Cambia todo cambia en este mundo / Change, everything changes in this world
Hispanic Summer Program – San Antonio 2019
Cambia, todo cambia
Cambia, todo cambia
Change, everything changes
Change, everything changes
Asi canta Mecedes Sosa.
This is what Mecedes Sosa sings.
Life is made of change.
Nothing stays the same.
Our lives are but a sequence of changes, either is some slow-motion transformations of abrupt refigurations.
Cambia, todo cambia
Change, everything changes
Change la senora que hace las tortillas, and the bus driver
Change our teachers at school and the dulces we eat on the street
Change the dogs that walk around our neighborhoods and the songs we sing at church
Change the seasons of the year and the companions throughout our lives
Change the books we read, the places we use to belong and the birds on the trees.
Change the farmers who pick the corn and the colors of our cloths
Cambia, todo cambia
Change, everything changes
Our communities know change very well. Since 1492 the indigenous populations of the Americas have seen more changes than they want. Their worlds were decimated so many times. And they continue to change in their daily surviving against all the brutal attacks perpetrated by ethnic cleansing for more than 500 years.
Plunder, diseases, extractivism, robbery, disasters.
Cambia, todo cambia
Change, everything changes
Along with them, the Africans had to move and change. They were violently brought to this land and have also to learn how to constantly change. They have been used, abused, exploited, destroyed. Like the indigenous people, they live in the margins of our societies throughout the Americas adapting to the constant attacks on their dignity.
Cambia, todo cambia
Change, everything changes
Our Latinxs communities know way too well how death has come to our land, our cities, our rivers, our air, our animals, our mountains, our religions.
Coloniality! Old and anew! Visiting us time and again. Viciously uprooting ourselves from the places we belonged. Changing everything.
Cambia, todo cambia
The earth, a place without a soul, can only be the ex-change of monetary value.
Our people, ripped apart from their land and strength so that, colonizers can go back and again extracting everything they want for the sake of their comfort and profit.
Our waters polluted
Our lands vilipended
Our souls extracted
Our bodies injured
Our hearts wounded
Cambia, todo cambia
But more. The climate is changing too drastically, now more than ever. Our land is getting dried out, our food is getting scarce and our water is disappearing. These new changes were unheard of and now we are getting panicked. Our lives aren’t the same, once again, and we are not protected from anything, just as we weren’t before.
Cambia, todo cambia
El Norte continue to live in comfort and ignorance
While our people cannot make ends meet
El Norte lives in obscene abundant resources and vast waste
While nuestras familias go hungry.
El Norte gives subsidies to the agribusiness of NAFTA
While nuestros campesinos become climate refugees
Cambia, todo cambia
With everything stolen, our communities live in scarcity
We lose our bearings while our societies become dangerous and violence places
With very little left to hold on to
Cambia, todo cambia
That is why our people migrate to El Norte
People go where the money is
For no one wants to leave their homes and be uprooted, leave behind the communities they gave their lives to build
And yet, they do it hoping to find some kind of safety, food, work and home
For the future of our children
Cambia, todo cambia
But nobody want us here
No bad hombres!
No rapists!
No deseases!
They are dangerous people!
Build the wall!
Build the wall!
Cambia, todo cambia
Those who want to build the wall will also be gone!
Tyrants and fascists, everyone will go
For everything changes, including the policies of death
As for our people
Some will never come here, for they rather stay in their homes no matter what
Trying to make life possible in the midst of so many challenges
But some people will come and will able to make a living
Working for less
Living in fear
Doing the work nobody wants to do
And some of us will die on the way
Crossing so many borders
Trying desperately to cling unto some form of hope
Cambia, todo cambia
Just this week, a father and a daughter had beautiful dreams for a new life. Oscar Alberto Martinez and his 23-old month daughter Valeria Martinez drowned at Rio Branco river trying to make a way into the United States. They left El Salvador looking for a new life, trying to run away from violence and find some form of cuidado, protection and love. I imagine Alberto saying something like this to his precious daughter just before they go into the river:
No te preocupes mi hijita, papá está aquí para cuidarte. Llegaremos a los Estados Unidos y usted tendrá una cama bien cómoda, una hermosa muñeca y una escuela donde aprenderá inglés y un dia serás una mujer importante. Despues, mama llegará también. No te preocupes! Agárrate a mi cuello! Vamo-nos!
Do not worry my little daughter, dad is here to take care of you. We will arrive in the United States and you will have a comfortable bed, a beautiful doll and a school where you will learn English and one day you will be an important woman. Later, mom will arrive too. Don’t you worry! Hold on to my neck! Let’s go!
Cambia, todo cambia
Even the growing borders all around us. One more time. All the time.
But in the midst of borders, impediments, desperation and death
We gather at the Hispanic Summer Program
We gather at churches of all kinds, everywhere
We gather around the kitchens of our abuelitas y abuelitos
We gather as people of many religions and no religion
And we repetitively say:
Si, cambia, todo cambia
Yes, change, everything changes
Pero
Solo nuestros corazones no cambian
Only our hearts don’t change.
And we will continue to gather together
At all and any place
We will continue to study, to pray, to dance, to eat and to bless each other!
Diciendo:
Lo que cambió ayer
Tendrá que cambiar mañana
Así como cambio yo
En esta tierra lejana
Pero no cambia nuestro amor
Por más lejo que me encuentre
Ni el recuerdo ni el dolor
We will not forget our people
No olvidaremos a nuestra gente.
Cambia, todo cambia. Asi es!
Pero el amor por nuestra gente, eso no cambia
Change, everything changes. Yes, we know it.
But our love for our people, that will never change.