The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer.
Because I grew up in a country subject to the censorship of a dictatorship and with a high rate of illiteracy, the most important information was passed on in coded ways. Among the most popular culture form were refranes, short pithy sayings that conveyed luminous little bits of wisdom and advice--our Dominican version of haiku, I suppose. One of my books for young readers in the tía Lola series, How Tía Lola Learned to Teach, starts off each chapter with one of these refranes. Out in the campo you can still meet campesinos who don’t know their “letters” (the alphabet) but have PhDs on taking care of the land and of the soul with their pithy sayings. This one about the hammer was one I heard growing up, a Dominican version of “experience is the best teacher.” Another one, “Nadie aprende en cabeza ajena,” also captures the idea that we can’t learn a lesson unless we live it. Very salt of the earth wisdom.
Because the Mirabal family were country people from the interior, our breadbasket of La Vega real—their speech was full of these sayings.
The truth of this particular saying about the nail and hammer was borne out throughout the 31-year dictatorship. There are countless stories of families and individuals who colluded with the regime for years. . . It wasn’t until some member of their family, a friend, a daughter, a brother, or they themselves got “hit by the hammer” that they became disenchanted and joined the very underground they had hitherto persecuted. The small group of men who finally carried out the assassination had all been Trujillistas, close friends and collaborators, until the violence and cruelty of the regime hit home.
Even the torture prison had a refrán carved on its wall: En boca cerrada no entran moscas, no flies can enter a closed mouth. Perhaps “silence is golden” captures the meaning in English. I first heard the story from a former prisoner who said this refrane was carved above the entry door of the torture prison. But that doesn’t make any sense—wouldn’t the point of a torture prison be to force people to talk? More likely, a previous prisoner had carved this advice on the walls of his cell. Keep your own counsel and your conscience intact. Solitary confinement didn’t come with a lot of reading material—so a prisoner would have a lot of time to ponder this.
A buen entendedor, pocas palabras bastan. . .
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