A forgotten and very current word. . . This 1973 write-up. . . BY THE GREAT MANUEL JOSÉ ARCE, SOMETHING THAT ADAPTS TO ALL ERAS. The HookahBeing a hookah is a moral condition, not a social or economic one. There are Hookahs without ratatouille and there are Hookahs with ratatouille. Just as there is lordship in prosperity and in poverty. The Cachimbiro is voracious, it is fast and it is audacious. But it's clumsy. Love the advantage, look for the opportunity. Pick the trick, chase the glare. Try to take advantage of everything and everyone. He is a fanatical supporter of the law of the smartest. It is customary opportunist. When it suits his aspirations, he is lambiscon, smiling, jacket-smacking. But as soon as he achieved what he set out to do, he becomes insolent and cynical. Take out the copper, as they used to say, or pull out the nails, as they always say. The Cachimbiro senses its limitations but does not know them. And within that framework he wants to situate others to use. He tries to reduce everything to his personal dimensions and then pass over everything. He takes other people's ideas and, if he can't buy them, he steals them, usurps them, but they are too big for him and he doesn't know how to handle them. The Cachimbiro ascends, climbs, climbs at all costs. It is like that prose by Carlos Wyld Ospina that I will never tire of rereading like the Matapalo: it seeks the trees, grows in their shade, climbs them, drinks their sap, disguises itself as the noble vegetable that it squeezes and drowns, but it never detaches itself from its parasitic and crawling condition. I have very often met peasants, workers, small merchants who know how to be true masters, of full and firm word, of clear and loyal lordship. I have met capitalists, merchants, and farmers who know how to be lords, who govern their acts, intimate or public, by a personal code of goodness and decency. People, poor or rich, who have good taste to be. I have also encountered, with painful frequency, ardent hookahs, poor or rich, all with the common denominator of an absolute lack of vital elegance. Because the hookah confuses the popular which is a noble value with the vulgar. It confuses the elegant with the ostentatious. He confuses intelligence with cleverness. Confuse courage with audacity. He confuses practicality with unscrupulousness. He confuses wholesome influence with servile mimicry. The Cachimbiro is incapable of breaking the molds of outdated morality in order to be governed by a valid personal morality. The concept of morality of the hookah is that of the honorable façade that is part of his tricks and behind which he hides the personal lack of values and the mockery of the values of others. The hookah is never lucky: he piles up ratatouille. The ratatouille (which is not money) is his supreme object: with it he will be able to make up for all his resentments; with it he will be able to acquire power to humiliate others; With it he will try to buy public image, a pedestal to show off his clumsiness more obviously. Manuel José ArcePublished in El Gráfico newspaper on February 2, 1973