What sadness! That we would all well do some soul searching and learn to say, Pardon me, pardon me, brothers! Today's world brought along by the culture of throw-away, needs you [indigenous brothers]. So Pope Francis spoke to the indigenous peoples from Chiapas, then he listened in their own languages: Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolobales ...
One would have to wonder if the exclusion the indigenous peoples have lived with for centuries, brought about by the One-Percent who "make use of" fifty-percent or more of the country's wealth, will allow them to forgive. Indigenous pilgrims with feet eaten by fungus, calluses, corns, abrasions, cuts, infections and other patrons of the feet that follow their pilgrimage and wander without shoes, made up by the dust of the roads. Yet even so others continue searching while living in the stillness and rest without end.
"... that in the depths there is no bottom,there is nothing but a cry,a cry, another desire"
Luis Cernuda, Spanish poet (1902-1963)
The consequences of such exclusion for the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, Oaxaca and so on [63 indigenous groups are officially recognized in Mexico] are isolation, despair and deeper immersion in an already chaotic inner world. Life lessons are in the family, where the primary concern is daily survival. Death is a reality that makes itself present at every moment against the threat of starvation, disease and daily violence increasing across the length and breadth of the country.
Family life is experienced as a means of achieving security. When this desire is frustrated, one turns to a new generation, immersed in the same sorrows and scarcities that come to worsen the precarious and distressing conditions in which they live. The city with its tremendous solution-less problems changes the lives of these families who, in search of food, leave behind lands, spaces, customs and symbols [i.e., cultural identity]. All this added to their low level of education results in their carrying out occupational activities that are not relevant for the system. In this scenario, most indigenous people are victims of exploitation, which generates more explosive anger and dissatisfaction with the associated elevated levels of anxiety, frustration and traumatic depression.
Reflecting with Paul Ricoeur (Memory, History, Forgetting, FCE), it can be said in his dry and implacable formality, without pity: the beg pardon "pardons" only the unforgivable. It cannot, and should not forgive—that is, there is no pardon if there is more where the unforgivable exists. It is worth saying that forgiveness should be presented as the very impossible. Because, in this century, monstrous, unforgivable crimes "therefore" have not only been committed, but they have become visible, known, recalled, named, archived by a universal consciousness better informed than ever. Crimes both cruel and massive seem to escape, because it has been sought to make them escape in the very excess of human justice. Invocation of pardon for the unforgivable was thus revived, re-stirred and re-accelerated. But is not the socioeconomic cultural inequality in which 70 percent of the Mexican population live a crime?
This destructive hostility can only direct itself to the face of the Other, the Other who is like oneself, the nearest neighbor. Should forgiveness then plug the hole? Or will forgiveness give way to another peace, without forgetting, without amnesty, fusion or confusion. It is obvious that no one would dare object to the imperative of reconciliation. It is better to stop crime and discord. But, says Ricoeur,
"I believe that we must distinguish between forgiveness and the process of reconciliation, the reconstruction of wellbeing and 'normality' as necessary and desirable as they may appear through loss of memory and the work of mourning."
A finalized pardon is not a pardon. Is it not just a political strategy, a psychotherapeutic economy? Or rather, is it not asking forgiveness of the unforgivable? Spanish original
*José Cueli García, born in Mexico City in 1934, completed studies in medicine, psychology and psychoanalysis. He holds a doctorate in psychology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Since 1965, he has been a professor in the School of Psychology of UNAM.
See also:
See also: