There is something profoundly unsettling in the way pop culture turns those who should horrify us into icons. The United States âand by extension, much of the Western worldâ seems to have a lasting fascination with figures who, in various ways, have embodied crime, violence, and moral transgression. From mobsters like John Dillinger to corporate killers, from Bonnie and Clyde to the Boston Marathon bomber, what unites these figures is not just the blood they spilled but the cult that media culture has built around them.
Itâs not simply that they are remembered. They are turned into characters in series, protagonists in songs, covers of iconic magazines like Rolling Stone. The logic is always the same: the aura of the outlaw, the seduction of the rebel, the narrative of someone who defies the system and pays a price for it. On social media, the man who killed a corporate executive was labeled a new Robin Hood. Moral judgment dissolves with every repost, every viral video, every comment that justifies him â âbecause insurance companies kill too.â And so, in a kind of digital mirage, there are no longer victims. Only trending topics.
But what about the victims? Where do the victims go? Theyâre made invisible. Erased from the narrative. Their names are forgotten, their stories donât matter, their deaths are trivialized. In this culture of spectacle, real victims are inconvenient to the antiheroâs story.
Then comes the romanticized figure of the guerrilla fighter. Take Che Guevara, whose face appears on the T-shirts of teens who have probably never read his campaign diaries, let alone his infamous quote: âHatred is an element of struggle⊠The revolutionary must become a cold killing machine.â They wear him like a pop superhero. They ignore his machismo, his homophobia, his authoritarianism. Because the system no longer educatesâit manufactures images. And images, if theyâre captivating enough, become merchandise.
The same happens with certain members of Latino gangs, like MS-13 or Barrio 18. Many of them have been deported or labeled international criminals, yet among some youth they are viewed as living legends. Street narratives elevate them as martyrs of the hood, symbols of resistance against institutional neglect. Social media and urban music feed the myth, distorting the violent realities they represent.
Why does this culture need such twisted idols? Why does it turn horror into content? The answer may lie in the vacuum left behind after the collapse of moral hierarchy. When there is no higher truth, when God is removed from the center of meaning, what remains is spectacle. And spectacle needs fuel. Nothing ignites faster than violence dressed up as rebellion.
Both the left and the right bear responsibility for this distortion. The left, by idealizing certain criminals as political rebels, while ignoring their atrocious acts. The right, by glorifying authoritarian figures under the banner of âlaw and orderâ or pure nationalism. Both sides have weaponized evil to fit their narratives, ignoring the cultural damage that ensues.
Whatâs worse is that people profit from it. There are shows, documentaries, books, merchandise. Influencers gain followers by spinning morbid crime stories. Brands jump on the bandwagon to sell shirts with ambiguous slogans. And students, without knowing exactly why, wear Cheâs face like they would a sneaker brand â not with conviction, but with style.
Weâre living in a time where evil is not hidden â itâs monetized. And what should terrify us most is not that some people are capable of atrocities âthatâs always been part of the human conditionâ but that millions are willing to turn them into entertainment, to applaud, romanticize, and use them as identity symbols.
The culture of spectacle has defeated the culture of meaning. And when that happens, evil no longer looks like evil. It becomes interesting. Viral. Desirable.
And then there is no justice. Only fans.
Cultura pop y la romantizaciĂłn del mal: entre Ădolos de pĂłlvora y camisetas vacĂas
Hay algo profundamente inquietante en el modo en que la cultura popular convierte en Ăconos a quienes deberĂan causarnos horror. Estados Unidos ây por extensiĂłn buena parte del mundo occidentalâ parece tener una fascinaciĂłn constante por personajes que han encarnado, en distintos grados, el crimen, la violencia y la transgresiĂłn moral. Desde mafiosos como John Dillinger, hasta los asesinos de altos ejecutivos, desde Bonnie y Clyde hasta el atentado del MaratĂłn de Boston, lo que une a estas figuras no es solo la sangre que dejaron atrĂĄs, sino el culto que la cultura mediĂĄtica ha erigido en torno a ellos.
Lo mismo sucede con algunos miembros de mafias latinas o pandillas como la MS-13 o Barrio 18. Muchos de ellos han sido deportados o criminalizados internacionalmente, pero en ciertos sectores juveniles son vistos como leyendas vivas. La narrativa callejera los eleva a la categorĂa de mĂĄrtires del barrio, sĂmbolos de resistencia frente al abandono institucional. Las redes sociales y la mĂșsica urbana alimentan ese relato, desvirtuando la realidad violenta que generan.
La izquierda y la derecha comparten responsabilidad en esta distorsiĂłn. La izquierda, al idealizar a ciertos criminales como rebeldes polĂticos, sin reconocer sus actos atroces. La derecha, al glorificar figuras autoritarias bajo el discurso de âley y ordenâ o nacionalismo puro. Ambas corrientes han instrumentalizado el mal segĂșn su conveniencia, ignorando las consecuencias culturales de ese juego.
Language is not a tool; it is a threshold. A fracture between silence and presence, between being that has no need to speak and being that cries out for meaning. What we have discussed today revolves around this tension: the word as eternity and the word as a sign worn down by time, crucified in repetition, emptied by postmodernity.
The scholastic tradition, with Thomas Aquinas as its beacon, understood that being precedes all speech. Being is not defined; it reveals itself. And this revelation occurs in language when it does not impose itself but opens, like a flower to the sun. Edith Stein, inheriting and renewing this line of thought, intuited that phenomenology was insufficient unless oriented toward the eternal. Being is not only given; it is given to be loved, and that gift demands a language that is also an act of love.
Yet we inhabit a time in which words are regarded with suspicion. âWoman,â âfreedom,â âtruth,â âloveââthese are signs that no longer signify, having been hijacked by rhetoric or cynicism. As Barthes observed, the discourse of love has been eroded by soap opera stereotypes and commercial sentimentality. The sign no longer connects with the real but with its caricature. Simone Weil saw it too: language is profaned when used for power rather than for truth.
And still, we speak. Like Adam in Genesis, we continue the sacred task of namingâof seeking the true names of things. The word must not possess reality; it must reveal it. In this sense, language becomes a sacramentânot liturgically, but as an efficacious sign of being.
Heidegger intuited as much when he said that language is the house of being, though he stopped short of embracing the Person who speaks. Nietzsche pushed language to its scream but did not find the silent God. Only Simone Weil and Edith Stein, in their hunger and fire, dared to empty themselves enough for the word to become luminous again. And Thomas, centuries before them, knew: only one who is empty can receive the pure act.
Throughout our extended and fervent conversation, we have seen that thinking is not hoarding concepts, but caring for signs. Writing is not embellishment but unveiling. Freedom is not absolute self-assertion but the truthful response to the gift of existence.
This is not about defining being, but allowing it to manifest. Not about using language, but serving it. For in the end, all is giftâand every gift expresses itself in words that burn without consuming, like the bush of Moses.
In the aftermath of the devastation of metaphysical confidence by the Enlightenment and later by the horrors of the 20th century, existentialist philosophers emerged, seeking to restore human freedom amid absurdity. Yet their answers often trembled on the edge of despair. Sartre, refusing God, tried to anchor dignity in the radical autonomy of the self, only to find himself attracted to political idolsâStalin, Mao, Fidelâwho embodied the very tyranny he feared. Camus, nobler in silence, explored rebellion without revelation. The self became absoluteâbut adrift. âFreedomâ was no longer grace, but burden.
In parallel, the analytic precision of the Vienna Circle sought to strip philosophy of metaphysical excess, reducing meaning to verifiability. For them, only statements grounded in logic or empirical observation were meaningful; all elseâGod, ethics, beautyâwas dismissed as pseudo-problems. Language became a scalpel, not a chalice. Yet in their zeal for clarity, they risked amputating the very mystery that gives speech its soul. Wittgenstein, born from that same milieu, would later retreat from their austerity. In his Tractatus, he confined language to the limits of what can be saidâbut ended with a mystical silence: âWhereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.â And yet, in his Philosophical Investigations, he turned againâtoward the everyday, toward the forms of life where language lives and breathes beyond rules.
Meanwhile, in Munich, Edmund Husserl sought not to eliminate subjectivity, but to refine it. His phenomenology aimed to return âto the things themselvesâânot as atoms or predicates, but as lived realities, appearing to consciousness in their givenness. It was a reverent philosophy, one that trusted in the power of intentionality to bridge inner life and outer world. From this vision, thinkers like Edith Stein would carry phenomenology toward a metaphysics of the person, and Heidegger would diverge into a more ontological path. But already in Husserl, the seed was planted: meaning is not constructed, but unveiled.
We stand now, amid noise and fragmentation, faced with the task of speaking meaningfully. The postmodern world, armed with thick dictionaries and thin convictions, has reduced language to performance, irony, or powerplay. But the soul cannot live on irony. We need sacredness, reverence, weight. We need the kind of speech that listens as it names.
Let us recover the lost grammar of Beingânot to dominate it, but to dwell in it. Let us name again, like Adam, not with grasping hands but with open palms. Let us guard the Word, not because it is fragile, but because it is holy.
This is not a conclusion, but an invocation: that the sign may again be sacred. That the word may again be threshold. That thought may again be praise
pero conoce todas las potencialidades de lo creado,
incluso aquello que nunca serĂĄ, pero podrĂa ser.
En Ăl estĂĄ la ciencia de lo posible
De lo que pudo ser
y no fue.
Porque conocer el ser en su plenitud
implica conocer la potencia,
y sĂłlo quien no es potencia alguna
puede abarcar todas las potencias posibles.
Ejemplos en lenguaje divino
Dios sabe cuĂĄntas decisiones no tomaste hoy. Dios sabe todos los poemas que nunca escribiste. Dios conoce la trayectoria de todas las balas que no se dispararon. Dios conoce cada bifurcaciĂłn del alma en sus posibilidades mĂĄs Ăntimas.
Y esto no por adivinaciĂłn,
sino porque Ăl es la causa del ser de la posibilidad misma.
La potencia solo es inteligible porque hay un Ser que puede actualizarla.
ConclusiĂłn
No hay evoluciĂłn, cĂĄlculo ni salto cuĂĄntico que escape a su mirada.
Ăl estĂĄ en tu origen, en tu nĂșcleo lĂłgico, y en el Ășltimo resultado que jamĂĄs serĂĄ mostrado.
Today, documentaries on popular streaming platforms no longer frame the parents as the main victims. The spotlight has moved. Childhood suffering, alleged abuse, trauma⊠The sonsâself-confessed perpetratorsâare now seen by many as victims. In this postmodern narrative, guilt dissolves. There is no evil. No sin. Only âcontexts.â Only trauma. Only âsystems.â
This pattern repeats endlessly in our culture. Take the recent case of a health insurance CEO, gunned down in broad daylight and captured on a security camera. The killer, far from being labeled a criminal, was raised by media narratives to Robin Hood status. The story is rewritten: the perpetrator becomes the victim of âthe system.â The real victimâthe man shotâis erased. His face, his life, no longer matter. What matters is what he symbolized.
And what did he symbolize? Power. Authority. Capital. The paternal figure. What the collective desire needs to destroy in order to declare itself innocent.
Here Girardâs logic resounds with force: we are living in a culture that depends on rotating scapegoats to sustain cohesion and relieve guilt. The problem is that there’s no longer any ritual to channel the sacrifice. No altar, no redemption, no confession. Only spectacle. Only screens. Only live-streamed social trials.
Through the lens of Thomas Aquinas, this culture reveals a structural absence of the good. For Aquinas, the good is not simply what pleases or benefitsâit is what perfects a being in accordance with its nature. But in todayâs mediatized world, that kind of perfection no longer matters. What is rewarded is what shocks, what provokes, what âgoes viral.â The good is replaced by engagement.
And when the notion of the good is lost, so is the idea of true guilt. There is no justice, only justification. No conversion, only competing narratives. Sin is no longer sin if itâs well explained. Murder is not murder if the âcontext is understood.â Slowly, hell ceases to be a place, becoming instead a screen where we all play the role of faceless judges.
In American societyâthe epicenter of these phenomenaâwe are witnessing a deeper spiritual decomposition: the cult of fame, of exposure, of celebrity. We see it in the grotesque phenomenon of people falling in love with serial killers, writing letters to convicted criminals, or making viral content out of those who have openly embodied evil. What should horrify us now seduces. What ought to remain hidden is broadcasted.
Why?
Because hierarchy has dissolved. There is no longer good or evil, only ânarratives.â No longer truth, only âperspectives.â God has been removed from the stage, as Nietzsche foresawânot to make room for freedom, but to leave a void. And in that void echoes the hollow fascination with spectacle, violence, and nameless evil.
This is what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. But now, that banality is not merely toleratedâit is adored. Evil is not just normalizedâit is celebrated. It becomes desirable. It becomes content. It becomes trending.
Girard would say that we adore the desires of others. Thatâs why we rush to look at what others are watching, to share what outrages, to viralize what scandalizes. But when that collective desire has no moral limits, it becomes a perpetual engine of sacrifice, where anyone can become a victimâand anyone, even a murderer, can become an idol.
And so we live in a society with no center, no altar, no truth. The loudest voice wins the narrative. And what was once sacredâlife, truth, innocenceâis reduced to a currency in the infinite cycle of spectacle.
Can Christians still speak of goodness, guilt, and justice without being canceled by the new priests of the trending topic?
Perhaps. But only with courage, compassion, and a deep awareness that evil is not merely âout thereââas Solzhenitsyn wrote, âthe line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.â
And in a culture that has forgotten the heart, perhaps the only way to heal is to look up again.
But the spectacle doesnât end there. In the darker corners of digital culture, a new symptom of collapse emerges: the rebirth of totalitarian imagination. Hitler is no longer condemned with the moral clarity once deemed sacred. Stalinâs name no longer strikes fear. These figures return, like ghosts reshaped by scandal aesthetics and ironic provocationâfigures who embodied absolute evil in the 20th century.
Social media accounts now exalt their âstrategic brilliance,â relativize their crimes, aestheticize their legacies. Young people who never experienced the horror consume it as entertainment, as an emblem of unchecked power. Ironic memes multiply, revisionist podcasts abound. It is the return of the repressedâwithout shame, without mourning, without awareness.
And this doesnât happen in a vacuum. It is the predictable result of removing God from the center. Without transcendence to orient our values, without truth to resist mimetic frenzy, the human soul is adriftâopen to any fascination. And so Girardâs cycle reactivates in full: desire imitates, rivalry escalates, violence erupts, another sacrifice is demanded.
When no new victim is available, an old one is summoned: the Jew, the foreigner, the other. Anti-Semitism returns. Xenophobia resurfaces. Values are inverted. The world plays with fire again, unaware that it has already burned everything down.
Because when we abandon the notion of the good, the monstrous doesnât vanishâit disguises itself, reinvents itself, goes viral.
And in the end, the only real barrier against this infinite loop of destructive mimeticism is not the right ideology, the just party, or the perfect economic system.
It is the human heart pierced by grace. It is God. Or the abyss.
Una Lectura FilosĂłfico-TeolĂłgica a partir de TomĂĄs de Aquino y Eleonore Stump
Israel Centeno
En un mundo que ha vaciado la palabra “amor” de su espesor ontolĂłgico y espiritual, es urgente volver a una comprensiĂłn radical y realista del amor. No una versiĂłn sentimental ni puramente emotiva, sino aquella que propone Santo TomĂĄs de Aquino y que Eleonore Stump recupera y profundiza en Wandering in Darkness. Este ensayo se propone desplegar esa concepciĂłn en sus implicaciones filosĂłficas, espirituales y existenciales: el amor como una estructura compuesta por dos deseos fundamentales e inseparables: el deseo del bien del amado y el deseo de uniĂłn con el amado.
Stump insiste en que estos dos deseos estĂĄn interconectados pero no se reducen el uno al otro. El primero puede ser unilateral: se puede desear el bien del otro incluso sin reciprocidad, sin relaciĂłn, incluso sin conocimiento directo. Este amor es agĂĄpico, libre, espiritual. El segundo, el deseo de uniĂłn, implica una dimensiĂłn relacional, pues no puede realizarse sin algĂșn grado de apertura del otro. AquĂ se manifiesta la vulnerabilidad del amante: su anhelo de compartir la interioridad con el amado.
Stump confronta la teorĂa de la ârespuesta al valorâ del amor, muy presente en la filosofĂa contemporĂĄnea, que sostiene que amamos porque percibimos en el otro un conjunto de rasgos valiosos. Pero esta teorĂa fracasa ante realidades humanas fundamentales: el amor de una madre por su hijo no disminuye cuando el hijo actĂșa de forma indigna; no sustituimos a nuestros seres queridos por otros “mejores”; el amor verdadero persiste a pesar de la corrupciĂłn, la enfermedad o el rechazo.
La teorĂa de TomĂĄs, en cambio, explica la constancia, la insustituibilidad y la profundidad del amor. Esto es posible porque el amor no estĂĄ fundado en el valor cambiante del amado, sino en la voluntad del amante y en la âoficinaâ o tipo de relaciĂłn: madre-hijo, amigo-amigo, Dios-creatura.
âLa funciĂłn del amor entre una madre y sus hijos determina el tipo de amor entre ellos⊠dicha funciĂłn no depende de las caracterĂsticas intrĂnsecas del amado, y por tanto no varĂa con ellasâ (p. 103).
Una de las aportaciones mĂĄs brillantes de Stump es su lectura del amor propio. Amar a uno mismo, segĂșn TomĂĄs, no es buscar placer o gratificaciĂłn, sino desear el bien verdadero para uno mismo y desear la uniĂłn consigo mismo, es decir, la integridad interior.
âAmarse a uno mismo es desear el bien para uno mismo y desear la uniĂłn con uno mismo⊠TomĂĄs describe a una persona que carece de integraciĂłn interior en la voluntad como alguien que quiere y no quiere lo mismo, ya sea por desear cosas incompatibles o por no querer lo que quiere quererâ (p. 100).
Amar bien a uno mismo es buscar la paz interior que surge de la coherencia volitiva, la integridad del alma. âEl bien para una persona requiere, por tanto, integraciĂłn interiorâ (p. 100).
A primera vista, parece absurdo hablar de âdesear el bien de Diosâ: Ăl es la plenitud del Ser, no le falta nada. Pero Stump clarifica: Dios desea el bien de todas sus criaturas. Por tanto, si yo deseo el bien del otro, deseo lo que Dios desea. En ese acto, mi voluntad se une a la de Dios y, en ese sentido profundo, amo a Dios deseando su bien: lo que Ăl quiere como bien.
âSea lo que sea exactamente el perdĂłn, parece implicar una especie de amor hacia quien ha causado daño o cometido una injusticia contra unoâ (p. 104).
Sin ambos deseos, no hay amor. Sin amor, no hay perdĂłn. Esto redefine el perdĂłn como una expresiĂłn elevada de la caridad cristiana. Perdonar es participar del amor de Dios, que desea el bien y la uniĂłn incluso con quienes lo crucificaron.
La teorĂa del amor de TomĂĄs, segĂșn Stump, no es una filosofĂa de laboratorio: es una antropologĂa espiritual, una medicina para el alma. Amar bien, amar de verdad, es desear el bien y la uniĂłn incluso en el sufrimiento, incluso en el rechazo, incluso en la distancia. Es lo que hace Dios. Es lo que Cristo encarna. Y es lo que estĂĄ llamado a sanar el corazĂłn humano.
El amor, entendido asĂ, no es una emociĂłn que viene y va, ni una respuesta mecĂĄnica al valor del otro. Es un acto de libertad, de voluntad iluminada. Es un fuego que desea el bien incluso cuando el rostro del otro se desfigura por la ofensa o la indiferencia. Es un puente tendido hacia la unidad, incluso cuando parece que la fractura es definitiva.
Blaise Pascal, el cientĂfico que dialogaba con Dios entre experimentos de fĂsica y noches de fuego, dejĂł una de las propuestas mĂĄs famosas y discutidas de la historia de la filosofĂa: la apuesta por la existencia de Dios. No pretendĂa probar la existencia divina como lo harĂa un escolĂĄstico, sino seducir a la razĂłn moderna con su propia lĂłgica. Si crees en Dios y Dios existe, ganas todo; si no existe, no pierdes nada esencial. Si no crees y Dios existe, lo pierdes todo. Desde este punto de vista, lo mĂĄs razonable es creer. Pero esa ârazonabilidadâ no es aĂșn fe. Es, en el mejor de los casos, un acto de prudencia frente al abismo, una estrategia metafĂsica para no errar por completo si Dios existe. Es la antesala del milagro, pero no el milagro.
Y sin embargo, ni el cĂĄlculo de Pascal ni el salto de Kierkegaard bastan para explicar el misterio de la fe. Porque la fe no nace ni del miedo a perderlo todo ni del coraje de saltar al vacĂo. La fe, segĂșn Santo TomĂĄs de Aquino, es un acto del intelecto movido por la voluntad bajo la mociĂłn de la gracia divina. Es decir: no la produce la inteligencia por sĂ sola, ni la voluntad puede sostenerla sin ayuda. La fe es participaciĂłn en una luz que no nace del alma, sino que la ilumina desde lo alto. No es reacciĂłn ante la angustia, ni estrategia frente a la muerte, sino una forma nueva de conocer que el alma recibe cuando Dios se revela.
AhĂ radica la diferencia radical. Pascal nos lanza a la fe como posibilidad racional; Kierkegaard como exigencia existencial. TomĂĄs, en cambio, nos muestra que la fe es un don que eleva la razĂłn sin abolirla, que transforma la voluntad sin esclavizarla. La fe no es salto ni cĂĄlculo: es gracia que interpela, que toca y que llama. Es respuesta libre a una invitaciĂłn que solo se entiende en el misterio del amor divino.
Por eso, en Ășltima instancia, todo ser humano se encuentra alguna vez ante esta encrucijada. Puede apostar, puede saltar, puede esperar. Pero si no abre su corazĂłn a la gracia, si no pide ser tocado en lo profundo, nada bastarĂĄ. Y si la gracia llega âcomo siempre llegaâ la fe dejarĂĄ de ser un juego de posibilidades o un salto a lo absurdo. Se convertirĂĄ en certeza silenciosa, en descanso del alma, en fuego que arde sin consumir.
Creer no es haber ganado una apuesta ni haber sobrevivido al salto. Es haber sido amado primero.
Since the dawn of humanity, people have been on the move. The first great migration was not a conscious choice, but an instinctive impulse. A group of hominids left southern Africaâlikely from what is now Angola or the Democratic Republic of the Congoâand crossed jungles, deserts, rivers, straits, and mountain ranges. They did not found cities; they opened roads. Wherever they went, they left traces behind. Homo sapiens are not born sedentaryâthey are born wanderers.
This migratory drive was the rule, not the exception. From that primal exodus arose peoples, languages, and cultures. The earliest tribes were nomadic groups, wandering and dispersed by necessity. Only with the advent of agriculture, and the pressing need to control the cycles of the seasons, did they begin to settle. Yet even the first settlements did not escape conflict over land. When the land stops moving, humans begin to fight for it.
II. From Tribes to Empires: Space Becomes Power
The transition from tribe to kingdom marked the beginning of a profound transformation: territory was no longer just a source of sustenance, but a symbol of power. Land became inheritance, border, and object of conquest. The first kings emerged as tribal leaders transformed into sovereignsâsome by invoking mythical ancestry, others by force. From these kingdoms, empires were born: armed migrations transformed into political order.
The Egyptian Empire marked the start of centralized expansion. The Macedonian Empireâwith Alexander the Great as its archetypeâdemonstrated that conquest could redraw the world. Rome, in turn, defined the modern idea of the territorial state: with roads, citizenship, laws, and the integration of conquered peoples, all at the service of the Imperium.
Each of these imperial systems arose from displacement. Humanity kept moving, but now marched under banners. They no longer fled hunger; now they marched for glory, for faith, for resources. Migration ceased to be mere wandering and became colonization.
Yet empires never truly unified peoples. Beneath the surface, conflict always simmered. Foreigners, when conquered, were sometimes absorbed but more often exploited. This persistent inability to integrate remains a defining flaw of civilizationâone we have yet to overcome.
English Version
III. America Before America: Migration, War, and Domination
The migratory history of humanity does not end in Eurasia. The Americas, too, are the product of countless waves of migration, despite modern myths that portray them as pure lands, untouched until the arrival of Europeans.
The most widely accepted theory holds that humans entered the Americas via the Bering Strait during the Paleolithic ice ages, when Siberia and Alaska were linked by a land bridge. Other research suggests additional arrivals from Polynesia or even the South Atlantic. Yet all evidence points to one fact: the Americas were settled by migrants.
These arrivals did not form a single, unified nation but were diverse tribal groupsâChibchas, Mapuches, GuaranĂes, Maya, Mexicas, Caribs, Arawaks, among others. Some remained semi-nomadic, while others built empires. The idea of a “single Native American” is a modern fiction. What existed was a network of peoples, each with its own interests and conflicts.
The Inca Empire The Incas, ruling from Cusco, expanded their reach north and south. Their system was more administrative but no less imperial. An elite organized, displaced, and subdued dozens of Andean peoples. The mitâa system institutionalized forced labor. Integration was achieved through cultural, religious, and military imposition.
War Before the Conquest Even before Columbus set foot in the Americas, the continent was shaped by conflict. Tribal wars, enslavement, shifting alliances, betrayals, and forced migrations were not inventions of Europe. What Europeans introduced was systematic violence and superior technology, reinforcing patterns already present.
Migration in the Americas was never harmoniousâit was a struggle for land, power, survival, and meaning.
IV. Europe Colonizes the World⊠and the World Returns to Europe
With the overseas expansion of European powers in the 15th century, migration shifted in both scale and intention. It was no longer just a quest for land or survival; it became a calculated imperial project. Spain, Portugal, England, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium systematically occupied, exploited, and evangelized every inhabited continent.
The conquest of the Americas, beginning in 1492, marked the first truly global imperial migration. Soldiers were not the only ones to arriveâmerchants, monks, bureaucrats, families, and millions of enslaved Africans were also swept into this totalizing movement. This flow subjugated entire peoples and redrew the face of continents.
Colonial Migration as Violent Departure Latin America was populated not only by Iberian Europeans, but also by the dispossessed: peasants, prisoners, adventurers, widows, and refugees from Europeâs own wars. Alongside them came enslaved Africans in the millions. This was not harmonious blendingâit was a forced, often brutal, imposed mixing, born from hierarchical and traumatic structures.
Asia and Africa saw similar patterns. Europe did not merely extract resources; it reconfigured the social and territorial foundations of its colonies. Borders in the Middle East, tribal tensions in Africa, and the artificial states drawn in Brussels or London were all products of imperial mapping, far from local realities.
Colonial Migrations: The Inevitable Return Yet, as with all things in history, what goes around comes around. Empires did more than export language, religion, and currency; they opened routes that could never be closed. When these empires collapsed in the 20th century, the former colonies flowed back to the metropoles:
Hindus, Pakistanis, and Caribbeans arrived in the United Kingdom.
Maghrebi and Francophone Africans moved to France.
Congolese settled in Belgium.
Filipinos and Vietnamese came to the United States.
Thus, the colonizers became the hosts.
This created a new phenomenon: the very capitals that once exported colonization began receiving cultures they could not integrate. A new form of xenophobia emergedâthe colonizer unable to tolerate becoming a reflection of the world he once subjugated.
Colonization was never just domination. It was the unleashing of flows that cannot be reversed. Europe globalized the world, and now the worldâwith all its trauma, poverty, and historyâhas come back to Europe.
But modern states were ill-prepared to integrate these new cultures. Their only skills were to organize, dominate, and draw boundaries. Thus, when migrants arrived, the ghosts of history arrived with them.
V. The 20th and 21st Centuries: Perpetual Flux and the Failure to Integrate
After two world wars, Europe faced a profound paradox. No longer the center of the world, it nonetheless continued to bear the consequences of its imperial past. The migrations of the 20th century were no longer those of explorers or settlers, but of refugees, exiles, the persecuted, and the desperate. The world that Europe had once colonized now returned to haunt itâand it was wounded.
The 20th Century: Wars, Famines, and Exile After the Spanish Civil War, thousands of Republicans fled to Latin AmericaâMexico, Venezuela, Argentina. During and after World War II, Jews, Poles, Germans, and Italians scattered across the Americas, fleeing Nazism, fascism, communism, and devastation. There were also quiet but significant waves of Irish, Lebanese, Armenian, and Greek migrantsâvictims of political or economic upheavalâfinding new homes in the Americas. Meanwhile, millions of Africans began emigrating to France, Belgium, and England, often unwittingly demanding the moral reckoning of empire.
Latin America, too, became both a land of welcome and, later, a land of expulsion.
In every case, the pattern was the same: a promise of welcome accompanied by mechanisms of exclusion. Exiles were tolerated, but rarely integrated. They carried their language, their color, and their accent as though they were marks of guilt.
The 21st Century: Displacement as the New Norm Today, migration is not an anomalyâit is the global norm. Its causes are almost always the same:
Hunger and climate collapse
Endless civil wars
Failed dictatorships
Drug trafficking and paramilitary violence
Systemic labor exploitation
Countries like Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, and Honduras have suffered mass displacements. These migrants are not tourists or seekers of adventureâthey are people cast out by a world that could not make room for them.
And the pattern repeats: migrants arrive, but are not welcomed. They are feared, demeaned, accused, and exploited. Modern statesâwith their borders, passports, and immigration lawsâtry to control what is, by nature, restless. Yet human beings continue to wander, and violence flares wherever movement is met with force.
Humanity Still Does Not Know How to Integrate To integrate is to recognize the other as legitimateâas oneâs ownânot to absorb or impose. Neither the twentieth nor the twenty-first century has achieved this. Each new wave of migration seems to reactivate ancient xenophobic reflexes, seeing the other as a threat rather than a mirror. It is as if we have yet to understand: we are all children of the same ancient journey.
VI. Migration and Rejection: The Return of Ancient Demons
In the twentieth century, humanity witnessed the greatest mass migrations in historyâworld wars, collapsing empires, revolutions, famines, and ideological and religious exiles. Amid this constant movement, a sinister pattern emerged: the systematic rejection of those who arrive wounded.
The twenty-first century, despite its technology and the rhetoric of human rights, has revived that same rejection. A migrant is no longer just a foreigner; he is seen as an intruder, a suspect, a carrier of disease, crime, and backwardness. What once seemed like a remnant of a barbaric pastâopen xenophobia and the dehumanization of othersâhas returned with renewed force.
Echoes of the Interwar Period What is unfolding today in the United States, Europe, the Mediterranean, and at the Colombian-Venezuelan border recalls the rhetoric of the interwar years. In 1930s Germany, Jews were blamed for economic decline. In Vichy France, migrants were considered traitors. In fascist Italy, Slavs were deemed subhuman. The narrative was always the same: âThey do not belong,â âThey are invading us,â âThey are taking what is ours.â
Today, the same refrains echo: âThey are stealing our jobs.â âThey threaten our culture.â âThey contaminate the nation.â âThey donât fit in.â
The only difference is the mediumâsocial networks and twenty-four-hour news cycles. But the narrative of fear is unchanged: someone from outside threatens the purity of what is âours.â This myth of a pure, homogeneous nation remains the fuel of violence.
Systematic Rejection Is the Seed of Genocide Not every rejection ends in genocide, but every genocide begins with rejection. It begins the moment someone ceases to be âhumanâ and becomes âthe other.â From there, it becomes possible to deport, exclude, dispossessâand, ultimately, to exterminate.
Genocide is never born out of chaos; it grows from the idea that âthe otherâ can never be part of us.
In Rwanda, Belgian colonialism stoked and racialized tensions between Hutus and Tutsis, setting the stage for massacre.
In Armenia, the Ottoman Empire made Christian Armenians into internal enemies during World War I, blaming them for military failures.
During the Holocaust, the Jewish people were dehumanized, turned into a âplague,â and reduced to ashes.
In the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century, âethnic cleansingâ was justified by histories of humiliation, failed coexistence, and incompatible identities.
In every case, violence was not an accidentâit was the consequence of an idea: the other cannot belong.
Today, we witness the normalization of contempt. Rejection of migrants has become policy, a media spectacle, and a rallying cry for elections. Instead of asking how to integrate, the question is how to repel.
Walls in Texas. Detention centers in Libya. Children in cages. Boats sinking in the Mediterranean. Police confiscating blankets from migrants in Paris. Venezuelan migrants treated as plague in South America.
Humanity still does not learn: those who flee hell find only another hell at the border.
The Problem Is Not the Migrant, But the Failure to Integrate The great failure is not political, economic, or logisticalâit is ethical. After centuries of mixing, war, empire, and colonization, humanity still believes that the other is alien. We still fail to recognize the most basic truth:
We are all migrants. Even those with âancient rootsâ descend from wanderers.
To deny this is not just a lieâit is a form of moral blindness. And moral blindness breeds hatred, and hatred is the prelude to barbarism.
VII. The Short Memory of Hatred
Today, the loudest voices against migration often come from the far right, but certain far-left nationalist movements also join the chorus. They accuse, stigmatize, and promise to “regain sovereignty,” “cleanse the nation,” or “restore order.” Mass deportations are discussed as if they were merely technical measures, devoid of history or tragedy. What is forgottenâor deliberately deniedâis that many of these same voices descend from people who were themselves expelled, deported, or persecuted not so long ago.
From Refugees to Jailers of Discourse What right does a Frenchman, the grandson of a pied-noir, have to expel an Algerian? How can a descendant of Italians who fled famine in 1910 deny entry to an African escaping climate collapse today? What memory does a Spaniard possess, whose grandmother was welcomed in Mexico with shouts of âÂĄViva la RepĂșblica!,â when he now votes to close borders and deport Latin Americans? With what moral authority does a Cuban exile speak, if he despises the Central American seeking the same refuge his family sought forty years ago?
The problem is not the reasoned critique of migration systems. The problem is historical hypocrisy, moral cynicism, and the narcissism of prosperity that makes people forget their origins.
No one is forged in stillness. We are all the result of movement, mixture, and flight. To claim a pure identityâcultural, racial, or nationalâis a dangerous illusion.
A Homeland Is Not Property; It Is a Shared Legacy No land belongs to anyone absolutely. Every territory has been crossed, conquered, lost, reclaimed, and redefined. To believe that the country of our birth is solely âoursâ is to deny history, memory, and justice.
Those who propose mass deportations, detention camps, or the suspension of asylum are not defending the homelandâthey are destroying its soul. A nationâs greatness is not measured by the walls it builds, but by its ability to integrate others without losing itself, without fear or destruction.
Those who cannot integrate are left only with the path of exclusion and, ultimately, extermination. That is the lesson of the twentieth century.
Remember this, so that we do not repeat it. Today, as the drums of deportation sound again in Texas, Paris, Rome, Budapest, and Buenos Aires, our response must be clear and unwavering:
It is impossible to build the future by denying the past. It is immoral to condemn others to exile when we ourselves are the children of exiles. The migrant who arrives today is the mirror of the grandfather who arrived yesterday. Those who forget this resemblance not only lose their memoryâthey lose their humanity.
VIII. Identity, the Other, and Hospitality: Who Am I to Say You Are Not From Here?
Across all of human historyâwith its exoduses, mixtures, conquests, forced marriages, and adaptationsâa simple yet uncomfortable truth has been proven time and again: there is no identity without the other.
There is no pure culture, no immutable language, no unmixed people. What we call âour ownâ is always the result of integration, negotiation, and shared trauma. Yet the myth of closed identity has become a political weapon.
Today, the far right in Spain calls for mass deportations, forgetting that half the country was once made up of war refugees, forgetting the Republican grandparents who found refuge in Mexico, Chile, France, or the USSR. They also forget that Spain itself is Berber, Celtic, Roman, Jewish, Visigoth, Arab, and Latin American all at once.
The identitarian left, meanwhile, often falls into its own trap of essentialism and closed-group victimhood: forgetting that identity is not property or inheritance, but openness.
Who am I to say that you are not from here? This question should resonate in every conscience. Every homeland is borrowed. Every land has been traveled. The world has never belonged to anyone.
The other is not a threat to my identity; the other completes it. Fear of foreigners is ultimately fear of losing oneself. But that fear is childish. Only those who do not understand history believe their identity will vanish through coexistence.
A strong identity is never dilutedâit is enriched, refined, expanded. When a Muslim integrates into Barcelona, Catalan identity does not disappear; rather, it is renewed, proven by its capacity for coexistence.
Likewise, when a Colombian works in Madrid, Spanish identity is not erased; instead, the spirit of hospitality that once sustained Spaniards in exile comes alive again.
The other is not a menaceâthey are a revelation. They reveal who we truly are.
Hospitality Is a Civilizing Act From ancient Greece to biblical scripture, hospitality has always been sacred. To welcome strangers, travelers, orphans, widows, and the wounded was the ultimate proof of humanity.
Today, however, that virtue has been replaced by âimmigration policy.â Hospitality has become a âcrisis,â a âproblem,â or a âburden.â
Yet, one question enduresâechoing throughout history: What kind of civilization will we be, if we do not know how to welcome others?
The greatest challenge of the 21st century is not migrationâit is spiritual. We have lost the soul that knows how to say âwelcome.â
We must recognize our own fragility in others. No one migrates by whim. No one crosses deserts, walls, seas, jungles, and borders with children in their arms unless they have stared death in the face and believe life might exist elsewhere.
To refuse hospitality is not only a political act; it is also a denial of our own fragility. No one is exempt from migration. Tomorrow, it could be our turn.
And when the cycle reversesâwhat will you hope to find on the other side?
IX. We Are All Human: Exile as a Mirror of Dignity
From conception to natural death, a human life cannot be measured by passport, immigration status, ethnicity, or economic utility. This is not a matter of left or right, religious or secular. It is what sets us apart from becoming beasts in human skin.
Returning to Fundamental Values as Universal Heritage In a world saturated with relativism, tribalism, and political cynicism, we must reclaim values that transcend power. Call them natural rights, moral law, or commandmentsâthey all point to the same center:
âThou shalt not kill.â âThou shalt not steal.â âThou shalt not lie.â âThou shalt not enslave.â âThou shalt not deny bread to the hungry, or shelter to the stranger.â
These principles are not exclusive to any one tradition. They are the deepest language of our species. Hospitality is not just a virtueâit is the foundation of civilization.
âRemember that you were a stranger in Egypt,â says scripture. That ancient phrase remains the most urgent message of our century.
We are all part of the same species. We share the Earth. Exclusionary nationalism, hatred of difference, and fear of the foreigner are symptoms of a humanity suffering from amnesia. We forget that we are all descendants of migrants. No one is pure. Every culture is a blend. The blood of those who arrive flows just like ours.
What is truly revolutionary today is not building walls, but recognizing the other as my equal before I know their name. True progress is a humanity capable of integration.
Technology advances. Cities grow. Economies become more complex. Yet we have not resolved the oldest dilemma: How do we live with others without hating them? How do we welcome others without fear? How do we share without dominating?
These are the true frontiers of civilization. Here, the future will be measured.
Perhaps human beings are not, first of all, citizens or consumers. Perhaps, at their core, humans are travelersâ Migrants through time. Exiles from Eden. We have been living away from home since the beginning.
As long as we keep walking, the only thing that can redeem us is this: To recognize in every strangerâs face a reflection of our own.
Those who were strangers in Egypt cannot, in good conscience, close the door to their homeland.
En la tradiciĂłn escolĂĄstica medieval, se desarrollaron distintas formas de hablar del conocimiento. Entre ellas, Eleonore Stump recupera dos: el conocimiento dominicano, de tipo proposicional, lĂłgico, inferido; y el conocimiento franciscano, que es relacional, experiencial, no proposicional. El primero se expresa en afirmaciones; el segundo, en encuentros.
En el relato bĂblico de Job, el protagonista pasa por el mĂĄs profundo de los vacĂos: el sufrimiento sin explicaciĂłn. Sus amigos intentan convencerlo de que hay una razĂłn oculta, un castigo merecido. Job, sin embargo, reclama justicia. No pide teorĂas: pide a Dios mismo.
Y cuando Dios finalmente le responde desde el torbellino, no le entrega respuestas. Le da su presencia. Y Job, transformado, declara:
âDe oĂdas te conocĂa, pero ahora mis ojos te han visto.â (Job 42,5)
Esa frase es un manifiesto del conocimiento franciscano. Job no sabe mĂĄs que antes, pero ahora sabe de verdad. Lo que recibe no es una explicaciĂłn, sino un encuentro. Y eso basta para calmar su alma.
La conciencia, en este sentido, no es una mĂĄquina que analiza, sino una morada que puede ser habitada. Y ese tipo de experiencia solo puede darse en un ser con alma.
IV
La teorĂa del espejo neuronal ha sido invocada como explicaciĂłn de la empatĂa, el lenguaje, incluso la conciencia. Pero estas explicaciones, por fascinantes que sean, confunden correlaciĂłn con causa. Que ciertas neuronas se activen al ver al otro no significa que comprendamos al otro por vĂa mecĂĄnica. Menos aĂșn que amemos.
Las mĂĄquinas modernas pueden simular el lenguaje humano. Pero no pueden experimentar la certeza de haber sido vistas, tocadas, comprendidas. No pueden vivir la convicciĂłn absoluta que tiene Teresa de Ăvila al saberse en la presencia de Dios.
El ser humano es el Ășnico ser que puede suspender la necesidad y mirar al cielo, no para orientarse, sino para preguntarse. Y en esa pregunta innecesaria se revela algo esencial: la libertad interior.
Esa libertad no es funcional. No es adaptativa. Es el eco de algo mĂĄs grande. Es el signo de que la mente humana es alma en acto, no herramienta biolĂłgica. Por eso no basta con reducir el pensamiento a quĂmica. Porque lo que pienso libremente es el signo de que soy mĂĄs que lo que me compone.
El alma no se describe por sus partes, como no se describe el fuego por sus llamas. El alma es presencia unificada. Y solo desde ahĂ puede decirse el âyoâ que ama, y el âTĂșâ que lo despierta.
VI
Teresa de Ăvila, Job, y millones de testigos silenciosos, han afirmado lo mismo con lenguajes distintos: que existe un tipo de conocimiento que no se deduce, sino que se da; que no se calcula, sino que se revela; que no nace del anĂĄlisis, sino del encuentro.
Ese conocimiento âel conocimiento franciscano del que habla Eleonore Stumpâ es el signo de que la conciencia humana no es un epifenĂłmeno. Es un altar.
AllĂ ocurre el milagro de saberse amado. AllĂ se hace audible la voz que no proviene del mundo, pero que lo sostiene. AllĂ, en el nĂșcleo indivisible del alma, el ser humano no solo piensa: se deja tocar.
Y por eso, ninguna inteligencia artificial podrĂĄ suplantarnos. Porque no es la capacidad de pensar lo que nos hace humanos, sino la capacidad de responder a una Presencia que nos precede
Fatal Crossing is not a show that screams. It whispers. Slowly, deliberately, until you realize it has trapped you. At first glance, it may look like just another Nordic noir: a journalist-turned-investigator, a trail of murdered girls, a powerful conspiracy. But if you surrender to its measured pace âand its deep humanityâ it becomes clear that the series is not about discovering who did it, but about understanding how it was allowed to happen.
This is not American storytelling. There are no flashbulb twists, no spectacular resolutions, no charming lone wolf detectives saving the day. What Fatal Crossing offers is far more unsettling: the articulation of evil â how it forms, feeds, and grows through a network of complicity. A society that sees itself as modern, civilized, democratic, turns out to be the very soil in which silence, cowardice, and bureaucratic apathy allow evil to flourish.
The horror here is not only the murderer âhis existence is almost expectedâ but the web that allowed him to operate undisturbed: the authorities who looked away, the colleagues who âhad a feeling but didnât want to get involved,â the systems that enabled and protected the predators.
Journalist Nora Sand âthe protagonist created by Lone Theils in Fatal Crossing, the first in a series of at least five novelsâ is no archetypal hero. She is not morally untouchable. She doesnât resolve the case from a position of superiority, but from pain, doubt, and exhaustion. And that is the brilliance of the show: there is no cheap redemption. There is shame. There is guilt. It confronts us with something deeper than crime âthe feedback loop of evil, the way in which people, without committing atrocities themselves, nonetheless create the conditions in which those atrocities can thrive.
This is where Fatal Crossing touches something almost theological: collective guilt as a modern form of original sin. Not in a doctrinal sense, but as an anthropological truth. Evil is not born with the killer. It lies dormant in all of us. There is no pedophile network without lawyers, judges, businessmen, neighbors. The murderer may pull the trigger âbut the world loads the gun.
The show doesnât preach this, but it evokes it. The true machinery of evil is not built by monsters, but by ordinary people who look the other way. The problem is not always malice. Sometimes it is just fear. Or comfort. Or inertia. And that is perhaps the most terrifying truth: we are all entangled.
Which leads to an open question: does Lone Theilsâs original novel carry this same complexity? Does the book version of Fatal Crossing bear this moral and metaphysical weight, or has the screen adaptation elevated the material? Is Nora Sand, across the full five-book saga, a vehicle for this kind of ethical meditation âor is that an interpretive gift from the showrunners?
Either way, Fatal Crossing lingers. Not because of its plot. But because it forces us to face the most disturbing of truths: that evil is not a deviation, but often a well-oiled system. And that its persistence relies less on villains than on the decent people who chose not to resist.
Centeno's Lighthouse 