A Message to Our Friends on the Moon: The Pandemic of 2020

Set in the year 2090, Milton Hatoum fictional letter from the future chronicles the COVID-19 pandemic in president Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, as an elderly narrator shares his firsthand experience with a civilization on the Moon. With a retrospective tone, Hatoum portrays the pandemic as a historical event, reducing figures like Bolsonaro to a vile creature, “nothing more than a footnote in the history books” (Hatoum). He vividly describes how COVID-19 magnified systemic issues, unveiling a world plagued by “oppression, inequality, and environmental disaster” (Hatoum). In stark contrast, Hatoum presents the “Seven Lunar Colonies” as a utopian society and warns against returning to Earth, a place where a cure remains elusive. Drawing on the pandemic as a metaphor for humanity’s inherent capacity for evil, Hatoum underscores the significance of human solidarity and the pressing need for progress. The letter concludes with a poignant message, urging the moon residents to continue demonstrating “love and solidarity,” despite the narrator’s lingering pessimism and the imperative to reflect on the world’s trajectory to avoid complacency.