MY LEAD BACKPACK
Dedicated to
Js. Ig. Rouco
I did not have, a normal family
My father wore blue uniform with epaulettes
And for that time I did not live in a normal country.
Instead of president, there was a board of three.
Instead of a congress that issued laws
A serious man read us communications, that yes, they were ordered
Number one, two and ten
And it was the hour of stay, where the obedient city slept
We lived in fear, there was an enemy that wanted to harm us
Sirens and explosions we heard them every day.
We made common sounds, perhaps everyday
I was already a university student and, for that time, I took an entrance exam
In the state university. It was explained all were too many
I did not know at that age what politics was within the cloisters,
I only read in the newspapers that the students were Guerrillas
and they were killed in armed confrontations.
I deduced who the bad guys were, “the enemy”,
I was not even clear who was the friend
Little by little that enemy began to have faces, names, families.
My father, his co-workers in daily chats,
Involuntarily I was shown
And I realized that it was not very different from my family.
Ordinary ordinary people, students, parents
People that I was sometimes known
I had a mother who was a psychologist,
And he complained that his mail came to him open and photocopied.
An older sister who studied theater, or cinema
And my father wore blue uniform with epaulettes
He left every day to work and returned bad,
I remember his eyes, they began to cover themselves with a veil,
It took a few years, not many
So that I understood the cause of his frown.
And I can not go around anymore, the best thing is to say it
Much has been written about the victims and the perpetrators
Nothing of a repressor’s daughter
That was me, that was me during the years that took the country to reconcile.
And now, now that I can write this, it’s not her anymore, it’s me,
Maybe another victim, different
Nobody talks about, nobody
Except, now me, dealing with my story
Before anyone knew many things,
That a whole society refused, or was denied
And the injured party that lived horrified, of terror was silent.
I can only say in my favor
That in the middle of the horror
It was my determination that saved a life, maybe more.
He never knew, and maybe he will never know.
But to save Him I saved myself as a person
and maybe something of what was left of my father’s moral
I was able to choose to flee to another country,
Protect me from the shame that was already mine
And it could be public
Try it only to discover
My inability to renounce what I knew as a homeland.
All the human rights revisionism was running
The declaration of crimes against humanity, with its consequence
While my father already ill dying for two years
Where perhaps he was exempted, therefore, from his appearance.
With his death I wanted to close this story
With this prose, let me know who I eat, I
Neither victims nor victimizers, we were “children of”
So we had to shut up and charge,
For the price we pay for talking.
Because of the heavy load that we can finally download