Fluctuat Nec Mergitur

I was born in a long, thin country that clings to the Andes to avoid falling into the Pacific. Soon after, I flew northward to the Caribbean, where people always dream with going to the beach. There, I spent many years in a valley traversed by an open gutter in which sometimes cars plunge. As a young adult, I migrated to a shiny island whose piers are what remains of an active marine trade; now things come through land or air, and everyone forgets there’s still water at the edge. Time after, I crossed the Atlantic for a city that started in the middle of a river which divides it into right and left. I pass over this river daily: on one side old buildings, on the other new, in between a water mass that changes from green to brown, calm to turbulent, high to low. «Fluctuat Nec Mergitur » is the emblem of this place, a colonial ship rocking on wavy lines. Swim or sink might be its translation, or so I like to believe.