By Roberto Morejón
This week, as every March 25, a day of remembrance was dedicated to the victims of slavery and slavery trafficking, although Humanity has not yet repaired the impact of such a cruel procedure.
At the initiative of the United Nations, the unfortunate process of more than 15 million adults and children uprooted from their environment and taken to other lands to be exploited as a labor force is evoked.
Not only did they lose their freedom, their lives were ruined and they were even exterminated in the midst of suffering and terror.
But the colonizers refuse to repay the debt contracted by encouraging the transfer of human beings in appalling conditions.
It is no coincidence that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for restorative justice for the victims and their descendants of slavery.
As the UN official pointed out, for 400 years enslaved Africans fought for their freedom, while colonial powers and others committed crimes against them.
If there is any lesson to be learned from the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, it is that racism and other prejudices have not been eradicated.
Today, many descendants of African slaves continue to demand equal rights and freedoms, and regions such as the Caribbean are demanding reparations from the former colonizers for the horrors of vassalage.
In 2020, Hilary Beckles, chairman of the Reparations Committee of CARICOM, the Caribbean Community, presented a petition to the European Parliament to put an end to what he described as colonization in the area.
The speaker was right because in the Caribbean, for example, they consider that Europe's economic development was largely financed by the extraction of wealth from its colonies.
It is true that the Caribbean appears on tourist postcards as a paradise under the sun and crystal-clear waters, but this truth does not hide the fact that it still has to deal with high levels of poverty and inequality.
Caribbean leaders reiterated to the Old Continent the obligation to pay for the moral, human and material damages caused by an oppressive system of domination.
It is a requirement that is opportune to reiterate in a week in which the world once again evoked the horrors of slavery.
