Tribute to Latin America - The Continent of my Roots

A ritual culture whose nude foundation is miscegenation during the conquest and colonization. The conjunction of the indigenous cultures with the others allowed a social synthesis, since then, the Latin American mestizo culture has emerged. Therefore, the continent would be a meeting between cultures that combined to form a new one. I was born in Chile, a relatively new, strange country. A recent human settlement installed between the most active tectonic plate on the planet and the longest cord of volcanoes of all. Where the driest dessert in the world is flooded and where forests are burned with thousand-year-old trees. The country has faced the two most violent earthquakes recorded by man and a string of geological catastrophes. It is right here, where we still can not feel comfortable, with barely two hundred years of open bowling and dealing with an identity that refuses to appear yet; it is here, where the roots are found in the wise native peoples who have their own religion, their own clothing, their own gods and their own language, while Chile’s official language comes from Spain, our religion comes from the Middle East and our clothes are made in Asia. For all these reasons we have had to invent a national identity through a memory mutilated, hidden, wandering between the fog of badly recorded facts and the interests of the owners of the land. “Nuestra comarca del mundo, que hoy llamamos América Latina, fue precoz: se especializó en perder (…) Continúa existiendo al servicio de las necesidades ajenas, como fuente y reserva del petróleo y el hierro, el cobre y la carne, las frutas y el café, las materias primas y los alimentos con destino a los países ricos que ganan, consumiéndolos, mucho más de lo que América Latina gana produciéndolos”. (Eduardo Galeano)