El modesto misterio

Mayra Izabel Cifuentes Pineda

By: Laura Toribio

Translated by: Ana Recio & Cesar Parra

Only 26 hours. No more than 26 were left when you called your mother for the last time. Almost nothing, Mayra, after the 14 days of travel since you left your land, Guatemala, en route to the United States. Those hours were nothing since you had already been living for 24 years in a village of La Gomera in the city of Esquintla, in misery and without options. Seeing your dad break his back cutting fruit in a farm for a few cents, barely enough to provide enough food for you and your six brothers.

They were only beans. What were 26 hours? Since it cost you a month to make the most difficult decision for a mother: abandoning your child. You had to do it, you Gustavo, your five year old little one. But you had no choice, I know, your mother confessed that to me, you didn’t want him to have your luck: dropping out of the fourth grade with only the option of living in a room made of aluminum that wasn’t his to own, it was rented.

Caramel skinned with sleepy eyes, nappy haired and short. I know you yearned for a dignified life for you and yours, and they know it too. And you made that very clear on that fourth day in August when you marched out: you promised your son a bike and a robot; your dad that you’d send him money so he didn’t have to work any longer; to yourself, that you’d save so you could build a house for your mom and your brothers.

You had yet to find out that you were going to work in New Jersey, where you’d arrive to meet with your uncle and cousin, but you’d already decided you weren’t going to be away from your son for more than two years. You left him in your moms care, and asked him to look after her as well. And you left in search of what Guatemala simply denied you of: opportunity.

She also wished she was with her mother; she missed her. Her mother had plans for her: she would go to school in New York, then work and maybe some day get married. A simple deal. Besides a park, a volcano and beaches, the town also had coyotes that announced their presence outside the houses.

On August 10th Yeimi headed to the U.S She was wearing a turquoise shirt and jeans. The coyote got three thousand dollars in advance, out of the seven thousand in total of the agreement. The grandparents gave their blessings. She spoke to them twice over the phone to let them know she was in Guatemala, and that everything was OK. They didn’t hear from her again. A few days later their dreams were crushed, by monsters just like in fairytales.

She carried her birth certificate in one of her pockets: her ticket to a city she did not know and where her dream would carry on. Yeimi’s story needed not to end this way.

Don Quixote, originally written by Miguel de Cervantes has been translated many times in various languages. In the Spanish language there are different ways throughout the years that the text has been translated and modified to appeal the current reader.

The translation made by John Ormsby in 1885, is not a translation a person in 2013 would read, however, it could’ve been well written for people in that century with a sophisticated style. The translation from 1949, also uses terminology that would be for an older audience in current time, and using descriptions that are lengthy. the last two are by one British writer John Rutherford, and one American one Edith Grossman, both from the same year (2003) and they have a more modern style. They have taken the story and translated it in a way that doesn’t damage it’s complete meaning, and made it a lot easier to read and understand, using words that are still used in 2013. For example the last one by Grossman, was very open with her translations and in a way was very similar to the text, like it says on the very first sentence “Somewhere in la Mancha” as opposed to “a village” that is used by the other authors. This is just one of many examples of the wide variety and translations there are for one book, in this case Don Quijote. (Or Quixote according to your interpretation of course.)

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Rocio Rodriguez

Profesora: Allen

Quatro diferencias

La primera version como todos podemos ver es en espanol. Las otras tres son traducciones en ingles. Cada una de estas traducciones estan traducidas en diferentes versions y estilo. Queriendo decir que lo hicieron a su manera. Algunas de ellas pierden un poco el sentido o talvez en como deben o pueden fluir al ser leidas. Por ejemplo: la traduccion de John Ormsby no me gusto mucho porque uso palabras muy diferctas que podemos malintrerpretar como si hubiese usando “Google translate”  una de ellas es : “the name of which I have no desire to call to mind” it does not sounds fluent or irrelevant. Tambien eh observado que algunos casos como este “Don Quijote de La Mancha” talvez  no importe en cual ano fuese traducido porque el vocabulario nil as palbras no cambian. La traduccion de Samuel Putman traducida en el 1949 y la de John Rutherford en el 2003; los dos usaron la misma oracion pra empesar el texto “In a Village of La Mancha” con este nos deja saber que aveces no tiene importancia en que ano hubiera sido traducido.

Mi version favorite que mas me gusto fue la de Edith Grossman. Ella trato de mantener el cuento fluyente y tambien cambio palabras para que no perdiera mucho el sentido. En la primera oracion ella donde dice “”cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme” osea, no es que no le importe simplemente es que no quiere, entonces ella uso “I do not care to remember”. Con esto le anadio un poco mas de vida al cuento y mantuvo la historia entendible.

Unidentified Female Immigrant (71)

By: Patricia Guerrero

I know nothing of the woman I’ve have been assigned to write about. I do not know her name, her age, where she came from, if she was young or old, child or women. I only know that her body was found next to 71 other bodies in a miserable ranch north of Tamaulipas, that she was probably Central American, and that she’s one of thousands of immigrants that have encountered death when traveling this country. It hurts and shames me her death unspeakably, and since the knees of my words weaken when talking about this, I would simply like to dedicate this song to her that I’ve liked ever since it made me cry when I was a child, in the faraway lands of the United States:

¡Que lejos estoy del suelo donde he nacido! Inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Y al ver me tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento, Quisiera llorar, quisiera morir de sentimiento.

“How far away am I from the ground where I was born! Immense longing invades my thought. And seeing myself alone and dreary like a leaf in the wind, I would like to mourn, I would like to die from this feeling.”

I’m very sorry.

Unidentified Guatemalan Female Immigrant 

It’s been days, weeks that I’ve been looking and thinking of you. Imagining if you look like the undocumented Guatemalan girl that I found four years ago at the Tapachula immigration station shown like a cage of cold. The girl was about to be deported- accompanied repatriation, as you say it in the right language institutions that report with white gloves and shackles if necessary. It was not the first time in which she tried to go north and cross, it was her second time they deported her and ran like adventures of air, holding with irony in her hand the booklet on human rights.

Remembering her, vital and brilliant, she asked what was your experience, an anonymous dead maid, well deserved. If it was your first time when all 3 women, for sure young, cornered, like being locked in a pen, it was 72 people in total like human beast, threaten and hit to accept the offer that they made to work for them and for the females, to pay with their bodies and bring to disappearance, secret trafficking to the perverse business of sexual meat trafficking and work of slaves

The unidentified girl from Guatemala who I look for in my imagination was willing to try again and again, exit-cross-arrive, to stop feeling used and abused by her own community, by men who claimed to care about her but who abused her. She kept dreaming about a more valuable and free life, she planned to escape, she got together with a girl of her same age, they gathered some money, set out the march, and finally crossed the Suchiate paying some quetzals. It was in Mexico where the worst started, although they decided not to get on the train, but to walk as much as possible, blisters on exhausted feet and to get on some bus. They were detained because of their skin color and their way of talking, as always, the signs of identity and discrimination abducted and subjected to threats and calls, from siblings from the other side to pay for their rescue. Siblings did not answer, they did not have the money nor the means, and the two immigrant friends that escaped together from Guatemala looking for another life they were raped and submitted by police and immigration personal, how would you know, and forced to either sell their bodies or die. Noticing that this was not life, that there was no choice, the girl from Guatemala who I think saw in an instant, everything lived and dreamed, and fell on her friend, like an impossible hug, so that together they would resist or die. Central American mothers who have started today a caravan through Mexico looking for their immigrant “missing” sons and daughters, they will find them one day if we help them, so we will all know disappearance in our country means annihilation, by physical death or mental disintegration.

Author: Isabel Vericat

By Janitza Solarte and Laura Triana

Text #9: Unidentified Migrant.

Autor: John Burstein W.
Foto: Francisco Mata Rosas

She was probably from Honduras. The number of Hondurans has increased from the migrants who cross the south border. The proportion of women has also increased in this new economical and climatic migrant wave; the migration tsunami of our era. The Migrant Still Unidentified 9 was probably Honduran.

There is no assurance. It is said that 400,000 MIGRANTS – mostly undocumented – cross through Mexico every year. The government deports 188,000 of them. The men are disproportionally deported (88 percent). In other words, women have a slightly better probability of making it through, but there is a price.

Migrant 9 joined the obstacle race. I see her as small digit in between the large numbers. Her success consists of passing the pitfall, escaping from one trap to the next. It is hard to win the bet against the statistics constituting, rating and financing the system; it is as tough as crossing the Suchiate River (border with Mexico at Union Juarez) and the Sierra Madre mountains (peak at 5843 feet), or the Peten Jungle from one side and Lacandona from the other side, but which is no more than a bunch of tree roots.

She bets her numerical luck in this transit like if she was running from ICE (la migra), hoping to be absent from the statistics of deported or missing, or losing her name. Migrant 9 beat the unfavorable numbers against her, and made it through the South Border. However, she would have been luckier to be deported, instead of being lucky crossing the border to never be seen again.

It’s also possible that the unidentified migrant 9 was a Guatemalan man. Meanwhile tens of thousands stay working in Chiapas, other tens of thousands join the migrated American-Guatemalans, who have exceeded half million, primarily made of native mayas.

Obviously: number 9 could’ve been Salvadorian. The sixth part of the Salvadorians has already left their country. Their remittances are equivalent to the 17% of the economy. They end up substituting the dollar for the national coin. They see the rainbow with one eye pointing to the American union and the other looking towards El Salvador, effulgently. I imagine the neighbor in the corner: decided to enter in the glorious systematic streets of the transnational El Salvador. Nothing could’ve been more natural. At the end he proved himself as a guy with luck that put aside the national statistics, that talk about 50 murders for 100,000 people, overflowing by a whole lot Mexico, that only has 12 man down by 100,000.

Could be less common if the immigrant number 9’s death wouldn’t have catch him via the weapons that the dirty army buys at the other side. (In the last three years 60,000 weapons were requisite in Mexico, smuggled from United States)

Where did the gun’s registration went with the series number AK-47 (the most common weapon of traffickers) what did they use to kill him?

Translated by Rocio and Andres.

Title: Jose David Giron Martinez (49)
Written by: Lydiette Carrion
Translated by: Wendy Mora

Two pictures are in the Prensa Libre newspaper.

The first picture: Brenda Liset Betancourt faces the camera. Her expression shows the absence of a smile. She holds a photo of her missing husband.

Brenda is accompanied by her daughters, ages three and six, who are now fatherless. They do not smile. They are sitting on a sofa. Behind them is a blue wall whose paint is falling off in pieces.

The second picture- the only one I have of you when you were alive: a smiling young man, with bright eyes, carrying a baby girl in his arms. Was she the younger of his daughters? In the background is the bald eagle and flag of the United States.

Jose David Giron, 26 years old.Guatemalan.

On August 2, 2010, you left the village of Sipacate , La Gomera, a fishing community in the region of Escuintla, Guatemala.

You left with four others, three men and a woman. All with the hope of getting to the United States, finding a job and sending money back home. This wasn’t the first time you’d attempted this. Two years ago you had made the same journey, your wife informed the newspaper. However during it, you separated from the group and got lost for a month in Mexico.

At home, after this “disalusion”, you began working at a banana packing plant. However this job was temporary, so you decided to try again.

Other migrants some young, some old, have told me the same story. It is hell crossing Mexico. But if they had to do it again they would.

They would do it, they’d do it again. Even with all the dangers this journey held. Despite the fact that even when they reach the United States they will continue to live in fear due to their illegal status. In the first 6 months of 2010, 16,000 Guatemalans were deported.

But how are they not to try again ! When the newspaper reports that only half of the deportees manage to find jobs in Guatemala.

You had not been gone a month, when in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, 72 migrants were found murdered for not paying their ransom and for refusing to work in organized crime. Among them, your family, wife , two daughters and your village learned, you were.

All because you refused to work for the Zetas …..

Your remains arrived in Guatemala the 5th of November. It was declared a national day of mourning.

26 years of life is very little . I believe it is to much killing for a father who only looked to support his family.

Autor: Marcela Turati

Un surco mal trazado de frijol permanece como recuerdo de tu vida en Los Astales, el rancho de 20 casas Allende el rio Las Tacayas, en El Progreso, Guatemala. Tu aportacion a la milpa familiar parecia bigote retorcido, tan gracioso, Lizardo, que tu tio pidio que lo dejaras. No slaiste bueno para el trazo acaso desde que desertaste de la primaria. Tantas ganas tenias de salier del pueblo que te alquilaste como chalan en el camion guajolotero de vaivenes entre tu caserio y San Antonio La Paz. Tnata urgencia sentis por vivir que con 17 anos eras todo un hombre casado. Estabas proximo a estrenarte como padre del bebe tejido con amor en el vientre de Yesica, quien hoy se sabe una nina viuda. Te hipnotizo la idea de dar alos tuyos uns mejor vida abandonando las milpas de tu Guatemala y pizcando golden apples en California. En vez de quetzals ganarias dolares. Se veia re’ facil: tu cunado GIlmar seria el guia, tu y yu cunado Ermelindo los seguidores. Te pienso junto a ese par cruzando el rio Suchiate a la bava, entre esa enredadera de bicitaxis que transladan mercancia y pasaje de manera legal o contrabunda. Los imagino en Chiapas aferradas como moscas al techo del tren carguero, los musculos tensos, en vigilia permanente para no salir voladno. Me pregunto si entre las costuras del pantalon llevabas billetes cosidos para olcutarlos de los duenos de esa Ruta Del Mas Fuerte. Acaso quisiste camuflar tu condicion migratoria con una mochila ligera que no delatara que cargabas tus suenos en la espalda. Quizas matizaste el cantadito del dulce hablar guatemalteco, o memorizaste las estrofas de un himno nacional ajeno, para confundir a quienes prohiben el paso segun el injusto rasero de la nacionalidad.
Me intriga saber si desde el lomo del tren pudiste atrapar alguna bolsita con agua o uno de los atados de tacos que lanzan las doñas avecindadas a la orilla de las vías, que no soportan que el hambre y el sufrimiento se paseen tan cerca. ¿En qué momento ustedes tres perdieron el camino? ¿Cómo fue que ‘la ley’ los correteó hasta obligarlos a esconderse? ¿El samaritano que prometió llevarlos a Monterrey fue quien los vendió a sus asesinos por unas monedas? ¿Quién autorizó a los hombres que llamaron a tu casa, para pedir 2 mil dólares por tu rescate, a actuar como dioses borrachos, con derecho de mutilar vidas? Lizardo, ¿habías escuchado que la frontera mexicana es territorio perdido? Vaya, ¿al menos que en México se libra una guerra donde los migrantes son un botín y que las autoridades contemplan con sospechosa indiferencia esa compra-venta? Encontraron tu cuerpo, querido Lizardo, junto a los de los esposos de tus hermanas Karla y Nohemí, y a los de otros 69 migrantes en el rancho de San Fernando. Nomás tras lomita quedaba Estados Unidos. En Los Astales, la noticia desmoronó como polvorón la vida de todos, desgajó corazones como pasa con los cerros tras las lluvias. ¡En la foto de un diario tu Yésica luce tan triste y tan linda! El vientre aún no se nota abultado. No sé si Lizardito siente la angustia que guarda ella. Seguro que cuando nazca le contará de ti, le dirá que el presidente te declaró héroe en una ceremonia donde no te dejaron estar presente. Sigues varado en una morgue mexicana. ¿Quién te manda, Lizardo, no tener cédula de identidad? No hubo manera de identificarte aunque tus parientes empeñaron su palabra en que tú eres tú, el adolescente de las milpas mal trazadas. Un surco de tierra te espera en casa. Ahí tu cuerpo será sembrado.

A furrow evil plot of beans remains as a memoir of your life in Los Astales, the ranch of 20 houses among the river Las Tacayas, in El Progreso, Guatemala. Your collaboration to the family’s cornfield was like a twisted mustache, really funny, Lizardo, your uncle asked you to leave it. You didn’t come out so well for tracing ever since you dropped out of school. You wanted to leave town so badly that you rented yourself as a chalan in the guajolotero’s truck between San Antonio La Paz and your hamlet. You were in a rush to live your life that with being only 17 years old you was already a married man. You were about to be a daddy, fruit of your love inside Yesica’s womb, whom today is no more than a widow girl. The idea of giving your family a better life and future hypnotized you to the point where you abandoned Guatemala’s land for some apples land in California. Instead of quetzales, the US dollar. It seemed so easy: your brother in law Guilmar would be the leader, you and your brother in law Ermelindo the followers. I think of you crossing the river Suchiate at it’s worst, in between those pedicabs that transport merchandise and passengers legally or in a smuggled way. I picture you guys in Chiapas cling together like flies on top of the train, tensed muscles, in permanent vigil to prevent you form flying off. I wonder if you sewed money inside your pant’s sowings to hide them from the men of that route the strongest. Perhaps, you wanted to camouflage your migratory status with a light rucksack that wouldn’t give away that you were carrying your dreams in your back. You tinted the singing of the sweet to speak Guatemalan, or memorized the strophes of a foreign national anthem, to confuse whoever prohibits the entry according to the unjust citizen of that nationality.
I would like to know, when you were in top of that train, if you would be able to pick up any of the little plastic bags filled with water or any of the bags filled with tacos that the ladies who lived next to the train’s track threw because they couldn’t bear someone in pain and hunger passed next to them. When did you all three lost your path? How come did “the law” run after you until you were force to hide? Was the Samaritan, who promised to take them to Monterrey, who sold them to their killers for couple dollars? Who did authorize those men to call your home asking for two thousand dollars rescue, like they were drunken gods with the right to mutilate lives? Lizardo, have you ever hear the Mexican border was a dangerous territory? Well, at least, have you ever hear there was a war in Mexico where immigrants were war’s trophies? Have you ever know the authorities allow these purchase-sale suspicious activities? Dear Lizardo, your body was found next to your bothers in law, Karla and Nohemi’s husbands, and next to other 69 immigrants in San Fernando Ranch. You were just three little cliffs away from Unites States. In Los Astales, the news made our lives fell apart as an explosion and our hearts were broken. There was a picture of your Yesica at the local news-paper; she looked very pretty but very sad. There were no signs that she was pregnant. I wonder if your unburned child (Lizardito) could feel her anguish. I am sure when he born, she will tell him about you, how the president declared you a national hero in a ceremony that you couldn’t assist. Your body is still stranded in a Mexican morgue. Lizardo, How come couldn’t you have a proper identification documents? There was no way to identify you. Even though your family recognized you as the young guy with the crazy hairstyle, they were not listened. There is a small piece of land waiting for you next to your home, where your body will be planted.

Translated by Erika and Jose

El Salvadorian male immigrant yet to be identified

Author: Guillermo Osorno

No one knows his name. It matters, but it doesn’t matter. At least that’s what I think. I think he is dead, that’s for sure. I think that the hardest part is over. And this too is for sure, although I know it was something he was regretting along the way because he did not know that things could get worse. I think at one point he had to walk barefoot. I believe he was mugged on a train before arriving in Oaxaca, surely by someone pointing a gun to his head. I think his life in El Salvador was not good. I think the “Mara Salvatrucha” killed his brother or perhaps a family member. I think he went to the United States to meet a family member, to see if they wanted him. I think someone told him on the way that he had been kidnapped by municipal police officers and had asked those relatives from the United States for money. Then that someone beat him, they released him and he went to a shelter, where he met him. I think he didn’t know what words to say to him. I think he and the rest of people killed in Tamaulipas were taken to ask for money. I think when he had the blindfold on, before being shot, he agreed to drink water from puddles and begged to eat.

-Mishelle

Samuel Putman, translated this text on 1949, and it reflects the style of the time, it uses words such as “an ancient buckler…a greyhound for the chase. A stew…” These are interesting choice of words as they are not often used this decade. I specially like the he refers to the left overs from Saturdays as “scraps for a Saturday,” as I would not refer to scraps as left overs. Overall I do like the style of writing, as he uses terms such as “fond of the hunt.” I like those choice of words, to be fond really sets across a feeling of like, at least in my perspective.

John Rutherford, translates Don Quixote in 2003, in a similar fashion he chooses to use a different words to translate the same sentences and terms. On oppose to using an ancient buckler he uses “an ancient leather shield”, which is easily understood, he translate a “greyhound for the chase” to “a greyhound for the coursing.” Which was not as easy to understand. And to represent his liking of the hunt he translates to “a keens huntsman.” I really would not have translated this in this manner.

Edith Grossman translation, done on 2003, had a better choice of words, at least to my liking. She chose “a greyhound for the racing”. And a “great lover of the hunt.” This latter translation sets forward his true love of the hunt. And thought it was the most appropriate translation of these sentence.