On Political Commitment

Here's a historical note for the long haul fighters doing the work on various battle lines.

”What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burned out of them?”

These lines are from the Guatemalan poet Otto René Castillo. I first came across them when I was in high school, and they’ve inspired me in moments of self-doubt. I have found them not only deeply moving because they remind me of the obligation and sacrifices we owe to each other to create a better world, but also deeply haunting because Castillo was burned alive. I’ve long considered myself part of a romantic breed of fools: reckless, vainglorious, kind, and a tad mad.

Before his death, Castillo had just returned from exile in Europe in 1966 to become a propagandist for the Guatemalan Rebel Armed Forces. Soon after, he dropped the pen and picked up a rifle to fight. After he was captured by government forces, he was tortured and burnt alive in 1967. The tragedy of revolutionary commitment imbued his poetry, a commitment that is all too rare today and even scoffed at in polite society, which is understandable: What is revolutionary commitment without a revolution if not sectarian delusional thinking? But could there be worse delusions than the flaming passions to build a new world? Hmm….

Before the Scales, Tomorrow:

And when the enthusiastic
story of our time
is told,
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
--those who have suffered most from it.

And that
being ahead of your time
means much suffering from it.
But it's beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.

And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it's all still so cold,
so dark.

Castillo joined the Workers' Party of Guatemala at seventeen. In 1954, an army junta trained and financed by the U.S. government overthrew the democratically-elected Jacobo Arbenz after he had instituted agrarian reforms, which would have loosened the stranglehold of the United Fruit Company over Guatemala. The U.S. government mounted a full-on assault on Arbenz’s government, from economic sanctions to aerial bombings to radio propaganda. Like many of us from Latin America and elsewhere, Guatemalans are here because the U.S. was there. Like a friend once told me, “Puerto Ricans didn’t come to the United States. The United States came to Puerto Rico.”

Castillo went into exile following the steps of other dissidents in Guatemala, returning in 1957 after the death of the dictator Carlos Armas who the U.S. government had installed after it toppled Arbenz. But Castillo left again and traveled to Europe, returning and leaving again until his final return in 1966. One year later, the U.S.-trained counterinsurgency army tortured and burned him alive.

Let’s go country, I will go with you.
I will descend the depths you claim for me.
I will drink of your bitter chalices,
I will remain blind that you may see,
I will remain voiceless that you may sing.
I will die that you may live,
so your flaming face appears
in every flower born of my bones.

That is the way it must be, unquestionably.

Now I am tired of carrying your tears with me.
Now I want to walk with you, in lightning step.
Go with you on your journey, because I am a man
of the people, born in October to confront the world.