Apolitical Intellectuals/ Intelectuales Apolíticos
Annotation
Otto Rene Castillo wrote the poem “Apolitical Intellectuals” in 1967 in response to the Guatemalan Civil War, which lasted from 1960-1996. The poem serves as one example of intellectuals’ and artists’ responses to US-supported coups around Central and Latin America during the Cold War, in the name of anti-communism. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup to depose Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz and install Castillo Armas. Castillo had supported Arbenz’s progressive social reforms, and he went into exile after Armas assumed dictatorial control of the country. In 1960, guerrilla forces in Guatemala rose up against Armas’s regime in what would become a decades long civil war. Castillo’s poem calls upon intellectuals, whom he saw as complacent in the fight against Armas, to join the laborers in the armed fight against Armas. In 1967, Armas’s regime tortured and killed Castillo for his dissent and his leadership in the guerrilla forces. Over 50 years later, his poem urges readers to consider their own reactions to injustices and attacks on personal freedoms in the contemporary era.
This source can be taught alongside Teaching Central America's lesson plan, Poetry Fires in the Revolution.
Text
Un día,
los intelectuales
apolíticos
de mi país
serán interrogados
por el hombre
sencillo
de nuestro pueblo.
Se les preguntará
sobre lo que hicieron
cuando
la patria se apagaba
lentamente,
como una hoguera dulce,
pequeña y sola.
No serán interrogados
sobre sus trajes,
ni sobre sus largas
siestas
después de la merienda,
tampoco sobre sus estériles
combates con la nada,
ni sobre su ontológica
manera
de llegar a las monedas.
No se les interrogará
sobre la mitología griega,
ni sobre el asco
que sintieron de sí,
cuando alguien, en su fondo,
se disponía a morir cobardemente.
Nada se les preguntará
sobre sus justificaciones
absurdas,
crecidas a la sombra
de una mentira rotunda.
Ese día vendrán
los hombres sencillos.
Los que nunca cupieron
en los libros y versos
de los intelectuales apolíticos,
pero que llegaban todos los días
a dejarles la leche y el pan,
los huevos y las tortillas,
los que les cosían la ropa,
los que le manejaban los carros,
les cuidaban sus perros y jardines,
y trabajaban para ellos,
y preguntarán,
“¿Qué hicisteis cuando los pobres
sufrían, y se quemaba en ellos,
gravemente, la ternura y la vida?”
Intelectuales apolíticos
de mi dulce país,
no podréis responder nada.
Os devorará un buitre de silencio
las entrañas.
Os roerá el alma
vuestra propia miseria.
Y callaréis,
avergonzados de vosotros.
Translation
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
Translated by Margaret Randall.
Credits
Annotated by Hannah LeComte, George Mason University
Source location: Teaching Central America, https://www.teachingcentralamerica.org/apolitical-intellectuals.