Crime of silence: the time has come. It’s time for action

Editorial Comanegra has just released “Crime of Silence: the time has come. It’s time for action", a publication in which its author, Federico Mayor Zaragoza urges citizens to take a stand and take the reins of their destinies into their own hands, rather than remaining silent spectators, and to say ENOUGH!

INTRODUCTION

Awareness, foresight, prevention. Behaving in such as way as to forge the future and invent a tomorrow in consonance with equal dignity for all human beings. This commitment to the future generations requires profound transformations and radical changes, but also that we preserve the essential values that must guide our steps and serve as a point of reference when responding to the great challenges that we face.

Thus, against the wind, we must plow our fields and plant our seeds, even in bad weather and hostile environments. For centuries, in male-dominated circles of power there has been a culture of imposition, violence and dominance. And people, as obedient vassals, have remained silent and fearful.

But at last the time has come for the peoples, the women and men of the whole world, to take the reins of their destinies into their own hands. The time has come to refuse to accept the unacceptable. To rise up, to raise our voices and to offer an outstretched hand.

Information and communications technologies now make distance participation possible. And, thus, they can facilitate a transition from an economy of speculation and war to an economy of sustainable global development. From subjects to citizens. From force to words.

The time has come. It’s time for action, and to cease being passive spectators.

The time for silence is over.

The crime of silence

From wave to wave.

The sea is all knowing.

But it forgets.

Mario Benedetti

I wrote this in August 1994 in Salobreña, sitting across from the sea as the sun went down:

The crime

of silence.

We must become

the voice

of the silenced

ones.

The voice

that denounces,

that proclaims

that man

is not for sale,

is not part

of the market.

The voice

that reaches out to

the four corners

of the earth,

forceful and loud.

Let no one who

can speak

stay quiet.

Let all those who can,

join in with

this cry.

The silence of the silenced, of the gagged. The silence of ignorance. Terrible silence. Though even more terrible, so terrible it is a crime, is the guilty silence of the silent. Of those who can speak but remain quiet. Of those who can and should speak, but choose not to.

We owe our voice. To our own conscience, primarily. But, immediately after, it is our duty to be the voice of the voiceless. We owe them our voice: The voice owed to you, as in Garcilaso's eclogue, as in Salinas' book. The voice owed, above all, to those who follow just behind us, to future generations.

Without ceasing. Without flinching. Resisting distraction or weariness. Resisting the pull of the screen (s), passive viewers. It is a duty to speak out. To fail to do so is, or can be, wilful insolidarity, a moral transgression, a crime. "When the tired man / ... stops, / he betrays the world, because he yields / in hte supreme duty, which is to continue".

Try again. Without stopping, without pause, because -as Salinas continues- "It makes our lives complete / that pure, restless flight...".

A watchful voice. A voice that warns and corrects. A voice tha guides. "The voice must preceed the fact, / prevent it. / Any later and it is useless. / Nothing more than trembling air" (verse on Cambodia, 8 April 1979).

The voice owed, pledged. The voice that liberates as it utters. The voice that is a handhold, that cures. In 1995, I wrote in Paris,

"... The voice sometimes / was not a voice out of fear. The voice tha could have been the remedy / and was nothing".

In hies poem, On Present Time, José Ángel Valente warns us:

"I write from a shipwreck.

I write about the present time.

I write... about what we have destroyed

above all inside us.

I write from the night,

from the infinite progression of the shadows,

... from the clamour of man and the netherworld,

from genocide,

from the children, infinitely dead...

but I also write form life...

from its powerful cry".

Like Garcilaso, "No longer could I remain silent," let us raise our voice. A voice owed, a voice of life. The crime of silence"... Let the voice of everyone be heard, / solemnly and clearly". This is the message of Miquel Martí i Pol. Of everyone! The clamour of the people, so that our descendents do not look back one day and think: "They could have but the did not dare. We waited for their voice, and it never came".

The sea can remain silent.

We cannot.

--------------------------

In book "Heartbeats of time", by Ricardo Calero and Gervasio Sánchez. Published by Ayuntamientos of Sevilla and Zaragoza, 2004