poem

ignorance implicates us
in its fabricated
tapestry of lies
close your eyes
and imagine this world
with out suffering, with out violence
... with out people.
And so you stand alone.
With out responsibility from
the chains that bound you
to this earth
the chains that found you
at your birth
have been cut
all ties to humanity
human sanity
have been cut
you stand alone
pretending you are not a product of a past
but this past
is long living, forever sinning
and will outlast
this current generation
Alone, you stand
upon claimed land
staring into the abyss
of a mass gravsite called Earth.
But who piled on the dirt?
With victory cry
shovel held high, the voice screams
I did this for you!
For you, my family!
For you America!
For you! For you! For you!
and our silence is our complicity
it packs the dirt,
on this massive gravesite city
unless we realize our chains
are from our silence.
no longer bound
creating from silence a sound
of our voice shouting
No!
You do not kill for me
You do not hate for me
Not!
For!
Me!
But its not the guilt upon our backs
that need force us speak out and act
But Love!
And love of life. all life.
Because this world is filled with people

Tumaco

I spoke too soon inside my head when i arrived yesterday. I thought this was a beautiful little town on the waters edge. i was so excited to see the ocean. Alas... my day was smashed with a reality check today when i went in search of boats to float gailily around in. This town is poor. dirty. it smells. poor? very poor. i have never seen a big city this poor. Small towns, yes, worse off. with out electricity, running water, etc. The houses are built into the water on supports for lack of land. Where the water has receded it leaves a big hole of mud filled with garbage for much of the waters edge houses. Lack of resources? I think not. This is a port town. With oil. lots of oil sent from Popoyan as i learned yesterday. as well as various other things. That explains the heavy military presence. They searched my bus on the way in, and made us all stand out in the rain as they checked for... drugs? Costumed men in green are everywhere. sometimes they like to scare me when i am walking along thinking my own little thoughts... a sound hisses out at me! a snake? no. something snake like... and military uniformed has called to me from his camafloughed perch. Today they were on their best beviour. i wanted to walk around the town in search of the peninsula. about five or six of them started sweetly shouting gringa! hey gringa! and mami! at me. and whistling loudly. such nice boys. and then i do not know who to attribute this next act of flattery to, but as i was walking back to my hotel a car drove by and someone reached out and grabbed ahold of my arm. scared the shit out of me. Such nice boys....
i am getting the fuck out of here tomorrow.

reading

more tidbits: I am ploughing through my history textbook in spanish, but it is slow going. So i finally cave in and checked out some books from the library in english. An interesting comparison of numbers: Chilean dirty war - 17 yrs. 3,000 political killings. Argentina 8 years- 9,000 politically motivated killings. Colombia, 1986-1994, 28,500 politically motivated killings.... it was much easier to hide under "drug war" and the government often portrayed itself as a victim cocaine and guerrila warfare. However, the violence of the state commited more atrocites than all the other dictatorships in Latin America combined. And this was just in a period of 8 years. The writer of this new book discusses the tactics taught by U.S manuals of the "climate of fear" that to combat internal conflict the government must use violence in a manner so as to terrify the community into subjugation and silence. Killing is used not only to rid the city of "problematic" people, but to intimitate through use of torture. some of the examples given are absolutely horrific. The one i can`t get out of my mind is the story of a woman coming home to find her entire family decapitated. each body was sitting in a chair with its head on the table in front of it. The hands of the body were placed where their heads should have been. The baby`s hands were too little and were nailed to its body. guesomly horrific. As i began reading this book my roommate came in and we began a discussion of media violations. For example, two weeks ago a high up leader of one of the farc factions was killed by the police. His face was plastered all over the newspapers. His dead bloody face. And let us not forget the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Shown on international television and newspapers everywhere. I need look no farther than popular culture to begin comtemplating how it is possible to decapitate a baby and make a joke out of it.
to be continued....