El Embudo [Homenaje a La Patagonia] [English translation]

Come here son, I'll talk today

about a daily subject

that nor you nor your brothers

have ever stopped to think

and that's just by the habit

of being born here

of being from a root

so alienated a long time ago

and gazing in silence

what's going on in the country

Maybe you never considered

that you with those two hands

you come to distant fields

giving light and heat

which also moves the engine

that moves through the sky and the sea

or city highways

and the communications,

without knowing why

all goes and nothing comes.

Look at that tube

that's the famous pipeline

through which the fruits go,

in bulk, like people say.

You'll find hard to understand

why that oil of ours

is industrialized so far

and later the byproduct

returns to its land again,

God knows with what tricks.

Our gas is tubed

in high pressure pipes

which brings heating

to warm up other fields

don't be amazed

if I say that in the gas

many more things go,

with many properties,

which make other places rich

and make our places poor.

And the national parks

seem to be foreign

because natives and locals

are foreigners there

and in their huge forests

it happens sometimes

that become ember

the logs that nobody cuts

and they use bull excrement

for the ranch bonfires

And those lined towers

holding the cables

are taking from our rivers

the best of the energy

it's not a fancy of mine,

nor I want to embarrass you

but start to think

what would happen if they gave us

for all that they take

the bare minimum.

We're still a colony

of the northern rooster

federalism my ass

since I have memory.

History is made there,

here it is written with blood,

but once in a while they come

on elections eve

to promise solutions

that no longer fool anybody.

Let alone the heavy water,

mineral royalties,

nothing comes, all goes,

squeezing the cow.

The issue is already studied

to leave us mourning,

with any pipe

they take even our land,

if our sweat had worth

they'd have a sweat pipeline

• Artist:León Gieco
• Album:Orozco (1997)