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Let's Go
INTRODUCTION
These poems by Otto René Castillo will ask a new kind of response of their readers.
The translations were not made for the reasons one translates Vallejo or studies Lorca.
They were not even made for the reasons one might transpose the work of some of our outstanding contemporaries: Ernesto Cardenal or Juan Gelman. Otto René Castillo was not a man whose prime concern in life was poetry; his prime concern in life was life,andthat concern and commitment led to his death as well as producing, along the way, a legacy of three books of poetry.
Castillo’s language is simple, direct, but never ordinary. He asks not metaphorical involvement from his reader, but action. His play with the phraseology of his time may result in cliché to the reader looking only for literary innovation. In this case the reader must come prepared to follow the twist now almost lost among us: absolute honesty and absolute commitment.
Otto René Castillo’s life sounds heroic to us. It is. And it is even more heroic if one realizes it is not unique among Latin Americans of his generation. He was born in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, in 1936 and entered political life at the age of 17, assuming the presidency of his high school student association. In that same year, 1954, he was exiled for the first time. In that same year in that same exile, he began writing poetry.
In 1955 he shared the famous Central American Poetry Prize with Roque Dalton, well-known poet from El Salvador. The following year, 1956, he won the “Autonomia” poetry prize in Guatemala City, and in 1957, he was awarded one of the poetry prizes at the World Youth Festival.
<span style="color: #FF0000"> In 1959, again in exile, he began to study letters at the University of Leipzig, Germany, where he was exempted from taking almost all examinations as the rectors felt they were unnecessary.</span>
Castillo returned from exile in 1958 and began studying law at the University of Guatemala. He was declared the best student in the school and awarded the “Filadelfo Salazar” scholarship. His particularly analytical mind not only marked his academic career as exceptional, but gave him particular insight into problems of Guatemalan political life, evoking great respect among his comrades.
Again in his own country in 1964, he continued his activities as a student organizer and co-edited the newspaper “Vocero Estudiantil.” He founded the “Teatro Experimental de la Municipalidad”, experimental revolutionary theatre which, although unknown to them, is certainly one of the ancestors of the current U.S. guerilla theatre (both, perhaps, having their roots in Brecht). The same year he published his first book of verse, Tecun Uman.
In 1965 the military dictatorship of Guatemala imprisoned and exiled Castillo again. From that time to late in the following year, he spent some time in Cuba and also in Germany again, where he left a wife and two small children. Near the end of 1966 he returned to Guatemala to integrate definitively into the F.A.R. (Revolutionary Armed Forces), under the command of the late Major Luis Agusto Turcios Lima. <span style="color: #FF0000"> In March, 1967, after 15 days of eating only roots, he and a girl comrade (Nora Paiz, known to the guerillas as “Raquel”) were captured in ambush, tortured 4 days and finally burned alive---March 19th </span>
These poems are a selection from his second book (the last to be published during his life). Vamonos Patria a Caminar. A posthumous collection was due to appear, but the print shop, presses and publications were all destroyed by the Guatemalan government. Copies exist, however, and sooner or later the poems will appear. Meanwhile, as Cesar Montes, Commander of the F.A.R. says in a short introduction to a new Mexican edition of Vamonos Patria a Caminar, “the greatest homage we can pay him, is to go on fighting.”
For the Good of All
By Otto Rene Castillo
Listen,
look,
touch
this voice,
for underneath
a man burns sweetly
for the good of all.
Cliches?
You,
try to be worthy
all day long.
Afterwords
we'll speak alone
if you wish.
I tell you.
At this stage of our time
after twenty centuries
of christian word,
man is worse than ever
more evil than ever
less caring than ever.
Even the word love
has been lost
—love!
This at least in my country
gentle and sonorous as no other.
And in spite of it all,
there are nations where man
sings a duet with tenderness.
And eats enough.
And drinks enough.
And constructs enough, and more.
And loves, more than enough
if the blind torment appeals to him,
rock and air.
And who made
these nations?
He,
he with his hands
cordial and hard.
And the heat of his head
from where the future
bursts
like a rocket in space.
He,
the new man
who looking
on the horizon of his hands,
said one day:
Enough hunger!
Enough misery!
Enough being the toy
of divine forces that don't exist!
Enough and enough and enough!
I am my own destiny!
From now on
he said,
the centuries will come
to kneel before my image,
proud,
alone,
and human.
And he began
to climb the mountains of hate,
to conquer
the enormous moles of envy,
to penetrate
the labyrinth jungles
of misery and hunger.
And his soul became light
with the swallows of tenderness.
And all the magnates of the world,
laughing,
laughing with the pure politicos,
hung over with their lives
of commerce and industry.
Have they stopped laughing today?
Naturally not, biologically not!
He, only he,
the powerful of this century,
the proud of himself,
the solitary and the human,
the man who works,
has won, wins,
and will keep on winning.
Like a comet
he'll disappear in history
with his forehead in flame
but his fire will continue
lighting the centuries to come.
And if you come now
to the plaza of his acts
to the streets where he risked his life,
you'll find bread
on everyone's table,
a roof over everyone's head,
a kiss on the lips
of everyone,
friendship running in the veins
of all.
And when will this cosmic force
arrive in my sweet country?
Sonorous and odorous
like a petal in the sea?
When we, all of us,
decide to make it arrive!
Or never.
Only in ourselves
the light, the dawn,
or nowhere.
Beneath our night
a sun awaits us
greater than the universe:
the authentic freedom of man.
But freedom is like wheat.
It must be planted, softly,
and watered every day.
It must be protected
till it multiplies
fills the mouth of the wind,
the hunger of all,
and becomes invincible.
So, I say,
our evil,
our badness,
our lack of care,
will only be wiped out
with the unity of all
for the good of all.
If we unite
we will win over the fearful
smelling his own death,
enemy, howling already,
definitive and huge.
Now do you understand
this voice?
It is not only mine,
nor yours,
but that of all.
And I know
that many hear it,
they sense it,
they see it,
and cry in hiding
because they recognize
in that voice their own,
the voice already lost
or not emerging.
And I know they love
and respect this voice,
because no one can deny
that beneath the voice
a man burns
sweetly
for the good of all,
even for the good of those
who have not heard it.
