[-empyre-] memory and chatarsis and struggle

[Ana Valdés]

Some years ago I translated a book written by a Swedish journalist and
writer, Monica Zak. She spoke good Spanish and wanted make interviews with
refugees from Guatemala living in Mexico. The struggle and the poverty for
Central American refugees is not new, its as old as the continent, it
started with the Spaniards and continue today with American corporations
and governments.
Monicas book was written for a young audience, maybe between 10 and 16
years old. The name was Puman's daughter and it was the story of a young
peasant who lived in the border between Guatemala and Mexico, the
Cuchumatanes mountains. The place was isolated, the name was Yalabochoj and
it was inhabited by indians speaking Chuj, maybe twentythousand people
speaks it.
The girl was the witness of a massacre, the massacre of San Francisco. bn50
civilian, elderly, women, men and toddlers were killed in the most atrocius
way, burned alive, killed with machetes. The people who killed them were
paramilitary soldiers trained by US experts in counter terrorism and the
goal was to punish any population who could help the guerilla.
The girl, who lived in a neighbooring village, hided inside a pyramide in
the central square of the town and saw with her own eyes what happened.
When it dawned and all were dead she fled through the mountains to warn her
village they were the next target of the paramiliary killing spree. Her
village, maybe twohundred people, fled with the little they could carry
until they reached Mexico and become refugees.

Mexico had at that time almost one million refugees from Guatemala,
Salvador and Honduras.
'
Monica Zak was so impressed with the young girls tale she come back to
Sweden and wrote a book and made a film. Both the book and the movie were
great successes and she asked me to translate it. It was very painful to
translate it, I cried a lot, it was so easy written and you heard the voice
of the girl telling the horror history without any emotions.

When the book was translated an Guatemalan publisher house bought the
rights and they proposed me and Monica to travel to Yalambochoj the place
where the people fled from and the place where they were now back, after
the Peace treaties between gerillan and the governent were signed.

We should give back the book to the indians and the children should use it
as school book.

The trip between Guatemala City and Yalambochoj was difficult, we sat on a
little school bus donated by some charity or by some NGO, three adults
sharing two seats made for  12-years old. The bus climbed painfully among
mountains and cliffs, a beautiful landscape, many Indian women took the bus
with machetes on their backs and small children sleeping on improvised
rucksacks. They headed to the crops of cofee, their work day were long and
hard.

We arrived and after a small ceremony we gave the book to the parents of
the young girl who was the book's teller. She died as refugee in Mexico and
never was back in Guatemala but her parents and siblings made it.

The book woke up difficult memories and we had long conversations about how
memory has an own life, how memories of sadness and pain create as well
vinculations and links, how we weave with greys whites and blacks a
multicolor quilt.

Ana

-- 
https://anavaldes.wordpress.com/
www.twitter.com/caravia158
http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0




<http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/>

cell Sweden +4670-3213370
cell Uruguay +598-99470758


"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20190410/e60b8cb8/attachment.html>