He's a law firm and a city counselor by profession. He has been known for breaking taboos on cancer and denouncing the sexual abuses to which Patxi Ezkiaga has been subjected. It is capable of laughing and laughing at the dramas experienced, but without forgetting the strength of words for transformation; it does not count.
It looks like a joke, but you've become familiar with it because of the cáncer.Todo this comes from the Lasartean mother
Julene Illarramendi died of metastatic breast cancer, and she thought there were many taboos and shadows around the cancer. So he started a partnership with Miren Cuerdo. When I was bald, they pulled out the project of the handkerchiefs and told me if I wanted to take it bald with the handkerchief. We got together in the turret of Zarautz and there they appeared two Iratxe Etxeandia, photographer, makeup artist… They didn’t look at me like a poor Olatz who had cancer, like a person who looked at me. And I thought I wanted to be part of that.
Afterwards, we have seen you in the bertsos sessions organized by the Izan Inurri association, and you have presented us with very dramatic themes, but you have always made us laugh and laugh blico.En Inurri always say that
comedy is a drama for longer. What we've lived through is a drama, but we laugh because we're crying a lot ahead and because for many of us humor has been an instrument to survive.
Many of you have changed the perspective of cáncer.En
our society all the negative things are taboos: death is taboo, disease is taboo… What we have said is that this is part of life. The report of cancer has been constructed with those who have been cured, but what about the 35-year-old woman who has metastasis and is mother of two children? He is alive, but our society doesn't want to know anything. It is not nice, it is not pink: it is an impressive “brown”. But we have to grab that "brown." Those of us who have cancer are told to disguise themselves as a healthy person, to wear a pretty and be what they used to be, but those people who are sick have the legitimacy to exist and have to be able to live with all the letters while they're alive.
One of your slogans is precisely “to live to
death.” I confess I've never been drugged until I've started taking chemotherapy. I don't know if it was for her, but I had a moment of mental lucidity. “Listen, we’re wrong, we always go with the pig hook and this is not life, this is to last.” I got rid of the drugs and I came back every day, but the logic of capitalism leads us to produce them also in free time. Zegama-Aizkorri, triathlon… and not. Hold on. Be and be.
It seems that we need a blow to realize that we just stand, but after the blow, do we resist again?
Yes and no. Don't go back to the previous plane. The need to pass a disease such as connecting with oneself is harsh. How far you have to go so that people give you legitimacy to take care of yourself. And you think, "This wouldn't be wrong without being sick."
To what extent is it important to change the language about cancer?
The warlike language gives disgust. Cancer is my cells: my cells have been poisoned. What should I fight against, against myself? In addition, that means that all the sisters who have died have failed. Let's see if from that petty epic we're going to a nice lyric.
In your case I don’t know the lyrical, but you have made the way from the staff to the collective.
When you have cancer, you feel guilt and fear. Medicine has very good relationships with cancer cells, but not so much with women who have cancer. We all need a collective that understands and embraces us. Complicated choices have to be made: removing the chest, reconstructing it or not, undergoing treatment, giving up treatment… and having a safe space to talk about it freely and without a sentence. Then, of course, we patients suffer from the shortcomings of the health system. Not from the workers, because we normally get a good deal from that side, but you hear that Amancio Ortega has donated and that 26 million euros are going to be invested in a protoiterapia machine, and you think that we would prefer the fisio of the pelvic floor, the sexologist, the psychoonologist or the nutritionist. It would be beautiful to fund the high-speed train with the EITB marathon and cancer research and resources for the sick with our taxes. That's the utopia of ants.
In society, however, when we talk about cancer we do not talk about sexologist, nutritionist, fission…In the collective discourse,
the person who has cancer is bald, vomiting all day. There are times like this, but people have either taken oppositions with cancer or gone to Stockholm to visit their daughter, who is in Erasmus. And that's cancer, too. Treatments are not completed with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Then comes immunotherapy, hormone therapy… and side effects are hard. After three and a half years I'm going to stop treatment. It has been a difficult decision, I do not want to get sick again, but the treatment causes depression, insomnia, lack of desire… and I do not want to be my reduced version.
But if you have a chance to be alive, what do you want that desire for?
I want to continue to live with all my passions and all my appetites. What happens is that nobody asks you for that convergence, and you need the courage to explain it to a professional, and that professional looks at you as if you had a dirty mari, and tells you if you've tried throwing Nivea blue pot. No to protoitertherapy, please fund the sexologists or formats so that these people are able to give the right answers. Because I'm a privileged person and I've been able to fund a lot of treatments, but what about women without resources?
Every time I hear you, I think about how empowered you are.
No, no. As a famous tote bag says: here we all have our traumas and the “modas”.
Are we talking about Patxi Ezkiaga?
Yes.
Many of you who seem strong, or are strong, have also passed us.
We often hear Not all men (not all men), but after all, they are all men and, consequently, most women pass by. On the other hand, I spoke on the radio because I was angry. We always have to go out and put our body on intimate issues, but we have to focus on the system that has allowed this man to systematically attack women for 30 years. What happens when men and power come together? What happens in Basque culture?
Do you think that the world of Basque culture has remained silent?
Totally.
I have heard many people say that they have not been entirely surprised. So why haven't anything happened for so many years? There is
an omertta like the one in the Italian Mafia, but the ointments, the orphidals and the tramchimazines have to change sides. The aggressors should know that women talk to each other and that we have a hard drive that's the hardest.
Have you been silent all these years? Or have you had a safe space to tell?
There were many women in innocence because of age, and that man behaved with that ambivalence. He called me to his office and asked me to sit with my penis out of his lap. I already knew what that man was looking for, I was 16 years old and I didn't get confused. I chose the victims well, we were always vulnerable girls. My mother was in clinical depression, and I thought if I told her that I would kill her. But my partner told me to tell my mother. My mother told me that nobody would believe me because that guy was God, that I would have a bad time, that I would be kicked out of school and that, finally, nothing had happened to me. I'm sorry I've shut it down publicly. My silence would have sent more than one to the hands of this goat. Still, I've talked to my friends, my partner and my daughters. Now I'm glad people know for once who that man was.
There is a time when the aggressor has to acknowledge that he has been assaulted.
That's a really hard time. Over the years, you're mature, you've done therapies, your life has changed, but there are many situations that lead you to it. As a society, we do not have articulated what its consequences are.
Your mother’s words are generic: if there are no entries, it’s not for tanto.Hay to offer safe spaces to women
to speak. Nobody wants to say that they have attacked, but if we do not speak, we will not be able to identify the aggressions and if we do not identify them we will not know what the victim needs. Many victims of sexual assaults attempt suicide, have anorexia, depression… and find no room to speak without sentences.
Many women have come to grips with Patxi Ezkiaga’s allegations about the Bateragune case. Have you articulated among you?
Yes. The connections that have been created are medicinal, even though asking for forgiveness from those of the skin and silence have done a lot of harm.
Is that the hardest thing: silence?
You feel ignored. I sent a message to La Salle and the answer was stereotyped: “Thank you for contacting the Government service,” as you would say. They are not able to deal with this situation. It may do so wholeheartedly, but it is not possible to give a stereotyped response to a woman who has undressed.
What would it take?
Firstly, credibility. We get messages saying we don't have any evidence, and look, I don't need any evidence to believe. Secondly, we should look at what are the invisible mechanisms that protect these so-called excellent men. And thirdly, we need specialized and economic resources from a feminist perspective. A supposed expert asked me if there had been penetration in my case. I don't know if that person is able to see the inadequacy of that question. People have spent a lot of money on therapies. One woman told me that 12 to 22 years old, I hadn't been able to laugh. How do you notice that? Reparation must be personal and particular, and in order to do so the victim must feel listened to and satisfied with his needs.
Do the current processes lead the victim to question himself?By the time we
were born we were installed culps and earrings, and if all the structures are going to protect that famous man, what barbarity! That's why we need sisters who believe us unconditionally, even if there's a good brother.
I tell you creo.Se that the allegations are
false, but how many have to be kept quiet being true.
As a result of Patxi Ezkiaga's attack, you lost your fondness to literature, Olatz.
I became disgusted by the Basque, until recently I have not read it in Basque and the Basque culture seemed to me a field of nabo. Bertsolarism also made me truly repugnant until I met you.
Thanks to the wonderful
work of many women, I am reconciling myself with Basque culture.
Is it worth telling?
Audrey Lord said: “My silence has not saved me and your silence will not save you.” Every time we speak, we can move from being victims to becoming agents of a transformation. It is an insurmountable force.
You’ve met with cancer, you’ve also come out with Patxi Ezkiaga… My daughters tell
me that we have a random chance of life, but that the Basques in general are paraplegic emotional and that we count our lives.
Random of life, you're an attorney for yourself.
Yes, I work in the area of urbanism.
His profession has some emotional paraplegia… more
than paraplegia due to psychopathology.
And can the current urban models be changed?For the urban cars of the 20th century
there have been roads and building plots. White men with penis, hetars and rich men have done everything, thinking we all have a car and someone who will take care of our care. As other looks come, things change. In order for care to actually be put into practice, it is necessary to create spaces of opportunity. People have to be designed to respond to people's needs, and our needs have not only been awakened, but have gone to work and come home.
For most people, surveillance and urbanism are far away.
Because they've thought that way. Today, however, if we do not make an urbanism that makes surveillance possible, we are making urban planning deficient and obsolete. At the same time, we know that if capitalism sees the business, it will die on guard, so collectivize care and put it in the front line, but alert.
The discourse and the north are clear in all the areas that we have seen you. Is everything battlefield?
Sometimes you have an amazing force and sometimes you don't. People tell you “get out of your protection zone,” but I, from time to time, see a protection zone and jump into it. So fight if you can and if you need it and relax to re-enter combat. I don't understand life if we don't commit.