One different Easter

I am asking of God only one thing: Does not exist anymore the mining company Barrick in my continent



I was at the top of my town, with my people, with the children ... We were watching to the horizon, looking with tenderness all the mountains that lie far away with their white color on their laps. And the cold wind of those giants was broken in our faces. They looked so far away but they were always in our life and we always loved them. And I remembered the song about the cardboard houses.

Watching them my tears runs away ... Like small pearls, when I still seeing over our mountain's peaks with all respect that they deserve. I am crying, because of the future that waits to my people, I am crying for the hundreds of children who roam the city streets aimlessly with the faces of hunger, with empty stomachs, staring the showcases full of shiny malls.



Those indigenous children haven't a future ... But they have schools that teach them to be westerners and consumers. It's necessary for not seeing them, that all of them will not have a future: Their farms infected by cyanide that destroys everything green that exist in our Mother the Earth. She gave to Us to eat we a rich fruits before, but now She languishes every one moment during our existence - with hers snow and glaciers that die each day and we can not to do anything, because the enemies took away our souls in more than five hundred years!



We were subjected to torture to stop being we Indigenous People: Huamanchucos, Chachapoyas, Cañares, Chancas Now I see those kids all pale as the white of our snow peaks, shivering in a cardboard house in the high hills of the big city, with the light of a candle that must be purchased with the sweat of their parents - slaves on the plantations of new bosses, which are the same as yesterday.



And also I see: all my years of struggle, there I were left my youth. I were fighting for my people all my life, and now in my years of old man, without almost forces I still fighting like yesterday... even though my feet were flying before as the condor in the sky's height, now my feet are heavy as the stone of Icchal.

I wanted to go to renew my promise that I made many years ago, but my feets just drag and my spirit feel so horrible pain. I want to rebel but my tired body is unresponsive. Because so many years, I was being arrested by the enemies of my nation.

I would: like the condor at the end of his years, I want to fly to the highest cliff, and to jump almost no forces and die! But after I've expulsed the idea of dying! I have to die with my face to my village.

I still want to fight to the moment of my death, I want to be a ray of fire - generated from Katequil and I will become to make fire all the steppes and to the highlands of hills, I will lift all stones and they too will follow me: We will evict the invader who enslaves and kills five hundred so long years to my people! My indigenous people who doesn't understood that their chains have even stronger then ever.



I see their faces, in my eyes and they say to me: "Tata Tupac, because it's so far the horizon, where you want to take us right now?" I answer: "Doesn't matter the time we will get there, you are the strength that I lost so many years ago!”



And I look back and I look for the huge hole. Our enemies turned in this hole so much people of my nation. The greedy interests of a handful of people who came to us from the north, they are not from our country. I see how the invasion would cheat to my people with a new glass bead: which were called schools of clay with beautiful stained glass windows. They make it while still burrowing and destroying to our Mother Earth! Before we loved our Mother Earth, and she gave us, all that we needed to live.



And I see my brothers who sold our people to the enemy. Those misery brothers all around with the alcohol, they say it gives them pleasure, others like fools wearing the clothes of mistis. The clothes, of the enemy who throw us away from our land.

The enemies say: "We are preaching the truth!"

But the only truth is: day after day we were nowhere to live. And we wonder: "Where will I die?"



Time ago this land was ours, but the Europeans took it from us and we have no where to go. My Mother Earth has wired now. I remember my childhood: I walked on this land with my feet or some times on my Moor horse, which tata Noah gave me. But now I can not go there and a sign says: "Private property! Forbidden to enter! Here has order: To shoot! "



I can not enter in my country to make my ritual offering by my lakes. Many times ago my Mother Water gives life to Mother Earth, which irrigate the fields where we played with my ayitos - guardians in that my childhood.

Just I found one of them engulfed in alcohol on a fork-lift He stop me and still recognize me ... He said: My boy, where you go? Where is yours mother Herlinda? I look in his eyes the sadness, which the European culture brought here to us. I saw his misery: his children crying for bread that the father will not give them. And I turned around; I just grabbed his tanned hands, his hands so sad and crumpled by the pain. Those hands now have not, a plantation there they working before. They have no running waters...



During my childhood, He looked after me, and in there lands we together saw a abundance of running waters! And now? My sadness now turns sadder.



And I see his children as slacker, they crouched in the corners of the streets, hoping to steal, because at home no food to eat. This is the only thing which the "European civilization" gave them.



And I remember those words, which the mining company told him: Barrick promise them that the indigenous people will have much money for their lands and thus will take them a progress.



They sold the piece of land that tata Noah was left at them. And after reached to the coast where they spent those little money. After looking for work they no found other: only a pawn for one person.

Then they wanted to return to his people and found no place to live. All the earth barbed with wire that was brought from the progress of the gringos. And there working like guardians - those brothers - who once told him: "Do not be goofy! Sale all the land of tata Noah and will see your life will change for better."



Now he has nothing and I ask him: "Where you live?” Because I know: if I give him some money, He only will consume it for alcohol. He did not tell me, but I do know where he lives, there, where all my brothers search refuge in the big city:

Behind the hills of sand with their cardboard houses, this can not keep them from the light and from the rains of the summers, and never can save them from the freezing of the winters. My brothers shivering without shelter, they will all be near the fire of newspapers, because they want to try a piece of his warm glow.



I tell my ayita-guardian to my childhood:" I see you soon". And now I have to fulfill my promise that I made yesterday. I am walking with pain burthen; because I see my brothers now suffer so much because they do not have anything today.



Túpac Isaac II

Juan Esteban Yupanqui Villalobos.

 http://juanestebanyupanqui.blogspot.com