Our great poet dreamed of "an island that is not gagged silence", a happy metaphor for the end of that time of injustice and denial of rights that our islands, and the rest of the State, suffered for almost forty years. García Cabrera sang, and his song was of everyone, to the need and certainty of making our islands a place where tears of rage, wounds, raw flesh,... illuminate in a fruitful paradox horizons and hands of hope, the joy of the sea, in short.
The reason that drives me to write these lines, unfortunately, takes us away from that chimerical island, which has inhabited the island imaginary for so long - perhaps our San Borondón, a country foreseen for Morales - and takes us back to the darkness of times that we thought were already forgotten. I am referring, perhaps the reader already guesses, to the aggression suffered by the professor of Philology at the University of Las Palmas and expert in Canarian oral tradition, Maximiano Trapero, on January 30 (paradoxes of fate, School Day for Peace and Non-Violence) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The Canary Islands, our small Atlantic country, has been a meeting place for cultures and peoples throughout history. Far from offering here a complacent vision of our history, it is fair to recognize that the very Canarian founding fact was the product of the almost extermination of the primitive inhabitants of the islands; that our successive encounters have not always been as idyllic and fruitful as the official historiography, of Francoism but not only, has wanted to divulge; that the relations of the Canarians of past centuries with their African neighbors, to cite an example, have not always been cordial and friendly. However, the 20th century, and especially the last three decades of democracy and growing self-government, have given birth to a mature and tolerant people, aware of their immense plurality, prepared to face with high vision the new and old tasks that come their way, among which is not the least, that of managing a community of democratic, civic values, within the framework of a progressive sovereignty.
Why then this aggression against a person of peninsular origin because of his accent? What justifies two young Canarians attacking a citizen with blows and insults? Tracing that other virtual island that is today the internet, where there is also necessarily everything, one finds too many times attempts to justification of which the ethical and civic conscience of a person cannot emerge unscathed: "he must have done something", "surely they are not telling us the truth", "that guy is a fascist and a godo", "if they don't want violence, residence law", "there are many people who have a bad time because of the Spanish invasion", "these reactions are symptoms of a disease called colonialism" and other niceties. Along with these, it is fair to recognize the existence of comments that express their aberration for the events that have occurred.
I call attention to the former: I hope and wish that they are a very minority expression of the anti-pluralism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism that one finds in other societies and that one wishes to disappear forever from the face of the earth. It seems especially opportune that we keep in mind the worst of the last forty years of history in Euskadi, the unfortunate gap that yesterday and today separates Northern Irish society, the attempts at imposition that occur in religious fundamentalisms of all kinds, the fascisms that Europe has known in the 20th century,... and we ask ourselves collectively: Are we facing an isolated outbreak that as such should be treated or is this one of the drifts of a poorly understood nationalism? I want to think that we are facing the former but I do not obviate the possibility that we are rather facing the latter. In any case, I cannot resist expressing here the obvious: not a single one of the problems that exist in the Canary Islands can serve as an excuse to justify a fact of this nature.
If we are talking about nationalism, someone should remember, or say since perhaps they have not lived it, that the most beautiful pages in defense of peace in the Canary Islands have been written precisely by the nationalist left. I bring here not only the campaign for the No to NATO, but the fight against the abuses of the Legion in Fuerteventura, against the militarization of the island of El Hierro, for the neutrality of the Canary Islands,... Someone should remind them of the anarchist and internationalist affiliation of Secundino Delgado, father of Canarian nationalism, and faithful friend of the Spanish anarchist Fermín Salvocheca. What a disservice these "patriots" do to the high ideals that the nationalism of the left always defended with their vile behavior! This deserves only our contempt.
If we are talking about our society, someone should say loud and clear, that a society that looks the other way when events of this type happen, is a society that is morally degraded, that ends up paying dearly the price of its silence. It is urgent that this one pronounce itself without ambiguities of any type, condemning the fact, showing solidarity with Trapero and closing the way to those who have the temptation to turn into a politically "justifiable" fact what is nothing but a savagery, typical of those who seem determined to show us only the worst of the human race. In my opinion, the lukewarmness with which, until today, the Canarian institutions have pronounced themselves is not up to the level of the facts or the democratic conscience that should permeate our public life. One would expect more evident declarations and gestures (we do not know if they have occurred in the private sphere, which does not exclude what I defend) in which it is made clear what is clear: that in a democratic society like the Canarian one, this type of behavior does not fit, that only degrade those who commit them, those who cheer them and the ideas they say they defend.
Cutting the evil at the root means putting in the first place the solidity and firmness of the democratic values on which the acceptance of the other is based, their recognition as equal, the consideration towards their different identity or political project if they had it,... The negation of all this, or our indifference, puts us on course for other islands already traveled by Humanity. Without wanting to be alarmist, we do want to be responsible and, in our opinion, the responsibility before this fact today is to be completely clear in showing our denunciation and rejection. Let us be worthy of that island "that is not gagged silence".
José Miguel Martín