political curses

I don’t believe in curses; but there are cases and there are things very similar to it. I’d like to think that the events I’m about to tell you are just the simple facts of life, but I prefer it to be you. the same ones who sentence them, because it would not be objective for me to do that, since I am part of the topics. My criteria would never be objective.

I don’t know what made him Gabriel Arias will leave his country for Costa Rica that in the 19th century he would end up in piers of Puerto El Gago, in Coclé, that he would later settle there and start a family.

Many myths are passed down from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation. One of my uncles said he was Gabriel he came to these parts fleeing from justice, and that his dangerous occupation, in those times of youthful lightness, was rustling. Undoubtedly a dangerous activity, when Whoever was captured received an express punishment of a rope and a branch. I really want to think they didn’t questions of justice, the reasons why he came to settle in Panama, but that’s part of that impartiality that I can’t promise anyone, because it’s my great-great-grandfather. Until now, through the centuries, the weight of the blood of our ancestors continues to beat the heart of their descendants. Stories say that his first home was precisely in Port of El Gago. Archives of the Penonomé Church We are told that she got married Nicolas del Castillo Camargo.

My great-grandfather was born in that home. Antonio Arias Castillo, who later married Carmen Madridwho should actually be called, by his birth, Carmen De La Guardia Madrid, being an “illegitimate” daughter Don Manuel de la Guardia Dominici. Many believe that Antonio already came in the company of his father, when he emigrated to Panama. I don’t think so, because his mother’s last name was Castillo, precisely because of the mother from Cocles he is with Don Gabriel got married.

This is of little importance, because what must be pointed out is the actual fact that Antonio and Carmen were forgers of a great family, out of a total of nine children; two of which would have a very significant impact on the future of our nation. I mean of course Harmodio Arias, President of the Republic in 1931 and 1932. and his brother, Arnulfo Arias, president in 1940, 1952 and 1968. That supposed blessing

and the family pride of conceiving two children who would later become leaders of the nation, did not come without a double-edged sword, because even before the conception of these boys, the Arias family would already suffer greatly political struggles, like hundreds of thousands of citizens who were forced to take sides with one of the dominant power factions: either you were a liberal or you were a conservative.

The internal fighting between both factions was bloody and the Arias, who leaned towards the conservatives, were forced, during the Thousand Day War, to flee to the mountains and allow the liberal siege burned their things, consumed theirsinto cattle and commit all kinds of atrocities that would be pure barbarism in our world today.

Politics was a shadow that followed almost everything Panamanians at that moment, and had to sacrifice their children in the war of a thousand days, regardless of the fact that they were only children. If they could load a sword or a rifle, they could kill the enemy. That was enough to turn the child into a murderer. Male children, to war; and women, always exposed to all kinds of abuse and atrocities by troops hungry for food and other appetites. Those were hard times, after all. One wonders how they managed to overcome them. Actually, they are. The men and women of that time either had character or they simply didn’t. instead of social classOn the one hand, they were resistant, and on the other, weak and oppressed by an unwilling society. In the 19th century, Colombians were born in Panama, but, emotionally, he continued to be a Spaniard, because the rupture of those habits of the Spanish culture, woven into the fiber of life, could not be broken so easily. We can even imagine those who felt neither Colombian nor Spanish. Perhaps this sense of displacement awakened love for the country and nationalism, in its earliest stages.

The illiteracy rate did not differ much from that of the rest of Latin America: 87%, roughly. Those who could read and write were kings in the land of the blind illiterate.

I think Carmen and Antonio, belonging to the privileged sector of readers, they could consider the importance of education for their children, which they did. As far as I know, all of them were educated, and some, e.g Arnulf and HarmodioThey were educated at one of the world’s best universities at the time, and still are today. The question that always gravitates, at least for me, is how family, relatively modestwithout being really poor, he managed to form hope for betterment in these children, to eradicate all social-parasitic complexes from the cradle, to instill in them an intellectual hierarchy that raised them to the heights of respect and esteem.

City of Rio Grande At that time, it was a small village, with gathered families. Everyone knew each other and everyone supported each other, because that was the law of the bush. Most of those who had some land dedicated it to cattle ranching, the dream of every cowboy. The soil was bad for crops, hot in the summer and soaked in mud in the winter. Drinking water was from a well, there were no schools, doctors, roads. It was a completely wild and forgotten place. But from there, the Arias family dedicated themselves to hard work in the fields and somehow managed to collect enough to live on the borderline between comfortable and necessary.

Carmen finally manages to convince Antonio that the family founded in the city of Penonomé, where at the beginning of the 20th century there was already some comfort that made life more civilized. It was the only way to access formal education and I think that is what worried this mother the most, a visionary like few others. We know that both great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers were avid readers and that for Antonio, Don Quixote, the work of Cervantes, was an inexhaustible mine of all possible human knowledge, surpassed only by Bible. For Carmen, As religious as it was, only the Bible could fulfill that attribute. Antonio gathered his family every evening, as if anointed, and by the light of a few candles they read passages from his favorite work. I can imagine him silent, smoking his hookah, and meditating with proud fatherly pride on the singing voice of one of his children. He was a hard-working man, always gloomy, full of anxiety, and sometimes, like everyone else, devoted to the momentary pleasures of this world. It is most certain that he had some other loved ones, and even unacknowledged children, as was common at that time. I neither confirm nor deny it. the main thing, but it is true that he devoted most of his life to his crafts and his home. That is enough for me to respect and admire him when I see him in the mist of time. Without him, what his sons did for us and for the nation might not have been possible, and that is enough for me.

He said that the family was suffering political attacks, that is, almost Gallic struggles that divided the world at the time. Liberals and conservatives wanted to destroy each other. Disputes and arguments became long, like intestines, and just as fierce. God’s forgiveness and compassion did not match

in backpacks or in the heart of a fighter, deformed by hatred that began to poison very early on. “Remember that so-and-so, a conservative, killed his uncle, so-and-so, a liberal,” was heard between the gatherings. homemade from peasant corn coffee. (To be continued)