Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the historical oppression and mistreatment of Indigenous people in Bolivia.
Evo Morales reflects on the deep-rooted injustices faced by Bolivia's Indigenous population, emphasizing their political exclusion, cultural alienation, and the dehumanizing treatment they received. He draws attention to a disturbing historical context where national resources were exploited, and Indigenous individuals were subjected to acts of cruelty, illustrating systemic oppression that continues to resonate in contemporary society.
In practice
During a discussion on social justice and human rights, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing historical injustices.
It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
The peoples of the Andes believe in the concept of 'living well' instead of wanting to 'live better' by consuming more, regardless of the cost to our neighbors and our environment.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.
Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.
It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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