Chapter 4

The Little Girl

            “I’m scared.”

            “Mi amor, no te preocupes, soon enough we’ll find her.” He gently embraced her, trying to console her.

 “And then we’ll all go back to El Morro and fly kites together.”

“Who would take our baby away?” She cried.           

“No sé, mi amor, no sé.”

            The man kept looking for his daughter tirelessly around the stadium. He stretched the entire arena and examined every single space in the seating area. He saw the military dragging out people from the arena into the hallways of the stadium. He tried to follow them in, but was aggressively pushed away. He had a feeling that she might be somewhere in that space behind the arena. He looked around for a way in, and all he could see were armed men standing guard. He paced around the arena in circles, looking for a way in.

There was an old rusted steel door in a corner of the arena.

Nobody was guarding it, so he walked up to it to inspect further. The handle was not locked. He looked around him to make sure no one was looking at him and quickly went inside. It was very dark, but he could tell he was at the top of a staircase. He looked down and could see a slight flicker of light coming out of a cracked-open door at the bottom of the stairs. He went down to investigate.

When he stepped out of the staircase, he found himself in a hallway. He was in the basement of the stadium. The long bending path was dimly light by flickering lights; there were doors on each side. As he walked down the hall he heard the sounds of machines beating and turning. They have to be the air-conditioning, he thought. He kept walking until the sounds of the machines disappeared.

Dead silence.

His heart started beating faster.

He hated silence.

Then, he heard footsteps. Two militiamen were walking up the hall, approaching him. He hid behind a cornered entrance to a room and waited—trembling. He could hear the men talking to each other:

“Why do we have to drag down all the fat ones?” one of the men said.

“I know. I tell you, if they weren’t paying this good I wouldn’t be here at all. They give us shit work, man.”

They stopped a few feet before the corner he was hiding in, and opened another door.

He heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

His skin fluttered as if trying to escape his body—he trembled intensely. The militiamen walked away.  He waited in his hiding place until the echoes of their footfalls faded out.

“¿Camila, mi amor, me escuchas? ¿Estás ahí?” he called out to his daughter in a hushed voice. He stepped out to investigate this room the militiamen had walked into. He saw the opened door, and could smell the rancid scent of rotting meat. His stomach turned over and he nearly vomited.

There, he found the bodies.

They belonged to the people who had been shot and killed since the confrontations with the military began. Their corpses were separated by body mass, sex, and skin color. They were piled on top of each other in a large grey-walled room—like mountains of flesh. Who could do this, he thought, as he scanned the putrid landscape. He feared the worst. Could she be here?

There she was.

Her father dragged her out of a pile of small bodies. Her skin was pale blue, and her brown eyes remained open as if staring into infinity. He held her in his arms and kissed her frigid face. “¿Porqué Dios, por qué nos torturas de esta manera?” he said.

She showed obvious signs of physical violence. Her little white dress was ripped open. Her legs were severely dislocated by the tugging force of the army men. She had bled to death from the injuries inflicted upon her little body by the strong army men.

His heart was palpitated faster.

Tears streamed down his darkened face and blurred out everything around him and his little girl.

He heard their steps again.

The militiamen marched down the hallway to inspect the strange sounds coming from the catacombs. He kissed his daughter goodbye and started running away.

They saw him.

“Hijo e' puta!” They started shooting at him. The man thinly escaped the fire as he sprinted out to the door leading up the staircase exit of the basement.

“Olvidalo. We’ll pick him up later,” one of the soldiers said.

“Dead meat,” said his partner.

Chapter 3

Henry’s Story

The cell phone rang, shaking Henry from a deep sleep. He couldn’t find it. He looked under his pillow, moving aside a book, a pair of mechanical pencils, and his 9mm Makarov pistol, he finally finds it hidden beneath the pillowcase. He liked big pillows.

“It’s three in the morning, what the hell do you want?” he answered.

“Soy yo, mijo,” the caller said.

“Perdóna papá. What happened?”

“Abuelo murió, you have to come back home right now”

“What?”

“Wake up, get dressed, and get to JFK. Your uncle bought you a ticket for the six AM flight to San Juan. Go to the American Airlines front desk.”

Henry got out of bed, still dazed from the sudden awakening. He zigzagged across his apartment-studio: grabbing the remote control and turning on the TV, stretching up to reach the cabinet with the grounded coffee and starting the coffeemaker. Once the coffee was brewed, he sipped it down quickly.

Now he could start his day.

He was packed in five minutes.

On the television there were visuals of the statue of liberty. On the top of the statue there was a man standing with his fist raised next to the Puerto Rican flag and the Vieques flag. The newsperson on the T.V. announced: “This attempt is considered one of many in a chain of civil disobedience acts intended to stop all military practices in the small island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Despite these continuous and ever-increasing acts of disobedience, the U.S. Congress’s position on the Navy’s presence remains the same.”

            “They just don’t get it do they? Those stupid gringos…” A voice came from the other side of the living room where Henry’s friend, Jamal, was seemingly sleeping on their couch near their entry door.

            “I thought you were asleep, sorry if I woke you up with the T.V.” said Henry.

            “Nah, man, I’ve been up all night trying to figure stuff out.”

            “So… you mean you’re planning the revolution again, huh? Where are your maps and little black notebooks?”

            “Shut up, man, this is a serious issue that requires some serious reflection.”

            “Yeah, and here I was thinking we left the island to escape all this type of useless thinking. You’re way too idealistic, you know that?”

            “I’m not idealistic. I’m just stubborn, and that’s a good thing! I’ve been reading other authors now and have come to the conclusion that Che’s guerrilla-focus strategy is faulty and requires a very different approach.”

            “You’re reading other authors? How many Marxist authors are there? Or are you reading the memoirs of Lenin’s wife’s dog?”

“Believe or not, there’s enough literature about revolution and Marxism out there that a single person couldn’t possibly read it in a lifetime.”

“So you’re questioning Guevara’s thought now huh? Sounds dangerous.”

            “I’m no blind follower of anyone. You know this. At least I’m doing something; I’m being a critical thinker. What are you doing?”

            “I gotta go home today. Abuelo died and my parents want me to be back in the island right away.”

            “Shit man, I’m sorry. How long you gonna be gone?”

            “I should be back within the week. I gotta go right away though. Take care, my little Fidel.”

            “Very funny, my little Trotsky. Take care of yourself, and don’t even think about blowing up any buildings without me.”

            Henry put on his jacket, grabbed some more coffee to go, a notebook, and his old Nikon camera and left for the airport.

            The same day Henry left, eleven protesters occupied the statue of Liberty. This was part of the first mass movement in Puerto Rico since the protests against the privatization of the telephone company. Back then, Henry and Jamal stood in the front lines, facing the beatings of the riot police, tasting the stingy taste of pepper spray and fighting them back with stones, fists, and protest chants. They skipped a good portion of high school fighting for worker’s rights. They didn’t care about missing classes and would still somehow manage to pull straight A’s throughout their entire academic career. They were too mature for high school culture and would only share true friendships among themselves and the older college students they met in the protests.

They became well known among the activists of the University of Puerto Rico and were promptly considered by many to be a part of “El Movimiento”: the not-yet-effective, but glorious, student movement for university autonomy and Puerto Rican independence, as Henry would call it. El Movimiento was the vanguard of the university’s left and would take on all the imaginable issues that were of concern to the students. Henry wasn’t that good of a public speaker, it was hard for him to describe what they were against and in favor of whenever journalists of the conservative press asked him what they were doing in the protests. He would struggle with terms such as the bourgeoisie, socialism, capitalism, and class struggle. Having come from a family of leftist intellectuals really didn’t help him express himself in a clear manner to the “uneducated masses.” For Jamal, however, the idea of the movement was clear: he would always say, “we are anti-capitalists! We stand against the injustices and repression of the system and advocate a different and more humane system of social welfare institutions. We stand against all profit-seeking institutions of man.”

It came as a surprise to many when Henry and Jamal decided to leave the island and go study in New York. Many complained about Jamal’s “abandonment” of the movement and others tried their best to convince Henry not to leave. The leader of the socialist organization to which Henry’s father belonged to argued with Henry on several occasions.

“You know you could do a lot more by studying in the university here. You could be close to your family and help the movement,” the leader said.

“I just don’t see myself truly contributing to anything,” Henry said.

“We need more young and thoughtful people like yourself, Henry. Losing you will be a great step back for the movement.”

“Well, that’s exactly one of the things that makes me think I would have no more to contribute if I stayed. We depend too much on individual leaders and we put too much hope in the coming of the next Che Guevara.”

“Oh, please. You know we have more than that going for us. We’ve organized the workers. We have their support.”

“So what? I’m sure any Puerto Rican, even those who want statehood, would rather live in an independent republic than be like Hawaii. The problem is not in how much they support us, it’s in how lazy they are,” Henry said.

***

He boarded the plane. Still tired and slightly dazed, he found his seat. He attempted to catch some missed sleep while everybody else streamed onto the plane. A thin, curly-haired, brown-skinned man who wore a shirt that read, “I’m Puerto Rican: 100% Boricua de pura cepa pa' que tú lo sepas” sat on the seat next to him. The thin man looked around the cabin as if he were inspecting for all available exits, he then looked into the seat pocket in front of him and started reading the handout out loud with a strong Puerto Rican accent. “Pleese fa-low all instructions geeben bai dí air-plain estaff.” He looked at the pictures in the handout and exclaimed, “Ave María, más vale que este avión no se caiga.” He turned his head to Henry, “I hope this airplane don’t fall, you know?” Henry glanced at him, nodded, and turned his head back toward the window.

“Tú eres Boricua, verdad?” the thin man asked.

Henry turned his head toward him and nodded. “Yes, I’m from Old San Juan”

“Un muchacho de La Loza ah? I’m from La Isla—Cayey, para ser específico,” the thin man responded. He kept on talking mostly in Spanish. He knew Henry understood.

“Well I’m not exactly from the city. I just lived there for a couple of years. My family is really from Aibonito,” Henry said.

“¡Ah! Entonces somos vecinos. Me llamo José Carlos, a su servicio.”

Henry hesitated mostly because he was tired and the man didn’t seem to be that interesting. “I guess we are neighbors… in a sense.” He paused for a second and thought about whether it was worth it to keep talking. “My name is Henry,” he finally said.

“Oye, brother, if you don’t mind me asking… Este… ¿Por qué tu solo hablas English?”

“I don’t see any reason in speaking Spanish.” Henry said, turning away. But José Carlos was undeterred.

“Why not? It’s our native tongue, bro, and we must give it some cariño and respect.”

“There’s nothing native that is Spanish in Puerto Rico.”

“Nuestra herencia es Española”

“The Spaniards were colonizers, not natives. Don’t tell me I have to respect the tongue of an invader.” Henry was getting annoyed. He took out one of the in-flight magazines and pretended to read it.

“Oh… you’re one of those, ah? Ay mi-hijo, don’t give me that kind of crap. You’re whiter than me. You’re probably more Spanish than I am.”

“My grandfather was black. Half of my family is black. I just got the shit end of the French in my family to dominate my genes, but I’m really mostly Arab –from northern Africa.”

“Why don’t you speak Arabic then?” José Carlos laughed.

“Kuss mm-ak ya'arku shar mouteh” Henry responded in Arabic. Carlos, stopped cold and stuttered.

“Bueno, erm…” José Carlos stuttered, “parece que va a ser un viaje largo pa’ los dos”

The flight attendants did their typical ceremonial dance of safety and prepared for liftoff. Eventually, the plane’s wheels started rolling. Henry felt the pressure against his body as it picked up speed. The plane ascended into the sky. He felt the floor tremble as the wheels retreated into the plane’s belly. Invariably, he imagined what would happen if something went wrong: If the wheels were tucked away too soon, or, if on landing, they weren’t lowered at all.

Despite his worst fears, the trip wasn’t too long. José Carlos allowed Henry to sleep for the rest of the flight and minded his own business. Henry slept fitfully and had a couple of nightmares in the three-hour flight. He dreamed about his father dying, and him being forced to cut a deal with the devil to save his father’s soul. He also dreamed about a circus full of people, where his closest friends were being displayed and paraded around like animals for the entertainment of the crowd. Finally, he dreamt about his greatest fear: Jamal was dying in his hands and Henry wasn’t capable of letting go of him to get help. He had dreamt about Jamal’s death many times. In the dream, nobody’s around. They were alone in the middle of a great white windowless room, light by an ardent white-fluorescent light. When he awoke from the nightmare, he couldn’t go back to sleep. So be it. José Carlos was asleep. The sun was rising ahead of them, as the island slowly came into view in between the clouds.

As the plane descended, Henry started seeing the rolling beaches, the karstic hills, and gentle green mountains of the west side of the island appear through the cloud-filled skies of the Caribbean. Though they were traveling in opposite direction from Henry, many of these clouds had traveled a long way, just as Henry was doing, from the tropical waters of western Africa.   Henry connected with these clouds. For him, they were brought by the same winds that bring the Sahara desert sands that help make the island’s soil fertile and provided him and his family with just enough food to eat when he was a child.

Henry’s father, Augusto, was raised as a farmer in the mountain town of Aibonito before the family was forced to move to New York to work in the factories. Augusto learned everything he needed to know about farming from his grandfather, who would often entrust him with the care of his entire “diez cuerdas” (about 9.7 acres) farm. By the time Henry was born, this farm had been lost and sold to a man who turned it into a Walgreens. Henry’s father’s love for farming compelled him to buy another “diez cuerdas” of land in the higher mountains of Aibonito where he raised Henry and taught him all that he had learned from his grandfather.

Augusto loved stories, especially those that were centered on him. He would tell these stories to Henry at night until the boy fell asleep, and he would continue telling stories in the morning over breakfast.  Many of them were melodramatic and very real for Henry, who would often tell them to his friends.

As the plane flew over the island, the mountains rolled by--scarred by hundreds of rivers and ravines flowing through them. Henry remembered one of his father’s stories. In it, he had single-handedly saved Henry’s aunt Gloria from drowning in a rapidly flowing river. Henry memorized the story as a child and had even drawn a cartoon book depicting it. He attempted to sell it to all his friends but stopped because drawing all the scenes over and over again was very tiring for him. In his head, he could still hear his father’s voice telling the story.

“I used to love body surfing on this brook near my childhood home whenever it turned into a heavy-flowing river after a good rain.” Augusto would always tell his stories to Henry in a very distant and melancholic past tense.

“I never do things like that anymore, and there’s a good reason for it.” Henry never fully understood why his father both romanticized and tried to forget his past. Whatever the reason, Henry’s love of these stories made them true and powerful.

“The water flowed rapidly and dragged you down to a small set of falls that rapidly dropped in levels and were full of rocks and boulders. I always had fun throwing myself into the river and letting the water take me down, but would always remember to grab on to a tree’s branch that extended out to the river just before the small falls started and much before all the boulders and dangerous rocks hit me.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun, papá,” Henry said as he attentively heard his father’s story and visualized the entire situation.

“It was fun, but it was very dangerous. It was okay for me to do it because I was always in control. But your auntie, Gloria, was a little child back then. You know what little sisters do when they see their big brothers do really dangerous and exciting things? They try to imitate them! So she saw me one day jumping into the river and decided she wanted to jump too. When I got out of the water, I noticed she was flowing down stream to the area were the falls and rocks and boulders were. I screamed out to her and tried to tell her to grab on to any branch she could reach. But the current was too strong, and her arms were too short, so she passed the branch that I grabbed on to and continued on downstream. I ran as fast as I could down to the area were the falls were and tried to position myself near them so I could grab a hold of her when she fell down. I saw her little head trying to stay afloat on top of the streaming water and heading toward me faster and faster. Her body jumped out and started falling down the waterfall as I extended my arms and was able to narrowly snatch her by her dress. I threw her on the riverbed next to me and made sure she was still alive. She was okay and didn’t have a single scratch on her. But she could have died, had she continued down.”

“Then what happened?”

“She told me she wanted to do it again!”

Henry laughed and drifted away in thought—imagining the story—they remained silent for several minutes.

“Papá, why don’t I have a sister or a brother like you did?”

Augusto tensed up and rolled his eyes. This was not the first time Henry had asked him this. He didn’t want to deal with his son’s incessant questioning of his parent’s relationship.

“Ask your mother.”

Henry hadn’t seen his father in the several years he’d been away studying in New York. Neither of them ever went to visit the other. Henry made it very clear to his father that he was leaving Puerto Rico to gain perspective on life and his own goals. He didn’t want to live the life his father had planned for him. His father, on the other side, was upset with Henry because he symbolized his failure as a father and revolutionary. What did it look like to his comrades that he wasn’t able to convince his own blood of staying in the movement? He would often struggle with this question.

They were finally going to see each other.

Henry was unsure of what to expect once he arrived at the airport. After all, his father didn’t tell him much over the phone. When he walked outside, he saw his mother waiting for him in her Jeep.

“¡Ay Dios santo, mi nene a vuelto!” She jumped out of the car and ran toward him to hug him and kiss him. Henry pushed her back a little.

“Mom, I’m happy to see you too. Please, let’s go to the car, I’ve had a long trip.”

They drove off and headed to Henry’s father’s place in Aibonito, where the funeral procession was going to happen the next day.

Chapter 2

The interrogation Rooms

“This is all your fucking fault,” he said. “No, look, please I…” Two army men stormed into the arena and jerked the scrawny kid from her side. “Don’t!” Laura started crying as two other men came up to her and struggled to keep her still. “Fascists, you fucking fascists, die!” she screamed out to them. “It’s all your fault!” he yelled out to her as the men dragged him away. “No, Henry!” She kept trying to walk out and reach for him. “Ayúdame con esta,” said one of the men trying to hold her down. She resisted. “Cállate, carajo!” he insisted. She kept pulling away from them and started kicking them on their boots. They punched her in the stomach. Recoiling from the pain, kneeling on the floor, anger filled her veins and circulated through every inch of her body. “Don’t you fucking blame me! This was your choice!” she screamed across the arena to Henry who was already several meters away from her, being dragged into the interrogation rooms.

Henry was taken into one of the old office rooms on the second level of the stadium.  At the end of the room was a dusty Oak desk with a leather chair looking out a window-wall into the main arena of the stadium. In the center of the room there were three steel chairs. Small puddles and dripped blood surrounded the middle one. The other two were facing it.  Henry was told to wait for his interrogator inside the room. As the army men brought him in, one of them looked at him in the eyes and told him, “sin trucos… Don’t try anything smart in there. ¿Entendido?”

Henry waited.

“So, finally Mr. Al-Velo, what a pleasure.” The interrogator walked into the room stealthfully behind Henry’s back. Henry was not scared by his presence. He was prepared for anything. The interrogator walked past Henry and stopped behind the desk, facing the window-wall, always keeping his back to him. The two army men standing guard outside the room walked inside the room shortly after and sat down on the other two chairs facing Henry. Whatever happened, he told himself, he would not incriminate the others, no matter what.

“I am all about efficiency. You know this, right Henry?” His voice sounded familiar, but Henry couldn’t quite yet pinpoint whom it belonged to. “We’re running this stadium very inefficiently. Some of the people in here don’t have anything to do with the movement. There’s children, women, elderly. So many resources and money are being wasted right now to keep them here. Alive! We should just keep the ones we need. The hell with the rest!” Henry recognized his voice now.

 “Vete pal carajo, José Carlos.”

“Ay Henry, you recognize my voice? Well I’m flattered.”

“Yeah, I recognize your voice and your stupid accent. ¿Por qué no me hablas en español, pendejo?”

“Ha! Well, the answer to that is simple, my friend: I simply don’t see the point in talking in Spanish,” he said in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Believe it or not, my friend, I’m not here to torture you or extort any information from you. I already got my fill from the rest of your friends –who, by the way, talked up a storm for me! ¿Puertorriqueños al fin y al cabo, ah?”

“Pobre madre tuya por haberte parido,” Henry said.

“Don’t you fucking dare talk about my mother!” the interrogator snapped. He slammed his hand on the desk behind him and the army men in front of Henry started beating him.

Warm blood slowly spread across the cold puddle on the floor.

Henry remained silent.

“Are you calm now?” José Carlos asked the faint-headed Henry. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! ¡Que difícil es este hombre!” José walked toward the men sitting in front of Henry. “Guys, just put him in the room with Jamal for the moment. I need a smoke.”

The army men picked up Henry and dragged him into another room. An old dressing room used by many of the artists and sportsmen that were showcased in the stadium. Mirrors surrounded by round yellow-glowing bulbs covered a north-facing wall. A giant Puerto Rican flag covered the east-facing wall. Under it, in one of the corners of the room laid Henry’s most valued person: Jamal. The men dropped Henry on the floor, where he laid silently for several minutes. Jamal, who was asleep, woke up, saw him, and rushed out to him.

“Henry, bro, wake up. Wake up man.” Henry opened his eyes and saw Jamal standing over him.

“Cabrón, ¡despierta! Brother, can you hear me?” Jamal asked anxiously. Henry didn’t respond. Jamal looked around Henry’s head and noticed his ears were bleeding.

“What the fuck did they do to you?”

Chapter 1

In the Stadium

“There are five thousand of us in this small part of the city. Five thousand of us here. I wonder how many of us --all together in the cities, in the whole country? In this place alone are ten thousand hands, which plant seeds, and make the factories run… Six of us were lost as if among the stars of space. One: dead. Another: beaten, as I never could have believed a human being could be beaten. The other four wanted to end their terror. One: jumping into emptiness. Another: beating his head against the wall. But all of them with the fixed look of death.”                                                             -Victor Jara

“Con permiso, Have you seen my daughter?” The man paced around the arena of the stadium looking for her. He showed different people the picture of his four year-old daughter. No one had seen her. Nobody knew where she was. They didn’t even know why they were there.

He remembered the hot, humid day. He could feel the heat of the sun pressing against his back; his forehead was sweating from a day of walking around Old San Juan. He was gracious for the cool Caribbean breeze that blew on his face when they reached El Morro. As they approached the rolling hills of the mall of this fortification, he could see the military marching out of the fort and into the field. Walls of militiamen closed in on the mass of people gathered around the Plaza de la Revolución, where they commemorated the 3^rd anniversary of the Shift revolution. The militiamen pushed everybody inside a perimeter surrounding the plaza. The militia blocked all surrounding streets around it and wouldn’t allow anybody within it to leave.

He tried to reason with them, telling them they were not a part of the demonstration and they were just heading to the park. The men never responded, they just kept pushing against them and cornering them into the plaza. He struggled to get through the division line with his wife and daughter, but the men were too strong.

He had never felt so confined in his life. There were seven hundred of them contained in and around the plaza. It was a difficult crowd to contain, especially on a day of national celebration like that day. Then the guns started to fire. He told his wife and daughter to bend down and wait until the firing was over. He thought maybe someone was getting a little out of hand with the militiamen so they were forced to fire into the air to control the crowd. After the fire settled, they struggled through the crowd of people to get to the outer edges of the perimeter and try and reason with the army men again.

“Sir, please, we are not involved with this crowd. We were just walking to El Morro to fly our daughter’s kite. This is some sort of misunderstanding. Can you let us through?” The man asked one of the militiamen standing guard on the perimeter controlling the crowd.

“No señor, everybody has to stay within the perimeter. These are direct instructions from the provisional government.”

“¿Qué dijo? ¿Un gobierno nuevo? But we already had The Shift, why is there a new one?”

“No sea estúpido por favor. You know about the coup, right?”

“Were you a part of it?”

“No, I was drafted.”

“Please let us pass”

The militiaman looked at him and his family and thought about it for a second. He answered in a whispering voice. “I can’t. They’ll shoot me if I do.”

“Step back sir,” said another soldier as the man and his family were pushed back into the crowd.

They walked back to the center of the crowd. It’s safer in the middle, he thought. After a stressful 30-minute wait, a flight of army vehicles and three tanks arrived on the scene. A soldier stood on top of one of the tanks and spoke through a loudspeaker.

“We will transport you to a safer dispatch area. Cooperation is required. If you do not cooperate, you will be shot.”

The perimeter of soldiers started moving behind the leading vehicles and the people inside were forced to keep up with the pace of the march.  The man and his family held on to each other’s hands as strong as they could and tried their hardest not to be separated. They were forced to walk faster and faster. In the massive confusion of the moment, the family separated by pushing and trampling people around them. The man lost hold of his daughter, who let go of his hand when she saw a neighbor who was a friend of theirs in the crowd. “Camila, come back here right now!” The crowd kept pushing the man forward while he was trying to reach his daughter who had moved to the back.

After struggling for several minutes, defeated and separated from his daughter and wife, the man decided to just keep walking until he reached the safer dispatch area the soldiers had talked about to look for his family. After a long and excruciating walk, they arrived at the gates of the national stadium. Once inside, the man noticed there were thousands of other people already there. Some of them were being carried in by school buses, and walking out of them handcuffed behind their backs, while other groups of people were also marching in with a military escort like him and his family were.

The stadium was packed full of them. Prisoners of a war waged through centuries of struggle, oppression, and resistance. They all waited impatiently in the halls of the stadium for their final judgment. In these same halls, several years ago, many of them celebrated and shared the ecstasy of change, the magic potion of youth. Music, art, and sport filled the air inside the stadium throughout its existence. The entertainment of the masses was provided for inside these halls. The same halls where the revolutionary forces triumphantly marched into the center stage after the uprising of the Veladoras. When salsa, bomba, plena, and all the other rhythms of the Caribbean resonated through the packed space—penetrating past the walls and windows of the stadium, out into the streets that were streaming like rivers full of people celebrating their long to come, but finally achieved freedom. Now, the center stage did not resonate with songs of hope and change. No music filled the air, only the sounds of anguish, confusion, and pain.

“Con permiso, ¿ha visto a mi niña? Tiene cuatro años. La he estado buscando todo el día.” The man kept asking others inside the stadium. One woman told him she saw the militia locate all the children in a corner of the stadium to which she pointed. The man ran hastily to the children’s section and looked for his daughter. She wasn’t there. He went back to his wife.

“Have you seen her yet?” she asked.

“No, mi amor, nobody knows what’s really going on. It doesn’t seem that bad anyway. She’s probably being taken care of by somebody who knows us.”

“But I already found our friends whom she had walked out to and they told me they lost her too and they were looking for her.”

“Jesucristo todo poderoso, por favor, ayúdanos… We’ll just have to keep looking.”

The Idea

I'm working on finishing a novella. The idea behind this blog is to publish small bits of it so you can read through them and give me some feedback on it. How's the writing? Typos? ESL? Give me the nitty-gritty on the technicalities of the writing. Also, if you just wanna say you like it, that's cool too. It's up to you. Just don't put insulting, or dumb comments like: "that part about the dog is dumb." It doesn't help. If the part about the dog doesn't work, tell me why. That helps.

Thank you for reading this and helping me out.

¡Cuidense!