Pedro Antonio Franco #23
Pedro Antonio Franco
Author: Elia Baltazar
Photo by: Pedro Valtierra
“They didn’t hurt him, did they? They didn’t beat him up first, did they?” Ana Virginia, your wife, asks frantically. She wants to know what happened to you. She wants to find comfort at least by thinking that the darkness fell quickly upon your large and robust body that was no longer able to see. Strong as she remembers you, she just wants to imagine that you left complete and without pain. You had already had enough since you were young, when you left San Vicente to enroll in an army that made war in that small country of yours. You became Sergeant with no wounds. Just a finger broken by a bullet. The worst was your fear when you felt your life ending though the blood of others. She did not know you yet, but you were already looking for her. You always told her that as a compliment, when you spoke about San Miguel, where she had grown up and you hanged around. “Why didn’t I meet you before to steal you?” you would tell her laughing. “Really?” She would ask you. A woman who knew the harsh treatment of men appreciated that you did not yell at her, did not hurt her, that you called her Tinita and that you showed her off: “I have found the most beautiful woman in this world,” you would tell one of your six brothers. You were as affectionate with her as with her three children and grandchildren. You loved them as if they were your own and she was grateful for that. She returned your kindness and love by getting up at dawn to heat up your food and atole before seeing you leave to work at that construction job that would break your back. You had already experienced hard working days before. In the fields and as bus dispatcher. At 55, you were well-trained in the necessities of a poor country. However, you had never carried 80 pounds (approximately 36 kilograms) all day, every day. Until you arrived at Maryland, where you met her eight years ago, on the platform of the train you both took to go back home. One station separated you so you decided it was better to take her to live with you. You traveled to El Salvador to get married and then you returned together to the United States. There she said good bye, you had to leave her: your job had been lost in the real estate collapse, you were sick, and with no work permit. That’s why you returned to El Salvador, to get as a citizen, a surgery that would be impossible to get as an immigrant. In El Delirio, the community where you left land and house, your health and the nostalgia returned. You did not want to be by yourself in San Miguel. Also, you were soon going back there together again. In two or three years, you promised. When there would be enough money to buy some animals. You went to Mexico only with the things needed for the days to come and you traveled more than 1500 kilometers until arriving to San Fernando, Tamaulipas: 300 kilometers before the border with the United States, your future ended. One day before your death, a man called Ana Virginia to tell her you would cross the border that night. On the next day, you were found lying on the uneven piece of land that you got in life. A poet whose last name is Dalton could have written for you: “The night comes and destroys everything/ viscose, devastating sea/ nothing forgives the relentless”
Translated by: Alejandra Garcia and Vanessa Fernandez