--On August 30, five years ago, a good man died. He had been robbed of his one beloved possession: a piece of land. His name was Franklin Brito. Franklin was a biologist and agronomist who spent his life harvesting his land and producing thousands of pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables, helping people and his family. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the military and authoritarian regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it was inconvenient to have him producing so much, because it showed the productive capacity of an individual versus the inefficient socialist machine of his government.
Chavez decided to take Brito's land and proceeded with an "expropriation" which meant giving it to the "pueblo" (people he considered to have more rights than others, only because their political allegiance to him). Franklin was devastated and, despite being offered some money to keep his mouth shut, he refused and decided to travel from his small farm in the south to the capital city in the north to begin a hunger strike. Franklin was not only taken away from his land, but he also ended up being kidnapped and tortured, forced to eat and he endured many other abhorrent things.
At the time Franklin started the first of the six hunger strikes that he would do, he was a healthy man. The day he died his body weighted only 80 pounds, less than 10% of muscle mass. During his hunger strikes, Franklin sewed his mouth and cut one of his fingers in front of the TV cameras to show that he was willing to go to the infinite and beyond for what was right.
Franklin was a good man. He didn't accept being extorted by the government. He only wanted the land that his own hands worked for many years. Today, his family suffers economic hardship, still fighting for his property. The "pueblo" to which the land was given have since abandoned it, and what used to be the world for one man, has now become a weedy and unproductive piece of dirt.
Brito reminds me of Thích Quảng Đức, the Buddhist monk who burned himself to death to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the Vietnamese government, or "Tank Man", the man who stood in front of the Chinese war tanks when they were heading to kill students in Tiananmen, and who was later executed by the government. Stories of immolation abound in history. But, we all know that their fight was not theirs, even though they were the ones who died. Their struggle was for what was right and just.
Integrity is a constellation of things: values, ethics, the rule of law, your experience and common sense and your responsibility towards yourself as an individual in a society. Franklin Brito didn't die for his land, or his fruits and vegetables. I think he didn't even die for his family. Brito died for that one thing that makes a difference between the good and bad, for that one constellation that constitutes a person's legacy when they die. His possessions were taken, but he was never expropriated of his integrity.
Franklin Brito, together with many others, showed how far the human spirit can go to keep integrity alive. In a volatile, convulsed and uncertain world of today, integrity is the pivot on which our decisions and actions should rest. How far are we willing to go to keep our integrity?
Author: Enrique Rubio
Best Regards,
Educate, Empower, Elevate
Prof. Bholanath Dutta
Founder, Convener & President- MTC Global
An Apex Global Advisory Body in Management Education
MTC GLOBAL- Educate, Empower, Elevate
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