On the bittersweet occasion of the assumption of the new Pope, the first Jesuit and the first Latin American, a cleric with a truly humble lifestyle, and a man who at best failed to stand against the bloody dictators of his country and at worst actively collaborated with them, I am reminded of this great song by the Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés:
Yo pisaré las calles nuevamente
Lyrics and translation on the flip...
Yo pisaré las calles nuevamente
de lo que fue Santiago ensangrentada,
y en una hermosa plaza liberada
me detendré a llorar por los ausentes.
Yo vendré del desierto calcinante
y saldré de los bosques y los lagos,
y evocaré en un cerro de Santiago
a mis hermanos que murieron antes.
Yo unido al que hizo mucho y poco
al que quiere la patria liberada
dispararé las primeras balas
más temprano que tarde, sin reposo.
Retornarán los libros, las canciones
que quemaron las manos asesinas.
Renacerá mi pueblo de su ruina
y pagarán su culpa los traidores.
Un niño jugará en una alameda
y cantará con sus amigos nuevos,
y ese canto será el canto del suelo
a una vida segada en La Moneda.
Yo pisaré las calles nuevamente
de lo que fue Santiago ensangrentada,
y en una hermosa plaza liberada
me detendré a llorar por los ausentes.
(1974)
Written within a year of the bloody coup that cost the life of President Salvador Allende and thousands of Chileans, the song goes like this:
I will once again walk the streets
of what had been bloody Santiago
and in a beautiful liberated plaza
I will stop to cry for the absent
I will come from the burning desert
and I will leave the forests and the lakes
and I will evoke from one of Santiago's mountains
my brothers who had died before
And joined to the one who did much and little
to the one who wanted his country freed
I will fire the first bullets
sooner, rather than later, without rest
I will return the books, the songs
burned by the assassin's hands
My people will be reborn from their ruin
and the traitors will pay for their guilt
A child will play in the avenue
and he will sing with his new friends
and this song will be the song of the earth
to a life snuffed out in La Moneda palace
I will once again walk the streets
of what had been bloody Santiago
and in a beautiful liberated plaza
I will stop to cry for the absent
I want to wish the new Pope well, really I do, but I think of those torture victims, the ones who were certain Bergoglio had turned their names over to the death squads, I think of the political prisoners hidden from prying eyes in the archbishop's residence, and the water comes to my eyes.
When the Argentine dictatorship came to an end, the Argentine Commission on the Disappeared published a report documenting the worst abuses of the dictatorship. They called it Nunca Más, Never Again. If a man complicit in the crimes can become Pope, is that nothing more than flowery words?