Lorna De Cervantes

Lorna De Cervantes

COFFEE

In Guatemala the black buzzard

has replaced the quetzal

as the national bird. The shadow

of a man glides across the countryside,

over the deforested plantations; the

death cross burnishes history into myth

as it scours the medicinal land into coffee;

burial mounds that could be the sites

of unexcavated knowledge hold

only blasted feathers and the moulding bones

of freedom. Golden epaulettes glint

in the fluorescent offices, the crystal

skulls shine in the eyes of the man

with the machete, between the cross-hairs

of an AK-47. Under the rubble

of the ruling class, a human heart

beats in the palm, the tumba of ritual mercy

drums in the thunder clap, a hurricane wind

sounds the concha. In Quetzaltenango, foreign

interests plot the futures of Mayan hands

and Incan gold. While on Wall Street

the black sludge of a people trickles through

cappuccino machines like hissing snakes.

II.

Acteal. December 22, 1997. The bloodied

mud holds the plastic sandals of a child,

velas gutter through the saged prayers

in the little church blasted through with

22 splintered holes the size of a baby's tender

fists. Melon sounds pop and the hacking

drum of a machete meeting bone counts down

the hours of matanza. Somewhere, a telephone

rings off the hook. The Vicar of the Diocese

calls in twenty minute intervals. 140 federales

stand smoking in the twilight, at their feet,

the trampled harvest of peasants gleam

through the saturated leaves. Homero

Tovilla Cristiani picks up the phone: "I have

notified General Jorge Gamboa Solis. Everything

is under control. There is no massacre in Acteal,"

and places the receiver back off the cradle

on the well-ordered desk. Meanwhile, a young

Tzotzil bloodies her knuckles scratching a hole

in the adobed wall of a cave feathered with the fur

of Jaguar, where 14 women and children wait,

shivering in the dark. An infant picks up the call.

The first woman in line gazes into the coked-up eyes

of her assassin cocking his automatic weapon

into the ear of the whimpering baby at her breast.

500 years of history gets written in her eyes, as a Tzotzil

mother wedges her sleeping newborn into the hole.

She spits on the reddening dirt, and covers

her luz like a cat. Forty five pair of shoes

get lost in Acteal. Matted hair clings

to the coffee plants, each green leaf,

another listening ear; each red seed,

another eye, dislodged from its skull. I hear

nothing happened in Acteal. And if it did

no one knows who they were. The PRI

press machine stands on the ridge

of Destiny, staring Truth in the eye

as they lie to the cameras. Twenty yards

away, the survivors are speaking

the names of the men paid 600 dollars

American. Men with no families but a spoon

and a copa. Men with no names but the trademarks

emblazoned across their chests and their running shoes.

I hear forty five graves being dug today.

The women form a chain of hearts.

They have dried the earth baked with their tears.

Each one carries a red mud brick

from the killing floor where the people

were hacked into pieces the size of a bat.

Here, the "Bat People," Tzotziles, will

build a house for their dead, and pray.

III.

Alonso Vazquez Gomez

Maria Luna Mendez

Rosa Vazquez Luna

Veronica Vazquez Luna

Micaela Vazquez Luna

Juana Vazquez Luna

Juana Luna Vazquez

Maria Jimenez Luna

Susana Jimenez Luna

Miguel Jimenez Perez

Marcela Luna Ruiz

Alejandro Luna Ruiz

Jaime Luna Ruiz

Regina Luna Perez

Roselia Luna Perez

Ignacio Pukuj Luna

Micaela Pukuj Luna

Victorio Vazquez Gomez

Augustin Gomez Ruiz

Juana Perez Perez

Juan Carlos Luna Perez

Marcela Vazquez Vazquez

Antonia Vazquez Vazquez

Lorenzo Gomez Perez

Veronica Perez Oyalte

Sebastian Gomez Perez

Daniel Gomez Perez

Pablina Hernandez Vazquez

Rosela Gomez Hernandez

Graciela Gomez Hernandez

Guadalupe Gomez Hernandez

Maria Ruiz Oyalte

Catalina Vazquez Perez

Catalina Luna Ruiz

Manuela Paciencia Moreno

Margarito Gomez Paciencia

Rosa Gomez Perez

Doida Ruiz

× Gomez

Augustin Ruiz Gomez

Rosa Perez Perez

Manuel Vazquez Perez

Juana Vazquez Perez

Josefa Vazquez Perez

Marcela Capote Vazquez

Marcela Capote Ruiz

We are One Spirit, One Heart and One Mind.

IV.

Marseilles. Summer of 1940.

In the Cafe Rue d' Bohe'me, a poet,

Hans Sahl, sits waiting for someone

to buy him a cup of coffee in exchange

for witty repartee. He is a dead man.

His name has appeared on a list of those German

refugees commanded to "Surrender on Demand."

He is convinced he will never leave France

except by cattle car. A compatriot tells him

an American was asking for him by name,

that "Varian Fry is now waiting for him at the

Hotel Splendide with money and an emergency

visa." He thinks the man is crazy or

it is a joke crueler than fate for a Jew.

He sits in the Cafe all day, writing his last poems

on the coffee splotched napkins. He writes:

Sprich

Not to lost causes present your heart.

Nor love those who cast you from their midst.

Forget dark visions your dreams

ð impart.

Forget the hand that pushed you into emptiness.

Let not phantom sounds tear you apart

That yesterday's world brings to your ear.

Not to lost causes present your heart.

Guard yourself until your hour's here.

--Hans Sahl

He empties the bitter cups of coffee, knowing

they are the last he will ever taste in unoccupied

France. That fall, he sits in a Greenwich Village

cafe, the cooling coffee sweetened with the blood

of the funny little man who brushed in the stamp

on his forged exit visa. He vows to spend the rest

of his days praising the man who defied the orders

of nations, Nazis, industry, collaborators,

gendarmes and, the United States Consulate.

Work is the refuge of sadness.

"Only when we remember does sadness

overcome us and we cry. It's better

to just keep busy," says Maria Ruiz.

The women knead the masa under the heels

of their hands, cupping the balls of cornmeal

pocked with a few black beans. They pat

the bolas into palm-sized portions. Golden

ears of corn, black eyes of frijol, red tongues

of chili. On December 23rd there is laughter

in Polho'. The seÒoritas giggle at the gringo's

questions. "Que' tiene? Que' tiene?" Meaning

What is inside this humble feast they are

preparing for the ones who have come with

provisions and witness? "What's the matter?"

"Que' tiene?" The gringo insists. They smile,

a coy reply. "Nada." Nada. There is nothing

in Acteal. The federales have stolen the well-packed

sacks of coffee, a year's hard labor. They have

torn-up the clothing, peed on the grain, slaughtered

the animals, taken radios, cooking pots, weaving,

looms. The same soldiers who shit in the kitchen

now sport yellow arm bands reading "Labor Social."

Work is the refuge of sadness.

Work is more than the sum of a job.

"We need to finish off the seed!"

Micaela heard them shout.

She had been praying in the chapel since 6.

At eleven she heard the gunfire start..

Men and women were on their knees.

Some stood up and began to run. Some fell

in the chapel. The only way out was the steep

embankment. Her mother took her by the hand

and carried the two youngest. The bullet

entered her mother's back. They were found

by the children's cries. First they shot her

mother, then the babies. She made no sound

under her mother's cooling huipil. "Diego,

Antonio y Pedro. More than fifty from Los Chorros,

Pechiquil, La Esperanza, Acteal. They were dressed

in black. The one's in charge had military uniforms."

She testifies to the National Human Rights Commission.

She testifies to anyone who works to listen. How they

stripped the dead women and sliced their breasts,

forced sticks between their legs, opened the wombs,

passing the fetuses from machete to machete....

Where once she worked to silence her siblings,

at 11, Micaela's work is to be the mouth

of a people. Behind each of the names

is a life, lost between the reporter's lines

and the photograph's caption.

VI.

"No more genocide in my name...."

A young girl in trenzas sings outside

The Mexican Consulate in Denver.

"Go back to where you came from!"

shouts a car of gringos speeding down

memory lane, and is nearly drowned out

by the ritual drums and the Native chants.

First World faces sing out above the placards

like severed heads or scalps. "No more Genocide..."

...in Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Chile,

Sand Creek, Wounded Knee.... Not with arms.

Not with training. Not with money. No more

of my tax dollars that buys the man that drives

the Humvee that transports the soldier who shoots

the weapon that blinds the toddler, that enters the heart

of Guadalupe Lopez Mendez who dies in Ocosingo

asserting her civil rights. No more Genocide

in my name. We shall not overcome. We shall fight

this way forever. Estas son mis armas:

la computadora, el video, la pluma.

La plumage de justicia hangs from the broken

arrows of palabras breaking the media block

of Truth and Consequences of Free Trade Agreements.

Horrific to read, to imagine, to know, to tell--

but the only end to bullets for profit is knowledge--

knowledge that will not appear wedged between

commercials for Taster's Choice and "Nobody

Doesn't Like Sara Lee" like the living body of an

indigenous child found two days after massacre

in a bullet-ridden cave. Is this any way

to fight a drug war? Coffee, sugar, chocolate,

cattle.... "N...E...S...T...L...E...S...

Nestles makes the very best...MUR...DER!"

310 kilos of cocaine are found in Mazata'n,

the municipality where the governor, Julio Cesar

Ruiz Ferro, has two large mansions, a ranch

with a hundred hectare banana plantation and,

is building a luxury hotel with 100 suites, underground

parking, boat dock, restaurant, bar and disco.

Revenue from taxing an impoverished indigenous

population was good this year. Meanwhile,

the Mexican Red Cross sends contaminated

and expired drugs to the thousands of refugees

dying of exposure, pneumonia, and other infections

in the frigid mountains. "Nestles makes the very best...

MUR..DER!" 15 billion served, ground flesh

for the masses. I will grind Zapatista coffee

with the tongues of witness. I will wear

the huipil and honor the mothers. I will write

the dark into dawn. I will sit in the offices,

shut down the lying dog press, picket

the congress into action. I will not bank

with assassins. I will buy crafts, not Kraft,

Nestles, Proctor & Gamble, McDonald's, Sara Lee....

I will fight this way forever. Estas son mis armas:

La computadora, el video, la pluma.

"A culture isn't vanquished until the hearts

of its mothers are lying on the ground."

I will fight this way forever: I will say.

I will fight this way forever: I will pay.

I will fight this way forever: I will pray.

Amen. Y Con Safos.

El Cinco de Mayo, 1998