And then again, on the road that connects San José to the city of Apartadó, a rope has been raised. You are let through only after paying a toll, with the promise that the money collected will be used to repair the condition of the road, which is now almost impassable.
This is a method that has already been used, these are promises that have already been made, words that have already fallen into the void in the past. Perhaps it is a sign that power over the territory is held by someone who obtains it through force, without respecting any law, written or moral. Faced with this unjust imposition, people silently accept it. Everything goes on as if nothing ever happened. Some still believe in these false promises, others don’t want any trouble, some others fear the consequences, and then there are those who simply want to survive.
Just how subtle and pervasive is this mechanism by which we end up agreeing even to what we do not want, even to the unacceptable? We constantly normalize what we fear might cause us too much pain if we were to confront it for what it truly is.
Through small actions we slowly give in, we bend, we tell ourselves a story, painting a fictitious narrative within which everything fits, in order to justify what has been happening and how we relate to it.
It is a slow process, almost invisible, a creeping and relentless one. Exactly the same one that, in Fortress Europe, leads to indifference and makes us voiceless spectators of this collapse.
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
