Memory and Opportunity

Memoria a la deriva - Drifting memory. Ángela Reyes Illustration

Water, in its sacred essence, nourishes and gives life. It also symbolizes the capacity for connection that has allowed numerous cultures to pay tribute to their gods, and intertwine their destinies. Thanks to this flow —to migrations and cultural exchanges— our world has become enriched and diversified.

Like a river transforms every landscape it passes through, the person who migrates changes the spaces they move through, and these spaces transform them in return.

In the face of the mistreatment and tragedies experienced by so many people who embark on journeys across countries and seas, as well as by the communities that receive them, the “culture of encounter,” as Pope Francis has noted, is an opportunity to learn from the past, to embrace diversity as a source of richness, and to promote integration based on respect and dialogue. Solidarity is the force capable of saving us from the culture of rejection, fear, and hatred that so many promote, paving the way toward a more just and fraternal world.

“A migrant is no more or less human depending on which side of a border he finds himself”

(Pope Francis, 2019).