Images of the world around me.

19th April 2013

Link with 3 notes

El día que acabó la crisis / The day that the crisis was over. →

Cuando termine la recesión habremos perdido 30 años en derechos y salarios

One day, we’ll wake up in 2014 and they’ll announce that the crisis is over. Rivers of ink written with our sorrows will flow, celebrating the end of the nightmare, they’ll make us believe that the danger has passed but they’ll warn us that there are still signs of weakness and you have to be very careful to avoid relapse. They’ll get us to breathe relieved, to celebrate the event, to strip the critical attitude against the powers and they’ll promise that, step by step, calm will return to our lives.

One day in 2014, the crisis will be officially over and we’ll show a face of stupid grateful, they’ll reproach us our lack of confidence, they’ll make good the adjustment policies and rewind the carousel of the economy. Of course, the ecological crisis, the unequal distribution crisis, the crisis of the impossibility of infinite growth will remain intact but that threat has never been published or disseminated and those who truly dominate the world will put an end to this crisis scam -half fact, half fiction-, whose origin is difficult to decipher but whose objectives were clear and conclusive: set us back 30 years in rights and wages.

One day in 2014, when wages will be cheaper, near the Third World, when the work will be so cheap that it’ll no longer be the determining factor of the product, when they make all professions to kneel so their knowledge will fit into a squalid payroll; they will have trained youth in the art of working almost free, when they’ll have a pool of millions of unemployed people willing to be versatile, movable and moldable just to escape the hell of despair, then the crisis will be over.

One day in 2014, when students will be massified in classrooms and they’ll have expelled from the educational system 30% of students without visible trace of the feat, when health will be purchased and not offered, when our health status will resemble that of our bank account, when we will be charged for each service, for each right, when retirements will be late-paid and meager, when we’ll be convinced that we need private insurance to guarantee our lives, then the crisis will finish.

One day in 2014, they’ll have achieved a leveling down of the entire social structure and all -except the dome carefully placed safely in each sector- will tread puddles of scarcity or feel the breath of fear in our back , when we’ll be tired of confronting each other and all the bridges of solidarity will be broken, then they’ll announce that the crisis is over.

Never in such a short time they will have achieved so much. Five years alone have been enough to reduce to ashes rights that took centuries to conquer and spread. A brutal devastation as social landscape had succeeded only in Europe through the war. Although, come to think, in this case it was the enemy who has dictated the rules, the duration of the fighting, the strategy and the conditions of the armistice.

So, not only when we will be out of the crisis what worries me, but how we leave it. His great triumph will be not only make us poorer and unequal, but also more coward and resigned as without these last ingredients the ground so easily have won will come again in dispute.

Currently they have turned back the clock of history and they have earned 30 years of their interests. Now the last touches to the new social context remain: a little over privatization here, a little less public spending there and voilà: their work will be completed. When the calendar will point any day of the year 2014, but our lives have fallen back to the late seventies, they will decree the end of the crisis on the radio and we will hear the latest terms of our surrender.

Concha Caballero, 18 January 2013 
(sorry for my translation)