the website of the Secretary of the Navy. Just type “search and rescue teams” in the search engine window.

If they have the means to spy on their enemies (un Pegasus en cada soldado te dio [a Pegasus in every soldier he gave you[1]], why don’t they use those technologies to find out if that person is missing «by their own will»?

Or are the Seekers lying? So is it a lie that they go from one place to another, based on the information they receive? Do they suffer because they want to or because someone needs them? Are those images where they appear, with shovels and pickaxes, in rural areas, edited with a digital application and, in reality, are they at home doing math to see how they make ends meet? Did they – and they, of course -, the Searchers, voluntarily disappear their sons, daughters, colleagues, fathers, mothers, family, with the sole purpose of harming the imaginary victim of the National Palace?

Maybe they could at least ask those Seekers to search and find the shame that, up above, they lost for a government position… and a personal payroll.

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If you work in the media, do you remember those times when doing journalism meant investigating, going to the scene, interviewing the “parties involved,” challenging “self-censorship,” fighting in the editorial committee for publication? -because you were committed to those victims, to make their tragedy known; and you hold the value of giving your word in high esteem, that’s why you chose journalism -, return to the place and show those mourners the published piece (which cost you the umpteenth threat of dismissal, -or confirmed it, of course-) ?

Remember when the notes were taken from reality and not from social networks? Do you remember when the “PRESS” badge, more than pride and impunity, was a symbol of ethical commitment?

Wasn’t there a time when you were fighting the article with other journalists and not with influencers who don’t even know how to write the description of their videos? Those days where the enemy was the gift, the ‘chayote’, the envelope with bills, the unconfirmed information? And not like now, the death threats – carried out not infrequently – or the virtual harassment of bots of both kinds. In addition, of course, to the “mañanera court” with which the Supreme distributes slaps and caresses.

Where are the great reports, the investigative journalism, the exclusive notes, the incisive questions, the impeccable writing, the correct diction, the image where the news piece is not the journalist but reality?

Follow Ariadne’s thread, maybe inside the labyrinth you will find what made them choose journalism as a profession… and a course.

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Somewhere in the human heart there is a thing called “empathy”. This ability to “put yourself in the place of the other” is, in reality, the ability to “put yourself in the place of the victim.” Sometimes individually and increasingly collectively, that feeling goes further and faces the need to “do something.”

But reality gives no prizes. If anything, nightmares. So it takes courage to say “this is me and I feel that this is not fair and I have to say it or make it feel, especially to the victims.”

The achievements are few and spaced out. They seem small, but for the victims they are everything. As it will be for – let’s suppose, without granting – José Díaz Gómez, who will surely be surprised when he sees all the messages of support and solidarity that, from the most unexpected corners of Mexico and the world, converged on the efforts of that NGO – uncomfortable, as all NGOs must be-, which assumed the search for justice for what it is, that is to say, a duty.

His freedom was born by all those voices and actions that, mind you, converged in a simple but forceful demand, as old as humanity itself: freedom.

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Search for the seekers. It occurs to me, I don’t know, that maybe they are also looking for another tomorrow. And that, friends and enemies, is fighting for life.

Okay. Cheers and find them. Urgent.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.