Progress in Puerto Rico

Girls from Puerto Rico

Snow in Puerto Rico

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Chapter 8

TUS LAGRIMAS, MADRE

(Uprising)

            The man ran up the stairway and out of the door into the arena as fast as he could. Clearly out of sight from the door, he walked back to the center of the stadium to find his wife. Slowly calming himself down from the adrenaline rush, he started feeling an increasing pressure in his left leg. Pressure turned into pain. Pain turned into agony. He could barely walk anymore.

He collapsed on the floor

            A seemingly old man who wore a red cap and baggy clothing saw him, coiling in fetal position—shaking.

            “¿Todo bien, hermano?”

            He touched the man on the leg.

            “¡Coño!” the man screamed and pushed the old man away.

            “Tranquilo papá, I’m here to help you. I see you hit your leg against something and it hurt you pretty bad…”

            “Are you a doctor?”

            “Of a sorts. So yeah… calm down.” He inspected the man’s injury, no open wound, no blood. It just seemed like a sore muscle from a strong impact.

            “Look, you’re gonna be ok. Take these, you’ll feel better. Come back to me later if you want anymore.” The old man handed him a pair of pills in a baggie.

            “What do these do?”

            “They make you feel better, hermano.”

            “Are they legal?”

            “If you can point to me where the law is in this country, I will give you an answer. Hasta luego.” The old man walked away and disappeared into the mass of people.

            The man looked at the pills in his hand with hesitation.

            “I have to find Sonia.” He needed to be with his wife. “I need her. Nuestra nena…” He remembered his daughter. He started crying.

            “¡Pal carajo!” He took the pills out and swallowed them quickly, as if trying to hide a felonious act. He garnered the strength to stand up, and started walking. Lamely dragging himself across the stadium, he approached the center stage.

            She was waiting for him there.

            “¿La has visto? ¿Estás bien? What happened to you?” she said.

The man looked down at the floor—trying to hold back his pain and tears. “Machos never cry” he kept thinking. His male pride did not permit it. It was too much. As he took the breath to utter the words of tragedy the floor started shaking. He looked around him and the walls of the stadium were swaying with kaleidoscopic colored waves of sounds exploding out into the crowd and bouncing in every direction. The meds had kicked in. He collapsed again, this time into the arms of his wife who instantly called out for help.

He woke up a few hours later with a heavy feeling of disorientation. He looked around and saw the thousands inside the stadium. He heard gunshots from deep inside the catacombs of the stadium. “Mi hija” he said out-loud.

“You found her?” his wife sitting next to him said.

  The man stared blankly into the crowds of people.

“Did you find her or not?” she insisted.

The man closed his eyes and bowed down his head, shackingly he nodded.

            “Dios mío, no por favor,” she said.

                        Silence and tears.

            “I want to see her,” she said.

            “No, mi amor, no es una buena idea. There are guards down there.”

            “There are guards up here too.”

            He looked at his wife’s face—paled by despair. He knew her. He couldn’t convince her of anything anymore.

            “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

            They walked to the staircases that lead into the basement of the stadium.  Over half an hour passed by and they hadn’t yet come back up to the arena.

Two more gunshots were heard from the arena—coming out from the catacombs.

***

            “Hey, you’re that musician, right? Miguel Alvelo, is it?” a young prisoner asked a man carrying a guitar who was next to the center stage.

            “Yeah… I am.”

            “Are you okay? You look very sad.”

            “It’s just life, mi hijo, it’s just this place.”

            “Yeah. People are becoming more paranoid every second. They said they heard two more gunshots coming from the catacombs.”

“Yeah. I heard them” Miguel said.

“Why would there be shooting down there? What do you suppose they’re doing?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to find out any time soon.”

“This place sucks. I don’t even know why they have us in here. The military is stupid… Everybody’s down, man. Hey, can you still sing? I think that would cheer up some of us. It’d cheer me up… Please?”

            “Erm… Well. Sure, brother.” Miguel picked up his guitar and started strumming.

“Can you sing Tus Lágrinas, madre? I really like it”

 His most famous song: it had become one of the revolutionary anthems of the radical forces of the Shift. He started to sing.

            “Tus lágrimas, madre, seran la...” He stopped. “Sorry, I’m off-key.” The young prisoner noticed he was crying and tried to comfort him.

            “It’s ok, Miguel, you can do this,” he said.

Miguel looked out at the mass of people. The sounds of gunshots resonating in his memory, he looked at the young prisoner.

“This madness has no heartbeat” he thought.

 He sat up straight and started singing.

“Tus lágrimas, madre, serán la sangre que dará la vida a todos aquellos que luchan todavía por un nuevo día…”

The young prisoner joined in and sang with him.

“De todos, por todos, daremos la vida por un nuevo día.”

Others around them heard them singing and joined in. Soon, it seemed like the entire stadium was singing in unison.

“La muerte no espanta a la gente valiente. No es un amenaza para los que aman su gente…. Nosotros, valientes, lucharemos hasta la muerte.”

The people of the stadium rose in cheer. The concerted energy of 17,000 bodies came down upon their captors. The militiamen ran out of the arena into the hallways of the stadium. The people pushed them out. The militia only had enough time to lock the access areas to the arena, so nobody inside the stadium could leave. But the arena belonged to the people now, and they celebrated this by singing and dancing filled with joy and hope for the end to the madness.

“Nobody, no matter how hard they try, can break the spirit of a country that has stood tall and firm against oppression and injustice,” Miguel said on top of the center arena to the masses that congregated near him to listen to him sing. After the people settled down more or less, he gave an impromptu concert and sang everybody’s favorite songs of victory and resistance until the night came and everybody went to sleep.

Henry, who had been released into the arena a couple of minutes before the uprising, recognized the musician from a distance and decided to go talk to him after his concert. As he approached the musician, Miguel recognized him.

“Are you Henry Al-Velo, the leader of the Veladora forces and the students?” Miguel said.

“Yeah, I am. I wouldn’t have thought you’d knew me.”

“Of course I know you, brother.”

“I’m a big fan.”

“I’m a big fan too.” Miguel smiled at Henry and they sat down together at the edge of the center stage.

“Are you proud of your people?” Miguel paused and looked at the people preparing for sleep across the arena. “They’ve risen up again. They will keep rising, no matter the horrors they face.”

“I am proud. I always am. People inspire me everyday to keep on living. But, honestly, I’m not sure everything’s going to be all right this time. We’re still trapped inside here.”

“I have faith, brother.”

“Faith can only take you so far.”

“Look, this is not the first time this has happened. I’m sure you know this story already, but it’s so dear to me that I don’t care, I have to tell it to everyone,” Miguel said. Henry signaled him to go on.

“You know about Chile right? You know what happened in ’73?”

“Of course I do. September 11, 1973, Pinochet lead a military coup that assassinated the president and some 30 other thousand people, and then put him in power.”

“Yeah, you know how a good number of those people died?”

“A lot of them ‘disappeared’” Henry said.

“Yeah, but about 5,000 of them were detained inside a stadium, not unlike this one.”

“I didn’t know that.” Henry thought about it for a second. “Oh, God, It’s fascism, it always comes back,” he thought. “Damn. It’s interesting to think about things this way. You know what Lenin said about fascism right?” he said.

Miguel shook his head.

“It’s capitalism in crisis.”

“It’s in constant crisis, then; ’cause I’ve never seen any good in capitalism.”

The two stopped talking and looked at the crowd of people. The free spirit of the arena started to wither away as they could foresee the potential outcomes of their situation.

“But you know what?” Miguel interrupted the silence.

“What?”

“I still have hope, you see. Chile went through that horrible era under Pinochet and then finally rose up from the ashes of fascism and started to build itself anew.”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”

“But the spirit is there, you can tell it. Have you ever heard of Víctor Jara?”

“No, nunca.”

“He’s my spiritual guide and personal idol. He was a musician, just like me. He was also a theater director, actor, and activist.”

“Sounds like your type of guy.”

“He was tortured and killed inside the stadium,” Miguel said.

Henry looked at him and noticed his fixed look out into the nothingness.

“I see…” Henry said.

“But he lives on. His message, his music, and his words live on. These things are infinite. Not even the horrible machines of fascism can contain them or destroy them. They continue to live, somewhere, somehow, inside of someone. This is why revolutions can be reborn: ideas never die.”

“Yet, here we are, trapped inside another stadium.”

“Don’t worry, brother. We’ll make it through.” Miguel started looking at his hands. “I’ll always say that. No one and nothing will ever stop me from saying that… I’m never scared. The only thing that would ever scare me is if it ever snowed in Puerto Rico. But both you and I know that’s impossible. So it is impossible to loose hope.”

Miguel and Henry spent a little bit more time together after that, talking about music, the arts, and reminiscing on the revolution and its milestones. They fell asleep on the stage, next to everybody else in the arena.

Chapter 7

THE DEAL

Henry woke to the familiar sounds of Christmas music from Puerto Rico.

“Traigo esta trulla para que te levantes…” José Carlos sang in an obnoxious off-key melody. Henry slowly opened his eyes—realizing he was back inside the interrogation room.

“Morning! Or is it? Heck, I’m not even sure myself. You’ve been out for a while, my friend. But you see, we’re here to help you. We got you a doctor and now you’re all better, Mr. Henry Elias al-Velo.”

Henry looked with confusion at José Carlos.

“If you’re wondering how I got your name, don’t think too much. Your papá gave it to us along with all the other names of your pals and collaborators. It’s kinda funny, when you think about it. We got a hold of your FBI file, but that thing was a piece of crap. Your father’s notes, however, are a work of literary art,” José Carlos said as he picked up a document from the table and waved it around in the air.

“What did you do to my father?” Henry said.

“We did nothing. The question is: what has He done for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on. You really don’t know?”

Henry started feeling the tingling of betrayal.

“Your father’s been helping us since the comandante contacted him,” José Carlos said.

“Bullshit. He’d never cooperate with a coup.”

“Well, my friend, this is the thing about coups: they happen from inside.”

“You’re telling me this thing was my father’s idea?”

“Oh, hell no. Your father’s a stupid humanist. He doesn’t know anything about this place. He’s only partially responsible, I guess, because he’s the friend of the comandante.”

“Who’s the comandante?”

“Where have you been, nene? Take a wild guess…”

Henry grunted. He had just woken up from a concussion caused by his interrogator’s beatings. He wasn’t feeling up for his games.

“Ok, ok. I’ll give you a hint: he’s the leader of the armed forces.”

Oh shit, Henry thought. How did I not figure this out?

It was Jamal’s father, El Comandante, who had concerted the entire take over with the help of the wealthy landowners who had lost their numerous properties on the island during the Property Reform enacted by the Shift government.

Jamal’s father evaded politics since his ideological downfall. But after the revolution triumphed, Henry’s father, who was in charge of the national workers front, needed a general commander to lead the newly formed Puerto Rican Revolutionary Armed Forces. Jamal’s father got the job due to his experience training the SWAP armed forces in the 70’s. Henry remembers Jamal’s disappointment when Augusto told them that Jamal’s dad was going to be leading the armed forces.

“That man’s gonna be the death of us!” Jamal said.

“He’s your father, bro. Augusto knows he’s a good person, and I trust my father’s word,” Henry said.

            “He’s an ideological traitor. He has no commitment. He shouldn’t be in any position of power!”

            “I wouldn’t worry too much. Revolutionary moments inspire people to lead revolutionary lives. He’s one of us. I’m sure he’s no longer a cynic.”

 “I hate telling you this, Henry. But you’re way too idealistic,” Jamal said.

“Whatever.”

“Money, greed, power, can override any revolutionary ideals, especially if there’s no discipline. Revolutionary moments are just that: moments. Strikes, uprisings, victories in the streets—they mean nothing for the long-term foundation of a new society. We’ve had too many moments in our history, Henry, too many moments that have given us hope and then taken us back to the same spot we were in when we started. It’s been that way, all over the World. So many revolutions betrayed, all over the World, Henry! But there have been revolutions that have truly triumphed. They were those led by people with ideals that transcended romantic revolutionary moments. Those people who pushed for change to keep moving forward—even at the most banal of moments when there were no gunshots fired, or explosions, or people out on the streets—those people were the ones who created the long-lasting shifts that have led us to this world we’ve inherited.  True revolutionaries are not guided by inspirational moments; they are led by their long-standing ideals, which they uphold at all times. That man that I call my father is not a revolutionary, and he will never be one. He prides himself on not having ideals! He only pledges allegiance to convenience. Being your father’s right hand is very convenient at this moment. Do you not see that?”

Jamal, almost hyperventilating, had to sit down.

“Calm down, man.”

“Nothing good can come out of this.”

Jamal’s words were chillingly foreboding as Henry remembered them in the interrogation room.

Henry sat silently in the middle of the room, thinking about the past and trying to make sense of the situation. José Carlos looked at him attentively and impatiently swung back and forth on the desk’s chair.

Dónde carajo is this kid’s mind? José Carlos thought. I should say something.

“You know, Henry, we have nothing against the revolution. Puerto Rico could’ve never continued to survive as a nation under colonialism.” He postured himself as if he were going to give a speech. “Nuestra cultura, nuestro patrimonio, nuestra identidad.” José Carlos paused and neared his face to Henry’s. “Nuestro lenguaje, puñeta… It would’ve all been lost. And that’s not mentioning the horrible economic state in which we were under colonialism. Ha! Remember? It was better for a Puerto Rican to live in the United States than to live in his own homeland. Nobody could make anything of themselves on this island.”

He moved away from Henry and looked out the window-wall toward the people in the stadium.

“So you see, Mr. Enriquez, we’re not against the independence of our madre patria, we just don’t agree with the way things were being run. We are patriots, and we hate seeing this country go down the gutter as Cuba did.”

“What does Cuba have to do with anything?” Henry said.

“They made a lot of the same errors we’re trying to correct over here. They forgot to listen to Tío Sam.”

“Goddamn you, man, this is not the fucking Cold War.  The shift is an international revolution. It progresses and moves…”

“Ha,ha,ha!” José Carlos interrupted Henry. “You’re so idealistic, it’s funny,” he said.

Henry rolled his eyes and stared with rage at his interrogator.

“The shift has no car to run anymore, my friend.”

“What a horrible analogy,” Henry said.

“Ay, bendito. Look, I’m not here to ‘hablar mierda’ with you. Believe me, I have better things to do.”

Henry started seeing José’s weakness: his self-absorption. Henry would rather have a pointless frustrating discussion than be coerced into talking about the movement.

“When did you learn to speak English so well?” he said.

“Hehe. Bueno, mi pana, five years studying in Georgia will help anyone become fluent.”

“You still have a disgusting accent.”

“Fuck you!”

A knock on the door interrupted them.

“Cállate, cabrón” José Carlos ordered to Henry. He opened the door.

Two militiamen stood in front of him.

“What is it?” he said.

“The general instructed us to aid you in your interrogation,” one of the men said.

“I don’t need any help.”

“We had strict orders.”

 “¡Maldita sea!

He called the general on his cell phone.

“I can handle it myself, ¡por el amor de Dios!” he said.

“Have you made the deal yet, or what?” the general said.

“Well, not exactly. We’re working on it, sir.”

“Well, the other men stay there until he makes a decision. Don’t fuck this up José!”

José Carlos hung up and signaled the men to sit next to Henry.

“Okay Henry, these men and myself will help you make a couple of decisions very soon. Okay?” One of the men tightened his muscles as the other took out a black bag.

“What are their names?” Henry tried to keep the conversation under his control.

“Ha, bueno, este es…”

“That doesn’t matter.” One of the men interrupted José Carlos, and looked at him aggressively.

“Um, yeah,” José Carlos said.

The man punched Henry on the face. His nose bled.

“Was that necessary?” José Carlos said. He was mad that the situation was getting out of his control, but he stopped questioning his back up interrogators out of fear of being demoted by the general.

“Okay. This is what we want:  We need your full cooperation. We understand you have a lot of influence in the student movement and were their primary leader during the revolution.”

“Fuck you.”

“Your father said you’d be a tough one to convince.”

“You’re lying.”

“He told us how hard it was for him to convince you that organizing the workers in a giant union would work to push the revolution forward.”

“You’re never going to be able to control the students.”

“Look, we don’t have to convince anyone. This was your father’s request. If we just killed every one of them, we wouldn’t have anything to worry about, right?” José Carlos noticed Henry started sweating when he mentioned killing the students. He looked at the man with the bag of items and nodded. The man pulled out a sharp knife and slit the blunt edge of it against Henry’s cheek.

“But you don’t want your friends dead, do you? I can see it in your eyes. You care, huh?”

“I’m never going to cooperate. Torture me, kill me, do whatever you want. I’m not going to betray the movement.”

“Yeah, okay. I don’t think we’re going to be touching you much anymore.” He signaled the men sitting next to Henry to come meet with him outside the room. Henry sat in solitude for several minutes, wondering what they were going to do to him next.

They can beat me as much as they want; I’m not talking, he thought.

 When they came back into the room, he was prepared for the worst. The men pulled him up and made him walk out of the room.

“We’re gonna let you go. Rest a little, and think about things. See ya soon, neighbor!” José Carlos said.

Chapter 6

LAS VELADORAS

        Oh God, is this the world that you’ve created? Was it for this your seven days of wonder and work?                                                                                                                 

-Victor Jara

They took Henry away from Jamal’s hands—dragging him out of the room.

“Where are you taking him?” 

            “Come with us, sir.” A militiaman ordered Jamal.

            “You’re not taking me anywhere,” he said.

He sat down on the floor and tried to resist their tugging. They were too strong for him. They dragged him out too. He kicked and screamed. He bit the arms of his captors. They knocked him out.

            “For fuck’s sake!” one of the men said.

            Bitten by the bitter cold, Jamal slowly woke back into consciousness. A large white room with no windows slowly came into focus as he opened his eyes. His arms, legs and head were tied down. All he could see was a rotating fan above him and a very intense white-fluorescent light on the ceiling. They threw another bucket of cold water with ice on his face—for good measure.

A tall muscular white man looked down on him and examined his vitals. As the man took his pulse, Jamal noticed his bright blue eyes and his bleached white hair and eyebrows.

“You’re fine. Are you ready to talk?” the man said.

“No English,” Jamal said.

The man rolled his eyes and looked at Jamal with disgust.

“¿Estáis listo para hablar?”

“No Español,” Jamal said.

The man slapped him on the face and punched him in the stomach.

“You’re going to talk.”

Jamal looked directly into his eyes.

“Kill me.”

“Okay.”

The man put a cloth over Jamal’s mouth and nose, and started pouring water into the mouth. The cloth slowly pushed down into Jamal’s throat. He couldn’t breathe. He felt like he was drowning. It’ll be ok. It’ll be ok. It’ll be ok, he repeated inside his head. The man continued pouring more water into Jamal’s throat until he started showing obvious signs of suffocation. The cloth was removed and Jamal started to breathe heavily, trying to catch his breath.

“Are you ready to talk now?”

Jamal started crying and nodded. The men untied him and helped him sit up.

“Okay. Tell me about the Veladoras,” the man said.

“What about them?”

“How do they work?”

“Well, if you want to increase the impact of a specific prayer, or you want a specific saint to help grace your family or your house, you turn one on and leave it burning until it burns out.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. Why were all those people, especially those grandmothers, carrying the veladoras you made during the revolution?”

“I don’t know.”

“You lie!” The man slapped him in the face with all his might, and started to walk around him in circles. In front of him, he could see the other two militiamen preparing a black bag—filling it with metal instrument of some kind.

“You’re lying. Don’t lie if you want to survive this.”

Jamal wasn’t going to give up any information. He remembered tirelessly studying revolutionary theory in the study circles with Henry. The organizers of the circles were veteran freedom fighters from the 70’s and 80’s who had experienced first-hand the effectiveness of the tactics used against the movement. He could still remember their vivid voices: “The best way to destroy a movement is to infiltrate it, use its own tactics, its internal structure, gain the trust of its people, and fuck it from inside. If that doesn’t work, the pigs will resort to torture and coercion to find what they need to eliminate us,” they said. He wasn’t going to give up any information about the veladoras. He was ready to die.

“Mátame,” he said.

The interrogator, empty of expression, locked his eyes with Jamal’s.  

“Gentlemen, give him a manicure.” The two other militiamen approached Jamal and made him sit down on an old school desk. They tied his wrists with hands facing down—extended out in front of them. From the black bag, one of the men pulled out a pair of pliers.

“Okay. We’re going to start with just one fingernail now…” the man neared to pliers to Jamal’s hand. “…And we might keep going with the rest, depending on whether you tell us what we need to know.” He plucked out Jamal’s thumb’s fingernail.

He could feel the pieces of skin going in tow with the nail as it was being pulled out. The pain was excruciating.

“So, shall we continue?”

Jamal stared blankly at the man holding his hand. He couldn’t think of anything else but: don’t talk, don’t talk. The men kept pulling out his fingernails slowly.

“Do you like this? Why aren’t you talking? Talk!” The other man slapped him in the face and kept harassing him as the white muscular man kept close watch of their actions behind them. Several hours passed and Jamal would still not talk. He progressively grew more and more detached from the situation. His eyes swirled around in circles. He vomited uncontrollably.

The interrogator noticed they weren’t getting anywhere with their tactics and signaled the men to take leave. He made sure Jamal’s functions stabilized before he left the room himself.

Jamal was left alone. Lying on the floor, he slept.

He dreamt about the time his grandmother showed him how to make veladoras. She taught him everything he needed to know to make good veladoras that would sell easily. He eventually became so good at making these seven-day prayer candles that he started living off of selling them to the women in his neighborhood.

Jamal is the third child from a family of seven children. They all lived in a small jam-packed house with only one television. Everybody wanted to watch the television. Because he had so many siblings, he never really got a chance to enjoy the television by himself. Thus, in search of a truly solitary activity, he found books and became an avid reader. He had an obsession with science fiction and would consume entire collections of novels, novellas, and stories in weeks.

His grandmother shared this obsession with him. She started reading the new science fiction that was being published and distributed through Puerto Rico when her husband died in the later years of her life. Jamal easily became her favorite grandchild.

“Remember that episode we read where the voyageurs met these people that were hypnotized by a chemical substance?” she said to Jamal.

“Yeah. That was an awesome one.”

“Well, it’s not really fiction.”

“What do you mean, Abuela Tatá?”

“Do you know why selling these veladoras is so easy for us, Jamal?”

“Because they’re cool, and awesome!” Jamal said. She smiled at the kid and patted him on the head.

“No, mi hijo, it’s because the wax is infused with these special chemicals that attract women and inspire them to buy them.”

“What?”

“Come, I want to show you the herbs I use to make our candles.” She took Jamal to her garden and showed him which specific herbs to pick out. They carried them inside her shop, where she taught him how to make the right mixes for the different occasions and buyers.

“The possibilities are endless, mi hijo. I’m sure, one day, someone will be able to make a mixture that will bring people together, and another one that will help them to love and respect each other. I know it’s only a matter of time,” she said. 

During middle school, Jamal got really sick one day and had to miss school and stay alone at home. Instead of doing the things that everyone expects a middle-schooler to do when left alone, he decided to explore the house. In his exploration, he stumbled upon a closet full of black 5-gallon bags that were full with books. He took all the bags and put them in his room to examine the contents. Inside were volumes of leftist classics that belonged to his father. The first one on top was The Communist Manifesto: “a specter is haunting Europe…” he read. “Cool! It’s about ghosts!” He devoured it right away, and then continued to read the other books: Lenin, Marx, Engels, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Guevara, Trotsky… He decided to keep them all hidden inside his room. He read all the 200 books and pamphlets within the month.

When his father found out that Jamal had uncovered the books and was reading them, he was enraged. He figured it was time to discuss a little bit of the past with his son.

“Mira, Jamal, I gathered these books while I was involved with the student movement in the 70’s. Back then, I was just as young and idealistic as you are.”

“Well… That’s kinda cool, dad.”

“Look: We went hungry and homeless for nothing. All of it was for nothing, Jamal. The university didn’t change, the island is still a colony, and the world is still dominated by the elites. The movement failed.” He paused for a second to breathe and calm his agitation. “There’s no point in reading these books and getting infected with dangerous ideas. History’s dead, there’s no point in repeating the errors of the past.”

After, Jamal’s father told him not to read the books anymore or believe any of the things that the books said; he felt an even greater urge to read further. Jamal read all of the books in his father’s collection again, and again. He memorized the revolutionary theories and was able to quote all the books from memory. He became his father’s black sheep—an uncomfortable reminder of his young self, which he had left for dead long ago.

Jamal awoke from his dream. He was still alone on the floor of the white room. He looked down at his hands and saw his fingers. Suddenly, the spastic pain rushed back through his veins—paralyzing him with the agony. His mind drifted away from his body. He remembered the day he perfected the formula for the veladoras that would inspire the Uprising and the Shift.

***

    Jamal sat at his desk in the apartment he shared with Henry in the Bronx. He wrote on his black notebooks surrounded by stacks of books and light by a couple of veladoras, facing their living room window.

”I know what we need to do,” he whispered to himself.

In New York, Jamal found an extensive market for his candles in the Hispanic neighborhoods. He crafted and sold unique and non-conventional prayer candles. Back in 2008, when the then president Obama was running for election, Jamal made thousands of dollars by selling prayer candles with Barak’s image plastered on them with his campaign motto: sí se puede.

As Jamal grew older, he became bitter with the United States and the world. His prayers of hope had turned into misanthropic chants of confusion. He still sold enough to make a living thanks to his steady market of old illiterate Puerto Rican grandmothers who were content with simply seeing Virgin Mary’s image on the candle and believing that the prayer on the candle was whatever Jamal told them it was. They came to Jamal to have him craft special prayers for them. Jamal use to do this job with great pleasure, even though he knew the grandmothers couldn’t read their own prayers.

However, after the events of the student uprising in Puerto Rico he created no other prayer than that which wished for the extermination of all CEO’s, senators, congressmen, governors, presidents and the families who composed the elites that crushed the rebellion in San Juan and supported the massacre of more than 5,000 people.

But this day was different. He could feel it as he kept scribbling on his black notebooks. He was feeling hopeful.

“Henry! Wake up!” he said.

It was a cold morning in the Bronx. Icicles decorated the window and fire escape of their apartment. The sun was rising slowly—too slowly, as if it were trying to thaw itself out before shining on the Earth—days like these made Henry miss the humid-hot pluvial greenness of Puerto Rico. He hated waking up early when the weather was cold.

“Henry! I know what we need to do!” Jamal said.

“Do about what? What time is it?” Henry looked over at his clock. “¡Me cago en tu  madre, cabrón, it’s 6:30! What the hell do you need?”

“I know why the rebellion didn’t work.”

“God, not this again,” Henry said.

“Listen to me, man.”

“No. I know what you’re gonna say: There were too many of us with too few guns, and too many assholes on the other side with too many M16’s.” Henry covered himself completely in his bed sheets. “Please, Jamal, let me sleep!”

“No, man, come one. I figured out something new.”

Irritated, Henry sat up and glared at Jamal.

“They’re dead! All of our friends are dead. Get over it!” he said.

 Henry noticed Jamal’s face was turning red and his eyes were tearing up. Jamal started to quiver. A teardrop escaped his left eye. He clutched his right fist, still holding the pencil with which he was writing.

“We have to do something for them,” Jamal said. “I truly do have a plan this time. It’s going to work. It’ll work because I know what it is that we did wrong. I know why…” he started crying. “I know why we killed our friends.”

“We didn’t kill anybody! It was the pigs’ fault! They planted spies to harass us; they coerced; they tortured our comrades into talking so they could scatter the movement and push it underground” Henry said.

“That’s because we were too open from the beginning. We were too public and vulnerable. We had no safety nets. Sure, the people supported us, but…” Jamal started sobbing. His face turned deep red. He shook his head with fury, trying to suppress his emotions. “But they had all the guns! We didn’t organize any military force and we had no military strategy. When we took over the streets they planted the National Guard on us and...”

“Dude, okay, I already said I was sorry I wasn’t there!” Henry said.

Jamal took a deep breath and cleaned his tears.

“That doesn’t matter, man. I’m glad you’re here and alive.”

After the student uprising, the Puerto Rican government instated a curfew after 8PM for all workers not serving in the police department or tourism industry. Anybody found walking the streets after that time that didn’t have a carnet saying they worked with the appropriate agencies was considered a civil disobedient and arrested with a charge of sedition. The people of the island grew weary and suspicious of their government, but the environment of fear, beatings, and government-supported raping was too powerful and constricted to allow any space for further rebellion. Most of the revolutionary leaders exiled themselves; the majority of them went to New York, México, Venezuela, Cuba, and Chile.

The government cut all civilian communications with the exterior world. Cell phone signals coming to and from the island were blocked, the Internet, and telephone lines among other means of communication were also either shutdown or strictly supervised and controlled. The radical radio stations were shut down and the only type of programming permitted were weather reports and strictly danceable music –preferably with no lyrics. News broadcasters were prohibited any type of local reporting. The only stations that were allowed full access to the local audiences were CNN Headline News and Fox News.

With the help of several members of the U.S. federal government, the Puerto Rican elites were able to smash the rebellion behind the back of the rest of the world. The only news of the massacre to ever escape the island were spread by a few leaked messages from bloggers on the island, or from those who traveled out of Puerto Rico. When the United States and Puerto Rico were questioned by several international organizations about their doings in the student uprising they responded that nothing out of their legal realms was done, and that any rumors that suggested otherwise were mere delusions of the far-left.

They managed to get away with one of the largest single-event massacres in the 21^st century thanks to their scrutiny with migration and media. Jamal remembered. The Homeland Unity Act was passed almost unanimously a couple of days before the rebellion took place. It prohibits “any transportation of media-carrying devices” and strictly enforces measures that limit the type of media you can upload to the internet, in addition to allowing the use of “live ammunitions” in public demonstrations that support “acts of violence against the state.”

Jamal remembered this Puerto Rico before the Shift, as he looked around the white-walled room. “Was it all a dream? Did the Shift really happen? Did anything change?” He started crying. He heard the militiamen’s boots nearing his room. He slid back out of his body and into his memories.

“You know we can’t go back to Puerto Rico,” Henry said to Jamal while walking to their kitchen area. He started preparing some coffee.

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be able to get there with ease. The uprising has to happen here first, at the belly of the beast,” Jamal said.

“A revolution in New York? Yeah, good luck with that.” Henry neared his face to the coffee maker. As a little kid does to a microwave when it’s cooking something, he watched the brewed coffee slowly drip down into the pot. “You know, you’ve always been the smarter of the two of us, Jamal. But sometimes I think your apparent intelligence is merely the disguise of a deeply deranged mind. You’re 34 years old now and you’re still making veladoras for the Doña Juanas of the neighborhood.”

“What? What the hell, man? What have you done? You’re 32 now and you’re still trying to finish your stupid PhD. What’s so radical about a PhD?” Jamal said.

“A PhD gives you a turn to talk in a sea full of mindless and voiceless followers.”

“Yeah? Well, at a 100,000^th fraction of the cost, an Ak-47 gives you all the time you need to talk. Tell me, how many Dictators have been convinced to give up their dictatorship by a PhD?”

“Well, as a matter of fact… If you can remember, my friend, the Middle East took down a couple of dictators—no thanks to any weapons!”

“Oh yeah? I wanna hear that from a Libyan.”

“The motors of the revolution were the educated people, the bloggers, the students…”

“But when the elites make peaceful revolution impossible, they make violent revolution inevitable!” Jamal said fervently.

“Ay bendito. Will you stop quoting el Ché so much?”

“That’s not el Ché, my friend, that’s John F.—Fucking—Kennedy.”

“Hum.”

“Look. I’m not trying to put you down, my PhD-to-be. I’m just saying, sometimes you have to open up the ears of the oppressors with the contents of the barrel of your gun” Jamal said.

Henry and Jamal have been living together for over 16 years in their apartment above the Deli Grocery in the Bronx. They’ve known each other since they were very little. Their fathers were both members of the Socialist Workers Army of the People (SWAP)—a radical student organization that claimed responsibility for several bombings of various military and government installations in Puerto Rico in the 70’s. The organization had dismantled in the mid-eighties amidst the incarcerations of leaders and the impending doom of the soviet-bloc.

Their fathers left the organization just before it dismantled and decided to finish their education and become teachers. In the midst of this process, they became members of the teacher’s union in Puerto Rico and helped create the Teacher’s Vanguard, a group of leftist teachers (mostly ex-members of the SWAP) that challenged the incumbent leaders in the union with a general election. Because of several scandals of corruption that were found inside the previous leadership of the union, the Vanguard won the elections with and overwhelming amount of support. Once in power, they instated several measures to prevent corruption and began bargaining with the government on a more demanding level than the previous leaders. Soon enough, the Teacher’s Union became one of the most radical and upright unions in both the United States and Puerto Rico—and became an enemy to the government. Both Henry and Jamal’s fathers were at the top levels of command.

After the dissolution of SWAP, Jamal’s father grew extremely bitter with the radical movement in the island and animatedly challenged and attacked anyone around him who expressed themselves in support of such movement. He was a burnt-out activist. In the eyes of many, he sold out to union politics and bureaucracy. In his own words he had merely become a realist. In the eyes of Jamal, he had become a post-modernist bastard.

“What else would you expect from a Trotskyite?” Jamal remembered arguing about his father to others. “Everybody knows the next step from being a member of the Fourth International is becoming a misanthrope.” The older Jamal grew, the less fond he was of his father. They grew further apart as he radicalized and his father settled down. “I have six brothers and one sister. You know that there’s something wrong with a Puerto Rican man when he simply does not stop having children until he gets a girl.” Jamal would tell this to Henry, almost too often, when they were teenagers and their favorite pastime was making fun of local politicians, planning the revolution and discussing their parents.

“Look, man, I’m sorry about all this.” Henry had had too much of their fighting already. “It’s cold outside, it’s six in the morning, and I’m in a crappy mood. You’re my camarada de la vida. You know that.”

“Well, as your comrade, I ask that you listen to my idea seriously,” Jamal said.

“Fine, tell me how we’re gonna pull off an uprising in New York.”

“It won’t be simply New York. It’ll be everywhere where our people are. Our main problem in the past has always been being too predictable. We always selected political anniversaries of one or the other sort. Because of this, they always knew when and where to find us. We have to do this when they least expect it. A day that’ll give us enough time to carry on our attacks and maintain our cover.”

“And we’ll have an international strike? Is that it, you’re proposing a day without Puerto Ricans? That sounds a little familiar to me. I think the Mexicans would dock you creativity points for that.”

“No, the strike comes after the uprising to support the new changes in the system. We don’t, we don’t need a strike. We need an attack. A massive, concerted, fully coordinated attack.”

“You know most of our most active people are hiding now. There’s a price on their head, and I’m sure they don’t want to give any gringo the pleasure to take it. All we truly have out on the streets are the non-militants and yeah, I’m sure the Doña Juanas of the neighborhood will take up in arms any time now.”

“They are exactly who we need.”

“What? Man, you’ve been up too late.”

“No. I told you I’m serious.”

“All right… You sure you don’t want any coffee or something?”

“The elderly are the least expected group to be out and involved with the movement.”

“Ok, and how exactly are you going to recruit them, or even convince them that a change is necessary? Remember all they did during the uprising? I don’t, ‘cause they were never there!”

“Henry, don’t be stupid. Just because they can’t go marching on the streets for several hours does not mean they can’t be solidarious with the movement. Many of them lost their children and grandchildren in the massacre. They need… they want justice.”

“Ok, I still don’t see how we’re going to send out the message to them.”

“Well, some of them are illiterate, but the majority of their family members can read for them.” Jamal took out a veladora from his desk and showed it to Henry.

“With these, my friend, we’re going to have a revolution.”

“Ha,ha, you’re kiddin’ me, right?”

“Look at it, man.”

Jamal’s new design for the veladora showed an image of Puerto Rico and a prayer that incited for action. Between these two things there was a message: a message of the actions to take.

“What happened to power laying at the barrel of a gun?”

“It’s a little bit more complicated than that, man.”

“Wait… now your talking like an intelectual.”

“Oh, shut up. Just smell the damn thing for a second.”

Henry, took one of the veladoras and smelled it. His pupils dilated and his lungs expanded—pushing out his chest and forcing him to stand straight.

“Jamal, I had never seen one of these that was even decently interesting. There’s something very different about this one. It calls out to me, and you know I don’t believe in this hocus-pocus catholic religious crap.”

“Perfect. You see? This is exactly what they’re meant to do. I finally developed the right formula for it.”

“Formula?”

“Yeah, the only thing that makes these candles sell is the chemical smells they expel. In the past, the herb mixed only attracted older women, but now I have perfected a formula for everyone!”

“You know you could simply get rich with this and not have to worry about all this political crap?”

“Henry, are you ok? Keep drinking that coffee, my friend.”

“I mean, man, you have a product you can sell to anyone. This is worth something.”

“This is how we’ll spread the uprising and fund it!”

“Damn.” Henry looked at his watch, “crap, it’s 7:30 already. I gotta get to work. My boss is gonna kill me. Last time we had a customer who wanted to use the dark room and the studio wasn’t open because I was still sleeping here.”

“Hum! Come on, man, one would think you’d be early to work since you practically live a block from there!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Gotta go. I’ll see you when I’m done with classes and shit.”

“July 4^th!” Jamal said.

“What?”

“It will happen on July 4^th, the uprising. Under the guise of fire works and celebration, we’ll attack the government on its holiest day.”

“Damn, you’ve turned Nostradamus and everything on this shit.”

“The psychological impact will be unprecedented.”

“Ok, buddy, see ya later.”

“Come back as soon as you can from your classes. We have some extra work to do.”

“See ya, brother,” Henry said as he walked out into the street.

Jamal went back to studying his notes and revising his maps. He spent the rest of the morning working at his desk, humming the tune of “A las Barricadas” an anarchist anthem from the Spanish civil war: “El bien más preciado es la libertad. Hay que defenderla con fé y valor…”

He sang to himself quietly inside the interrogation room as he reminisced on the days of the revolution. He could see clearly in his mind the happy faces of his comrades when they heard the attack on Capitol Hill was successful. They were finally free, and the Shift was just starting to spread across the world.

“The world was ours… the world…was… ours…” he said.

The militiamen walked into the interrogation room.

“I’m ready.”