In Limbo / Regina Coyula

Those who have heard of me, and who sincerely, or with teeth bared, support the government, I am a a person of rights. Of rights because I want a democracy where people exercise free expression and all the other freedoms that help a nation to prosper, because they believe that my critical views are those of a mercenary seeking patronage, or because I have political ambitions for the future; because I don’t like this Revolution that has degenerated into a government — to say it the Mexican way — that has been experimenting for more than 50 years without success for the economy, but with notable success in managing to stay in power.

Those who have talked with me know that I am against the Embargo, that I put Bin Laden and Posada in the same box, that I defend the right of every citizen to education and health care along with the other human rights, that I cannot find the logic in having people inconceivably rich who don’t worry about the hunger of the Third World; fine, these people would label me like the leftists.

There are conventions which they have accustomed us to: right = bad, left = good. But there is nothing better than politics to show the ambiguities of labels on one side or the other. I am not even capable of calling myself politically postmodern like a dear friend of mine. I feel in limbo in this area. And from my limbo, dreamy and Utopian, I continue to imagine a country where there is room for leftists, rightists, post-modernists, limbo-ists and, like the nautical compass, all the positions in between.

October 8, 2010