and Words
Yo quisiera poder aplacar una fiera terrible
Yo quisiera poder transformar tanta cosa imposible
Yo quisiera decir tantas cosas que pudieran hacerme sentir bien conmigo
Yo quisiera poder abrazar mi mayor enemigo
Yo quisiera no ver tantas nubes oscuras arriba
Navegar sin encontrar tantas manchas de aceite en los mares
Y ballenas desapareciendo por falta de escrúpulos comerciales
Yo quisiera ser civilizado como los animales
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
This is a story from my young childhood; I was about five or six years old. My family rode in my dad’s Chevy Nova into San Juan. It was night and the sky was dark except for the streetlights. I forget precisely where we went, but we ate oranges in the car as we drove there. As I finished mine, I rolled down the window and tossed the remains into the freeway.
I won’t tell you that I’m proud of it nor that this is an excuse, but it’s something that many people did in Puerto Rico. The freeway offramps were covered with litter. This ranged from napkins to paper cups, but what was probably the worst were cigarette butts. No one seemed content to wait to get home to unload their waste; the world was your wastebasket.
On this night, the authorities were not so forgiving. Next, moments after that orange escaped our car, a police siren sounds behind our car. Once confronted with the littering, my dad turns his head and with a scowl asks if any of us had tossed anything out the window in Cantonese. My mom confessed to tossing an orange out the window, but that was miles away. In my guilt, I remained quiet. Finally, my dad turned to the officer and feigned ignorance but managed to sweet talk his way out of a littering ticket.
For years my mom told the story of how a police officer chased us on the freeway for miles over an orange. I continued to listen to that story and never corrected her. That was the notorious beginning to my building my environmental consciousness.
I grew up in Puerto Rico and then Florida; paradise seemed impervious to anything I may do. Through my early adulthood I wandered with apathy about this world we live in. It was more than that, I was downright defiant.
I was in college when I finally circled back to my Spanish-speaking roots and came upon this song again, and it spoke to me. It speaks of progress.
He wishes to:
- tame a terrible beast
- transform impossible things
- say things that could make him feel better
- embrace his worst enemy
- not see as many dark clouds above
- set sail without seeing oil stains on the oceans
- not see whales disappearing due to lack of commercial scruples
- be civilized like animals
- not see as much green dying on Earth
- not see the fish disappearing in the rivers
- scream that this ‘black gold’ is nothing more than a black poison, we already know that we’re dying from it
- etc.
He does not condemn all progress, he simply speaks of having an awareness. He’s not against progress, as long as there’s good consensus; he simply doesn’t want to compound one problem with the next. Two wrongs do not make a right.
It is tragic is that for so many years I was so willfully ignorant about what affects our Earth. I consequently downplayed all the concerns that people wept about on the news. Meanwhile, I rationalized that they were alarmists. Surely this planet is more resilient than that? It’s tragic that I was unwilling to listen to people as they spoke, but at least I was able to listen to the voice of Roberto Carlos in song.
As I grow older and presumably wiser, I watch as objects of apparent permanence collapse. I lived in Florida as it was struck by Hurricane David in 1979, but I don’t remember any other major hurricanes when I left in 1991. Consequently, hurricanes now strike with alarming regularity; sometimes multiple in one season. It’s troubling that so many now simply own a generator because they expect to be out of power for days at a time.
I drove down US-1 near the University of Miami shortly after Hurricane Andrew had struck. The medians that separated traffic on each direction are normally lined with majestic palm trees. Those palm trees were there, but now they were propped up with a cluster of wooden boards as they took root.
Most recently I watched in stunned silence as flood water from a hurricane overwhelmed Downtown Miami. Water flowed through the streets as if the buildings were built off the water. Where does one even go to get refuge? Are we now expected to get inflatable rafts if you want to wander out during storm season?
Are we truly suspending our disbelief in that something that happened less than once a decade now may occur multiple times a year is… normal?!
I picture the beaches, parks, and the beautiful palm trees, and I took them all for granted in my youth. I went to Burbank for a business trip some years after my departure and realized that merely seeing palm trees truly made me homesick. My hometown of Miami is more fragile than I once believed. It’s not just Miami; it’s everywhere.
You can restructure your business model, whatever it may be; we can’t rebuild a new Earth. We need to own this.
As I started college I was immersed back into a heavily Spanish-influenced community. I made many friends who tolerated my broken Spanish that I had almost intentionally expunged from memory for many years. Many of these friends I still know, and we continue to converse. Music was part of that revival of my passion for Spanish culture. I discovered new music and reconnected with some older gems like this one. I’m deeply grateful to Roberto Carlos for presenting this in a way that I could hear it. I hope each of you find that one voice that you can listen to that you trust; let’s join hands to save our planet.
The one tidbit that is truly remarkable about this song? It was released in 1976. It’s been forty-five years; are we making progress yet?