Hernán González slowly closed the Bible. He looked around him and spoke:
“Now,
more than ever, our day of liberation is farthest. After the war, America has
become excessively powerful. Like David, America is feared by its enemies, and
respected by its friends. The battlefields of Europe sonorously affirmed the
wholeness of its stature as a power of the first order, and now, in the
intoxication of its triumph, it desires to confirm this personality even more,
by exerting its power on those countries that, due to their weakness, cannot
counter with arrogance, the arrogance of this great power. America now has
everything, but is not satisfied. What cannot its power and wealth not attain?
All nations are in its debt; while it owes nobody anything. All is found in the
hands of America. Alexander the Great once dreamed of founding a universal
empire, whose capital would be his kingdom of Macedonia; Caesar, Charlemagne,
Charles V, Napoleon, all those great tyrants, also wanted to grasp the scepter
of dominion overall the world But from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, all
have failed. In turn, America, solely with its power based on its gold, has
realized what no one of these captains of preceding centuries had attained,
with the point of their steel. What more does America lack? Nothing. And yet,
having everything, power, riches, all that a nation could desire to satisfy its
vanity, America deprives a poor and weak small country of its liberty, that
desires nothing more in its life than its own liberty. America has behaved in
the same way as the rich man in the parable of Nathan, who, having a great
number of oxen and sheep, when a stranger came to his house, fed him not with
the sheep of his herd, but with the lone little sheep of his impoverished and
weak neighbor, that creature whom ‘he cared for in his own home, among his
children,’ and who was loved ‘as if it were his own daughter.’ Who will be the
new Nathan Prophet, who would throw in the face of the modern David the
ugliness of his conduct? Who will tell him that from his house, the sword of
death will never part, warning him with heaven’s punishment, that always
attracts injustice and tyranny? Nobody, Mariano, nobody! Juan de la Cruz is the
poor of Nathan’s parable; Filipinas is the little sheep coveted by the rich
man, his neighbor. America, wealthy, powerful, feared, and respected, wants to
give a banquet for its friends, to affirm its power and prestige, and in this
banquet, it would present to its guests a magnificent dish, concocted with the
meat and juices of a little sheep, snatched from a defenseless neighbor —the
richest dish of the Philippines, which is the beloved little lamb of the
unhappy Juan de la Cruz.”
Antonio M. Abad
1922
Translated by Lourdes Castrillo Brillantes
