Gracias Mercedes Sosa
October 4th, 2009 § 4 Comments
The “voice of the voiceless ones,” Mercedes “La Negra” Sosa, passed away today at the age of 74. Her songs provided an inspirational soundtrack for so many of Latin America’s freedom fighters, famous and unknown. Harry Belafonte once said: “you can cage the singer, but you can’t cage the song” — this also applies to Sosa, even after her death. Her words will continue to soar through the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom and justice forever.
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I first herad her song “Sólo le pido a Dios”. Although I did not understand the lyrics (apart from few words) I asked one of my spanish friends who translated few line and I fell in love with the beautiful, profound and strong words of this song.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que el dolor no me sea indiferente,
That i am not indifferent to the pain,
que la reseca muerte no me encuentre
That the dry death won’t find me
vacío y solo, sin haber hecho lo suficiente.
Empty and alone, without having done the sufficient.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que lo injusto no me sea indiferente,
That i won’t be indifferent to the injustice
que no me abofeteen la otra mejilla,
That they won’t slap my other cheek,
después que una garra me arañó esta suerte.
After a claw (or talon) has scratched this destiny (luck) of mine.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que la guerra no me sea indiferente,
That i am not indifferent to the battle,
es un monstruo grande y pisa fuerte
It’s a big monster and it walks hardly on
toda la pobre inocencia de la gente.
All the poor innocence of people.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que el engaño no me sea indiferente,
That i am not indifferent to deceit,
si un traidor puede más que unos cuantos,
If a traitor can do more than a bunch of people,
que esos cuantos no lo olviden fácilmente.
Then let not those people forget him easily.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que el futuro no me sea indiferente,
That i am not indifferent to the future,
desahuciado está el que tiene que marchar
Hopeless is he who has to go away
a vivir una cultura diferente.
To live a different culture.
Sólo le pido a Dios
I only ask of God
que la guerra no me sea indiferente,
That i am not indifferent to the battle,
es un monstruo grande y pisa fuerte
It’s a big monster and it walks hardly on
toda la pobre inocencia de la gente.
All the poor innocence of people.
Gracias Mercedes Sosa! R.I.P
I don’t want to discredit Mercedes Sosa one day after her death, of course she is a great singer and she really was the “voice of the voiceless” in the past, but I think it is important to set the record straight and remember that she was a staunch defender of Israel, where she sang a few times despite the callings of the PACBI and other organizations not to do it.
http://www.ijsn.net/116/
We can see her here singing in the celebration for the Peres Center for Peace’s 10th anniversary at Tel Aviv in October 2008. In the introduction she speaks about peace… through love between the peoples:
In the following video she makes the usual calling for peace and says she is there to sing for the people of Israel, not to do politics. She goes on telling that “it is possible to kill both with a stone and with cannons, and nobody who is fighting in either side may think he is working for peace. The only way to attain peace is without weapons. There is not peace with weapons”. She says she reminded this in Paris to… a Palestinian! After speaking about the guerrilla in Colombia, she goes back to Israel. She was well received there in 1980 by the Argentinian community (she was exiled at that time from the brutal dictatorship in Argentina) and states: “I love this country, don’t tell me about other countries, I love Israel. I am interested in this country because this country has been fighting for centuries”.
As far as I know, she never performed in Palestine.
It was quite painful for me to discover the Zionist leanings of Mercedes, Jasmin, as I grew up listening her songs at home (my parents love her) and she was to me the embodiment of everything you write in your post. But the fact remains the same: She was a long-time supporter of Israel (at least from her tour in Israel in 1980 during her exile) and she never defended the Palestinans in any meaningful way beyond her vague speeches about peace through brotherhood, universal love and so on, or her duets with… Noah.
Thinking that she could be misguided and the people didn’t spend enough time trying to inform her seems to me unrealistic (given the firmness and persistence of her Zionist convictions) and a little bit patronizing: like Leonard Cohen, she was the sole responsible of her choices and she wasn’t neither an ignorant nor the puppet of anybody.
I’m sorry I can’t provide more links in English about her stance but it seems to me quite telling that Shimon Peres has felt urged to pay homage to her in her last hour…
Carlos,
Thank you for sharing the information. It is indeed painful to know that. I think I first heard her song in a documentary about Argentina (I can’t remember the name of the documentary).
It is annoying when people sometimes are not able to understand the issue and rather try to preach universal love & peace!