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A photography

2022-01-09T02:08:54.764Z


The photo from the beginning of the year in Colombia is the image of a massacre in Arauca due to illegal income from drug trafficking, where 6,800 Army men have not managed to take control of the territory


Migrants cross the Arauca River, the natural border between Venezuela and Colombia, to take refuge in Arauquita.FERNANDO VERGARA (AP)

I will try to describe a photograph that haunts me.

It is that of Colombia in a series of events that have remained in my mind during this first week of the year and have ended up appearing there, in the lens from which I capture an image without retouching, which brings to light what It is intended to be left in the dark.

In the foreground, on the right side, speaking with a couple of statues sitting on the bench in what looks like a park, is former president Álvaro Uribe in full length.

Imaginary dialogue with the past.

The statues have reddish parts, like smeared with blood, that of 23 corpses, which were found assassinated in the plains of the border with Venezuela days before the portrait.

Two women and two minors are seen.

The rest are men.

Some have bullet holes in their faces, some have their nostrils full of coca, the one through which the FARC dissidents and the ELN guerrillas continue to fight, occupying another space in this photo: they are seen with their covered faces and their faded green dresses, some parts darker like the color that damp cloth takes on.

Behind them, other men, dressed in the same color, are soldiers.

They carry backpacks and rifles, swamp boots.

The role they play in the image is not clearly visible.

There are gray areas in that part of the photo.

Chiaroscuro, mist, blurred areas.

But they are many, almost like ants.

The photo is printed on a paper of 4,000 pesos, paper devalued as the value of the Colombian peso against the dollar.

A farmer carries a sack of products whose price is affected by an inflation of 5.6 percent.

His face has the frown and the hands of one who has plowed the land for a long time.

A little crowded together, a series of presidential candidates can be seen showing their banners full of empty phrases with the promise that one of them will have a greater preponderance in the portrait.

The place in the left frame of the photograph is occupied by the faces of Rodolfo Hernández and Gustavo Petro.

Some others appear on vacation recharging batteries to fill an urn that is located in the center of the composition.

They all wear masks.

Common citizens line up, long, there are about 50, to get to the place where a nurse is sitting waiting to insert the long flake in the nose.

She looks tired and somewhat fearful.

On the wall where a makeshift chair rests, the word "Omicron, little evidence left" appears.

A black man in sandals is seen raising his hands in front of a restaurant waiter, as if forcing his way inside.

The waiter is white, the door is ajar, but the name of the place can be read: racism.

President Ivan Duque does not appear in the photo.

Nor do I think it is worth framing to be hung as in one of the hundreds that it has on the walls of the House of Nariño.

This is different from the others.

This, without a doubt, is the photo of the imperfection.

It is the photo of a week, the one at the beginning of the year in Colombia, that of a massacre in Arauca on the Colombian-Venezuelan border due to illegal income from drug trafficking, where 6,800 Army men have not managed to take control of the territory, a contagion uncontrolled by omicron, that of the threat to an economy that grows and at the same time is weakened by increasing inflation and informality, that of a case of racism in the land where we are all black with great honor, and that of a country for now without a route It is clear that it is moving towards the congressional elections in March and the presidential elections in May and June 2022.

A photo that should be framed, to remember that this is the Colombia in which hatreds have not left room for true reconciliation in the territories and the promised institutionality did not arrive even with the wise men.

To evaluate in a few months if we learned the lessons of the pandemic and were able to prepare the health and educational system to keep up with the speed with which the virus is transmitted without isolating ourselves from knowledge again.

This is a photograph to warn about the sick soul of some white people who speak of equality with the hypocrisy of always when in the XXI century, someone is denied a position because of their skin color.

But it is only possible to watch it detaching itself from the ego and it will be necessary to take it again every week to see how these same elements are occupying the spaces in a new composition.

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Source: elparis

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