After almost a year of continuous work, I went to Bogotá to visit my family. While I was on the Transmilenio, an elderly man who was walking with crutches got on. He shared that he had suffered a fall at work, resulting in fractures in both legs, leaving him disabled for life.
He told us he was fired and the company assumed no responsibility for the accident. He said, “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have accepted a job without a contract, but I needed to feed my family.” At that moment, all I felt was anger and frustration.
I can’t help but think that like him, there are thousands of people who walk the streets with their broken bodies, looking for bread for their families.
I am angry, deeply frustrated, and I write this prayer in the hope that when someone reads it, they will join their prayers with mine.
The God of the poor
I
Dear friends, history repeats itself.
Now companies have made work illegal.
They have outsourced the work, to save a few pennies.
As if all the wealth they already have wasn’t enough,
They continue to build their fortunes on the bodies of our brothers and sisters
II
The same old killers are now called CEOs,
Assassins who join forces with other assassins just as them.
They have turned the right to resist into a crime,
They kill the leaders who defend people’s rights,
And when the danger has passed they pay tribute to them,
and they beat their chests in front of everyone,
As if God didn’t keep track of all his crimes,
III
Hypocrites, with one hand they greet the tyrants and with the other they hit the poor,
They give jobs to the poor as if they were giving them alms,
And when they get sick they wash their hands as if it were not their problem,
IV
They think they own the world, they think they own lives,
They play with them and then throw them away like garbage,
When someone stands up against their unjust actions
They silence them and make sure their voice is not heard.
They buy everyone who can talk, they buy them with dirty money
Money that has previously been taken from the poor
V
Assassins, they have more crimes on their shoulders than money in their banks.
They murder God’s children and then go on television, lying.
As if with your lies you were convincing someone other than yourselves,
They give alms to ensure that they will be forgiven for the murders they have committed, but God does not forget.
VI
Do not be fooled, God does not forget the cries for justice of the poor,
does not forget the cries of the workers who have died behind your walls,
does not forget the pleas of those who have become ill thanks to your industrial processes.
God does not forget the cries of hunger of the families you have abandoned with your layoffs.
God does not forget the cries of the families who mourn those killed by you.
God does not forget and will never forget those voices that you have silenced.
God does not forget the cry for justice that comes from the earth.
VII
This land has been historically exploited by the same people.
These same people have bled the earth and bled its workers,
They have mixed blood with oil at the expense of the children of God.
They have murdered the earth by ignoring God’s will for life,
VIII
Who is responsible for animals killed by oil spills?
Who is responsible for the tragedy and the environmental crisis?
Who is responsible for those families who no longer have work?
Who is responsible for the murder of the earth?
Who is responsible?
Who does justice to the earth?
Who provides justice to the impoverished?
IX
We know those hypocrites who say and do not do,
We know the murderers of the earth,
We know the murderers of the workers,
We know their faces and we know their strategies,
We know their alliances and who they pay to keep their mouths shut,
We know how institutions have prostituted themselves to the powerful,
We know where they sleep and where they plan the murders of the innocent,
We know who you protect and what methods you use to cover each other up.
X
I want to tell you one last thing
In the name of the God of the poor I say to you,
That of the walls that protect them, not one stone will remain upon another,
and those riches that they idolize so much, God will take them away,
Hide in the caves because the God of the poor is going to come for you and strip you naked
like you did to all your workers, to our brothers.
Repent of your sins because there is no greater sin than to murder a poor person and enrich yourself with his death.
