Tears for the Month of May

Photo by Michael Collopy

I've been sick and stuck in bed for the past four days. Usually, I long for those "free" days when I can lounge, but when one is ill it isn't any fun. One tosses and turns. One moans. One  longs for basic things that are usually taken for granted--being able to eat a meal without feeling nauseous, being able to take a walk without feeling weak or dizzy, being able to go about the day (complaining or smiling) without too much of a struggle. Whenever I am sick, I am humbled. I am reminded through sickness that I am not a machine, that the body (as Dr. Gabor Mate has repeatedly highlighted) knows how to say "No" or "Enough," and that it will.

That's what my body did this past weekend. I'm not sure if it was saying "Enough" to the 80 student papers I graded and gave feedback on. That took three days of intense labor. Even with a detailed rubric and 15 years of teaching experience under my belt, it was difficult. It wasn't the labor alone that wore me out. It was the sadness I felt as I read the papers because so many of the young students I work with haven't been given the tools they need to effectively articulate their thoughts in written words. I don't say this to put them down. I have a lot of respect for my students, their efforts, and I understand they are developing writers. What is overwhelming is what's lacking, everything they have systematically been denied (cheated of) for the past 12 years. The deficit is so great that it overwhelms, and I know (because I have lived and witnessed it firsthand) that it is race and class that have marginalized these students. It's that systematic marginalization, not my students' words, that sickens me.

Violence also sickens me, and there is so much of it in the world. This past week I read about Jose

José Luis Solis López, AKA Galeano, a school teacher at the Zapatista Escuelita in La Realidad, Chiapas. He and others were ambushed earlier this month by the paramilitary group CIOAC-Histórica. In addition to murdering Galeano (with gunshots and a machete), they wounded 15 others and destroyed La Escuelita and a clinic. What was this targeted community's crime? Being Zapatistas. Being a revolutionary and autonomous indigenous community that demands justice, equality, and above all peace. If you'd like to learn more about the Zapatista in Chiapas and their educational efforts, you can visit: http://www.schoolsforchiapas.org/ 

Since their historic uprising in January of 1994, the Zapatistas have set up Mayan schools for Dignity, established health clinics, empowered indigenous women, and given the world a model of  autonomous communities with real democratic governance and sustainable agriculture that is good for the earth and good for the people.

Butchering teachers, burning down schools, destroying clinics. These are the types of crimes that attempt to break the spirit of a movement. But they won't because the wrongfully departed live on forever in the hearts and minds of people in struggle. The wrongfully deceased fuel the living with pain and rage and a love for justice so strong that it cannot be broken by military tanks or guns or machetes. History has shown us this over and over again.



Galeano Vive

 



After reading about Galeano's brutal murder, I couldn't stop vomiting. (Perhaps it also had something to do with that "organic grass-fed" meat from Trader Joe's that I ate. The one that is shipped all the way from New Zealand. How do I know it is truly 100% grass fed and why does it have to come all the way from New Zealand? But that is another topic, another blog).  

 

Because I was so sick this past weekend, I unplugged from cyberspace and it felt good to be in limbo for a bit. I knew nothing of the happenings of the world except that Subcommandante Marcos had spoken at Galeano's memorial in La Realidad, Chiapas. You can read the complete transcript here: http://www.schoolsforchiapas.org/2014/05/marcos-gone-light-shadow/

 

Among the many pertinent things discussed in his address, Marcos declared an end to his publically created persona. He stated, "We think that it is necessary for one of us to die so that Galeano lives...That is why we have decided that Marcos today ceases to exist." Marcos died a metaphoric death at that memorial, and then he rose and identified himself as Galeano, a metaphoric rebirth. My girlfriend played his words for me on her smartphone as I lay in bed withering in pain and his words, as always, were poems unraveling and challenging us all. His words were enough to fill me and move me and remind me that we must keep fighting for those things we deem precious and essential in life. The last thing I heard before going to bed that night was a chant, "Galeano Vive Vive! La Lucha Sigue Sigue!"

 

When I finally did turn on the computer again on the Morning of May 28, the first headline I saw was "Maya Angelou Dies at 86." I stared at the screen, letting the words sink in. I took in a deep breath and then there was nothing else I could do; I cried, and cried, and then cried some more. I knew instantly I was not crying for Maya alone. They were universal tears. Accumulated tears. Tears for the month of May. I cried for my sick body, all the stress I sometimes put it through. I cried for my students (and for me because I am making all of them rewrite their papers and there will be another 80 papers to review).  I cried for Galeano and all of his loved ones. I cried for the Zapatistas who are being persecuted for being democratic self-ruling communities who grow their own food and have their own schools. What a crime! I cried for the birth month of my querida and much-missed sister and partner-in-poetic-crime, tatiana de la tierra. I will never stop missing tatiana. Her ashes are scattered in the mountains of Colombia, but she is here, whirling in the wind. 

 

And I cried for Maya Angelou, a woman writer who greatly influenced and nurtured me. I never met her in person, of course, but she was a rock, a river, a tree to so many of us. Angelou who defied borders. Who rose up against all odds. Who glittered and poeted her way through life. Who gave and loved and taught, like Galeano. She was a bearer of fruits, like the Zapatistas, and she knew violence. She knew hatred. She knew systematic racism. She knew poverty. She knew all the terrible monsters of the world and she stood up, looked them in the eye, smiling, and said:

 

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terrors and fear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise.

I rise.

I rise.