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OPINION | Emergency exit

2020-12-01T10:25:48.085Z


Camilo Egaña: The only consolation is that the animals we love the most will never be able to read those headlines in the press that denounce us. They show us. They point us. They accuse us. | Opinion | CNN


A pygmy chimpanzee named Bonobo turns cartoons on the cell phone of an employee of the private zoo "Twelve Months", in Demydiv, 40 kilometers from Kiev, Ukraine, on May 5, 2020 (Credit: SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP via Getty Images)

Editor's Note:

Camilo Egaña is

Camilo's

driver

.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

(CNN Spanish) -

That life smells better than it tastes, one learns it before discovering that the Three Wise Men live in El Corte Inglés or at Macy's.

But even so, there is always room for surprise, even if it appears on tiptoe.

One, who has spent so many years in this telling of life, comes face to face again and again with reality.

I say this through the headlines.

They denounce us.

They show us.

They signify us like genetic markers or any pointing finger.

I read in a newspaper that chimpanzees, used as pets and in shows, suffer from serious mental disorders.

They suffer from psychological illnesses similar to those of humans, including post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.

Even bipolar disorders, says a study from the University of Girona, in Spain.

Chimpanzees unsettle me.

In Africa, seeing them and seeing me was the same.

Cuteness aside, each primate functions as an accusing mirror.

Seeing you in his gaze is overwhelming.

I remember how a little monkey, who had been the joy of everyone in Angola, languished to death when the boy who rescued him more dead than alive returned to Cuba and was not allowed to take him away.

That creature came undone little by little.

First, the look.

As if a sudden attack of glaucoma had dimmed the brightness of his eyes forever.

And then the stillness.

No more jumps or pirouettes or cheeks.

He almost became a statue of himself.

A little monkey reduced to a monolith, like Lot's wife, who looked back and became a pillar of salt in the "sight of God."

I thought again about the headlines denouncing us, when I read that the American singer Cher traveled to Pakistan in the midst of a pandemic to free Kaavan, an elephant that has been locked up in a zoo for 35 of its 37 years.

Kaavan is obese, they tried to rehabilitate him with a strict diet and music by Frank Sinatra to ward off the ghosts that haunt him.

Cher has managed to take him to a nature reserve in Cambodia.

And there he will spend what remains of his life.

"The only emergency exit," says my admired Leila Guerriero, "is the one we carry inside."

But what about the animals?

What emergency exit do they have for what we do or stop doing?

The only consolation - and I know it is a small thing - is that the animals that we love the most - that sleep in our bed, that we talk to them, that we bathe with hypoallergenic shampoos and that finally, we bury or cream, destroyed by sadness - will not be able to read never those headlines in the press that denounce us.

They show us.

They point us.

They accuse us.

Chimpanzee

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-12-01

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