by Michele Shaul

May 28, 2016. 5:20 A.M. 2500 members of the public forces entered the area.
What they found: 130 underage sexual workers, 508 homeless people,
56 slot machines, 1000 “bazuco” doses, 1 kidnapped victim behind a false wall.
 
Two alleys in between a police command,
a military garrison and a church, L-shaped:
to the right, there was a clandestine market of stolen
objects, to the left, taquilleros that trafficked
one dose of bazuco for 2000 pesos--
queues of dried mouths and fidgeting thumbs. They sold
 
20 doses per minute, 8 taquillas sold
460 million pesos’ worth. They would command
the homeless to smuggle sacks of 2000-peso
bills out on their mules. Every day was shaped
by weed rolls and bazuco bags. They trafficked
cocaine residues cooked in red gasoline, stolen
 
bone and brick dust. Lives were stolen:
“The vicio does not spare anyone,” they sold
the promise of a lawless paradise, trafficked
the cheapest drugs. Influence would command
even the wide-eyed rich to trade their steel-shaped
watches for a night in an olla—4000 pesos
 
for a consumption safehouse—a few pesos
for a prostitute. “El bazuco had stolen
the glow in her eyes and her crystal-shaped
shoes when I fell for her. She was sold
to a taquillero three weeks after her first command--
she lost her teeth but never her beauty. They trafficked
 
her body.” Through tunnels, they trafficked
victims underground--sapos who were worth in pesos
less than the bullets they shot. Taquilleros’ commands
for imprisonment in “torture houses” had stolen
their limbs and their poisoned blood. They sold
their remains to be cremated and confined to pill-shaped
 
bazuco powder. Sometimes the devils in L-shaped
Bronx would hide the vice they trafficked--
the souls they lured—the death they sold--
for annual inspections. But with a few pesos,
they bribed their way into the streets they had stolen
to confuse the press and evade the police commands.
 
In 2016 public defense authorities dismantled the area.
They hope to build a Cultural District for the city’s people
by 2023, on top of blood-stained demolished walls.


Glossary:
bazuco,  illegal narcotic substance made from cocaine residue.
taquilleros, operators of points of drug sale within el bronx known as “taquillas.”                                                                                                                
vicio, refers to the addiction caused by bazuco.
sapos, translates literally to “frog,” figuratively to “snitch.”

Laurisa Sastoque, born in Bogotá, Colombia, is a creative writing student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she lives. Due to the Covid-19 situation, she is living in Colombia. “El Bronx, Bogotá D.C” is based on an area in Bogotá, Colombia known as El Bronx.​​

​I

Where El Pueblo Points Their Thousand Fingers at La Niña Tere

​We did what every pueblo did
    when soldiers came asking
for our children. We hid inside
    barrels of beans and slept
on rooftops. We called the names
    of our gods and our country
hollered back. They found us
   at school, reciting the national
anthem. They found us selling
   conchas a cora on the streets.
They found us between bedsheets,
   nude as newlyweds, asking
for names. And if they gave us
   the choice between their enemy
and our head, we did what every
   pueblo did. We gave them puta
ó pobre. We saved ourselves.

II

Where Tía Tere Knocks Out the First Conquistador and All Else is Unimaginable 

​Spilling colónes on the street
is the closest we will get
to smearing dirt all over

Cristóbal Colón’s gilded face. 
So, when soldiers tear the purse
from her arm and bills rip ragged

as flags from its slapped mouth,
burying coin and conquistador
in shit and mud, we can call it

resistance, a victory for the little
hand that spun and struck midnight
raw against the jaws of soldiers. 

Tía Tere’s wrists were younger
then, stronger than they are now,
puffy and punctured. She caught

the first soldier in the nose and broke
red yolk down his rugged grimace.
Before he raped her, she forced him

to weep a boy’s tears. If he survived
the war, then he still walks today
with the nose the devil gave him.

Best believe she would have merked
him before the gun buckled her neck
and for hours she blinked back black.

III

Love Letter from Tía Tere to a Boy Soldier
​

​n the months dogs dig their dry noses through trash in search
of water, you were the boy who left out tins for the strays to lap,

a chicken bone for muzzles to startle and snap. Papi threatened
to beat us if we stole the fruit that fell from your father’s terreno

into our yard. I hid the mangos you gave me in my shirt and only
got caught once. Later, we shared the bruised seed, our white uniforms

half-translucent in the summer sweat, the pulp, bright and yellow,
stuck thirsty on our lips. I never repaid you for your kindness.        

He had your face,

The man with the fat nose
who dug through me like trash.

Here are my kindnesses in return:                 

      I fucked up his mug, gave him a new nose
      and busted lip before he overtook me.

I told myself you went North instead of enlisting.
You were the one I saw when I closed my eyes.

​IV

Where Tía Tere Faces the Judge 

​If bullet wounds had tongues
to testify, ¿would the judges

believe us then? If the vagina
could speak and write its darkest

name in blood, if she could count
the soldiers and their barrels,

¿would my pain be legitimate?

I gave up water and let my voice evaporate
       in the Chihuahuan desert.

I gave up a language—even the words amor y luz
        --and now my teeth cut
 my lips like rakes.
  
I gave up a good mother who worked like an ass,
a father who starved
      to feed his children.
 
I gave up my body and let its most tender parts
crack to pieces like a clam
full of dirt.
 
I gave up a whole country and you keep asking for more.  

Your honor, dile al presidente, the officials of ICE, the alt-right,
and this nation’s countless slaves: I am here to court each of you.

I brought you all the arm of a child, plucked from the earth
the way some pick a daisy. I apologize for its lack of fingers.

You already know how these games go. He lives, he lives
not. Are your men astute enough to tell me when it’s from:

¿our old war or yesterday’s tiraera? They all look the same.
If it’s not el ejercito, it’s la policia. If it’s not a landmine,

it’s a mara. ¿Which are you? If you want to play Pantokrator,
por favor, please judge me. 

In the Last Judgement, we will all be sent
to El Salvador to reap our eternal redress. 

In the Last Judgement, you will be forced
to face the insurrection of our dead.

V

Prayer to Cipactli Tlaltecuhtli
​

​Cipactli Tlaltecuhtli,

Tía says so many men went over her she lost count. 

They all blurred into one— 
            the soldiers y conquistadores
the judges y el pueblo
the police y las maras
the boys who once offered
her the ripe heart of a mango.  
             
You were the goddess men tore in two and claimed
they created the earth, as if la selva isn’t the nap
of your kitchen, as if Izalco y Ilamatepec blossom
from somewhere other than your bosom. 

We call you the world monster—la mujer, la guerrillera,
who survived a gang rape of gods and gave us your queendom,
bloody belly and slaughtered womb. ¿Are you not madre y martyr 
of our Americas, splintered at the isthmus, legs thrashing

against every chain and stitch? ¿Are we not all the children
of a woman torn at the border? You burst from the pin
of a guerrillera’s grenade as an angel. You flapped
your wings and the leaves of the trees fluttered

in flames and spoke--


Mija, soy la mera, mera, Santa Salvador.
Mira las heridas sobre mi cuerpo,
       las bocas que gritan en cada rótula, el rio
sangriento de mi pelo que llena mares
con su furia. Sos mi hija-guerra, nene, carne
de mi carne, la rosa de mis moretones. 
Entiendes ahora porque mis bocas siempre
 ansían por la sangre. He perdido tanto
de la mía. Pero no vas a morir aquí, ahorita,
       mija, yo te concederá la vida.
  
and the men were blinded
            by your light, made deaf
            by the roar of your rifles

and the men hid behind
            your trees which fell
            like hands clapping flies

and guerrilleros ambushed
      the camp as the colonel
      selfishly begged Tía for life

and the men lost their arms
            in the scuttle and finally prayed
            to mothers they never loved

and the men lost their legs
            in the scuttle and finally knelt
      humiliated before their Maker

and her thighs were still mud-slapped,
            bleeding to her knees as she led him
            through her homeland, the dark arch

and dip of your chest, where once
      she nursed from your honey and felt
      her bones harden with your marrow

and where then you gave her
      the strength to save a man
      who didn’t deserve your blood.           

VI

Prayer to Tía Tere
​

​ Tía,

When I call you Cipactli
            Tlaltecuhtli I mean this:
                                                 
You gave us a world, torn
limb by limb, rich with your sacrifice.
You gave birth to the poet and the thug,
to men who never knew your power.
If you let us live,
it is by the grit of your grace.
If we betray your love,
then we do not deserve your mercy. 

Editor’s Note:
This poem is about a woman’s abduction and torture in El Salvador in 1979.

​Willy Palomo, the son of immigrant parents from El Salvador who now lives in Cedar City, Utah, is a McNair Scholar, Macondista, and a Frost Place Latin@ Scholar. He has performed his poetry at the National Poetry Slam, CUPSI, and V Festival Internacional de Poesía Amada Libertad in El Salvador. Other works have appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, Muzzle, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. His first collection of poetry is due out in 2020 by Black Lawrence Press. Follow him @palomopoemas 
and  www.palomopoemas.com.