January 23, 2005
Madre De Los Dolores
by Mari P. Ziolkowski
Feeling burned out from a ten year career in social work, tired of trying to help people just survive (let alone heal), in 1992 I decided it was a good time to leave the country. Though I knew what I didn't want to do anymore, the next step was anyone's guess. Travel, speaking Spanish, and learning about the indigenous cultures of Central America seemed as good an answer as any. I had for some time been attracted to the political struggles of this region. Living with the conflict between the government and the guerillas, suffering frequent human rights violations, maybe the people of Guatemala would have some answers for me about how to survive extreme political times….
I was standing outside the Mayan Jade store where I worked in Antigua, Guatemala. Watching the Posadas during Semana Santa (Holy Week inspired floats) being carried down the cobblestoned street in front of me. Rain was pouring down. Were the heavens crying with us? My attention was riveted on the women walking in front of me -- women dressed in black from head to toe, together carrying an impossibly heavy float, upon which stood the Mother, covered in black. Madre de Los Dolores. Mother of All Pain. The beauty of the volcanoes and ice cold lakes, the colorful Mayan weavings, the fortitude of the people faded away….
I flashed on the first time I had entered La Antigua. The car slowing as we approached, myself staring in shock at the army tanks at the gates of the city….
I remembered the KKK style sheets worn over faces of demonstrators in the Huelga De Dolores (Strike of Pain) march I had attended, and my realization that here this fearful image protected the identity of the ones who disagreed with those in power….
I pictured the two coffins I had stumbled across in a nearby town, part of a double funeral procession that the Spanish teacher accompanying me could not or would not explain….
I recalled the little town across Lago Atitlan I had seen on vacation, and the crosses on the wall of the church with names of those who had been 'asesinado' (assasinated)….
I remembered on my communication with friends doing activist work in the Capitol, who advised me not to get involved -- there was great risk.
I pictured the Spanish teacher who told me about his aunt, who had disappeared when she dared to ask the military what had happened to her son. About how he waited with a machete under his bed -- he would go down fighting when they came to get him.
I recalled another Spanish teacher who had advised me I shouldn't ask about human rights -- there were 'orejas' (ears) everywhere.
I was reminded of the Guatemalan friend who, when asked, pointed out the violence in my own country.
I remembered my visit to the capitol city, to the place where the mothers gathered to call for information on their disappeared sons, husbands, daughters.
I acknowledged the awareness of my own government's role in destabilizing this country.
I recalled my own choice not to get further involved in the fight for justice, because I wasn't ready to die.
And I honored the fortitude of the Guatemalan people, who had no choice to make, whose lives were their choice, who lived every day with the risk of death and who laughed, cried, fell in love and gave birth anyway….
The rain is misting around me. The women in black pass in front of me now. People are joining them, walking behind the Posada, behind the Dark Mother of Pain…. I find myself joining them. Joining the women who walk with Her. In mourning, and in solidarity with all the sons, daughters, husbands, mothers who had been disappeared I walk…. In solidarity with all the women throughout time who have found the courage to protest the ways of pain. In solidarity with those who know somewhere in their hearts there must be another way….
Though I returned from Guatemala deeply changed, it was not in the way I expected. The only solution I found to the everyday confrontation with mortality I saw around me was to hold myself in a most loving space. That is what I could do right now, today, in this moment. The more formal answers I looked for were slow to come. Over time, an identified interest in women's issues and my own confrontation with the 'dark night of the soul' led me to formal study of feminist spirituality. And to the Dark Goddess. Was this encounter with her so many years ago a foreshadowing of my path…?