Re: Coffee/Just A Poem (fwd)

P. Myers (mpwr@u.washington.edu)
Fri, 16 Jan 1998 08:16:03 -0800 (PST) 

while not directly addressing homelessness, I think we do well to think
about people our tax dollars directly affect, in other parts of the world.

this is so tragic.  PatM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 04:27:51 EST

Subject: Re:  Coffee/Just A Poem

*****************************************


Dear Friends,

It's very late and I am writing to you with a heavy heart and a pain in my
stomach, like someone was slowly pressing a spear into my solar plexus.  I
don't know what y'all have been thinking of very sporadic forwarded message=
s
concerning the massacre of indigenous women and children in Chiapas.  (I ha=
ve
more information I can forward to anyone who wants it.)  The truth is, the
slaughter of 45 last Dec. 22 is just the very tip of the spear;  estimates
range between 500 to 1,500 indigenous Chiapanecos have been brutally murder=
ed
by US trained paramilitary groups and federal forces in the past three mont=
hs.
(Again, you want facts, figures, names and "proof," email me.)  But these
are--even for me whose mirror resembles the faces of these women--just
abstract figures, rounded off numbers, anonymous conflicts in remote areas =
of
the globe. =20

Tonight I read an account in the form of a letter to the editor from a
friend, who left for Chiapas Dec. 15th.  He is the director of The
Human Bean Company in Denver which specializes in coffee from indigenous
communities in Chiapas.  (I am a connoisseur of fine coffee, a caffeine
addict, I know my peaberries from Hawaiian blues, and the expresso roast is
some of the finest coffee I have ever tasted.  I have joked to friends that=
 my
new book is the result of Zapatista coffee.)  Acteal, where the massacre
occurred, is the pueblo where he buys his coffee from the indigenous coffee
union.  He was on his way there to buy his yearly supply when he took the
coastal route through Oaxaca.  Those of you who remember my posts from the
hurricane that devastated indigenous populations in Oaxaca recall that ever=
y
bridge in Oaxaca was wiped out and huge stretches of the hiway dissolved.  =
The
arduous route shook the nuts and bolts off his engine and transmission, and
caused other severe damage to his motor.  He arrived in Acteal late, a day
after the massacre.

Would his presence there have changed anything?  How can anyone know?  When=
 I
see the news photographs of these women, I can't help but think they would
never have "disappeared" a blond, blue eyed, short-haired gringo.  Not like
they raped and buried white American nuns in El Salvador.

XXX is a videographer.  He makes documentaries.  He has been making videos
of the Zapatistas in Chiapas since the beginning of the movement.  You may
have seen them on your local PBS stations.  The last video of his that I sa=
w
several months ago was of coffee production in Acteal.  I had told him that
another friend, a Mexican forest economist who worked in Chiapas had said t=
hat
there were no coffee plantations in Chiapas, at least not in the Zapatista
zone.  So he showed me the video.  We sat down and I viewed shots of childr=
en
playing around the coffee mills that grind the husks from the bean.  I hear=
d
interviews with the women's collective who also make and sell elaborately
embroidered "huipils."  The majority of the women do not speak Spanish.
Everywhere there were children, and everytime I thought:  They look exactly
like my three year old son who is half Mixtec from Oaxaca.  All dead.
Hideously hacked to death until they were unrecognizable.  Pregnant women w=
ith
the fetuses macheted from their wombs "Guatemalan death squad" style.  And
paid for, in part, with my tax dollars. =20

And there is no more coffee to sell.  At the funeral procession from Acteal=
 to
Chenalho, as the people surrounded a truck full of assassins who drove by, =
the
coffee belonging to the dead was stolen and hauled away by the government
operatives in full view of the mourners.  So much for free trade for
indigenous peoples.  Do you know where your Starbucks has been?

I am writing you with tears streaming from my face.  There is a demonstrati=
on
outside the World Trade Center tomorrow.  I will be there.  I do not know w=
hat
will happen or what I will do.  Initially I had planned to wear my huipil f=
rom
Chiapas and my long hair in a braid.  I know I will look like the sister of
the slain.  Instead, I have decided to wear my most professorial black wool
suit.  I may get arrested and I want to look "good."  At the last
demonstration, Jan. 12th in Ocosingo, federal guards shot and killed a woma=
n
my age and gravely wounded her two year old son. =20

It is the least I can do.

I hope you are well, warm and safe as you read this with your morning coffe=
e.
I read this poem now, in another light:

"That may be why
when you think of someone
it is like saving them."

Yours,=20

XXXXX

In a message dated 1/16/98 7:46:16 AM:

<<I think that at this moment
by Roberto Juarroz

I think that at this moment
maybe nobody in the universe is thinking about me,=20
I=92m the only one who=92s thinking me,
and if I were to die now
nobody, not even I, would think me.

And this is where the abyss begins,
as when I go to sleep.
I=92m my own support and I take it away from me.
I help to curtain everything with absence.

That may be why
when you think of someone
it's like saving them.>>


Goes for homeless, that last line, as well, doesn't it?

PatM