I was born and raised in a small central american country named Panama, where ever since we were little kindergarten kids we we’re taught that our country is a diverse one, a place were different cultures converge and where (ever since our formation) we all coexisted equally and peacefully. For many years and in the innocence of my youth I believed that to be a constant true. 23 years later I discovered this is nothing but an outstanding fallacy.
I am from a country whose whole foundation is based on slavery, based on the trade of humans who weren’t even perceived as so, this land that I am willing to sacrifice my life for was constructed over the blood of people who where dragged away from their freedom, their rights and their beloved ones only to be enslaved and sell by cheap.
For years now, we were kept blind from the things going on outside of our privilege ‘house slave’ bubble so that governments and its institutions could still feed us all those lies about how equal we were, are and always will when in God’s truth we NEVER were.
Now don’t get me wrong as a Panamanian, I’d be lying if I say I was ever belittled, discriminated or disregarded by the tone of my skin ( because down here open discrimination is based more on status quo than race itself, most of the times at least) but me never been personally attack doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist in my country because it does. Racism exist in commercials where only 1 out of 5 models is black, racism exist when little black girls were denied from entering school with their hair braided, racism is latent when black people isn’t allowed to wear their traditional clothes to go to public or private institutions because it doesn’t fit the standards of "proper dressing code".
This little things I noticed made me realized that just because today I’m allowed to ride in the same buses as white people do, be on the same movie theater as black people is and use the same books they use doesn’t mean we’re equal yet and not because I (and thank the Lord for that) was never stoned, shot or imprisoned for wanting to be treated fairly was I any different from the ones who were; because the truth is the only reason I’m allowed to do all of those things I said before is because of the blood and lives of brothers and sisters before me who fought the righteous fight and didn’t saw the results but regardless overcame successful.
I’m choosing this opportunity to rid my mind of all the institutional lies that this society fooled me with for so long, I’m choosing this opportunity to understand what Malcolm X meant when he said that we needed to see this as a whole as a united front and saying that not because I’m not from The States, the blood that racism and prejudice embodied in police brutality senselessly spilled is not my blood, that the lives lost do not represent the lives of my beloved ones being threatened as well, that this injustice is not going to reach me because IT WILL, sooner or later IT WILL!. Once this cancer spreads it sees not human made boundaries because lies know nothing about material limitations because they’re carried away by the people who were implanted with that seed and go wherever their host go.
I refuse here and now to be told that I shouldn’t care for what happen in a country that isn’t mine and that I should be worrying about real and concrete things that are happening in mine; because aren’t these the same people who told us that we were a Global Community or what this just another tactic to rob poor countries of their crops and riches to supply the more developed ones?. Is it really that impossible to do both?. I will not forsake my kind (humans) for cunning and evil pre-fabricated lies whose only target is to keep me in the dark and dehumanize me but above all I will not let any government rob me from my roots and make me forget that is not all the people who is dying, the people who is being brutalized is the same people that it was in the beginning, BLACK PEOPLE. In the beginning it was our fathers today it is US their children, tomorrow it could be my little brother here in Panama.
It’s too many tears, too much blood and so many names now, we must stand wherever we are in the world take this fight to us and march on until we get to the final goal that is justice. I promise this movement my involvement, my education on the matter and the making of awareness, so that at age 23 I can finally cease to fear ever giving birth to black children that will later be taken away from me unfairly and violently just because their mother is a black woman, so I don’t have to mind if my brother wears a hoodie late in the night after coming home from his job to be shot dead just because he looks suspicious, I vote to stand and fiercely, consciously, responsibly and above all tirelessly to be seen as an equal as a HUMAN BEING!.
My heart goes out to all the uniformed men whose live where lost today because of ignorance as much as my heart goes out every time a brother or a sister is taken down. I pray the Lord we’ll see brighter days where we can actually and fully live in peace. But as for now #BlackLivesMatter
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