PoeCarta para Elba y Celina Ramos: entre la rabia, la tristeza, y el luto histórico
Abstract (Spanish)
Esta PoeCarta nace de mi necesidad de hablarles a las muertas como si volvieran a estar vivas o como si mi espíritu las visitara. En esta metodología feminista comunitaria de la voz y el recuerdo histórico, yo puedo procesar heridas colectivas que fueron causadas por el estado-nación racista y machista durante períodos en los que yo ni siquiera había nacido. Aunque mi luto tiene raíces en décadas y siglos atrás, el dolor me afecta porque es un dolor transgeneracional y somático. Una PoeCarta es una respuesta a el desplazamiento forzado y a la vida en la diáspora.* También, es una manera de sacar la rabia y el pus que llevo dentro, decir mi verdad, visibilizar la muerte y honrar la vida como una herramienta de memoria histórica, y para procesar y sanar heridas que mi cuerpo ha metabolizado en inflamación y dolores. Una PoeCarta es un testimonio en carne.
Abstract (English)
This PoeLetter (a poem-letter) is born from my need to speak to the dead as if they were alive again or as if my spirit visited them. This community feminist methodology of voice and historical memory allows me to process collective wounds caused by the racist and patriarchal nation-state during periods before my birth. Although my grief has roots in decades and centuries passed, the pain affects me because it is a transgenerational and somatic pain. A PoeLetter is a response to forced displacement and life in the diaspora61. Also, it is a way to release the anger and pus that I carry inside, to tell my truth, to make death visible and to honor life as a tool of historical memory, and to process and heal wounds that my body has metabolized into inflammation and pain. A PoeLetter is a testimony in the flesh.
1989 Centroamérica: Crónicas de la memoria y el cuerpo (2025) / 1989 Central America: Chronicles of Memory and Embodiment (2025)
*Katherine McKittrick in her book, “Dear Science and Other Stories” develops a glossary around the topic of the Black diaspora. My definition of diaspora is based on McKittrick’s articulation of a diaspora which she articulates as, “the scattering of people across spaces, borders, and nations . . . ethnic and racial traumas as well as geographic losses have underwritten the scattering of people.... returns . . . the process of returning, whether imaginary, real, filmic, fictional . . . what returns are possible. . . through travel, remembrance, imagination, remittances, yearnings, stories or songs? are past cultural practices retained on relocation, and do these cultural practices carry in them the history of violence, dispersal, and memories of home? . . . . diasporic returns . . . real, imaginary, political, economic, and creative . . . if diaspora fundamentally centers on the movements of people, are not all traveling cultures diasporic . . . if departure is voluntary, or individual rather than collective, is this diasporic process . . . do all diasporic subjects return? . . . imagine homelands and returns, but do not assume that “home” is either returnable or innocent.... the experiences of removal, travel, and return are... indicative of modern geographies . . . these processes of displacement, outer-national ties, and settlement demonstrate the workings of modernity and the modern nation not as bounded or unchanging but as a territory inflicted with difference...”
