Missing the freedom

In the spirit that I just got into, I am going to tell everyone a little bit about the system that just trapped me.

I miss college.

I miss it more than what I missed Colombia when I moved to the United States.

I miss it more than what I miss eating luscious fruits every day with exotic names that stick to your tongue.

I miss it more than what I miss my father.

It is impossible to convey the feeling that just grabbed me. I miss college.

Maybe it was the freedom I felt this weekend in Gainesville, the town where my Alma Mater is located.

The freedom of not feeling guilty while enjoying an afternoon of leisure in the balcony, staring out… Thinking, making plans.

The freedom to drink and not worrying about my mother.

The freedom to sleep in the same bed with my boyfriend.

The freedom to take my car and just drive…

The freedom to stare vacantly into the crowd of a punk/rock show.

Well, now that I am back to reality and the lack of time to make plans, I feel more trapped than ever and had a spark of creativity. Here is my outburst!

Corporate America sucks.

It promises high-paying jobs for those who go to college. Jobs that will award you the freedom to travel once a year to an exotic destination, move to a trendy loft, go out to drink cosmopolitans with your friends and do whatever you want. Because you did the right thing. You went to college. You graduated cum laude from a great school.

It is a lie. And I am living it.

Exile–the theme of Latin American literature

Maroon is the term used by Ramon Arnaud as the Corrigan II disappeared in the horizon after leaving him and his wife, Alicia, to the mercy of the ocean.

As Laura Restrepo explains in her novel, “The Isle of Passion”:

…maroon, a variant of cimaroon– and for some game of logical associations, designed the name of the capital punishment that the British pirates of the Caribbean applied to the traitors: they abandoned them in a deserted island, in the middle of the ocean, without other thing than a few drops of sweet water in a bottle and a gun, charged with a single bullet, for when the agony turns unbearable. (p 80)

Clipperton fits the description of such punishment to perfection. A deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with nothing but crabs, sand and the 13 palm trees that the German Gustavo Schultz planted. Yet, when the story ends, Alicia is asked how she was able to bear the decade she spent in the island with her husband and she replies that they were livable. 

This really makes me think that, after all, exile is bearable as long as it is spent with a partner like the one Alicia had. The had their own isle of passion where they conceived and raised four happy children. Tragedy and hunger was part of their daily routine, but somehow their survival instincts kicked in even after all the men of the island were killed by disease. The women and the children survived.

Moreover, I think this novel is an excellent example of how there are stories everywhere waiting to be told. Restrepo found a great story out of an uninhabited island that nobody remembers;  not even marines will venture into the corals surrounding the island like a death trap waiting for them.

My place as a resident of the United States

Last night I was finishing “La Suma de los Dias” , or “The Sum of Our Days,” by Isabel Allende and she worded my own worries. On the last chapters she explained how she had finally reunited her “tribe”, which consists of her immediate family and her friends in California, to have them scatter again thanks to the irresponsibility of President George Bush’s administration.

I’ve seen this myself.

When I came to the United States from Colombia eight years ago, I came with my whole family that consists of about 20 people and we all settled in South Florida. Now, after years of struggle trying to get a green card, most of my “tribe” left the United States and headed back to Colombia because of the same reasons Allende discussed in her book.

Allende has similar fears. In the book, she mentions her friend Tabra, an American, who decided to leave the United States and go to Costa Rica just like she left the country during the Vietnam War to protest Richard Nixon’s administration.

Allende also mentions two relatively recent instances when the United States has violated human rights without much consequence: Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, and the incident of the Abu Ghraib prison. The New Yorker published a story about torture at the prison complex the same year Bush was re-elected and some of the wrongdoings that were reported are:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

I really don’t think that any of the above mentioned abuses of authority fit into the Geneva Convention agreements dealing with the treatment of war prisoners.

Such atrocities against humanity are really bothering me, and Allende is in tune with me on these issues. Like me, she is a legal resident of the United States and lives here while she stays in touch with her own country. However, she is indirectly (or directly) part of this country. Residents of the United States pay the same taxes citizens pay but have no power over the electoral process. Only citizens of the United States are allowed to vote.

Allende really made me wonder about my place in the United States. Outrages like these ones really make me wonder if someday I want to become a citizen. However, thinking about the power that United States’ citizens have by voting in the upcoming elections somehow makes me reconsider. This is definitively a right I don’t want to pass on.

Literary brain drain

There is a common denominator among my favorite authors: they are all in exile.

As I pondered about this fact, I thought about what is wrong with Latin American countries that governments are so messed up that the brightest minds are fleeing the countries (and in many cases, they don’t go back).

Right now, I’m reading “The Sum of Our Days” by Isabel Allende. In this book she is narrating her life in California, where she lives with her American husband, Willie. When I finish this book, which is her latest, I will let you know what I think about it. But for now, I am going to examine why the brilliant minds are leaving Latin America to go elsewhere.

Mainly, I believe their prominent status as literary geniuses in their countries leads them to get too involved. In other cases, they are forced to flee because of their connections with a vanquished regime.

As much as I like to think about myself as a citizen of the world, I realize my identity lies in Colombia. This really leads me to wonder about these people. How do they live in anonymity after spending years as local celebrities?

I came across a very thoughtful story mentioning Isabel Allende and her loss of identity. This piece also talks about Allende’ status as an expatriate and how one is not really adopted into another country. Also, the person’ status as a native of his or her own country, changes radically. This results in people not being from any one place. Somehow, expatriates are left in the limbo of citizenship and identity. When one returns to the country of origin, everything falls out of place and many times it is easier to live in the memory of the country, with all the former glory of the past.

In “My Invented Country”, Allende also talks about Chile and its former glory. She explores her own nationalism and her reaction to San Francisco when she arrived. The Chile she describes is the Chile of her memory.

When I read Allende’s books, I always wonder how different the Chile she is describing looks now because the Colombia of my childhood, is a very different one to the blooming one that I see every time I go back. Maybe she prefers the glory of old Chile, but I really want to know how she is really adapting to her new life with an American husband, without the decorations of a memoir for her daughter Paula, who died in the mid nineties. It really leaves me wondering of how much of the fantastic elements make their way into this “factual” piece.