There were hints all afternoon, but we didn't dare hope too much; there have been false
alarms
all week, and a bit of breeze under an overcast sky has several times come to nothing. But
tonight it is actually happening: it's raining. We've been suffering through an intense hot and
dry spell the last couple of months, which has had its effect on crops (as if the depression
weren't already doing enough by itself), and whose effects we've suffered with every show: I'm
continually worried that one of the actors is going to take overly literally the dictum to "break a
leg" by slipping on the pools of sweat that cover the stage area a few minutes after the start of
every performance. And after the shows, especially when the audience is made up of little kids
cheering and jumping up and down and perspiring profusely from the exertion, the fragrance of
locker-room that permeates the theatre is truly breath-taking. But it's raining now.
Last week we traveled to Río Lindo, a small town about an hour and a half into the
mountains
whose principal claim to fame is that it is the site of the hydroelectric plant which serves the
whole country (and thus is whence come the incessant blackouts we've been subject to recently).
The drought has sapped most of the color out of the land, converting the green into a dusty
neutral, and the trip would have been rather dull were it not that the acacia trees have just
flowered, and the flaring reds and oranges of their blossoms haven't yet succumbed.
Driving home in the cool of the late evening under a full moon, luxuriating in the
satisfaction
that sets in after a good show well received by a packed house, I mentioned to Guillermo
Fernández (at present our senior member at 27) that one of the questions about the
teatro that is
put to me most frequently is: "Who are these people who act in your shows?" And even if you
haven't put the question, today you have the privilege of receiving the answer, for Guillermo got
interested in the idea of trying to describe who one, at least, of these actors is.
(The rain isn't amounting to much: a fair amount of sound and fury, but only water enough
to
settle the dust. Where is Starbuck when we need him?)
"The year: 1954. Las Cañadas: the name of the
place where Gabino Fernández and Amelia
Rápalo began their married life. Situated in the mountainous western department of
Santa
Bárbara, Las Cañadas (a property which my father -- a simple, illiterate peasant --
had managed
to acquire while he was still a bachelor, at the cost of a great deal of hard work) was divided
down the middle by the border between the municipalities of Colinas and Trinidad. One the
Colinas side, my father planted a stand of sugar cane of eight manzanas, and on the Trinidad side
seven manzanas of coffee. On both sides there was also land for crops for our own
consumption: rice, beans, potatoes, and different kinds of vegetables. My father had one horse
and three oxen to help him farm the land, and my mother could earn some money as a domestic.
My parents had the base from which they could live peacefully in their work.
"In 1954 my older brother Nery was born, and two years later another boy whom they named
Guillermo Alfonso: I am he. My parents now had the companionship of two sons (there were
no other inhabitants for kilometers around); but they wanted female children as well, and a year
after me a girl was born, and eighteen months later another, and the children kept coming until
they reached a total of nine. Nine children with an uncertain future and with parents poorly
prepared to bring them up.
"My father, in spite of his being illiterate -- perhaps because he was illiterate -- wanted an
education for his children and he sent Nery and me to a village called 'El Corozal' to start school.
But my parents saw that it was dangerous for us to walk ten kilometers through the mountains
alone and decided to move to the village. There my father rented a house and tried his hand at
business, stocking a small store in the house in which he sold food and other everyday
necessities, including alcoholic beverages. The business failed because my father liked the
latter: he drank up most of the merchandise himself and he extended credit to everybody; he
started chasing other women and quarrelling with my mother. So we only stayed two years in
the village and returned to the house on our land.
"My older brother continued traveling to the old school, but I was enrolled in another village
eight kilometers away from our house in the opposite direction. Those were the hardest of my
childhood. The path was rocky, I traveled barefoot, and I was losing all my toenails as a result
of the inevitable tripping and stumbling. The path was all up and down, climbing and
descending mountains. But that was nothing: when I arrived at the house at nightfall, a wet rope
was waiting for me for arriving late, and I received some beatings that still make me shiver when
I think of them.
"I was rather timid and didn't play much with other kids. But I remember one day when we
got
out of school and the others invited me to play soccer with them, using green oranges for a ball.
I was so delighted playing that time flew and night fell and I arrived at the house about seven
o'clock. I knew beforehand what would be waiting for me: a really violent beating.
"The next morning I awoke aching all over from the blows and with to no appetite, to which
my
father reacted violently. He forced me to eat, which I managed to do through my tears, and I set
off for school.
"On the way to school I was so hurt and disenchanted with my life that I wanted to die. At
one point the path skirted a huge chasm: you looked down at the treetops
below, and if you tossed a stone over you had to wait a spell before hearing the sound it makes
when it falls. I stood right on the edge; my feet dislodged a few pebbles that went tumbling
down to the bottom. I felt no fear and I stood with my eyes fixed, without blinking: I needed
only the slightest prompting to jump into the abyss. Something like five minutes passed in
which I wasn't conscious of my body. Suddenly a wave of ideas flooded me and I felt an intense
heat all through my body. I realized I was a coward for what I was about to do. It amazed me
how rapidly I was thinking all of a sudden, and in a moment I had charted out a whole plan for
my future: that I could be a good man, that I could work, that I could make something of myself
and be worth something. And that was what saved me.
"From that moment I was a new person. I took off running to school. My father's blows did
not
hurt anymore and I was even able to pardon him -- although I also did everything possible to
avoid giving him the slightest motivation for doing it.
"The year I started fourth grade, Nery had to start the junior high. This forced my father to
rent a
house in Colinas, the town closest to our land, and we all moved there.
"In Colinas a new adventure awaited us. We were now four studying, since my next two
sisters
started school there. My father installed another woman in the house he didn't give us any
money for food, he didn't pay my brother's tuition, and he spent any money he could get on
drink. Thus we spent three years, and we passed through a lot of hunger. My mother took in
laundry to be able to buy food, and all of us did what we could -- when we could find something
we could do.
"One time my brother hid a set of keys from the other woman of my father, and he (my
father)
suspected him and wanted to kill him with a pistol; so my brother had to run away from the
house. He went to San Pedro Sula; there he got a scholarship and graduated as an electrical
technician.
"I had stayed in Colinas and my father took me to the lands to work. I wounded my knee
with a
machete and they took me to Colinas to sew it. The wound still hadn't healed when my father
came to get me to go back to work. I was fourteen years old now, and I refused to go with him
until it healed. I ran away from the house; I told my mother that I was going but that I would
come back afterwards.
"I went to Trinidad to an uncle, the brother of my mother. I worked for him harvesting
coffee, I
made some money, and I returned to my mother's house and convinced her that we should all
move to Trinidad.
"In Trinidad all of us worked, but we weren't all able to study; each of us worked one year
and
studied the next. The years passed and they killed my father there on the land because the other
woman had another man. We never saw my father again: the news got to us after they had
buried him.
"A couple of years later my brother had a good job at the hydroelectric plant in Río
Lindo. He
suggested that we should move to El Progreso: it was closer and he could visit us every week.
We didn't think about it much: my brother found us a house to rent in El Progreso and borrowed
a truck and we loaded up what we had. We put some smaller things -- a few chairs, some pieces
of wood that my mother thought might be of use for something, packs of clothes, kitchen things
to grind corn -- on the truck first, and on top our beds, and ourselves on top of the beds: eight of
us plus my brother who rode in front with the driver.
"We sold the land to one of the big landowners of the region for a lot less than it was really
worth: nobody had farmed it since my father's murder and we needed the money for the move.
Most of that money went to pay lawyers and the rest disappeared quickly in rent and tuitions --
but at least it was enough that we could all start studying in El Progreso.
"I had always stood out as a good student with artistic leanings: there in Trinidad I liked to
participate in skits, to recite poetry, and once in a while I had even tried my hand at writing.
Once we got settled in El Progreso, I tried to get up a skit for Mother's Day, but it didn't come off
because the teachers weren't interested and my fellow students didn't show up for rehearsals. At
just about the same time I heard about teatro la fragua; I
heard some classmates talking about it
in a recreation period and I asked a friend about it and he took me there to show it to me. I
participated in a couple of sessions of exercises and improvisations, and after one of these
sessions I talked with the director, Jack Warner. He told me I could come and work there
whenever I wanted. I couldn't do it right away because rehearsal times conflicted with my class
schedule, but the next semester I enrolled in night school and started to work with the
teatro by
day.
"Since that time, we have formed a real theatre troupe, and it has been a great experience for
me.
We have appeared all over the country and I have learned a lot about what communication is.
Acting has become one of the most important things in my life: acting is sharing what you
have in you with others; and if you don't share it, it becomes a burden you have to carry around
all alone. But my greatest satisfaction is knowing that I'm contributing something toward the
education of my people, something that might help them to improve our situation. And to see
that we have helped people to see and understand a little of the truth, as they recognize in our
works a mirror of their own reality.
"This year one of my younger brothers joined the
teatro. Danilo is only fifteen, but he already
shows considerable promise. I hope that the teatro can
do for him what it has done for me -- and
more."
(After a couple of hours of teasing, the clouds have opened up; it sounds like one that will
go all
night. We should have an excellent night for sleeping, so that we'll all be fresh for rehearsal in
the morning.)
