Musings

Sitting on the floor at Birmingham International Airport waiting for boarding time to return to California from a pilgrimage to Fort Benning, Georgia, to protest the continued operation of the School of the Americas or School of Assassins. Exhausted and yet invigorated by all that happened. Need to sleep for a couple of days...

My already sixty year-old body if you count the time in my mother's womb is not happy with long hours or with activism. It protests violently, the feet swelling and blisters appearing, and I feWEeling as if any second, if I don''get sleep now, i will drop to the floor and throw a temper tantrum. I am sooo tired, and angry to an extent at my own body's betrayal.

the other thing is that my eyes fail me; my glasses are not bifocals, so the writing is blurry. new glasses will cost about 250, and so for now, that will have to wait, I STILL HAVE the ugnly lined bifocals I BOUGHT when CAterina had her accident with her eyes.

I feel as though if i start writing about this event I WILL begin to cry again, as I did so often in the past three days. Saturday we started at 9 in the morning and went on through the day, from the Conventon CENTER TO THE stage in front of the gages and badk to ghe COVNEnetion center. the stories, each of them, were gruesome and dreqdful and unb erlievable, and even more nbelievable the fact thaqt these folks were coming to speak the truth and might return to be killed or tortued of both once they returned to their counttries. for it has happened before...

ATHERE wqs mARY eLENA BUSTAMANTE who brother, a young beterinarian in GUAQTEMALA who was denouncing the practices of the military, was 'disappared, torturned, killed. HOW TERRIble to have a yong brother who disappears and about whose death you can only make assumptions, all bad.

NERYS gonzles was tortured when she was 8 months pregnant with her son DANIEL eRNESTO IN san VICENTE, her crime being that of teaching the peasants to read and write. SHE had worked with PQDRE Rutlio GRAND, who was tortured and killed by the military, and whosse example nspired OSCAR romero, who was in turn killed. SHE WEORKEd sice by side with RUTILO AND then with RONMERO. she was thus a marked woman from then on.,

SHE was tortured until, between the terrible pain, and watching and hearing the tortured screams of the campesinos of SAN vicente, ALL OF WHOM were massaxxred, she fainted, and was dumpled into a pile of dead bodies. She was laster found and taken to a hopsital, and ws in a coma for 4wisx monthsw. HER BABY duedm but she said she woke up after six months asking about him, and touchinger her stomack, where she could still feel a pull from her now dead child,

NOE is a unionist whose brother was torutred and shot, in GUATEMALA. He said that although he knows he maqy be targeted, the labor struggle is in his blood. HE IS an organizer for the banana workers in GUATEMALA. HE SAQID that whe we eqt CHIQUITE b annas, each of ghem come with a drop of blood attached.

I interpreted twixe for Geardo C ajamarca.hE CLOSED the event; he screamed, andasked me to do the same, ANO VEMINOS A ROGAR JUSTICIA, VENIMOSA EXCIGIR JUSTICIA.