LATIN AMERICA - Cristina, My Love

I’m not a feminist, neither red, nor leftist, nor revolutionary. I know very well where I do belong: I am a pariah and Cristina is my love. As well as Mercedes Sosa, Dilma, Evita and Violetona Parra.

And as a writer to shout this love to the world, has earned me the reprobation of more than a few. I have been accused more than once of being mercenary, living in the United States with money sent to me by Cristina and Dilma to write about them. So help me God! These women don’t even know that I exist, because ... As if I was a writer read worldwide, (the truth is the truth) with great weight in the communicational platforms and moving masses with just the snap of a finger, as is the case with others. I know for sure where I’m standing.

And I say this clearly: Cristina, my love. Although she is the love thousands, as Evita continues to be. And I’ve already lost the track how many media organs have criticized me for writing about them, about the achievements of their governments, and gender violence they have experienced. I’ve been called fanatical and my opinions devalued for lacking a college degree or an intellectual moniker to support them. I do not need them: I speak from the heart, from the blood. I do not need to resort to boasting about being erudite to receive the applause and to be engaging: my expression exists by itself, without sponsorship. As we the nobodies and outcasts do exist.

Patriarchy does not accept that a woman admires another, much less to say it publicly so removed from any worries, they want to see us divided, hating each other, quarreling, so that we fail to advance and empower ourselves as a genre. So that we always continue to be in the shadows, behind, with tired steps, with the yoke of being invisibly, and submissive, and envious. Without rights, without fairness, without social equality.

Love should not be hidden, neither gratitude. I am not impartial, I cannot be impartial in the face of injustice, and I cannot pretend not to see the achievements of Cristina’s government and the smile and joy she brought back to Evita’s shirtless when she made them visible, and restored their rights. When she fought for them against international capital, when she offered them food, shelter and education. Health and labor benefits. The tools for overall development.

I cannot remain silent and not to be thankful for the Equal Marriage and public education. I’m not blindfolded; she didn’t provide us the right to abortion. It was she, it had to be she who should do it, but it was not. It is a debt to Argentine women. Not everything is perfect and not everything is as it should be. Even so, her government is faultless, as corroborated by the facts and time.

During her government she never suppressed opposition protests. She let them be; she endorsed freedom of expression even if it was employed to insult and denigrate her as a woman. She did not prosecute a single mass media due to the gender violence she constantly experienced when they displayed on the covers of newspapers and magazines photographs of her with expletives calling for gender violence and femicide.

No, it is not fanaticism, it is love, and love flows, love expands, flourishes. We are millions who love Cristina around the world. Yes, millions.

Because we admire and applaud her ability, her intelligence, her audacity, her dedication. Her courage and fortitude. The way she has dignified a whole people. To generations. Cristina is timeless, like Evita is. Not even death will overcome them.

So timeless and so beloved she is that the same people that took her to the presidency went to bid farewell to her the last day of her term, and then went to welcome her the day she returned to Buenos Aires to make the chimeras flourish.

The region is going through hard times, and Cristina continues to shine: whole, capable, incorruptible, indestructible. Why? Because she is a woman, and as women we have shown throughout history what we are made of.

Cristina has guided thousands of women around the world with her sole presence. With her transparent word, with her passion and political action that has left printed in history her allegiance to the outcasts. Her government was populist, of course, it was populist because it was the people that voted for her and for these people she ruled, not for the traitorous oligarchies.

Cristina never left, she has always been with the nobodies, and we the nobodies are with her.

And pariah as I am, who has seen the benefits of her government to my people, I name her and shout from the rooftops that she is my love. In case there is still any doubt.

Cristina, my love.

@ilkaolivacorado

contacto at cronicasdeunainquilina.com

Crónicas de una inquilina

Translated by Marvin Najarro