Girls from Puerto Rico

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 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 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.”