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from Vol. #7, Issue 3: Autumn 2016
translated from Spanish by Kevin Brown
from Ocosingo War Diary
by Efraín Bartolomé
They said this mystery never shall cease:
The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace.
William Blake
PROLOGUE
(I was born in Ocosingo's first valley, when my village was still gateway to the jungle, and the jungle was still worthy of its name. In that atmosphere of pain and wonder you could plumb the depths of nature and human nature. In that smithy my soul was forged. There, in the old family house, the war took us by surprise. I kept a hasty record of what I saw and heard during those first 12 fateful days. The very valley that gave rise to my verse has also generated the snapshots which, in brushstrokes of stuttering prose, I transcribe below.)
6 JANUARY [1]
7:00 A plane.
Throughout the night those brutal impacts of previous days were heard.
Far away, in the direction of the Jataté River.
8:00 The sky's absolutely clear.
Sun above the roofs and above the highest eastern hills.
The area where the Virgin River runs, behind the church, appears sunk in white mist, as usual.
Soon, without anyone noticing, the thick mist disappears.
It's cold, but today's sun seems different.
We'll see.
8:10 On my father's initiative, we make a sign to post on the entry gate: "There's no water or telephone."
The news has reported that life in San Cristóbal returned to normal already.
"But not here, and if the press is coming to town, like yesterday, it should be known that life here's still interrupted," is my father's argument.
There're people in the street.
Carmelino's doing business.
Since there're no classes, the nieces and nephews ask me for things to do.
I put them to work sweeping the patios because today we're going to take coffee beans out to dry.
While they're doing their chores I paint the cobbler's shoe repair stand red: a cast-iron foot, welded at a point that's been firmly nailed upon a base of solid oak, hatchet-carved. Once the iron's painted, I place the piece upon an oak half-trunk, about two feet high and just as wide.
There it stands against a white pilaster of the southern corridor.
A wartime homage to Joan Miró.
08:45 Now we take the coffee out to the patios.
There was moist coffee that was already getting moldy.
Although there's been good sun the past few days, it wasn't possible to take it out, on account of the shooting.
But now the piles are on the patios.
My father spreads it out with wooden rakes.
Uncle Rodrigo made a fire on the old kitchen stove.
There, my sisters will roast more coffee.
The two Pablos are set on leaving.
Aunt Maguita doesn't want to but won't let them go alone.
Pablo Jr. asked Toño's son to move his truck.
They've now moved it.
There's movement of cars on the patio.
Ready to leave.
I give Pablo Jr. my children's telephone number so he can tell them we're alright.
Our aunt and uncle's departure worries us a bit, but their minds are made up.
Since day before yesterday they began discussing it.
They want to take advantage of the convoy that will set out for Palenque today.
Aunt Maga's arm was very swollen last night.
My mother prepared her a poultice and today my aunt's arm appeared normal.
My mother dictates the recipe: five large mango leaves; one tablespoon of striped curare, split into pieces; a rib of purple agave; a big branch of marigold.
"Any old marigold," she adds, while I come away savoring the image.
"It's used for fomentations and for compresses, in inflammations. As hot as you can stand it."
09:20 All the patios are covered with perfectly raked coffee.
It's my father's job this time of year.
In the street white flags continue waving.
I now see them accompanying some women on bicycles and adorning a red Volkswagen.
09:24 "Hey, Carmelino, gimme my flag!", shouts one man from a group that just exited the store.
Ten people, forming a group, await their turn to go inside.
A dog barks at a man on a bike.
My wife brings me the most beautiful Brazilian cherry that she found in the garden.
A perfect waning moon bejewels the blue sky.
The children work together with their parents in roasting the coffee.
The heavenly aroma's now inundating the patios and the house.
The passengers are about to depart.
Don Pablo is a 77-year-old Spaniard who was a political prisoner under the Franco regime.
Was sentenced to 30 years in prison, of which he served six.
Now he's a pensioner of the Spanish government, and the husband of aunt Maga.
Pablo Jr.'s father.
El Paraíso belongs to them.
Don Pablo's tried everything there, on his 14 hectares, his orchard, his natural spring and his spacious house.
"There're no reshponsheeble people anymore, nothing but thieve sh," has been his catch phrase ever since I've known him.
At this point he'd started breeding chickens and producing eggs.
Finally got it right.
Everything was going well, but the war blocked his progress.
When will he be able to return to his Paradise?
Will he be able to?
I get along well with don Pablo: he's very cooperative and very daring and very naïve.
On day 2 he went down to the corner to chat with a group of Tzeltal guerrillas: "OK, but you guy sh, whowhat do know avout Marx ishm-Lenin ishm? Bee cause I know more tthan you. Bee cause I was sh een thee Shpanish Theevil War. . . ."
"And how did they respond, don Pablo?", I ask him.
"No thing . . . Yesh, shir . . . yesh, shir . . . and I didn't kick tthem out of tthere."
"That's great, don Pablo. If you come across any Central Americans, how about if they enlist you in the ranks . . . eh, commandant?"
With this recollection and with this dialogue we say our goodbyes.
Hugs for aunt Maga and Pablo Jr.
Good luck.
09:58 Calm has increased.
Some women come around selling pork and chicken.
In a house up the street they're slaughtering a pig: long, piteous squeals are heard.
"We're craving us some pork rinds now," says my smiling sister Dora as she passes.
In the store people report that the guerrillas holed up in some houses in Barrio Magisterial, a new development, for ISSSTE workers, that was constructed far from town, outside Pequeñeces.
That they carted off things.
10:05 My mother's crying because her sister left.
Aura's whining like a little girl: "She doesn't even cry that much over me."
A youngster reports that 12 cars left for Palenque.
Carmelino closes the store for a while: they're going to lunch.
When they finish they'll continue doing business.
Today I wanted to see how the mist disappears in the depression, but I forgot.
All clear already.
You can feel the absence of Aunt Maga, the two Pablos, Angelica and Arturo.
There're 20 of us left in the house.
10:22 The store opens again: the small door.
Shoppers enter one by one.
10:50 Edgar and Mingo play ping-pong, very lightheartedly.
Since they haven't brought milk from the ranch, there's no queso fresco.
But all the hard cheeses, held in reserve, that my mother sells as cheese for grating, are being consumed with gusto.
Even those are already running out.
This is a typical day in the valley: high and clear, cloudless, extremely blue, above the intense greenery.
The dazzling bursts of bougainvillea, the floral explosions, the swaying of plantain trees, fields of maize and palm trees.
But someone said a while ago that amid the canchishal[2] thickets some dead bodies remain, abandoned to the dogs' jaws.
10:58 The helicopter returns.
Everyone in the street with their white flag.
A bannered peregrination to the tortilla shop.
They come see Edgar for a doctor's visit on account of diabetic crisis.
Inform us that one girl died.
They found Doctor Talango already.
He's dead, apparently since day two.
11:22 Four cars carrying civilians pass by towards Palenque.
Some with Veracruz license plates.
They say there're dead bodies near the agricultural technical institute.[3]
The street has come to life.
Passing in front of me a young girl in a red T-shirt, with a low-cut neckline and big firm tits, very big for her stature.
She busts me staring at her.
Smiles.
There goes the young thing on up the street, "shakin' her rump real nyshe and jooshy," as we casually say, imitating Gabriel Vargas, in Mexico City.[4]
Sign of life.
Is Capirucho corrupting me?
I see two young Tzeltals coming.
They come up the street as if scared.
Are wearing clean and very wrinkled clothing.
As if recently changed.
Extremely tired.
Surely they were rebels.
Must have been trapped somewhere, in some house, and left only just today, taking advantage of the movement of people through the street.
Such fear in their faces, such concern.
They don't look at anybody.
Pass right in front of me, two paces away.
Speak but don't make eye contact.
New boots.
Like the ones that dead guerrilla had on.
They continue up the street.
Fare ye well.
In the crowd of shoppers some say they have rebels hidden in the church cellars.
"Or used to have, they must have helped them get out already."
My father insists, "how can they expect people not to revolt if they take so much away from Chiapas: petroleum, electricity, natural beauty, cultural riches, poetry, novels, archeological treasures, corn, beans, livestock, honey, shrimp, marvelous birds, research materials, timber.
"And they've exploited chicle gum base, sugar, rice, cotton, milk, cocoa, coffee."
"And here's the proof: there're no good roads, not even mediocre ones."
"There's no large runway for planes to make a decent landing on."
"Our old air field, which used to run from the river all the way to don Mamerto's house, was much better than the piece of shit airstrip there now."
"On the old field, although unpaved, Douglas aircraft, B-18s, Avros, big planes, used to land."
"Just small planes now."
"A piece of pock-marked landing strip they left us."
"They built the marketplace, the library, the radio station, a few ARIC[5] warehouses, and they let everything go to waste."
"As if there were no space."
"Now the Army can't arrive either by plane or by land."
"The highway reached us 100 years after don Juan Ballinas asked for it . . . ."
And me, I listen to my father expound, and I write as if he were dictating to me.
But this armed movement is, say what you will, college-student ideology.
And, according to my reading of Gabriel Zaid, I doubt the college kids want the peasants to leave the field to become . . . college kids.[6]
And undergraduates from the big city must now be celebrating the violence on the outskirts of Coyoacán, in the cafeterias and in the lecture halls.
And many intellectuals must be dusting off their bellicose dreams, ready to hang, over the Che Guevara poster,[7] full of cobwebs, these new versions of heroes with boots on.
One stern speech and the entire leper colony was bid come forth, loosed and let go.
And one is left filled with doubt, without getting carried away, with no desire to applaud either the vulture, or the fly, or the dog, or the guerrilla willing to sacrifice 150,000 lives if necessary.
And my father justifies the uprising.
And my mother radically disapproves of it.
And I'm this bundle of misgivings with one sole conviction: the new tyranny is always nesting in the depths of a warrior's soul.
And that's what I'm writing when my cousin Mario arrives.
Tells us about a schoolteacher who lives near his house: is from Taniperla, a collective settlement in the jungle.
His mom came to spend Christmas and New Year's with him, here.
They live in a wooden house.
The schoolteacher's young son wanted to look out the window, one day during the shootout.
A little boy.
His grandmother came over to pull him away.
Those were moments of heavy combat.
A bullet penetrated through the wood.
Grazed the back of the child's neck and hit the woman.
She's dead.
Her name was Basilia.
Mario and Ovidio helped bury her.
Have been active helping neighbors who suffered damages.
Saw the guerrillas escaping along the creek because their house is right next to it.
Saw many wounded.
"That female captain, the squad leader or whatever she was, passed by shouting: 'Shoot, cowards, shoot! Fire! Don't let them close in!' But she was already wounded . . . ."
And Mario continues:
"The shootout was whizzing around our heads as we were making a fire for tortillas. Right now all's clear.
"People are now cleaning their houses and their patios. I began gathering shell casings. I have all sizes, from .22 [all the way up to] some that seem like small drinking glasses. I think they were from a bazooka or something like that. One day the soldiers detained Ovidio and me. We'd gone out into street. We told them that we lived right here, a block away, and they let us go. 'You have ten seconds to get home, after that we're gonna start shooting. Jeez Louise! We arrived in five seconds flat!"
Yesterday we saw Ruben in the marketplace. He's another of my cousins, the brother of these youngsters.
Ruben got married two weeks ago.
So, since yesterday we know nothing happened to them.
There're no casualties in the family.
Neither there nor here.
Yet.
12:45 We've heard nothing about my brother Rodulfo.
Pillita and I were going to stop by yesterday, on the way back from the cemetery, but the sepulchral silence in the streets prevented us.
We've decided to go right now to take them something my mother prepared for them to eat.
The neighborhood is calm.
Lots of people at their house doors.
We greet all our acquaintances.
Ask around.
Everything's OK.
Comes from the highway a Red Cross ambulance.
A military plane is flying overhead.
Just as we're arriving at my brother's house we see them coming, Conchita and him.
They were going home.
We delivered the package.
We go back together, the four of us.
13:00 We're about to go in when a press vehicle stops in front of us.
A red Volkswagen.
"Efraín!", they shout.
We're thinking it's Enrique Aguilar, who has a car just like it.
We come closer.
See the Macropolis logo.
It's Alejandro Toledo and Marco Vargas, from Macropolis, and Gustavo Armenta and Jean Sidenar, from Cambio 7.
Mention to us that they came by way of Tenejapa.
A large convoy of reporters was coming, but only those arrived.
They ask what I'm doing here.
I tell them I'm staying here at my parents' house, that I've been here since December 20th.
"We have to interview you," says Alejandro.
But first they'll tour the town.
They'll come back later.
13:16 The swarm of vultures has migrated down a bit, more toward the river, maybe further away.
I keep thinking about the dead bodies in the mountains.
14:47 Flor Domínguez informs us that the phone lines are back up.
We try calling Mexico City, but the calls aren't going through.
The line gets crossed with that of my cousin Lety, who's trying to call Córdoba.
We dial Dora's number: call goes through after several attempts.
Then nothing.
Busy signal.
16:40 The reporters left 10 minutes ago.
I read and commented on, skipping around, my diary entries from the first three days.
They recorded.
They must get to San Cristóbal and leave here soon.
Pilla reminds them there's a virtual curfew starting at 5 p.m.
17:00 Loud noise of bull horns proclaiming.
It's the Mayor, who atop an Army truck, proclaims that now life can now go back to normal, that now people can come out into the streets.
These are the phrases that are repeated: "Thanks to our glorious Mexican army, Ocosingo has been rescued. Thanks to our glorious army, everything has returned to normal. We can now move about freely. Thanks to the Mexican Army, everything will be same again."
But well all know that nothing will ever be the same again.
People comment, walk away.
There are lots of them across from the burned town hall, as far as my wife and I have gone down.
17:30 Despite the saddening atmosphere that the burned building causes, people's eyes glisten distinctly.
The soldiers ask me for identification before entering the park.
Just me.
People chat with the soldiers, humble people, appreciative.
It surprised me a while ago to see how people were coming outdoors to shout hurrays for the Army, to applaud the soldiers.
It's strange to see.
The tough soldiers try to maintain their expressionless faces but a smile betrays them.
There are youngsters, predominantly, among the troops.
Kids just over 18.
People form little groups, greet each other, chat.
They begin sweeping the streets.
Strange calm protected by the Army.
The sky continues exquisitely blue and all swallows of the valley seem to organize their fluttering underneath the transparency.
I sit on a bench, I watch, I write.
What poetic truth is there in all of this?
One: the monster never emerges by accident.
It's always a call to attention from the Great Mother, to point out to us that we've violated basic poetic principles.
And in Chiapas it's so obvious.
Attacks upon the earth, upon the rivers, upon the jungle.
It's true that in these fertile valleys people don't die of hunger: the poorest person sows a cornfield and a beanfield, on his own land or on another's.
And sows plantain, keeps beehives and in any old hovel, there are pigs, turkeys, hens.
But there's racial hatred.
But there's caste war.
And there are corrupt judges, corrupt officials, corrupt teachers.
And exploitative business types with debased moral values.
And hatred between inhabitants of Ocosingo and Oxchuc.
And slow infiltration by the saviors of souls.
And gamesmanship.[8]
And skullduggery.
And, mixed with all that, a surprising capacity for work.
In the field hand: the farmer and the cattle breeder.
These men with sun burnt skin and rough hands who rise at dawn and are at their ranches by five in order to be back in town at six, delivering milk that will be drunk or will be turned into cheese, into cream, into butter.
These cowboys who now drive pick-up trucks.
These men of bad taste who produce that which we shall eat in the big cities.
These men and women couldn't study because they had to tend their ranches.
These to whom reality is suddenly become so incomprehensible.
And Ocosingo can never be the same as before.
Because for some time to come the hatred will mount.
And the wounds won't heal easily.
And "monsters of the good" will continue arriving in the valley.[9]
And while this passes, hastily, through my head, the valley herons flutter off to their magnificent tree.
The sun now sets behind the immense Chacashib mountain range, amid red resplendences.
Like an oriental king, the sun expires.[10]
18:32 We encounter Moisés Trujillo, the man whose house the unexploded grenade fell into.
Today Judicial Federal Policemen removed it.
"'Kick it away, like a ball,' the son of bitches were telling me . . ." "Ah, fuck . . . if you guys who are the experts don't dare do it . . . "
We also greet schoolteacher Jorge Meza, who tells us that on the 30th and 31st, his surprised wife told him: "Hey, Jorge, you shoulda seen how the red bandanas are selling . . . ! They gonna use 'em for the school dance or what . . . ? Imagine our surprise when we saw what they wanted them for, look . . . ! —and raises his extended hand, in a rapid gesture, up to his nose—What a bunch a bastards!"
And the schoolteacher continues:
"Me, sure I was pissed with everyone who was stealing. You'll forgive me, but I even got to insulting those were passing by carrying their things. Some women from over there, here they came struggling with packages of toilet paper. Packages bigger than they were . . . ! They just passed by and I said right out loud to my wife: 'and these broads, who were wiping their asses with corn cobs up until yesterday . . . what do they want that for'?"
Images from the park: two girls see each other, run towards each other, hug, kiss, want to speak, cry and laugh all at once. They thank God.
Some girls and guys have their pictures taken with the soldiers.
"Get the truck in the shot," a gentleman orders.
We meet up with Domingo, a young Tzeltal who lives near El Chorro.
Greet each other with joy.
—Good thing God didn't want us die in war, yes indeedy . . . !, he says laughing, in his pidgin Spanish. Then asks: They killt that guy Palatsá, that true?
—Who?
—That guy Jorge Palatsá, pot-bellied like this, big dark-skinned guy . . .
—I?don't think so, Domingo—I respond—, we'd have known about it already.
—But people was sayin' they killt that don Pepe Barragán too, and don Alí, and that don Chuchín Rovelo, that they even cut his nuts off with a machete.
And he was laughing hard, Domingo, asking those questions.
—They's also sayin' they killt don Roch.
—Well, there's the corpse—I tell him.
He goes back where I indicate: there's Rodolfo Ruiz, with Lucy, his wife, and Jorge López, the presumed deceased fat guy: they're chatting on the sidewalk of their house.
—People tellin' lies ! . . . yessiree bob . . . ! —concludes good ole Domingo, dying with laughter.
There was a group opposite Gardenia Pharmacy.
Someone, from over in the park, comments: "They looked like fresh-bought chickens in a new coop, those rich people."[11]
Another one, half-nostalgic and half pitiable: "Ooh now, the Citizens' Defense Committee didn't do a damn thing."
"Well, no, we were all scared," they respond.
We go down to the church: people are going in, crying, making the sign of the cross.
Praising God.
Some right out loud.
Priests greet people at the entrance.
Shake hands, speak to everyone.
Some leave suddenly, after crossing themselves, right there at the entrance.
Others get as far as the Nativity, opposite the great altar.
Sit down on the cedar pews.
Pray.
"Lotta good the fucking priests did . . . " says a man on the convent sidewalk.
Is there's really racism in town?
Certainly.
Injun!" Injun!" Injun!"
The word cleaves the air with the reverberant effect of a machete blow on a heart of oak.
"No-good Indian", "miserable Indian", "you must a been a Indian", "Indian sonofabitch", "Indian in disguise", "black Indian", "you eat like a Indian", "you ride like a Indian", "you look like a Indian", "Indians are nasty and filthy", "they're thieves", "all Indian offspring look alike".
Or the reaction formation:[12] "little Indians", "pure-souled indians", "noble Idians", "essentially good Indians", "little Indians who must be helped", "exploited Indians", "Indians enslaved on the farms", "poor little Indians", "Indians who won't be able to do anything if enlightened Ladinos don't come put learning in their eyes, maize in their mouths, bibles in their pockets, guns in their hands . . . .
And I cannot be at peace: I think about that chilling thesis that views war as a natural mechanism for regulating overpopulation; or I think about the human condition: a forcemeat of angel and demon, as in Parra's verse.[13]
We go back home beneath the lukewarm night.
Notes
1. On Thursday, EZLN rebels retreat from Ocosingo, but continue harassing Mexican Army soldiers with sniper fire. During one firefight, an Army helicopter is shot down. <//back
2. Author's note: Canchishal . . . es una palabra tseltal para referirse a un tipo de acacia. La Acacia pennatula o tepame es más típica del norte de México. <//back
3. Author's note: "ETA significa Escuela Técnica Agropecuaria. CEBETA o CBTA quiere decir Centro de Bachillerato Tecnológico Agropecuario." <//back
4. Gabriel Bernal Vargas (5 February 1915 - 25 May 2010) was a Mexican painter, artist and cartoonist, whose comic strip La Familia Burrón was created in 1937. This cartoon has been described as one of the most important in Mexican popular culture. Vargas won Mexico's "Premio Nacional de Periodismo" (National Journalism Prize) in 1983 and the "Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes en el área de Tradiciones Populares" (National Sciences and Arts Prize) in 2003. <//back
5. Author's note: La ARIC las usa para almacenar productos agrícolas como maíz y frijol. <//back
6. Gabriel Zaid (born 1934 in Monterrey, Nuevo León) is a Mexican writer, poet and intellectual. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Vuelta magazine from 1976 to 1992. His essays have been very influential on a vast array of topics, most significantly poetry, economics, and criticism of the literary establishment. <//back
7. Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture. <//back
8. El agandalle de los gandallas [http://cerdomorado.com/popcul/sobre-los-mexicanismos-gandalla-y-agandallar/; marzo 5, 2012 - Pop Cul - Tagged: agandallarse, agandayarse, Carlos Montemayor, diccionario, gandalla, gandaya, México. <//back
9. Allusion to Mexican author Jose Revueltas. <//back
10. Quote from Salvador Díaz Mirón, from Poesias, Boston, Casa Editorial Hispano-Americana, 1895; from the Book Collection at Harvard University. <//back
11. Author's note: Los pollos recién comprados entran a un nuevo gallinero y por un buen rato se mantienen inmóviles y aislados, desconcertados. <//back
12. Me refiero aquí con formación reactiva: a psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency. <//back
13. Nicanor Parra Sandoval (born 5 September 1914) is a Chilean mathematician and poet. He is considered an influential poet in Chile, as well as throughout Latin America. Some also argue he ranks among the most important poets of Spanish language literature. . . . Nicanor Parra was born in 1914 in San Fabián de Alico, Chile, near Chillán, a city in southern Chile, the son of a schoolteacher. He comes from the artistically prolific Chilean Parra family of performers, musicians, artists and writers. His sister, Violeta Parra, is possibly the most important folk singer the nation has produced. <//back
>> read the Spanish text of this excerpt
Efraín Bartolomé was born in Ocosingo, Chiapas, in 1950. His fifteen books of poetry have been reissued several times. His work has been collected in Agua lustral (Holy Water) (Poems 1982-1987, Mexican Readings collection, published by CONACULTA ); OFICIO: ARDER (Poet Afire) (Poems 1982-1997), published by UNAM; and EL SER QUE SOMOS (Being Who We Are), his first collection to appear in Spain, published by Editorial Renacimiento (Seville, 2006) . His most recent books are Cantando El Triunfo de las cosas terrestres (Singing the Triumph of Earthly Things) and El son y el viento (Sound and Wind), both appearing in 2011. Ocosingo: diario de guerra y algunas voces (Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, Mexico City, 1995) was his first published book-length work in prose.
He is the recipient of the Mexico City Prize, 1982; the Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize, 1984; the Carlos Pellicer National Poetry Prize for work published in 1992; and the Jaime Sabines International Poetry Prize, 1996. The Mexican government awarded him the National Forest and Wildlife Merit Prize in 1994, for the contribution of his work to promoting awareness of nature as sacred territory. He received the 1998 Chiapas Arts Prize, the highest honor the Chiapas State Government grants its artists. He is a member of the National Council of Creative Artists. In 1999 he received the Ledig Rowohlt Fellowship in Switzerland. In 2001, the Mexican Heritage Corporation of the United States awarded him the International Latino Arts Award. In 2002 he received a fellowship from the Landeshauptstadt München Kulturreferat, in Germany. He represented Mexico at the first Ibero-American Poetry Summit (Salamanca, 2005).
His work is featured in the major anthologies of his generation, and his poems have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Galician, Arabic, Peninsular Mayan, Nahuatl and Esperanto. At present, he works as a psychotherapist in Mexico City.
About this text: In 1994, Bartolomé lived through the entire beginning of the Zapatista uprising. His family, like many in the village of Ocosingo, received death threats from the Zapatista guerrillas who demanded they join them at risk of being declared enemies of the Revolution. This book from which this excerpt is drawn is his account of that conflict, equal parts poetry and diary. Kevin Brown's translation of Ocosingo War Diary into English was published in book form by Calypso Editions in 2014.
About the translator: Kevin Brown was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1960. A biographer and essayist, he is the author of Malcolm X: His Life and Legacy (1995) and Romare Bearden (1994). He was a contributing editor to the New York Public Library African-American Desk Reference (2000). Since 1978, Brown's essays, articles and reviews on the visual arts, cinema, dance, literature, music and politics have appeared in Afterimage, The Kansas City Star, Kirkus, London Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Threepenny Review and Washington Post Bookworld, among others. He studied under Gregory Rabassa at Queens College, CUNY; Brown's interview with Rabassa was published in the December 2006 issue of the University of Delaware's Review of Latin American Studies. Other excerpts from Ocosingo War Diary have appeared in Apuntes, Asymptote, The Brooklyn Rail, eXchanges, Hayden's Ferry Review, K1N, Mayday, Metamorphoses, Ozone Park and Two Lines.
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