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I first became aware of Otto Rene Castillo when I was doing organizing work for the Central America Solidarity Coalition in Milwaukee back in the 80's during the Reagan Administration's war on Nicaragua. Castillo was a Guatemalan poet, activist, guerrilla fighter and revolutionary. In Guatemala, he joined the guerrilla movement with the Rebel Armed Forces, where he served as the chief of propaganda and education. After operating in the Sierra de las Minas for several months, he was captured by government forces and taken to Zacapa barracks alongside his comrade, Nora Paíz Cárcamo in March 1967. There they were interrogated, tortured, and burned alive. Below, his poem entitled, “Apolitical Intellectuals." It is especially fitting for us here in the US as Trump slowly destroys our democracy. It hits so damn hard:

Apolitical Intellectuals
Otto René Castillo
I

One day,
the apolitical intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
about what they did
when their fatherland
was being slowly extinguished
like a sweet fire,
small and alone.

They will not be interrogated
about their dress,
nor about their long siestas
after lunch, neither about their sterile
struggles with the void,
nor about their ontological ways
of arriving at money.
Nor will they be interrogated
about Greek mythology,
nor about the self-disgust they felt
when someone, deep down,
got ready to die like a coward.

Nothing will asked of them
about their absurd justifications
that find their shadowy origins
in the round lie.


II


On that day
the simple men will come
those who never had a place
in the books and verses
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but who arrived every day
with bread and milk for them,
and eggs and tortillas,
those who sewed their clothes,
drove their cars,
tended their gardens and dogs,
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
'What did you do when the poor
were suffering, and tenderness and life
were being burned out in them?'



III

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will devour your insides.
Your misery will gnaw at your souls,
and you will fall silent,
ashamed of yourselves.