Hombre Preso Que Mira a Su Hijo

When I was like you the old people taught me
And also the kind and short-sighted teachers
That freedom or death was a redundancy,
Who thought of it in a country
Where the presidents walked without capanga.
That the homeland or the grave was another pleonasm
Since the country was functioning well;
In the fields and in the pastures.

Really, botija, they didn't know a thing,
Poor things believed that "freedom"
It was just a sharp word
What a death, it was only serious or plain,
What prisons, luckily a word that is esdrújula
They forgot to put the accent on the man.

It wasn't exactly their fault.
But of others harder and more sinister
And these yes, how they skewered us
In the clean verbal republic and how they idealized
The cow glass and ranchers
And how they sold us an army
That he took his mate in the barracks.

You don't always do what you want
One can't always, that's why I'm here,
Looking at you and missing you.
That's why I can't ruin your hair,
Not even help you with the nine table
And riddled you with balls.

You know well that I had to choose
Other games and that I played them seriously.
And I played, for example, thieves
And the thieves were police
And I played, for example, hide and seek
If they discovered you they would kill you
And I played tag and it was blood.

Botija, even if you are only a few years old,
I think we have to tell you the truth
So that you don't forget it, that's why
I don't hide from you that they gave me a cattle prod
My kidneys almost burst.
All these sores, swellings and wounds
That your round eyes look hypnotized
They are very hard blows, they are boots on the face
Too much pain for me to hide from you,
Too much torture for it to be erased.

But it is also good that you know
That your old man kept silent or bitched like a crazy person
Which is a nice way to keep quiet
That your old man forgot all the numbers,
That's why I couldn't help you in the tables.
And therefore I forgot all the phones
And the streets and the color of the eyes,
And the hair and the scars
And on what corner and in what bar,
What a stop, what a house.

And remember you,
Your little face helped me keep quiet,
It's one thing to die of pain
And another thing is to die of shame.
So now you can ask me
And above all I can respond.
You don't always do what you want
But you have the right
Not to do what you don't want.
Cry no more, botija,
They are batons that men do not cry,
Here we all cry,
We scream, we scream, we sniffle, we scream,
We curse, because it is better to cry than to betray,
Because it is better to cry than to betray yourself,
Cry, but don't forget.