I.
Nowadays, suffering is the clock of time
The fallen ones mark the passing hours,
maltreatment and illness have a long life,
the famine ever onward and upward.
A persistent cultural conviction
guides this Chilean blood
ruthless enemy of their origins
throughout the centuries
At morning, hunger tighten the belly.
Filling up the afternoon
Special local Forces, repression and gunfire
Midnight, raid warrant, inhuman arrest.
mattocks and equipments destroyed,
Then comes interrogation and torture,
trial, forged evidences, masked witness,
anti-terrorist law, unjust convictions.
The second hand walks on natural rights
that now are criminal offenses: no protest,
no defending roof and family, nor crying starvation.
II.
The cry of Chilean indigenous territories
the mainstay of the South
fire alive that has not gives ashes.
Time goes by
in lands burned by chemicals.
Cannot hear even one trill.
Small birds ate the wilted venomous berries,
the skunk hunts the swollen poisoned rabbits
Eagles, cougars, humans… All perish.
The whole food chain is polluted
To sow is impossible:
the soils are contaminated
everything withers
and if it grows, it kills.
At the water landscapes, no drinking water.
Pipelines and rubbish dumps
pollute groundwater and wells.
Rivers and lakes receive industrial waste.
III.
Come check health of the sick children!
Come to count thousand of dead fishes!
washing up along poisoned rapids
found in estuaries and deltas!
Come hear song of swans when dying!
Come see their long black necks falling
as they expire by hundreds of thousands!
Criminal productivity. Maximum performance.
No matter if nature and men die.
But as these crimes occur on indigenous land,
over there, in the skyscrapers of Santiago or New York
some sex slave raises a leg, bottle and gets high
with “Chilean Tigers”,
North Americans and another foreign
bank, portfolio and stock exchange.
Flowing out whiskey, dollar, drugs,
business deals, intrigue.
One aseptic cueca for fake local flavour
and the omnipotent guffaw who feeds itself
from the billions of billions looted
to life of fields, animals and people:
evil money goes against life…
Goes against life
Goes against life
Against life, goes.
—–
From Ximena’s book, Mapuche Apology.