Pulling Onions
In Guatemala, the children on the
streets enjoy
Arranca Cebollas. A young boy hugs
a light post fiercely, while
others try to
pull him off, out like an onion in
hardened dirt.
They tug and tug, careful not to
fall
among the ubiquitous pebbles and
shards of glass
that draw blood.
In Guatemala, an adult version of
the game was played.
In the guise of the night, men and
women,
indígenas and ladinos, young and
old,
were plucked from their colonias,
leaving behind them a trail
of revolutionary pamphlets and
empty spaces.
An unholy rapture. Not Jesus, but Ríos Montt.
Genocide as vast as the silent El
Petén jungle
where the military hid its
victims,
tortured and killed.
There is No Violence Here
For Arnoldo
There is no Death Squad.
No 200,000 indígenes and ladinos
disappeared, raped, tortured,
or killed under Ix Chel and Jesus.
No bodies deposited in Guatemala,
the Motherland,
in estanques, jungles, and on
military bases.
Only arrested marijuaneros,
solventeros,
hookers, malcriados,
and communists.
Only puntos being erased
from the sentence
that is organized crime.
Limpieza.
There is no SWAT
knocking at your door,
asking for your son.
There are no narcóticos agents
breaking into his home,
smashing his trinchante and ribs,
taking everything else.
Only confiscation of evidence,
items purchased
with blood money.
Not your son’s sweat.
Not his own checks.
Not his own receipts
to prove it, now
burning over the stove.
There are no militares
with ametralladoras
around every dirt block
grabbing the crotch
of any girl who passes them
with too much hope
in her stride.
No girls now walking by
your son’s body,
his ears, eyes, and
mouth full of stones.
No officers so high
off dope they smell colors,
and jump off State jeeps
like Quetzals attempting flight.
Only imagined absence.
Only your silence now.
At the Center of Things
Below the United States, Land of
the Dreamer,
there is Mexico and South America.
And at the center, I stand,
an
imaginary Guatemalan,
alongside
Maya Chinchilla (like tortilla),
As invisible as our disappeared
brothers, uncles, boyfriends,
mothers, sisters, friends,
ancestors,
speakers of revolution, in Spanish
and K’iche.
As invisible as the fictional
Luz
Delcano and Rosario, Central American
washerwomen,
housekeepers, and widows,
in
Chicana refugee novels.
We stand in Yichkan,
the
center of the earth,
the
place between dirt and sky,
where
two dimensions meet.
There we remain
bearers of cultures that do not
exist.
When You Insist I’m Mexican,
You Bring Out the Guatemalan in Me
[Inspired
by Sandra Cisneros’s “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me”]
When you insist I’m Mexican,
you bring out the Guatemalan in me.
The memory of the past.
Civil War cries.
The frijoles negros blood.
Hear, all Latinos are not the same.
Words fly from my tongue like
Calidad, chilero, puchicas vos,
rape, disappearance, torture.
A green Quetzal, I sing silence.
Feel my El Petén rainstorms of fury,
the hatred of state-sanctioned violence
and US-intervention are in me.
When you insist I’m Mexican,
you bring out the Ix Chel
mood goddess in me.
La Siguanaba seductress.
The dark sands of San Jose.
See, sí, I am
la viuda, planchadora, tamalera.
El comal y la pila.
La pata rajada y Maya huipil.
The K’iche fire tone.
The indígena and ladina.
The victim and conqueror.
BIO
Gabriela
Ramirez-Chavez is a writer based in Santa Cruz, California. She received her BA
in English Literature and Creative Writing from California State University,
Long Beach, where she pursued her research interest in Sylvia Plath and began
her series of poems on Guatemalan/Central American identity and memory. Her
poems have most recently been featured in Kweli and Plath Profiles. Gaby is
currently pursuing a PhD in Literature at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, where she continues to write poetry beside the ocean. Contact her at gabrielaramirez51@gmail.com. www.gabrielaramirez.wordpress.com