Words, gods and devils

 

How was it possible? In a few years, a few decades, many peoples and ancient cultures were buried by a destructive avalanche difficult to understand.

From the lands of the albatross, in the austral borders, to the evergreen rainforests, with their meandering rivers; from the craggy peaks, where the condor nests and the snow remains embedded in the shadowy walls of the hills; up to the shores of palms and crabs, the American world seemed paralyzed by the advance of those armored and aggressive men.
They brought ferocious dogs, horses, iron and guns.
They were thirsty for gold and power. They seemed not to know mercy.
They came without women. They arrived shipped in strange ships of ropes, wood and sails, spoke an incomprehensible language, raised curious banners and everywhere nailed their crosses to take possession of territories and people. They did not ask about the native names of the land. When they asked, they were not understood. When they were answered, they did not understand.
Deep down, they did not care about ancestral names. They replaced them with their own whenever they could. And so the thing remained without change since then.
Places were renamed with foreign sounds. Identities lost, raptured, overwhelmed. We do not know if there was a denomination for the entire continent.
A name that could identify us from south to north, from east to west, up and down, from the masses to the desert.
Today, we are still looking for it: Abya Yala, the Island-Turtle, the home of the Pachamama, America. Maybe that designation we seek has never existed.

The Great Identity is expressed in many ways. In ancestral ceremonies, in the tobacco and coca rituals, in teonanacatl and ayahuasca, in sacred crops, in respect for nature, in the smoke from the stoves, in the dances, in the sound of the flutes and drums, in songs, in dreams.
However, our continent carries its roots in the eyes of the elderly who seem to see beyond time.
In the landscapes of water and lights.
In the leaves of the trees.
In the roots of the forests.
On the feathers of birds.
And on the shining scales of the fish.
Our home is all that. Countless flashes of all the waves of the seas and the currents of the rivers.
The full moon nights in the Great Lake and the sunny days in the islands of warmth and joy.

We are also words 
But besides all that, and somehow integrating each of its emotions, nuances and voluptuousness, our earth is also made of pala-bras ...
Somewhere in our essence, what is called our soul, we are built with words. With many voices. Of diverse sonorities. Sometimes mutually incomprehensible. When we lost their sounds, we lost an important part of ourselves. Among those words there is one that had a special content, but, in some way, it has been forgotten.
It is the name that we pronounce every day and that identifies us all: America.

From the book "La Mentira del Milenio", D.Antón, Piriguazú Ediicones