There once was a boy named Dilan Cruz, a boy I never knew and will never know, a boy who could have been my brother, my family, my friend, a fellow student in any stage of my life.
Dilan was born in one of the most unequal countries in the world, Colombia, a beautiful place full of monstrous violence and with outrageous cases of corruption and injustice.
One day, so many decades and millions of victims later, there was a social movement that decided to express all the bottled up despair and say "no more", move to the streets and march against the thousands of injustices, stop the country for the time necessary for the government to listen to them.
The people, millions of them, fed up with violence, marched the streets peacefully, demanding the most basic conditions for a dignified life and for the already poor ones not to be taken away, the government had been proposing, among so many incredibly unfair measures, to raise their retirement age, force the youth to work for less than minimum wage (around 270 dollars) all the while giving the rich 14 billion tax exemptions and making the population pay in taxes for the billions more stolen by corruption.
So Dilan, having recently turned 18, aware that his future, just like the future of his entire generation, was completely deprived of any certainty, decided to get inspired by the rest of his peers and, filled with hope and strength, went out and marched, the day after panic had taken over the capital city because of alleged mass house robberies that were discovered to be staged to remove the legitimacy of the protests and scare the population.
On the third day of the national strike, with a small sign on which he wrote "You don't play with my family's fear. Resistance." he called for everyone on his social media to go out and march, going out in one of the biggest and most peaceful protests that the country has ever seen.
No one could have imagined that this boy, who had just finished high school, and was about to get his diploma this Monday, would become the face of Colombia's pain, the face of the country's soul ache, when, on last Saturday's afternoon, he was shot in the head, by the police, in plain sight, with an anti riot projectile that caused him severe brain trauma and left him in a coma, fighting for his life. The attack was witnessed by dozens of protesters who taped it and shared it on social media, causing the outrage of millions.
No one could have imagined that his recent death, on Monday night, would completely destroy the hearts of so many who, like him, are completely fed up with a reality that's designed to murder their spirits, their souls and, if possible, their bodies.
So here's to Dilan, and to the 18 other young people before him, who have been killed by the anti-riot squad. May his soul elevate beyond the limits and beyond pain, may his soul elevate the souls of all other victims, the millions more, the unspoken, unknown ones, the missing ones, all the ones left in mass graves and all the ones who are still deprived of any justice and may it help us find meaning and find the wisdom and strength to finally change this horrible reality, this mass repetition of wounds and injustices.
May he rest in peace and live forever in all our hearts.
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About the Curator - Henry Gonzalez
Musician from Colombia, constantly inspired and moved by music and trying to express it in the best way posible, trying to find common souls who get as transformed by music and sound as he does.
Music can be a spiritual experience, you just have to find the right one.
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