My Words

As Americans, when we think of war, we think of soldiers and the toll their sacrifice has on our families and communities. We think of the financial cost of war. We fight over the righteousness of war. This is not a discourse on the socio-political aspects of war, or even its righteousness. What I am attempting to do is to create a window for you, the reader, to peek through. A window of what war looks like for those of us who have been caught, literally, in the cross-fire. For every soldier who comes home in a body bag, there are hundreds – if not thousands – of lives which have forever been scarred by the violence and mass trauma of civil unrest.

I arrived in El Salvador, my Mother’s homeland, from Spain when I was not quite nine years old with my two older brothers and Mother. We left our Father behind in my country of birth and arrived in a land about to erupt with violence enhanced by Reagan’s war on the Russian encroachment of Communism into the Americas. Of course, I knew nothing of this “bigger” picture. All I knew was that my parents were separating and I had chosen Mother. At the time, I did not know that the war in El Salvador would officially last twelve years and take over 100,000 lives. Unofficially, there is no “set in stone” date. I lived through the “invisible” war which began somewhere in 1976 and some would argue that it had been brewing since the first indigenous uprising at the turn of the 20th century.

The stories and poems you will find here are not linear. I, myself, question the accuracy of the details. Sometimes, one event merges into another to fill the gaps left by the emotional detachment necessary to survive. The brain is an amazing organ. It tries to protect your sanity at all costs because it knows that if it doesn’t, it won’t survive either. It takes the ugly, hard stuff and puts it away deep within its archives. It creates a happy place for you to escape during traumatic events so that its impact in your psyche is minimized. I have spent the better part of thirty years by-passing the archives of El Salvador; discriminately pulling files of memory and putting together some palatable stories. But there are some stories I have not been able to access. And there are some stories which I may never dare tell.

Two years ago, I accidentally came across a picture of my cousin, Jimmy the Poet. A beautiful, talented man who found his strength by choosing to not ignore the burgeoning civil war and wrote of the injustices and atrocities being perpetrated against his people by the El Salvadorean government. He found his strength in his words. He used his words as fists against the deafening silence at a time when most of us kept our head low and eyes to the ground. Unfortunately, not even his high ranking General brother could spare his life and he was murdered one hot, April morning. I have carried the weight of his death in my heart since 1980. I have felt great shame and guilt over my silence for over thirty years. My brain has finally decided that I am sufficiently strong to give voice to those deeply buried files in the archives of memory.

This is a work in progress. Some of the words being liberated in this exercise will be powerful, painful, inspiring, and at times confusing. I have no control over the words. I can try to create a somewhat linear format for you to follow, but I can’t promise much. The best for which I can hope is for you, the reader, to understand what I experienced and be a witness to another side of war.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Para el Poeta Jimmy

Es tan sucio el que pone las cadenas como el que lo acepta como algo sin remedio.
 .-Jaime Suárez Quemain (1950-1980) ...

Para el Poeta Jimmy

Un grito colectivo
Escribió mi hermano
A quien me aferro
en la neblina
y la distancia.

Por tanto tiempo he gritado
en unión contigo
- mi hermano anarquista -
pero silenciosamente
en las obscuridades huecas
acompañada por mi dolor y melancolía
--pue’ ya que esta es una proposición honesta--
cobardemente y embarrada de vergüenza
permitiendo que el miedo absurdo
me ensuciara con la misma ignorancia
cual infecto a nuestro pueblo

Pero al fin llego el día
- Mi hermano en la anarquía -
de comenzar a gritar contigo.
Pero espero que me perdones
si mis primeros gritos
Son susurros
Como suelen ser
cuando por tantísimo tiempo
la voluntad ha sido paralizada
por el terror cual aprieta la garganta
estrangulando la voz.

Ojala no pierdas fe
por no ser tan valiente como tu
aunque tampoco habíase permitido
Que mi espíritu se ensuciase por completo
con las cadenas de la resignación.


******************************************************************

He who enchains is just as dirty as he who accepts to be chained in resignation.
 .-Jaime Suárez Quemain (1950-1980) ...
For Jimmy the Poet
A collective shout
Wrote my brother
To whom I cling in the fog
From a distance.

I have screamed for so long
In unison with you
- my anarchist brother -
But silently
In the hollow darkness
Accompanied by my pain and melancholy
--and since we’re being brutally honest and--
If truth be told
Cowardly and smothered in shame
Allowing that absurd fear
To soil me with the ignorance
Which infected our people

But the day has finally arrived
- My brother in anarchy -
For me to shout alongside you
But I hope you can forgive me
If my first shouts
Are whispers
As they tend to be
When for so very long
One’s will has been paralyzed
By the terror tightening one’s throat
Constricting one’s voice.

I hope you don’t lose faith
Because though I have never been as brave as you
I also didn’t fully allow my spirit
to be soiled by the chains of resignation.

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