My favorite student, Sylvia, writes a beautiful text in which the colorful flowers on her white skirt smell, the tiny flowers on her white skirt rise with their dance, then fall on her and shine. She says she didn’t take off her skirt even when sleeping.

Your story reminds me that on January 22, fifty-six years ago, I turned ten years old. And when I came home, I found on the bed a wine-colored sweatshirt with a high collar and a sweater that my mom had sewn for me and that I would wear with the sweatshirt inside. And my dress was white like Sylvia’s skirt, but instead of colorful flowers it had little boats and it smelled of the sea, it had little boats that sailed without stopping. It wouldn’t be strange if Sylvia and I have already met, if my boats jump into her skirt and if my sweater is full of flowers and if both her skirt and my dress smell of water, of games, of dreams, of childhood.

I don’t want to write about deaths, and the page is filled with blood. I’m not going to talk about violence and guns, guns are appearing…

And that’s how life used to be, we children imagined possible or impossible worlds, our own worlds that were always good. Worlds full of ships, flowers, candies, vipers, suns. I wish those ships and flowers and dreams and marshmallows would travel through time to other childhoods and that flowers would rain again and again and ships would always sail or fly. But no, the ambition of a few took us in other directions.

455 children and adolescents were killed in Ecuador in 2023.

Irresponsible governments, corrupt politicians and general blindness believed that progress was to build huge buildings, have shopping centers, follow fashion, be richer, more exclusive, more unscrupulous every day; bowing to consumption without turning to see the real problems of this small country. We believed that poverty, malnutrition, lack of education and health were a matter of numbers. And the figures are not eaten. Until the desolation and abandonment of large areas of the country exploded in our faces. And he made us understand the hard way that there is no going back, that war has been declared.

Now we want, we are trying, we are negotiating to get funds for this war. And this hurts. Oil spilled into private checkbooks hurts, unpaid taxes and forgiven interest hurts, but above all it hurts that the money collected (via 15% VAT, from deported prisoners or whatever) will not be invested in education, but will be spent. to arms! And I’m speechless, I don’t know what to do, write or say.

President Nobo talks about mixed VAT, ITT moratorium, contributions and even subsidies to face the lack of resources

I don’t want to write about deaths, and the page is filled with blood. I don’t want to talk about violence and there are guns, short weapons, long weapons, bullets, grenades. I don’t want ugly words and these rains on me, cover me, drown me: drug state, attack, organized crime, operation, seizure, criminal groups, aliases, ringleaders, defendants, ammunition…

I’m running out of stories because I can’t write because I’m afraid. I am silent before the stupor that evil causes in me. My pen wobbles, my pen hits as if drowned, and I cannot rediscover the word “Peace” or return to coherence or look forward with even a grain of hope. (OR)