I have been remiss in getting my journals typed up and posted, so here goes an attempt to catch up! Most of these were written months or weeks ago, but when the incidents occurred is not important.
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A wet and chilly early morning saw a silver Prius roll away from
Arriving in
We pushed towards the end of the street where a Mayan sun salutation was underway. Apparently the sun wasn’t convinced it should salute us back. Next, from the stage, several human rights organizations from Latin America stood with banners and testified to the murder of their families and neighbors by paramilitary trained at the School of the
Sensing that we were too far from the action, we pushed (respectfully of course) past the port-a-potties and fair trade-shade grown-organic coffee vendor, closer up to the stage. Someone read statements about abuses perpetrated by the
Back from
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Someone handed us each a white cross, two paint stirrers nailed together. We now grasped a marker of a life ended by SOA trainees. José Rosario Suarez, El Salvador. ¿Quién fue él? It seemed absurd that his life was condensed into his humbly Sharpied name on a cross held by a gringa.
Up on stage, a collection of leaders took turns singing the name of each victim in a melodic minor chant. After each name, we the thousands in the crowd raised our crosses and in response sung, “Presente.” Present and accounted for in spirit. I listened for José’s name, but mostly got lost in the chilling harmony of the call and response.
“Isabel Morales, doce años de edad”
“Pres-en-te”
“Oscar Romero, priest and martyr”
“Pres-en-te”
When the cold had penetrated all my layers, I wondered how much longer I could stand there with José’s cross before completely being distracted from what we were all doing there. Then we started to move. Slowly, cogs began turning in our machine of thousands, and we processed in a circle, continuing our dirge. As we rotated towards the fence, we walked up and fit our white crosses into the chain links.
La frontera se convirtió en una pared de cruces.