They arrived without asking permission, but they didn't come to steal anyone's heaven. The Atlantic gave birth to them one March afternoon, with the wind in their faces and empty stomachs, aboard a log as long as despair and as thin as a broken promise. There were 68 of them in that canoe that smelled of salt, diesel, and fear. But those who will sit in the dock of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas are only three: AS, BS, and BT, natives of Senegal, without papers, without a criminal record, with no other weapon than a 40-horsepower Yamaha engine and the idea, as old as the world, of crossing the sea to make a living.
The papers—that icy ink that is the law—say that the three were the skippers. That they knew what they were doing. That they were doing it with others. That they had agreed to take as many as they could fit—like sea cattle—from Nouadhibou to the end of Europe: the southern coast of Gran Canaria, to Maspalomas. That the boat had no lights, no radio, no life jackets, not even a meager first-aid kit. That the air was stale, the space was minimal, the food scarce, the water brackish, and the risk was deadly. That they played with everyone's lives as if they were dice thrown on foam.
And for that, for leading the hunger of others and for defying the law without a flag, the Prosecutor's Office is seeking eight years in prison for each of them, plus a ban on voting, as if of all the shipwrecks this were the most urgent: that of the ballot boxes. AS and BS have been locked up since March 8. BT was released for six days and then locked up again, on April 19, as if time in prison served any purpose other than accumulating rage and cold in the bones. And the others? The other 4 who came on board. What happened to them? Who gave them names, who gave them water, who explained to them that Europe begins with handcuffs for some and oblivion for the rest?
Because in this case, there's no international trafficking network, no Nigerian mafia, no evil organization. Just three men who climbed onto a motorized log and risked their freedom to cross the liquid border that separates the living with papers from the living without luck. The court says they endangered the safety of the passengers. But what about those who make the laws that close the ports to them? Don't they also endanger them? And those who send patrol boats to watch from afar, to count floating corpses? This trial doesn't talk about colonies, or fishing agreements, or misery imported by history. Here, there are just three men on a wooden bench, staring straight into a courtroom that doesn't even know how to pronounce their names. And the sea, as always, is silent. But it doesn't forget.
