“I don’t talk about politics.” It is the phrase that more and more famous people repeat when they are asked to comment on the most relevant issues in their country. They refuse to give their opinion for fear that the public will stop following them or so that social networks do not squander them. The last example was the response of the Argentine singer Emilia Mernes, who refused to answer a question about the cuts in culture by the Government of Javier Milei.
A position that is not shared by the veteran artist Ana Belén, who has sent a message to all the famous people who avoid taking a political position.
In an interview in El País Semanal, the woman from Madrid explained why she had made her ideology public, being very jealous of her privacy. “The moment called for it,” she recalls about the times of the dictatorship, in which the Communist Party militants remained underground. “You said, well, if it helps to normalize this…”, she remembers.
However, he maintains that now “people are cowed.” “Today it is either with me or against me, and choosing confrontation over understanding is losing. And sowing fear. How many actors, athletes or musicians say ‘I don’t talk about politics’?” she reflects.
Ana Belén does not share that position. “At what point did Peru get screwed? For people in the profession it was when we took to the streets with ‘no to war’. We are not used to respecting other opinions,” she continues in statements to this medium.
The artist invites us to leave our comfort zone: “We applaud the mobile phone. And that instrument of contact has turned us onto ourselves. What interests us about others is what they think about us.”
