Anyone would think that at your age you had already seen and felt everything, but exactly 17 days after your 155th birthday, you suffered under the onslaught of a fury whose intensity, according to those in the know, had never hit you before.
As Ian moved away, new wounds appeared, and they were added to the many others that you have not managed to heal, or whose keloids are a permanent reminder that the love of your children is not enough to protect you.
No one will try to deny that the last three years have been adverse to you: illness, pandemic, death; ordering, inflation, inopia; separation, emigration, pain; gloom, silence, sadness… who is going to blame you for the hopelessness, restlessness and uncertainty?
But it’s your birthday and you deserve, at least, the hint of a smile. A breath of renewal will not run through your streets, and you understand it, because with so many of your inhabitants eager for a roof over their heads or to solve other hardships, you know that there is no time for makeup; In fact, you don’t want it, because the best cake for your celebration is one with sprinkles of happy faces on the top.
So you assume the austerity of the celebration, without any discomfort; There is no offense in this, because daily emergencies are priority, and like any mother you give up whatever is necessary in order to shelter your offspring; the one that you have seen decline, age, harden in the face of so much adversity. And although sometimes the eyes lose their shine and the lips are guarded by rictus that confirm the sadness, when each dawn they flood you with their footsteps you return to cradle them with the strength and tenderness of someone who, even without handles, clings to that promising tomorrow, which may be a dream or the future, but undoubtedly, it is strength in the present.
The years, the shortcomings, nature have taken their toll on you; However, they do not cast as much shadow on you as do those offspring who muddy you with their vileness, disguised as laziness, ignorance, careerism; whose souls became entrenched, stripping them of humanism and solidarity.
You are flexible, and that is why you find ways to adapt to circumstances. Until recently we thought that it was possible to rejuvenate yourself in an integral, full, splendid way; You have made those fragments of modernity yours and it is now impossible to imagine yourself without them, we will have to wait for better times to incorporate others and continue to stop the deterioration, without giving up preserving those relics that make you unique, exclusive.
We also have to look for ways to better express love to you, because keeping you clean is something we can do and we don’t always achieve; Nor do we take full advantage of all the spaces you offer us to magnify yourself with the virtuosity and wisdom of your descendants, those are outstanding debts.
As is it to get rid of the laziness that sometimes keeps us in stillness and separates us from the desired prosperity; continue tirelessly striving to materialize those unfulfilled promises: Saidén theater, Sala del Deporte, Hotel Comercio…
We owe you so much! And 156 years after holding the title of City, we would like to see you more beautiful, because you are despite those indelible marks of time, but especially, more honored with word and action; No, it is not about architectural works, it is about filling you with civility and decency, that having you as a cradle is enough for us all to feel like brothers, that we stop dividing you in search of individual glories and offer you the collective one.
You reach a new anniversary and you still exude moisture from the last rains, may that water be conducive to fertilizing desires and fertilizing these lands on which you stand, surrounded by tobacco fields, sustained by the dreams of the future, towards which we are going, in which we meet.
