The crowds surpassed all our expectations and many people were left queuing outside, including several friends. Some people in the audience asked if what I read was published–it is not–and a friend suggested I should put it in this blog, so I upload the whole thing here.

My story-telling was divided in two parts: the Soul’s descent into the underworld at and after the moment of Death (a rather bleak journey), and the Soul’s return to the Earth during the one day in the year that she is allowed to go back to her loved ones (a merrier affair).

Both readings were dedicated to my dear friend Rita Guerrero, who passed away this year, and finished hearing her sing with Mexican band Santa Sabina–both songs were quite fitting companions to each part of the journey.

The words of Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia were interweaved with my text.

Here is the whole thing (with the songs included after each text, taken from Youtube as I failed to upload sound from my computer), and thank you all for coming (those who managed to get in and those who didn’t), for your enthusiasm and for encouraging me to publish this in my blog. Special thanks also to Jimena Gorraez and the Wellcome Trust, for their kind invitation to a wonderful day of remembrance.
The book

The first story.
The Journey into Death

Here it is, again. I would call it a tingling, if I had a body to feel. Yet I do feel it, though there is no flesh left around me.

Shall I say it’s a calling then? And who may be calling now? Where am I supposed to go? Don’t the voices, their disembodied touch, know there is no space, nor journeying across space anymore?

I was at peace. Or how should I call it? The thickening silence, the aloneness, the sleeping with open eyes—if I had had eyes.

My eyes were torn away from me a while ago. But I have vision.

I inhabited the expanding vastness of absence, drawn into the wonder of the utmost intimacy with myself while already devoid of being.

Then something that felt like colours, ripples of light and shades, a mocking breeze started stirring the nothing of the air. I was disturbed. I felt the calling. I was awake from that sleep that was wakefulness itself. Now I find myself here, amidst neither light nor shadows, and walking, though I have no limbs to walk with. This land is not here nor anywhere. I am tired, beyond the tiredness of any mortal body, and the pangs of an anticipated joy the nature of which I do not know, a phantom of reunion, encounter, do not bring consolation: they hurt, they pierce, they stab me with the memory of something that used to be contained in the word ‘hope’. Something you are stripped of when you give up the flesh.

This land is no land! I sink. It is a swamp. It is an ocean, unwholesome, dark, though there are dazzling spans of azure and silver, sometimes—deceitful filaments of beauty laid there by godless hands just to better outline the body of darkness. I am in the middle of it, tossed by gigantic waves. The nothing that I am chokes. The air that I am gasps for air.

There are intervals when the storms subside. Then I walk on water, and it’s hard. I see no shore. I should swim whichever way to find a shore, I am so tired, so weighed down by the slabs of grief and hope that should forever have been left behind! But I have no body, no flesh around me.

It’s the beat of a sea in which I know nothing and I cannot swim, for I have left arms and feet on the shore. I feel the web of my nerves falling without me, yet everything flees like the fish become aware. I feel the pulse in my temples, a mute telegraphy answered by no one, for dream and death have nothing more to say to each other.

I was happy then, when time existed. Dazzling day and profound night had a meaning. I inhabited flesh. I was alive. My flesh was the tendril reaching for the substance of the earth, and the breath of the earth and the sea, the pulsations of light, the caress of the air. To inhabit flesh was the gift of tongues. The gift of sight and touch, of ears open to music, nostrils to take every fragrance in. I was body and soul: no division. I was.

Then it started, so slowly I first did not realize it. I can’t remember the moment when I knew it had crept in, that it was as much part of myself as body and soul, the uninvited guest that was now essence with me. The journey could no longer be delayed: I had to tear myself away from the miracle and the joy of flesh. Farewell to my eyes, my ears, my tongue, my skin! Farewell to the gates!

Was it possible? Was I really going to say farewell to the world I loved so, to night and day, the gentle rolling of time and the changes of seasons? Farewell to my flesh and the fruits of my flesh, my lovers and children.

Sadness came first, the anticipated grieving, all the love that would necessarily go unsaid—not enough time, not enough words. Then the fear. What would I hold on to, devoid of flesh? How would I be? I had not even stopped to consider the pain.

But it came along too, in due time. It hurts, the tearing away from the physical chord. There were times when it was hard to tell what or where I was, the pain of matter slowly dying around me was so overpowering. My loved ones feared I disappeared then, gone into another dimension, but no, I was there… I was only quiet, as if sleeping, but fully awake. Dazed, speechless before the spectacle of my own separation.

I wished to speak to no one. It wasn’t lack of love, no. It was rather that the certainty of love, the love lived in what was swiftly stopping to be my life, was too great, too definite, it filled me entirely and I wanted it to find its last form in the vessel of flesh, to become me, before the moment of division. I needed to see myself, the thirst was unquenchable, the mirror was all polished now, whole, no more place for concealment. Such reckoning with what one has been in the world of the living can only be fulfilled in solitude.

Grief, sorrow, fear… They cannot be shared. They are the mirror, and they are the cast of the Soul, to its most minute scratch and scar and trait.

What, I wondered, was the purpose of a Soul’s descent onto Earth, her investiture with the magnificent garment of flesh? What unspeakable cruelty could lie behind the illusion of beauty, wonder, love and ecstasy fleetingly trembling in the air before being torn through decay, separation? The painstaking learning, through joy and through sorrow, the disciplined journey into love and creation, what for? To be engulfed by loss and darkness…

No one knows how dense the darkness is until she finds herself beneath it. Unbreathable. Unbearable. Neither Soul nor body could contemplate an all-merciful God who could inflict such merciless agony, so fierce that body and Soul became indistinguishable—everything was a close-knit mesh of excruciating pain and even the physical world around it, the mystery of creation itself, were part of that pain that could only come from something far worse than evil: a void, an absence, the essence of all loss, the vortex that ate it all: all life, all joy, all beauty, all love.

Had I not been at the gates of Death, had I not known that it was Death herself the harbinger of darkness, I should have sought refuge in her.

I could not. I was already in her. There was no refuge. So I had to bow my head, my whole body bent in pain and my spirit crushed, and go under.

I will tell you how it is like, down there.

You close your eyes when you cannot fight any longer. The wailing has ceased. There is no more voice left to cry out loud. The banging against the walls in rebelliousness and rage has subsided—no more strength left. Rage has been swallowed up by grief, and grief has finally been enveloped by yielding. Life, Death, their inextricable bond has finally subdued you, you are indeed no-one. You have to let go of everything. Even breath… it is painful when it finally abandons your breast… It was the divine wind that carried your vessel along beneath bright skies. You still have an infinitesimal fraction of time to be awed by the beauty, so alien to any thought or even feeling, of that last tear that runs slowly down your face… the last one, after all those tears cried when you were flesh, the rivers of your heart that are now finally taking you away.

Then you hear the bells. You hear them without ears, they resound somewhere that is both inside and outside you. You know they toll for you. You know they call you. You know they are the last song of your heart. You are bound to follow.

How strange it is, that having lost all your senses you are not banned from experience. You are rather immersed in it, you are the phenomenon of experience itself. And thus you know that you are brought somewhere that is down under, below, beneath. Beneath what? Beneath Earth and the sea that you have already abandoned. Beneath the entire universe, beneath yourself, beneath all blessings, beneath the realm of light. Beneath faith. Beneath, most of all, God.

Do you know what is the colour of hollowness? Not black nor white. There is nothing absolute about it, nothing definite. It is the dirtiest shade of grey, abominable, and it chokes you. It is the stain that is left when everything has been taken away from you—your entrails turned inside out. Only that when you are dead, you have no entrails. You are the greyness itself. That is the essence you cannot escape from. That is you. Greyness has many layers, many worlds revolve within. It takes something vaster than time to traverse it, an endless journey. It is a spiral—you are bound to get lost.

You are given a dog to guide you. Who gives it to you? Are there any gods, or spirits, watching over you? I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like that, the dog is no consolation. It is the colour of ashes, and horribly silent. It doesn’t bark, its footsteps have no sound. Nor do yours. You walk side by side. Your body is dead but your imagination is not, and so you are given an imaginary body for the journey—to suffer the more vividly through it all.

You are impelled to cross a mountain range—blurred peaks in varying degrees of dirty greyness. You start climbing, breathless (you have no lungs, no breath), the dog by your side. But this is no natural orography. These mountains never stay still. They tremble beneath you. They roar, they shake. They crash into each other like fantastic prehistoric beasts as you attempt to climb. Chasms open beneath your feet, you find no rest, and you are tired, oh so tired! You will to close your eyes, though you have no eyes, and the volition takes you to the realm of dream—of nightmares.

All those faces around you—the ones that fear is made of. The toothless smiles, the grotesque grimaces, the piercing eyes burning with evil. They mock you, they want to see you crawl, lick the dust, the mire. They want you humiliated: you are no-one, you belong nowhere, you have lost everything. You are dead. And you have to crawl and wail—so that you understand.

A mighty tremor throws you off the highest peak. You fall with the sickening thud of a boneless body, your imaginary eyes blinded with dust. You have reached the fields beyond, but you still won’t be at peace. There is the wind—it lifts you off your airy feet. It strikes you from all sides, nowhere to run. This wind does not come alone: its gusts are laden with piercing knives, all glimmering obsidian scraping your flesh. And you thought you didn’t have flesh anymore! You thought there was no more pain to feel! But there was, and you feel it. You are to be torn and shredded, so that nothing inside you remains hidden.

You hear water running somewhere. It is dense water, it moves slowly like death itself. You walk in that direction nevertheless, the dog’s freezing breath on your heels. You want to escape it all—the wind, the knives, the fear, the mocking faces. The confusion, the overwhelming grief. You reach the river. It is dense indeed, and red: opaque crimson. It has a metallic odour. Sickening. A river of blood it is, the precious blood of all those dead before you. The entire humanity that went this path before has poured here its wealth of blood, and you don’t know why—because you are terrified and sick—but you plunge into it, and so does the faithful dog behind you. You let the red thick current carry you away. You feel its warmth, the first embrace you have received since crossing to the other side. A faint memory of rosy sunshine flickers behind your eyelids. Nearby you hear the jaguars’ roar. If you open your eyes, and wipe the blood off them with the back of your hand, you can see the fire burning in their eyes peering everywhere from the encroaching darkness. They won’t let you abandon the river, they want to exhaust you floating on the waves of blood, they want to steal your soul, all that you are now—because you are dead.

You have no voice, but you feel like wailing and ask with rigid tongue, ‘What was the point of all the wholesomeness of life, my devotion, my worshiping at the sacred wells?’ You feel teased, abused, like an innocent child drawn with sweet songs to some chamber of horror. You doubt everything that was most sacred to you, everything you held for truth. Death, you realize, brings out the worst in you: your fear, your weakness, your helplessness. The monsters of fear and need in you. Your face claiming for mercy—for love, compassion, mercy!—has no expression now. It is the distorted mask of your broken self, a stillness that bears no rest but emptiness, and though there are no mirrors in the landscape of grief, and you have no eyes, you need neither mirrors nor eyes, because you are the grief.
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So what do you have? What magic have you called forth to preserve your soul? A shiny green stone in your mouth, lying cold on your imaginary tongue. And remembrance.

The first song (Dix, by Santa Sabina)

The second story
The Journey Back

I hear the bells toll. Unceasingly. They have been going on and on forever, surrounding this awareness, going through me. They have become my heartbeat, throbbing against the bare bone of my ribs.

There is a voice too, it is calling me sweetly. I don’t know whose voice it is, I don’t remember names, or faces, but I can feel the fondness. It is the voice of someone I once loved.

‘Where are you?’, it says. ‘What are you now?’

‘Now I am dead’, I find myself compelled to answer. ‘I am resting. I listen. Silence around me is so pure that a mere sigh might tarnish it. Memories offer themselves up to me, suspended, in relief, with the colours they had back then. I remain motionless. Every minute stops and falls to make space for a closer one. It isn’t hard to die. Everything lies in not making a single movement, in not uttering a single word, in fixing your eyes on one point, near, far.’

I am moved by the tenderness of talking to this voice. And yet, I am so tired.

‘Why have you come?’, I ask. ‘Why do you wake me? Look at me—I am intent on listening to the endless silence, hollow and hard, to the winter sky that is nothing but ashes of something that burnt out centuries and centuries ago… I am living my Death here, my present Death alone, my Death that I cannot share, that I cannot cry.’

‘What about us?’, says the voice. ‘We wait for you. We dream of you, and when we don’t, we miss you. We are preparing the welcoming, we are lighting your way back home, we…’

I stopped hearing it. Maybe it went quiet again, or it was drowned by the din of the bells. Or the dancing… There were feet stamping around my grave, round and round… They followed a pattern, a rhythm. And there was music too, someone was dancing around my grave! I could hear children laughing, high-pitched sweet voices singing. They were singing for me, laughing for me, with the simple golden round gift of happiness.

That was the balm seeping through, the blessing that shattered the everlasting winter that had frozen my blood, the eternal winter that had dried up my yellow words, the paralyzing sleep, the ice gag in my mouth. The blood that had frozen and become crystal, then hard marble, rendering me motionless in time anguished and slow with the secret, imperceptible, mute life of the mineral, the log and the statue started melting, and though I was cold bone with no more flesh around me, the warm blood of remembrance travelled around the nothingness I was and gave me back a tree of veins for it to run through, a joyous memory of flesh, embodiment.

I could see them dance, though I lied beneath the earth in my mineral self. There were many of them, boys and girls, their heads glowing, and their dance was both impeccable and mad. They were not alone. The dazzling white of bones shone here and there: a skeleton. They passed it around, they embraced it with laughter, mockery, tenderness, it was their favourite toy, their darling sibling.

They were so pure and wild.

Suddenly all my senses were awake, again.

Someone was baking bread. Someone was burning incense. And the fragrance of a thousand flowers impregnated the air. From the remains of me something gathered in the foul, confined air of the grave, particles that had been part of me but were no matter. They came from the realm of remembrance. Remembrance is a forest… so the air was not foul or confined anymore, it was no longer the trapped space of the grave—it was an open expanse suffused with the breath of trees and the warmth of sunshine. There the particles gathered, took shape, shone as they dived in the air like butterflies.

I, who had been dead, submerged in time—intact, clear, definitive, with not a lightning, no obscurity, as if bathed in the water of a mirror that would melt with its light everything futile, I who had been dead as if naked on an ice divan on a hot day, thoughts aiming at a single fixed target, I who had been dead, happily cut off persons and things, seeing them as the camera’s lens ought to look, with precision and coldness, I who was dead was suddenly seized by the wave of wonder. For I realized that the force behind the dance of shiny particles gathering in the fragrant air was the long forgotten, the long obliterated experience of joy.

Joy! I was a happy dead, a happy corpse, a happy sack of bones! And there were children dancing and singing around my grave.

The bells kept on ringing. It was not a funereal toll. It was the sheer intoxication of joy. ‘Get up!’, they said. ‘Open your eyes, your new eyes, your new gaze! Get up from the cold lonely soil! All the love you ever had, all the love you ever gave is moving with the seasons, blooming, it has taken root again in the golden flower of God, it has run its faithful cycle and you are here, among us, love and memory all around you, so get up! Come, come! Follow the fragrance! The musicians are here, the food, the garlands! The time of the living can’t wait!’

And so I did get up. My heart that had been burnt to ashes was beating again within my breast. I had flesh again, a luminous body with which to get up and leave the grave, come out into the open day, receive the sunshine, bathe in its light. And walk.

With joy came memory. All those faces! All of a sudden they were within me, around me. The beloved faces, the gestures, the smiles. The names. The sound of their voice, the ring of their laughter. My family, my lovers and children. Ah, the sunshine on those faces! The play of light and shadows on their hair. The sparkle in their eyes… My new body was full of warmth, a strange vigour, a cleansed force that impelled me forward. I truly did not know, did I walk? Did I fly?

The living were all around me, stretching out their clean hands. They gave me a dress, a clean fragrant gown. I put it on and I realized that light was coming from me, as if I was the Sun. Surrounded by the living, they held my hand, they led me along down the dirt winding road into the village. They were gently calling my name. They touched my face with their hands, soft like children’s, they described to me my own face with tender voices. They loved me so much that they reminded me who I was, who I had been, who would I always be, for nothing is ever destroyed or forgotten in the memory of the world.

I followed the fragrance, I followed the music, the riot of colour of myriads of flowers scattered all around. I was not the only one. There were hundreds, thousands! of bright dazed souls, the uncertain smiles on their pale faces—the smile of doubt, amazement, even fear—slowly softening, becoming pure and bright and simply happy, blessed again beneath the cloak of sunshine.

They had no weight, they floated in their joy just as I did, and I believe that we would have cried if our bodies had still had in them the power of tears. What tenderness was contained in the simple paved streets baking in the sun and dust! What sweetness, the dwellings of men and women, the tokens of their small cares, the smells from their kitchens. What tenderness, their beds, the slight whiff of their sleeping bodies still on the bedclothes, the most imperceptible print that their shape leaves there night after night, the soft pillow that receives their heads so gently, with their dreams, their hopes, their sorrows!

So we went down the road, all of us, the happy souls returning, hearing again the beloved voices, recognizing their faces though we knew it was only their love that carried us, that their touch was an act of yearning, because they themselves could not see us.

Far away we could hear the most delightful sounds. An unimaginable crowd of children singing and laughing. Their voices were crystal-clear and I was told they were the little angels. The souls of all the dead children who had come down to Earth a day before us. It was good to know them happy, that they could laugh so, still so happy to return to the old playgrounds and hiding places, to their dear fathers and mothers and siblings, to their old little beds.

Immaculately dressed women were hard at work outside sweeping the streets. The village was a pristine picture, bright and clean, all the doors open, garlanded with flowers. We were invited in—the souls received by loved ones and the wandering too, those souls with no belonging, no love left on Earth. We were all welcome. Each and every house had a quiet room in the shade, candle-lit: a temple, waiting for us. They offered us water, we were so thirsty from the long journey! They offered us gifts: our favourite food and drinks, flowers, the small tokens we were remembered by shining bright beneath the candles.

Never in mortal life had I been offered such celebration. No feast had ever touched my heart so. If I had found a way to know how we are remembered, that we are not extinct, that we are not shaken off the Earth like dust the moment our last breath is gone, I would have endured with much more courage the awful passage. We were remembered beyond tears—with colour, with music, with beauty.

We kept on roaming through the streets, peering into every open door, every humble house, every lit temple. Then I noticed a change in the atmosphere; something was fading. It was the voices of the children—the dead children—. They were slowly quieting down, as if they had been a dream, they dissolved in the air, and I felt a twitch of sadness.

Not for long. There was raucous laughter nearby. We started to be pushed and shoved, though gently. We looked around, and we were surrounded by devils. There were many of them… or were they living men? The fun they had! And how they made the women and old people and kids laugh! They danced and drank, and they said the most curious stories about hell… Their hell was, it was clear, a much better place than the underworld I had seen myself forced to traverse. It was the hell of the innocent. The punishment for the inexistent sin of being alive: alive and made of flesh, desirous, longing, craving. Alive and bent for pleasure. Alive and reckless, proudly disdainful of impossible Death, more impossible for being ever present!

A devil took me in his strong arms. They were living arms indeed, brown skin, the firmness of muscles and sinews sustaining my imaginary body in the middle of the living world still standing. I could smell the sweet fragrance of morning sweat—the dancing and the sun after the early ablutions. He whispered in my ear salacious words that made me laugh. There is no space for prudery in Death. I laughed, and somewhere in me, in that incorporeal substance that I was, I felt a memory: the pangs of desire, the delights and the tortures of flesh, the freedom and the slavery of human bodies, wanting, ever wanting… And I felt sad again, just as I did when I stopped hearing the pure voices and songs of the dead children.

For it makes no difference whether if it is purity or lust that we miss, when we are dead. There is no difference. It is the simple act of being that fills us with longing. Remembering who we were, what roads we walked upon and who we loved. How we loved. Even our grief becomes a precious jewel shining in tortuous crimson, hanging from the trees in the forest of remembrance.

There was much dancing in the streets now. The devils danced with real living women and with the dead as well. It was now hard to tell the difference between us and them. Dusk had descended on us. We had no more illumination than the trembling candle-lights showing through the windows, and all outlines were blurred, all frontiers banished. People sang—both the living and the dead. I remember I sang too, a song that had been old when I first heard it as a child, a song that was a bridge between all times past and now. There were moments when I could not have said if I had truly died, so real was the feeling of being alive, drunk on my own happiness, intoxicated by the smell of flowers and dance and laughter! And it crossed my mind that maybe no one truly knew at that moment whether if they were alive or dead. It was more than reunion. It was union. We all shared our common humanity, with our force of life, with our death and decay. There was no division. Life and death were Us. And that was the ultimate manifestation of love.

Suddenly I stopped dancing. I released myself from the arms that led me—not a devil now. It was a pretty young woman who rejoiced with all the might and joy of youth. I felt dizzy, stunned, and the thought came to my mind that maybe there was something wrong in that feast. I looked around: people danced and drank and laughed and were merry and kind to each other, they touched, they sang, and I saw a living skeleton moving among them—the most consummate dancer, the lightest, the quickest, passing through everybody’s arms in a flash of whiteness. What, I thought, if we were breaking some sacred order, by mingling that way? By uniting two realms that were meant to remain apart, piercing the mystery. By entering forbidden territory through a defiant act of love.

‘Do not worry!’, said an old, old voice by my side. I turned around and saw an ancient woman; her face was the craggy landscape of the whole history of the Earth, and if she was one of the living or one of the dead, I could not tell, though she smelt of earth and herbs and spices. ‘It is true’, she continued: ‘this is the world turned upside down. But this is necessary too. It is from the mingling of life and death, and of it only, that life regenerates. Our union will make the Earth flourish anew. Do not worry. Soon enough all will be in order again. The Divine Hand will part light from darkness.’

Should I have felt relief? I didn’t. I turned to look at the dancing crowd and I ran mad with desire to join them again, before the old woman’s words came true and order was established back on Earth. I made a feeble attempt at singing, the old beloved song again, but I had no more voice, I felt again like mist, and any attempt I would have made at sound would have been drowned anyway by the clamour that followed. I heard rumbling and then the dark sky was pierced by the most extraordinary light, dazzling flowers of radiance bursting in the sky, falling back to earth in an arch of colour before dissolving in the air. I smelt burnt powder, there was smoke and much laughter everywhere and it was hard now to make up any shape.

I realized then this was the signal. Order was to be restored. We were to go back to our world of shadows, to the grey icy stillness, the inscrutable land of the dead.

Indeed, soon the songs became melancholy and sad. No more could you hear the stamping of dancing feet on the ground. Rather the shuffle of thousands of feet as they walked slowly in procession. A smell of incense, still the fragrance of the thousand petal flowers, and again the ringing of the bells. ‘Back, back, back’, they said. ‘It’s time to go back’.

And I had long lost the gift of tears!

The living walked all around us, gently pushing us back, towards the village’s end. They all held candles in their hands, to light the way. If they didn’t we wouldn’t find the way, we would be forced to light our own fingers in order to see. But the living were gentle, they led us through with their mourning songs, the bells, the light, the solemn voice of farewell.

We reached the cemetery’s gates. The whole place was a source of warm amber light. All our graves had been cleansed, weeded, planted with new flowers, covered with candles. So we were not afraid. We had their sweet songs to wrap us up. We carried against our bosom all the cherished gifts they had given us. Most of all, I carried in my ghostly hands the warmth of their flesh, in my ghostly eyes the living flame reflected in theirs.

And though there was sadness in returning to the grave and the shapeless worlds that open beyond, I was contented: I had been reminded who I had been. I had been showered with memory and love. I was, I still was. I would not be forgotten, I would not be lost from the fabric of time. And I’d be called back to feast, every year, over and over again…

The second song. “Nos queremos morir” (We Want to Die) by Santa Sabina

I have no words to thank each and every of the comments you have sent me and the comfort they’ve brought.
I share with you this obituary I wrote for Rita. It did not find a place in the British press, so I upload it here today, which marks two months after Rita left us.
On the 2nd of June we will have an homage for her at the Claustor de Sor Juana, at 7 pm. I will upload the invitation later.
Thank you again with all my heart.

Obituary

Rita Guerrero, leader of Mexican rock band Santa Sabina, conductor of an Early Music choir at a University in Mexico City and whose theatrical skills inspired a whole generation of actors, has died from secondary brain cancer on the 11th of March 2011 at the age of 46.
From her youngest followers to the President of Mexico, her death has unleashed an outpouring of tributes in her country and abroad to one of the most uncompromising and gifted artists ever seen on the Mexican stage.
Guerrero was born in the city of Guadalajara in 1964, where she studied music and became part of the experimental theatre project “S”. She moved to Mexico City to study theatre at the Centro Universitario de Teatro. Her participation in the student strike that shook the National University in 1987, leading to the formation of a Students Congress, made her meet other radical artists and changed the course of her career. Under the direction of David Hevia, she acted on Jerzy Grzegorzewski’s America and Hevia’s Vox Thanatos, which left their mark on a cohort of actors–on hearing news of Rita’s death, Gael García Bernal stated that seeing these plays as a boy made him wish to become an actor.
America and Vox Thanatos included live music originally composed by experimental jazz-rock musicians then in their teens. Guerrero sang, and their musical affinity made them form the band Santa Sabina. Their first performance in 1989 electrified the audience with their complex music and Guerrero’s vocal feats. They soon became a cult band, and though Rita kept on acting in film and theatre, from then on she devoted most of her efforts to music.
Santa Sabina’s concerts were otherworldly three hour events, enhanced by Guerrero’s theatrical experience. Stage design was usually the labour of her and artist-friends who worked with scant resources to stunning results. Their experimental compositions and Guerrero’s mesmerizing force as a performer led King Crimson’s Adrian Belew to produce their second album, Símbolos. A few years later, when the band was King Crimson’s opening act, KC’s hard-to-please founder Robert Fripp praised their sound’s purity –a quality that Guerrero harnessed seamlessly to her Early Music work. Santa Sabina performed often in America and had a series of European appearances. They went into hiatus in 2004, after five studio albums.
While still working with the band Guerrero built a repertoire of Early Music and founded the Galileo Ensemble that recorded two albums. Their interpretations, both virtuous and fresh, of Sephardic songs, music from Medieval Spain and the Mexican viceroyalty earned them the respect of a diverse audience.
Guerrero was also known for her activism as an outspoken supporter of the Zapatista 1994 uprising in Southeast Mexico, and later of candidate López Obrador during the disputed 2006 Presidential Elections.
In 2005 she became conductor of an Early Music Choir at the Universidad del Claustro, a former convent where 17th Century Mexican poet and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz lived. Guerrero unearthed valuable music from the viceroyalty era and produced several theatrical music projects. The choir’s first album was launched last year.
When in January 2010 Guerrero was diagnosed with breast cancer, her enthusiasm for music did not diminish in the least—she was still working a month before her death. In May that year she was behind the staging of the show Música Divina, Humanas Letras. Rita conducted the choir and played a character in dialogue with Sor Juana, bridging the gap between the 17th and 21st Centuries—a fitting conversation between two unconventional Mexican women whose lives and work walked the thin line that separates the sacred from earthly fulfilment. Guerrero used the loss of hair from chemotherapy as a prop to enhance the androgynous ambiguity her character called for.
Last December, 22 Mexican rock bands played at a concert to raise funds for her treatment of what by then had become brain cancer. Rita gathered all former members of Santa Sabina and closed the concert, singing until the small hours.
On her death, some 2,000 people queued in the street around Sor Juana’s chapel were her wake was held, and which had not been used to honour a public figure on such an occasion for 50 years, in order to pay their respects. She was lying on a bed of flowers, surrounded by candles and music, just as she loved to be onstage.
Leader of a ‘cult’ band, a free spirit who built her life’s work on the fringes of the mainstream, she might have been surprised at the way her talent has been honoured by even the most official organs of Mexican culture and show-business. It is easy to imagine her ironic laughter at the condolences sent to her family by President Felipe Calderón, whose mandate is still tainted by the suspicion of fraudulent elections.
Rita Guerrero’s family and friends grieve for a generous, brave and loving woman who, despite her iconic status in Mexican culture, never cared about stardom, fame or riches. As she always said, all she wanted was to create and share beauty. She is survived by her partner Aldo Max Rodríguez, former member of Santa Sabina, and her son Claudio, who turned five the day after her death.

[credit photograph: Javier de María]

At the moment the only honest thing I can do is to write my books. I thank you for your interest. The last news is not much: the long blakean novel will be finished in a few months. The finished but unpublished books keep on accumulating in my drawers. Some people have asked here where they can find my books. Unfortunately the only one that can be found is my latest book of poetry, Una rosa, published last year by Ediciones sin nombre, that is surely in several bookshops in Mexico. The others are all unavailable. I will try to find spaces for those copies I have left of La sed and Estaciones.
Though the year that starts promises to be a hard one for almost everybody on earth, I do wish you that it manages to be ardent and luminous in spite of all.
I leave you with some images of the things I see through my window, as a complement to silence.

Londres ha estado llena de contrastes en esta temporada festiva: días grises de lluvia y oscuridad interminables, nevadas seguidas de mañanas claras, frías, cristalinas brillando sobre la blancura como en un sueño de imposible pureza. El primero de enero llegó como un regalo: luz, una luz límpida arrancando los colores más hermosos de las ramas desnudas de los árboles, del cabello de la gente, el pelaje de los perros en el parque, la blancura de las gaviotas paradas sobre el hielo en el estanque.

La escritura avanza. Mi novela crece. Por el momento no pido más.

The absence has been long, and I apologize. Life changes, it moves in strange ways. Sometimes it moves too much and then the blog suffers. But I didn’t want to start the New Year without saying thanks to those who have followed me in this space, for your kindness and your patience, and I want to wish you a 2010 with many books.

London has been full of contrasts during the festive season: grey days of endless rain and darkness, snow storms followed by clear, cold and crystalline mornings shining on all that whiteness like a dream of impossible purity. January the 1^st came as a present: light, a limpid light bringing the most beautiful colours out of the trees’ naked branches, people’s hair, the dogs’ fur in the park, the whiteness of the seagulls standing on the frozen lake.

The writing continues. My novel grows. For the time being I ask for nothing else.

Thank you all for your comments. This is a very brief post, just to give you the link of a new site where there is information about new actions in order to demand justice for Acteal.

http://actealjusticiaymemoria.wordpress.com/

(Scroll down to read in English)

Perdonen que este blog se haya vuelto tan político últimamente y parezca que se ha olvidado de la literatura. No es el caso, pero hay momentos que se imponen, como éste en que la patria se desmorona y ya nadie sabe si vamos a llegar a celebrar el bicentenario antes de que nos estalle en las manos otra revolución.

Nada más para que no se me olvide a lo que está una expuesta por ser mexicana, esta mañana, al abrir mi buzón, lo primero que me encontré fue un mensaje del FONCA con una carta adjunta, dirigida a los becarios del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, y firmada ni más ni menos que por Felipe Calderón. Está escrita en papel virtual membretado y toda la cosa, incluyendo la fotografía del hombre en cuestión… de verdad que no era necesario.

Es una carta muy curiosa. Más que curiosa. Me dio dolor de estómago, yo creo que por leerla en ayunas. Empieza diciendo que va a informarme de “los avances de uno de los programas que estamos impulsando en esta administración.” Y luego siguen varios párrafos de demagogia en los que no se me informa de los avances de ningún programa, ni se especifica siquiera a qué programa se refiere (no queda tan claro que sea el del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte).

En el terso lenguaje de los políticos, lo único que la carta transmite es un mensaje que, como escritora, me parece insultante. El presidente Calderón me dice que sabe que soy becaria del FONCA y que está seguro de que con mi talento seguiré contribuyendo “al caudal creativo de México”, y continúa: “Nuestro país es la suma del esfuerzo de todos los mexicanos. Hoy que enfrentamos grandes desafíos, el empeño y el compromiso de personas como usted son vitales para salir adelante. Todos tenemos un papel que cumplir y sé que hará la parte que le corresponde. México cuenta con usted.”

Y termina diciendo que el gobierno de México “seguirá dando la más alta prioridad al desarrollo humano y social de los mexicanos”, whatever that means.

¿Pero qué es esto? No se necesita ser muy listo para entender que es un mensaje tras el escándalo y las protestas por el reciente recorte al presupuesto para la cultura y la educación.

El mensaje sería de muy mal gusto en cualquier país. Viniendo del gobierno mexicano, en estos momentos de tanta vergūenza e iniquidad, es francamente atroz. Lo que se nos está diciendo a artistas y escritores becados es: “Sé que tienes una beca del gobierno mexicano. Acuérdate de dónde está tu lealtad.”

Por este medio quisiera decirle al Sr. Calderón que, como escritora, mi lealtad está con mi obra, y como mexicana, con el pueblo de México, y con los impuestos de los mexicanos de donde salen las becas. El FONCA es una institución publica de apoyo y fomento a la cultura, y las advertencias veladas del presidente no deben tener cabida en sus programas.

No sé con quién cree el Sr. Calderón que está hablando. El trabajo de artistas, escritores e intelectuales es una cosa seria que merece respeto. Estoy segura de que todos los becarios que en estos momentos son, al igual que yo, miembros del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, tienen muy claro que la beca es un reconocimiento a nuestra trayectoria y un impulso para crear obra nueva, y no el pago por nuestra libertad ni de expresión ni de protesta, mucho menos el precio de nuestra conciencia.

A mí nadie me ha comprado. Soy una escritora cumpliendo con su proyecto de beca, nada más y nada menos. Como tal, espero respeto del Presidente de la República.

Me despido recordándoles sobre la campaña “Zedillo not in Yale but in Jail” de la entrada anterior de este blog, y seguiré informando sobre nuevas acciones con respecto al caso de Acteal que estamos planeando en Londres.

Espero poder escribir pronto de cosas más gratas. Gracias a todos por sus mensajes.

Please forgive me if this blog has become too political of late and it looks as if it‘s forgotten all about literature. That is not the case, it‘s just that there are moments that cannot be ignored, like this one in which Mexico is crumbling down and no one knows anymore whether if we’re going to be able to celebrate our Independence bicentenary before another revolution goes off in our hands.

Just so that I don‘t forget what I’m exposed to by being Mexican, the first thing I found this morning when I opened my inbox was a message from the FONCA (the Mexican organism that awards the grants like the one I currently have), with an attached letter addressed to current beneficiaries of the ‘National System of Art Creators’ and signed by President Felipe Calderón, no less. It is written in virtual headed paper, including a photograph of the man… it truly was not necessary.

It is a very curious letter. More than curious. It actually made my stomach hurt, I guess because I read it before having any breakfast. It starts by saying he‘s going to inform me about the ‘developments of one of the programmes we’re backing in the present administration’. Then follow several demagogic paragraphs in which I am not informed about the developments of any programme whatsoever, nor do they even specify what programme is he talking about (it’s not clear he means the National System of Art Creators.)

With the terse language of politics, the only thing the letter conveys is a message that, as a writer, I find insulting. President Calderón is telling me that he knows I have a FONCA grant and that he’s sure that, with my talent, I will go on contributing to ‘Mexico’s creative wealth’, and continues: ‘Our country is the aggregate of the efforts of all Mexicans. Now that we face great challenges, the effort and commitment of people like you are vital to overcome them. We all have a role to play and I know you’ll do your part. Mexico counts on you.’

And he ends up saying that the Mexican government ‘will go on giving the highest priority to the human and social development of all Mexicans’, whatever that means.

What on Earth is this? You don’t need to be too clever to understand it’s a message on the wake of the scandal and protests because of the recent cuts on the national budget for culture and education.

The message would be in very bad taste in any country. Coming from the Mexican government in these particular times, loaded with shame and iniquity, it is frankly atrocious. What it’s telling artists and writers is: ‘I know you have a grant from the Mexican government. Don’t forget where your loyalty lies.’

Through this means I’d like to inform Mr. Calderón that, as a writer, my loyalty lies with my work, and as a Mexican woman, with the Mexican people, and with the taxes of the Mexicans that make the grants possible. The FONCA is a public institution that supports and encourages culture, and the President’s veiled warnings should have no place in its programmes.

I don’t know who Mr. Calderón thinks he’s talking to. The work of artists, writers and intellectuals is something serious that deserves respect. I am sure that all those who are now members of the National System of Art Creators, as myself, have it rather clear that the grant is a recognition to our trajectory and an impulse for us to create new artistic works, and not a payment for our freedom of expression or protest, much less the price of our conscience.

Nobody has bought me. I am a writer working on my grant project, no more and no less. As such, I expect some respect from the President of Mexico.

Before I say goodbye I’d ike to remind you about the “Zedillo not in Yale but in Jail” campaign mentioned in this blog’s former entry, and I’ll keep on informing you about future actions that are being planned in London regarding the Acteal case.

I hope I’ll be able to write soon about more pleasant things. Thank you all for your messages.

The Supreme Court of Mexico’s decision of releasing 20 of those accused of perpetrating the Acteal massacre has provoked an uproar that now has an international scope. Perhaps the magistrates and the revisionists of history were betting on our forgetfulness, but they’ve just found out our memory is not so faulty. Perhaps this is the moment for finally achieving justice up to the higher levels, including of course ex President Ernesto Zedillo. If you want to protest for Zedillo’s post as Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, explaining that it’s all a lamentable typo and this man with blood on his hands should not be in Yale, but in jail, write to them. This is the link: http://www.ycsg.yale.edu/center/contact.html

(Scroll down to read in English)

Londres, a 12 agosto de 2009 

Ya no sé a quién dirijo estas palabras. Pensé en escribir una carta abierta a los ministros de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, a la Presidencia de la República, a los abogados del Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, al “historiador” Héctor Aguilar Camín, que cree que la historia se escribe entrevistando a los poderosos y dándole espaldarazos públicos a sus versiones de los hechos. Pero se cansa una de estar arrojando palabras contra murallas de piedra, verlas caer, mudas e impotentes.

 Mejor escribo esta carta a mi país, a México. Porque, si bien recientemente recibí la nacionalidad británica, no he perdido la nacionalidad mexicana, y ni en mi conciencia ni en mi corazón voy a perderla nunca. La escribo de paso para quien pueda escucharla en el resto del mundo; esa es una de las virtudes de estos tiempos en que la información, las ideas y las palabras se esfuerzan por abolir fronteras. Ciertamente, la masacre de 45 indígenas tzotziles –entre ellos mujeres y niños– en Acteal, Chiapas, del 22 de diciembre de 1997, un crimen de Estado aún impune, con los autores intelectuales libres, está inscrita desde entonces en la conciencia y la memoria no sólo de México, sino del mundo.

 Escribo en un intento de apelar a nuestra memoria, a la memoria de individuos con conciencia propia y libre, para que, en el dudoso caso de que lo hayan olvidado, recuerden lo que sabemos sobre la masacre de Acteal y unan sus voces a los clamores de indignación y de denuncia que se han levantado en estos días por la probable excarcelación de un buen número de los autores materiales del crimen. Justo mientras escribo esto los ministros de la Suprema Corte están reunidos, presumiblemente tratando de obtener la mayoría que opaque al único disidente entre ellos, Sergio Valls Hernández, para dejar a decenas de estos hombres en libertad.

 Nosotros mientras tanto esperamos el desenlace de este vergonzoso episodio con un puño en el estómago y en la garganta, que en nada se comparan con el horror, la ira y el desaliento que deben estar sintiendo los sobrevivientes y los deudos de las víctimas de la masacre. La excarcelación en cuestión no es nada más un signo de impunidad: es una amenaza de más violencia.

 Confieso que pocas veces me molesto en leer al Sr. Aguilar Camín, pero cuando llego a hacerlo, por fuerza de la necesidad como es hoy el caso, siempre me parece un hombre muy curioso. No atino a entender si cree que los destinos, las vidas y muertes de individuos concretos no son sino instrumentos de un divertimento literario en el que resulta entretenido jugar al abogado del diablo; no logro comprender qué tan desmedidas serán sus ambiciones de… ¿de qué, exactamente?, como para tomar el partido del poder cuando se trata de episodios particularmente atroces y brutales, como es el caso de la masacre de Acteal; me pregunto si alguna vez ha oído hablar de la honestidad intelectual, y si sabe lo que esto significa; no sé cómo puede dormir. Pero, sobre todo, me pregunto si cree que todos somos idiotas y, peor aún, un país de desmemoriados, capaces de aceptar sin inmutarnos su revisión de la historia, como si no hubiéramos sido testigos del horror de esta masacre.

 Enarbola su versión de los hechos contra los testimonios de los sobrevivientes de la masacre, de los deudos de las víctimas, de las comunidades que conocen a los integrantes de los grupos paramilitares, contra el testimonio de los periodistas, observadores y asociaciones de defensa de los derechos humanos que han estado en la zona haciendo un trabajo serio, objetivo, necesario y sin duda arriesgado, constantemente, en la zona de conflicto desde 1994. Pretende empañar las conclusiones de las investigaciones de organismos internacionales de defensa de derechos humanos y parece pensar que, al final, no son sino las palabras de todas estas personas contra la suya.

 Pero no son sólo palabras. Hay testimonios grabados y filmados de lo ocurrido en cuanto se supo de la matanza. El caso de Acteal –y de ahí que la impunidad sea aún más inconcebible– está extensamente documentado, en México y en el extranjero. Por si la memoria nos fallara tanto, existen por fortuna innumerables fuentes a las qué acudir para que nos la refresquen.

 Esto en lo que respecta a un escritor con perpetua vocación de cortesano. ¿Pero qué decir de los ministros de la Suprema Corte de Justicia? ¿Cómo pueden dormir? Lo pregunto de veras, no es retórica. ¿En dónde quedó su conciencia, y en dónde su memoria? Estas 45 personas desarmadas, que estaban reunidas rezando, desplazadas de sus comunidades por la violencia ejercida en su contra por los grupos paramilitares no sólo tolerados, sino armados y entrenados por las fuerzas estatales, estas personas que fueron masacradas durante una larga escena de pesadilla, de entre 6 y 7 horas, sin que las fuerzas policiales y del ejército ni la Cruz Roja intervinieran, estas 45 vidas fueron extinguidas de una manera brutal, víctimas de un bien planeado y meticulosamente articulado ejercicio del horror, y sus sobrevivientes y deudos quedaron aún más traumatizados y desprotegidos de lo que ya estaban antes de la matanza, expulsados de sus hogares por la violencia. Hay innumerables testimonios de todo esto, ¡por Dios! Es ya ocioso repetir lo que todos sabemos. Son vidas humanas, todas, las de los hombres, mujeres (algunas embarazadas) y niños asesinados.

 Como muchas otras personas del resto del país y del extranjero, yo estuve en el campamento de refugiados de Polhó poco después de la masacre. Vi a los desplazados, hablé con sobrevivientes de la masacre, vi cómo seguían siendo hostigados por el ejército y los grupos paramilitares, vi –con indecible horror– lo cerca que está el lugar de la masacre de la carretera constantemente transitada por soldados y policías y del campamento militar que entonces se encontraba justo a espaldas del de refugiados: imposible que seis o siete horas de carnicería hayan ocurrido ahí sin ser percibidas, y sin la complicidad de esos soldados y policías que, sin duda alguna, estuvieron todo este tiempo oyendo los disparos y los gritos. Todo esto lo vi yo con mis ojos y lo asimilé, como pude, en mi conciencia. Nadie me lo contó, y nadie se lo ha contado a los miles de observadores nacionales y extranjeros que han acudido a la zona desde entonces. Les aconsejaría a los ministros que se den una vuelta por ahí, donde por cierto los conflictos no se han solucionado y muchas comunidades, de bases zapatistas o no (Las Abejas no son zapatistas, por más que algunos artículos en la prensa nos traten de confundir doce años después), siguen siendo hostigadas. Que vayan y vean cómo viven tantos y tantos mexicanos: no nada más su miseria, no nada más lo expuestos que están constantemente a todo tipo de violencia, no nada más sus carencias, no nada más su dolor, sino también su entereza y su dignidad. Que vayan, a ver si aprenden algo.      

Y justo en estos días el presidente Felipe Calderón niega la afirmación de Human Rights Watch de que, en México, los abusos del Ejército quedan constantemente impunes. Ya no sabe uno si reír o llorar. En caso de lo primero, sería una de esas risas de desesperación, ya sin humor alguno. El otro nombre del poder en México es Impunidad, a todo lo largo y ancho del territorio nacional. Lo sabemos los mexicanos, y es urgente que lo sepa el resto del mundo, que se acabe esta farsa hipócrita en que otras naciones se hacen de la vista gorda ante tanto y tanto crimen impune porque México es un país “con el que se pueden hacer negocios”.         

Escribo esto con horror y angustia, pero no son ni el horror ni la angustia los que deben tener la última palabra. Hablé hace un momento de la entereza y la dignidad de esas comunidades indígenas en Chiapas, y no son los únicos mexicanos que saben lo que es eso. Hay muchos, en todo el país, tratando contra viento y marea de construir un país justo, con valentía y fortaleza admirables. Y entre ellos, muchos se cuentan entre los más pobres y más desprotegidos de los mexicanos, que ya es bastante decir. No los dejemos solos. Recordemos –aunque los crímenes sean innumerables, tan atroces, y sea tan doloroso recordar. Usemos nuestras palabras, nuestras imágenes, nuestra tristeza y nuestra indignación y nuestra furia para un fin común: justicia y verdad. Para que un día todos los mexicanos podamos dormir sin que nos asfixien las pesadillas de tantísima sangre impunemente derramada.

Funeral. Fuente: BBCmundo.com

  I don’t know whom I’m writing these words for anymore. I though about writing a public letter to the Ministers of the Supreme Court of Mexico, to the Presidency, to the lawyers of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, to ‘historian’ Héctor Aguilar Camín, who believes that history is written by interviewing the powerful and publicly backing their versions of facts. But one does get tired of throwing words against stone walls, and see them fall back, mute and impotent. 

And thus I’d rather write this letter of sorts to my country, Mexico. Because, though I recently was granted the British nationality, I haven’t lost the Mexican nationality, and I never will, in my heart or mind. I write this also for whoever may listen in the rest of the world; that’s one of the virtues of our times, when information, ideas and words strive to abolish frontiers. Indeed, the massacre of 45 tzotzil Indians—women and children among them—in Acteal, Chiapas, on December 22, 1997, a State crime still unpunished, the masterminds untouched, has been inscribed since then in the consciousness and memory not only of Mexico, but of the world. 

I write in an attempt to appeal to our memory, to the memory of individuals with their own and free conscience, so that, in the unlikely case that they have forgotten, they may remember what we know about the Acteal massacre and sum their voices to the clamour of indignation and denunciation that has been growing in these days, because of the likely release from prison of dozens of the perpetrators of the crime. While I write this, the Supreme Court’s Ministers are gathered, presumably trying to obtain the majority that will silence the only one among them to dissent, Sergio Valls Hernández, in order to set these men free. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us wait for the ending of this shameful episode with a lump in our throat and our stomach that can’t possibly be compared to the horror, fury and dismay that the survivors of the massacre and the victims’ relatives must be feeling. The release of the prisoners is not only a sign of impunity, but a threat of further violence. 

I confess that I hardly ever bother to read Mr. Aguilar Camín, but when, by force of circumstances, such as these, I happen to do so, I always find him a very peculiar man. I don’t manage to understand whether if he believes that the destinies, lives and death of concrete individuals are nothing but instruments for a literary divertimento, in which it is fun to play the devil’s advocate; I can’t understand how boundless his ambitions of… of what, exactly?, may be, so that he takes side with power when episodes particularly atrocious and brutal such as the Acteal massacre are involved; I wonder if he has ever heard about intellectual honesty and if he knows what that means; I don’t know how can he sleep. But, most of all, I wonder whether if he believes that we are all idiots and, even worse, a country without memory, capable of accepting without problem his revision of history, as if we had not been witness to the horror of that massacre. 

He hoists his version of the events against the testimony of the massacre’s survivors, of the victims’ relatives, of the communities that know who the members of the paramilitary groups are, against the testimony of journalists, observers and human rights’ defence organisations that have been in the area doing a serious, objective, necessary and doubtless dangerous work, constantly, in the conflict’s area, since 1994. He attempts to blur the conclusions of the investigations of international human rights defence organisms, and he seems to think that, in the end, it is only the word of all these persons against his. 

But it’s not only words. There is recorded and filmed evidence of what happened as soon as the news of the killing was known. The case of Acteal is extensively documented, in Mexico and abroad—that makes the impunity even more inconceivable. In case that our memory could fail us so much, there are luckily endless sources to turn to in order to refresh it. 

This is in what concerns a writer with a perpetual courtesan vocation. But what can we say about the Supreme Court’s Ministers? How can they sleep? I ask it seriously, it’s not rhetoric. Where is their conscience, and where their memory? Those 45 unarmed persons, who were gathered praying, displaced from their communities through the violence exercised against them by the paramilitary groups that were not only tolerated, but armed and trained by the state’s forces, those persons who were massacred during a long scene of nightmare that lasted between 6 and 7 hours, without the Army or police forces intervening, nor the Red Cross, those 45 lives were extinguished in a brutal way, victims of a well planned and meticulously articulated exercise of horror, and its survivors where left even more traumatised and unprotected that they were already before the killing, expelled as they had been of their homes by violence. For God’s sake, there are innumerable testimonies and evidence of all this! It is idle to go on repeating what we all know. They were human lives, all of them, those of the murdered men, women (some of them pregnant) and children.

 As many other people from the rest of the country and abroad, I visited the refugees camp in Polhó shortly after the massacre. I saw the displaced people, I talked with some survivors of the massacre, I saw how the refugees kept on being harassed by the army and the paramilitary groups. I saw—with unspeakable horror—how close the place of the massacre is from the road constantly used by soldiers and police, just how close from the military post that was then just behind the refugees camp: impossible, that six or seven hours of slaughter had taken place there without being perceived, and without the complicity of those soldiers and state police who, no doubt, where hearing all that time the shots and the screams. I saw all this with my own eyes and I assimilated it, as best as I could, with my conscience. Nobody told me, and no one has told the story to the thousands of national and international observers who have been in the area since then, seeing with their own eyes. I’d advise the Supreme Court’s Ministers to go there—by the way, the conflicts have not been sorted out yet and many communities, whether zapatista or not (Las Abejas are not zapatista, no matter how much some articles in the press try to confuse us 12 years later) are still being harassed. I’d advise them to go and see how so many Mexicans live: not only their misery, not only how exposed they constantly are to all sorts of violence, not only all they lack, not only their grief, but also their fortitude and dignity. I’d ask them to go, to see if they learn something. 

And it is precisely in these days that President Felipe Calderón refutes Human Rights Watch’s statement in the sense that, in Mexico, the Army’s abuses go constantly unpunished. We don’t know whether to cry or to laugh. If the latter, it would be one of those laughs born out of despair, with no humour in it. The other name of power in Mexico is Impunity, all throughout the national territory. We Mexicans know this for sure, and it is urgent that the rest of the world knows too, that we put an end to this hypocritical farce in which other nations put a blind eye to so many unpunished crimes because Mexico is a country ‘with which you can make business’. 

I write this with horror and anguish, but horror and anguish must not have the final word. A moment ago I talked about the fortitude and dignity of those indigenous communities in Chiapas, and they are not the only Mexicans who know what that is. There are many, in the whole country, trying against all odds to build a just country, with admirable bravery and strength. And many among them are some of the poorest and most unprotected Mexicans, which is to say a lot. Let’s not leave them alone. Let us remember—even if the crimes are innumerable, so atrocious, and so painful to remember. Let us use our words, our images, our sadness and our indignation and our fury for a common goal: justice and truth, so that one day all of us Mexicans may sleep without being smothered by the nightmares of so much blood shed with impunity.

Vigilia aniversario. Fuente: BBCmundo.com