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.
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