Sculpted Stones / Piedras Labradas

author: Victor Montejo

translator: Victor Perera

Curbstone Press, 1995

grades 7-up 

Maya

If our ancestors came to life

they’d surely give us, their descendants

thirteen lashes for being

sleepwalkers and conformists.

They always advised us

to struggle, build and forge ahead

so that no one’s left behind,

and no one’s forgotten by his brothers.

Yet today we Maya

remain hushed up

and have even forgotten the message

that might inspire us to break the silence.

That’s why if our ancestors came back to life

they’d give us thirteen lashes

to cure the amnesia of centuries

which has made us forget our names.

Victor Montejo is a poet, a human rights activist and an anthropologist, studying in depth his own people. After the massacre of his village in 1981, in which Guatemalan soldiers killed his brother, Montejo’s name appeared on a death squad list and he was forced to flee to the US. Since then, his life’s work has been to make known, in a variety of ways, the continuing human rights violations confronting the Mayan peoples.

After Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village, after The Bird Who Cleans the World and Other Mayan Fables, after a spectacular children’s version of the Mayan sacred book, the Popul Vuh, comes this book of poetry, Sculpted Stones. Here, in Spanish and English, Montejo’s poems express the resilience of the Mayan peoples, expose the Guatemalan army’s attempt to destroy the Indigenous population, and give lie to textbook anthrobabble about “history” and “culture.”

In the first poem, “Interrogation by the Ancestors,” Montejo asks,

Just think:

what can we say

to the ancients

when they return

with thunder and lightning

and ask about the fire

they left with us

in the cone of the great volcano?

And for the poor, betrayed, sad, humiliated, plundered, frightened people, there is this advice (beginning, of course, with an anthropological discourse):

Among the Maya

to cure a fright

you put a fresh-laid egg

in the armpit

of the frightened person

and in that way

the self-worth and health

that the phantom has stolen

will return to the afflicted.

But, how can we cure

the pain and fear

built up over the many centuries

of plunder and negation

of our Mayan identity?

Someone said

the egg is a great idea,

but in our day it’s better

to confront

and do battle

with those causing the fright,

then endure the centuries

warming turkey eggs

in your armpits.

This is really good advice. Sculpted Stones is testament to a people’s tenacious determination to survive in the face of centuries of colonization. Highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/22/14)

This review first appeared in A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin (AltaMira Press, 2005). We thank the publisher for permission.