Categoría: Inglés

The Break of Dawn

,

Translated  by Katrina Hassan During the last three years of my elementary school, my days were spent wearing donkey ears during recess time.  I had to face the wall, looking towards the classrooms. I was punished every single recess time, every day, without fail. I didn’t even get to enjoy one day of play. I always wished and yearned for more than my life circumstances could permit. I always dreamed of liberty and equality at a young age. I was a tremendously wild girl that didn’t fit the norm. I was full of energy and thought of myself as part of…

Continuar leyendo…

Guatemala: The Silence that Kills

,

Translated  by Marvin Najarro For generations we have been told, since post-dictatorship times, that a closed mouth catches no flies, that is why we hang ourselves to it so shamelessly, because it is not about the fear our grandparents lived through during the dictatorships, but about turning a blind eye when the violence is experienced by the indigenous peoples who have always been seen as the servants at the service of the urban mestizos. They have been the most beaten, impoverished, and exploited to the point of exhaustion; the most massacred. If there are people who have been abused in Latin…

Continuar leyendo…

The Herders We Have Become

,

Translated  by Katrina Hassan In Guatemala, the land where racists, xenophobes, homophobes, corrupt, and classists abound. To be black is worse than to be indigenous. Blacks are at the bottom of the social classes and also in the human rights department. Nobody wants to have a black friend, employer or teacher, wife and or kids. As unbelievable as it seems, the native people who have also been exploited and excluded, they want nothing to do with the black people.  Oh, the irony! In Guatemala, black people are only good for one thing. Everyone is dying to have a black lover, but…

Continuar leyendo…

Resistance Through Writing and Art

,

Translated  by Marvin Najarro My written expression was born out of my lack of verbal expression. I have never been able to communicate with humans; worlds and erupting volcanoes inhabit inside me, but on the outside I am an iceberg; coldness in itself. It is hard for me to approach people, I am not shy, on the contrary, I am bold, fluent with words thanks to my Alma Mater; the marketplace where I grew up selling ice creams. That experience taught me to go out and make a living at a fast pace; shyness does not help to survive. So, thanks…

Continuar leyendo…

The Homeland of the Undocumented

,

 Translated  by Marvin Najarro After the fence, the homeland becomes a perennial longing. The undocumented know this more than anyone else. It becomes that old letter of paper worn out by so much folding and unfolding. It is in the evocation of rainy days, of the milpa growing, of fresh chipilín flowers and the aroma of coffee cooked in a clay pot. The fog of the land left behind on the other side of the fence crosses the borders and seeps through the crevices in the windows of the skyscrapers where the generations who had to emigrate, because in their own…

Continuar leyendo…

Social Networks Progressives

,

 Translated  by Marvin Najarro Latin America is infested with formidable social networks progressives; some with a thicker skin claim to be revolutionaries. As in times past, when paper put up with everything that was written on it, now it is the social networks. They are the catalyst par excellence of our human mediocrity. They say that anyone has social networks nowadays, but no, not anyone, only those who have access to a computer, a smart phone or a tablet, those who have the economy to pay for internet at home, the people, the hoi polloi, do not even have access to…

Continuar leyendo…

Dignifying the Arrabal

,

Translated  by Katrina Hassan Historically, in the classist and racist societies, the arrabal or the “hood” is where all the evils of the world collide. This is why, whoever comes from the hood, has to be a thief, abuser, racketeer, rapist, murderer and every other accusation that a person can think of. To be rid of these labels is a titanic feat. The stigma is part of the arrabal DNA. To be from the hood is an impediment for getting a good job, to study and to have interpersonal relationships outside of your own kind. People view those coming from the…

Continuar leyendo…

The Assyrian Man and My Bamboo Sticks

,

Translated  by Marvin Najarro I am trying to find bamboo sticks to tie down the sunflower stems which are growing and are already bending over. I walk along the shelves full of pots with summer varieties, flamboyant colors, different types of yellow, and the green bottle or green avocado of the leaves. Fuchsia and pitaya colors and bright orange ones. Older adults are hired temporarily to take care for the flowers in the nursery; they water them, remove the dry leaves and carefully place the flowers on the shelves. The young workers are in the topsoil and fertilizer area carrying and…

Continuar leyendo…