Hello, how are you? Good morning.
There was no television in Bolivia back then. I was coming to visit my family and the stop at the Lima airport was about five hours. In the main room there was a group of people around a television. They were all watching anxiously. A fight was about to start. Cassius ClayBut I knew little about him. I stopped there; I didn’t know who he was fighting with. The comments seemed to multiply: his figure, his muscles, the beauty of a Greek god with dark skin.
The fight started and it ended quickly, in the first round. The great body of him standing while the knocked out man was lying on the canvas, like a lifeless rag monkey. The show ended pondering the strength of his fists.
I learned more about him when he entered Islam and changed his name: Mohammed ali. He changed his life and took advantage of his fame and influence to fight against racism, to oppose the Vietnam War, as a conscientious objector to the US government.
The black man, despised for his race, asserted his personal worth; he had no reason to fight in a merciless war. No Vietcong had even called him nigger, a derogatory racist nickname. The whites did not call him a coward. But to adopt such an attitude, criticizing a war that did not defend anything, requires uncommon courage: confront your governmentTherein lay his greatness.
Good day.
see more
#Confront #government