brenda-roja

Poema #1

Madre, yo recuerdo el sonido de ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Madre, yo recuerdo el olor de
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Madre, yo recuerdo el color de
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Madre, yo te recuerdo.

Madre me has ensenado
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Madre me has protegido
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Madre me has hecho
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Madre me has hecho.
Poema #2


Madre tu eres
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Madre tu eres
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Madre tu eres
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Madre tu eres
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Madre tu eres mi
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Poema #3

Madre mia, en las mananas vos siempre

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Madre mia, en las tardes largas vos siempre

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Madre mia en las noches vos

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Madre mia toda mi vida vos

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Y toda mi vida yo

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Poema #4

Yo soy de abuelas quienes son

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Yo soy de mujeres quienes son

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Yo soy de una madre quien es

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I love working with the nuns. I am back logged on reflections. Down the way, somewhere on this blog you’ll see images of the retreat we did on the weekend of April 18th.
In Zacualpa 80% of the population was massacred within the last 30 years. It is an indigenous place women walk barefoot, feet on the earth, wearing rough husks of hand woven cloth: A tight red band of a huipil cord holding up a long black corte. A wide band of crimson woven across the hips. Red panels falling like cardinal´s wings off the collarbones of their blusas.
Elders here still kneel to pick up corn kernels scattered on the ground. Corn is sacred. Our bodies are formed from corn like masa pulled and plied by the hands of those we love and hate, submit to and defy, pull close and push away…. Baked over fire.. The alchemy of a gold tortilla from which wood fire has burned away all else…..
In the center of the town is a convent behind an old imposing cathedral. Its one of the few churches I can kneel in whole heartedly. The spirit of the place is powerful. It has the singular effect of calling you back to your humanity.
During the 80’s it was taken over by the military and turned into a detention center. The floor of the parish was broken so the the Pacha Mama could drink the blood of those who perished there. Many of the bodies were thrown into a dry well next to the friars’ quarters including the bodies of a mother and her infant child. The mother was impaled with a stick running the length in front of her spine.
I have to stop often when I hear people talk about the war and try to find the space in my heart to hold it and honor it but I find that I am too small. It overwhelms me. I am left shell shocked. A shell that exploded all of my notions trying to explain away the existence of good and evil in the world. The ridiculousness of karma. As if anyone could have ever earned the fate that so many met in this place.

A couple weeks ago, in my free time apart from my ArtCorps commitment, I went to design and teach a workshop with the sisters, specifically Sister Ana Maria. It went very well to say the least. It was all boys. All from the rural areas. All indigenous. The sister is particularly concerned that they leave home very young to go and cut sugarcane on costal plantations. They do not study and ruin their bodies early with the 16 hour days and minimal pay. They are also the sons and grandsons of the most effected populations of the war: of guerrilleros and of those caught in the cross fire.
We started the the meeting off gently. The K’iche by tradition, aren’t big talkers, even less so in an atmosphere that is essentially one of post-tramatic stress disorder on the cultural level.
We started out slow. Dipping the kids hands in paint and making nametags using their handprints… Making journals out of paper trash bags… We played a lot of popular education games as I recently discovered a pop ed publishing house called equipo maiz. They are out of El Salvador and publish a lot of accessible texts in Spanish on free trade, menstruation, popular education, globalization, privatization, etc. etc. They have a great emphasis on having fun. (Social justice otherwise is just a big drag) I worked out a curriculum for the weekend using a lot of games that slowly increased the level of comfort within the group (as much as that can genuinely be possible within a stretch of a few hours) I really liked the nuns technique of getting people to lie on their backs and scream. It seemed to get them more OK with talking. As well as having them slap different parts of their bodies and make funny noises. Who says Catholicism can’t be fun too?
We created our ^altar^ which is as usual, a circle of pine needles laid out on the floor. The kids adorned a cross with flowers. Not just any cross though, a cross covered in images of working class people: mothers in their homes, teachers in their classrooms, campesinos in their fields, etc. The philosophy of religion here is radically different. The sister told me that Jesus was god’s dream: the dream of bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.
Switching to the Christian idiom I designed the opening workshop around the idea that the power, strength and love of god lives inside of us but that we create masks to hide it. All of the boys created a paper mask expressing their individual insecurities. I put Debajo del Agua`s “Saca la Mascara Ponte de Pie tu camino t’esta llamando, Anda con calma pacienca y fe tu destino t’esta esperando” on loop in the background. The Sister Ana Maria and I worked out an acoustic remix and had the kids one by one come up and repeat the lyrics with us as they hung their mask on the wall.
We closed by having prayer around the pine needles. Each boy received their own individual candle. We turned off the lights and had them one by one blow out their flames until only one remained, the room grew increasingly dark. ”This is what happens when you hide your power” we said:
Romans 8 For god did not give you a spirit of slavery or cowardice but a spirit of strength…. A spirit of hijos herideros del reino de dios.
The lit their candles again and the room grew bright. We raised our candles to the ceiling and together said: God is the light of the world, we are the light of the world, I am the light of the world, I will not live behind masks.
The next day began easily. A smattering of trust games. Team building games. Etc. I worked with the kids on a technique I had developed in the states. A weird combination of muralism, theatre, and therapy. Sister Ana Maria told them the story of the eagle that thought it was a chicken because it was raised to be a chicken. The story of how it fell from a mountain twice because it didn’t believe it could fly. Until the third time it flew: Fly eagle! The sky is yours! Whispered the campesino into its ear.
I asked the kids to get into groups of 4 and took them into a dark room. Facing me (so that no one could look at eachother and get more skiddish than they actually are) I had them sculpt their “chicken” using their bodies, their fears and insecurities. Using flashlights me and the K’iche translator drew their silhouettes on the papered wall, They took the giant group silhouettes and filled them with drawings and poetry. We had an “art exhibition” and had the kids walk around and reflect on the striking similarity between all of the images and all of the poetry…….

After a decent size break we called the kids back to the table where they made bright stars covered with their dreams. Some of their dreams were as simple as reading a book. Others wanted to study. To get a career. To finish high school. They were very bold dreams. Not many people in their communities had followed even the simplest of dreams. There is a persistent current of fatalism in the interior of Guatemala. Watching the boys work gave me the hope that they could swim upstream.
We hung the dream stars off cords in the outdoor corridor. It was beautiful sight to watch the boys reach way up high to tie their dream on the line and to watch the stars fluttering in the wind.
That night the masks and silhouettes were burned in front of the chapel were the old well once stood. The retreat ended with the novel phenomenon of roasting marshmallows and telling riddles. I watched them eat in silence and the translator told me that for them to eat has the same significance and feeling as going into a church. Silence. Reverence. Gratitude.
We spoke about our lives. She never had children. Saved from the fate of being perpetually pregnant. I told her mine. She spoke about the importance of our wounds and how they are fuel for the lucha, the struggle, of serving others. She told me more about the story of the well as we moved a ceramic platter full of tiny burning candles left over from the children’s evening prayers into the capilla. I stayed for a moment after she left. Kissed my fingers and touched the ground. Again overwhelmed in the little stone chapel no more than 10’x10’X8’. A marble copy of La Pieta looked down at me from a nook in the wall. One of the boys stepped in to thank me for the work I had done and I drew him into my chest and poured as much love from my heart as I possibly could from my heart. I felt such a need to give all the love I could to fight such ugliness. There is such devastating cruelty in the world and such powerful humanity growing side by side.