#25: Back from Guatemala, Eduardo Galeano, Otto Rene Castillo
Hola a todos! I’m back from Guatemala after 8 weeks. I’ve learned a lot of Spanish in that time and feel comfortable saying that my Spanish is functional, but not fully conversational. There’s still a lot of room to grow and I plan to continue my studies via online classes, YouTube, and Spanish language media.
Being back so far has been odd. While moving back into my house has been a seamless transition, I keep accidentally speaking Spanish to strangers. I’m sure that will end soon, but it’s a funny little brainfart. (It ended a few days later).
The school I went to, P. L. Q. was in a small city called Quetzaltenango. When I left, I really didn’t want to do it because it sounded hard, awkward, and uncomfortable. Some of this was true, but that description falls short of my experience at P. L. Q.
On each student’s final Friday, they are asked to write a speech and prepare a poem or song. Instead of gushing about how much I loved my time at P. L. Q., I will instead reproduce my speech here (minus the appropriate accents since I cant figure out how to do that on my laptop):
Hola a todos!
Yo quiero contarles que este escuela ha significado para mi. Pero cuando yo siento todo este gratitud, a veces yo lloro un poco. Entonces, lo siento si yo lloro.
Yo llegue a PLQ porque yo quería aprender español en un ambiente muy politico. Yo esperaba aprender mucho español mientras hablando sobre las problemas imperialismo, capitalismo, y neoliberalismo. Y si, este ocurrido. Pero ocurrido mucho mas también.
En este lugar, yo he hecho muchos amigos con los estudiantes y los maestros. Yo he jugado futbol, yo he explorado Guatemala, y yo he reído mucho!
P. L. Q. me ha enseñado mucho mas que solo español. Siempre lo he que ha sabido que yo odio, pero P. L. Q. me ha enseñado que yo amo, que yo defiendo. Yo creo en las personas aquí y yo creo en la revolución.
Pero, la revolución es no solo el find la inequidad, las political extractivas, y prisiones. La revolución n es una lugar de risas, jugando, y amor. Gracias a todos por enseñarme ese.
Entonces, yo quiero leer una poema se llama “Satisfacción” por Otto Rene Castillo:
Lo mas hermoso
para los que han combatido
su vida entera,
es llegar al final y decir:
Creíamos en el hombre y la vida
y la vida y el hombro
Jamás nos defraudaron
Así son ellos ganados para el pueblo
Así surge la eternidad del ejemplo
No porque combatieron una parte de su vida,
si no porque combatieron todos las días de su vida.
Solo así llegan hombres a ser hombres:
combatiendo dia y noche por ser hombres
Entonces, el pueblo abre sus ríos mas hondos
y los mezcla para siempre con sus aguas.
Así son ellos, encendidas lejanías.
Por eso habitan hondamente el corazón
del ejemplo.
And now in English with some parenthetical annotations:
Hello everyone!
I want to tell you all what this school has meant to me. But, when I feel all this gratitude, I sometimes cry a little. I’m sorry if I cry. (I had started crying before I even started talking, before I even stood up to give my speech.)
I came to P. L. Q. because I wanted to learn Spanish in a very political environment. I hoped to learn a lot of Spanish while talking about the problems of imperialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism. And yes, this occurred. But lots more happened as well.
In this place, I have made many friends with the students and teachers. I have played soccer, I have explored Guatemala, and I have laughed lots.
P. L. Q. has taught me much more than only Spanish. I have always known what I hated, but P. L. Q. taught me what I love, what I stand for. I believe in the people here and I believe in the revolution.
But the revolution is not only the end of inequity, extractive politics, and prisons. The revolution is a place of laughing, playing, and love. Thanks to all for teaching me this.
Therefore, I want to read a poem called “Satisfaction” by Otto Rene Castillo:
The most beautiful
for those who have fought a whole life,
is to come to the end and say:
we believed in man and life
and life and man
never let us down.
And so they are won for the people.
And so the infinite example is born.
Not because they fought for a part of their lives
but because they fought all the days of all their lives.
Only this way do men become men:
fighting day and night to become men.
Then the people open their deepest rivers
and they enter those waters forever.
And so they are, distant fires,
living, creating the heart
of example.
I wrote that a week ago. Now I’m sitting at home with covid after the Glue show in NY that Youth of Today was so eager to play. They were okay, too much Krishna though. While in NY I saw the Alex Katz retrospective at the Guggenheim which I thought was kinda mediocre. It was funny to read Katz claim that he wanted to avoid psychoanalysis or any sort of psychic depth and just capture a moment. It’s a noble goal I guess, but after watching Love is Blind season 3 and listening to Colleen say “I’m just a surface level girl” over and over again, that’s all I could think of when I read the Katz blurbs on the wall. Anyways the guy has been painting for like more than 50-60 years now and he’s producing his best stuff now that he’s in his eighties. That’s commendable.
Now, books:
Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
Simply, and simply is the best I can do right now, this might be compared to the work of Zinn or Mike Davis (RIP). Galeano is probably more famous worldwide than both of them though. Open Veins is a seminal work that explores the asymmetrical, uneven, and detrimental development of Latin America for the sake of the United States and certain European countries. Where this work most significantly differs from Zinn, and even Davis, is the prose. Galeano was a poet, a novelist, a philosopher, and a historian. Galeano claimed that this book was written in the style of a novel about pirates. While I’m not sure the prose is that punchy, there are very few dry moments which is a feat in a history book about extractive capitalism.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for years, but had failed to start it until I had some down time while I was at the mountain school at P. L. Q. I read the first half of the book there before I flew to Mexico to visit some friends for a week. After I returned the book to the school library, I downloaded the book to my phone from Z-Lib (RIP) and slowly read pieces of it in free moments. My reading unfortunately suffered as a result of this and I plan to go back and read it a second time within the next year (something I always say and never do).
Galeano later went on to dismiss the book in his later years, classically. While I’m not sure if he’s had a right wing swing in his old age or if he just finds the analysis unsophisticated, I think it’s the youthful vigor and the attempt to wrap his head entirely around asymmetrical world development in 350 pages that makes the book so punchy and exhilarating. You really could argue that Open Veins is a manifesto against the exploitation of the Tercer Mundo.
Let’s Go by Otto Rene Castillo
Otto Rene Castillo was a poet and a guerrilla fighter during the Guatemalan Civil War that lasted from 1960 to 1996. In 1967, Castillo was captured by the army and interrogated, tortured, and burned alive.
When the democratically elected Arbenz was replaced by a military dictator in a CIA-backed coup d’etat, Castillo went into exile in El Salvador. After publishing two books of poetry, he finally joined the guerrilla army in 1966. The Guatemalan government committed a genocide against the Mayan population within their borders.
These poems, which I love, shine with the vigor of a young revolutionary hoping for a better world. The poems are about poverty, love, revolution, eviction, exile, hope, and apolitical intellectuals.
If we cared to read writers from Central America, I feel Otto Rene Castillo (along with a handful of other Latin American poets) would fit comfortably into a canon of revolutionary poets like Nazim Hikmet and Bertolt Brecht.
More next time! Look forward to writings about Lauren Berlant, Sigrid Undset, etc. Getting back in the habit here after 8 weeks of not really reading or writing in English. Feels good to be home, even with the covid!