Having self-love in times of hate is the answer and the path. The Super Bowl performance presented love as a trench, a word, and a form of resistance against the alarming election results. At the world's biggest concert, with 135 million viewers, reading "only love is more powerful than hate" became a balm for the pain of seeing dehumanizing policies gain votes.
Reinterpreting words that others have emptied or manipulated is more necessary than ever. Benito reinterpretedGod bless America"To reclaim the rights of all the countries of the continent, displacing the United States as the center of the world. How many centers must be shifted to put at the center the voices and lives deliberately kept on the margins? Does love triumph over hate when a migrant child can dream of a Grammy in a context where children like him are deported and criminalized?"
In our home, we also need to redefine migrant, citizen, neighbor, rightsThe soul of Europe is sinking while the far right takes off, fabricating narratives of fear, rejection, and hatred: of the poor, the minorities, and the migrants. Bread and circuses. divide, rule: the smokescreen of not thinking, and above all, not thinking together.
Pointing the finger at others instead of confronting shared problems is avoiding facing the structures that impoverish all lives, not just those of migrants. Self-respect means joining forces as fellow citizens and refusing to accept bread and circuses as a substitute for explanations. It means asking why essential issues only arise after strikes, accidents, or resignations. It means demanding healthcare, education, and housing for all. It means fighting for a dignified old age and ensuring that no migrant loses their health, rights, or life feeding the capitalist machine, another self-absorbed center of the world. The true enemy of the political elite is not the immigrant community, but the collective conscience.
On the same night as the elections in Aragon, Bad Bunny's performance, and the Gaudí Awards, a question remained unanswered: when the sons and daughters of migrants enter the Liceu opera house to fill the intermission with entertainment, what will we do? Ángela Cervantes hoped that one day we would occupy those seats to tell our stories. For the children who dreamed of it decades ago, it's too late, but today's children continue to dream.
And if that day comes, our performance will be a display of awareness, not a smokescreen. We will make everyone uncomfortable to prevent the inhumanity imposed on a few. With music, film, and poetry, we will cling to love as our answer. To self-love and to the migrant pride that does not wither under the pressure of those who cannot see its beauty. Only in this way will it be possible to love even those who hate you, or at least the part of them that would awaken beyond their blindness. If hate can vote, love is obligated to vote, but also to create: as a verb, a trench, a resistance.
From the Super Bowl to the Liceu, because we, the children of migrants, dream bigger even as hate speech takes off to drag us down. We love each other and we will celebrate our pride, until the celebration is shared and shame finds no corner of the world to hide in.
