Totems: our wisdoms are the remedies to heal the city.
Totems: our wisdoms are the remedies to heal the city.
The material and immaterial injustices of colonial violence persist in the present and become visible through the wounds, trauma, loss, and new suffering that continue to increase as we continue to build and reinforce new and more numerous walls and fences, both physical and ideological..
What are the ways we can imagine to repair the direct and unequal repercussions that these borders inflict on our bodies?
We are the remedy and the cure. The complicity and trust established throughout these weeks of meeting and self-recognizing is our way of opening cracks and piercing those walls, of hollowing out and making porous those borders with empty spaces to occupy and fill with our own words of repair.
In this almost last meeting, we meet on Thursday, June 3, again at SERCADE, to collect words of reparation, small phrases that we would offer to those who have just arrived in the city.
Bouba working on the words for his totem and, next to it, some of the elaborate totems.
LASANE: “I live in Madrid, the people of Madrid are friendly, people help you. We are at SERCADE, thanks to the people who work at SERCADE ”.
IBRAHIMA: “La culture, quand tu vis dans un pays il faut accepter la culture et la tradition. Respect pour chacun et l’amour pour tous”.
ABOUBACAR: “Music is medicine, it makes me happy.”
IGU: “Love is a machine of visibility and (in all its forms) makes us FREE → (difficult today) If we act with love another better world is possible, it is not a utopia, it is an imaginary future, a reality to be made ”.
VÍCTOR: “We are beings who need each other, profoundly social beings, and this is something we have to feed and empower because it humanizes us.”
BOUBA: “Without a heart, we cannot live, we cannot be happy”.
MAYTE: “Freedom, my wings, all my travels, each person is a journey.”
ISSIAKA: “The ball is my favorite object. I am happy playing soccer ”.
JUSTI: “Joy, welcome, and smile.”
ZACARIAS: “Culture of Spain. I feel good with the Spanish people”.
ADAM: “It makes me very happy to be part of this Grigri family. Dear grigri, we love you very much. May you always carry on with a lot of energy ”.
Some of the totems with their remedies for the city of Madrid inside the finished botiquín.
RUTH: “Turn obstacles into opportunities.”
ISMAEL: “Come in, make yourself at home.”
CARMEN: “I send my heart because I like the city of Madrid, the culture, the love, the respect, it doesn’t matter the color of our skin, we are all human.”
MARIE: “Welcome to Madrid.”
MILENA: “Creativity and being outdoors with the people I love.”
FODE: “Playing is my medicine. I like football and the people I know.”
BABACAR: “Because people are wonderful.”
YANNICK: “I want Madrid to be a city that welcomes people who come from abroad to share our culture, our dishes, and our music. Boza! “
SAMUEL: “I express the face of a person who wants hospitality, and I am free to walk towards my dreams”.
CECILIA: “Brown skin is no less than white skin, nor is youth better. Break paradigms. Latino actors and actresses, we must not only be service personnel or poor in audiovisual productions”.
VERÓNICA: “Hugs and smiles so we feel loved and we heal the wounds”.
Totems: our wisdoms are the remedies to heal the city.