Mexican poet David Huerta has written a poem (Ayotzinapa) of urgency and compassion about the recent murder of forty-three students from Mexico’s Ayotzinapa Normal teacher training program. To help bring international attention the recent events in Mexico, editor Sophie Hughes of the literary journal Asymptote has called for translators around the world to submit their translation of the poem in written and recorded versions. In her request to translators Sophie stated that the goal is “to raise awareness of a longstanding humanitarian crisis in Mexico, which reached new levels last month with the mindless, systematized killing of 43 Mexican teacher trainees.”
On September 26, forty-three students from Mexico’s Ayotzinapa Normal teacher-training school went missing in the small city of Iguala, in the Pacific-coast state of Guerrero. The students had traveled to Iguala intent on protesting unequal hiring practices. Iguala Mayor Jose Louis Abarca, worried that the demonstration would disrupt his dinner party, asked the police to intercept them and “teach them a lesson”. The police opened fire on the buses carrying the students, killing six and injuring a dozen more. Forty-Three of the students were seized by the police and it was the last time the students were seen alive. The police later admitted that they handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. Three of the arrested gang members confessed to murdering the students and burning their bodies, and Mayor Abarca and his wife have also been arrested for their role in the murders. Subsequent investigations have revealed widespread corruption in the state of Guerrero, leading to the governor’s resignation. The murder of the students has sparked widespread protest throughout Mexico with citizens staging mass demonstrations, shutting down government buildings and calling for the resignation of President Nieto. A day of national strike and protest is planned for Thursday November 20, Mexico’s Revolution Day.
Asymptote has published the global translations of Ayotzinapa in their literary blog this week. Please take a look at this amazing project.
Here is Huerta’s poem in English and in the original Spanish:
Ayotzinapa
We bite the shadow
And in the shadow
The dead appear
Like candles and fruit
Like cups of blood
Like stones from the depths
Like sprigs and sprouts
Of sweet entrails
The dead have hands
Soaked in anguish
And heads bent
In the wind’s shroud
The dead carry with them
An insatiable pain
This is the country of mass graves
Ladies and gentlemen
This is the country of howling
The country of children in flames
The country of tormented women
The country that yesterday barely existed
And now is all but lost
We have lost our way among mouths full
Of doomed sulphur
And devastating fires
Our eyes are open
And our eyes are a glut
Of pointed glass
We are trying to give
Our living hands
To the dead and the disappeared
But they drift away, abandon us
An endless remoteness in their face
The bread is burning
The faces are burning wrenched
From life and there are no hands
Nor faces
Nor country
There is only a vibration
Thick with tears
A long howl
Where we the dead
And we the living
Have become the same
Whoever reads this must know
That it was thrown into the sea of smoke
Of cities
Like a sign of the broken spirit
Whoever reads this must also know
That despite everything
The dead have not departed
Nor have they been disappeared
That the magic of the dead
Lives in the dawn and in a spoon
In our footfall and our fields of corn
In the trace of a pencil or a river
Let us give to this magic
The tempered silver
Of the breeze
Let us deliver to the dead
To our young dead
The bread of the heavens
The ear of the waters
The splendour of all sadness
The milk of our damnation
The oblivion of the world
And the shattered memory
Of all those living
Now better to be silent
Brothers and sisters
And open our hands and minds
So we can pick up from the cursed ground
The severed hearts
Of all those who are
And all those
Who have been
David Huerta
2 November 2014. Oaxaca
translated by Juana Adcock
Ayotzinapa
Mordemos la sombra
Y en la sombra
Aparecen los muertos
Como luces y frutos
Como vasos de sangre
Como piedras de abismo
Como ramas y frondas
De dulces vísceras
Los muertos tienen manos
Empapadas de angustia
Y gestos inclinados
En el sudario del viento
Los muertos llevan consigo
Un dolor insaciable
Esto es el país de las fosas
Señoras y señores
Este es el país de los aullidos
Este es el país de los niños en llamas
Este es el país de las mujeres martirizadas
Este es el país que ayer apenas existía
Y ahora no se sabe dónde quedó
Estamos perdidos entre bocanadas
De azufre maldito
Y fogatas arrasadoras
Estamos con los ojos abiertos
Y los ojos los tenemos llenos
De cristales punzantes
Estamos tratando de dar
Nuestras manos de vivos
A los muertos y a los desaparecidos
Pero se alejan y nos abandonan
Con un gesto de infinita lejanía
El pan se quema
Los rostros se queman arrancados
De la vida y no hay manos
Ni hay rostros
Ni hay país
Solamente hay una vibración
Tupida de lágrimas
Un largo grito
Donde nos hemos confundido
Los vivos y los muertos
Quien esto lea debe saber
Que fue lanzado al mar de humo
De las ciudades
Como una señal del espíritu roto
Quien esto lea debe saber también
Que a pesar de todo
Los muertos no se han ido
Ni los han hecho desaparecer
Que la magia de los muertos
Está en el amanecer y en la cuchara
En el pie y en los maizales
En los dibujos y en el río
Demos a esta magia
La plata templada
De la brisa
Entreguemos a los muertos
A nuestros muertos jóvenes
El pan del cielo
La espiga de las aguas
El esplendor de toda tristeza
La blancura de nuestra condena
El olvido del mundo
Y la memoria quebrantada
De todos los vivos
Ahora mejor callarse
Hermanos
Y abrir las manos y la mente
Para poder recoger del suelo maldito
Los corazones despedazados
De todos los que son
Y de todos
Los que han sido
David Huerta
2 de noviembre de 2014. Oaxaca
