ALFREDO VARGAS ORTIZ
Proud Professor of the Universidad Surcolombiana
Doctor of Law National University of Colombia
In previous years, I had to pick up my son from school, on the first run through the Cándido neighborhood, and I stopped a taxi driver, but he stopped in the middle of the block, and in doing so he almost crashed into some motorcyclists who were going. on those extraordinary motorcycles that circulate in our territory with capacity for 3 people. As I was in a hurry, I got into the taxi without realizing that I would be entering one of the many adventures that are experienced in these lands, which not even the famous Fast and Furious series can match. The man on the motorcycle insulted with words that I had not imagined existed and the taxi driver, “very decent man,” responded with another caliber, which I imagined the members of the Royal Academy of Language short on ink to be able to assimilate. and capture such creativity of insults in the dictionary.
The die was cast, and the vehicles approached and moved away each time they wanted to convey what was coming out from their deepest (and I think rotten) entrails, with faces that disfigured with each word, while my son, only 10 years at that time, he observed in surprise. I was very calm, because I am from a land where many are born and few are raised, and where it is jokingly said that the parties without deaths were not good.
As a matter of the complicit universe, and with the aim of adding a little adrenaline to the matter, the traffic light turned red and suddenly the individuals had to stop and face each other, and I asked myself: “And now what are they going to do?” make these guaches? In order not to diminish the expectation of the surprise, the taxi driver, like one of the main protagonists of this story, opened the door, crouched down, lifted his mat and took out a machete that looked like King Arthur’s sword. I confess that I have looked at how it is possible to store such a long machete under the mat in my car and I have not been able to? Of course, those on the motorcycle ran away as soon as they saw the crazy man with the machete, who was going to at least take their heads if they waited for him. I, in the midst of the shock of this scene, saw how the famous taxi driver returned to the taxi that had already generated congestion in the first race, he returned and bent down to put his work tool on the mat, he got into the taxi very excited, I He looked in the mirror and asked me: “How did you see her?” I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or run out of the car, driven by such a lunatic, and common sense told me that I should stay calm and act as if everything I saw and happened was one of the many perks of the job of being a taxi driver. The man, very proud, told me: “And this is the second time this has happened to me this week.” With that sentence, the few minutes left to get home seemed like a year.
That true story, which happened to me, tried to repeat itself recently when another taxi driver walked in front of me, I don’t understand why, and started insulting me and giving me the gun signal with such force that I imagine she expected me to react violently. Obviously, my years of education and as a teacher do not allow me to master the Algeciras language and I had to contain myself in the face of injustice, again carried out this time with my son as an adult whom I invited to calm down and ignore that guache that once again reinforces my importance of working on civic culture in our beloved Neiva.
Good people, in the good sense of the word, are many, and we have to put up with these types of people every day on the streets. Our women are besieged by men who act like dogs looking for their meat, domestic violence does not give truce and the injuries, deaths and violence due to intolerance are unbearable. I make this reflection to invite Educational Institutions, universities, and government institutions to deepen the campaigns of citizen culture, tolerance, respect for others, the culture of legality, which, in short, is greatly lacking. to this land that, although beautiful it is, is made ugly by people who forget that it is shared and their rights end where those of others begin.
