Eduardo Galeano (Extract from pages 237 thru 252 of the book FEET UP: SCHOOL OF THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN. Editors: Siglo XX1, Spain, 2002. Human rights are undermined at the feet of the rights of machines. It is everyday more often that in the cities, mainly
cities of the "south"(underdeveloped) people is forbidden, automobiles seize the human space without consecuences, poison the air and eventually kill intruders who invade the space they have conquered. What is the difference between violence that kills with a motor from violence that kills with a knife or a bullet? The end of the century disdain public transportation. In the mid of the twentieth century Europeans used trains, buses, metros in three forths of their coming and going, now this has gone down to one forth, and that is much compared to USA, where public
transportation has vanished from most of the cities, it only covers five
percent of
total transportation. United States of America has the highest car concentration of the world and also the highest gun concentration. Six, six, six: of each six dollars that a medium citizen spends, one is devoted to the automobile; of each six hours of his life, he dedicates it to travelling in his car or to work in order to pay it; and of every six jobs, one is directly or indirectly related to the automobile, and another related to violence and its industries. As much as more people are killed by
automobiles and guns, as much of nature it damages, and more the Gross National Product (GNP) grows. The
automobile promises freedom to the people, that is why the roads are calle "freeways, but they are actually moving cages. Human work grows despite the technological progress and also the time used to coming and going to work increases year by year due to the heavy traffic, which makes you move with great effort and alterate your nervous system. People live inside their cars, they do not leave it. Never so many have suffered for so few. Only twenty percent of humanity own the eighty percent of the automobiles, regardless that one hundred percent of humanity has to breath the poisoned air. The catastrophic public transportation and the complete absence of lanes for bycicles make it almost imperative the use of the private automobile, but how many can have that luxury? The Latinamericans who do not own a car and could never afford to have one, live shut up in traffic and choked by polluted air. The sidewalks are reduced or disappeared, the distances increase, every time there are more
cars crossing and least people meeting in the street. In the cities all over the globe, the automobile produces the main part of the cocktail of gases which damages our lungs, our eyes, and the rest. It also produces the big noise and the tension that blow your ears and stagger your nerves. The number of cars increases and increases in the Latinamerican Babylonians, but that amount is still small compared to the main prosperity centers of the world. In 1995 The United States and Canada had more automobiles than the total automobiles of the rest of the world, with the exception of Europe. Germany had in that year so many cars, vans, buses, moving homes, motorcycles as the total of Latinamerica and Africa together. Nevertheless, in the cities on the "south" of the world three of every four persons are killed by automobiles, and of those three are pedestrians. Brazil has three times less automobiles than Germany, but it has three times more victims. In Colombia there are six thousand homicides called traffic accidents. Automobiles in the world kill each year as many people as the people killed in 1990 by the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together. Automobiles have caused more deaths and physical incapacities than wars or AIDS. Modernization, motorization: the strident noise of motors do not allow to hear the voices accusing the trick of a civilization that steals your freedom to sell it back later, that cuts your legs to impel you to buy automobiles and gyms. It has been imposed in the world the nightmare of cities governed by automobiles as the only possible way of living,
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