Buen artículo de Rosa Montero publicado en The Country. Como siempre, relacionando circunstancias políticas y sociales con la cuestión de los animales.
If you are a Spanish Language teacher, you are familiar with the texts from this journalistic publication for working on textual analysis and its structures, always clear and with compelling arguments.
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ISIS projected the horrific video of the Jordanian man burning alive on a giant screen in a Syrian town square. I watched, swooning, online as a pretty fifteen-year-old girl clapped and laughed with the same rapturous enthusiasm she would show to a pop star. The Jordanian man, stripped of his humanity, objectified, was nothing more than a pretext to amplify the delirious and fanatical cohesion, the sense of belonging to the horde.
These days, the Spanish Senate will be processing animal welfare laws as part of the draft reform of the penal code. The Justice and Animal Defense Observatory has been working for years to achieve real progress on this issue. It is crucial to ensure that the penalty for particularly cruel animal abuse is two years and one day, which would allow these despicable individuals to be imprisoned. Until now, no matter how abhorrent the act committed against an animal, the perpetrator never goes to jail. The reform will penalize the sexual exploitation of animals, but unfortunately, the new code does not punish sexual abuse unless money is involved. This sadistic and brutal practice is more common than people realize. The Observatory has gathered 160,000 signatures against the reform and urges us not to miss this opportunity to align ourselves with other countries in our region: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and others.
Do you think I've taken a leap of faith, jumping from the unspeakable, maddening horror of the Jordanian to the humble yet equally indescribable suffering of the animals? I, on the other hand, believe there's a clear continuity. That if we learn to feel empathy for all living beings, it will be easier for us not to objectify our fellow human beings, not to accept pain and horror with such nauseating banality. And besides: who will defend those poor, mute animals if we don't?