At the edge of the road, I find a man with weeping eyes and tossed black hair, staring at the thistle at his feet. "Why are you crying?" I ask, and he answers, "I cry because I did everything I could for my comrades. I sowed my parcel of land with hard work, as any man who respects himself must do; but those for whom I did so much good made me suffer, and in regard to my land, lacking water, that was snatched by the rich, only to produce those dry thistles you can see at my feet."
Bad harvest, I say, the one that the good ones harvest, as I continue my march.
A little farther I stumble with an old man falling and getting up, hunchback, sadly vague look. "Why are you so sad," I asked, and he responds, "I am sad because I have been working since I was seven years old. I was a dedicated person until the morning my boss said `You are too old, Juan; there is no work for you to perform,' and he slammed the door on my face."
What a harvest of years and more years of honest labor! He told me and I keep on walking.
A very young man yet, but missing a leg, comes to my counter, hat in hand, asking "a bit of charity for the love of God," expressing somewhat similarly to a man. "Why are you moaning?" I ask, as he answers, "Maduo promised we were going to be free and happy, with the condition to help him get the presidency of the Republic. All my brothers and my own father died in the war; I lost my leg and my health, leaving our families in poverty."
This is the reaping we the ones get, who work to raise tyrants, and support the capitalist system, I say to myself, and keep on walking. A few steps further, I encounter a group of tired men, sad steadfast looks, their arms dropped, reading dismay in their faces, and anguish, yet anger. "What makes you so angry?" I question. "We came out of the factory," they say, and after working ten hours, we only make enough for a miserable bean dinner."
These are not the ones who reap, I say, but their bosses do, so I continue with my travel.
It is nighttime already. Crickets sing their love songs in the crevices of the ground. My ear, attentive, perceives sounds of fiesta somewhere. I direct myself toward the place from where those gay sounds come, and I see myself in front of a sumptuous palace. "Who lives here?" I ask a lackey. "He is the lord-owner of these lands you see around here and owner also of the water which irrigates these lands."
I understand I am in front of the residence of the thief who made the fields become dry with thistle, and showing a fist to the beautiful structure of the palace, I think, "Your next harvest, scoundrel bourgeois--you will have to reap it with your own hands, so you know, your slaves are waking up..."
And I keep my march, thinking, thinking, dreaming, dreaming. I think on the heroic resolution of those disinherited, who have the courage to put in their hands the recovery of their lands that, according to the law, belong to the rich, and, according to justice and reason, belong to all human beings. I dream about the happiness of the humble homes after the expropriation; men and women feeling really human; children playing, laughing, happy, with their stomachs full with healthy and plenty of food.
The rebels will give us the best of the harvests: Bread, Land, Freedom for all.