About that faces

I always believed that the skin of black people was made in a special way. In my
country the black people were tanned, shiny, and smooth, without any wrinkles,
just a simple beautiful skin, even the oldest did not have marks of their ages.

Really, the black people that I saw in the subway, on the street, in the juice shop or
in the hair extensions shop at Capitolio were happy people, without traces of
suffering or calamities. With white teeth, very white with a friendly smile.

Everything has changed. Now I see their emaciated faces, haggard, skinny. There
are no traces of those shining skins that evoked the tastiness of our tropical drums,
which just with their looks could catch you and bring to the coast.

Their laugh, light and hope is gone. The black people of my country are no longer
the same people, no one is already the same. The dictatorship has destroyed
everything, taking life, joy, kindness, dreams, smiles and even the desire to live; it
became a pandemic capable of damaging their faces and make them
unrecognizable.

The black people of my country are no longer the beach of the Caribbean Sea,
neither the sun, nor our toasted sugar cane. Today they are a bunch of scars, of
nights without sleep, hunger, cold and anger. Their faces are the proof of a
devastated and wounded nation, they are the skins of all of us, the cry and shout
that goes inside, the despair, they are our history and our present.

They are the faces.

Autor: Ariadna García

Translation: Ángel M. Borges

The original version: Sobre las caras