Before I left Chile, some friends were kind enough to ask me to tell them about the Lebanese woman: what are her hopes and her aspirations, and what important works she performs.
As a woman, I ought to begin by speaking of the elegant woman dressed in the long gowns of today's fashion, explaining to them how excellent she is, how beautiful and chic — the woman I saw in the salons and the public places in her modern dress and her superb elegance.
And I ought also to mention the woman of brilliant opinions, whose name recurs in the newspapers and magazines, displaying her learned capacity and her mature ideas.
But many have spoken of this woman and of that one; therefore I want to raise my voice so that it may pierce the seas and the mountains and be a faithful messenger, carrying the message of love and tenderness dictated to me by the heart of the woman of whom no one speaks, whose life represents the bitterest kinds of misery and wretchedness.
I want to tell you of the forsaken mother — she whom I have seen here living like one lost amid the clamor of the fading cities, or with the stillness of the villages buried in life among the green pines on the mountain heights.
This is the unknown mother, daughter of our country, my friend — she who might be your mother, or mine.
The land to which you took refuge treated you with kindness and filled your hands and your pockets with ringing gold, and in her tender bosom you founded your home and your life; but you did not return, and you preferred to forget your sacred duty toward the cause of your existence, and you never thought to write her a word that would restore to her life and the longed-for hope of meeting you again.
You may find me severe in speaking to you, but I cannot avoid it, for I look with the eyes of your mother,
folded in upon herself under the weight of suffering.