«in a low voice»

i am tired of fleeing. of hiding. of a life imposed on us more than thirty years ago by a systematic effort to eliminate us; that is, my whole life.

for almost all that time we did not shout: we learned to survive in silence, which is another form of exile. this is the first time i speak out loud, and i do it, still, in a low voice.

i declare myself apolitical. my father was a politician, elected by his people; but he refused to fall in line with the monopolies, and the monopolies collect: they let him fall, all at once. what i write is not a political position: it is a position against impunity.

at some point, i realized i wanted to be an artist, and an artist cannot detach himself from the time and the place he was given, not chosen. the ones that fell to me came with a certain brutality, and it is that brutality i work with.

i have no oil or marble: my brushes are machines, and my creation happens in zeros and ones. the subject of my work, the one i cannot stop looking straight in the face: the ease with which a few appropriate the institutions and bend them to the measure of their interest.

in colombia there is no administration of justice; there is a monopoly of truth. and like every monopoly, it serves a few lords while the whole chain takes its cut.

whoever means to trust that justice has two roads: pay the monopoly's tribute, or know its fury.

"colombians, arms have given you independence; laws will give you liberty." dear francisco and simón, arms gave us a homeland; from laws we are still awaiting liberty.

since 2011 i have studied, case file by case file, the accusations raised against my father. i can say it without trembling: his only crime was not paying those tributes.

threatened by the farc, by the paramilitaries, by the narcos; survivor of more attacks than i can count. and even so, no party defended him: because there are other monopolies different from the one of truth, and whoever does not take part with capital is charged with their life or their liberty.

he fell through a crack no one would close. none of the sides that claim to be at odds held out the net; and without a net, the pieces were left served up, for the swiftest to claim his trophy: the quintessential scapegoat.

so my work was born. i hung in a gallery the portraits of those who accumulate power, of those who turned us into manageable collateral damage, and i painted them with the images of my house, the one the farc-ep bombed in florencia in 2001, and with marmalade labels.

in that room, those faces are subjected to the same violence we knew on the ground. a machine fires, with precision, round after round, to create chaos. my machines fire poetry: they manufacture a destruction so beautiful that maybe, maybe, someone somewhere will finally hear our story.

and i prepared for when that moment would come, because an artist showing his vision of the world would not be enough: it would take that vision, plus the proof.

that is factum: the study of the case the jep is pursuing against my father. the due-process violations are in plain sight, they are flagrant, and still the case advances. and one wonders: pushed by whom? while the press condemns him ahead of time, with the blessing of the very magistrates who should protect him.

let it be clear: this is not against the jep. it is the demand that the jep be what it promised to be.

i know there are honest people within the judicial system. if you are reading me: you know, better than anyone, how rotten the pillars that hold up the institution are. this call is also for you.

i have carried this alone for too long, and i do not want revenge: i want justice in colombia to be, someday, worthy of trust, without a monopoly of truth; i want only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. that trust is the only country i care to inherit.

so i ask: that human-rights organizations observe the case; that researchers, teachers and students turn it into a case study; that the process hold to law, and not to politics; that everyone, from wherever they stand, refuse to pay the monopoly's tribute; and that those who, from the art world, wish to walk with me in my next steps, come forward.