Activist Javier Sicilia: Mexico's Outstanding Debt to Its Disappeared Javier Sicilia - Proceso
go to original September 10, 2013

Mario Benedetti's poem, Disappeareds, speaks of those who disappeared during the so-called "dirty war" in Latin America. It is a poem that seems to be written for us today. In all the poetry I've read, I don't know words more beautiful or profound for bringing us closer to the terrible experience of the disappeared and of the families who search for them. Hence I don't know words more well-aimed for shouting at a State and a country with more than 30,000 disappeared. We have a huge debt to them and their families: a debt to find them, to restore their names, their stories, and despite the hatred that took them, to give back to them the house, the rest, the place, the peace that can be returned to them only by true love.

To read and reread this poem barely a week before the day dedicated to those disappeared by the violence (August 30), is, therefore, an act of conscience. It is also an obligation that must lead us to feel shame, to protest, and to resolve a form of evil unknown by societies that do not have the least idea of human rights: the complete eradication of a human being's presence on the earth.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Desaparecidos
They’re out there somewhere / all assembled
disassembled / bewildered / voiceless
each seeking the others / seeking us
hemmed in by their question marks and doubts
with their eyes on the ironwork in the plazas
the doorbells / the shabby rooftops
sorting through their dreams / forgotten memories
perhaps recovering from their private deaths

no one has told them yet for sure
if they’re gone for good or not
if they’re banners now or tremors
survivors or prayers for the dead

they see trees and birds go by
and wonder which shadows are theirs

when they first started disappearing
three five seven ceremonies ago
disappearing as if they were ghosts
with no trace or face or good reason
they glimpsed through the window of their absence
what was left behind / that scaffold
of embraces sky and smoke

when they first started disappearing
like the oasis in a mirage
disappearing with no last words
they still held in their hands the pieces
of things they loved

they’re out there somewhere / in the clouds or a grave
they’re out there somewhere / of that I’m certain
in the dear southern reaches of my heart
it may be they’ve lost their bearings
and now they wander asking always asking
where the fuck is the road to true love
because they’re coming from so much hate

Translation: Louise B. Popkin in Witness: the Selected Poems of Mario Benedetti

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