Categoría: Inglés

Translated  by Marvin Najarro  When listening to Luna de Xelajú, the chirimía and the tum, or when marveling at the gigantic kites of Santiago Sacatepéquez we experience a feeling of nostalgia. When the aboriginal peoples’ multicolored clothes leave us speechless, stunned, suddenly a certain something takes hold of us, akin to a kind of pride for a multicultural Guatemala; it’s what we export: something called folklore. The indigenous peoples are used for that, to be the folklore of Guatemala before the world. Those designs embroidered on pieces of clothing worn by the indigenous peoples are seen in blankets, napkins, wallets,…

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Translated  by Marvin Najarro  They made us believe that progress is in cement; that cement is progress. They made us believe that industrialization means prosperity of societies. That in order to industrialize, deforestation has to be ruthlessly implemented and entire peoples destroyed: stealing their water, land, food and any vital means of subsistence. These peoples, we were told, do not matter, and if they resist, they must be eliminated by sheer repression, that’s the reason of genocides that afflict the collective memory. They told us that civilization is a necessary concept for the survival of humanity, and that we the…

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Translated  by Marvin Najarro    The most visible imprint of the dictatorships imposed by the United States in Latin America can be seen every day in the thousands of migrants who are forced to leave their own countries trying to save their lives, and obtain shelter and food in the United States, which is presented by the experts in deception as the mecca, as the water that quench thirst; like the dreamland where all dreams come true.   A Latin America impoverished by post dictatorship neoliberal governments, made up of corrupt and mobs of looters who have created drug and…

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Translated  by Marvin Najarro  Since humanity’s early days, history has been trampled on by patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, classist, and xenophobic beings and, in the particular case of Latin America, colonized minds have been in charge of disregarding women like Evita who never fit into the patriarchal yoke, and who were never seduced by the honey of power, and on the contrary, were their greatest critics. Evita is the poetry of the rebellion of the peoples. The patriarchy, which knows no ideology places her in history as a passionate being; it has never seen her as an intellectual being with…

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Translated  by Marvin Najarro  In 1958, the chronicler and poet of the favela, Carolina Maria de Jesus was discovered almost by chance and in her own habitat; she dedicated herself to portray in her diary her day to day life in the favelas of Brazil: A harsh reality, of misery, abuse, exclusion and, a reality, too, of dreams, loyalty and sheer love. Little known in Latin America, Carolina Maria de Jesus captured in her writings the essence of the Brazilian slums; the same which in a display of rapturous love have taken to the streets to defend a worker who…

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Translated  by Marvin Najarro  They think that there is no spirit left, that they have been able to pulverize the yearnings, and uprooted the saffron from the field. They think they have left the trees barkless, helpless on eroded land. They believe that everything is an avalanche. But every wild cypress tree, sprouting up in the rocks, shows them the opposite. They think that they have silenced the song of the goldfinch, but the flocks crossing the horizon show them that there are trills impossible to kill and that there are beauties and dazzling liberties that no hatred can obscure.

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