How does it feel?
How does it feel to see the horror exploding on your patio and not in your
neighbor’s living room?
How does it feel?
That fear tightening your chest, the panic of that deafening noise, flames
out of control, buildings tumbling, that terrible smell which sinks to the
bottom of your lungs, the look in the eyes of the children who walk all
covered with blood and dust?
How do you live, even for one day, in your own house, not knowing what’s
going to happen? How do you get out of shock? The survivors of Hiroshima
walked in shock on August 6, 1945.
There was nothing left standing in the city when the American bombardier in
the Enola Gay dropped the bomb. In a few seconds 80,000 men, women, and
children were dead. Another 250,000 would die in years to come from
radiation.
But that was a distant war, and television didn’t even exist then.
How does the horror feel today when the terrible TV images prove that what
happened on that fateful September 11 didn’t happen in a far away land, but
right here at home? On another September 11, 28 years earlier, a president
named Salvador Allende died resisting a revolution planned by your
government.
Those were times of horror too, but they happened far from your borders, in
some petty little unknown South American republic. These petty little
republics are in your back yard so you didn’t pay too much attention when
your marines went out to impose their point of view by blood and fire.
Did you know that between 1824 and 1994 your country carried out 73
invasions of countries in Latin America? The victims were Puerto Rico,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, the Dominican
Republic, the Virgin Islands, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Granada.
Your rulers have been at war now for about one century. From the beginning
of the 20th Century there was hardly a war fought anywhere in the world that
didn’t involve people from your Pentagon. Of course the bombs always
exploded out of your territory, except for Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese
air force bombed the Seventh Fleet in 1941. But the horror was always far
away.
When the Twin Towers came down in a cloud of dust, when you saw the images
on TV or when you heard the screams, because that morning you happened to be
in Manhattan, did you think for one second about what the farmers in the
countryside of Vietnam felt over so many years? In Manhattan people fell
from the tops of sky scrapers like tragic puppets. In Vietnam people
screamed in agony because the napalm continued to burn their skin for a long
time, and death was horrific for them, as it was for those who made that
hopeless leap into thin air..
Your air force left not a factory nor a bridge standing in Yugoslavia. In
Iraq there were 500,000 dead -- half a million souls taken in Operation
Desert Storm. And how many were butchered in such exotic far-off places as
Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Angola, Somalia, Congo, Nicaragua,
Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Sudan -- an endless list of
far-off war zones?
In all those places the missiles were manufactured in your country. They
were aimed by your boys, by people paid by your Department of State, and
only so that you could keep on enjoying your American way of life.
It’s been almost a century that your county has been at war with the whole
world. Oddly, your rulers dispatch their horsemen of the Apocalypse in the
name of liberty and democracy. But you need to know that for many people in
the world (on this planet where 24,000 people die of hunger or of curable
diseases every single day) the United States does not represent liberty, but
a distant and terrible enemy who only sows war, hunger, fear and
destruction.
For you these have always been distant wars and conflicts, but for those who
live there, they are a painful and present reality. These are wars in which
buildings are bombed and where people die horribly. Ninety percent of the
victims have always been civilians, women, the elderly, children --
collateral damage to you.
So how does it feel when the horror finally knocks on your own door, even
for just one day? What do you think when the victims in New York are
secretaries, cashiers, cleaning staff who paid their taxes on time and never
killed anyone? How does fear feel?
How does it feel, Yankee, to know that on September 11 the long war finally
came to your house?
Article by Gabriel García Márquez regarding September 11
How does it feel to see the horror exploding on your patio and not in your
neighbor’s living room?
How does it feel?
That fear tightening your chest, the panic of that deafening noise, flames
out of control, buildings tumbling, that terrible smell which sinks to the
bottom of your lungs, the look in the eyes of the children who walk all
covered with blood and dust?
How do you live, even for one day, in your own house, not knowing what’s
going to happen? How do you get out of shock? The survivors of Hiroshima
walked in shock on August 6, 1945.
There was nothing left standing in the city when the American bombardier in
the Enola Gay dropped the bomb. In a few seconds 80,000 men, women, and
children were dead. Another 250,000 would die in years to come from
radiation.
But that was a distant war, and television didn’t even exist then.
How does the horror feel today when the terrible TV images prove that what
happened on that fateful September 11 didn’t happen in a far away land, but
right here at home? On another September 11, 28 years earlier, a president
named Salvador Allende died resisting a revolution planned by your
government.
Those were times of horror too, but they happened far from your borders, in
some petty little unknown South American republic. These petty little
republics are in your back yard so you didn’t pay too much attention when
your marines went out to impose their point of view by blood and fire.
Did you know that between 1824 and 1994 your country carried out 73
invasions of countries in Latin America? The victims were Puerto Rico,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, the Dominican
Republic, the Virgin Islands, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Granada.
Your rulers have been at war now for about one century. From the beginning
of the 20th Century there was hardly a war fought anywhere in the world that
didn’t involve people from your Pentagon. Of course the bombs always
exploded out of your territory, except for Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese
air force bombed the Seventh Fleet in 1941. But the horror was always far
away.
When the Twin Towers came down in a cloud of dust, when you saw the images
on TV or when you heard the screams, because that morning you happened to be
in Manhattan, did you think for one second about what the farmers in the
countryside of Vietnam felt over so many years? In Manhattan people fell
from the tops of sky scrapers like tragic puppets. In Vietnam people
screamed in agony because the napalm continued to burn their skin for a long
time, and death was horrific for them, as it was for those who made that
hopeless leap into thin air..
Your air force left not a factory nor a bridge standing in Yugoslavia. In
Iraq there were 500,000 dead -- half a million souls taken in Operation
Desert Storm. And how many were butchered in such exotic far-off places as
Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Angola, Somalia, Congo, Nicaragua,
Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Sudan -- an endless list of
far-off war zones?
In all those places the missiles were manufactured in your country. They
were aimed by your boys, by people paid by your Department of State, and
only so that you could keep on enjoying your American way of life.
It’s been almost a century that your county has been at war with the whole
world. Oddly, your rulers dispatch their horsemen of the Apocalypse in the
name of liberty and democracy. But you need to know that for many people in
the world (on this planet where 24,000 people die of hunger or of curable
diseases every single day) the United States does not represent liberty, but
a distant and terrible enemy who only sows war, hunger, fear and
destruction.
For you these have always been distant wars and conflicts, but for those who
live there, they are a painful and present reality. These are wars in which
buildings are bombed and where people die horribly. Ninety percent of the
victims have always been civilians, women, the elderly, children --
collateral damage to you.
So how does it feel when the horror finally knocks on your own door, even
for just one day? What do you think when the victims in New York are
secretaries, cashiers, cleaning staff who paid their taxes on time and never
killed anyone? How does fear feel?
How does it feel, Yankee, to know that on September 11 the long war finally
came to your house?
Article by Gabriel García Márquez regarding September 11
