Raúl Noro’s heart stopped beating. Mistreated, persecuted, infused even on his own deathbed.

They had no idea who they were messing with. They had no idea of the integrity and love Raúl was capable of. Of how loved and respected he was, is and will continue to be by millions. Yes, because Raúl belongs to communities that are multitudinous, as well as millennia old.

If they sought to prevent his example from transcending and being replicated, they achieved the opposite, they immortalised someone who, through his humility and perseverance, will be an icon of untiring struggle. For Jujuy, for Argentina, for humanism and for the world.

Now that kindness is associated with lukewarmness, with softness and even with a foolish air, I want to tell you that Raúl’s kindness was a just, perennial, unrenounceable and courageous kindness. His body may not have been able to cope any longer, but his actions will sustain him in this time and in this space for a long, long time.

Journalist and poet, but above all a militant for love and humanism, for social justice, devoted body and soul for decades to these passions, strengthening, radiating, multiplying.

I will not be the one to name his executioners; their names do not deserve to accompany this farewell. I am grateful to have known him, to have shared lucid and loving moments at his side, to have known his children, the mother of his children and Milagro, his last companion.

I am grateful for his efforts, his work, his achievements and failures, I am grateful to him for having been a beacon for those of us who came after him also wanting a better world.

Not so long ago, always rebellious, he wrote these verses that move me and describe him perfectly.

I do not know what’s going on with me

but I want to learn to dance chacareras

make my friends laugh

to lighten my family’s sustenance

to betray me less and less

and fight

so that the people have what they really need.

(I also want to learn a manual craft

like Esteban and Marta)

And thank you, thank you…

No end in the end

man is the soft register of meaning

three or four kind words

an image

an open horizon

and the resolution – unpredictable – of a sacred intention

that transcends space and time.

space and time.

Goodbye, Raúl, jikisinkama, see you always, Jallalla!