What Colombia is missing .
WILLIAM OSPINA.
Born in Padua, Tolima, in 1954. Poet, essayist and translator. He has published, among others, The country of the wind (1992), It is late for man (1994), Those strange fugitives from the West (1994), with whom does Virginia speak walking towards the water? (1995) and Where is the yellow stripe? (1997).
What Colombia is missing.
One of the most indisputable truths of our tradition is that Colombian society is founded on the example of the French Revolution and on the Declaration of the Rights of Man, as well as on its ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. When the second centenary of that revolution was recently celebrated, many reminded us how intensely we come from it and are children of its example. However, I believe that if something demonstrates Colombian society and the apparatus of its institutions, it is that no one comes from a distant revolution and no one can simply be the son of his example. A revolution is lived or not lived, and the claim to inherit its emblems without having participated in the mental and social dynamics that gave it life, without having conquered its victories or suffered its sufferings, is nothing more than a loud imposture. Our history is usually characterized by this tendency to think that it is enough to repeat with enthusiasm the words that expressed a time to participate in it. It is enough that we shout Liberté