​Por Rafael Jesús González


(Ponencia sobre poesía política presentada en el VIII Congreso y Festival Internacional Proyecto Cultural Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay, octubre 2018)

Recientemente se me invitó a participar en un panel “¿Que es la poesía política?” con distinguidos colegas a quienes estimo mucho. Se nos pidió que consideremos si hay un género de poesía que es política y como diferiría esta de la poesía que ostensiblemente no fuera considerada política y si el mero acto de crear es en si político. Se nos pidió que leyéramos dos poemas nuestros y dos de otros poetas que ilustraran nuestro pensar sobre la poesía política. La idea era tener una discusión en mesa redonda y responder a preguntas del público.
Nunca pasó. Se me pidió que iniciara la discusión; presenté mi posición y leí mis dos poemas, uno de Roque Dalton y el último poema de Javier Sicilia. Mis colegas completamente ignoraron las instrucciones al panel, dijeron esencialmente que el acto de crear era en si político y entonces tal era toda poesía y siguieron a leer de una gavilla de poemas que habían traído consigo. El evento se volvió en simplemente una lectura de poesía; no hubo discusión en mesa redonda ni tuvo el público oportunidad de hacer preguntas.
Algo irritado dije que si el escribir poesía era en si acto político entonces no había nada que decir y que además no le podríamos llamar a un poema sobre un peral, o un cuervo, o el poema de Bashó sobre una rana o un poema de amor políticos en ningún sentido. Y con eso se cerró la conversación que nunca tuvimos.
Por supuesto mis colegas sabían bien lo que fuera un poema político y cual no y aunque mantuvieran que el escribir poemas en si es acto político y todo poema implícitamente tal, no leyeron poemas sobre perales o cuervos o ranas o el amor sino los poemas que habían escogido leer eran indudablemente, poderosamente políticos.
En mis observaciones de apertura había dicho que porque éramos criaturas sociales todo lo que hagamos es político; no votar cuando podamos en una elección es en sí acto político. A demás, dije, un acto, un poema es cargado o no con significado político por el contexto en el cual fue escrito. En el contexto de la degradación ambiental la poesía sobre la naturaleza se pudiera leer como implícitamente política.  
Eso dicho, si el poema sobre el peral fuera escrito cuando los perales fueran envenenados por pesticidas, o los cuervos cazados a cerca extinción, esos poemas pudieran tener brillo fuertemente político. Por lo tanto si Basho hubiera escrito bajo un régimen tirano que criminalizaba el derecho de expresión para mantener el statu quo, el chapoteo de su rana pudiera haber sido aunque implícitamente políticamente ruidoso. Todo es contexto cuando todo se ha dicho; todo lo que existe es relación. Tal es mi teoría de la relatividad.
Pero todavía necesitamos una definición práctica de lo que es la poesía política y para eso propongo esta:
“La poesía política es esa que habla en oposición o apoyo, en crítica o justificación de las instituciones y normas que nos gobiernan.”
Resiento de tener que escribir poesía política; mucho preferiría escribir poemas de amor, poemas en alabanza de la vida, de la Tierra que la sostiene, poemas de asombro por lo que se percibe y por lo que se imagina. Por lo cual resiento de tener que escribir poesía política es porque me siento obligado a oponerme a las instituciones que nos gobiernan. Si esas instituciones fueran fundadas en y gobernaran con justicia, con compasión, con reverencia a la vida y a la Tierra que nos da nacer, sería yo libre para escribir sin impedimento en celebración y mi poesía “política” sería en alabanza de esas instituciones y con dificultad se distinguieran de mi celebración de la vida misma. Por supuesto que eso sería una Utopía y siendo los humanos que somos siempre hubiera cosas que criticar, o ignorar.
Pero los Estados Unidos de América donde vivo y de cual soy ciudadano es mucho más cerca a una Distopía y en este contexto mi poesía (o mucha de ella porque también escribo mucha que es puramente celebratoria) tiene que ser abierta y fuertemente política en oposición a la injusticia, crueldad, locura que son las normas con las cuales se gobierna la nación (imperio). Mi poesía política es la poesía del amor violado.
Entre las muchas violaciones de los derechos humanos que el gobierno estadounidense comete una que más me llega es su política hacia la migración, inhumana, cruel, demente. Las fronteras son de por si políticas y solamente tal, nada más.

​Los mapas mienten

Borders are scratched across 
the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, 
judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed 
we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the
 map turn red.
                                                --Marya Mannes

​Nací en frontera cargada en particular de política— la frontera entre los EE.UU. y México, Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua y El Paso, Tejas. Lo particular de esta frontera es que la tierra estadounidense al norte del Río Bravo, “la frontera,” fue robada por invasión por los EE.UU. Mucha de la población en esa Tierra es de descendencia y cultura mexicana  — es tierra nuestra robada. A demás, la mayoría de nosotros somos de sangre mestiza, mezcla de sangre europea e indígena. Para nosotros, la parte nuestra indígena, las fronteras no existían como tales, la Tierra pertenecía a nadie, era de todos.
Mi familia llegaron cuando la revolución mexicana de 1910 llegaba a su fin en 1920, mis padres apenas adolescentes. Así es que yo me crié bicultural, bilingüe entre y participando en dos distintas culturas. Mis padres siempre insistieron que conserváramos nuestra cultura mexicana y lengua castellana a la vez que aprendiéramos el inglés. No siempre fue fácil. La cultura estadounidense es poco tolerante de lo extranjero e insiste en que el inmigrante se asimile.
En la escuela nos castigaban si hablábamos en español en la aula o el patio de recreo y aun muchos nos sentimos obligados a defender nuestros propios nombres. El prejuicio en la sociedad en general es grande. Muchos padres para proteger a sus hij@s de los efectos de este prejuicio les permitían hablar sólo inglés para que avanzaran económica y socialmente. El costo de asimilarse es grande.

​Demasiado, es mucho el costo. Pera paro sobrevivir mucho se arriesga y mucho se pierde. Se emigra raras veces por gusto y casi siempre por necesidad. Históricamente la mayor parte de nuestra gente que emigra a los EE.UU. es gente pobre, más que nada campesinos que vienen a trabajar por muy bajos sueldos, largas y duras horas, bajo pésimas condiciones, muchos analfabetos o con poca escuela, muchos hablando lenguas indígenas. Vienen indocumentados y muchas veces traen sus familia, hij@s de muy tierna edad, infantes muchos. Es@s chicuel@s todavía indocumentados han crecido en jóvenes en todo estadounidenses menos en ciudadanía, muchos hablando y escribiendo solamente en inglés, muchísimos estudiantes en colegios y universidades.

Y ahora el Presidente de los EE.UU. Pres. Trump (llamado entre nosotros con el no muy afectuoso apodo Pres. Trompudo) racista y fascista, ignorante, arrogante y descorazonado hasta las cachas intenta, con el apoyo de su índole, expulsarlos a sus países natales, países extraños para ell@s, países no suyos — México, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua y tantos más. Se les han llamado “Soñadores” apodo que origina en un plan del presidente anterior Pres. Obama para protegerl@s.


Nuestros soñadores

El país que echa fuera
por falta de documentos
a sus soñadores 
se hiere a si mismo.
¿Que otra tierra conocen?
¿Que vacío dejarían
en la consciencia,
en el corazón del pueblo?
Es arrancarle las balanzas
a la justicia, apagarle
el antorcha a la libertad.
Sería como si el águila
con su propio pico
y sus garras se rasgara
su propio corazón
ya envenenado por la crueldad.
De fronteras y muros
los sueños y la necesidad
saben los mismo
que las mariposas, las aves,
el olor de las flores.
Si no protegemos
a nuestros soñadores perdemos
nuestras almas y sueños.
  
Con la ascendencia del Pres. Trompudo se ha demonizado el emigrante. El presidente les ha llamado violadores, asesinos, ladrones, especialmente a los emigrantes mexicanos, centro-americanos, latino-americanos (y además terroristas a los emigrantes musulmanes.) El fascismo, el racismo, el nacionalismo y el odio son patentes y se han normalizado en la discusión política estadounidense. Pero lo tenemos que decir claro --


Decirlo Claro

Dicen los bobos
que venimos de mendigos
estómagos vacíos, vacías las manos
para quitarles lo que ya
sus propios canallas y bribones
les robaron.
Sí, venimos con hambre
huyendo la violencia
a donde la riqueza
del impero se concentra
pero con las manos llenas
de nuestras artesanías y labores,
corazones llenos de bailes y canciones,
con nuestra cocina rica en sabores.
Le traemos alma a una cultura desalmada;
traemos el arco iris
y prefieren el gris de sus temores.
Se empeñan en construir muros
si lo que se necesita es puentes.
  
La frontera se ha militarizado y se ha hecho un frente de batalla. Y el Tompudo se empeña un construir una gran muralla por toda la frontera entre los EE.UU. y México a un costo aproximado de construir de 70 billones de dólares y de mantener a 21.6 billones de dólares. Y neciamente insiste que la pagará México. Pero no se le puede poner precio al costo del sufrimiento que ha causado, que causa esta política. Los emigrantes son aprendidos y encarcelados, las madres, los padres separados de sus hijit@s, muchos de ellos infantes, l@s niñ@s metidos en cárceles separadas, desparramados, enviados lejos. Y aunque las cortes han declarado estos hechos ilegales y exigido que se reúnan las familias, muchas todavía no se han reunido y niñ@s se han perdido. La crueldad, el sufrimiento hiere la imaginación.


Es tan amable la luna

La luna llena se cuela
por entre las rejas de la cárcel
de niños
para recoger sus sollozos
en su delantal de luz
y llevárselos a sus padres
en cárcel de adultos
y traerles lamentos y bendiciones
de sus madres, sus padres
a los niños.
Es tan amable la luna
que no niega su luz
ni a los malvados traficantes de angustia.
Es tan amable la luna


Y ¿que graves exigencias motivan a estos padres, madres a arriesgar tanto por emigrar a los EE.UU.? Vienen a donde se concentra la riqueza del imperio huyendo de la pobreza y la violencia de sus países causados por la política estadounidense: tratados de “libre comercio” que han sido desastrosos para la economía de México, la cínica “guerra contra las drogas” que ha traído violencia atroz a México, los Acuerdos de Mérida que han militarizado el gobierno de México y lo ha hecho aun más violento.
Pero no es solamente México sino es así en toda América Central y en partes de Sud América. Se cultivan y se apoyan gobiernos abusivos por el poderoso EE. UU. que para el bien de los ricos mantienen a sus pueblos en pobreza y represión violenta, vendiendo sus tierras y recursos naturales a empresas extranjeras estadounidenses e globales. Y l@s que resisten y defienden la Tierra (gran parte indígenas y mujeres) son torturados y muertos. Un caso representante de muchos, muchos otros por todas las Américas es el de Berta Cáceres de Honduras:

Por medio milenio y más

a Berta Cáceres
y a todos los mártires
de las Américas
muertos defendiendo la tierra
​

​Nombrémoslo por lo que esencialmente es: la economía de imperio, el capitalismo, y su política, un sistema económico que se basa en dos cosas: el tratar a la Tierra solamente como deposito de materia prima para explotarse y la esclavitud de mano de obra para convertir esa materia prima en productos consumibles a abajo costo para vender a gran ganancia para el bien de los pocos. Fue nada más que esto lo que impulsó la conquista de las “Américas.” (De la religión que hacía mucho se había hecho instrumento del estado y justificaba la esclavitud y hasta el genocidio no diré nada, ni de la oposición dentro ella que nos llega ahora como la teología de la liberación.) Por ser los EE.UU. el más grande imperio actual y su presidente un Calígula moderno, es fácil hacerlo el único villano, pero esto pasa casi por el mundo entero.
El capitalismo desenfrenado lleva al fascismo y esto lo vemos por a través del mundo actual. Las guerras y tiranías casi todas a causa del capitalismo desplazan una gran cantidad de gente huyendo del la pobreza y la violencia para sobrevivir. La migración es unos de los “problemas” más grandes del día no obstante que la humanidad siempre ha migrado desde su origen en África hace tres cientos mil a dos cientos mil años.                                                                                        

Migración

¿Qué sabe la mariposa de fronteras?
        ¿Qué sabe de banderas?
Cruza todo un continente,
        el movimiento su herencia.
Así es con nosotros,
        nuestra historia migración
de años, de siglos, de milenios 
        antes de que historia hubiera
y que formáramos mitos en el cerebro.
Nuestros pasos hechos de sangre,
de lágrimas, de risas, de sudor
marcan nuestra eterna búsqueda
de hogar señalado por el Dios,
        o el águila comiéndose una culebra
o quien sabe que señas arbitrarias.
Pero son inseguras nuestras moradas --
hogar es la Tierra redonda y sin costura;
la circundamos y si patria veneramos
es pretensión, es mito, es mentira --
buscamos abrigo, alimento, libertad, la vida.
Abajo con fronteras, abajo con banderas
        que si justicia y paz hubiera
no tuviéramos que vagar tanto por la Tierra. 
                         

Nací, vivo en y soy ciudadano de los Estados Unidos de América pero más que nada me siento ciudadano del mundo. Mi lealtad es a la humanidad a cual pertenezco y a la Tierra que nos dio nacer y nos sostiene. Mi ciudadanía estadounidense y terrestre me obliga a ver críticamente a mi país, al mundo, a la humanidad. Pero si he pintado a mi país en matices sombríos no es completamente fiel el retrato. Muchos, muchos estadounidenses no son racista, ni tóxicamente nacionalistas, ni injustos, ni crueles, ni capitalistas. Y son muchos los problemas del imperio y me he enfocado sólo en la migración. Es muy grande la resistencia contra las fuerzas del fascismo, es grande la compasión y el deseo por la justicia. Muchas ciudades y aun estados se han declarado ciudades, estados “De asilo” para proteger a los inmigrantes indocumentados negándose a colaborar con la policía federal en la persecución de los inmigrantes. Diariamente hay manifestaciones a las puertas de las cárceles, la frontera, los aeropuertos, los edificios de gobierno, las calles en apoyo de los inmigrantes. Hay una gran lucha entre las fuerzas del fascismo que controlan el gobierno y las fuerzas demócratas. Estamos en crisis y son tiempos temerosos.
En cuanto a mí como viejo y poeta


Te Digo

Te digo que estoy cansado
de no poder darle la espalda
a la injusticia y crueldad del mundo.
Quisiera en vez contarte
lo que el sauco y la secoya,
la piedra en el arroyo hecha lisa
por el toque suave o brusco
del agua me dicen.
Quisiera decirte los cuentos
del lagartijo y la mariposa,
cantarte las canciones calladas
de la madreselva y el romero.
Quisiera escribir versos de amor
a la Tierra, a la vida, a ti.
Pero no puedo darle la espalda
a la injusticia y crueldad
del mundo que causa
tanta pena y sufrir en la Tierra.
Mis versos de furia y protesta
son también poemas de amor,
de un amor traicionado y herido.

© Rafael Jesús González 2018.

​Recently I was invited to take part on a panel “What is political poetry?” with three distinguished colleagues whom I hold in high esteem. We were asked to consider whether there was a genre of poetry that is political and how this might differ from poetry that is ostensibly not considered political, and whether indeed, the very act of creation is political in its own right. We were asked to read two poems of our own and two from other poets that could be illustrative of our thoughts on political poetry. The idea was to have a round table discussion and answer questions from the audience.
It never happened. I was asked to open the discussion; I stated my position, and read my two poems, one of Roque Dalton's, and the last poem of Javier Sicilia. My three colleagues completely ignored instructions to the panel, essentially said that the creative act was in itself political and hence so was all poetry, and proceeded to read from a sheaf of poems they had brought with them. The event became simply a poetry reading; there was no round-table discussion, nor did the audience have an opportunity to ask questions.
Somewhat exasperated, I said that if writing poetry is itself a political act and all poems are political, then there is nothing to say and furthermore that we could not call HD's pear tree poem, or Williams' red wheel-barrow poem, or Stevens' blackbird poem, or Basho's frog poem political at all. Though a love poem could be political such as Arnold's Dover Beach (definitely political, but is it a love poem?). And that closed the conversation that we never had.
Of course my colleagues know perfectly well what is a political poem and what is not, and though they maintained that the writing of poems in itself is political and hence all poems implicitly so, they did not read HD, nor Williams, nor Stevens, nor Basho to bolster their contention, but the poems they had chosen to read were unquestionably, undeniably, powerfully political.
In my opening remarks I had said that because we are social creatures everything we do is political; not voting in an election when we can is itself a political act. Furthermore, I said, an act, a poem, is weighted, or not, with political meaning by the context in which it is written. In the context of contemporary environmental degradation, I said, the nature poetry of Mary Oliver may be read as implicitly political.
That said, if HD had written her poem at a time when pears were poisoned by pesticides, or Williams' his when red wheel-barrows were outlawed in New England, or Stevens’ when blackbirds were hunted near extinction, their poems could have a strong political glow. For that matter, had Basho written under a tyrannical regime that criminalized freedom of expression to maintain the status quo, his frog's splash could have been, though implicit, politically loud indeed. It is all context when all is said and done; all that exists is relation. Such is my theory of relativity.
But we still need a working definition of what political poetry is, and for that I offer:

“Political poetry is that which addresses, in opposition or support, criticism or justification, the institutions and norms that govern us.”

I resent having to write political poetry; I would much rather write love poems, poems in praise of life, in praise of the Earth that bears it, poems of amazement for what is sensed and for what is imagined. Why I resent having to write political poetry is because I must oppose the institutions that govern us. Were those institutions founded on and governed with justice, with compassion, with reverence for life and the Earth that births us, I would be free to write in unhindered celebration and my political poetry would be in praise of those institutions and could be hard to distinguish from my celebration of life itself. Of course that would be a Utopia and being the humans we are, there would always be things to criticize, or ignore.
But the United States where I live and of which I am a citizen is much closer to a Dystopia and in that context, my poetry (or a great deal of it, though I also write much that is purely celebratory) must be overtly and strongly political in opposition to the injustice, the cruelty, the insanity that are the norms with which the nation (empire) is governed. My political poetry is the poetry of love outraged.
Among the many violations of human rights the U.S. government commits, one that most deeply touches me is its inhumane, unimaginably cruel, insane immigration policy. Borders are inherently political and just that, nothing more:

​Maps lie --
they are crazy quilts
of pastel colors
            (lilac, sky, lime,
            lemon, orange, pink)
with arbitrary names and seams
with which we imagine the Earth
pretending to posses it
and call it ‘world.’
The Earth does not have seams
nor borders --
rivers and ravines, sierras, swamps,
canyons, jungles and deserts,
cascades and falls, seas yes,
but never borders.
Maps lie.

I was born on one particularly politically charged — the U.S./Mexican border, Cd. Juárez/El Paso. What is particular to this border is that the U.S. land north of the Río Grande, The Border, was stolen by the U.S. by invasion. Much of the population in this land is of descent and culture Mexican — it is our stolen land. Also, the majority of us are of mestizo blood, a mixture of European and indigenous blood. For us, the indigenous part, borders did not exist as such, the Earth belonged to no one, it was everyone’s.
My family came as the Mexican revolution of 1910 drew to a close in 1920, my parents but adolescents. So it is that I grew bicultural, bilingual between and participating in two distinct cultures. My parents always insisted that we preserve our Mexican culture and the Castilian tongue at the same time that we learned English. It was not always easy. The U.S. culture is little tolerant of the foreign and insists that the immigrant assimilate. In school we were punished if we spoke Spanish in the classroom or playground and many of us felt obliged to defend our own names. Prejudice in the society in general is great. Many parents permitted their children to speak only English to protect them from the effects of this prejudice so that they could advance economically and socially. The cost of assimilation is great.


To an Old Woman

Come, mother --
            your rebozo trails a black web
            and your hem catches on your heels,
you lean the burden of your years
on shaky cane, and palsied hand pushes
            sweat-grimed pennies on the counter.
Can you still see, old woman,
the darting color-trailed needle of your trade?
            The flowers you embroider
            with three-for-a-dime threads
cannot fade as quickly as the leaves of time.
            What things do you remember?
Your mouth seems to be forever tasting
the residue of nectar hearted years.
Where are the sons you bore?
            Do they speak only English now
            and say they’re Spanish?
One day I know you will not come
and ask for me to pick
the colors you can no longer see.
            I know I’ll wait in vain
for your toothless benediction.
I’ll look into the dusty street
            made cool by pigeons’ wings
until a dirty child will nudge me and say:
                    Señor, how mush ees thees?

(New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. XXXI no. 4, 1962; author’s copyrights.)

Too much, it is too high a cost. But to survive much is risked and much is lost. One rarely immigrates by desire but almost always by necessity. Historically the majority of our people who emigrate to the U.S. are poor, mostly farmers who come to work for very low wages, long and hard hours, under abysmal conditions, many illiterate or with little schooling, many speaking indigenous languages. They come without documents and often bring their families, children of very tender age, infants many. These children still undocumented have grown to be youths in every way U. S. except in citizenship, many speaking and writing only in English, many students in colleges and universities.
And now, the president of the U.S.A., President Trump (named among ourselves with the not very affectionate nickname Pres. Trumpet-mouth), racist and fascist, ignorant, arrogant, and heartless to the hilt intends, with the backing of his ilk, to expel them to their countries of birth, countries strange to them, countries not theirs — Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and many more. They are called Dreamers, soubriquet originating in a plan of the previous president, Pres. Obama, to protect them.


Our Dreamers

The country that casts out
for lack of documents
its dreamers
wounds itself.
What other land do they know?
What emptiness would they leave
in the consciousness,
in the hearts of the people?
It is to tear the scales
from justice, to put out
the torch of liberty.
It would be as if the eagle
with its own beak
and its claws lacerated
its own heart
already poisoned by cruelty.
Of borders and walls
dreams and need
know the same
as do the butterflies and the birds,
the smell of the flowers.
If we do not protect
our dreamers we lose
our souls and our dreams.

(Overthrowing Capitalism, Vol. 4, Hirschman, Jack et al., editors, 2018 San Francisco; author's copyrights)

With the ascendency of Pres. Trumpet-mouth, the emigrant has been demonized. The president has called them rapists, murderers, thieves, especially the Mexican, Central-American, Latin-American emigrants (and also terrorists the Moslem emigrants.) Fascism, racism, nationalism, and hate are patent and have been normalized in the U.S. political discussion. But we have to say it clearly --


To Say It Clearly

The fools say
that we come as beggars
stomachs empty, empty hands
to take what already
their own scoundrels and knaves
have stolen from them.
Yes, we come hungry
fleeing violence
to where the riches
of the empire are concentrated
but with hands full
of our crafts and labors,
hearts full of dances and of songs,
with our cuisine rich in flavors.
We bring soul to a soulless culture;
we bring the rainbow
and they prefer the grayness of their fear.
They insist on building walls
when there is need of bridges.

The border has been militarized and has been made a battle front. And Trumpet-mouth insists on building a great wall through the entire border between the U.S. and Mexico at a cost of approximately 70 billion dollars and 21.6 billion dollars to maintain. And foolishly insists that Mexico pay for it. But a price cannot be placed on the suffering that it has caused, that this policy causes. Emigrants are apprehended and jailed, mothers, fathers separated from their little children, many of them infants, the children put in separate jails, scattered, sent far away. And even though the courts have declared these acts illegal and demanded that families be reunited, still they have not been reunited and children have been lost. The cruelty, the suffering wounds the imagination.


So Kind Is the Moon

The full moon slips
through the bars of the jail
of the children
to gather their sobs
in her apron of light
and carry them to their parents
in the jail for adults
and bring the laments and blessings
of their mothers, their fathers
back to the children.
The moon is so kind
that it does not deny its light
even to the evil dealers in anguish.
So kind is the moon.

And what grave needs motivate these fathers, mothers to risk so much to emigrate to the U.S.? They come to where the wealth of the empire is concentrated fleeing the poverty and violence of their countries caused by U.S. policy:
Free Trade treaties that have been disastrous for the economy of Mexico, the cynical War Against Drugs that has brought atrocious violence to Mexico, the Mérida Accords that have militarized the government of Mexico and made it more violent. But it is not only Mexico; it is thus in all Central America and parts of South America. The powerful U.S. supports abusive governments that for the benefit of the rich keep their people in poverty and violent repression, selling their lands and natural resources to U.S. and global foreign enterprises. And those who resist and defend the Earth (a great part indigenous and women) are tortured and killed. A case representative of many, many others throughout the Americas is that of Berta Cáceres of Honduras:

 For Half a Millennium and More
      to Berta Cáceres
and to all the martyrs
of the Americas
killed defending the land

For half a millennium and more
we have died defending
the land, the forests, the rivers
from foreign invaders
blinded by greed,
crazed by profit
in bloodied coin.
We have suffered traitors
Infected by that madness
that for that same coin
sell their own gods.
Our bones sow the earth,
Our blood waters it,
and the sacred corn
sometimes tastes bitter to us.
But we go on struggling
and our bones and our blood
will grow a new flowering world.

Let us name it for what it essentially is: the economy of empire, Capitalism and its policy, an economic system based on two things: the treatment of the Earth solely as a deposit of raw material to be exploited and the enslavement of labor to convert that raw material into consumable products at low cost to sell at great profit for the good of the few. It was nothing but this that impelled the conquest of the Americas.
(Of the religion that for a long time had made itself the tool of the state and justified slavery and even genocide, I will say nothing, nor of the opposition within it that now comes to us as Liberation Theology.) Because the U.S. is the largest empire today and its president a modern Caligula, it is easy to make it the only villain, but this happens through the entire world. Unbridled Capitalism leads to fascism and we see this across the world today. The wars and tyrannies almost all caused by Capitalism displace a great number of people fleeing poverty and violence in order to survive. Migration is one of the greatest problems of the day notwithstanding that humanity has always migrated since its origins in Africa three to two hundred thousand years ago.


Migration

What does the butterfly know of borders?
        What does it know of flags?
It crosses a whole continent,
        movement its inheritance.
So it is with us,
        migration our heritage
of years, of centuries, of millenniums
        before history was
and we formed myths within the brain.
Our steps made of blood,
of tears, of laughter, and of sweat
mark our eternal search
for home signaled by the God,
        or the eagle eating a snake,
or who knows what arbitrary signs.
But uncertain are our abodes --
home is the round and seamless Earth;
we circle it and if country we venerate
it is pretension, a myth, a lie --
we seek shelter, food, freedom, life.
Down with borders, down with flags
        for if there were justice and peace
we would not have to so much roam the Earth.

I was born in, live in, am a citizen of the United States of America but more than anything I feel myself a citizen of the world. My loyalty is to humanity to which I belong and to the Earth that bore us and sustains us. My U.S. and Terrestrial citizenship obligate me to view my country, the world, and humanity critically. But if I have painted my country in somber hues it is not entirely a true portrait. Many, many U.S. citizens are not racist, nor toxically nationalists, nor unjust, nor cruel, nor capitalists. And many are the problems of empire and I have focused only on migration. Very great is the resistance against the forces of fascism, great is the compassion and the desire for justice. Many cities and even states have declared themselves Asylum to protect the undocumented immigrants refusing to collaborate with the federal police in the persecution of immigrants. Daily there are demonstrations at the doors of jails, the border, the airports, the government buildings, the streets in support of the immigrants. There is a great struggle between the forces of fascism that control the government and the democratic forces. We are in a crisis and the times are fearful.
As for me as an old man and a poet


I Tell You

I tell you that I am tired
of not being able to turn my back
on the injustice and cruelty of the world.
I would like instead to tell you
what the alder and the redwood,
the rock in the stream made smooth
by the soft or rough touch
of the water tell me.
I would like to tell you the tales
of the lizard and the butterfly,
sing you the quiet songs
of the honeysuckle and the rosemary.
I would like to write poems of love
to the Earth, to life, to you.
But I cannot turn my back
to the injustice and cruelty
of the world that causes
such pain and suffering on the Earth.
My verses of rage and protest
are also poems of love,
of a love betrayed and wounded.

 © Rafael Jesús González 2018.
                    
Rafael Jesús González es Poeta Laureado de la Ciudad de Berkeley, California/is Poet Laureate of Berkeley, California. Por décadas, ha sido un activista pro la paz y justicia usando la palabra como una espada de la verdad. For decades, he has been an activist for peace and justice, wielding the word like a sword of truth.

​Review-Reseña en/in English y/ and Spanish, of/de: A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins. Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural/ Edited by Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. Mexico: Cúmulo de Tesla, 2018

By Cristóbal Garza

Several authors and translators from the United States and from Mexico join their pens —or rather, their keyboards— in this collection of short stories edited by writer Libia Brenda Castro Rojano, who also contributed with a short story of her own. This collective work was inspired by the presence of John Picacio’s Mexicanx Initiative in the 2018 Worldcon Literary Convention (Tobin). The electronic version has been distributed free online and the printed version sold out soon after its release.
Each piece appears in its original language and translated either from Spanish to English or vice versa. This double format serves as an apt frame for texts that imagine post-apocalyptic worlds, simultaneous realities, and alternative universes. These stories take us to liminal areas that surround walls, portals, entrances and exits and everything that can be preceded by the prefix “bi”: bicultural, bisexual, bilingual, binational, bilateral, bifocal, and so on. The collection shows us how binary categories collapse; the inside and the outside, the human and the monstrous, the lyrical and the graphic, the humorous and the terrifying, the future and the past, the you and the me, fantasy and realism become entangled.
The borders identified, enforced, traversed, and challenged here are not new, but the articulation and disintegration that the authors of Una realidad/A Wider Reality narrate are urgent and timely. Zombies, magicians, scientists, gypsies, cholos, translators, chupacabras, soldiers, superheroes, time travelers, dancers and baristas populate realities that have been bifurcated by violence but rejoined by imagination.

​In the forward, Castro Rojano explains that this volume’s purpose is establishing dialogues and friendships among writers and readers of both countries. “Fences” by José Luis Zárate revolves around a magician who, after having lived on the margins of society and reality, must go beyond a real and symbolic wall to “go back to” who he really isn’t. In “Aztlán liberated,” David Bowles tells us the story of a gang of misfits who furiously fight predators to save the two countries that rejected them for being who they are.
With “A universally known truth,” Julia Rios challenges us to enter realities where identities, affections and memory are transformed and dissolved as if they were mirages. Felecia Caton Garcia reimagines the colonial tradition of the “Matachín” dancer as a scientific and technological tale with results that are vertiginously human. “Kan/Trahc,” by Iliana Vargas, takes us into a claustrophobic world of artificially recomposed bodies that reveal the dissatisfaction, the loneliness and the fragility of life.
In the “Binders,” Angela Lujan invites us to identify with her quixotic superheroes and to read their struggles as the confrontation of the analog vs. the digital, the physical vs. the virtual. “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” by Raquel Castro, is a story of social isolation and childhood anxieties that combines the popular genre of the living dead with cutting dark humor. Pepe Rojo shares Castro’s interest in zombies, but his piece, “Shoot,” is the frantic and over-saturated experience of a man who eats, dreams, thinks and feels everything through a video game.
The contribution of Alberto Chimal, “It All Makes Sense Here,” contradicts and, at the same time, affirms its title by showing us that when suffering is mediated by a screen we really do not care for other people’s tragedies as long as technology keeps us safe. Abuse, trauma, family secrets, sexism and racism battle with seduction, friendship, and joy in “The Music and the Petals,” by Gabriela Demian Miravete.
“Clean Air Will Smell Like Silver Apricots,” by Andrea Chapela, seeks to restore hope in a return to nature and life after one of the most significant losses. Finally, Richard Zela illustrates in comic format “Rhizome,” by Castro Rojano, the editor, in which they tell us how ephemeral obects, fantastic secrets and absurd stories only make sense when they are shared and we seek intimate contact with each other.
In this anthology, translations and exchanges are not only linguistic, we also see mixes and borrowings of media and genre. Traditionally, movies, television, comics and video games have adapted literary narratives to make them accessible to mass audiences. Conversely, many writers resort to the “language of the cinema,” emphasizing images and actions so that the reader can “see” what the page offers.

​In Una realidad/A Wider Reality, these loans, thefts or emulations are taken to the extreme; images and digital sounds burst into the immobile black and white of the page to infuse it with cadence, color, movement and urgency. Internet searches, mobile phone messages, security camera videos, and digitally produced images become the medium, the language and the message with which humans, androids, monsters, machines that have yet to be invented, and fantastic beings communicate with each other and with the reader.
In a similar way, the bilingual nature of this anthology lends itself to reflect on experimentation and interpretation of reading and writing in two languages. Besides reaching out to a wide audience that may include monolingual readers, this double volume offers a unique opportunity for bilingual readers interested in translation, untranslatability, and the ways in which language limits or liberates our thinking.
Some words are translated with “dubious” cognates while several idiomatic expressions offer a different point of view in each language. “Entertain me,” as in “let’s say you believe and want to hear what I have to say,” seems hard to translate and may sound like a request for amusement in other languages, yet it appears directly translated into its Spanish equivalent. 

​Interestingly, though it started in the United States with the spelling Latinx for Latina/o, the use of an “x” for gendered nouns and adjectives seems only possible in Spanish. Besides these examples, the fact that “Speculative Fiction” from the English title appears as historias [stories] in Spanish signals more than the difficulty of translation of idioms and culturally bounded expressions; it shows a keen interest in representing the linguistic flexibility and fluid imagination of those who live, imagine and write about the US-Mexico border.
As a collection, Una realidad/A Wider Reality gives us access to a multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and ways of writing on both sides of the border that, at times, can be surprising and even unsettling. Here, the form is put at the service of the content; brevity does not impede depth, humor does not hide fear and neither does terror paralyze the movement of life. The authors in this anthology showcase a diverse set of themes, strategies, interests and anxieties that represent Mexican, Mexican American, Mexicanx, Latinx and Chicanx narrative.
Even today, in some circles, the literatures of these marginal areas are expected to express racial concerns, local mythologies, authenticity, and border exoticism; however, the imaginative heterogeneity of these stories is so wide that it exceeds thematic and stylistic limits. Readers and critics who believe that Mexican authors only address “Mexicaness” —whatever that means— and that those of Latino diasporas are only interested in the migratory experience will find that, where the State and its institutions divide the world in two, Una realidad/A Wider Reality takes fragments from here and there, narrative splinters, and lost instants to integrate them into a current that, much like the Rio Grande, brings together waters from various sources and branches off into multiple channels.
The critical potential of a work like Una realidad/A Wider Reality resides in that it invites us to question our own expectations about what the literatures written and read around the border of Mexico with the United States are or should be. This publication also calls us to recognize that these voices are part of the traditions of both countries and to witness how they claim their right to double cultural citizenship. The challenge is not superfluous and surpasses the novelty of fashionable trends.
Genres such as horror, science fiction and fantasy have been disqualified as less literary but have also served to express the experiences and existential conditions of those who live on the margins of society, culture and history. This marginality ​​coincides and is complicated when it is located and enunciated from the border’s interstices. Gloria Anzaldúa taught us that the border is a bleeding wound, an intermediate space (3), a non-place from which literature can erupt.

On his part, Ignacio Sánchez Prado has shown that Latin American literatures are still uncomfortable for European and Anglo-American centers of cultural capital which do not know what to do with them (8). In this sense, the marginality of these stories is twofold; in addition to resorting to genres of the literary peripheries, they belong to a tradition that oscillates between the West and its liminal areas, especially if we read Latinx as also Latin American.

​These short stories —these speculative fictions— can make us confront the realities that are continuously fragmented by borders and that those borders disappear and reappear thicker, taller and, at the same time, more brittle.

​A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins ebook is free and available at  this link.

Works Cited:
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera. San Francisco: Aun Lute Books, 1987.
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. América Latina en la “literatura mundial.” Pittsburg: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006.
Tobin, Stephen C. “El reconocimiento tan esperado a la ciencia ficción mexicanx en el WorldCon76 del 2018.” Latina American Literature Today 8 (2018). http://www.latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/es/2018/noviembre/el-reconocimiento-tan-esperado-la-ciencia-ficción-mexicanx-en-el-worldcon76-del-2018. Consultado el 7 de Noviembre de 2018.

​Reseña: Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural/A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins. Editado por Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. México: Cúmulo de Tesla, 2018.

By Cristóbal Garza

Varios autores y traductores de los Estados Unidos y México reúnen sus plumas —o mejor dicho, sus teclados— en una colección de relatos cortos editada por la también escritora Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. El trabajo en colectivo fue inspirado por la presencia de Mexicanx Initiative, de John Picacio, en la convención literaria Worldcon de 2018 (Tobin). La versión electrónica se distribuye gratuitamente en línea y la impresa pronto agotó su primer tiraje. Cada texto aparece en su idioma original y traducido del español al inglés o viceversa. Este doble formato enmarca textos que imaginan mundos posapocalípticos, realidades simultáneas y universos alternativos que se localizan en zonas liminales de muros, portales, entradas y salidas y todo aquello que pueda ser precedido por el prefijo “bi”: bicultural, bisexual, bilingüe, binacional, bilateral, bifocal, etc.
La colección nos muestra cómo las dualidades se colapsan en torno a binarismos entre el adentro y el afuera, lo humano y lo monstruoso, lo lírico y lo gráfico, el humor y el terror, el futuro y el pasado, el tú y el yo, la fantasía y los realismos. Las fronteras aquí identificadas, desafiadas, atravesadas y vueltas a imponer son viejas, pero las formas de articulación y disgregación son de nuestro tiempo. Zombis, magos, científicos, gitanos, cholos, traductores, chupacabras, soldados, superhéroes, viajeros del tiempo, bailarinas y baristas pueblan estas realidades bifurcadas por la violencia y vueltas a unir por la imaginación.
El prólogo de Castro Rojano explica que el impulso de este volumen es el de establecer diálogos y amistades entre las comunidades de escritores y lectores de ambos países. “Vallas”, de José Luis Zárate gira en torno al último acto de un mago que, luego de haber vivido en los márgenes de la sociedad y de la realidad, debe traspasar un muro real y simbólico para “volver a ser” quién en realidad no es.

​David Bowles nos relata, en “Aztlán liberado”, la furiosa lucha de una pandilla de seres marginales por salvar de la depredación alienígena a los dos países que los han rechazado por ser quienes son. Con “Una verdad universalmente conocida”, Julia Rios nos reta a entrar en universos en los que las identidades, los afectos y la memoria se transforman y disuelven.

Felecia Caton Garcia reimagina la tradición colonial del “Matachín” como relato científico y tecnológico con resultados que son vertiginosamente humanos.

“Kan/Trahc”, de Iliana Vargas, nos adentra en un mundo claustrofóbico de recomposición artificial del cuerpo humano que desnuda la insatisfacción, la soledad y la fragilidad de la vida. En la “Carpeta”, Angela Lujan nos invita a identificarnos con sus quijotescos superhéroes y con sus luchas, mismas que pueden ser interpretadas como alegorías del enfrentamiento entre lo análogo y lo digital, lo físico y lo virtual.
“Rosa de la infancia”, de Raquel Castro, aborda el aislamiento social dándole una vuelta de humor negro a uno de los géneros más en boga: el de los muertos vivientes. Pepe Rojo comparte el interés por los zombis, pero su “Dispara” es la veloz y sobre saturada experiencia del que come, sueña, piensa y siente todo mediante un videojuego.
La contribución de Alberto Chimal, “Aquí sí se entiende todo”, contradice —y no— su título por que nos muestra que, aunque no entendamos los sufrimientos y tragedias que aparecen en pantallas, a nadie le importan en tanto la tecnología nos mantenga a resguardo. El abuso, el trauma, los secretos familiares, el sexismo y el racismo se debaten con la seducción, la amistad y la alegría en “La música y los pétalos”, de Gabriela Demian Miravete.
“El aire limpio olerá a albaricoque plateado”, de Andrea Chapela, busca devolvernos la esperanza en una vuelta a la naturaleza y a la vida después de una de las pérdidas más significativas. Finalmente, Richard Zela ilustra con sus comics el cuento “Rizoma”, de Castro Rojano —la editora—, en el cual nos cuentan cómo las cosas efímeras, los secretos fantásticos y las historias disparatadas sólo adquieren sentido cuando se comparten y se busca el contacto íntimo con el otro.

​En estas exploraciones narrativas, los prestamos y traducciones no sólo se dan en términos lingüísticos sino de medio y de género. Tradicionalmente, el cine, la televisión, los comics y los videojuegos han adaptado narrativas literarias para hacerlas accesibles a públicos masivos. Al mismo tiempo, muchos escritores recurren “al lenguaje del cine”, en el sentido de que enfatizan imágenes y acciones de modo que el lector pueda “ver” lo que la página ofrece.
En Una Realidad/A Larger Reality, estos préstamos, robos o emulaciones son llevados al extremo; las imágenes y los sonidos digitales irrumpen en el blanco y negro inmóvil de la página para darle cadencia, color, movimiento y urgencia. Búsquedas en internet, mensajes de teléfono móvil, videos de cámaras de seguridad e imágenes digitales se vuelven el medio, el lenguaje y el mensaje en que se comunican humanos, androides, máquinas que aun no se inventan y seres fantásticos.
De manera similar, el carácter bilingüe del texto se presta a reflexiones sobre la experimentación y la interpretación de la escritura y la lectura. Además de ampliar el alcance hacia públicos monolingües, el doble volumen le ofrece una lectura comparativa a los lectores bilingües interesados en la traducción, la intraducibilidad y las formas en las que el idioma restringe o libera el pensamiento.
Escribir “traslación” por “traducción” podría parecer un error: el primer término es astronómico; el segundo, lingüístico. También podría parecer un cultismo anacrónico, pues ambos son “pasar de un lugar a otro”, de un idioma a otro. Decir “entretenme” para traducir “entertain me”, expresión idiomática que quiere decir algo así como “haz como que me crees”; usar “definitivamente” como respuesta afirmativa, o incluso usar en el título “Speculative Fiction” como equivalente de “historias” muestran tensiones enraizadas en diferencias lingüísticas y culturales profundas que nos pueden llevan a la reflexión y a una lectura lúdica.
Otro ejemplo digno de atención es la alteración ortográfica de adjetivos y sustantivos que en el español normativo solo aceptan el masculino como inclusivo y que en inglés son neutrales; dressed, ready, child son traducidos como vestidx, listx, ninx. Más que enfocarse en la arbitrariedad de los significantes o en la imposibilidad de la traducción, estos “traslados” de un lugar cultural e idiomático a otro reflejan la labilidad de nuestras lenguas, la flexibilidad de la imaginación y la fluidez de la literatura como medio para expresar la experiencia en las periferias.

​El hecho de que se trate de una colección de cuentos facilita el acercamiento a una multiplicidad de voces, perspectivas y maneras de escribir a ambos lados de la frontera que pueden resultar desconcertantes. La forma está puesta al servicio del contenido; la brevedad no impide la profundidad, el humor no nos quita el miedo, pero tampoco el terror paraliza las posibilidades de la vida. Las autoras y autores de esta antología diversifican sus estrategias narrativas para mostrarnos el variado panorama de intereses y ansiedades que existe en las letras mexicanas, Mexican American, Mexicanx, Latinx y Chicanx.
Aún hoy, en algunos círculos, se espera que las literaturas de estas zonas marginales expresen preocupaciones raciales, mitologías locales y la autenticidad del exotismo fronterizo; sin embargo, la heterogeneidad imaginativa de estos cuentos es tan amplia que rebasa límites temáticos y estilísticos. Los lectores y críticos que crean que los autores mexicanos sólo abordan “lo mexicano” —lo que eso signifique— y que los de las diásporas se interesan únicamente en la experiencia migratoria encontrarán que, donde el Estado y sus instituciones dividen al mundo en dos, Una Realidad/A Larger Reality toma fragmentos de aquí y de ahí, esquirlas narrativas e instantes perdidos para integrarlos en un cause que, como el Río Bravo, hace confluir aguas de varias fuentes y desemboca en múltiples canales.
El potencial crítico de un trabajo como Una Realidad/A Larger Reality reside en que nos invita a cuestionar nuestras propias expectativas sobre qué y cómo son las literaturas que se escriben y leen alrededor de la frontera de México con los Estados Unidos. Esta publicación nos llama también a reconocer que estas voces son parte de las tradiciones de ambos países y a atestiguar cómo reclaman su derecho a la doble ciudadanía cultural. El desafío no es superfluo y sobrepasa la novedad de las modas pasajeras.
Géneros como el horror, la ciencia ficción y lo fantástico han sido descalificados como menos literarios pero también han servido para expresar las experiencias y las condiciones existenciales de aquellos que viven en los márgenes de la sociedad, la cultura y la historia. Esta marginalidad coincide y se complica cuando se localiza y se pronuncia desde los intersticios fronterizos.
Gloria Anzaldúa nos enseñó que la frontera es una herida sangrante, un espacio intermedio (3), un no lugar desde el cual puede irrumpir una literatura que, como opina Ignacio Sánchez Prado sobre la latinoamericana, resulta incómoda para los centros del capital cultural europeos y estadounidenses que no saben qué hacer con ella (8). En este sentido, la marginalidad en estos cuentos es doble, pues además de recurrir a géneros de las periferias literarias, pertenecen a esa literatura que oscila entre occidente y sus orillas, sobre todo si hacemos extensivo el adjetivo latinoamericano e incluimos lo Latinx.
Uno de los resultados de una lectura como ésta es la conciencia de que enfrentamos una realidad fragmentada por fronteras que desaparecen y vuelven a aparecer más duras y, al mismo tiempo, más quebradizas.

Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural ebook es gratis aquí.

Obras citadas
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera. San Francisco: Aun Lute Books, 1987.
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. América Latina en la “literatura mundial”. Pittsburg: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006.
Tobin, Stephen C. “El reconocimiento tan esperado a la ciencia ficción mexicanx en el WorldCon76 del 2018”. Latina American Literature Today 8 (2018). http://www.latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/es/2018/noviembre/el-reconocimiento-tan-esperado-la-ciencia-ficción-mexicanx-en-el-worldcon76-del-2018. Consultado el 7 de Noviembre de 2018.

​Cristóbal Garza González, who grew up Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a doctoral candidate in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Indiana University, and an avid reader of science fiction and fiction about scientific history. His work has appeared in Revista Hiedra and in the IU Press sponsored Chiricú Magazine.

By Jesús Mena

This trio of short stories tied for first place in the 2017 Writing Contest sponsored by the San Miguel Literary Sala, A.C., located in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.


This feature first appeared in Somos en escrito on February 23, 2017.

The Spirit

We lived in a string of lean-tos behind an old service station next to Emilio’s Bar. All the families living here were just like chickens, going to bed at sunset, not because nature dictated our clocks, but because any light in a one-room hovel alerted the migra that mojados who had crossed the Rio Grande in the dead of night were nesting here.
A four-year-old at the time, I was sleeping on the floor on the soft, red blanket that was my bed when late one night my grandmother flicked on the bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. She stumbled in with our neighbor Victoria leaning against her shoulder. Victoria’s eyes were slits, her face ashen. My grandmother, who was a curandera, slid Victoria onto her bed and quickly ushered me out the door.
“Vámonos! Fuera!”
“What’s going on, huelis?” I whimpered.
“Shht!” she shushed firmly, her finger on her lips.
I had already weathered my share of immigration raids so when my grandmother demanded silence, I was a mouse playing dead. But my body shuddered when I heard dreadful groaning coming from inside our shelter. Victoria was in agony. Was she dying?
The full moon that loomed over the large mesquite tree across the alley was a gray skull baring its ugly teeth at me. I could not bear to look at it so I sat on the cracked sidewalk, chin on my knees, staring at the alley and trying to ignore the wailing. It seemed like hours before my grandmother stepped out carrying a bucket filled with foul-smelling water that she splashed onto the alley. The water stained the gravel an eerie gray in the moonlight.
I grabbed her skirt and pleaded, “Can I go in now, huelis? Please?”
“Cállate, niño!” she uttered, shoved me aside, and rushed back in. Now I was terrified. My huelis loved me. She had never treated me like this.
Victoria began screaming: “No! No!”
Then I heard sobbing.
I rushed to the door, hoping I could sneak a peek. The adults inside started arguing then the light seeping through the cracks of the wooden door went out, the rusty doorknob squeaked as it turned, and Victoria’s husband stepped out carrying a dark bundle followed by my father and my grandmother. My mother called me back in and put me to sleep. The hard wooden floor was humid, giving off a dull musty odor.
Later that night I woke up screaming when I saw a translucent, blue figure floating through our shack. My grandmother ran to my side and picked me up in her arms. She brewed an herbal tea for me to fend off bad dreams and cuddled me on her lap, rocking me to sleep.
Dawn came and my grandmother and my parents acted as if nothing had happened. No matter how much I pestered them, they dismissed my questions about the night before. We moved out of the area when my father landed a good-paying job as a plumber, but images of that eerie night were indelibly etched in my mind. My grandmother always assured me that my childhood imagination had conjured up this dark tale. It was not until she suffered a stroke that placed her at heaven’s door that she decided to rid herself of her earthly burdens.
“Te acuerdas…de..de..aquella noche,..mi’jo…” she said, her voice faltering as she recounted what had happened that strange night.
Victoria had had a miscarriage, she said. They didn’t call the priest to give the child his final blessing because the priest was an Anglo. They were afraid he would call the migra. They had buried the child in the empty lot behind Emilo’s Bar, and my grandmother had said the final prayers. Her dying wish was that God would forgive her.
Her revelation was jarring. That lot with its scraggly bushes once was my favorite place to play hide-and-seek. It was also my sanctuary whenever I got in trouble with my parents. I had carved out a small hideout in the brush where I found solace. Somehow I felt like I had a friend there to console me. I lost that little haven when the garage owner turned that lot into a place for oil changes, and the earth gradually darkened to a pitch-black. The image of a baby drenched in this waste haunted me. My soul yearned to pay my last respects.
I went to my hometown, which had grown into a small city with a cluster of ramshackle cottages on its outskirts. Ankle-high weeds covered the backyards there with well-worn paths leading to sagging outhouses; kids were playing stickball in the alley. I felt at home. But my old barrio was quite a ways from those shanties. I finally reached the street where we once lived. The panaderia at the street corner that once filled the air with the sweet scent of cinnamon from freshly baked pan dulce had been supplanted by a dry cleaner. The garage and the bar had been leveled, replaced by a large cinderblock building. A grocery store occupied the portion of the structure where the garage used to be. Next door, there was a sign that read La Señora Adivinadora with a large Tarot card taped to the windowpane that showed Persephone, the high priestess sitting on her throne between the darkness and the light in front of the Tree of Life.
I walked into La Señora’s place, which had a glass counter with a collection of talismans mounted on shelves and a black curtain separating the small front room from the rear. The curtain slid open and a somber woman with dark brown eyes and black flowing hair strolled out. Around her neck hung a gold chain with an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe set in mother of pearl.
“Buenas tardes,” she said as she walked to the counter. “Would you like me to read your fortune?”
I looked past her to the rear of her unit, which stretched all the way to the alley. Concrete now covered the former back lot of Emilio’s Bar.
“Come into my reading room back here,” she said. “A special spirit resides there that guides me.”
I pursed my lips.
“I know,” I nodded as I closed my eyes.


The Stetson

Winter unleashed heavy downpours that battered noisily against the windowpanes. Gonzalo tossed and turned. His older brother Maurilio was snoring exceptionally loud tonight. It was a nightly ritual that began with hoarse guttural mutterings that would then dull into a drone before Maurilio would finally slide into a deep sleep. The steady drip of the rainspouts added to his insomnia.
With Maurilio’s snore down to a whisper, it became the mouse that prevented Gonzalo’s slumber. That vermin had been harassing the family for weeks despite the traps that had been set throughout the house. He heard it scratching at some package in the kitchen cabinet. He listened intently, hoping to hear the loud thump that said: This rata is dead meat! When it was satisfied with its treasure, the mouse scurried down the hallway, its claws rasping against the wooden floor, avoiding all the mines scattered on the floor. It was quiet again. The chiming of the clock told him it was midnight when his father’s truck pulled into the driveway. The pickup door opened and slammed shut. He heard his father come in the front door. His mother was still awake.
“Hola, mi amor, I’m home,” he said jovially.
“Where the hell have you been?” she asked.
“Is that any way to greet your viejo?” he asked.
When he was drunk, he was always sure he could sweet-talk her out of anything. They had been fighting for weeks. Gonzalo’s mother Mencha always made light of the squabbles whenever he asked her what was going on. The arguments that vibrated through the sheer walls usually began with his mother taking his flattery quietly for a while before the exchanges flared into nasty quarrels. Tonight, however, she seemed to have little patience for his accolades.
“Ándale preciosa! Let’s jump into bed and make out like old times,” he said.
“Those days are long gone,” she said sternly.
“Ay dios, you are a lioness tonight,” he said, laughing lightly. “What got into you?”
“Maybe I’m tired of being taken for a pendeja?”
“I always treat you with respect,” he snapped.
“Really? Partying till all hours? We’re barely making ends meet, and you don’t even come home from work on payday. You go out and spend money like it’s nothing.”
“You worry too much, amorcito,” he said. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”
“Get your filthy hands off of me,” she said.
“You are my wife and I am going to make love to you,” he said firmly.
“What? You didn’t get enough with Carla tonight?”
“Carla? Who is Carla?”
“You know what I am talking about! My friends have seen you with her. Una cantinera! Que asqueroso!”
“Ay, amorcito mío. Chismes, chismes, chismes,” he said dismissively. “You believe everything you hear.”
“I saw you tonight with her! Julia drove me over to the bar, and we waited till you left with her.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said.
“You filthy liar. Get the hell out of here! I never want to see you again!”
There was a dead silence.
“If I leave tonight, you will never see me again,” he said.
“That will be too soon!”
Gonzalo heard the front door bang shut, his father’s hurried steps on the porch, and the pickup rush out the driveway. His mother’s sobbing sent his heart racing. He desperately wanted to comfort her. He struggled to get up but his legs felt like lead weights. What could he tell his mother? How could he possibly soothe her? He found himself sinking into a dark pit as he sobbed himself to sleep.
Mencha’s sadness blanketed the house like a fog the next day. She avoided Gonzalo anytime he tried to talk to her. He told Maurilio what he had heard the night before, and the two of them finally approached her.
“Don’t worry, Amá, he’ll be back,” said Maurilio. “He wouldn’t walk away from us.”
“He has nowhere else to go,” agreed Gonzalo.
But the weeks turned to months without word of his whereabouts. His father’s departure spawned a deep guilt in Gonzalo. He should have had the cojones to get out of bed and intervene. He kept recreating the fight. All he had to do was step in and ask them what in the world was going on, and they would have been embarrassed and calmed down. Maybe they could have worked things out. Instead, he had just cried like a baby. An 11-year-old baby, for Christ’s sake.
What pained Gonzalo most was how his mother’s life changed. She became the neighborhood tailor, stitching dresses for quinceañeras and other special occasions but the money she pulled in was not enough. She started cleaning homes for gringos on the other side of town, cooking, scrubbing floors, changing baby diapers, and doing laundry. On her first day, she left well dressed, eager for the challenges of the new job. She came home exhausted and just scrambled some eggs and frijoles for dinner. Her eyes slowly lost their luster. The thought of his mother on her hands and knees in some gringo home burned a hole in Gonzalo’s belly. He argued with her to stop working. He could drop out of school, get a job, but she was adamant that her kids would graduate from high school and carve out a better life.
Gonzalo’s father now seemed like a ghost from his childhood – a carpenter who straggled home from work every day with his frayed Stetson sprinkled with sawdust. He would shake off his hat off in the front yard, walk in, smile at the family and head for the bedroom to read Western dime novels. He was a sullen man who ignored the silly banter or the rowdy spats between the boys around the dinner table. He wasn’t a real father. Gonzalo felt he had been abandoned since birth, a void that bred a rancor that gnawed through the remnants of his childhood innocence.
Each night Gonzalo dreamed that he stood before the shell of a house under construction. There was the dense, sweet smell of sawdust and the piercing whine of the saw. He’d step in and his father stopped pounding his hammer, tipped back his hat, and stared at Gonzalo with a smile. Livid, Gonzalo struggled to confront him but found himself staring, impotent with rage. Eliminating all that reminded him of his father became an obsession. He trashed the stack of his father’s paperbacks that were covered with dust. He urged his mother to dump all of his father’s belongings. She refused.
“They are his and he will return and get them one day,” she said.
Gonzalo frowned.
“Amá, how can you believe that jerk will ever return?”
“Don’t you ever use such language in referring to your parents,” came her indignant reply.
Her response only fueled his drive to erase his father’s existence from his world. One sunny afternoon when the family had fired up their barbecue pit in the backyard, Gonzalo was rummaging through his parent’s closet in search of a folding chair when his eyes zeroed in on his father’s dressy Stetson that he wore on his weekend parandas. He stared at it, grabbed it, walked out and threw it in the barbecue pit. Mencha gasped. The three of them looked on with an almost pious silence as the hat burst into flames and slowly became a gray sliver that blended into the burning charcoals.


Fallout

The drone of Mrs. Gray’s math class recital suffocated my thoughts. She bored me stiff. Mrs. Gray eyed the classroom as she paced the length of the blackboard, carefully seeking her next victim. She seemed to enjoy making us squirm.
“Moisés, can you recite the nine’s multiplication table?” she said.
Moisés walked timidly to the front of the class. He was clearing his throat when the shrill wail of the town siren shattered Mrs. Gray’s spell. We all leaped from our seats and scurried under our desks. From my hunched position, I watched an imposing Mrs. Gray march up and down the aisles, inspecting all the crouched bodies, making sure everyone was in the proper fetal position.
“Make sure you are covering your eyes,” she said, raising her voice over the siren’s whine. “Benigno, get your legs completely under the desk.”
The siren ceased its howl, the drill ending too soon, so we all crawled out from under our desks. I raised my hand before the teacher resumed her lesson.
“Mrs. Gray, why do we cover our eyes in a bomb drill?” I asked.
“To protect your eyes,” she said. “You could go blind from the light of an atomic explosion.”
“But how does that protect us from radiation?”
Mrs. Gray looked annoyed. “You know the auditorium is designated as a fallout shelter. Once the explosion is over, we’d go to the auditorium.”
“But it’s got big windows. How can it protect us from radiation?”
“And what about everyone else in town? ” chimed in Benigno. “Where are my parents supposed to go if they dropped a bomb on us?”
“The town has a fallout shelter,” Mrs. Gray said frostily as the bell rang and we all raced raucously from the room and headed home.
Moisés, Benigno and I savored the shade of the magnolia trees that towered over the landscaped yards on the gringo side of town as we walked home that muggy afternoon.
“Did you guys check out the note Mrs. Gray sent home?” I asked.
It was an official city memo that asked families to set aside a month’s supply of canned and dried foods, water and other necessities. It was part of the nuclear-preparedness program that city officials had unfurled with much fanfare.
“A month? Sometimes we’re lucky if we got a pot of beans at the end of the week,” said Moisés.
“I’m not gonna show this to my Dad,” said Benigno. He yanked the note from his book, crushed it into a wad and thrust it into the corner garbage can.
We grew quiet. The three of us had seen the newsreels in the movie theater a couple of months ago warning all Americans to prepare in case Russia nuked our country. The film was frightening – an atomic bomb going off with a horrific boom followed by a ball of fire that spread into the sky like a giant mushroom.
“Do you really think they’re gonna drop a bomb on our little town?” asked Benigno.
“Of course. The Russians got a bomb aimed at every town in America,” I said.
Benigno looked depressed.
“The city bomb shelter is on the gringo side of town,” lamented Benigno. “How are my parents and my little sister gonna get there? We don’t even have a car.”
“We gotta do something to help our families,” I declared.
“Like what?” asked Moisés.
“We could build our own fallout shelter,” I said, a bit surprised at myself.
They looked at me skeptically.
“Really?” asked Moisés. “Just how are we gonna do that?”
“I don’t know but we gotta figure it out.”
Moisés shook his head.
“If we get hit, we might turn into some kind of nuclear monsters…” growled Moisés as he contorted his face, moaned and breathed heavily then started chasing Benigno. Benigno shrieked and sprinted away.
My friends were trying to laugh it off but I knew they were as worried as I was.
When I got home, my father had me lug some scrap lumber from his dusty blue pickup and stack it in the backyard.
“What’s this for?” I asked. My father was a carpenter who would never let any lumber go to waste.
“Not sure…might come in handy someday,” he said.
“Can I have some of it?”
“What you planning…a clubhouse?”
“Something like that.”
“You know where the nails and hammers are. Just don’t mess up my saw,” said Dad with a smile.
I was ecstatic. It was the first time Dad had trusted me with his most prized possession – his electric saw. Lumber, nails, tools – we had everything we needed to build the fallout shelter. I rushed next door to tell my buddies.
“Hey you guys! I got the stuff we need to make a bomb shelter.”
Moisés and Benigno rushed over to my place to see but they seemed less than enthusiastic when they stared at the pile of mangled scrap with splinters and nails jutting out at odd angles.
“You couldn’t build a doghouse with that,” said Moisés.
When I pulled out my father’s electric saw, their eyes lit up. I squeezed the trigger switch and the silver blade roared to life.
“Let me try that,” said Moisés.
“I’ll teach you how to use it…if we build the shelter.”
Benigno smiled, picked up a hammer and began driving rusty nails out of the lumber. My chest swelled as I taught Moisés how to use the saw. We began arguing about the proper architecture with the debate getting heated at times. The intermittent whine of the power saw and the banging of hammers soon eliminated the chatter.

I called the club to order as I crouched on a small wooden crate. The shelter was finished except for the lead lining needed to protect us from radiation. Being the entrepreneur, I had talked Moisés and Benigno into chipping in fifty cents each to buy some baby chicks. We planned to raise them into hens, sell the eggs they laid and, when the hens were too old to produce, we could sell them to make chicken soup. Our chickens would be cheaper than the ones at Hinojosa’s Market. We would make a killing in the neighborhood. The income would get us the lead we needed.
Of course, bold ventures invariably encounter obstacles. Our first challenge was sharing our hideout with the chicks. It’s hard to conduct a serious business meeting with chicks darting in and out between your legs. With time, our troubles grew.
“You guys, it’s starting to smell in here,” complained Benigno.
“It’s chicken shit,” groused Moisés. “That’s why chickens live in chicken coops, not in fallout shelters.”
Suddenly one of the chicks let out a shrill cry and hobbled as it raced in circles. Moisés had accidentally stepped on it.
“Damn it, Moises! You almost killed one of our investments,” I yelled.
“Investments, my ass!” cried Moisés. “Who would want to come into this stinkin’ fallout shelter? We don’t even know where we can get the lead even if we had the money.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.” Unfortunately, he was right. I had no idea where to get the lead.

One day I was helping my father build a new house when I saw the plumber pouring a silver liquid to seal the drainage pipe he was installing. Molten lead! How could I have been so blind? Plumbers used lead to seal pipes! Our problem was solved. I called a meeting of my buddies to unveil my discovery. We all headed to the shelter, and I unlocked the latch, jiggled and kicked the twisted door until it finally came loose.
“Watch out for the chicks,” said Moisés.
More than once they had escaped, and we ran ourselves ragged chasing hyperactive little feather balls. I crouched down with a watchful eye but none of the chicks even peeked through the crack I opened. I slowly swung the door open ready to snatch any chick that made a run for it. None did. It was quiet. Too quiet.
“Something’s wrong.”
We walked in and looked around.
“Holy shit!” said Moisés.
The neighborhood alley cat had apparently dug his way under the dirt floor and gobbled up our little treasures. There was nothing left but feathers strewn on the ground. We were speechless.
“What a drag – que pinche aguite!” muttered Moisés after a drawn-out silence. “I told you we should’ve built a floor to this thing.”
“We didn’t have enough lumber,” I said.
“So much for the fallout shelter,” sighed Benigno.
It was also the end of our club. I was never able to coax the guys into starting up again.
I’ve always felt that I failed to capitalize on the dramatic potential of our project. It could have been the basis for a great science fiction screenplay. Picture a newscast that erroneously reports that the Russians have just launched a nuclear attack on the United States. People scurry for cover, quickly overwhelming the city’s designated fallout shelter. In the chaos, the mayor and some of his cronies are stranded on our side of town. They come to our sanctuary, pleading for a chance to enter our shelter.
Gringo politicians begging Chicano kids for a share of the fruits of their labor? That’s a story line that would light up faces in any barrio.

Jesús Mena, the son of undocumented Mexican immigrants from the south Texas Rio Grande Valley, grew up as a migrant farm worker, following the crops each year with his family along the entire US Midwest corridor. He was managing editor of ChismeArte, a pioneering Latino literary journal. After stints as a journalist with various newspapers including the Brownsville Herald, Orange County Register and Oakland Tribune, he became director of media relations for UC-Berkeley and subsequently held a similar post at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Jesús is currently working on a historical novel set in the Rio Grande Valley in the early 1900s. ​

​Por Oscar Moreno

Si alguna vez le vuelves a caer a Juárez y tienes que y puedes regresarte al El Paso, te puedo dar algunos tips, depende de lo que quieras hacer. A los gringos y pochos les choca que te vean medio Mexicana. Con ellos tienes que ser completamente gringa o completamente pocha, lo cual quiere decir que mínimo tienes que ser medio gringa o medio pocha. Para los pochos, ser medio Mexicano es puro pedo. ¿Qué tienes que hacer? Primero, si andas en Juaritos, en tu casa o dónde andes, deja tu IFE, tu pasaporte Mexa, tu credencial caducada de la UACJ, tu licencia de Juárez, todo. Llévate tu pasaporte gringo, tú licencia del chuco. Segundo, nunca hables español. Puro Inglés. No dejes que se te salga ni una sola letra de español. Ahorita que estamos aquí en el puente, pues quien nos oye, pero ya cruzando con los oficiales, haz de cuenta que llegó el Will Smith y te echó un flashazo de todo tu tiempo en México. Tercero, que no te agarren viendo a Juárez. Mal plan que tu cantón este tan cerca. Yo no tengo buen ojo, pero desde el puente lo puedo ver.
Cuarto, cuando vayas de Juárez a El Paso, deja todos tus pesos en casa. Que no te agarren los gringos o pochos enseñando a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, para ellos, puro George Washington. A los del 656, les valdrá wilson, nomás aguas porque luego puede que te acaben pidiendo un poco para ahorrarse espacio de billetes en sus carteras, con eso de que ahorita un dólar equivale a cómo veinte pesos.
Yo sé que la regaste. Yo sé que nunca pensaste en acabar acá. Pero por cómo pintan las cosas, puede que regreses. Ahora, estando en Juárez, seguramente te van a decir güera, sobre todo por lo blanca que estás. Pero solo un imbécil pensaría que eres gringa, pero si pasas por pocha que nunca ha pisado tierra Mexa. Te van a hablar en Inglés de chiste, te van a decir “Go, UTEP!” a pesar de que esa no es la porra y a pesar de que no terminaste tu licenciatura acá. La misma gente que te trató de la patada sirviéndoles alitas en el Grand China Buffet, te va a tratar de la patada cuando les quieras regalar quesitos y jamonsitos en Costco sucursal Juárez. Te trataron de la patada en el Circle K de la Airport cómo cuando me dijiste de una morra que se encabronó porque no le vendiste birria con una licencia de conducir falsa, y te dijo que eras una “pinche pocha pendeja”. Nomás porque vio tu apellido en tu gafete, te vio güera y te oyó gringa. Aguanta vara porque algún bato te va a querer tirar rollo diciendo que votaste por Trump, cuando el día de las elecciones nos conocimos pagando multas en la corte. Te la van a regar por haber estudiado diseño gráfico en IADA cuando ya no pudiste terminar en El Paso y van a creer que con lo nerda que eras en la Prepa del Chami, que siempre pudiste haberte ido a una ingeniería. De seguro tu misma lo pensaste cuando a tu jefe le colgaron los tenis. Menos mal que no te dijó que te fueras a la burger cómo me lo dijo mi jefe antes de que lo cagara el payaso. Que descanse en paz y que Dios lo bendiga.
Ni pedo, chamaca. La regaste cómo muchos la regaron cuando se soltó el desmadre de violencia generación 2007-2012. El desmadre que nunca terminó y no te hagas, que tú también hiciste el tuyo.
Este sería consejo extra,  no te lo tengo que decir, pero aguas con cargar droga, ya tienes antecedentes por un pinche gallo de uso personal. No debería ser así, pero por el güero enojón ese, ya cualquier pretexto te buscan. Y si no te encuentran pretexto, se lo inventan. Date cuenta, eres la enemiga número uno de ellos, con todo el coraje y el miedo del mundo.
Así fue, así es y así será siempre aunque no hayas hecho nada malo a nadie más que a ti misma, y no hablo de los gallos, que si traes, comparte. No, pero lo que nunca entendiste es que hay un lugar y un momento para todo pero estando acá, si veo cómo puede valerte queso. No sé si fue Silvio Rodríguez o José Alberto Jiménez o Mijares o Arjona el que cantó que no soy de aquí ni de allá. Pero no creo porque ninguno de esos cabrones era de Juárez.
El desmadre personal ya se acabó, te toca decidir que sigue.  Ahí te agarro dibujando sobre tu pierna y tus brazos, son caricaturillas pero son mejores que los tatuajes que se avientan los disque machos gangstas de acá o los chami-cholos de allá. Si te dicen que no tienes futuro, nada más acuérdate que muy probablemente mañana vas a despertar.

​Oscar Moreno, born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México, endured the crime wave that took over his hometown in the late 2000s. During that time, he studied Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso and then did a Master’s in Art and Design in the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez. He’s now in the Creative Writing MFA at UTEP, commuting every day across the border.