Politically speaking, the country is a paper republic. It is a scandal every day, a problem of corruption and robbery. It is hatred, it is calculation and daring. It is a scene of characters trying to convince us that their plan is ours, that their theories are our beliefs, that their lies are universal truths. From this perspective, the country is chronic fatigue, frustration and an uncertain horizon. The news is what leaves us horrified, the mediocrity that suffocates us. It is a message of revenge and frustration. It’s a list of ambitious themes, recurring caudillos and shout-out speeches. The nonsense that overwhelms us.

But is it possible to look at the country in a different way? Of course. It is possible to see it as your home, to look at it from the edge of the mountain range that towers over every volcano, under the blue sky, or between showers and earthly fears, between the wind that heralds summer and the sunshine that orders you to seek shade. Is it a different country or a different perspective? Or, perhaps, the real state has been replaced by a freak hiding behind the mask of unspeakable ambitions and appetite for power?

The real state, second, is not in offices or assemblies, it does not tread on red carpets. It is not in empty phraseology, it is not in the eternal frustration that is injected into us every morning and that is shouted at us as a dogma, a speech or an interview. It is not in the poison of rivalry and hatred. It is not arrogance that suffocates us. It’s not nonsense. It is, yes, in school, in the soccer game that children play, at work, in the intelligence that is practiced to survive with enthusiasm. It is in a well-earned salary, in an honest profession, in the plans of every family, in the minimal hopes with which the days are filled.

Is it possible that one day the two countries will reconcile and become a “people’s republic”…?

This is the real country we live in. It is what we feel is ours, without the need for a slogan to command it or a proclamation to falsify it. It is the one that naturally imposes itself on us when we walk in the village or go to the park, when we press our hand on the shoulder of our son or the hand of our grandson, or in the embrace of society and in a gesture of solidarity. It is the one we find when friendship blossoms. It belongs to our country, our space.

Is it possible that one day the two countries – the sour and distant one, and the sweet and close one – will reconcile and become a “people’s republic”, a true democracy? Will there be generosity that makes this difficult brotherhood possible? Whoever truly achieves this will go down in history, a history that allows us to recognize ourselves in the moral authority of the ruler, in the helpful official, in the honest and sincere politician, just as we recognize ourselves in the landscape, in the privacy of the family, in the book we read

We hope it is so, because the political state is moving further and further away from ours. It’s a strange world and a winding road. It is the farthest and most contradictory thing from what is close here, in an ordinary man struggling to survive. (OR)