Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

 When Otto Pérez Molina won the elections, I thought that Guatemala had hit the bottom; a society that was unable to prosecute him for crimes against humanity was taking him to the presidency. To the victims’ relatives that was a stab in the back, and disrespect to Historical Memory and dignity.

We had had to put up with them until, all of a sudden, justice began to gasp, a trample down justice, desecrated, disappeared, buried in every clandestine grave in Guatemalan history. An affront with the face of children agonizing by famine, of girls transgressed in the purest of their being, of the historically exploited peasants and day laborers. Of the thousands of migrants who in the estrangement of the diaspora and the sacrifice of remittances, dream of the return to the homeland that threw them out. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

Most times, if we decide to follow our dreams, that which makes us happy, we will find opposition among family and friends, society and the system; by upbringing patterns, stereotypes, ignorance or by simple imposition. Our only tool to defend ourselves is resistance: resist, resist, resist until the last day.

Resist with passion, dedication, rapture, and love. Resistance often take us to loneliness, to absolute solitude, and it is in that solitude, in the turbulence of the battle, that our fears are revealed and from the depths of our being the most sublime of our unshakable spirit emerges. If we know how to listen to it, and follow it, we will be safe from the cruelty of reality. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

In 2014, Obama came out with his eleven sheep to give a press conference as a matter of urgency; it was early in the summer. He spoke of a crisis of migrant children traveling alone to the United States in search of their parents or fleeing violence in their home countries. Of course, there was no talk of institutionalized violence; he referred to maras (gangs) as criminal cliques. The “crisis” as he called it, is more than 20 years old, and has had an urgent character ever since. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

In the early days of the 1990s, Ciudad Peronia began to fill with shacks and people who came from other poor neighborhoods and from the country’s west to invade the sector now known as El Mirador. It consisted of brushwood, tepetate streets, and an open-air market; a dusty place where vendors threw empty sacks and cardboard boxes to serve as a table to display their products on. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

Latin America, with its multicolors, its fecundity, its Native Peoples and its martyrs, is a land of contradictions, among them, the defeated generations accommodated in the shadow of brazenness, opportunism and indifference. Generations that refuse an identity of their own and who trample every trace of memory and dignity.

Inept, lethargic generations, unable to fend for themselves, to dare to create, to question, to formulate an analysis of their own, who became accustomed to copy and paste, and to hide behind other people’s words and actions, because doing so, does not demand any responsibility for their own acts. They are, therefore, the useful puppets of a system of domination, which increasingly cements itself on the inert root of those who easily forget, because they live floating in a bubble of indolence and individualism. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

Already the nightmare of migrating without documents is terrible enough as to add to it being the victim of trafficking for sexual exploitation, labor, and of organs of men, women and children, with the latter two being the most vulnerable. Not to mention the LGBTI community which besides being discriminated against, suffers a great deal of abuse due to homophobia and patriarchy.

The undocumented is a population constantly exposed to all types of abuse, both from mafias and government authorities of the countries of origin, transit, destination and return. A migrant in transit lives in a delicate situation because of the social status that exposes him to the dangers and abuses of his situation as an undocumented. Sigue leyendo →

Translated  by Marvin Najarro 

Patriarchy should be a topic of conversation, as when we talk about football, music, literature, art, movies, etc., etc.

We should speak of patriarchy and its consequences, in school, college, social gatherings, everywhere and at all times.

Why? Because it is our enemy to defeat, and it is not a theme that involves only feminists, we do not have to be feminist to talk about patriarchy; patriarchy is hurting us all, some more than others, because a man doesn’t get killed because of his gender, but women do.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro 

I remember, as a child, when after selling ice creams at the market on weekends, I returned home at two o’clock in the afternoon, (at 12:30 a.m. on weekdays, because I had to go to school at 1 o’clock) and set out with my friends, each of us with a bag, to collect trash from house to house to go dump it at the ravine; we were paid 25 cents for a bag.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro 

We are a hair breadth away of an invasion by the United States and its pack against Venezuela. The first to provide an open corridor by land, sea and air will be Brazil, Colombia and Argentina; their rulers are already on all fours. Did anybody believe Juan Manuel Santos’ tale of The Peace (La Paz)? They will go with their rusty tanks to shell their brothers.

The media war is colossal; a great deal of distorted information has been created to guarantee the manipulation of the lukewarm. Because when it comes to defend the peoples sovereignty there’s no middle ground, one in life is either fish or fowl. In the case of Venezuela, one is with her or with the enemy, one cannot be impartial and remain silent, because to do so, is to conceal the extermination of Historical Memory, the dignity and identity of the peoples; their chosen democratic decision.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro 

It would have been so easy for Cristina the following day after finishing her presidential term in Argentina, to grab her odds and sods, and go abroad; after all, as the head of the government, she had fulfilled with what it was expected from her. Dilma would have done the same thing after the coup d’état against her; the easiest thing to do, to leave and not to look back. But they both stayed and not to be idle, the same as Lula who has been indefatigable.

As political beings, and at a time when most bend their knees, these are clear examples of conviction and historical responsibility. It is fundamental, political awareness is not learned, it is born when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro 

The north is not always the United States, the north, for migrants and displaced people is a distant place where they go in search of a utopia. Forced by the circumstances which are the result of the ineffectiveness of a state, an historical oppressive system, and an inhuman and insensitive society.

Pushed by the circumstances they migrate from the town to the capital or to another country, and these change their lives. Since the moment they step out their nests, they will never be the same again. Something breaks up, something so valuable and intimate which is impossible to reconstruct and recover. It vanishes and breaks us up in two, a before and an after; it returns from time to time in the sighs of nostalgia. And like the memories, it can’t be touched it.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro 

Since the beginning the patriarchal system has imposed upon us the way we should walk or sit, everything regarding the role of gender, not to mention behaviors since they come in categories according to stereotypes and prejudices; by upbringing patterns or because we as grownups chose to register them to our own convenience.

In this life there is nothing more damaging than the sexist and misogynist patriarchal pattern which has been exacted upon us as a society. Potential mother, proclaim the Mother’s Day greetings to women who do not have children, as if all women, by the simple fact of their gender, should become mothers no matter what. When it is known that a single woman had sex before marriage, they say, that woman is of ill repute, not worthy. And the man? He’s a big shot -the more women he has on his list. But here there is a detail, what about the man who is different from the average? Surely he is a fagot, a queer, a pretty boy, and an endless number of epithets which are regarded as normal in a society which has made of disrespect, insult and violence a way of life.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro

At this time in any street, bar, corner, home and brushwood of Latin America, a girl, a teenager and a woman is being raped, in the next five minutes dozens more will be abused, by noon will be hundreds and by the evening, thousands . Most of them will be beaten, many murdered in hate crimes, some will disappear and nothing will ever be known about them, possibly they will die in the hells of human trafficking, and of others their bodies will appear dismembered in any street, in a garbage bag or a sack. Of those girls, adolescents and women who have been raped, hundreds will become pregnant.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro

As of late human rights defenders call us domestic helpers, to lessen the blow, but call a spade a spade: we are maidservants, our function is to serve.

From there on, we can break down the gamut of abuses experienced for those of us who work in domestic service and maintenance. No matter the country, the reality of the servants is the same everywhere. We are not going to feign innocence, and to point an accusing finger at the United States as the cause of all our ills. In India, there are castes, in Latin America, the colonized minds, and so we got every country and continent, each with its own evils.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro

April 8 marked one month since the femicide of 41 Guatemalan girls whom the state of Guatemala raped and burned alive. And also, on April 8 appeared the body of Micaela Garcia, an Argentine girl member of the Evita Movement, who had disappeared a few days ago. Twenty one years old Micaela, was a student of Physical Education, and was very concerned about the outcasts, the black ones, those that classism detests. She was raped and murdered by a serial rapist who was released by a judge because, according to him, all he sufferred was “natural perversity.”

In the same country, just a few months ago, in October 2016, Lucia Perez, 16, was drugged and murdered. The forensics discovered that she had been raped by the vagina and by the anus, not only with the penis, but also with a stick introduced in her sexual organs, stick that bore her body. She died of unbearable pain. The death of Lucia angered the Argentine people, who called for a march, the #NiUnaMenos, to which the whole continent joined.

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Translated by Marvin Najarro

In these moments of joy and celebration in Latin America for the triumph of Alianza País, it is necessary to remember that everything in contemporary history began with the illusion of The Niño Arañero, the seller of papaya sweets in the streets of his native Venezuela; I summarize his origin because we are made of Historical Memory and identity. Children like Chávez are born one every five hundred years and they pass through the earth to mark the peoples’ history.

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Translated y Marvin Najarro

Many of us would rather live in our bubble and close our eyes to reality, remain passive, turn away and remain silent. This in relation to government corruption, and the ineffectiveness of a failed state, to systematic violence and impunity. Influence peddling and manipulation by the media. We prefer to stay at the margins in the face of injustice, because it is more comfortable not to get involved, because getting involved demands respect for oneself and for others, and above all: honesty, responsibility and integrity.

And we are not prepared to risk our skin for others, we did not learn of solidarity and of collectivity. We naively believe that it will never touch us, that it only happens to others: to those who are up to no good.

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