José Luis López (Puerto Rico), (Prepared by Angela Kosta)
Moderator 
Dr. HC JOSÉ LUIS LÓPEZ (PUERTO RICO)
Graduate in Secretarial Sciences, Recipient of an Associate's Degree in Automated Office Management. Puerto Rico Junior College, 1983
Bachelor's Degree in Executive Secretariat
Interamerican University of Puerto Rico Metropolitan Campus, 1998
Recipient of 8 Honorary Degrees and 4 International Cultural Ambassador Degrees.
He has published two books: Adventurer and Poetic Fiction (bilingual).
He is passionate about the artistic field (singing, dancing, acting) and has been a talent for two agencies. He has won two awards for digital drawing (Germany and Yemen). He also won a gold award at the Virtual Exhibition in India.
WHY DO I WANT TO BE A MOTHER?
There are times when a woman reflects on the role she should assume as a mother, and when someone asks her: Why should I be a mother?
She has her vision: to have a family and have children.
Excellent answer. Many have that information about what mothers are like, and today: Is that the same answer? Unfortunately, it's negative. Do you know why? I'll explain it here.
Wanting to be a mother is very different from acting as a mother. Each country receives an education to develop entrepreneurial or productive people; on the other hand, there are those who want to form a family unit. Now, you must organize your thinking about who you want to be as an individual.
A mother carries responsibility at home because you have to support a husband and children, as well as the roof over their heads. Today, that isn't seen, because no one protects or fulfills the role of the home.
When this relationship exists with a partner, they must know each other for a specific period of time, and then courtship begins, and if there is a communion between the two, marriage is decided.
Everything is a process, from the moment the child is born: babbling and crawling. And the growth stage. There, parents take care of education to train future professionals, but there must be mutual agreement, because these children soon become independent.
A mother is not a domestic worker, a mother is not a hotel maid, a mother is not a baby-maker. A mother is a responsibility she assumed because she took that position of ensuring the care of the home. Do you know that being a mother means giving birth to a life in her body?
Generations haven't experienced what they live today. Older people have more life experience than in many other places and countries. I remember my foster grandparents telling their granddaughters, "There are more girls than boys," and many of them were never mothers. One of them spoke to a grandmother who had a suitor, and her grandmother replied: if you're going to have sex, you should be careful because men only look for a bed, and when you get pregnant, you're screwed. She was never wrong.
At that moment, my grandmother told her: when you open your legs to a man, you've already given him permission as an object to do his thing.
No one is obligated to have their sexual act... you allow it to happen because you're an adult.
Today, she was completely right. Being a woman is a social position, and a mother is a genealogical position. When there's a courtship, they use each other, they love each other for their every whim, because there's no security or control over getting pregnant. And when the time comes for pregnancy, everything falls apart.
Being a mother is total independence because you're already a mature individual. Obviously, if the husband is willing to help in his role as a partner in the home, because there were agreements of marital communion. Unfortunately, we don't live what we had imagined or dreamed of; it's all about social prestige and lack of mental education.
Let's not act out of sexual gratification or family pressure. We must organize and be aware that in every system of family building, everyone has responsibility.
EYES OF DARKNESS
That silhouette was lost in that process.
She felt she couldn't find an answer to her imprisonment.
And each time, the silence took over her thoughts and tormented her.
It was evident that her walk was intolerable, but that's how she had to decipher her agony.
That darkness became more oppressive and more painful.
She had no sign of escape, and she was further down that precipice.
Those eyes, which she knew were chasing her all the time,
They were the assassins who kept her subdued and without remorse.
That feeling of vortex was tied to her visions and suffocated her.
The darkness continued to celebrate that its mistreatment was the best reward for its vile audacity.
The silhouette lost all opportunity to see a light, achieving its goal. Her closed eyes were her greatest torment in the face of the uncertainty that condemned her.
What could the silhouette do to undo the spell?
The last option available to this victim of insults and slander was to invoke her exceptional potential, to clothe herself in the sun.
When she decided to do so, THE LIGHT CAME!
Inadvertently, her closed eyes were already awakened, and the darkness vanished.
All torture was now sanctioned, and the silhouette was able to be what she had never seen before.
THE SILENCE OF MY VOICE
Monologue
Do you know why my voice is silent?
Do you know that my mouth is a lethal virus?
Do you know that my words are dangerous?
Do you know why I can't speak?
Because my voice was sentenced to indefinite silence.
Why did my mind decide not to comment?
Why are my thoughts invalid?
Why are there no responses to my ideas?
Why am I accused of the unjustifiable?
That was the ultimate penance awarded to the traitor.
The Silence of My Voice.
What crime did he commit, what judgment will he face?
Why is there so much darkness, so much loneliness?
What would have happened to my voice if it betrayed me?
What verdict would be appropriate for my ideas that were never confessed?
The silence of my voice.
Muffled, muted, expired
Contempt, iniquity, catastrophic
There and then my voice has taken its perjury.
Prepared by Angela Kosta, journalist, poet, essayist, publisher, literary critic, editor, translator, promoter
