DOCSLIB.ORG

Download/Documents/204000/Amr340011976en.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download/Documents/204000/Amr340011976en.Pdf UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Open Graves of Latina/os: Representations of a Latinx Horror in Pinto Poetics, Border Gothic, and Homeless Encampments in Los Angeles Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7b07s8hw Author Cortes, Luis Alberto Publication Date 2021 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO The Open Graves of Latina/os: Representations of a Latinx Horror in Pinto Poetics, Border Gothic, and Homeless Encampments in Los Angeles A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Luis Alberto Cortes Committee in charge: Professor Dennis Childs, Co-Chair Professor Sara Johnson, Co-Chair Professor Curtis Marez Professor Sal Nicolazzo Professor Rosaura Sanchez 2021 Copyright Luis Alberto Cortes, 2021 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Luis Alberto Cortes is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically. University of California San Diego 2021 iii DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to my father and mother, Luis & Mayra Cortes for always believing in me. I would also like to thank my brother and sister, Edwin Giovanni and Cynthia Yareli Cortes, for inspiring me. Lastly, I would like to thank my life partner, Defne Sevil, for listening. I am immensely grateful to my dissertation committee members and professors who guided me in this process. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Rosaura Sanchez, Dr. Dennis Childs, and Dr. Sara Johnson for their unwavering support. I would like to thank Dr. Curtis Marez and Dr. Sal Nicolazzo for their mentorship and compassion. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Fred Randel, Dr. William O’Brien, and Dr. Michael Davidson, for showing me that our life is poetry. iv EPIGRAPH Rest In Peace, Andres “Chito” Cortes May 16th, 1959 - April 14th, 2021 v TABLE OF CONTENTS DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE. ...................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................................. iv EPIGRAPH ................................................................................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. vi VITA ........................................................................................................................................................... vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION .................................................................................................. viii Introduction: In the Flesh .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Howling Voices and Haunting Jaguars................................................................................. 17 Chapter Two: Entombed Voices ................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter Three: The Voice That Once Was A Woman ............................................................................... 86 Chapter Four: Voces del Infierno.............................................................................................................. 114 Conclusion: The Lives of Infamous Latina/os .......................................................................................... 136 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 150 vi VITA Luis Alberto Cortes obtained his PhD in Literature at the University of California San Diego. His dissertation explores the genealogical modern inheritance of colonial mechanisms destroying bodies and epistemologies deemed expungable by dominant hegemonic culture. His honors thesis is on John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the patriarchal family structure represented within the poem, for which he was awarded Honors with Highest Distinction. In the doctoral program, Luis concentrated in 20th century American Literature, specifically Latinx & Chicanx literature. His educational background in both British and American Literature equips him to effectively engage in the discourse of a wide variety of Spanish, Anglophone, & Transatlantic literature and writing discursive fields. Luis Cortes is the son to formerly undocumented migrants, who themselves underwent the life-threatening US-Mexico desert border crossing, and a first-generation Chicano graduate. Luis has presented his work at The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States (MELUS) Conference, and the UMass-Amherst Graduate History Association Conference. 2013 Bachelor of Arts, University of California San Diego 2018 Master of Arts, University of California San Diego 2021 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Open Graves of Latina/os: Representations of a Latinx Horror in Pinto Poetics, Border Gothic, and Homeless Encampments in Los Angeles by Luis Alberto Cortes Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California San Diego, 2021 Professor Dennis Childs, Co-Chair Professor Sara Johnson, Co-Chair This work centers on the necropolitical lived reality of Latinx people within the United States. Specifically, this work explores the conditions of death present at the US-Mexico border which migrants encounter, as well as the condition of social death that those undocumented migrants inhabit once within the United States. In this project, we examine the haunting voice that is encapsulated within literary texts emerging from or representative of necropolitical geographies; particularly, the US-Mexico border, the prison, and Los Angeles. Through a close reading of the literary texts, in conjunction with historical data which corresponds to the atrocities documented viii within the literature, this project focuses on the haunting present within Latinx texts concerned with the migrant, prisoner, and homeless experience. Ultimately, I argue that the work of Tobar, Salinas, Baca, Lucero, and Limón, demand a new reading practice and a new kind of reader; one attuned to the necropolitical realities experienced by Latinx people. What the new reader must understand, is that these necropolitical encounters are sanctioned and absolved by American imperialism and unfettered racialized & patriarchal capitalism. ix Introduction: In the Flesh “O’ Heinous Gods Who stand for LAW! to you i shall not bow” —raulrsalinas, “Declaration of a Free Soul” “There has to be a reason for all of this misery” —Graciela Limón, The River Flows North This work is concerned with the process of reclamation, and to that end you are now my accomplice. Together, we will testify, acknowledge, and explore the lives and deaths of Latinx people caused by the United States foreign and domestic economic policy. The Open Graves of Latina/os analyzes the horror produced by the legal sorcery which transfigures people, such as the homeless, the incarcerated, and the undocumented, into positions of death-in-life, social death, and biological annihilation.1 In particular, this project focuses on Latinx cultural production, such as novels, poems, images, films, and testimonies that represent this systematic process of dehumanization through terror.2 I trace this Latinx counter-discourse against power, generated both by authors who represent and survivors who testify about the legal creation of American necropolitical mechanisms of disarticulation through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Stated simply, my work examines the texture of Latinx writing which takes as its focus American institutions which systematically kill our people. My work centers on a Latinx necropolitical literary undercurrent which resists the dominant hegemonic cultural institutions that transmutate the human into nonhuman in 1 Here, I am deploying Joan Dayan’s formulation of legal sorcery as, “the creation of an artificial person in law, whether the civil body, the legal slave, or the felon rendered dead in law, takes place in a world where the supernatural serves as the infallible mechanism of justice” (“Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies,” 3) 2 I am of course building on Dayan’s conception that “It is through law that persons, variously figured, gain or lose definition, become victims of prejudice or inheritors of privilege. And once outside the valuable discrimination of personhood, their claims become inconsequential” (The Law is a White Dog, xi) 1 maintenance of American domestic and foreign economic interests. Throughout this work, I demonstrate how authors represent the modern perpetuation of a Latinx subaltern in the United States and Latin America as sanctioned, absolved, and executed for the sake of capitalist profiteering, or American Imperialism.3 By American Imperialism, I am referring to the authoritarian regime which controls foreign subjects through capitalist coercion and military force abroad.4 United States judicial and legislative policy disproportionately target, kill, and disappear Latinx people, and this violence is transcribed in the language of legal text making and unmaking persons,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Civilian Killings and Disappearances During Civil War in El Salvador (1980–1992)
    DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH A peer-reviewed, open-access journal of population sciences DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH VOLUME 41, ARTICLE 27, PAGES 781–814 PUBLISHED 1 OCTOBER 2019 http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol41/27/ DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2019.41.27 Research Article Civilian killings and disappearances during civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992) Amelia Hoover Green Patrick Ball c 2019 Amelia Hoover Green & Patrick Ball. This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany (CC BY 3.0 DE), which permits use, reproduction, and distribution in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are given credit. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/legalcode Contents 1 Introduction 782 2 Background 783 3 Methods 785 3.1 Methodological overview 785 3.2 Assumptions of the model 786 3.3 Data sources 787 3.4 Matching and merging across datasets 790 3.5 Stratification 792 3.6 Estimation procedure 795 4 Results 799 4.1 Spatial variation 799 4.2 Temporal variation 802 4.3 Global estimates 803 4.3.1 Sums over strata 805 5 Discussion 807 6 Conclusions 808 References 810 Demographic Research: Volume 41, Article 27 Research Article Civilian killings and disappearances during civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992) Amelia Hoover Green1 Patrick Ball2 Abstract BACKGROUND Debate over the civilian toll of El Salvador’s civil war (1980–1992) raged throughout the conflict and its aftermath. Apologists for the Salvadoran regime claimed no more than 20,000 had died, while some activists placed the toll at 100,000 or more.
    [Show full text]
  • Blood in the Water: Salvadoran Rivers of Testimony and Resistance Adrian Taylor Kane Boise State University
    Boise State University ScholarWorks World Languages Faculty Publications and Department of World Languages Presentations 4-1-2013 Blood in the Water: Salvadoran Rivers of Testimony and Resistance Adrian Taylor Kane Boise State University This document was originally published by University of Minnesota in Hispanic Issues On Line. Copyright restrictions may apply. 9 Blood in the Water: Salvadoran Rivers of Testimony and Resistance Adrian Taylor Kane From the 1970s to the early 1990s the dominant forms of literary production in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua were testimonial literature and literature of resistance.1 During this time period, all three of these Central American countries were embroiled in bloody civil wars, and the written word was employed on the cultural front as a means of denouncing and resisting various forms of oppression. For both historical and artistic reasons, rivers frequently play an important role in cultural production from and about this era and have thus become embedded in the complex web of ideological signifiers that comprises the discursive practices of Central American literature.2 In the two works of poetry analyzed in the present essay, “Réquiem para el Sumpul” (1983) (Requiem for the Sumpul) by Mercedes Durand and Swimming in El Río Sumpul (2005) by Elsie B.C. Rivas Gómez, the river figures prominently. “Réquiem para el Sumpul,” published toward the beginning of El Salvador’s civil war in an anthology whose stated mission was to call attention to the violent realities of Central America, lends
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophical and Pragmatic Links Between US Foreign Policy and Immigration Policy
    Philosophical and Pragmatic Links Between US Foreign Policy and Immigration Policy The Case of El Salvador Bridget O’Neill November 21, 2018 1 In the American imaginary, discourse surrounding both foreign policy conduct and immigration are parallel: both are vague and self-idealizing frameworks. Foreign policy decisions reduce global enemies to figures of external evil and posit American troops as saviors; military myths purposefully leave little room for criticism. There is a disconnect between self- idealizing rhetoric in American foreign policy and the specific and often covert violence carried out under broad, moralistic justifications. Similarly, despite the popular categorization of the US as a “nation of immigrants,” this glorified title implies a fictitious timeless homogeneity; it offers no historical texture to a constant renegotiation of who belongs and who doesn’t. The lack of specificity or consensus regarding an immigration philosophy (more concretely, the lack of any codified criteria to evaluate asylum applications with) is exactly what enables immigration policy to become deployed in specific and disparate ways. Within the nation of immigrants, immigrants exist in hyper-policed political limbo. The idealized version of American immigration and its violent reality are imagined as separate entities, even though the latter underpins the former. The same distance is used to avoid acknowledging that foreign invasion destabilizes countries and drives the emigration that Americans subsequently police: establishing a causal link implies responsibility. The ideological web is held intact only because the romanticized conceptualizations do not break down: historical reinforcement have posited these claims as crucial to American national identity. These myths are believed with sincerity -- by necessity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Massacre at El Mozote
    March 4, 1992 Volume No. IV, Issue No. 2 EL SALVADOR THE MASSACRE AT EL MOZOTE: THE NEED TO REMEMBER Introduction With the negotiated cease-fire agreement signed on January 16, 1992, in Introduction ..................................................1 Mexico City, the twelve-year-old conflict in The Massacre of El Mozote ........................3 El Salvador has formally come to an end. The Massacre Becomes Known .................5 The agreements under United Nations The Lack of Press Coverage in supervision between the Salvadoran El Salvador........................................5 government and the Farabundo Martí U.S. Press Accounts of the Massacre..6 National Liberation Front (FMLN) envision The Reagan Administration Response.....7 unprecedented reforms: to reduce the Congressional Hearings .......................9 military, dissolve the elite, immediate- The Atlacatl Battalion and U.S. Policy ...11 U.S. Government Response reaction battalions, eliminate two of the to Massacres ...................................15 security forces, create a new National Civil The "Official Story"..............................16 Police, and demobilize the FMLN and fully The Current Status of the Case................16 integrate ex-guerrillas into civilian life. These transformations hold forth the greatest possibility yet for the respect for human rights and the achievement of social justice in El Salvador. Two provisions of the peace agreement touch more directly on the question of human rights. In April 1991, the negotiating parties agreed to the formation of a Commission on Truth, which would review "grave acts of violence which have occurred since 1980 and whose mark on society demands with great urgency public knowledge of the truth." In September 1991, the Salvadoran government and the FMLN agreed to a process of "purification" of the armed forces, to be carried out by an ad hoc Commission, which would review the records of military officers with a special focus on their human rights records.
    [Show full text]
  • El Salvador: Official Investigation of 1981 El Mozote Massacre to Begin Deborah Tyroler
    University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository NotiCen Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) 6-5-1992 El Salvador: Official Investigation Of 1981 El Mozote Massacre To Begin Deborah Tyroler Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/noticen Recommended Citation Tyroler, Deborah. "El Salvador: Official Investigation Of 1981 El Mozote Massacre To Begin." (1992). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/noticen/7502 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in NotiCen by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LADB Article Id: 060862 ISSN: 1089-1560 El Salvador: Official Investigation Of 1981 El Mozote Massacre To Begin by Deborah Tyroler Category/Department: General Published: Friday, June 5, 1992 On May 27, Justice Ministry officials commenced investigation of the December 1981 massacre in El Mozote, Morazan department. Soldiers pertaining to the Atlacatl Battalion reportedly murdered 1,000 civilians, accused of supporting the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Presiding Judge Federico Ernesto Portillo visited the site, accompanied by Supreme Court officials, staff from the Attorney General's office, UN observer mission (ONUSAL) human rights division director Philippe Texier, and director of the Catholic Church's human rights office Maria Julia Hernandez. Rufina Amaya, sole survivor of the attack, was also present. Amaya explained to officials how the soldiers separated men, women and children before killing them. During the visit to the site, investigators took photographs and measurements. Several sets of human remains were discovered.
    [Show full text]
  • Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in The
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Journalism and Mass Communications, College of Communications Summer 8-1-2010 An Ardent Flame: Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in the Coverage by The New York Times and Two Journals of the Religious Left of the 1980s iC vil Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua Charles A. Flowerday University of Nebraska at Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Flowerday, Charles A., "An Ardent Flame: Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in the Coverage by The New York Times and Two Journals of the Religious Left of the 1980s ivC il Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua" (2010). Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. 8. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journalism and Mass Communications, College of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. AN ARDENT FLAME: WITNESS TO DISTANT SUFFERING, HUMAN RIGHTS AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS IN THE COVERAGE BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND TWO JOURNALS OF THE RELIGIOUS LEFT OF THE 1980’S
    [Show full text]
  • Reagan, Central America, and the Human Costs to Waging the Cold War
    Reagan, Central America, and the Human Costs to Waging the Cold War Matthew J. MacKoul Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts In Political Science Mauro J. Caraccioli, Chair Paul C. Avey Ilja A. Luciak February 26, 2021 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: History, Latin America, Human Rights Reagan, Central America and the Human Costs to Waging the Cold War Matthew J MacKoul Abstract Since the introduction of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has maintained a sphere of influence in Latin America. This hegemony has yielded beneficial results, such as the Panama Canal, and at times, has caused more harm than good. The later result has been the dominant outcome beginning with 1954 and the Central Intelligence Agency’s foray into Guatemala. U.S. foreign policy has enabled or sanctioned actions resulting in human rights abuses. This can be easily viewed through the Reagan Administration’s re-ignition of Cold War politics based on realist international relations theory This particular foreign policy blueprint is based on one geo-political thought: Communist Rollback. Due to this, other concerns, such as human rights, were relegated to a lesser priority. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the extent to which U.S. foreign policy undermined human rights in Central America during the decade of the Reagan Administration. By understanding the effects of Reagan’s singular focus, this thesis seeks to bring clarity to the deficiencies of current or potentially future foreign policy models.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of El Salvador Advisory Board
    THE HISTORY OF EL SALVADOR ADVISORY BOARD John T. Alexander Professor of History and Russian and European Studies, University of Kansas Robert A. Divine George W. Littlefield Professor in American History Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin John V. Lombardi Professor of History, University of Florida THE HISTORY OF EL SALVADOR Christopher M. White The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling, Series Editors Greenwood Press Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data White, Christopher M., 1974– The history of El Salvador / Christopher M. White. p. cm. — (The Greenwood histories of the modern nations, ISSN 1096–2905) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–34928–7 (alk. paper) 1. El Salvador—History. I. Title. II. Series. F1486.W46 2009 972.84—dc22 2008030539 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2009 by Christopher M. White All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008030539 ISBN: 978 – 0 –313 –34928 –7 ISSN: 1096 –2905 First published in 2009 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321
    [Show full text]
  • Aiding and Abetting Terror in El Salvador: Holding the United States Responsible for War Crimes Committed During the Salvadoran Civil War
    Aiding and Abetting Terror in El Salvador: Holding the United States Responsible for War Crimes Committed During the Salvadoran Civil War Written and Edited By Brenna Dilley and Kristina-Aiad Toss “The army wanted to exterminate the thinking and the idea of our rights in El Salvador. You exterminate the idea by exterminating the people; the women, the children, everyone. Especially the children because you kill the idea by preventing the growth of the idea. You kill the root to prevent the change.” – José, Salvadoran Civil War survivor and guerilla fighter Executive Summary We present this report to identify the U.S.’ facilitation of war crimes during the Salvadoran Civil War through the El Mozote Massacre case study. International Partners in Mission is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that gave two law students from Case Western Reserve University School of Law the opportunity to travel and gain insight into Salvadoran human rights realities and community attempts at reconstruction following the Civil War. Initially, we gathered local testimonies and researched international law. Our research focused on academic analysis regarding the Peace Accords and laws created in response to the victims who survived the Civil War. We further gathered testimonies from civilians who escaped massacres orchestrated by Salvadoran military fighters, from guerilla fighters who took up arms in opposition to the military, and from community members living in areas that are now controlled by gangs. We discovered that the Salvadoran government further divides the nation by failing to provide accountability of Salvadoran political leaders accused of committing war crimes during the Civil War.
    [Show full text]
  • It Happened at El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke the Story That Washington Refused to Believe
    Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2016 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2016 It Happened at El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke the Story that Washington Refused to Believe Naomi Rubel LaChance Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016 Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Latin American History Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation LaChance, Naomi Rubel, "It Happened at El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke the Story that Washington Refused to Believe" (2016). Senior Projects Spring 2016. 298. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016/298 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. It Happened at El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke the Story that Washington Refused to Believe Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature and The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Naomi Rubel LaChance Annandale-on-Hudson, NY May 2016 ii For my parents, and for all those who dare to tell the truth.
    [Show full text]
  • El Salvador's Civil War and Civic Foreign Policy
    157 4 El Salvador's Civil War and Civic Foreign Policy In the 1980s, civic foreign policy toward El Salvador materialized in more public forums and strata of society than in the previous decade. It manifested itself in insistent lobbying campaigns of Catholic, Protestant, and a few Jewish denominations. Religious human rights groups aimed at policymakers in Congress and in the Carter and Reagan administrations. As a response to the murder of El Salvador's popular archbishop and outspoken defender of citizens' rights, Oscar Romero, and to the killings of four U.S. churchwomen in 1980, religious activists established additional advocacy groups throughout the United States which concerned themselves with events in El Salvador and Central America. While targeting Congress, the administration, church constituencies, and U.S. public opinion, civic foreign policy strategies that tried to affect U.S. foreign policy matured during the 1980s. Civic foreign policy toward El Salvador also broadened numerically. While the bulk of interested citizens in the 1970s stemmed from religious orders and staff exposed to events abroad, many of the newcomers in the 1980s did not belong to the church establishment or orders and groups active in Washington and overseas. Civic foreign policy developed and became quite articulate and dedicated on the grassroots level of U.S. society. Throughout the United States, new citizens' groups focusing on policy questions regarding Central America emerged. While heterogeneous in character and purpose, most of these groups and citizens were generated from the religious sector. Apart from new grassroots groups and active citizens, an increasing and large number of religious denominations and NGOs made their voices heard on Central America.
    [Show full text]
  • El Mozote Massacre*, El Salvador
    Toyon Literary Magazine Volume 66 Issue 1 Toyon Volume 66: Exploring the Taboo Article 10 2020 El Mozote Massacre*, El Salvador Irma A. Ramos Arreaga Humboldt State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/toyon Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Ramos Arreaga, Irma A. (2020) "El Mozote Massacre*, El Salvador," Toyon Literary Magazine: Vol. 66 : Iss. 1 , Article 10. Available at: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/toyon/vol66/iss1/10 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Digital Commons @ Humboldt State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Toyon Literary Magazine by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Humboldt State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. El Mozote Massacre*, El Salvador Irma A. Ramos Arreaga Awakened suddenly by a distant noise Followed by discomforting silence I wondered the whereabouts of my boys Who didn’t realize the dangers of defiance A soldier violently threw me aside As I stumbled, I was brought to a halt Petrified, by my children who lied open eyed Lifeless; the aftermath of an assault I could barely see anymore But the other women’s screams were enough For me to know what we were brought for Praying God gave me the strength to be tough I peacefully took my last breath Knowing I’d reunite with my town after death * The Massacre of El Mozote happened during the civil war in El Salva- dor, on December 11, 1981. There were roughly 800 citizens murdered by the death squad, known as the Atlacatl.
    [Show full text]