By reason or by force

It came slowly, insidiously, like a fascist spider weaving its web, planting its threads from the peaks of the Andes to the beaches of the Pacific. It slipped into our lives gently, without a sound, into a dull and corrosive routine. The lines, endless and monotonous, became the daily backdrop of our existence, constantly reminding us that we had to wait. Wait for the factories to start again, for the trains to run, for the truck drivers to deliver. Wait for there to be something to buy.

Our pockets were full, it was finally our turn, the turn of the proletariat, to buy. But there was nothing. The shelves stayed empty. No bread, no tea, no trace of meat. Full pockets, but nothing to consume. The irony cut through us, like a rusty blade.

It was in one of these lines, the one for bread, that everything changed.

I had been waiting for hours, lulled by the crackling music from a small gray radio. A metallic voice interrupted the broadcast, harsh, guilty of announcing a reality none of us wanted to face. As if perfectly orchestrated, military trucks appeared on the horizon. Huge, menacing. Soldiers jumped out, machine guns in hand, barking orders.

“GO BACK HOME! NOW!”

They struck with the butts of their rifles anyone who asked questions, anyone who got in their way.

And then, the first gunshots rang out. The bullets, they screamed through the air, piercing it, announcing that the world had just changed.

The soldiers, who had sworn to protect their people, turned against them. Against everything that made up our country, its citizens, their own mothers, fathers, and children.

In the chaos, the bullets flew. They shattered against the brick walls, ricocheting near my ears. My heart understood before my mind. Long before my legs.

I saw her, a young mother running, a baby in her arms, two other children clinging to her sides. She darted between vehicles, desperately searching for shelter, slipping behind the door of a small store. My heart exploded in my chest. It beat like a war drum, demanding I understand. The voice of the radio still echoed in my mind.

“The government has fallen. The president is dead.”

I had to flee. So, I left. Without bread, but with a brutal truth to swallow.

At home, my mother and brothers were huddled in the center of our single-room dwelling, as if the walls themselves were dangerous. We stayed there, frozen, praying for a tomorrow where we could step outside again, praying that this was just a nightmare. That the neighbors’ cries were only mistaken laughter.

When we finally emerged, our country was unrecognizable. Ungrateful. Vicious.

Those who dared to stand, to shout, to sing, or to write that we lived in injustice disappeared. Swallowed by the earth, as if the ground itself consumed them. They were ripped from their lives, forcibly taken to places that didn’t exist. There, they endured tortures that, officially, had never happened.

They were replaced, one by one, with posters plastered on walls, bearing their photos—faces that became the only proof they had ever existed.

Some returned. But they were no longer themselves. Cursed, broken, they ended up alone, avoided by everyone, as if they carried an invisible disease. Unwillingly, they became informants, puppets of their tormentors.

And trust disintegrated.

Speaking became an illness. Having an opinion, suicide. Fear seeped into our movements, our breaths. It coursed through us, replacing the blood in our veins, replacing the hope we had once been promised.

For weeks, I didn’t see the moon or the stars. The night belonged to them. Soldiers patrolled after 5 p.m., hunting those who dared step outside. The most terrifying game of hide-and-seek played out every evening. At home, we held our breath, listening to the heavy boots stomping on tin roofs, the gunshots tearing through the dark, the screams shredding the silence.

By morning, we found the remnants of this silent war, bodies left where they had fallen, rotting under the rising sun. Sometimes, families found their loved ones. Sometimes, they ended up in mass graves.

Corpses riddled with bullets, but no culprits.

We survived, not out of hope, but out of obligation, forced witnesses to a macabre puppet show. School no longer existed. Nor friends, nor extended family, nor trips to the beach, nor chasing lizards under the scorching sun.

It was them, all of them, against us, each of us alone.

The months passed, and life changed. New rules emerged, some clear, others insidious. Silence reigned, oppressive, stretching along the coasts like a sea of lead. It rose high into the sky, squeezing our tongues, forcing us to swallow what we felt, what we thought.

Life carried on, as it does, turning everything into normality. Every day, it invented new enemies of the state, those who dared challenge the General.

They hammered relentlessly, methodically, their ideologies into our minds. They tore apart our dreams, erased our ideas, and replaced them with their own, stripping away our rights one by one. Their speeches, relentless, poured endlessly from radios under their control, newspapers they owned, and television screens turned into cold instruments of propaganda. Television, once an escape, showed only their imposed truths.

And the lines continued. We still waited. Always waiting. Waiting for life to begin again, for something to restore meaning to this existence that had become a monotonous loop, empty of promises.

And when hope was lost, when life no longer made sense, when we doubted everything, and despair became our new way of living, Christmas came along.

It hadn’t changed.

The world outside could crumble, turn cruel and unrecognizable, but within those fragile walls, we still loved each other. That Christmas, we ate beans, nothing more, nothing less. Christmas of ’73. Sitting on the floor in an improvised circle, the rough earth cold beneath us, we shared laughs. We shared stories and memories. We shared the most precious thing we had, the one thing they couldn’t take away, our love for each other.

Everything else could change. They could tear down our walls, strip us of our rights, rob us of our voices. But they could not stop us from loving one another. Christmas reminded us of that.

And it would, for the next seventeen years.

Every Christmas, no matter how barren the table, how heavy the air, we found a way back to that circle. It became our sanctuary, a fragile but unbreakable ritual that the years of fear and silence could not touch.

For seventeen years, Christmas was our act of defiance. Not loud, not violent, but unyielding. A testament to what they could not take, the bonds that made us human. The laughter in the face of despair. The courage to hope, if only for one night.

And that, in the darkness, was enough.