Mother Tongue (9 page)
Authors: Demetria Martinez
SAN SALVADOR
, El Salvador, Aug. 15, (AP)—The bodies of two nuns who were reported missing earlier this week have been found 33 miles north of
here near the village of Encarnación.
A group of Encarnación youth found the partially nude bodies yesterday evening while playing near a ditch. Authorities have identified the remains as those of Eve O’Connor and María Quinto of San Antonio, Texas.
Witnesses say the bodies, which were in a shallow grave, appeared to have been mutilated. The bodies were moved to an unrevealed location for autopsies.
The nuns were reported missing after they failed to return Wednesday night to their residence, Casa Justicia, in San Salvador.
U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Emory Newland, who
oversaw the removal of the bodies, denounced the deaths and promised a full investigation by an independent commission.
“Despite major steps toward reform in El Salvador, it is clear the country still runs the danger of becoming a death-squad democracy,” Newland said.
But according to separate press releases issued early this morning by the U.S. State Department and Salvadoran President Alfredo Amérigo, “leftist guerrillas” are the key suspects in the deaths.
The differing interpretations of the cause of the nuns’ deaths is the most recent example of a growing rift between Newland and the State Department, sources said.
In recent weeks, Newland has
made widely reported visits to literacy projects, which O’Connor and Quinto helped found throughout El Salvador. The nuns belong to Our Lady of the Light, an order that has worked closely with Jesuit priests in literacy and public health.
Since the assassination last year of Jesuit Father Milton Gustavo, U.S. Jesuit leaders have alleged that the State Department is concealing evidence of a campaign by the Salvadoran army to harass church workers who live among El Salvador’s poor.
Sources close to the State Department said Newland’s visits to the literacy projects have embarrassed U.S. officials.
O’Connor and Quinto were outspoken critics of the $1-million-a-day in military aid the
U.S. sends to El Salvador, where civil war has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 50,000 people. The nuns have also worked closely with the Mothers of the Disappeared, a group the Salvadoran government says has strong ties to the guerrillas.
In his press release, President Amérigo said he has postponed a speech he was to give at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in order to attend the women’s funeral mass. The date of the service will be announced soon, said a U.S. embassy spokesman.
According to a statement released by the San Salvador archdiocese, Archbishop José Grande, who has come under repeated death threats himself, will lead a three-mile funeral
procession from the sisters’ residence to Our Lady of Sorrows Cathedral where he will offer a Mass of the Resurrection.
Twenty years later, the article is brittle but the memory is not. In the basement by the washing machine, I am translating the
Albuquerque Herald
report of the nuns’ deaths for José Luis, and he hates me for what happened. See, see what is being done to us? he says. He has heard the story of slain nuns too many times so he wads up and throws his nation’s history at me like a rough draft. He says, you don’t know what it’s like to suffer. I say, José Luis, please, it will be all right. He says, you have no right to say that, you don’t know what it’s like to flee. Later in the day, he apologizes for the episode, but it is too late. Like a man who dared to look straight at the sun, he will never completely obliterate that dark light; it has scorched his vision. He saw in me an image of a gringa whose pale skin and tax dollars are putting his compatriots to death. My credentials,
the fact that I am Mexican American, don’t count now; in fact, they make things worse. In his anger he looks at me and sees not a woman but a beast, a Sphinx. Earlier in the morning, he had made love to a Chicana. But after telling him the news of the nuns’ deaths, I am transfigured. For a terrible, disfigured moment, I am a yanqui, a murderess, a whore.
EMERGENCY ACTION BULLETIN
IN RESPONSE TO THIS WEEK’S
DEVELOPMENTS IN EL SALVADOR
,
THERE WILL BE A
DEMONSTRATION AT THE
FEDERAL BUILDING DOWNTOWN
,
242
WASHINGTON S.E., AT NOON
.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HELP
MAKE SIGNS, JOIN US AT THE
JUSTICE CENTER TWO HOURS
PRIOR TO THE DEMONSTRATION
.
OTHERWISE, BRING YOUR OWN
SIGNS. KEEP THE MESSAGE CLEAR
AND SIMPLE, SUCH AS U.S. OUT OF
EL SALVADOR, BREAD NOT
BOMBS, TAX DOLLARS ARE
KILLING CHILDREN, ETC. WE WILL
ALSO BRING WHITE CROSSES
INSCRIBED WITH THE NAMES OF
SALVADORANS WHO HAVE BEEN
KILLED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE
LAST FEW MONTHS. WHEN WE
GATHER AT NOON, JOSÉ LUIS
ROMERO WILL OFFER AN
INVOCATION WITH RABBI ANNE
WEISEN. WE WILL THEN LINE UP
ALONG WASHINGTON. WE
ENCOURAGE PARTICIPANTS TO
WEAR SUITS, TIES, DRESSES, ETC
.
RELIGIOUS LEADERS SHOULD
WEAR HABITS, COLLARS, AND SO
FORTH. THE MEDIA HAS MANAGED
TO PEG US AS THE RADICAL
FRINGE, AND WE NEED TO
COUNTER THIS STEREOTYPE IN
ORDER TO GET OUR MESSAGE
ACROSS
.
THOSE WHO PLAN TO COMMIT
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (ONLY THOSE
WITH EXPERIENCE, PLEASE)
SHOULD MEET AT THE JUSTICE
CENTER AN HOUR BEFORE THE
DEMONSTRATION TO GO OVER
INSTRUCTIONS. WE PLAN TO
OCCUPY SENATOR MARCIANDO’S
OFFICE UNTIL HIS PEOPLE CALL
THE POLICE. WE WILL PROBABLY
BE BOOKED AND RELEASED ON
OUR OWN RECOGNIZANCE SO
PLAN FOR A LONG EVENING
.
SOLEDAD SANCHEZ IS
ORGANIZING A CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE SUPPORT GROUP
,
WHICH WILL HOLD A PRAYER
VIGIL OUTSIDE THE BUILDING
UNTIL EVERYONE IS RELEASED
FROM THE POLICE STATION
ACROSS THE STREET. CALL HER
OR THE JUSTICE CENTER IF YOU
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS. PEACE
.
VIGIL PROGRAM, P
. 2
AFTER THE INVOCATION, PLEASE
TURN AND FACE THE FEDERAL
BUILDING AND TOGETHER READ
THE LITANY OF NAMES. THESE
ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE
DISAPPEARED IN THE PAST
MONTH:
CARLOS RAMOS GRANDE
EUGENIA MÁRQUEZ NÚÑEZ
RUTILIO LÓPEZ MONTES
OSCAR DONOVAN MARTÍNEZ
REGINALDO DE JESÚS ROMERO
ELBA VELÁSQUEZ TAMAYO
…
August 20
I pray that María forgives me for getting angry with her the other day. I acted as if it were her fault that the sisters were killed. I suspect the real reason for my anger is that I have no idea what to say to make her understand that my world is falling apart around me. And I am too proud to say, María, there are reasons why I get cold whenever I hear helicopters or sirens. There are reasons why I had to fight off vomiting last week when we drove to Old Town and saw a dead, bloody dog on the side of the road. The problem is we’re not seeing or hearing the same things. Even church bells mean something different to us. She hears them and sets her watch. I hear them and remember the endless funerals in the villages outside the capital.
But what right do I have to be angry with her? It is not her fault that her culture has made her who she is. And
there are times when she steps out, when she sees things. Yesterday she drove me to an appointment with a counselor. I let her talk me into it because the man is a Chicano who speaks Spanish and who understands the situation of refugees. As we were walking toward the office, I spotted life-size chalk drawings of human figures on the pavement. I began to panic and I turned around and went back to the truck. I couldn’t stop myself. Thank God María did not think I was changing my mind about going to the counselor. She understood what was happening. She had read in some newsletter about how the Salvadoran police outline in chalk the bodies that they find, documenting the “mysterious” deaths they themselves plan and carry out. María understood, and she sat with me in the truck until I stopped shaking. The counselor was upset when I told him what happened. He said some
children had made them as part of “art therapy” with another counselor and that he would have them removed.
I have not done well since hearing the news of the sisters’ deaths. I had often visited the literacy projects with Father Gustavo. Sleep has been difficult, and I find myself taking extra sleeping pills from María’s purse without telling her. But I know she knows I’ve been drinking way too much. I feel that a bomb is ticking inside me, and I don’t know how or when it will go off. It takes so little to push me off the edge. The other day, María took me to the Rio Grande for a walk. Green-gold gourds were growing wild among trees she said were Russian Olives. Just for fun, María started kicking a little gourd. After a while, for no reason at all, she smashed it with her foot. Only my pride kept me from crying. Then I was angry at her for doing what she did. In a world
of violence you would think she had something better to do than to smash a baby gourd.
Then I hated myself for being angry. To make reparations, I plucked a new gourd and tossed it in the Rio Grande, the great jeweled snake of a river that I have come to love. I didn’t know what else to do. It made no sense to apologize to María so I apologized to God.
—
JL ROMERO
August 22
I am working on a collection of poetry for María, to keep my mind clear and to give her something to remember me by if I leave. It is tempting to save them until that day comes, if it comes. If I give them to her now, she will take it to mean I am in love with her. And I do love her. But she might miss the larger meaning, that I never know where I will be tomorrow. I want to give her what I
can now, but not foster hopes of a future. In truth, the situation is not fair. I talk with her about the importance of hope while praying she will not dare dream.
#3
FOR
M
ARÍA
how your eyes hold me,
eyes where relief and fear
reside as in a cease-fire.
my rib throbs beneath
your palm, the rib
they fractured with
a rifle, the rib
that if taken into
the body of america
might make it new,
a country where mercy
and nobility reside,
where the shattered
bones of my people
teach your people
about strength.
—
JL ROMERO
One day he told me about the strange markings on his hands and his back. Sitting on the end of the bed, he sucked on a cigarette and flicked ashes in a beer can that he held between his thighs. He said, guards snuffed out their cigarettes on my body, one by one. It says so in the affidavit, thirty-three burn marks, not birthmarks like I told you the first time we made love. As he spoke his face melted into a trail of waxy tears, but because he believed men should never cry, I looked the other way. Not only cigarettes, he said, but electric wires on my genitals. Then, as if I were a stranger whom he had run out of things to say to at a party, he turned away, tapped his finger on the beer can. He felt ashamed. Not because he survived while others died but
because the intimacy was too much, a window thrown open too wide. To tell another person about what was done to your body in the name of politics is a frightful act of intimacy, risky beyond sex, because a man can make love for years and not reveal much of himself at all.