Original
In Acteal
Her mother didn’t speak Spanish
Very few in Acteal spoke Spanish
For these refugees were Tzotzil natives
speaking a language handed
down for centuries
in that mountainous land of the Maya
So her mother didn’t understand
the orders barked by soldiers
outside the Catholic church
where she and the villagers had hidden
Not that it would’ve mattered
Her mother’s heavy burden
soon to be spattered
on cool ochre-colored earth
would have slowed her escape from
that presumed sacred place
And so the little one
never knew nor comprehended
cost-effective manufacturing
preventive restructuring
trade incentives, downsizing,
maximizing profits
by minimizing salaries,
political realities,
multinational corporations
optimal business relations,
overseas production or
deficit reduction
For in the moment
the young paramilitary men
(all good Catholics, we are told)
ripped open her mother’s womb
and skewered her warm wriggling form
to be tossed about
from bayonet to bayonet,
all her life’s possibilities
were distilled down to a
lifetime of hapless regret
shared by all who survived and witnessed
her death in Acteal that December morn
But pity not she nor any other Tzotzil
of the forty five massacred
in progressive, dollar-friendly Mexico
(former jewel in Cortez’greedy eye,
now simply a bankrupt monument
to the incomparably efficient
Catholic empire, and would that
President Zedillo,
John Paul’s Board of Directors
and the Wall Street Oligarchy
could watch those bayonets
being cleaned every morning
outside their rectories as they rise)
No, pity not those forty five
now crossed to the spirit world
for their agony was brief,
the terror of screams,
automatic gun fire,
explosive tipped bullets and bayonets
ripping flesh
was finished in Acteal by sunset
Pity not even the Tzotzil survivors
who now can see the monster
for all it truly is
and having endured and survived
a slower, more insidious
though no less hideous holocaust
for five hundred years
will learn to survive even this.
No reserve pity for all those who
refuse to know
the hidden cost of living lives
comforted by lies disguised
in such phrases as
“high performing investment”,
“record-breaking dividends”,
and “clean profits”;
who, in their futile consumer quest
for materialistic happiness
will discover too late
the blood of the Tzotzil rape
can never be washed from their sacrocanct
temples of capital lust
thrusting blind and phallic to the sky
from the tortured concrete of Wall Street
Surely, their agony,
an eternity in their own moment of death
bereft of raven’s caws
will come when they face the spirits
of all they profited by with laws
they bought to silence
their consciences roar
Pity them, instead,
for they deserve it
and yet, certainly no more
For look closely now at Acteal’s forty-five
and not just the memory of their lives
whose spirits are now returned to our tribe
and tell me not they bear no dignity
or show less honor than the rest of humanity
For even if their memory survives
only in their names being read here
it will be greater honor
than those denying
the lie of record quarterly earnings
coerced from another’s fear of dying
Their’s will be the honor of
all tribes who strived
and continue to survive
on a planet parched
by centuries of cruelty
How blind of the rich not to see
that all acts of greed
demand justice eventually
and more than a mirrored
injury of prejudice
from those struggling with more
than simply “what to acquire next?”;
more justice than mere memory
not of their greatness but rather their greed
No, I fear only nature herself
by right can, and will, administer
an equally tragic righting of this wrong
by sacrificing innocents
for crimes against Acteal’s innocents
Truly, how tragic
that these blind will not see
until the deed is past
and at last they’re compelled to recognize
their latest inheritance.
– June 1998
Alonso Vázquez Gómez
María Luna Méndez
Rosa Vázquez Luna
Verónica Vázquez Luna
Micaela Vázquez Luna
Juana Vázquez Luna
Juana Luna Vázquez
María Jiménez Luna
Susana Jiménez Luna
Miguel Jiménez Pérez
Marcela Luna Ruiz
Alejandro Luna Ruiz
Jaime Luna Ruiz
Regina Luna Pérez
Roselia Luna Pérez
Ignacio Pukuj Luna
Micaela Pukuj Luna
Victorio Vázquez Gómez
Agustín Gómez Ruiz
Juana Pérez Pérez
Juan Carlos Luna Pérez
Marcela Vázquez Vázquez
Antonia Vázquez Vázquez
Lorenzo Gómez Pérez
Verónica Pérez Oyalté
Sebastián Gómez Pérez
Daniel Gómez Pérez
Pablina Hernández Vázquez
Roselia Gómez Hernández
Graciela Gómez Hernández
Guadalupe Gómez Hernández
María Ruiz Oyalté
Catalina Vázquez Pérez
Catalina Luna Ruiz
Manuela Paciencia Moreno
Margarito Gómez Paciencia
Rosa Gómez Pérez
Doida Ruiz Gómez
Agustín Ruiz Gómez
Rosa Pérez Pérez
Manuel Vázquez Pérez
Juana Vázquez Pérez
Josefa Vázquez Pérez
Marcela Capote Vázquez