21 To You, Whom We Do Not See

A ti que no te vemos

Buenos Aires |

Argentina

Spanish

Behind the scenes

This text was born from a discomfort I have often felt in public spaces: when faced with disability, many of us do not know how to behave. We look away, quicken our pace or, on the contrary, try to help awkwardly, sometimes with an unintended sense of condescension.

As I was writing it, I wanted to question this behavior. Disability is, of course, a physical reality for some people, but what can weigh even more heavily is the way others look at them.

I imagined a simple reversal: a world in which almost everyone would have a disability… except one person. Who, then, would truly be “different”?
The scene could have taken place elsewhere, but the inspiration came to me in Buenos Aires, on the busy Corrientes Avenue, as I crossed paths with a disabled man in the crowd.

Perhaps the real question is not disability itself, but our ability to recognize and value difference.

Echoes of the world

The text is written in Spanish, but it uses a feature typical of Argentine Spanish. In the final sentence, you will find “vos” instead of “tú” to say “you.”
This phenomenon is known as voseo: in Argentina and several other Latin American countries, vos replaces tú in everyday speech. It allows for a very direct way of addressing someone and gives the language a closer, more personal tone, which I was seeking for this text. The final question – “¿quién sería el discapacitado?” – thus resonates as if it were addressed to each of us individually.

Argentine Spanish also has a very distinctive pronunciation: the letters “ll” and “y” are often pronounced like a soft “sh” sound. For example, yo (“I”) can sound almost like “sho.”

Listen to an audio excerpt of the text