Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare is an odd Christmas song, full of the pathos of longing if you listen to the exquisite sobriety of Jesus Avila, or fake merry Christmas spirit, but consoling, if you consider the Nancy Ramos version. And yet it is exquisitely atmospheric if you have had the luck to wake up more than once in Sucre where the morning calm is the calm I have never felt elsewhere.

I have to admit that this week end, as I am dusting off my Christmas music, it is hitting a raw nerve.  Thus work strange associations who make a single song suddenly embody all that is wrong with your surroundings.  Of course, it is a sad coincidence that this magic tune includes the name of the city Guanare where this week the most ugly aspects of misery came up as flotsam. But that flotsam was brought upon us by a regime that has really done nothing to protect children rights, gay rights, property rights, basic rights....  We certainly cannot blame the regime of the machismo, homophobia, disregard for the weak that are the sad heritage of our history.  But we can blame it from having paid lip service at best while it made it all the worse in its pursuit of power, and money, and materialism, which now reign supreme.

And to finish it all up last night the fascist thugs set aflame the "house that defeats the shadow" while today in yet another obscene cadena the tyrant of our spirit played with a little boy in military drag.

But Jesús Ávila leaves us a consolation:

Tenue es la luz y alegre la alborada