A month without Berta. A month with Berta.

A month without Berta. A month with Berta

By Claudia Korol

[Translated to English by Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle - Poema original en español aquí]

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. Women rise up from our different

corners of the planet and say, “We are all Berta.” In our different

languages we all repeat: “Berta’s alive, the struggle survives!” And meanwhile

the powers of injustice keep weaving their webs to obscure

the truth of the crime against the sister from COPINH, daughter of the Lenca people, 

compañera of all people who struggle.

The Lenca women, the women of COPINH, the ones who learned

audacity and rage with her, lose patience and storm the Attorney General’s office.

They paint it red. Red like Berta’s blood,

they say.

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. It’s hard to sleep. Over and over again,

I’m startled awake. It’s the same time the assassins entered her house. It’s the same time

 they fired. Berta asks of us, “Wake up humanity! Time is up!”…

I think of you Berta in the early dawn hours. It’s the same time they

multiplied you. The bullets re-birthed you as the conscience of our continent.

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. We take the streets. We paint your

name. I want to ask you all, sisters and brothers, what do we mean, exactly,

when we say that “We are all Berta”? What does that phrase mean in

our day-to-day life? What changes are we forced to make when we say that we

are all Berta? What changes to our routine and

the way we are in the world are we willing to make?

I’m writing against the ritualization of death. I’m writing against

naturalizing crime. I’m writing against the comfort of thinking of ourselves as

Berta without knowing the risks and fully taking up her struggle. Because

we must say that “Berta’s alive, her struggle thrives,”

but never as a phrase to calm our rage or

our pain.

Those who have walked alongside Berta, we know that nothing could be further from

calm then moving through this world with her. Because if the ritual

doesn’t mean making changes ourselves, revolutions ourselves, beyond the

emotion we put into saying her name, are we really all Berta?

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. I ask myself… if it is true that

Berta is a planted seed as we feel in our lands, who is defending

those lands, who is watering them, who takes care of them?

and I also ask myself, how will we get justice for Berta? Do we think

the criminal Honduran state and its institutions,

the ones responsible for the history of pain amongst the Lenca people,

the indigenous, garífuna, black peoples of Honduras, will make it happen? What will do

 to stop Berta’s memory from being distorted by those to want to see this extraordinary

 figure packed back into the same molds from which she constantly escaped?

How do we ensure that those who clashed with her time and again don’t wrap her in a

 history free of conflicts? Because Berta didn’t just confront companies like DESA and

 SINOHYDRO and their hydroelectric project Agua Zarca,

transnational corporations, the coup government, the military,

the paramilitaries. Berta also confronted those who institutionalize

left politics following the same logic of the powers-that-be, she confronted

the patriarchal family model that sought to suffocate her, she

confronted those who call themselves our brothers but carry out violence against

women, she confronted allies who didn’t respect

COPINH’s autonomy.

Berta had a wild tongue that she used to confront the powers

colonizing our bodies and territories, the capitalist

patriarchal power structure, prejudices… And she paid for it with so much pain and

loss.

I still ask myself if it may be necessary to make ourselves uncomfortable when we say

that we are all Berta, and use that discomfort to take the streets, to

rebel in the face of all injustice, like she did, she who was

guardian of the Gualcarque River, who was also the voice that alerted us

to other oppressions and injustices…

“Hey sister, what are we going to do to support the Kurdish women, look how beautiful

their revolution is… hey sister, what are we going to do about Colombia where they

are killing our sisters… hey sister, I’m calling you from Aguán…

hey sister, we’re headed to Río Blanco… put the word out sister,

those bastards are coming for us”…

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. The wound hurts. It’s not weakness

to say that it hurts a lot. It’s feeling the immense solitude left by

your absence. Because we are missing Berta even if we are all Berta. Because our sister,

our compa, was one of a kind, was special… that’s why the rage

is so boundless, the tears, the voices that multiply around the world.

When we say today that we are all Berta, we are talking – I think –

about a collective body of rebellion… But still, that body

has to keep on re-making itself in revolutions. Because within that collective body

in which we are all Berta, we are missing Berta. It is a hard

battle against adapting, against losing hope, against fear,

against resignation, against the bureaucratization of

revolutionary dreams, against forgetting.

A month without Berta. Let me correct myself. A month with Berta. I repeat myself. A

 month without Berta. I ask myself. Are we really all going to be Berta now? I

answer myself. Berta’s struggle survives and thrives. In the Gualcarque River, which

still runs freely through Río Blanco. In the Lenca people, who cry for her and carry

her forward with them in struggle. In Berta’s daughters and son, where we see

the mark of her teachings, the words of her whole life, her clear gaze,

her warrior spirit. In Mamá Bertha, who stands strong

at her age demanding justice. And in ourselves, sisters on

this path, insurrectionary feminists, autonomists, in solidarity since forever, we

who have the wounded skin of our peoples and hearts that run as

fast as the river.

A month without Berta. A month with Berta. We know that you’re not at rest sister.

That you are demanding that our peoples wake up. Not to play the games of the

powerful, but to carry out the revolutions that await us.

Claudia Korol

April 2016