Quieren cambiar todo, menos ellos / Rafael Cadenas

They want to change everything, except themselves

Donations crack boulders, especially if these are porous.

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Revolutionaries hate capitalism, but so many of them really love capital.

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National sovereignty, without the measure imposed by civilization, fits dictators like a glove: that’s how they can subjugate their peoples more easily.

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Calling his discourse empty is an insult to emptiness.

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Doña Bárbara defeated Rómulo Gallegos and remains in power still.

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Utopia bleeds.

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They want to change everything, except themselves.

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Justice can’t be revolutionary or reactionary. It lacks an adjective. It stands alone.

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Forcing a way of thinking impedes thought.

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We can engage in combat without hate, which enslaves the hater.

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When the state becomes a giant, the citizens become underaged once more.

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The main component of all authoritarianisms is the inflation of the ego.

Totalitarianism warns you: if you dissent, you’re an enemy, in other words, something to be exterminated. Democracy tells you: think however you’d like.

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Nationalism is the enemy of humanity.

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Democracy and communism are antonyms.

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Now we know: revolutionaries, with honorable exceptions, I figure, deep down just really wanted to live like the bourgeoisie, and they’ve achieved it. They’ve become what they thought they hated. Their enemy ended up winning when they came into power.

They make up the new class that Milovan Dilas wrote about.

This conversion by now seems to be a law of history.

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He’s a friend to all the dictators and autocrats of the world and many intellectuals support him. They should explain that to the country. I’m curious to see how they’d do it.


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Since they see themselves as redeemers, they should at least talk with courtesy, like Saint Teresa recommended.

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As for vulgarity, some so-called revolutionaries are insuperable, but that trait was seen by Trotsky as counterrevolutionary.

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Nothing solid can be built without cordial coexistence.

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Detach yourself from hate and pick up off the ground the poor fraternity you tossed away, hallucinating from an ideology extenuated from so much failure.




From Otros dichos, by Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, Venezuela, 1930). Curated by Josefina Núñez.




{ Rafael Cadenas, Prodavinci, 5 January 2016 }