Margaret Randall

RUINS CD

Margaret Randall — 2011-06-21T17:49:56Z

Selection of poems from Margaret Randall's RUINS (University of New Mexico Press, 2011) recorded by Daniel Staniforth and Rebsie Fairholm. Original music composed and/or arranged by Staniforth and performed by Staniforth and Fairholm, with vocals, cello, double bass, guitars, ukulele, synthesizers, drums and Celtic harp.

RUINS - poems

Margaret Randall — 2011-06-07T17:07:04Z

In Search of the Next Sun

At Teotihuácan I watch helpless as you slip away,

are sucked, taken

from this time into that other.

You walk beside me,

children and grandchildren scattered oblivious

between pyramids of Sun and Moon

along broad Avenue of the Dead,

but I know it is only your shell accompanies me

silent and pale as chalk.

Later you try to describe the place you escaped

with such effort: brittle and cold

between two millennia gone and now.

How you tore yourself from the witness

of your hologram eyes,

obsidian knife entering breast

after breast, blood-drenched hearts

lifted from darkness to sky

in search of the next sun.

Birthplace of gods, at its moment of greatest glory

a pulsing city of pyramids

and butterfly palaces,

home to 200,000 Otomi, Zapotec,

Mixtec, Maya, Nahua and Totonac,

craftspeople, potters,

worshippers of Quetzalcoatl:

feathered serpent who gave them

source and ordinary life.

Something terrible happened here,

was all you could say

when you finally made it back to me,

something unspeakable,

and you did not speak of it

until our poet friend

told her own near-death experience

caught at the pyramid's highest point,

unable to descend.

At Chaco too you feel the terror,

especially at Pueblo Bonito: Great House

of 600 rooms holding central kivas

in its arms, incomplete circle

of walls, small doors and high windows

framing passing clouds to capture beauty

camouflaging what happened 800 years ago

when this was the center,

hub of roads stretching to cardinal winds.

And at Canyon de Chelly, Spanish bungling

of the Navajo Tségi—“inside the rock”

where in 1805 at the place two streams converge

a shattered cave remains as evidence.

Invaders massacred women, children, old men,

and two centuries later

their fear inhabits your body,

you draw into yourself

the screams cutting desert air that day.

In a thousand years if we are still searching

for the next sun

I wonder if certain visitors to Auschwitz,

Ramallah, Baghdad, Kabul, Soweto,

Morazán, Acteal or Port-au-Prince

alive to what happened there

may feel themselves pulled into a dimension

between their time and ours, fear they will

not escape what we still do to one another.

LOST & FOUND: Selections from EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN 1962-1964

Margaret Randall — 2011-05-22T19:49:12Z

LOST AND FOUND: Pages from EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN (English, first three years: 1962-1964, selection and commentary by Margaret Randall)

EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN was a bilingual quarterly of poetry, short story, essay, visual art, letters and various combinations of these, published out of Mexico City from 1962 to 1969. Mexico had long been rich in artistic tradition and the sixties was a decade in which young artists in many parts of the world pushed the limits of conceptual and stylistic possibility. The journal's name combined the jazz horn of the north and the bright feathers of Mesoamerica's Quatzalcoatl, signifying a mix of cultures from two hemispheres, although during its life El Corno—as it came to be known—also published work from Finland, India, Spain, and many other parts of the world. Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón and I met in the fall of 1961 at the home of U.S. Beat poet Philip Lamantia. Philip and Lucille, the woman who was then his wife, had an apartment in Mexico City's exuberant Zona Rosa, an area near the city center where artists and writers congregated at people's homes and in small cafes. I remember especially the deli café owned by Georgian poet Jacobo Glantz, The old man sat at a table in the back, pounding away at his Hebrew typewriter, its carriage moving in the opposite direction from those on which most of us wrote. He was generous with the younger writers and often fed us without charge. This was a time of typewriters, carbon paper, and snail mail service, when even a long distance telephone call was beyond the reach of most young poets. Lamantia's apartment became a meeting place for artists and writers from several countries: Mexico's Juan Martínez and Carlos Cofeen Serpas were often there. Ernesto Cardenal arrived from Nicaragua; this was long before he took his priest's vows. Raquel Jodorowsky visited from Peru. Among the U.S. Americans I remember Harvey Wolin and Howard Frankl. Through seemingly endless nights we read to one another, often barely understanding the other's language and almost always missing hidden historical and cultural references. It soon became clear that we needed a forum where we could read new work in the original and in translation, a forum free of the strictures so often imposed by the academies or schools then in vogue. Sergio and I fell in love, married, and founded the journal, which quickly became a vibrant part of the renaissance of independent cultural endeavors characterizing the 1960s and ‘70s (Harvey Wolin was part of the endeavor until its first issue appeared. Mondragón left during its last year, when U.S. poet Robert Cohen assumed co-editorship). We prided ourselves in showcasing work by communist guerrillas, Catholic priests, indigenous poets, consecrated masters and those publishing for the first time, irrespective of whatever style or group was fashionable. Quality was our criteria. We adjusted the page to the requirements of the word rather than the other way around. We printed as much translation as possible, making such poets as Allen Ginsberg available for the first time in Spanish and Ernesto Cardenal in English. Each year's final issue was a book by a single author, in completely bi-lingual facing-page format. We also featured important anthologies from a single country or, occasionally, a single poetic movement. El Corno also eventually added a series of chapbooks to its imprint. It wasn't easy to launch such a publication. At first we faced the incredulity and lethargy of the poets as well as the disbelief of potential advertisers and sponsors. When our first issue appeared in January, 1962, people began taking us more seriously. Mexico had a history of governmental support for the arts, and we soon had patronage from Bellas Artes, the Ministry of Education, even the Office of the Presidency. Important cultural figures, like publisher Arnaldo Orfila, poet and Secretary of State José Goroztisa, and respected intellectuals Carlos Pellicer, Rosario Castellanos, Mathias Goeritz and Leonora Carrington offered their support. We wanted to maintain our independent criteria, and relied as well on worldwide subscriptions and bookstore distribution supplemented with benefit arts sales and poetry readings when times got rough. (Mexican governmental agencies supported us only as long as we refrained from criticizing national policy.) For a real sense of what the journal offered and what it meant in the world of letters of its time, one would need an anthology many times the size of this sampler. Each of our 31 issues averaged 200 pages, roughly half in Spanish half in English. So, to begin with, the Spanish contents would have to be featured as well. For reasons of space I have chosen to reference only the English here. Secondly, I would have included some of the editors' notes, which give a sense of where we found ourselves at each stage of our journey. I will try to illustrate this with brief descriptions of each issue. And I would have wanted to include prose: one of Laurette Séjourné's insightful essays on pre-Columbian Mexico, a fragment of Henry Miller's “Nexus,” Dan Georgakas' collage interview with James Baldwin, or an essay by Edmundo Desnoes. Because of page limitations, I made the decision to reproduce only poetry and letters originally published in English, and only work from the journal's first three years. El Corno is out of print, complete runs are extremely rare (although a number of libraries hold them). Perhaps at some later date someone will take it upon her- or himself to anthologize “the best” of the journal's eight-year production. I hope they do, because such an anthology would not only provide a look at a journal that utterly defied national and continental boundaries during a time of great cultural richness; but also bring to light many early texts by writers who went on to gain international recognition, revisiting ideas as relevant today as they were then. The following excerpts are, indeed, lost and found.

Testigo de Piedra

Margaret Randall — 2011-05-22T19:26:22Z

Prefacio

Testigo de piedra nació en Kiet Seel, una ruina de nuestros ancestros pueblo ubicada en la parte norte del estado de Arizona cerca de la frontera con Utah. Se encuentra bajo la jurisdicción del Navajo National Monument y la maneja el Servicio Nacional de Parques y la Nación Navajo. Cada año, desde fines de mayo hasta los primeros días de septiembre, el parque permite que veinte personas caminen diariamente las 18 millas de ida y vuelta, y que de cinco en cinco entren en la ruina acompañadas por un guía. Antes de que realizara esta caminata, y después, los sitios antiguos me han hecho ahondarme en mí misma, revelando conexiones a menudo ocultas por debajo del ritmo y la distracción de lo que solimos llamar progreso. Lugar —no sólo los lugares discretos de origen, lenguaje, creencia, niñez, comunidad, paisaje, y cultura, sino la misma tierra como hábitat capaz de sostener la vida— se encuentra amenazado hoy como nunca antes. Esta amenaza no es pasiva; nosotros somos quienes la hemos puesto en peligro, quienes abusamos de ella, la destruimos. Hoy en día la codicia a corto plazo triunfa sobre una visión abarcadora: el combustible fósil ataca un medio ambiente predecible, la capa de ozono se deshace, el hielo polar se derrite, y en el año 2005 la temperatura de la tierra subió entre tres y cuatro grados farenheit —el incremento más grande desde hace 400 o posiblemente 2000 años. La nuestra es la era del asesinato de las semillas ancestrales y de la alteración genética de lo que comemos. Nuestras actitudes colectivas hacia los desastres naturales y los que son provocados por el ser humano son extrañamente distintas, como si ambos no afectasen sobre todo a los más empobrecidos. Este libro comenzó siendo una meditación sobre un sitio específico, pronto se extendió a otros lugares importantes en mi vida, y finalmente a esa cosa que se llama Tierra, que debemos salvar si no queremos perecer con ella.

Margaret Randall Albuquerque, Nuevo México, Verano de 2010

Testigo de Piedra en español

La idea de traducir este libro nació a finales de 2006, cuando se publicó el primer poemario de Margaret Randall traducido al español en México: Dentro de otro tiempo. Reflejos del Gran Cañón (Alforja-Conaculta). Ese proyecto —que traduje también— culminó con un viaje al Gran Cañón que realizamos juntas Margaret, su compañera Barbara Byers (autora de las ilustraciones de aquel libro) y yo en 2007. En ese recorrido viajamos desde Nuevo México hasta las escarpadas hondonadas de Arizona, y visitamos los sitios antiguos de Wupatki y las construcciones de la prodigiosa Mary Colter. La traducción de Stones Witness fue el devenir natural de esos recorridos. Estas páginas están pobladas del conocimiento que impregna sitios antiguos lo mismo de Estados Unidos que de países asiáticos, México o Sudamérica. Es también el resultado de un intercambio de información y experiencias profundamente enriquecedor con Margaret, y que ha dado lugar ya a varias ideas que han derivado en frutos como Testigo de piedra. A pesar de su larga trayectoria de vida en México y en otros países de Latinoamérica, la obra de Margaret Randall no ha sido lo suficientemente traducida ni divulgada. Por ello este nuevo libro se suma a esa intención por dar a conocer su obra, vasta en contenido y profundidad. Una intención que, gracias a la generosidad y entrañable lucidez de Margaret, continuará acercando su voz a estos contextos.

María Vázquez Valdez Ciudad de México, Verano de 2010

Memoria de Samotracia

La niña pequeña, con un abrigo azul marino de cuello blanco estilo Peter Pan, va de la mano de su abuelo cuando cruzan la entrada principal del Museo Metropolitano de Arte de Nueva York. Ya dentro del edificio podrá soltarse e ir hacia las muchas atracciones que la apasionan. Mientras permanezcas a la vista, dice él. La niña tiene seis o siete años; le llevo seis décadas. El abuelo, que ya tiene más de cuarenta de muerto, me llevaba a menudo al gran museo. Después de un par de horas en las salas de exposición, íbamos por malteadas a la cafetería, o por ostras en su media concha flotando en jugo de limón a una barra de mariscos cercana. Recuerdo estas excursiones con toda la emoción de una pequeña que descubre las maravillas de otras culturas, del arte.

Como niña en el Metropolitano, amaba especialmente el ala egipcia: el rey con la máscara de oro en su sarcófago que se va estrechando hacia los pies. Líneas de figuras irresistibles implicadas en todas las actividades diversas de la vida, siempre representadas de perfil. El gesto magnífico del rostro cincelado de la reina Nefertiti, su mentón levantado levemente en la que puede haber sido mi imagen más temprana de la dignidad femenina. En la Sala del Renacimiento me atrapó la Copa Cellini: un recipiente pequeño de oro y joyas, muy adornado y con forma de concha, que alguna vez contuviera sal en la mesa de la monarquía. El poder de príncipes y princesas para embelesar a los jóvenes.

Mi primer cuento narrado a mano, cuando aprendí a escribir, era acerca de robar exitosamente esta copa de una vitrina cerrada. Pero el impacto más grande durante esas visitas ocurrió justo un momento después de cruzar las vastas puertas principales del museo. Recuerdo y anticipo su repetición. Mirando hacia delante y hacia arriba, vislumbré la figura de la Victoria de Samotracia, la famosa Victoria Alada de la Grecia Helénica.

Tuve que estirar el cuello y levantar mi rostro para admirar su postura majestuosa: esta mujer con cuerpo poderoso de mármol drapeado reveló cada uno de sus músculos y sus curvas. Aun sin brazos, sin cabeza, era hermosa. Más que hermosa, me habló de fuerza: poder y posibilidad. Tal vez ella fue mi primer amor por una mujer, el presentimiento más temprano de mi posterior ser lésbico. Cualquier cosa que la Victoria de Samotracia haya sido para mí entonces, su figura imponente está ligada inextricablemente a esas visitas al Metropolitano cuando era niña.

O tal es la historia que me había acompañado todos estos años.

En marzo de 2004 reservé un día en Nueva York para el Museo Metropolitano. Había regresado muchas veces desde esas visitas en la niñez, pero nunca sola ni con tiempo de vagar libremente, recuperando la experiencia del pasado y preguntando hacia dónde la curiosidad y el gusto guiarían a la mujer que soy ahora. Ya no era la colección egipcia mi interés primario. Las esculturas europeas de terracota del siglo XVIII capturaron mi visión. Y el arte precolombino que he conocido en su sitio original. Los Impresionistas. Van Gogh y Gauguin. Jarrones griegos. Y una satisfacción íntima cuando vi que varios de mis amigos pintores de los años cincuenta ahora exponen su obra en esta institución venerable.

En aquel entonces, pobres y hambrientos de arte, caminábamos hacia la parte norte de la isla desde nuestros estudios y departamentos sin agua caliente, ubicados en el lado sureste de la ciudad, hasta el museo; pocos se atrevieron a soñar que serían incluidos en esos muros. Ahora estos momentos yendo de un ala a otra fueron generosos, deliciosos. Pero una sola ausencia lentamente se volvió un vacío. ¿Dónde estaba la Victoria de Samotracia, esa mujer que amé como niña y cuya imagen llevé en mí todos estos años?

Todas las respuestas fueron insatisfactorias. En el módulo de información no tenían la menor idea de qué estaba hablando; alguien finalmente me dio un folleto gratis: “Si lo tenemos, lo encontrará aquí”. Me acerqué a un guardia de edad avanzada, pensando que seguramente él recordaría a la mujer magnífica en lo alto de la escalinata. Me dijo que había trabajado en el museo durante 46 años y ninguna estatua estuvo nunca donde yo señalaba tan insistentemente. Los museos cambian sus exhibiciones, pero yo no podía imaginarme que éste trasladara cuatro toneladas de mármol a alguna cámara del sótano. Entre más pensaba en mi estatua desaparecida, más contrariada y desorientada me sentía.

Con más de setenta años he adquirido el hábito de examinar casi diario y con detenimiento los obituarios del New York Times. Ahora el Internet lo hace más fácil. Las más de las veces, un amigo o conocido aparece. Así es como encontré el 16 de octubre de 2004, una nota necrológica para “Phyllis William Lehmann, de 91 años, la Arqueóloga de Samotracia”. No el amigo o el conocido, pero sí la mención de Samotracia.

“La doctora Lehmann era una autoridad acerca de los monumentos y la arquitectura de Samotracia, una remota isla montañosa en el norte del Egeo. La isla era considerada crucial en el desarrollo del arte y la arquitectura del periodo Helénico, que duró desde la muerte de Alejandro Magno en el año 323 a.C. hasta la mitad del primer siglo a.C. Samotracia era el centro de uno de los cultos de misterio más famosos de la Grecia antigua; sus rituales se practicaban en los edificios imponentes conocidos como el Santuario de los Grandes Dioses…”

El artículo era sobre las ruinas de Samotracia y acerca del trabajo de la doctora Lehmann ahí, y finalmente, como suelen hacer los obituarios, se refería a la mujer misma y a sus extensos logros. Trabajando en Samotracia en 1949, Phyllis Lehmann hizo uno de los descubrimientos más importantes: una alta estatua de mármol de Nike, la diosa de la victoria, que data del siglo II a.C. Para situar el descubrimiento, el periodista del Times mencionaba que esta era la tercera Victoria encontrada en el lugar. Lehmann dejó su descubrimiento en esa tierra, que ahora reside en el museo del sitio de Samotracia. La segunda, una copia romana, fue descubierta en la década de 1870 por arqueólogos austriacos, y reclamada por Viena. Pero la primera fue encontrada por el arqueólogo francés Charles Champoiseau en 1863. Él la llevó, con el espíritu del botín colonialista, de regreso a París, “donde saluda a visitantes del Louvre desde la cima de una escalera imponente…”

El fino mármol utilizado en estas Nikes y en otras estatuas del Egeo y más allá vino de la isla de Paros en Las Cícladas. El mármol de Paros viajando de las canteras a las manos apasionadas de los escultores, desde Samotracia a París, desde el culto antiguo a mi corazón latiendo aceleradamente.

Mi estatua. Mi escalera. Y así se resolvió el misterio. Nunca vi a la Victoria Alada en el Metropolitano de Nueva York, y no era una niña pequeña. Debo haber tenido una visión dramática de ella en mi visita a París cuando era joven. Tenía 17 años cuando acompañé a mis padres al Louvre. El recuerdo vívido del dolor en el cuello por tener que levantar hacia arriba mi rostro de niña para mirar por encima de esos escalones de mármol a la mujer de cuerpo decidido, no era, a fin de cuentas, absoluto. ¿Pero cómo hicieron las células de mi cuerpo el cambio? ¿Cómo se volvió este recuerdo una parte tan importante en mi viaje? ¿Cómo 17 llegaron a ser seis o siete? ¿Cómo el tiempo lineal se volvió tan no lineal en mi convicción?

Los sitios arqueológicos me han sumergido en su silencio y misterio. Me atrapan cuando me paro entre muros medio destruidos que estuvieron habitados hace ochocientos o dos mil años. Mis manos se alargan para acariciar un pedazo de alfarería rota, y soy transportada imaginando quién la hizo y lo que pudo haber contenido. Cuando me paro en la cúspide azotada por los vientos de Sacsayhuamán, con las piernas abiertas hacia cada uno de los lados del ojo del puma, quiero saber lo que el inca experimentaba al mirar desde ese lugar sobre el sitio que era entonces y sigue siendo la ciudad de Cuzco.

Cuando camino por las sendas de la selva de Cobá y una familia maya surge de la espesa vegetación, imagino a la mujer y a sus niños como sus antepasados debieron ser. Cuando me paro en la orilla del nicho arenisco de Kiet Seel, volteo y miro hacia el piso, cañón abajo, y me imagino como un miembro de esa comunidad anasazi hace ocho siglos. ¿Me pregunté entonces qué yace más allá del riachuelo de plata? ¿Lo supe?

No creo que el tiempo sea lineal. Prefiero una configuración circular o en espiral. Así que me pregunto: ¿por qué esta sacudida a la conciencia —este sentido de la memoria traslapada— cuando descubrí que no fue sino hasta que tuve 17 años, que encontré a la mujer de mármol que amé a los siete?

* Después de publicado este texto, recibí una comunicación de una lectora en Australia informándome que en los años de los cuales escribo, una réplica de la Victoria de Samotracia del Louvre estaba en expuesta en el Museo Metropolitano de Nueva York. Unos meses después, una curadora del mismo museo me confirmó el dato. De hecho mi memoria no me había traicionado. (N. de la A.)

SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH THE CORNFIELDS: new poems

Margaret Randall — 2011-01-03T16:16:15Z

Vallejo's Man Passes with a Loaf of Bread

Menacing courtroom scent

of polished wood

invades my skin

when I revisit

that no-man's land

and all its questions.

Stench of Bismuna's battlefield

floats faint

on trickster wind.

Where I wandered

and with whom

one ferocious November day,

shame of a slap I cannot take back.

More distant yet, mist rises

from orchid-lined ravines

on the road to Cuetzálan,

Totonacan women sit in silence,

green and purple yarn

woven into their hair.

Mexico 1968, blood-red paint

obscured the breasts

of white doves

stenciled on ancient stone.

Or concrete exoskeletons

gaping like sliced egg crates

a decade before

on New York's Lower East Side.

I cannot forget the feeling of freedom

as I drew my first paintbrush

across a page of paper,

first photograph true to my eye,

first poem I wanted to claim

as mine.

Surroundings blur, dates contract,

expand or hover

in places I can no longer access

without an image,

name, date.

The body of every man

I have touched

breathes through my storyline

although my love—a woman—

walks beside me,

committed

as long as we both shall live.

Four times I yearned and stretched

to welcome children

who now have children

of their own.

Four screams, four times

the joy of continuity.

Moving across my own map

I drag imprints of memory

with me as I go,

walk, run, stop

only to disentangle

what is caught

on the barbs of wire fences.

Vallejo's man passes with a loaf

of bread on his shoulder.

A million comrades sound

the rhythm of a single drum

in Revolution Square.

Old fears struggle to hold their own,

memory slips through fingers

and savorings

once salty or sweet

come up pumpkin custard

one day,

street-corner mazorcas the next.

The life I travel threatens

to leave me behind,

confusing a first visit

to Vietnam

with Peru's ancient kingdoms

reasserting themselves

through jungle green.

Moving through my time

I walk, run,

stand still and wait,

dragging the puzzle pieces

with me as I go.

Something's Wrong with the Cornfields

Something's wrong with the cornfields.

In Utah's wide valleys

between red rock walls

wind works

to stir a brush-cut of tassels.

Nothing moves.

Defiant, their strange offering

recalls molded plastic,

each spear exact height

of the next.

Dense thicket of green plants,

identical.

Winds unable to bend a stalk

carry altered seed and pollen.

Chemicals vanquish borer larvae,

inhabit milk of corn-fed cows,

poison those who drink,

erase the butterflies.

We witness the terror

of genetic engineering

seeds ripped from history

splitting threads of continuity.

Earth Mother's hands

tied behind her back.

Memories of the family milpa,

childhood images of Kansas,

India's suiciding farmers.

A threat to generations

teaching us to fear

designer sustenance.

I dream a stash of ancient cobs

chewed clean by teeth

and grit of sand

eight hundred years ago.

Escalante's shallow stone basin

calls me home.

AS IF THE EMPTY CHAIR / COMO SI LA SILLA VACIA

Margaret Randall — 2010-12-12T10:52:16Z

Author's Note

- Throughout Latin America in the 1970s and ‘80s, a new form of state terrorism took root and spread. It came to be known as disappearance: paramilitary forces aligned with national dictatorships, themselves supported and funded by a succession of U.S. administrations and often trained by Israeli experts, kidnapped people from their homes or plucked them off the streets. They were never seen again. They became the desaparecidos of popular discourse, mourned in homes and communities, immortalized in song and poem.

- Disappearance. Disappeared. Strangely passive words to describe such brutality. From the rich Latin American lexicon, we might have invented a word that better fit the crime. What happened instead was that this word shed passivity and took on new meaning, one instantly and painfully recognizable to anyone living on the continent during the last half of the twentieth century.

- The sinister methodology wasn't entirely new. It had been used before in different parts of the world, but rarely as State policy or in such overwhelming numbers. In Argentina alone, 30,000 mostly young people were disappeared, in Guatemala 40,000, in Colombia 28,000. Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia were also profoundly affected. Some countries lost whole generations, their brightest minds, most sensitive and courageous citizens: gone.

- International law has been slow to recognize this crime. It wasn't until July, 2002 that the International Criminal Court ratified the Rome Statute, which states that “forced disappearance,” when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at a civilian population, qualifies as a crime against humanity and isn't subject to a statute of limitation. On December 20, 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Welcome as this recognition is, like so much international law it has had little effect on the ground, for the victims and their families in their ongoing struggle for closure.

- The vast majority of victims of the crime of forced disappearance were kidnapped, illegally detained, tortured, murdered and their corpses hidden. These people simply vanished. Persistent clarification campaigns and forensic evidence tell us they were tortured to death, their bodies often dropped into the ocean from helicopters, abandoned in unmarked graves, or disposed of through other means that render them impossible to find. But there is a vast emotional distance between knowing this intellectually and having a body to bury and mourn. Disappearance not only punished the man or woman fighting for social justice; it also punished their families, communities, and nations. Someone failed to come home, and the long search began: family members made the rounds of prisons, hospitals and morgues; international campaigns were launched. In only a miniscule number of cases these efforts were rewarded with success: very occasionally a life was saved, even more rarely the disappeared person was released from the clutches of those who were trained to lie or remain silent.

- Hope is that most tenuous but tenacious of human emotions. Without a body, hope refuses to die. And it was precisely this hope—and its counterpart, collective frustration—that changed the face of entire populations. I have known families who have kept on searching for their loved ones for decades, unable to give up without a body. I know faces forever wracked by a new type of social schizophrenia: living in a realm of senseless hope even as they get up each morning, go through the motions of an ordinary day, and go to sleep that night, only to repeat the listless habits the next day and the next. I have friends who even today are present at the opening of every newly discovered common grave, hoping at last to answer the question of their beloved's fate. Chilean revolutionary Bautista Van Schouwen is rumored to have told his captors: “You don't know why you torture me but I know why I die.” This conviction sometimes helped victims meet their fate. It rarely helped those they left behind.

- Although the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and ‘80s have been replaced by quasi-democratic governments and, in some cases, excitingly progressive ones, the shadow of disappearance continues to shroud peoples who have been unable to come to terms with this chapter in their history. Some governments have made efforts to confront the phenomenon and its scars with monetary retribution for those who escaped death but suffered in other ways—involving or obviating amnesty for those responsible. They have won conviction and prison for some of the worst criminals. And a number of stunning memorials have been built to help people remember, and to strengthen the hope that “this must never be allowed to happen again.” Each country has dealt, or is dealing, with disappearance according to its particular history and culture, and within the parameters successive administrations have permitted.

- Still, a profound coming to terms with disappearance has eluded those who still suffer—consciously or unconsciously—from its scars. Conservative voting blocs are always there to put forth the “why can't we just forget and move on?” argument. Amnesty is a particularly thorny issue, since those responsible sometimes still hold power, and families often have ex-torturers and victims among their members. Repressive organizations crossed borders, and once a murderer is caught, tried, and convicted, other countries sometimes request extradition. As generations succeed one another and history texts are rewritten to gloss over uncomfortable events, the will to continue the struggle for some sort of justice may fade.

- Women have played an important and inspiring role in this drama. One tragic byproduct of disappearance was torturing parents to death and taking their offspring, or keeping pregnant women alive until their babies were born and then disappearing the mothers. The children left behind were frequently adopted by military families or others involved in the crimes. The grandmothers, famously in Argentina through their movement “The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” but in organizations of the families of the disappeared in other countries as well, began a tenacious effort to find their grandchildren. They marched. They campaigned. And they established DNA banks through which they have been able to identify and reunite close to one hundred lost children with their bereaved grandparents.

- I lived in Latin America from 1961 through 1984, first in Mexico, then Cuba, and finally Nicaragua. I knew dozens of families with one, two, and in one case three disappeared children. Several of the disappeared themselves had been close friends. Another friend has dedicated decades of her life to finding her husband's body. As with so many horrors invented and implemented by humans, the adage “this must never be allowed to happen again” has proven pallid at best. Today, while some Latin American countries continue to struggle with ways to deal with this chapter of their history, in others people are once again being disappeared.

- Why these poems now? Perhaps because the wounds are still raw and the healing so very partial. Disappearance as a sociopolitical phenomenon has long seemed a very personal debt, one I hoped to pay by doing my part in not allowing the memory of lost comrades to dry like dust and blow away. A brief news item reported the trial of one of Argentina's most notorious murderers—the man who happened to be responsible for the torture and disappearance of a friend. This may have been the spark that started this series. The poems began to spill out, and then stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. I wondered if I should include them in a larger collection I was working on at the time. Then I understood that they must stand alone. I dedicate the series to my grandson, Daniel, who is deeply affected by the plight of all beings and lives his life, as far as he is able, in solidarity with them.

Nota de la autora

- Durante las décadas de 1970 y 1980, una nueva forma de terrorismo de Estado arraigó y se extendió por toda América Latina. Se la conoció como desaparición: fuerzas de seguridad oficiales, y grupos paramilitares alineados con dictaduras nacionales –financiadas y fundadas, a su vez, por una serie de gobiernos norteamericanos, y a menudo entrenadas por expertos franceses o israelíes– secuestraron gente de sus hogares, o deteniéndolas en plena calle. Jamás volvieron a ser vistos. Se convirtieron en los desaparecidos del discurso popular, llorados en hogares y comunidades, inmortalizados en poemas y canciones.

- Desaparición. Desaparecido. Palabras extrañamente pasivas para describir semejante brutalidad. Desde la riqueza del léxico latinoamericano pudimos haber inventado un término que definiera mejor el crimen. En cambio lo que ocurrió fue que esta palabra se despojó de su pasividad y adquirió un sentido nuevo, instantánea y dolorosamente reconocible para cualquiera que haya habitado el continente durante la segunda mitad del siglo veinte.

- La siniestra metodología no era del todo nueva. Se había usado antes en diferentes partes del mundo, pero raramente como una política de Estado y en tan abrumadora escala. En Argentina solamente, fueron desaparecidas 30.000 personas, en su mayoría jóvenes; en Guatemala 40.000, en Colombia 28.000. Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, México, Perú y Bolivia fueron, también, profundamente afectados. Algunos países perdieron generaciones enteras, sus mentes más brillantes, los más sensibles y valientes ciudadanos: desaparecidos.

- La ley internacional ha sido lenta para reconocer este crimen. No fue hasta julio de 2002 que la Corte Penal Internacional ratificó el Estatuto de Roma, que establece que la “desaparición forzada”, cuando se comete como parte de un ataque sistemático o a gran escala dirigido contra una población civil, califica como un crimen contra la humanidad y no está sujeta a plazos de prescripción. El 20 de diciembre de 2006, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas adoptó el Convenio Internacional para la Protección de Todas las Personas contra las Desapariciones Forzadas. Por bienvenido que sea, al igual que tanta otra legislación internacional, este reconocimiento ha tenido poco efecto en el terreno de lo concreto para las víctimas y sus familias, en su lucha, que aún continúa, por lograr un cierre, una conclusión. Algunos de los sobrevivientes no quieren cerrar el tema: la propia naturaleza del crimen los hace preferir la herida abierta, incluso tantos años después. Además, estas personas tienen derecho a saber qué es lo que pasó con sus seres queridos.

- La vasta mayoría de las víctimas de la desaparición forzada fueron secuestradas o detenidas ilegalmente, torturadas, asesinadas, sus cuerpos fueron ocultados. Toda esta gente simplemente se esfumó. Las persistentes campañas de esclarecimiento y la evidencia forense nos dicen que fueron torturados hasta la muerte, sus cuerpos a veces arrojados desde aviones al mar, enterrados en tumbas clandestinas, o eliminados por medios que los volvieron imposibles de encontrar. Pero hay una enorme distancia emocional entre saber esto intelectualmente, y tener un cuerpo al que llorar y dar sepultura. La desaparición no sólo castigó a los hombres o mujeres que lucharon por la justicia social, sino que también castigó a sus familias, a sus comunidades y a sus naciones. Alguien nunca volvió a casa, y así comenzó una larga búsqueda: los familiares realizaron las rondas a prisiones, hospitales y morgues; se lanzaron campañas internacionales. En sólo un número minúsculo de casos, estos esfuerzos fueron recompensados con el éxito: muy de vez en cuando se salvó una vida, e incluso en raros casos la persona desaparecida era soltada de las garras de quienes estaban adiestrados para mentir o permanecer callados.

- La esperanza es la más tenue pero la más tenaz de las emociones humanas. Sin un cuerpo, la esperanza se niega a morir. Y ha sido precisamente esta esperanza –y su contraparte, la frustración colectiva– la que transformó a poblaciones enteras. He conocido a familias que mantuvieron la búsqueda de sus seres queridos durante décadas, incapaces de darse por vencidos sin encontrar un cuerpo. He visto rostros marcados para siempre por un nuevo tipo de esquizofrenia social: vivir en un reino de esperanza sin sentido, levantándose cada mañana, cumpliendo los ritos normales del día, y acostándose por la noche, sólo para repetir estos hábitos apáticos al otro día, y al siguiente. Tengo amigos que aún hoy, se hacen presentes en la apertura de cada nueva fosa común que se descubre, esperando finalmente hallar respuesta sobre el destino de sus seres queridos. Se cuenta que el revolucionario chileno Bautista Van Schouwen les dijo a sus captores: “Ustedes no saben por qué me torturan, pero yo sí sé por qué muero”. A veces, esta convicción debió ayudar a las víctimas a enfrentar su destino; pero raramente ayudó a quienes fueron dejados atrás.

- Si bien las dictaduras latinoamericanas de los años '70 y '80 fueron reemplazadas por gobiernos cuasi-democráticos y, en algunos casos, alentadoramente progresistas, la sombra de la desaparición aún sigue envolviendo a pueblos que no han podido aceptar este capítulo de su historia. Algunos gobiernos han realizado esfuerzos para confrontar este fenómeno y sus cicatrices, mediante retribuciones monetarias para quienes escaparon de la muerte, pero que sufrieron en otro sentido viéndose involucrados en aceptar la amnistía de los responsables. Se logró condenar y enviar a prisión a algunos de los peores criminales. Y una serie de impresionantes monumentos memoriales han sido construidos para ayudar a la gente a no olvidar, y a fortalecer la esperanza de que “esto jamás puede volver a pasar”. Cada país ha hecho frente o sigue enfrentando las desapariciones de acuerdo con su historia particular y su cultura, y dentro de los parámetros en que los gobiernos sucesivos lo han permitido.

- Aún así, la aceptación profunda de la desaparición ha eludido a los que todavía sufren –consciente o inconscientemente– de sus heridas. Los sectores conservadores del electorado siempre están ahí para argumentar el “¿por qué no podemos simplemente olvidar y seguir adelante?”. La amnistía es un asunto especialmente espinoso, ya que en algunos casos, los responsables se mantienen aún en el poder; y una misma familia puede tener a ex torturadores y a víctimas entre sus miembros. Las organizaciones represivas habían cruzado las fronteras, y cuando un asesino era capturado, juzgado y condenado, otros países reclamaban su extradición. A medida que las generaciones se suceden y que la historia se reescribe para pasar por alto los hechos más incómodos, la voluntad de continuar luchando por algún tipo de justicia puede llegar a diluirse.

- La mujer ha desempeñado un papel importante e inspirador en este drama. Un subproducto trágico de la desaparición fue torturar a padres y a madres hasta su muerte, y quitarles sus hijos, o mantener vivas a mujeres embarazadas hasta que sus bebés nacieran, para luego desaparecerlas. Los niños dejados atrás fueron frecuentemente adoptados por familias de militares, o bien por otros involucrados con los crímenes. Las abuelas –célebres en la Argentina por sus movimientos de Madres y Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, así como organizaciones de familiares de desaparecidos en otros países– emprendieron un esfuerzo tenaz por encontrar a sus nietos. Marcharon. Impulsaron campañas. Y establecieron bancos de ADN por los cuales han podido identificar a cerca de un centenar de niños perdidos y reunirlos con sus desconsolados abuelos.

- Viví en América Latina entre 1961 y 1984, primero en México, después en Cuba, y finalmente en Nicaragua. Conocí a docenas de familias con uno, dos y, en un caso, tres hijos desaparecidos. Varios de los propios desaparecidos habían sido amigos cercanos. Otra amiga ha dedicado décadas de su vida a buscar el cuerpo de su esposo. Como con tantos horrores creados e implementados por seres humanos, la sentencia “esto jamás puede volver a pasar” se vuelve pálida en el mejor de los casos. Hoy, mientras algunos países latinoamericanos continúan debatiéndose con las formas de tratar este capítulo de su historia, en otros hay, de nuevo, gente que está siendo desaparecida.

- ¿Por qué estos poemas ahora? Quizás porque las heridas aún están en carne viva y su cura ha sido tan parcial. La desaparición como fenómeno sociopolítico ha sido siempre una deuda muy personal, que tenía la esperanza de pagar haciendo mi parte en impedir que la memoria de los compañeros perdidos se secara como polvo y la arrastrara el viento. Una breve nota de prensa informaba sobre el juicio de uno de los criminales más notorios de la Argentina: el hombre que resultó ser responsable de la tortura y desaparición de un amigo mío. Quizás fue esta la chispa que inició esta serie. Los poemas comenzaron a derramarse, para luego detenerse, tan abruptamente como habían empezado. Me pregunté si no debería incluirlos en una colección más extensa en la que estaba trabajando en ese momento. Pero entonces, comprendí que deben estar solos. Dedico esta serie a mi nieto Daniel, a quien afecta profundamente el sufrimiento de todos los seres, y que vive su vida, en la medida en que le es posible, en solidaridad con todos ellos.

Between Painting and Photograph

El Prado's great trees and faded colors

stare from this old post card,

its dusky colors between painting and photograph,

stamps and printed postmark

part of the ruse.

In another life I might look at this scene

and see a secret garden.

But this was where they grabbed him

January 3, 1974. He went out at 9

and never came home.

Entre pintura y fotografía

Árboles enormes y colores lavados de El Prado

miran desde esta vieja postal,

sus colores oscuros entre pintura y fotografía,

estampillas y matasellos impreso

parte del ardid.

En otra vida podría mirar a esta escena

y ver un jardín secreto.

Pero aquí fue donde se lo llevaron

Enero 3, 1974. Salió a las 9

y nunca más vino a casa.

First Laugh: Essays 2000-2009

Margaret Randall — 2010-07-30T20:00:03Z

Pumping Gas

Again I am somewhere else. Or everywhere at once. But as always, every word has its color. Sometimes, when I lose one now, the color rises behind my eyes but the word still plays hide and seek. Taunts me from the sidelines. Or a vast rainbow looms, and I must find my way through hues and the language they mask. Sometimes I sit for long minutes sifting through color on my way to word. Word may try to resist, but synapse eventually takes me home. I am seventy-three. My father died of Alzheimer's. He was in his late eighties, but still. In retrospect there'd been years of signs: unmistakable, some even dramatic. Like getting up in the dark of night, demanding breakfast from Mother. Or taking a small list from his pocket to help him order at a restaurant. Several years before he died, he confessed to having forgotten how to subtract. “Can you teach me?” he asked Barbara and me. We couldn't. A man who was characteristically sweet and—despite all predictions to the contrary—became more so in his final months. Still, denial, like a web, trapped every family member. When denial crashed, the before and after mocked us all. My father's story inhabits mine like a prehistoric animal ready to spring. Thought fragments, a sentence misplaces its tail, and I wonder, wonder. Now every lost word draws an exclamation from someone, surely meant to console but I feel them as condescending: “I know . . . I know what you feel . . . it happens to me, all the time.” I consider contamination from pesticides, hormones, food additives, water, power plants and their billowing stench. I think about how our exposure to radiation from medical screening has grown seven-fold between the early 1980s and 2006. I can see the once-pristine landscape, surrounding the desert majesty of Shiprock, where monster chimneys spew invisible smoke and people keep getting sick. What we breathe, without thinking about it. Toxic waste: corporate gift to so many poor communities. Now I maneuver the car into the crowded Chevron station, pulling into the space beside the only available pump. Exaggerated satisfaction: I've managed to position myself with the car's tank on the appropriate side. But other storylines continue to intrude. Again I am somewhere else. There have been so many cars since my first, a muddy-brown Austin more than half a century behind me now. I bought that one for $500 in my early twenties, then sold it for the same amount days before it broke down for good. I've always named my cars. Mónica, after Mónica Ertl, the Bolivian woman who hid Inti Peredo in her home during Latin America's cruel era of dirty wars. Hortensia, for the kind Cuban woman who cared for my youngest daughter when political repression in Mexico forced us to send the children on ahead. Much more recently, Biko: after Bantu Steven Biko, tortured to death in an Apartheid prison in 1984. Just one more way of honoring risk and courage. This last name recycles itself; I continue to use it for a succession of replacement vehicles—always referring to them as she. Slowing down, smiling in spite of myself, I think about the gray-blue Studebaker coup my parents let me drive through my last two years of high school. The one I would leave by the side of more than one New Mexico country road when heading out with a Geological Survey map in hand, following the rises and hollows of the land, passionate to believe I could escape Civilization. With a capital C. Mid last century: the world was safer then and a young girl could explore that world—its colors and meaning—without a shaming fear. I still delight in memories of those nights spent alone, stretched naked on some warm desert rock, imagining myself before the conquerors arrived. Sometimes before the presence of any human. There were a few Datsuns, including the one we sold for quick cash when escaping Mexico City, 1969. Then, in Cuba, the little badly painted bright blue Datsun sedan whose brakes were always failing and floor eventually rusted through. I lost that car in one surprising moment when the government confiscated it, claiming it belonged to my ex-husband who'd left the country months before. Such were the contradictions in a revolution often betrayed by anachronism even as it strove for future. I think about noise pollution, and the confusion brought by avalanches of information. Text messaging, cell phoning, all manner of off-stage conversation assaulting the ear. Nowhere can we escape it now, from highway to airport gate area, restaurant to waiting room. Era of the Internet, pushing us further from one another even as it joins us at the hip. True, the elderly aren't the only ones who forget a word, the end of a sentence, why they're holding that particular item in their hands, what they plan to do next. These days ever younger people show symptoms of overload. But on the downhill edge of life it feels unidirectional. In contrast, perhaps even in direct relationship, age has brought me a new awareness. Unexpected but unmistakable: as memory ruptures along my particular fault lines, difficult to claim. It is as if the last few elusive pieces have fallen into place. I hold the larger picture in slightly trembling hands. Despite a gnawing discomfort around Volkswagen's relationship with the Third Reich I, like so many of my generation, drove my share of Beetles. In the mid-1960s my young family and I coaxed one across the Mohave Desert, heat stuck in the on position and all its windows gaping. Since my 1984 return to the United States there've been two comfortable Jettas. Then a used Volkswagen van that hauled what Barbara and I took across country when I got that first year's teaching job at Trinity in 1986. We couldn't sell that van for half what we'd paid for it. Priding ourselves on being tough when it comes to cars, yet losing, always losing. And one last Volkswagen, a diesel: just as the price of that once-cheap fuel rose above the cost of regular gasoline. Wherever it went that vehicle trailed its parts: a mirror, a hubcap, handle or knob. Until we traded it in on our first Toyota. The white Corolla supplemented the also white four-wheel drive Jeep. So dependable, that Jeep: Emma was her name, after Emma Goldman who said she didn't want a revolution if you couldn't dance in it. It transported us along miles of back roads in search of ancient petroglyphs, ruins unlisted on any map. We still needed two cars back then, and the Corolla had a trunk that could accommodate Mother's walker: A Mafia trunk, we joked, big enough for a body-sized block of cement destined for some deep water grave. After moving from the foothills into the city, Barbara and I were determined to go to a single car. We'd been together two decades by then and the decision was one more milepost on this map of shared aging. We sold the Jeep we'd only used a couple of times its last year: each pre-trip discussion pitting the advantage of off-road travel against its poor sixteen mph. For a while, then, it was just the Corolla: easy sharing, good mileage, and the satisfaction of a reduced footprint in a world panting its way through these waning years of fossil fuel. Believing we could save our earth, one effort at a time. Until that Saturday when I put a slow roast in the oven and we went food shopping, never expecting we'd detour via the Toyota dealership and—just for kicks—test-drive a Prius. Now the footprint is smaller still, the hybrid our only family car. Barbara, fifteen years younger than me, mostly rides her bike or scooter. She also handles vehicle maintenance, including filling them up. Which is probably why, I tell myself, I sit beside this pump unable to remember how to open the little door implacably shielding the gas tank. Everything grows very still. I finger the knobs and dials on steering wheel and dash, try to recall what unlatched that flush little door on Mónica's hip, on Hortensia or Emma. Nothing useful floats to the surface. Stay calm, I tell myself. I remember the manual in its navy plastic envelope and open the glove compartment. “Gas,”—in the index—“page 78.” But again I am somewhere else. Page 78 doesn't seem to have any information about accessing the fuel tank. Could Toyota have made a mistake? I read it again, slowing my respiration after every sentence; then the previous page and the one following. Clear instructions for how to open the trunk or roll down windows, but nothing about that little door. People are honking now. Just behind me a guy in a Humvee stares. I avoid his eyes, go back to the manual, read the text again. Still nothing. Take a deep breath, I tell myself. This can't be this hard. Somewhere on page 78 the answer must be hiding. Start again, from the top. Is this about memory, or sight, or something else? I reread and the words come into focus, where they've always been: a small button on the floor to the left of my seat, right beside the driver's door. I look down. The white gas tank icon on the black lever stares back. With a grateful hand I reach, tap the lever, release the latch. As I get out of the car I glance to make sure the little door is really open. I insert and then quickly remove my credit card from the pump's slot, remembering earlier times when I'd have saved a few pennies with Self Serve while others handed their key to an attendant who pumped gas, checked oil and tire pressure, and wiped windshields for a tip. The little screen says my credit card has been approved. Then the message changes: “Remove nozzle. Pump gas.” Now I'm on automatic again as I press the button for regular grade, dislodge the nozzle and pull the hose to my car's waiting tank. Again, I am somewhere else. Or everywhere at once. Without denying support for wars of national liberation, I can finally embrace pacifism as the only entirely rational answer. War is always horror. Capital punishment is obscene, no matter the obscenity of the crime. Nationalism itself bears reexamination as it invariably leads to positions of exception, overarching authority and swollen ego. Too many authoritarian leaders, too much dynasty. And far too many dead, who believed they were dying for something different. Their faces wander in my dreams. Their presence, too, bothers my ability to remember. Return. Reclaim. Reclamar: somewhere between to retrieve and demand. Tragically, this is how we have raised our men, generation to generation. Not this man or that—your brother or husband, my son—but male people in a system that supports and encourages their basest instincts. A seed born in some deep construct of inferiority sprouts and grows through bullying to war and uncontrolled domination, taking over as the illness of violence. Religion provides a perfect framework for this distortion; it is the very basis for a division among peoples: those in command and their followers. From popes to gurus, the narcissistic personality claims everything in its path. Class, race, and cultural tradition: all are part of the picture. William James was right when he said the church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous spirit. I have come to believe that religion also stifles curiosity, knowledge, imagination, and truth: Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Archbishop Oscar Romero. And of course human rights: to life, love, and equal protection under the law. Women, lesbians and gay men stagger at the bottom of the heap; our rights or lack thereof dependant upon the culture in which we live. Justice is always simpler than the experts would have us think. The Humvee driver looks belligerent now. He displays no visible relief that I've solved the problem and am pumping the gas. Today everything's Self Serve. And automatic. No human on the other end of the telephone line, just a recorded voice following the answer to each successive question with a cheerfully upbeat perfectly inflected “All right then, let's keep going!” as if there really is someone there, paying attention to my need. “Listen carefully, as our menu has changed. Press 1 if… press 2 if…” Oblivious to my frustration, the fact that mine is not a yes or no question. Multiple choice doesn't cut it. What passes for progress. Although we span a considerable age difference, memory and its rough terrain are areas Barbara and I inhabit together. Anguish and understanding: a balance sought. I remember a time a while back when she was visibly frightened that I was stumbling toward the downward spiral; I must have done or failed to do, said or failed to say, something important. I caught worried looks, whispered consultations with others. Tension mounted until she understood her degree of concern might itself damage what we have. Despite the age difference, we both clearly suffer from varieties of forgetting: mine undoubtedly more age-related, hers resulting from extreme childhood abuse. Collateral damage is so often expressed as afterthought. And not only on the battlefield but also in the world of economic exchange and security: credit and derivatives and bundles and foreclosures and leveraged debt. An intentionally complicated swamp, meant to blur the simple fact of a family evicted from its home, a person ousted from his or her job, health and wellbeing beyond reach, a future disappearing beneath such a heavy blanket of greed, or a simple task waiting to be undertaken. Despite the unrelenting—often mixed—messages, overall sleight of hand is painfully transparent. The latest corporate scheme translates to gross theft: of sustenance and identity. As long as we fail to look through any eyes but our own, as long as every andocentric, egocentric viewpoint guides our vision, we doom ourselves to extinction. Human rights. Animal rights. The right of earth itself. Nowhere is our vision narrower or more skewed than in our eternal search for life in distant parts of the universe, or in other universes. We seem unable to grasp the fact that other worlds are likely to have given birth to life forms adapted to their discreet conditions. Why should they look or act like us? Which brings me back to my renewed certainty: justice really is quite simple. I remember believing this when I was very young, not yet privy to all the theories and counter-theories. Along the way, major texts and charismatic figures convinced me otherwise. Experience consolidated those convictions. Isms. Schisms within isms. Then, painfully, the unraveling. A hunger for power and insatiable greed dressed differently for every new occasion. What was sacrificed was always “necessary.” Except of course for those forced to make the sacrifices. The ends never justify the means. I reject the image of a no-man's land. Fence-sitting and its devil's advocates. It looks to me like a land of nothingness, where familiarity eats away at invisible contours, false promises of relief. Where identity is spliced and dignity dies. Oh those colors: still brilliant in my aging eyes. Losing the sharpness of youth. Taking longer to arrange an image in the lens, camera less sure in my shaking hands. No longer able to drive at night, the oncoming headlights exploding my sight. But oh, those colors pulsing within colors! Cream and orange-red, pink and desert-varnish brown, as far as I can see. Waning light running along a lip of rock. The seam where river meets wall. My landscape: prying me open, filling me up. I get back in my car and sit for a moment. The Humvee driver waits. Before pulling out I turn and look him calmly in the eye. I force myself to hold the gaze, silently counting to ten. Another advantage of age: no apologies. Of course I wonder how or if to tell Barbara about my difficulty accessing the gas tank. Then I promise myself I will. We are in this together.

My Town: A Memoir of Albuquerque, New Mexico in Poems, Prose and Photographs

Margaret Randall — 2009-12-20T15:07:44Z

Nothing was What it Pretended

Words I'd never heard took up residence

in my mouth.

Montaño, even if city signage

refused to put the tilda over the n,

names like De Vargas, Cabeza de Vaca

or Juan Tabó,

shepherds and assassins enshrined on street corners

unquestioned and mispronounced.

Indian words like Acoma, Navajo—now Diné—

or place names like Canyon de Chelly

the conquerors left us with

when they couldn't speak what they couldn't hear.

Names imposed: Oñate, Coronado, Santa Fe.

Another's holy faith bringing death

and leaving division, delighting

those who arrive on private planes.

Common words like tijeras and frijoles,

scissors and beans

began to quiver on my tongue,

stood easily in later years.

I too came from somewhere else,

a childhood far away,

with other sounds in my ears,

other familiars in my mouth.

The new words tested teeth, stretched lips

and exercised my landscape

until language caught meaning in its net

and I knew nothing was what it pretended.

Their Backs to the Sea

Margaret Randall — 2009-01-11T14:20:49Z

Easter Island, Rapa Nui, or simply the land

your ancestors felt no need to name,

place that receives me now

eager and awkward: my eyes

hauling picture-book images,

mouth filled with questions

juggling answers as I breathe.

I will think of you as an island

without color on a map,

your first people dizzied in harmony,

clothed by the land itself:

no reason to signify

that which receives and gives,

asks nothing in return.

To Change the World: My Years in Cuba

Margaret Randall — 2008-09-09T15:54:41Z

Excerpt from Prologue

Fidel Castro came to New York City in the summer of 1960, fresh from his guerrilla triumph. I was a young writer and soon-to-be single mother, enormously pregnant with Gregory—my son who, forty-six years later, would suggest we write about Cuba together—but I longed to see the hero up close, applaud his stance, express my personal appreciation. Carefully, lovingly, I prepared a platter of Spanish paella; not such a tropical staple perhaps, but my signature dish at the time.
I bought choice drumsticks and wings at Mrs. Schiffer's Second Avenue butcher shop, picked over giant langoustine shrimp in the market three blocks uptown, and must have found the peas, black olives, bell peppers and imported saffron in that market as well. I told the food merchants I was cooking for Fidel and all showed their enthusiasm in one way or another. One threw in an extra half pound of sausage, another handed me one gorgeous sweet red pepper. I sang as I cooked. The pungent mix of scents invaded the grim stairwell and shabby hallways of my Lower East Side walk-up. When the paella's colors shone robust and each ingredient had reached its moment of perfection, I covered my platter with aluminum foil and carried it onto an uptown subway train.
Fidel and his retinue had left the Waldorf Astoria unexpectedly. Some said the hotel administration accused them of keeping live chickens in their rooms. Others insisted it had been the Cubans' decision to leave. Whatever the case, halfway through the visit, Fidel and his party moved up to Harlem's more friendly and welcoming Hotel Theresa. Above ground, at 125th Street, I was immediately met by a cordon of New York's Finest; no amount of pleading convinced the police officers to let me through. Nor were they willing to take my aromatic gift and see that it got to its intended recipient. My body still remembers its disappointment as I headed back downtown with the platter untouched, its metallic covering soiled and torn, its contents beginning to sour.
Many of those who lived the story of that time and place are dying now. Even in Cuba itself, new generations replace those first men and women who dreamed the dream, took the risks, threw out a dictator and began to create a different society, one rooted in justice and equality. Yes, there was a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, when some in my generation believed we could change the world. Many movements waged struggles of varying intensity, achieved degrees of success or longevity. Utopias seemed possible. And the Cuban revolution was the palpable example of a small country leading the way in demonstrating that more equitable relations of production—more equitable human relations—were not simply a worthy goal. With determination and sacrifice, the dream was possible.
Where is Cuba on our map, today, here in the United States in this first decade of the twenty-first century? . . .