B1 · Intermediate
12 min
culturewar and conflicthuman rightshistory
La Boda y la Bomba: Guerra, Cultura y Darfur
The Wedding and the Bomb: War, Culture, and Darfur
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So here's the story I can't get out of my head from this week.
In Kutum, in North Darfur, a drone hit a wedding.
Fifty-six people killed, seventeen of them children.
Bueno, mira, cuando leí esta noticia, me quedé en silencio un momento.
Well, look, when I read this news, I went quiet for a moment.
Una boda.
A wedding.
No un cuartel, no una base militar.
Not a barracks, not a military base.
Una boda con música, con familias, con niños.
A wedding with music, with families, with children.
And Octavio, this is the thing about a wedding specifically.
In almost every culture on earth, a wedding is the most public, the most communal celebration a family can have.
It's not just two people.
It's everyone.
Exacto.
Exactly.
En muchas culturas, la boda dura días.
In many cultures, a wedding lasts days.
Toda la comunidad participa.
The whole community takes part.
Cuando atacas una boda, no atacas a una familia.
When you attack a wedding, you don't attack one family.
Atacas a todo el pueblo.
You attack the whole village.
The Sudan Founding Alliance, which is the group that reported this, says it was a Sudanese Armed Forces drone.
So the regular military, not the RSF.
Which is its own complicated story.
A ver, para entender esto, tienes que saber que en Sudán hay dos ejércitos que se pelean.
Look, to understand this, you need to know that in Sudan there are two armies fighting each other.
Las Fuerzas Armadas del Sudán, que son el ejército oficial, y las RSF, que son las milicias.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, the official army, and the RSF, the militias.
Los dos atacan a civiles.
Both attack civilians.
Right.
And the RSF, for anyone who doesn't know their history, evolved from the Janjaweed.
The militias that carried out the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s.
So the people getting killed in Darfur today have been getting killed in Darfur for twenty-plus years.
La verdad es que Darfur es una herida muy antigua.
The truth is that Darfur is a very old wound.
En los años dos mil, el mundo habló de genocidio, de cientos de miles de muertos.
In the two-thousands, the world talked about genocide, about hundreds of thousands dead.
Pero la violencia nunca terminó realmente.
But the violence never really ended.
Solo cambió de forma.
It just changed shape.
I covered some of that.
Not Darfur specifically, but I had colleagues who were there in 2004, 2005.
And what they described was systematic.
Villages burned, wells poisoned, the deliberate destruction of everything that made a community a community.
Mira, eso es importante.
Look, that's important.
Cuando destruyes una boda, un mercado, una escuela, no matas solo a personas.
When you destroy a wedding, a market, a school, you don't just kill people.
Matas la cultura.
You kill the culture.
Matas la memoria.
You kill the memory.
La comunidad no puede reunirse más.
The community can no longer gather.
The extraordinary thing is, this is actually documented as a deliberate tactic.
Anthropologists and war crimes researchers have a term for it.
Cultural destruction, or sometimes cultural genocide.
It's not accidental.
Bueno, en Darfur, los grupos que sufren más son los africanos no árabes.
Well, in Darfur, the groups that suffer most are the non-Arab Africans.
Los Fur, los Masalit, los Zaghawa.
The Fur, the Masalit, the Zaghawa.
Tienen su propia lengua, su propia música, sus propias tradiciones.
They have their own language, their own music, their own traditions.
Y eso es exactamente lo que los hace diferentes, lo que los hace vulnerables.
And that is exactly what makes them different, what makes them vulnerable.
So when a drone hits a wedding in Kutum, it's not hitting an abstract gathering of civilians.
It's hitting a Fur or Masalit family celebration.
A specific cultural practice, a specific community.
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y en las bodas de estas comunidades, toda la familia viene.
And at weddings in these communities, the whole family comes.
Los abuelos, los niños, los vecinos.
Grandparents, children, neighbors.
Por eso murieron diecisiete niños.
That is why seventeen children died.
Porque los niños siempre están en las bodas.
Because children are always at weddings.
I want to stay on this cultural point for a second, because I think it gets lost in the casualty numbers.
Kutum is a market town in North Darfur.
It's had some of the worst violence since the current civil war started in 2023.
Es que Kutum tiene mucha historia.
The thing is, Kutum has a lot of history.
Era un centro importante, un lugar de comercio y de cultura.
It was an important center, a place of trade and culture.
Pero desde que empezó esta guerra civil en 2023, muchos pueblos de Darfur prácticamente no existen más.
But since this civil war started in 2023, many villages in Darfur practically no longer exist.
Look, here's what gets me about this particular war.
It started in April 2023, when the two generals who together ran Sudan, Burhan and Dagalo, turned on each other.
And the people of Darfur just became the battlefield again.
A ver, Dagalo, el jefe de las RSF, viene de la región de Darfur.
Look, Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, comes from the Darfur region.
Y sin embargo, sus tropas atacaron a los civiles de Darfur de una manera terrible.
And yet his troops attacked the civilians of Darfur in a terrible way.
Quemaron pueblos, mataron a hombres, violaron a mujeres.
They burned villages, killed men, raped women.
Es una traición muy oscura.
It is a very dark betrayal.
And now, apparently, the regular army is doing it too.
With drones.
I mean, there's a grim escalation in that.
Drones change the nature of this kind of targeting.
You can hit a celebration from kilometers away and walk away.
Bueno, los drones permiten algo muy horrible, que es atacar sin ver las consecuencias.
Well, drones allow something very horrible, which is attacking without seeing the consequences.
El soldado no está allí cuando mueren los niños.
The soldier is not there when the children die.
Eso cambia algo psicológico, algo moral, en la guerra.
That changes something psychological, something moral, in war.
There's been serious academic work on this.
The removal of physical distance from killing and what it does to the psychology of warfare.
But that's cold comfort to the families in Kutum.
La verdad es que para estas comunidades, la guerra destruyó casi todo.
The truth is that for these communities, the war destroyed almost everything.
Sus casas, sus mercados, sus fiestas.
Their homes, their markets, their celebrations.
Una boda era probablemente uno de los pocos momentos de alegría que todavía existían.
A wedding was probably one of the few moments of joy that still existed.
Right, so this is something I want to put to you directly.
In situations like this, when culture is being systematically destroyed, how do communities rebuild?
What survives?
Mira, la lengua sobrevive.
Look, the language survives.
La memoria oral sobrevive.
Oral memory survives.
Las canciones de las bodas, los cuentos de los abuelos.
The wedding songs, the grandparents' stories.
La cultura no está solo en los edificios o en los objetos.
Culture is not only in buildings or objects.
Está en las personas que recuerdan.
It is in the people who remember.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And there's historical evidence for it.
The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Bosnian war.
Communities that lost nearly everything physically still held onto language, food, music, ritual.
Pero necesitas sobrevivir primero.
But you need to survive first.
Y en Darfur, muchas personas no sobrevivieron.
And in Darfur, many people did not survive.
Más de ocho millones de personas tuvieron que abandonar sus casas desde 2023.
More than eight million people had to leave their homes since 2023.
Ocho millones, Fletcher.
Eight million, Fletcher.
Eight million.
To put that in perspective, that's roughly the population of Switzerland.
Displaced.
And this barely registers in the international news cycle, which is dominated by Iran, Ukraine, everything else.
Es que hay guerras que el mundo ve y guerras que el mundo ignora.
There are wars the world sees and wars the world ignores.
Sudán es una guerra invisible.
Sudan is an invisible war.
Cuando murieron 56 personas en una boda, ¿cuántos periódicos pusieron esta noticia en la primera página?
When 56 people died at a wedding, how many newspapers put this story on the front page?
Almost none.
I checked.
And I think there are a few reasons for this.
Geography, the complexity of the conflict, and frankly, race.
Sub-Saharan African wars have historically received less Western media coverage than conflicts closer to European interests.
Sí.
Yes.
Y eso tiene consecuencias reales.
And that has real consequences.
Cuando el mundo no mira, los gobiernos no actúan.
When the world does not look, governments do not act.
No hay presión diplomática, no hay ayuda humanitaria suficiente, no hay justicia.
There is no diplomatic pressure, no sufficient humanitarian aid, no justice.
Here's what gets me about the cultural dimension specifically.
We just covered the story of Jerusalem's holy sites reopening.
The whole world was watching.
And rightly so.
But fifty-six people die at a wedding in Darfur and it's a footnote.
Bueno, es muy difícil decirlo, pero algunas culturas tienen más visibilidad que otras.
Well, it is very difficult to say, but some cultures have more visibility than others.
Jerusalén es un símbolo global.
Jerusalem is a global symbol.
Kutum no es un símbolo global, pero para las familias que vivían allí, era todo su mundo.
Kutum is not a global symbol, but for the families who lived there, it was their whole world.
And there's something about weddings specifically that crosses every cultural barrier.
Every listener to this podcast, wherever they are, has been to a wedding or wants to go to one.
That moment of community, of celebration, is universal.
A ver, en español tenemos una palabra muy bonita para esto: celebración.
Look, in Spanish we have a very beautiful word for this: celebration.
Y la celebración es la parte más humana de la cultura.
And celebration is the most human part of culture.
Es cuando una comunidad dice, somos felices, somos familia, existimos.
It is when a community says, we are happy, we are family, we exist.
We exist.
That's it.
That's the sentence.
And a drone ends that sentence mid-word.
For fifty-six people, including seventeen children, at a wedding in Kutum.
La verdad es que yo creo que los episodios más oscuros de la historia no empezaron con grandes decisiones políticas.
The truth is I believe the darkest episodes in history did not begin with great political decisions.
Empezaron cuando alguien decidió que ciertas personas no merecían celebrar.
They began when someone decided that certain people did not deserve to celebrate.
That is a genuinely chilling observation, Octavio.
And historically accurate.
The dehumanization of a group almost always precedes the violence.
And denying them public celebration, public joy, is part of that process.
Mira, y por eso esta noticia no es solo sobre guerra.
Look, and that is why this news is not only about war.
Es sobre lo que significa ser humano, sobre el derecho a tener una fiesta, a cantar, a bailar, aunque el mundo esté destruyéndose a tu alrededor.
It is about what it means to be human, about the right to have a party, to sing, to dance, even when the world is falling apart around you.
So where does this leave us, practically.
The Sudan civil war has no end in sight.
The international community is distracted by Iran, Ukraine, everything else.
What should someone listening to this actually know, or do?
Bueno, primero, saber.
Well, first, know.
Saber que existe esta guerra, que hay ocho millones de personas desplazadas, que las organizaciones humanitarias como Médicos Sin Fronteras trabajan allí.
Know that this war exists, that there are eight million displaced people, that humanitarian organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières work there.
Y segundo, hablar de esto, como hacemos nosotros ahora.
And second, talk about it, like we are doing now.
I think that's right.
And I'll add one thing.
The reason we chose a wedding as the entry point for this story, rather than the casualty number, is because culture is how we hold onto our common humanity in situations like this.
That's not sentimentality.
It's strategy.
Sí.
Yes.
Y yo espero que las familias de Kutum puedan celebrar otra boda algún día.
And I hope the families of Kutum can celebrate another wedding someday.
Sin miedo, sin drones.
Without fear, without drones.
Solo con música, con comida, con las personas que aman.
Just with music, with food, with the people they love.
Eso no es mucho pedir.
That is not asking too much.
Es lo mínimo.
It is the minimum.