Reunión is a writing and listening experiment that I've been carrying out with many other people since 2015. It results in the creation of books that intervene in urgent debates and conflicts. Through face-to-face encounters, oral histories are written by hand, collectively edited, printed, read aloud at public events, and distributed in local communities and beyond.1
I travel to cities, towns, borders, and Indigenous lands to meet people and communities. I invite them to make a book through a process in which words are transmuted from oral to written and from spoken to read as they traverse bodies and spaces. People speak to me, and I write their words verbatim by hand. Each time they pause to inhale, I start a new line, creating a new verse. Recording is forbidden. In the following days, we read the text together and reach a final version that is then typed and made into a book. The full texts are read aloud by the participants in public events. Then the books begin to circulate: half the copies are distributed by communities in their own territories, and half the copies are distributed elsewhere. Free digital and audiobooks are made available online. Each book necessitates its own distribution that accounts for the specificity of its territory and context, the political, social, cultural, and ethical intentions of those involved, and the material conditions of the people they need to reach.
Movimiento X la Lengua is an ongoing series of the project, one that brings together people and communities that are fighting for, through, with language. In these books, language became not only the tools and means to carry out action but also the focus of the texts. In the midst of a global exacerbation of narratives of hate, terror, and homogenization through which hegemonic powers weaponize worlds and shape our relationship with language, how do communities in resistance live, think, perceive, use, and dispute language?
In August of 2016, I was taken prisoner
I spent my birthday
alone in a police station
and as soon as they locked me up
as soon as I entered that place
I started to sing,
not to cry
not to scream
not to cuss anyone out
I started to sing loudly and without stopping
and it seemed that all the prisoners were listening
A teacher who taught at that police station
later told me
that everyone there experienced a strange feeling
very strange
they said that a silence fell over the police station
an inexplicable silence
I didn't know they were listening to me
I did it for myself
to calm myself
to recognize myself
and it seems that the other prisoners were moved
and told the teacher: “We heard her singing
and we asked for nothing bad to happen to her”
I sang loudly
almost shouting
bah, not shouting
I mean: full-bodied
very loudly and intensely
for a long time
a long time
and I felt calm
so calm
in the midst of all that adrenaline
Adrenaline dries out your mouth, you know?
and singing brings me back to my body
it tells me: “Calm down, come back to yourself”
because you're in such adverse terrain
so foreign
so hostile
a police station!
a place where you'd never want to set foot!
it was a song of protection
it's an animal instinct
to sing when you feel you're in danger
I was experiencing a serious imbalance of forces
alone among so many cops
so singing
singing to myself
singing to my very own self
generated calm for me
and at the same time
regenerated my power
gave me strength
because in those places
it's as if they disintegrated you
as if they pulled you apart
as if they cut your soul into pieces
and singing
I feel like I put myself together
I put myself together again
At one point, a cop enters and says:
“Don't worry, nothing will happen to you
because I'm the granddaughter of the Lonko Agustín Sánchez”
who was a Lonko I learned a lot from
gained a lot of knowledge from
a Lonko who is no longer alive
and when the guard changed
another cop entered and said: “Don't worry
nothing will happen to you
because I'm the granddaughter of Florentina Leguimán”
a papay from that same community
who I've shared ceremony with and who also is no longer alive
I was accompanied
I could feel that truly I was accompanied
and they were letting me know that
through these cops.
All the Lonko
all the Pillan Kushe
all the Mapuche you loved and valued
in some way or another
always find a way to tell you:
“We're here
accompanying you
you're not alone”
I had completely forgotten this
I hadn't given it much importance
could it have been an experience of singing as self-defense?
who knows
it's not like I said: “I'm going to use singing to take care of myself”
the singing activated on its own
the singing emerged to protect me
in those dangerous circumstances, your tools emerge on their own
they come into play unconsciously
they arise on their own
with all your will
with all your experience
but without your decision
After these situations of violence
when you return to the land
and you come into contact with its sounds
how can I explain this to you?
our sound is everywhere
in the leaves of the trees
in the trunks that move
in the arroyos, in the birds
in the names of the rivers and the mountains
in the howling of animals
in people
the sound of the land returns to your body
and returns your body to the land.
(excerpt from Reunión: The Dream of Sound, 23)
Soraya Maicoño is a Mapuche woman who has been making a compilation of the ancestral chants of her people for twenty-five years. She has been the spokesperson for the most radical communities of the Puel Mapu. She also has the spiritual role of Pillan Kushe: a wise woman who sings sacred chants in ceremony. Through these different manifestations, her voice gives continuity to knowledge practices that the state has tried to exterminate and charges the present with a new form of political spirituality.
See this?
What do you call it?
Mushroom?
We call it torch,
when we bury
a person
who is dying
then that person comes out
and illuminates.
Do you see that tree?
Is one of the last survivors
beautiful trees there were here,
man did a lot of damage
they see wood and cut
they see molle tree and cut
they see duraznillo tree and cut
they see cebil tree and cut,
I don't know how far it will end
there is no way to make authorities accountable
these are the mothers
they are the ones who share
with seeds
the life
that never fails
And when someone wants to get out of their pain
they listen to the seed song
the fruits that open
each one of them
will translate you
it will give you formation
Important
Information
the tree embraces you and gives you thought
but we are different
we don't think
we don't think, really,
but when you get close to a tree
the tree gives you knowledge
knowledge is essential for the tree
men see them and see resources
all resources,
and trees
are the people
who were walking the world
and now come out to illuminate.
(excerpt from Reunión: A Text I Walk, 2021–22)
Caístulo lives on Wichí Indigenous land, near the border between Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. When he was eighty years old and the pandemic was just starting, he fell into a coma on the monte. After eleven hours he woke up and started to sing the messages of the mothers—beings we usually call trees. It was the very first time he sang. He has not stopped.
2007, I go to a job to take care of an elder woman
in Lavapiés
Tribulete Street
this old lady, Consuelo, helps me a lot
a Spanish woman
gives me my first job
and with her I learn my first word
aroz
and she tells me, “Afroza, is not aroz,
¡arroz!
¡arroz!”
I still laugh when I remember.
Look,
when you say hola
in my country that's an illness
so you start thinking about the illness,
when you say ¿qué tal?
tal, in my country, is a fruit
so you already think about the fruit
when you say ¡qué bien!
bien, in my country
means the relationship between my daughter's mother-in-law and me
the relationship between those two women
is bien
when you say ¿qué pasa?
(this is a joke for you, don't write it down)
pasa
in my country
is ass!
so people greet you
with all these words
very simple words
and you start thinking about all these things
the illness, the fruit, the mother-in-law, the ass
everything
everything gets mixed up in the head.
(excerpt from Reunión: Language or Death, 2020)
I’m Afroza Rahman. I’m a luck of a woman; my life is an open book. I was born in Bangladesh, and now I live in Madrid. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Spanish state provided health care via telephone—that is, through orality. Migrants in Madrid who didn't know how to speak Spanish were abandoned, left to die. In this book, the Bangladeshi community recounted the death of Mohammed Hussain due to lack of medical attention despite insistent calls to the state medical services. The book chronicles how the community organized a network of volunteer interpreters to offer free oral translation and launched their dispute for the right to live in their own language.
© 2024 Dani Zelko
2024
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
