When did fear prevail among us?

By Eduardo Galeano

In the Victorian age, it was inadmissible to mention men’s pants in the presence of a young lady. Today, it is not well considered to say certain things in the presence of public opinion: Capitalism bears the artistic name of market economy; imperialism is called globalization. Its victims are called developing countries; it’s like calling midgets children. Opportunism is called pragmatism; treason is called realism. The poor are called needy or in need, or underprivileged. The expulsion of poor children from the educational system is known as school desertion. The employer’s right to fire a worker without compensation or explanation is called a flexible job market. The official language acknowledges women’s rights among minorities’ rights as if the male half of mankind was a majority. Instead of military dictatorship it is called process. Tortures are called illegal constraints or also physical and psychological pressures. When thieves belong to well-to-do families, they are not thieves but kleptomaniacs. The plundering of public funds by corrupt politicians takes on the name of illicit wealth. Accidents are those crimes committed with automobiles. To mention the blind, one says the unseeing, and a black man is a person of color. Where it reads a long and painful disease you should read cancer or AIDS. A sudden ailment indicates a stroke; one never says death but passing. Nor those human beings annihilated during military operations are dead ones. If soldiers, they are called casualties; if innocent civilians, they are called collateral damage. In 1995, at the time of nuclear explosions in the South Pacific, the French ambassador in New Zealand declared: “I don’t like the word bomb, these are not bombs but explosive artifacts.” Some of the gangs who kill people in Colombia under the protection of the military are called “Living together”. Dignity was the name of one of the concentration
camps in times of the Chilean dictatorship and Liberty the biggest prison of the Uruguayan dictatorship. Peace and Justice was the name of the paramilitary group which, in 1997, shot in the back forty five farmers, mainly women and children as they were praying in the church of the town of Acteal, in Chiapas. “Global fear” – Those who work for fear of losing their jobs and those who don’t work are fearful of never finding one. Whoever is not afraid of hunger is afraid of food. Car drivers are afraid of walking and pedestrians are afraid of being run over. Democracy is afraid to remember and language is afraid to express itself. Civilians are afraid of the military, and the military is afraid for lack of weapons. Weapons are afraid of lack of wars. It is the time of fear. The woman’s fear of the man’s violence; the man’s fear of the fearless woman.