I want to tell a story that serves me to say that not everything must be allowed: the child who smoked tobacco to please the patron saint.
In the name of the power of the one who decides, there are many barbarities that, over all the centuries of our history, have been committed and still followed.
Preachers and rulers have saturated us with errors and horrors.
It is attest to the chronicles written in our books. And thousands and more thousands of images, stored in thousands and more thousands of individual and collective memories.
I have always felt, I live within me, the desire to say no to abuse. I don't feel mercy for whom, abusing another, he uses him as a utilitarian example of his strength and power.
I oppose those who claim to know more than me for the simple fact that I don't think the same as them. And when I oppose, I express my loyalty to the balanced and fair world with which I dream and in which I believe.
And, when I don't understand something, I need to say that I don't understand it.
I need to tell you that I do not care how to argue what, in my eyes, it is not a good or acceptable thing.
The child of this photograph was convinced that he had to smoke tobacco on behalf of the patron saint. If not, the child and all their loved ones would run the worst of the luck. His poverty would be greater, his health would be at illness and his life would end up succumbing to the thrust of the worst death.
To receive blessings, I had to smoke.
And the child, unaware of his right to say no, said yes. Yes to everything. And smoked. Between congratulations, applause and currencies of the fervent crowd, fascinated by the image of the devout and convinced child of the goodness of his action.
And all this to fulfill the mandate to obey his elders and please the patron saint.
Before my perplexity and my outrage.
Pepe Navarro
