The proliferation of digital technologies, especially the growing diversity of value-added platforms, has altered people’s behaviors. While some practices have quietly faded, lingering only as fragments in the memory of older generations, others—those that relied on the privacy of events for specific audiences—have become impossible.
Thus, playing with the dictionary to fully grasp a term has become an artisanal exercise, much like adjusting the language and jokes used in a gathering to captivate an audience that would otherwise be impossible to win over. One could argue that those who believe the end justifies the means are the most affected by this new reality, where completely confidential spaces are becoming increasingly rare. There are fewer and fewer places left for xenophobia, racism, intolerance, and misogyny.
Hatred has lost its anonymity. The old backstage joke becomes the headline of the moment. Laughter has ceased, and it’s no longer an excuse. Labeling others as trash, vermin, ignorant, drug addicts, thieves, rapists, slackers, murderers, or inhuman is increasingly seen from a different perspective.
It is always the other who carries the burden of evil—the one who lives differently, speaks with an accent, and dreams in a language that brings tears of both sadness and joy when they remember their loved ones, their little piece of land, and memories that grow increasingly blurry and distant.
An entire sentiment is dismissed as garbage simply because it cannot be understood.
However, within the logic of hatred, that intellectual childishness, it makes sense to call the home of those labeled as lazy, leeches, vermin, and drug addicts “garbage.” After all, according to the Cambridge Dictionary for the English language garbage is “waste material or unwanted things that you throw away.” In other words, the perfect place for vermin—those “wicked, despicable people of low morals” capable of causing harm.
That’s why we use words to differentiate, despise, and constantly remind them that they are the strangers we must fear. It will always be easier to blame the unknown than to heal the flaws within us, our group, and our proximity. The others must be at fault; they have an accent and look different.
We are labeled as refuse because we are not understood for speaking multiple languages, with musical tones and rhythms that would make even the most brazen blush. We are called thieves and drug addicts because it is far simpler than crafting a government plan not based on ignorance and revenge. It is easier to brand us as trash than to educate a handful of zealots who dream of returning to a lost paradise where slavery persists and women must be kept pregnant and chained to the kitchen, always following the master’s orders. Hatred is diligently condoned in the Sunday sermon.
We represent everything they fear—diversity, harmony, and beauty. The pursuit of freedom and the desire for self-improvement, which cannot be found in squandered inheritances or rape attempts absolved by money. They see us as unacceptable waste in public office, irreverent heretics, or emboldened servants.
That is why we are seen as garbage by those who believe they are looking at us but are just seeing their reflection—those heirs of a world built by pimps and smugglers who boast about owning a golden toilet.
If the alternative is to be like them, I would rather continue being the trash that they despise and was born in the enchanted part of the Caribbean.
