spring and Democracy, Part 5

Raining in Arlington, Virginia, the place where my family exiled. My daily commute is complicated, or rather wet, and I am forced to walk a mile on the drops. I smile with silly expression, and smile more when the indignant pedestrians imagine watching my smirk and possibly think "what's wrong with that silly" because I find the source of my foolishness and apparent passivity against rain. And it is perhaps because the rain gets sappy people, or because this particular rain showers reminds me equally other individuals, I am reminding the girls and boys who a few months ago, in the spring of 2010, took the gates of the University of Puerto Rico.

There were suspicions that guided the minds of the "troublemakers" who closed the university. They had not raised the tuition, for example, although there were rumors that this would happen. At that time, the / the protesting students certification helps separating "merit" such as honors or scholarships athletes, the "need" as the Pell Grant. Also protesting the administration's silence in front of their just claims made through the proper channels. They were protesting the lack of transparency and poor faith. Protesters camping in front (behind) the gates of each enclosure.

From time to time, for that to keep the case in sight and busy people, summoned a march, of greater or lesser magnitude. One of the gears (so basic, so simple) leave wrapped each up to the main gate, and there take a little walk. There we find the / students and / the others - teachers, professors, staff / as, people were there ... not many. After all it was Mayaguez, Rio Piedras not, and there was no press or crowd.

But the fact is (bear with me, gentle reader, that the case, the point is, is that my brain works well, little by little, and is gathering momentum) the fact is that we walked, teachers, workers, and students, and suddenly, reaching the goal, the gate of the Vita, the place where we would give the usual little walk, it started raining.

It was raining as it rains in Mayagüez, as it rains in Puerto Rico: as if the world were to end, except that it is every day and that the world, for better or worse, still there, sort of like when the sun comes out and it dry.

And in that moment, in that moment where the rain started, we defined a generation gap: The students hesitated only a moment, investing in looking at the sky, and smile, and then started the laps agreed, except that instead of walking, dancing. Boys with long hair, short hair girls, some lenses, some with handkerchiefs, tattooed, severe, jumpers, awkward ... Students danced.

And at that moment, the older we hesitate a few moments and then we fall. The contingent worker took refuge under a couple of umbrellas shared, and we dispersed teachers. I ended up protecting my computer with my body, stuck in the car of a colleague, looking away (so close, so far) to students who danced.

That's the memory that overwhelmed me as I walk in the rain from my work to my house. Someone once said (I would like to remember where I read this, if anyone knows say so) that the real difference between tragedy and comedy is that tragedy is sad, and that comedy is happy, but the tragedy is always with some emotion and individual events an inevitable outcome, and the comedy comes with some emotions and social events with surprising outcomes. The tragedy is individual, social comedy is. The difference is not in the depth or shallowness of one gender over the other, but from the perspective of the thing.

The university and happiness, Ana Lydia Vega wrote decades ago.

I look at the sky and smile. They were not suffering, creative strike of 2010, but to smile and act. Even in the rain. Even in the rain. Especially in the rain.