I want to go to war.
Do I really believe it when I say it? Yes, I truly do. However, my words are veiled in a silent shame when spoken aloud in front of others. I do not feel shame for what I desire; rather, it is perhaps the judgment, never expressed, of those who listen to me that makes me reduce this thought almost to a whisper. As if this “aspiration,” which I dare not call a dream, were something childish that should have vanished over time. Instead, it is there, shaped and manifested in recent years, stronger and more urgent than ever. A need, a voice, a call. I believe, or perhaps fear, that this is the result of a deep internalization of the anthropological education and experience I had in Argentina: living to understand.
There is a line that goes beyond empathy, which I have consciously crossed, deliberately placing myself in those realities that I otherwise would never have had the opportunity to explore. So I went to where the spirits of the orixás descend, through the spirals drawn by spinning skirts, into the bodies of faithful people drunk on alcohol. I shared iftar sitting on the carpets of unfamiliar living rooms. Always willing to enter, wherever a door is opened to me. I have known many deities and believed in all of them. I have deconstructed all my certainties with the help of those who have none. I have been overwhelmed by the strength of those bodies, hidden in black garments, whose eyes remained stubbornly dry while recounting the memory of unimaginable evils, while I collapsed at the second word I heard.
And now I am here, among paramilitaries and guerrillas, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, minefields, mass graves, and ancestral paths. Images of ordinary misery and decay flash by from the window of a bus, while barefoot children play with stray dogs reduced to skin and bones. On the walls of houses and shops, the inscription “AGC presente” (Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) casts a shadow that crawls like black tar into the alleys of the villages, reducing the population to silence and amplifying a tension that can be felt on your skin.
The conflict in Colombia hides under a cloak of presumed democracy, which everyone knows but no one has ever met, fed and kept warm by the hands of businessmen and greedy politicians. So young people disappear in the mountains, and their bodies reappear in the rivers weeks later, unrecognizable and swollen with water; murdered indigenous people are laid in rudimentary wooden coffins and covered with white shrouds that obscure their bullet holes; mines indiscriminately mutilate and tear apart women and children; rubber bullets, fired to “disperse” crowds, gouge out the eyes of the front line of those marching to demand rights; the government acknowledges and apologizes for the 6,402 “false positives” (civilians killed by the armed forces and passed off as guerrillas to improve conflict statistics); army helicopters fly low over a horizon that turns red while the peace agreements are nothing but a signature on a piece of paper put away in a drawer and now covered with a layer of gray dust.
I walk the streets of Bogotá where people sip coffee or aguapanela in fancy cafes adorned with climbing plants, where I sit in Eastern restaurants with expensive imported products. And yet, even in the capital, you walk on the sternums of the dead.
Colombia, as a friend said, is nothing but a huge cemetery without fences, and wherever you dig, a human remains always pops up.
I wonder if I am reckless, and the answer can only be yes, I am. I feel like Týr, who pledges his arm to the wolf Fenrir, with the sole purpose of getting close enough to chain him, only to lose the limb, mauled by the animal’s jaws. I assume my recklessness stems from ignoring what I am offering as a pledge to see the wolf up close, well aware, however, that looking evil in the eye, touching it firsthand, means paying a price, or losing a part of yourself. Perhaps I am losing my mental health, or perhaps not, but I do not care, and I am deliberately ignoring the pledge, as long as it allows me not so much to see as to understand.
Is it madness, or courage? The answer is very clear to me, having learned it long ago and cemented it in my person: there is no courage without madness, and no madness without courage. And I find confirmation of it every day, especially in the pages of books by those who have paid a very high price, finding themselves, unwillingly or consciously, facing situations where a face-to-face encounter with a brutal reality pushed them to perform actions they did not think they were capable of, for better or worse. Erich Maria Remarque, who volunteered in the First World War, wrote that “heroism begins where reason goes on strike: in contempt of life. It has to do with madness, risk, a drunken state,” and with adrenaline, I would add. After all, danger, when sought out, is itself a drug. However, a question arises: do I despise life? No, I do not despise it, but I also know that I would not care so much about losing it doing what I love, living with a purpose.
A friend, who shares the daily reality of the Colombian conflict with me, looks at me perplexed after listening to the flow of my delirious reasoning and exclaims:
But Marghe, a dead activist is useless.
These words strike me deeply because I share her view, and I realize that what I am talking about sounds more like a martyrdom: the sacrifice of life in the name of a belief. So do I want to live, or do I want to live to die? The cover of a book I read a while ago comes to mind, flaming red with a photo of Che and a title written in large black capital letters, “The true revolutionary is the dead revolutionary,” which I agree with, in part. What do I want to be? An activist, a martyr, a revolutionary? Do I really want, do I feel the need to confine my entire existence within a concept? I am sinking into contradiction.
I gather my thoughts and pause, I weigh the words, I gather the tangle, I order the thread, I look for the escape route. It is undeniable that working for others involves a risk in certain parts of the world, but it is also true that I am deliberately going where this risk exists. And this leads me back to the initial reasoning: living to understand. I simply, personally, cannot work for others without putting myself in their shoes. Which for me is equivalent to living there and in their very reality.
The circle closes.
The clear awareness that war is “ugly and infamous” is simply no longer enough for me.
The time will come to cross the line.