The Tearless Eyes of the Mother of a Murdered Poet
Francisca Dominguez, repressed and jailed.
El Fronton: open tomb of 300 political prisoners whose blood has
flooded the conscience of Peru and the world.
Francisca Dominguez Flores, mother of JOVALDO, a young poet murdered during the genocide of El Fronton on June 19, 1986 pointed out the following at the start of this conversation: "I will not spill one single drop of tear for the death of my son, because such would only gladden the monstrous faces of the butchers who commit henyous crimes in the prisons of this country."
With unlimited tenderness, she added: "the blood of my beloved son and of the 300 murdered prisoners, will run through the fields and planters of this aggrieved Peru, our country, and from there, they will sprout like bountiful trees the children of the people."
Francisca Dominguez, mother of four children, said that the poet Jovaldo was the best of them. She proudly said that he died with his forehead and fist raised high, without asking his murderers for mercy.
She is an exemplary woman and on the same day of the slaughter (June l9), she was arrested by members of the political police, DIRCOTE, where she was unjustly kept until June 27. There in that confinement she suffered perhaps the most dramatic moments related to the genocide of 300 political prisoners. The charge by DIRCOTE was that she was hiding in her purse a poem (reprinted below) by her son Jovaldo.
With fear and decomposed faces the police told the humble elderly woman that poem, the last from Jovaldo, was subversive and very dangerous, although its title merely was: "I ASK THE PRISON."
Once released, she told the press (e.g., El Diario) that the harassments to the families of the political prisoners and prisoners continued. She calmly said: "Just like hundreds of mothers of the people fallen in combat, all I ask is that the corpse of my son Jovaldo be given back to me, which this government, already with its hands full of blood, refuses to do."
Question: How does one feel after having lost a son?
Answer: As a mother, I feel an immense pain for having lost the best
of my children, however, I will not shed a single tear for that reason,
because my tears would only help gladden his murderers. The son I lost
was not only mine, but of all the people, for this reason, I am proud of my son and that
pride helps me to continue forward.
Question: Aren't you afraid that the police might again put you in jail?
Answer: With my son I learned not to be afraid of telling the truth,
besides I am just one of the thousands of mothers of murdered or
disappeared sons and daughters.
Question: Why was your son Jovaldo imprisoned?
Answer: My son served, up to the day he was murdered, three and a
half years in prison, and please take notice that the prosecutor had only requested
two years of imprisonment for him! Jovaldo was put in prison for being
on the side of the people, because since he was a child he fought
against injustice, against corruption, because he wanted a better world
for the children and the poor of this country. He sought freedom and a
genuine peace without men, women and children dying of hunger. That
was my son's crime, and for that, just for that, they riddled him with
bullets until he was dead on that early morning of June 19.
Question: Why do you say that Jovaldo was the best of your children? Answer: I will always be proud of him. Since he was a child, he was a writer and a poet committed to the people and their struggles. He fell with his forehead raised high, unafraid of embracing the ideology of the people. Jovaldo never kneeled before the enemy. He, together with those 300 children of the people murdered with him, knew that this government prepared a genocide in the prisons. He did not run away, he defended his life with a very high morale and the right to think as a free man.
Question: What example your son left for this generation? Answer: Finally, I would like to make a call to the people of Peru and to all the oppressed in the world. You should unite with us in the struggle against this genocidal regime. Now it murdered the defenseless prisoners, tomorrow its murderers will continue by killing anyone opposed to their political and military plans.
Jovaldo, 34, the people's poet, murdered on that tragic June l9 at El Fronton. He was arrested on March 29, 1983. His great crime: Writing poems and distributing them among the workers and the people.
The workers remember well how this people's poet since 1974 was completely devoted to diffusing his literature. He had fallen riddled with genocidal bullets, but his poems, like epic songs, perhaps reaching the sky, will continue to circulate from one factory to the next, from one People's Committee to the next, blending themselves into eternity.
Today, for the first time in the English language, we reproduce part of his last poem, written in the month of March, 1986 at El Fronton. It is a sharp poem revealing all the tragedy of the genocide in the prisons of Peru.
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Today More than Ever, Fierce.
Here, there or wherever it may be,
When the class moral is at stake,
We are prepared for anything
The "repuchos" [Trans. Republican Guard]
Fist high with firmness |
¡Hoy más que nunca feróz
Aqui, alla o donde sea
Cuando en juego de la clase
Si a Cantogrande pretende
Para todo preparados
No han podido los repuchos
Pun~o en alto con violence
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