Last year, for Workers' Day, I wrote a note entitled "A Memory Carved in Struggle". In it I spoke of May Day as what it really is: a date born of conflict, of organization, of the sacrifice of thousands who fought for fair conditions in an unequal world.
A few days later, a friend replied with a message that included a text by Eduardo Galeano. It was not a simple quote: it was a story. One of those that force you to stop and think.
Today, I want to share it in its entirety. Because it is worth more than any introduction.
Chicago is full of factories.
There are factories even in the middle of downtown, around the tallest building in the world.
Chicago is full of factories.
Chicago is full of workers.
Arriving in the Haymarket neighborhood, I ask my friends to show me the place where, in 1886, those workers were hanged, those workers that the whole world salutes every first of May.
-It must be around here," they tell me. But no one knows.
No statue has been erected in memory of the Chicago martyrs in the city of Chicago.
No statue, no monolith, no bronze plaque, no nothing.
The first of May is the only truly universal day of the entire humanity, the only day where all the histories and all the geographies, all the languages and the religions and the cultures of the world coincide;
but in the United States, May Day is just another day.
On that day, people work normally, and nobody, or almost nobody, remembers that the rights of the working class have not sprung from the ear of a goat, nor from the hand of God or the master.
After the futile exploration of Haymarket, my friends take me to see the best bookstore in town.
And there, by pure chance, I discover an old poster that is as if waiting for me, tucked among many other movie and rock music posters.
The poster reproduces a proverb from Africa:
"Until lions have their own historians, hunting stories will continue to glorify the hunter."
Desmemoria - Eduardo Galeano
That final sentence sums it all up.
That is why it is so important to keep writing, keep telling, keep remembering. Because if we don't do it, others will. And they will tell it differently. They will tell it from above, from the comfort of those who never had to go out and fight for an eight-hour day or a living wage.
May Day is not only a historical date. It is a mirror. It shows us where we come from, but it also questions us about the present. In a world where labor rights are seen as a cost, where work loses stability and meaning, Galeano's warning gains force: memory is not automatic. It must be built. And defend it.
Happy Workers' Day. May the hunter not be glorified. Let the lions write. And let them be heard.
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