Colombia: Solitude is a Relic of Latin America’s Past

By Rocio Arango Giraldo

COLOMBIA: Poets, from here and others lands, have dedicated an infinity of verses to our landscapes. The happiness of our rhythms resound in the Caribbean music’s absolute happiness, but it is also expressed in the nostalgia of the tango.

Dois Candangos monument in Brasilia, Brazil
(Source: theodora.com)
Latin America has the color and the passion of Frida Kalho’s pictures, and the architectural novelty of Brasilia.
The people that are born of these lands are born encompassing the solitude of the past, the melancholy of the great civilizations of history and the indomitable spirit inherited from the Spaniards.
Anywhere we go, we feel at home. A home that guards us with the sea from Mexico that reaches to Patagonia, and in the south the imposing “dark mop,” as Mistral describes The Andes in one of his poems, that continue with the protection of its lands and people.
We Latin Americans who fight elbow-to-elbow. We the grandsons of those who rode the sheer summits in search of freedom, — What do we now call Latin America?

We take our culture and we settle in the heart of the world’s might, teaching them to speak “spanglish.” Yet, at the same time, our culture follows us and hurts us with its poverty and misery.
We are siblings because we have grown up together, and built our nations together. We knit History together, working through the sanguine knots that have interwoven the Aztec, Inca, Mayan, Guarani and Chibchas.
¡Oh Latin America! You are my earth and I have felt this way since seeing the panorama that at one time witnessed Quetzacoátl at the Pyramid of the Sun, the surrounding white greenery of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, the sea at Valparaíso and how the sun fuses with the green in the Pampas.
For these reasons, I ask: Doesn’t Reason predispose the personal interests of Rulers?
I ask this question now with the complicated diplomatic relationships that have arisen over the last few days.
I don’t understand the reasoning behind the guise of the humanitarian motives our leaders claim give them the right to make my siblings cry. As Simon Bolivar once declared, “It is harder to maintain the balance of freedom than it is to endure the weight of tyranny.”
Are we sovereign towns to defend our territory, but not accountable to one another for our actions?
Does Nicaragua break relationships with Colombia for solidarity with Ecuador, but not solidarity with Colombia whom also are our siblings?
Is that solidarity?
I ask them: What do these actions mean for the children of Latin America?
Learn more about Rocío:
Rocío Arango Giraldo is 21-years-old and lives in Medellín Colombia. She studied Political Science at the University of Colombia, as well as, Social Communication, Public Management, and Strategy and Public Knowledge at the Mexico City campus of the Technology Institute of Monterrey.
Rocío is a member of the Conservative
I am member of the Colombian Conservative Party (Partido Conservador Colombiano) where she works in political marketing, social and policy investigation and foreign affairs.
She also works as a young democratic participant with the Democratic Christian Organization of America and has written for such prestigious Colombian publications as El Colombiano, El Tiempo and others.
But something she is most proud of is her advocacy for people with disabilities.