LETTER TO MY SISTER PAZ

By Alejandra Bermúdez Mallol

June 19, 1981

Do you remember, sister, my house full of baskets, pots, and clay jars? I opened its doors so that the people's wonder could illuminate my corners, so that the color of the people could light up my walls.

And there was always room for something else. For the solemn portraits of our grandparents. And for their swords. And our father's old books. And everyone's old things. The old trunks with my worn-out nostalgia . Do you remember the rag dolls, the multicolored toys? By clinging to them, perhaps I wanted to imprison my childhood.

Then the presence of the children left its own mark and the drums, guitars, charangos, flutes, and quenas appeared.

And the subversive posters and proclamations, the youth's insatiable thirst for justice, invaded corridors and hallways. When one, at forty-five, has to leave all that behind, one also leaves a part of oneself. And it's as if one carries one's home on one's back and tries to reinvent it in exile. One tries to recreate one's home, to make it relevant again.

But today, sister, I calmly tell you that new editions of new houses are impossible. Because from that one, ours, I took the best, the only thing that truly mattered: the memory forever etched in my mind of the life that pulsed within it.

But when death and blood burst into my wide, white house, devastating walls and bricks, leaving it orphaned of children and voices, then, sister, I understood that the heart of man is the best and most beautiful house one can inhabit .

Commemoration of the assassination of José León Díaz