Rafael Barret "Johnson"

Johnson.

The best of the black boxers has defeated the best of the white boxers. It’s something scandalous. Johnson has forgotten that he belonged to an inferior race. His cannibal homocromes don’t forget that white meat is the most exquisite of all. They just ate in Africa two missionaries. But Johnson didn’t want to eat Jeffries’s body. He wanted to eat his soul. He’s a civilized black. He triumphed, not only by the muscle, but by perseverance and intelligence. Raw energy, and also skill and will. He’s the triumph of the complete man. His fists have felt over the white face, and sunken it in the shadows. ¡Oh, blows defamatory like slaps! Transmitted by telegraph as Jeffries received them, few instants later they felt them in their skin the North Americans. And very soon the cities of the union were reproducing the torture, through their cinematographers. Thanks to a film, the generations could watch, until the consummation of the centuries, the live image of the defeat of Jeffries, the fall of the black fists over the white face. ¡National opprobrium! And in great part of the territory of the United States, the whites started to lynch blacks with double animation than usual.

We’ll note, to excuse them, that Roosevelt’s countrymen –who, being president, sat a black on his table- had been hurt in a fiber more sensitive even than the racial and national: The proprietary fiber. Even more, Roosevelt, who represents almost mathematically his voters, identifies both. During his latest tour, he has repeated in the Cairo, in Rome, in Berlin and on Paris, that the first duty of the citizen is to make himself rich. It’s a patriotic duty. Well then, the majority of the white Yankees had bet 10 to 6 for Jeffries. ¿Do you understand now all the extension of the disaster? The money, that with such ease replaces honor, with it sank. And after the rage of missing the diagnostic, of having been tricked… ¿By whom? This demands a brief analytic digression.


If I bet to heads or tails, in absolute ignorance of the luck, I will bet on par, 6 against 6. If I know before hand there is a trap, but ignore for the sake of who, I will continue betting on par, the data is useless to me. And here is the curious thing; If having already lost, I find out that there was a trap, i protest indignated. ¿Why? Because had I known before betting, the «sense» of the trap, would have been towards my contender. To not exploit the occasion to cheat in cold blood, equals to being cheated by the neighbour and there is no game without trap. To head and tails, the only fair thing would be that the coins remained on edge. In the most equitable roulette of the earth, the little ball decides to prefer one number, one alone –at least, that time-, one number favored by the occult nature. Those who betted 10 to 6 –Jeffries!- believed him likely favourite of the traps of a patriotic nature, friend of the pale men. And nature stood on the side of the black. And them, to whom nothing impeded from betting on Johnson, added to their other pains, the rage of having scammed themselves.

Johnson, if I may be allowed to employ photography terms, is a negative that reveals us the unexpected lines of reality. Johnson –Menelik in tournee- had demonstrated the world that the black, like the yellows, are capable, in certain conditions, of defeating the whites. ¡Oh, the happiness of Johnson, the happiness of this son of slavery; the smile of the white teeth that dazzle in the black face! White, black… ¿what does it matter? Illusion of the hatreds. The whites hate the blacks, as they hate each other; But the difference in color eases the hunting. The squares of a chessboard are painted alternatively of black and of white, for convenience of the adversaries. Pure formula. There’s a white king and a black king; Yet the essential is to checkmate the other. ¡The other is the enemy! Underneath the black or white varnish runs the blood, and the blood is always the same, is always red. It’s the bloods that are hated.