León Gieco’s Argentine Peace Song Sólo le pido a Dios (The Only Thing I Ask of God)
León Gieco’s peace hymn Sólo le pido a Dios (The Only Thing I Ask of God) was written against the backdrop of the Argentine military regime (1976 – 1983). However, the preconditions for lasting peace formulated in the song have timeless validity.
The Only Thing I Ask of God
The only thing I ask of God
is that I may not be indifferent to pain;
that my heart may not be empty and lonely
and that what I can give, I will have given
when the scrawny hand of death
reaches out for me.
The only thing I ask of God
is that I may not be indifferent to injustice;
that I don’t let myself be slapped
on the other cheek as well,
when the unjust fate
should someday make me its tool.
The only thing I ask of God
is that I may not be indifferent to war,
this monster that crushes with thundering steps
the innocence of the poor.
The only thing I ask of God
is that I may not be indifferent to betrayal;
that the many, though they can do less
than one single traitor, yet judge the betrayal
with their remembrance.
The only thing I ask of God
is that I may not be indifferent to the future;
that I don’t get lost
in a lost world.
How Lasting Peace is Possible
What do we most wish for in the New Year? I think the word „peace“ will be at the top of many of our wish lists. Without peace, ultimately our other wishes cannot be fulfilled either. Without peace there is no well-being, no health, no material security, no protection for nature and the climate.
Therefore, as a conclusion to this year’s musical Advent calendar and as a wish for the year that has just begun, here is once again one of the most beautiful peace songs: the sung intercession Sólo le pido a Dios (The Only Thing I Ask of God) by the Argentine singer León Gieco.
The song raises the question of the indifferent followers who have made inhuman regimes of all kinds possible at all times. The central appeal of the song is therefore not to become indifferent, not to become numb to the injustice that happens every day.
Because this appeal is not directed at others, but is formulated as a kind of self-exhortation, it is given a special credibility and urgency: only if everyone questions their own behaviour can inhumanity be eradicated.
In order to achieve lasting peace, however, it is also necessary that injustice is not forgotten. In the song, overcoming indifference therefore also includes the call to remember the present crimes later. This is the only way to effectively prevent the recurrence of inhumane conditions.
León Gieco and the Resistance against the Argentine Military Regime.
The singer-songwriter was born in 1951 in a rural region of the Santa Fe province in north-eastern Argentina. After initially participating in joint musical projects, he started his solo career in 1976 – in the difficult environment of the Argentine military regime that determined the country’s fate until 1983.
The political commitment that Gieco expressed in his songs put him in the military junta’s crosshairs from the start. After some of his songs had fallen victim to censorship, he had to flee to the USA for some time in 1978.
In the same year, the song Sólo le pido a Dios was released. It quickly became an anthem of resistance in Gieco’s homeland. In the following years, it was also sung by numerous other famous musicians (including Mercedes Sosa) and became an expression of protest against authoritarian regimes and antisocial conditions throughout South America.
As an icon of resistance against the Argentine military dictatorship, Gieco remained extremely popular in Latin America even after its end. He also toured outside his home country and worked with various other politically committed musicians, including Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel.
The Cynicism of the Argentine Military Junta
The threat that General Ibérico Saint Jean, governor of the province of Buenos Aires under the military junta, made in a speech on May Day in 1977 could also be applied to Gieco: „First we will kill all the subversives, then their comrades-in-arms, then their sympathisers, then the indifferent, and in the end we will kill the waverers“.
The words must be seen in the context of one of the greatest human rights crimes in the second half of the 20th century: that of the „desaparecidos“ (disappeared persons), i.e. people whom the henchmen of the dictatorship made disappear without a trace, for example by dropping their bodies from aeroplanes over the sea.
The legal processing of these human rights crimes was initially very hesitant, as the military still had great influence in the country after the end of the dictatorship. For example, General Jorge Videla, who headed the military junta until 1981, was not finally convicted of the crimes for which he was responsible until 2010, a quarter of a century after the end of the military regime.
Quotation taken from: Comision de los exiliados argentinos en Madrid: Palabras para no olvidar (Words that must not be forgotten; translated from Spanish).
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