By Víctor Manuel Rubio Carrillo

I am poverty, born in a failed state, raised among misery and inequity.

But I am wealth, born in the Andes and friends with the Earth.

I am elite, who know poverty from witnessing it but not with the skin to endure it.

I am urban, born in the chaos and contamination.

I am also field, self-exiled towards the land to breathe.

I am balance, born in the center, in the Ecuador, latitude zero.

But I am disequilibrium, harmed by trauma and pain.

I am Music, vibration and force of this cosmos.

I am silence too, imagination of the impossibility.

I am family and community, unified bodies by sensation and scent.

But I am an individual, one that waits and will not be silenced.

I am Mestizo, Carajo! Hybrid force that will not rest…