When Woke Went Weird

This week's Camino a Ítaca explores how woke went from being a genuine movement for peoples to recuperate their dignity to some catch all phrase of every pet concern out there. Time to reset the word and bring it back to its original specs. Click over to read the original piece in Spanish in El Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Don’t look up. And I mean this seriously, at least if you’re walking along the excrement splattered street of the Arco del Cristo in Caceres. The main access to the UNESCO core of Caceres should have a warning sign at the entrance that reads: Enter at your own risk.

If you do choose to take the risk along the defile, perhaps wanting to catch a better glimpse of the belltower of Santa Maria or perhaps take a selfie before the irregular Arco de la Estrella, take my advice and walk in the middle. If not, consider that you, your hair and the shoulders of your jacket have been forewarned. Caceres, like many other cities around the world, has a serious problem with pigeons.

And I’m confused.

Something happened to us. Some sociological twist took place over the course of this new millennium that has turned the world as I had come to know it upside down. It’s a phenomenon that reaches far beyond our borders or perhaps it is one that has reached us from afar. Sure, the goddesses Ishtar, Venus, and Aphrodite may have all been represented by doves and in Christian iconography the dove is said to represent the Holy Spirit, but these are all myths. Since when have pigeons gone beyond this and have acquired the status of a protected species? In fact, in a broader context, since when did animals become more important than fellow members of our own species?

One of the most egregious instances of this growing trend recently took place in the ravaged and betrayed lands of Afghanistan as the Taliban waltzed into the capital and easily retook control of the country after twenty years of war. Multitudes of Afghani families whose members had worked with the forces braved just about everything you can imagine to get to the airport before it was too late. A desperate and dangerous attempt to flee the country before they were assassinated as traitors by the incoming maniacal messiahs. Imagine their horror as they shivered in the freezing cold and looked through the chain link fence only to see that the British had fleeted airplanes to repatriate dogs ahead of them.

Animals ahead of people.

People, I might add, who had risked their lives to work for the coalition. By saying this, I have nothing against animals. But this movement has reached a point where it raises questions as to what it means to be human.

Closer to home in Caceres, the town hall has had to go to extreme lengths in trying to solve this avian plague and not provoke this power lobby. It was finally decided that an enormous cage would be built to trap and house the birds until they could be then set free. Imagine a Disney-like avian Free Willy. But where is the wild for them? Do they think some North African country can be persuaded to take them in? Then there’s the fact that pigeons are incredible navigators. Some birds can find their way home from nearly 1,000 km away.

In these times of such alarming narcissism, I wonder if somewhere along the way we forgot what it means to be human.