What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

by Carolyn Forché

The radio was covered in brown leather, with tubes visible inside it like a miniature city glowing with orange lights, and as she turned the dial, the voices changed, and because they were in different languages, and I was a child, I imagined that the radio was a city of voices from all over the world.

But those of us who no longer attend Mass are called fallen or fallen away. I’m fallen.”

he was simply cleaning out his inbox, as they say, taking care of routine matters, and now it seems to be routine to dump political prisoners into the sea.

I had no idea how to think like a colonel.

“What are you going to do, Papu? Write poetry about yourself for the rest of your life? And if you’re going to translate our poets, don’t you think you should know something about Central America?”

You’ve already spent a summer with Claribel. You’ve translated her poetry. Now write your own.

In my country, and in the rest of Latin America, poets are taken seriously. They’re appointed to diplomatic posts, or they’re assassinated, or put into prison but, one way or the other, taken seriously.”

injustices of a political nature were not historical accidents, and that most injustices in Latin America were supported or made possible by the United States,

Well, your bed belonged to the man responsible for those thirty thousand dead. Or eighty thousand, depending on your source.”

That would mean they’re only interested in human rights when it suits them.”

You can be vague. In fact, it’s usually best to be vague. But

but then the conversation hardened. Medrano

You are now a mysterious person of some importance, and that might save your life.”

One thing did not have much to do with another at this moment.

but I had known since childhood that human suffering demanded a response, everywhere and always, and I wondered: What would I do?

they accused me of setting a precedent, those were their words. Can you imagine? Being threatened by mattresses?”

Here, if someone expresses concerns about your safety in a certain way, they are giving you a warning or something worse.”

Such signs would indicate that General Romero’s promise of reform was more than mere rhetoric. Until such indications occur El Salvador must, unfortunately, be declared to be in violation of human rights and its own constitutional guarantees.”

and I hope to God we don’t encounter these killers, but if we do, listen to me, if we do, are you listening? Don’t say anything, let me talk.

There is practically no middle class. . . . Thirty or forty families own nearly everything in the country.

so is war coming? What do you think?”

But unlike in the United States, we can only have a little democracy here. Just a little. We are a small country and most of our people are illiterate and live as the animals do.

“So it is my hope,” Suárez said, “that you are going to write beautiful things about my country when you return to the U.S.”

“But she doesn’t like North Americans much at the moment, so watch yourself.”

I might always have thought myself invisible, and I wasn’t sure why, but it had by now become a comfortable state—not

but there was no weapon between us.

“You weren’t afraid, Carolina?” Margarita asked as we descended toward the city. “Should I have been?” She looked over at me and then, downshifting with her hands white on the steering wheel, she answered, “Yes.”

It seemed we were both inside and outside the house.

I would pay attention, and try to see as much as I could, not the world as imagined in my continuous waking dream, but as it was, not only the obvious but the hidden, not only the water cántaros but their weight, not only their weight but why it was necessary to carry water such distances.

She had no English, and didn’t want any.

After that happened, they were willing to die for one another, and for those who were already dead.

To be with God now is to choose the fate of the poor, to be with them, to see through their eyes and feel through their hearts, and if this means torture and death, we accept. We are already in the grave.”

I want you to pay attention now, and feel what you are feeling, really pay attention because you can learn from this. This is what oppression feels like.

You’re exhausted, you’re shocked, you’re sick to your stomach, and you feel dirty. These things are what people feel every day here—and you expect them to get themselves organized?

That night I knew that something had changed for me, and that I wasn’t going to get tired or need a shower or want to call something off so I could rest, and I hoped that if I forgot this I would somehow remember Alma in the cardboard box in the barrio, and the mimeographed poems.

“I don’t know, but I have seldom seen the Americans serious about human rights unless it is politically convenient for them.

“Yes, well, I have posters of Mussolini too, if the need arises. You can sleep here.”

“But are you a Marxist?” “I have told you, I’m not a religious man.”

Leonel seemed relaxed and happy, and the conversation was light. Only an hour ago, he had been holding forth about guerrilla warfare.

We are either going to see some results or we’ll be lucky to be alive at this time tomorrow. You can’t stay at Margarita’s tonight, and I can’t go where I was going. We have to do something else.”

A poet had once cautioned me not to live a life that was more vibrant and intense than my inner life, that inner and outer must at least be kept in balance, but if one was to gather strength over the other, let it be the life within.

But the god of fate, Papu, can you imagine! They wanted to eradicate even the god of what the Mayans were destined to become.”

Every figure speaks, if one knows how to read the weave.

The Mayans don’t distinguish between past, present, and future, he’d said.

If someone promises to do great things, ask them first for something small, like a bridge or a cow.”

“I know what you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me that I’m not being fair. It’s something you Americans say when you are told the truth.”

The president of the republic called them Communists, of course, and charged them with plotting to overthrow the government. All because of Miss Universe.”

The symphony of illusion, remember? You need to be seen entering and leaving the embassy,

“Congratulations, my dear,” Leonel said, “the ambassador said he was appalled by you.”

Her nameplate was such that it could be slid from its holder and replaced by the name of someone else.