Pure skin

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• The video of Luna, a Red Cross volunteer, hugging the immigrant recently arrived in Ceuta

He crossed the desert, swam in the sea, reached land and found Luna. Then came that image that shows how being in the presence of the other forces me to look him in the eye, share his helplessness, feel his vulnerable body. The video of Luna, a Red Cross volunteer, hugging the immigrant recently arrived in Ceuta, which arises from the simple impulse of proximity. The first, rational, responds to our democratic values; the second is pure skin: materiality, immediacy, closeness. We feel the other, their humanity, by recognizing our own vulnerability. That is why the skin is more convincing than a speech. His cold gaze persuades us more than a parliamentary plea, where immigration policies take on the warlike aroma of the “defense of Europe”. The cold of a naked being unleashes our compassion like an instinctive gesture,immediate, almost animal. Caring for the other is an impulse prior to freedom because it is guided by the basic protection of the other in need. Actually, I don't decide. When I realize it, I am already trapped in it.

Perhaps that is why during this pandemic it has been so difficult for us to think in terms of care. Only in hospitals do they know what really happened. What is still happening. We learned from the experiences that the nurses told us, how they opened up to patients with gestures of recognition, of attention, without expecting any reciprocity. Like Moon. They tried to explain to us how our behavior can condition the lives of other people. But there is something that prevents us from experiencing that intuitive responsibility until we have the drama in front of us. We should demand the same degree of responsibility towards all people, and yet we only feel it when we feel it, when we see it from the singularity of its life, its history, its development, its goal.

But if all people require the same empathy, why do we normalize conversations about the cost in lives of opening the terraces, or reducing freedom to a kind of addition of positive sensations, such as reeds, bullfighting, even going to mass ? Fortunately, there are photographs, stories told with images where, when we see a face, we are vaccinated against dehumanization, avoiding becoming insensitive to life. The simplicity of showing a hug to a child rescued from the water connects us with the deepest sense of care. Then there will be speeches, geopolitics, patriotism. Even criticism and accusations for our "goodness". But there are the images: that of George Floyd, that of the Palestinian girl exclaiming "I'm only 10 years old",that of the embrace of the Moon ... Those images are the only instrument that some have to affirm their own lives and allow us to continue striving to maintain an ethical view of the world.