What is really at stake?

Let's talk about a fictional country. A literary creation to allow our prognostic journeys and our glimpses into the past. Of course, something might make you imagine that we are dealing with some real case, because that's what literature is like: it makes us travel closer to ourselves. But relax. Just allow yourself to follow the journey.

The imaginary country we are discussing has its origins and development founded on the plunder and enslavement of its native peoples and African men and women kidnapped from their kingdoms across the Atlantic. Their labor force is usurped to build wealth and form elites who would wield power to this day, as we tell this story.

An elite that builds itself from lands it receives freely; from the production of a drug that, by sweetening, becomes addictive; or from another that, similarly, by serving as a stimulant, creates dependence. Or it strengthens itself, even, from the destruction of the environment to plunder gold and diamonds to be sent to other countries.

But, above all, we are talking about a slave-owning elite that continues to express its thoughts about those who served as enslaved labor in the construction of its power and wealth. Sometimes they do so discreetly, keeping it to themselves; other times, reproducing it in their attitudes and jokes; and often, not so discreetly, making objectively clear what they think and feel.

This elite, which for years and years had faced resistance from those who saw injustice. Battles with losses on both sides. But with the military might and economic strength it possessed, it always managed to impose its will.

However, as time passed, these exploited and discriminated-against inhabitants, drawing on the accumulated experience of other liberation movements lived by their people, advanced. They defeated this elite on their own battlefield. And, with victories in several battles—one, two, three, four—they experienced a six-year setback, but soon resumed the path of building the country they defended.

And today, this elite, which for centuries has done as it pleased with this imaginary country, finds itself facing a relatively strong counterpoint. Those who gathered during that six-year period of recent national backwardness, however, do not accept it. It doesn't matter what is actually done to help those who, for centuries, have been relegated, abandoned, and humiliated. The elite simply does not accept any millimeter of progress towards improving the lives of these men and women who, for them, are disposable—and, for some, despicable. And they will do everything to defeat a project that seeks to bring "those at the bottom" closer to their concrete or imagined realities.

That is why we see, in the streets and on the networks of this still imaginary country, the debate being framed by those who govern it in terms of "us and them." "Us," represented by those who do not agree with the exclusion and concentration of income that the elite's project signifies; and "them," those—whether consciously or serving as cattle—desirous of returning to a country of slavery, even a modernized one, where slave quarters are replaced by slums lacking infrastructure and where their inhabitants have no opportunities. The difference between the projects is being made very clear to society. The spokespeople for "us" have taken upon themselves the strategic and non-transferable task of painting the picture as it really is.