I was in fifth grade when my sister bought me an autographed book. It was lilac in color with light green leaves, and on the cover it announced what it would be used for in extravagant golden letters. I suppose he would seem hideous to me today, but at eleven he was of incomparable beauty.

Never lose your charming personality (Never lose your charming personality), the lady wrote in the autograph book. Not just any autograph book, but one that belonged to a little girl whose teachers told her she didn’t like her; whose teachers organized a parent-teacher conference, apparently without inviting the parents, to warn them that she was a “bad apple” and that they should prevent their daughter from contracting the disease; and whose teachers pulled a subject to leave her in extra time because she laughed easily.

That hostile, spoiled and rebellious girl that I was, smiled when she read that autograph. My life turned upside down, the phrase remained forever in my memory, in my heart, in my soul. That simple autograph sustained me, saved me, and brought me here. Miss Ana María Jaramillo knows this, because I told her so many times that I could thank her.

Jaime Iván Kaviedes was orphaned by his father and mother, his ability to play football raises him like foam, gives him money and fame that he could not handle. Perhaps his orphaned soul had lost its compass and the love of his grandparents was not enough. This boy, who vibrated the whole country with his goals, is today a man who causes problems, who attacks, who behaves badly. What would your education be like? What did you miss, what did you not understand?

The National Police is there to monitor public order and peace, and if a drunk, or a well-known person, violates that order, it is their duty to act. How should agents act? As they were taught, that seems like an obvious answer. But another question arises: How were they taught? Obviously not with the Montessori method.

As human beings, words sink us or save us. Disqualifying words from parents or teachers can be deadly.

A whip made of braided leather was called a harness. They sold it in those vans with megaphones that were parked on Saturdays in the Plaza de la Virgen del Salto, in my Latacunga. There I heard a sentence that also stuck in my memory, in my heart and in my soul when my dad explained to me what he meant: “So that they will give while he continues to grow”, shouted the man who sold those stews.

The only explanation I have, both for Kaviedes’ attitude and for the actions of the police, is that education in Ecuadorian families, in schools and military training centers is probably still “a letter in which blood enters”.

What goes through the mind and heart of this wounded child, these authoritarian policemen, what old fear, what old loneliness makes them behave like this? I feel the pain of their helplessness in the face of a society that has failed them.

As human beings, words sink us or save us. Disqualifying words from parents or teachers can be deadly. I wish we all had a miss whose word is a buoy to help us stay afloat. (OR)