The Elephant and the stake

The Elephant and the stake

By: Cristiana Guevara-Mena

Have you ever wondered why an elephant doesn’t escape from a circus? Well, it turns out that they take a baby elephant and tie it with a rope or chain to a stake buried in the ground. Being still a baby elephant, no matter how hard it pulls the rope or chain that is tied to the stake in order to break loose and escape, it can’t because it doesn’t have enough strength. As it grows, the elephant becomes convinced that it cannot come loose, and it gives up trying. When the elephant is big, even with all the strength that implies it can pull out the stake and run, it doesn’t, because it is resigned to the fact that it cannot escape from the circus, because ever since it was a baby, it could not get loose from that stake.

As a people, throughout our history, we have lived in an environment of outrageous corruption and injustice on the part of our leaders. It's happened for so long that we see it as something natural. The poverty that we live in everyday is seen with such normalness that we don’t even notice it; it has become our daily bread. Political leaders abuse us in any way possible, break the law, and do dirty tricks from their positions, and we see it the same way that elephants see the circuses in which they live. Apparently, it is a fact that we cannot change, because they have tried to convince us that we are weak and incapable of transforming our reality. The circus owners of the moment have tried to tame us to the point that we should give up trying to break free.

Currently, the circus impresarios think they can always live off exploiting and abusing the elephant in order to generate profits, so that their circus stays standing. They believe that the abuses, threats, and economic asphyxia that they give the people will serve as an elephant’s stake in order to keep them trained and obedient. According to them, these tactics will be useful to them all the time. However, to their own regret, they do not count on the elephant being conscious of its own size, capacity, and strength to loosen the stake, destroy the whole circus, and incidentally crush them. This way of keeping the people tied down will not last for long.

The lashes used to domesticate the people, such as: the unfair raising of the price of electricity, water, telecommunications, and other public services, have reached the point of being unaffordable for the vast majority of the population; the conditional employment in exchange for loyalty to the party; and, especially, the plague of corruption spread to every corner of the state institutions. These whips that are used against the people to keep them tamed and tied to their stake of poverty and misery will not last long. The tamers of beasts believe they are invincible, when they are actually fragile and frightened, and are afraid of the greatness of the elephant. That's why their battering will not be enough to keep the elephant as a prisoner tied to the stake. There is no consistency in the tamer, nor in the stake. Now, the elephant is big and has all the force necessary to destroy everything that suppresses its freedom.

In order for the people to come loose from the stake, they must be aware of their own strength and size. They are no longer a baby elephant that can easily be fooled by being tied to a stake in which they could not break loose from. Now the elephant is so big and strong that it can destroy the whole circus of corruption, subjugation, and poverty that surrounds it. We have such strength as people that there is no stake strong enough to keep us prisoners and domesticated by mere beast tamers who actually are more afraid of us than we are of them. They know very well that they are but trifles next to the big elephant. We must see that the stake we are tied to is just that, a stake. All it takes is for the elephant wake up, take strength, destroy the circus, and be free, like every elephant should be.