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 21st 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 100,000th 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 4th!” Jamal said.
“What?”
“It will happen on July 4th, 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.”
