Perquin travels to Canada
Dear Everyone,
From April 21 to May 24, I will be working in Toronto, Canada, with youth. Enclosed, as attachment, you will have information about this collaborative and community based project.
The relevance of this project is that the “Perquin Model” is traveling and finding homes in many parts of the world where art proposes social change.
With hugs !
Claudia
WSWH Flyer Jan 2008.pdfTapestry of History
COLLABORATIVE MURAL CREATED IN GUATEMALA IN JANUARY 2008
We started this year 2008 with an invitation: to return to Guatemala to work in a collaborative and community-based project with people from ECAP ( Equipo de Capacitación y de Ayuda Psicosocial) and several other human rights agencies that came to Guatemala City to create a workshop on “muralism”.
The mural created last year in February in Antigua, Guatemala, by survivors of massacres, left a legacy of beauty and commitment towards the communities. Franc Kernjak, Lidia Yoc and Olinda told us about the impact that the mural caused while it transited among the different communities from where the participants were from, Chajul, Nebaj, Chimaltenango, Ixil, Ixcan and Rabinal.
This new initiative of muralism in 2008 convoked a group of 25 people. They were social psychologists who work with ECAP assisting victims of violence and massacres; social workers; people who work in human rights agencies and activists who are part of human rights organisms.
The site for the mural was the office of ECAP. It measured about 45 feet long by 6 feet tall. The participants had never done art previously to this project but everyone had been moved about the work created last year and they were willing to partake in this new project.
On Monday, January 21, the workshop started. It was the day of presentations. We shared the work we do in our School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, El Salvador. Claudia Verenice Flores Escolero, Rosa del Carmen Argueta and Rigoberto Rodríguez Martínez, artists and teachers of our school, showed artwork created by children, youth and adults in our classes and community and collaborative workshops, placing emphasis in the murals that we have created all over Morazán. América Argentina Vaquerano, Dina, who could not come with us on this trip, created all the visual material, power points, and publicity material besides being our “logistic” specialist in the organizing of this trip.
In order to continue formulating connections between history, art and activism, I showed work of Argentine artists who use art as a way to denounce, to provoke, to initiate debate about taboo and fatal subjects such as violations of human rights, massacres and the legacy of violence generated by institutionalized state terror.
A cultural aspect from Guatemala, quite different to El Salvador, for instance, is the silence of the victims. I lack authority to address this complex and multifaceted issue. Empirically, however, what I can say is that it is very different to work with Salvadoran people than to do the same with Guatemalan communities. Guatemalan people are reserved, a lot more careful when they choose to speak, less willing to share their thoughts or their feelings.
On the second day, Tuesday January 23, I asked the group, as a way to reflect, what had stayed with them from the day before? What images had accompanied them? What thoughts?
Remarkably, the participants spoke as if they were opening their souls. They gave information not only about what had made an impact during the presentations but they also shared with the group, personal and private accounts filled with sadness and lament. They told us about their desire to use those memories as part of the subject of the mural.
From that moment on, each drawing was a testimony.
Each line a memory. Each image a name.
The collective memories became alive in sketches and with no effort, this group of people who had never done art started populating 45 feet of stretched canvas with images that were generated in community and collaboratively.
The central image painted by Paulita, who later collaborated with Haidee and Olinda, is, perhaps, the synthesis of the main message of the mural: An indigenous woman with her garments trapped in a mortuary bandage, lies under a tree that seems to acquire life through the death of this woman whose soul, as a Nahual, is escaping from her in a subtle whisper. The tree of life has in its center a bright circle shinning like a sun. Initially, this circular shape was though to be a clock but in the development of the mural, the idea of time became more abstract, more poetic, it became a statement for that which has no end, for eternity.
As in the mural painted last year, this one has a frame with designs generated from the embroideries of a huipil. The artists involved in the drawings of the abstract shapes of the frame were so demanding that they were christened “The United Nations of the Huipiles”. Each decision became a diplomatic process.
In the extreme left side of the mural, Santos from Chajul, painted a beautiful textile from Nebaj. Under the vertical textile, there is a Spanish Conqueror. The scale is eloquent: 500 years of Conquest had occurred but today the presence of the indigenous culture is present, it is prominent and larger than the Conquistador on his beautiful white horse.
Some of the recurrent images emerging from early ideas were those referring to empty garments, absent clothing, dresses without people. Each of the participants of this workshop knows well enough the tragedy of massacres and the sadness of exhumations. It is always moving to find in mass graves or in clandestine cemeteries, the remains of life accumulated in garments, in children clothing, in the smallness of tiny shirts that had belonged to the assassinated babies. It is a cruel testimony filled with tenderness.
Jacinta painted a huipil of such veracity that there were some people who thoughts that she had attached a real huipil from Nebaj on the surface of the mural. Its delicacy, its embroideries and the complexity of detail are showing Jacinta’s wonderful skills as an artist.
Franc started his sketch from a group of absent clothing that later was painted by Inés. The empty garments followed by a chromatic circle, embody the mandate of ECAP: to assist the victims. Underneath the chromatic circle, Lidia painted a group of people some of whom have their eyes covered, some others are showing a demanding expression, some others have their mouths wide open as a claim for attention, they are demanding justice.
In the left area of the mural, there is a building. Looking at it from my ignorance it appears to be a colonial building. For our Guatemalan friends, however, it is a testimony of terror. This building represents the National Police station that served as clandestine center of detention. Felipe had the idea of its inclusion and delegated in Mariola its rendering. Mariola undertook the task with the seriousness of an architect painting and repainting, walls, windows and balconies. Luis Felipe designed a torture room hidden under the building. There is a red human figure asphyxiated within grey walls providing information, eloquently, of what had happened in that place.
Maria José, Carmelita and Inés created, collaboratively, a female figure. This woman has no mouth, no nose. She has disproportionate huge eyes placed in an empty face, looking frightened. This woman, populated by red lines in a mapping of blood, has a circulatory system that travels through her body from the roots of her feet towards the very center of her body where the growth of tender leaves speak, quietly about rebirth. From her open arms and generous exposed hands, the woman gives away photographs narrating violence: burning communities, disappeared people, raped women, a complete family of parents, children and even a dog, before they were killed by military repression.
Over the years, I have found artwork that seems to capture as in a perfect verse, the essence of an idea. This woman surrounded by death, traveled by a circuit of blood and rebirth is one of the most remarkable images I have ever seen of cultural and political resistance in Latin America.
Santos, Juan and Hugo, designed a landscape where the beauty of nature confronts the presence of clandestine cemeteries. There is an ample, white and beautiful church. Adjacent to it, in a “camposanto”, there is an “official” cemetery. While one looks at this landscape, it is possible to identify locations of accumulated earth containing skeletons looking at us as if they were asking our help to reach light. Jacinta painted a terrorized woman hidden behind a tree who sees skeletons in the deep waters of a peaceful river. There is helicopter above the woman. From its motion, soldiers are throwing people into the river. They will never emerge.
Towards the right side of the timeless tree of life, Rosa del Carmen Argueta, artist from the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, painted an homage to our dear friend Santiago whose untimely death left us orphans of his calm presence, his detailed landscapes and his commitment to his community. On the mural Santiago is holding a brush that spills magenta paint from his right hand which acquires the shape of a ribbon of light extending itself from above the tree of life.
Santiago, beyond volcanoes and hills, is holding in his left hand, triumphantly, a plant of corn. Towards the right of Santiago, Delfina, Antonia and Sara, assisted by Carmelita and Olinda painted a group of indigenous people. Men, women and children are marching in protest holding a sign with no words, just with the images of clothing without people. They carry, with reverence, photographs of the disappeared. They are marching towards justice. Immediately adjacent to the marching group there is a Ladino man, in jail, the thick bars of the prison hide, in part his face. This man is a “repressor”. His pained gestures seem to indicate that he, finally, is suffering a disserved sentence.
The first day that we started sharing ideas and images, the presence of the “Screamer” appeared as a strong woman, fearless, decisive, ready to defy silence in order to demand, to shout, and to confront. Virginia painted one of those Screamers, with strident orange whose yellow voice in the form of wavy lines, left no doubt about her intentions.
Lancerio documented the process with photography. Carlos Bazua, a dear friend who is an anthropologist working in Guatemala, was willing to capture the process on tape, hoping to create a documentary about this amazing project.
Matilde painted a naked, pregnant woman. In her ample womb, a baby is growing. An enormous soldier next to the woman has snatched her other child, a toddler of about a year old. The military man has a weapon and he threatens the woman and her child to death. It is a brutal scene. Sadly, this image is well known amongst Guatemalan indigenous people because the brutality of the armed forces of this country was not mitigated while treating women or children. They killed with the same ferocity, men, women, youth, the elderly and even infants. The massacres left no survivors. Matilde painted a dead corn plant next to the woman in danger. The amount of poetry and tragedy that this image contains eludes description.
Hugo in collaboration with Catalina painted a Mayan Calendar, delineated in black lines over a transparent background of blue and green speaking of open spaces, ever-lasting landscapes and eternity. Above the Mayan Calendar, a friend from ECAP painted another “Screamer”. Originally designed by Mariola, this Screamer is a young woman with open mouth, dressed in huipil and corte. She carries signs demanding respect for Human Rights and attention towards the process of Justice.
Catalina painted on the extreme right side of the mural a colorful spiral, a chromatic scale that emphasizes the passing of time, serene, constant and hopeful in the obtaining of a dignified future, peaceful and plentiful.
For us, artists from the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, it has been an honor and a great joy to have shared this week of creativity in Guatemala with our friends gathered by ECAP.
To all of you, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!
Claudia Bernardi
Director, School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin
Perquin, January 30, 2008.
Note: Please visit the photos page to see images of the mural.
The Brush is Like a Candle
“The brush is like a candle, it has light on one end”
Doña Elena, Nebaj.
Art Recuperates Memory as a Demand of Justice
By Claudia Bernardi
In October 2006, I got a phone call from Franc Kernjak, from ECAP, Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, Community Studies and Psychosocial Action Team, asking me if I would go to Guatemala in 2007 to work in a project creating art with a group of survivors of massacres.
I was intrigued and inspired. I suggested to Franc that he would to Perquin to witness first hand what we do in the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, Morazan, El Salvador, to evaluate if the “Perquin model” would be pertinent or advisable to be implemented in the upcoming conference in Guatemala.
Franc came to Perquin accompanied by Olga Alicia Paz, who worked extensively with women survivors of sexual violence as result of the armed conflict in Guatemala. In the weekend we shared in Perquin I took Franc and Olga Alicia to locations where we had created murals or public art projects. They were impressed both by the scope of the work in terms of scale and numbers but, more importantly, by the artistry with which the final product was accomplished. Franc and Olga left with the certainty that a model of community and collaborative art, similar to the one used in Perquin, would be applicable in the communities they serve.
The First International Conference on Psychosocial Work in the Exhumation Process, Forced Disappearance, Justice and Truth took place in La Antigua, Guatemala on February 21 to 23, 2007.
Organizations around the world were invited to be participants of this conference to learn about common experiences with psychosocial work related to the search of disappeared people with an special focus on the pre and post work related to exhumation processes of mass graves.
ECAP states: – “Since 1998, ECAP has carried out psychosocial work in the process of searching for the disappeared, including psychosocial support of more than 70 exhumations in Guatemala. Based on this experience, we believe that both survivors and the families of victims must be supported during investigations (i.e. anthropological, historical, and forensic research) and documentation of violent actions committed in the context of political violence or armed conflicts. In addition, they and the larger society should be provided with the elements necessary to help interpret the dynamic and consequences of violence and its concrete manifestations. Taken together, this work strives to reduce the impact of violence in the past, present and future.”
The School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin was invited to share with the participants of this project the strategies that have allowed us to build art from communal trauma and historic memory.
America Argentina Vaquerano, (Dina), Claudia Verenice Flores Escolero and myself arrived to Antigua, Guatemala with a luggage filled with mural paints. Our contribution within the conference was the creation of a mural project. The participants of this collaborative and community effort were survivors of massacres from the North/ Western region of Guatemala.
The group of 15 people came to La Antigua from distant regions: Don Juan Francisco and Domingo Caba came from Estrella Polar, Nebaj. Don Luis and Don Santiago came from Chajul and Quiche, Doña Elena and Jacinta came from Nebaj and Ixcan. Doña Margarita and Gloria came from Chimaltenango. Andrea, Maria, Marcelina, Paulita and Anabella, came from Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. The group was further conformed by Lidia Yok, Otilia and Pedro, three “capacitadores” from ECAP.
They wore remarkable garments of great beauty. Their indigenous languages spoke of their traditions, unique and ancient. They came from distant lands expanding geographically from the mountain range and cold climate to the tropical central region of Guatemala. The “huipiles”, masterfully embroidered textile pieces most frequently created by the women who wear them, narrated in color symbols the history from their communities. One can identify where a person comes from according to the colors of the garments he/ she wears. The group was varied in origins, their languages and traditions. What they all had in common was the tragedy of being a survivor of a massacre.
The state terror inaugurated in the late 50’s in Guatemala leveled the life and people of the communities to “ground zero”. A more perverse “ground zero’, than the one we are accustomed to hear about related to New York, 9-11, for its voracity against indigenous people (pueblos originarios) has its start five hundred years ago and it still savages the land and culture of the Guatemalan people. The casualties of violations of human rights are uncountable but, as a way to state the calamity and seriousness of the carnage against civilian population it is usually accepted a number reaching half a million people “disappeared” in the last five decades as consequence of political violence. The numbers of displaced or exiled Guatemalans are virtually unknown and unrecorded.
With these references of their history in mind, Dina, Claudia Verenice and myself started our work, sharing with the group some of the murals we have created in El Salvador.
We were all staying at a small hotel that led to an easier communication since we were housed in the same space we ate together, came and went as a large group. We did need assistance with translations for the languages they spoke brought sounds of tongues spoken before Columbus ever arrived to our continent. They spoke Achi, Quiche, Kaktchikel, Kanjobal and Mam. Most of them understood Spanish but chose to talk to us through their interpreters.
On Sunday night we gathered as a group in a small hotel room. All of them and all of us concentrated in front of a screen to see the art from Morazan. Prominently, we described the mural at El Mozote for the resemblance to their own history being survivors of massacres. They were moved. They were astonished to learn of such carnage elsewhere. They had though, until that very moment, that the humiliations and damage of their own communities were unique.
On Monday, early in the morning we started the rendering of the first ideas, producing the first and most important question:
“What would you like to say in this mural?”
Think of the mural as pages in a history book, “ What history would you like to tell to your family, to your community and to the world?”
They were silent. Attentive.
Some of them declared that they did not know how to write or read. We insured them that words were not necessary. We were writing this large history book in the form of a mural with images coming from memories.
“Do you have memories that you want to share?”
They asked if the memories needed to be “happy” or “sad”?
We explained that they were the ones to decide.
It is important to remark that none of the participants of this project had ever done art in this way. However, we pointed out the mastery with which they are able to embroider their textiles. This allusion proved helpful allowing the group to focus on a blank page with no fears and almost no hesitation.
We were perplexed at witnessing their capacity to select images gathered through the monumental tapestry of their memories, drawings landed on the papers like anchors of episodes. Most of them painfully eloquent: helicopters, people being killed by helicopters, crops on fire, houses on fire, animals killed, people running away, hiding. There were corn plantations and there were images depicting vernacular life.
Paper and pencils, markers and colors defined a mapping of their history that became personal and tangible causing some women to weep while they rendered. The ones who did not cry comforted the ones who did. The men wrote a long poem later to become the words of a song. The words narrated the massacre of Estrella Polar (March 22, 1982) in Nebaj and the 12 years that the few survivors of the massacre lived in hiding in the thicket of the jungle. They stressed how arduous it had been to live deprived from salt.
The conference and the mural were to take place at the Spanish Center of Cooperation, El Centro de la Cooperación Española, a beautiful colonial building that had been a convent. The mural would be painted on canvas allowing that the final piece could travel to the different communities where the survivors came from.
On Tuesday, the drawings were transported to the location of the mural. The canvas was stretched on temporary wooden walls. The participants applied gesso on the canvas becoming familiar with the vastness of the piece. The extended canvas measured 8 m long X 1,80 m high (approximately 24 ‘ long x 6 ‘ high). Most of the participants voiced concern of not being able to paint such a vast field.
We told them, “Fear not! You will!”
While the gesso settled the group concentrated on the first guidelines of composition deciding where some of the selected images would go and what would be the central part of the mural.
The participants seemed to gravitate towards a composition divided in five narrative segments identifying the five communities they came from. We, artists from the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin accompanied the process clarifying doubts and concerns. We intervened only when we were asked. The Guatemalan artists took most decisions.
Don Luis from Chajul stood up. He said:
“Brothers and Sisters, until now I have believed that what happened to us in our community of Chajul was tragic. I also thought that had not happened elsewhere. To my horror I see now, that what happened in Chajul happened also in your lands. We have the same memories. We have lost families, our homes and our children. For this, I propose that we will paint a mural not divided in five parts for our stories are the same.”
The participants agreed. The composition was resolved identifying the left part as the past, the center as the present and the right section would be the future.
The borders of this mural were created observing the abstractions of the women’s huipiles, which identified in colors and design their geographic origin, The top of the mural alluded to Chimaltenango, the right and left was inspired on Nebaj and Quiche and the bottom was referential to Rabinal.
The left part of the mural presents a community on fire. There are people lined up by the army, their un-free hands clasped with ropes. The people are depicted small while the army men are large and threatening. There are pathways leading to the mountains, secret passages known by local people only. In the ferocity of the massacre some women and men found refuge in hiding. Children, by in large, had perished. They were too small to run and too heavy to be carried.
The very few people who survived the massacre were now painting the mural. No one else was left alive.
The participants of this mural project had acute memories of everything they saw.
In the creative process, the group of Guatemalan artists started noticing that Doña Elena was a fabulous depicter of helicopters while Santiago was a “landscape artist”. Many of them, intuitively first and very purposely later, became aware of their unique talents and without our intervention, they would ask one another to paint a helicopter here, or a corn plantation there, or a cardamom bush in front of a hill. This exchange inaugurated a collaborative project in which the capacities of some would be at the service of the ideas of the others.
It was wonderful to witness how these collaboration strategies got implemented.
Dina, Claudia Verenice and I assisted the group by mixing colors for them until, of course, they discovered that they could do the mixing of colors themselves. With no hesitation they transited on this first day of work at the mural (let’s remember that it was only Tuesday!) from never having done murals or paintings to mixing their own colors, choosing how to apply them, being aware of shadows and lights, transparencies and opacity of colors and how to better use background and foreground.
Doña Elena smiled at me and said: “Brushes are like candles, they have light at one end”
On Wednesday morning Dina, Claudia Verenice and myself arrived to the site of the mural at 8:30 am to find that everyone else had arrived earlier. They had taken the box of art materials from storage and they were painting, mixing colors, going from one place to the other of the mural collaborating with each other adding color to background fields while some others were rendering new images on the mural.
Periodically, I would recommend: “Artists! Take few steps back to see how wonderful it is!”
They did take the step back and in astonishment of their own accomplishment, laughed and celebrated. And, rapidly, they went back to work!
Doña Elena, a 62 year-old respected midwife and a healer, leader in her community of Nebaj had not been a midwife at the time of the massacre. I saw Elena painting with unbreakable concentration a pregnant woman assisted by another woman wearing a huipil from Nebaj. When I had the opportunity, I asked her if she knew who those women were?
“When the army came to our community and we saw they were killing everyone, many of us run to the mountains. Many died. Others were able to hide. I was running with one of my sons. I reached the top of a hill and could hide. He was caught. He was killed. From where I was, I saw his body being thrown into the river, his head disengaged from his body. I heard screams that were no loud but were screams of pain. I turned around and saw a woman, few steps behind me. She was in labor. I was aware that I could do nothing more for my son but I could help another child to be born. I opened the legs of that woman and another son came to this world. From then on I became a midwife.”
A while later, Elena asked Jacinta to paint her son being taken to the river and being killed and thrown into the agitated waters. Elena asked Jacinta:
“Please, paint him kindly. He was a good man”.
That same afternoon, I saw Doña Elena touching her neck, gently. I asked her if she had any pain, if she needed assistance.
She said:
“I could run no more and I was caught. I was hanged and left for dead dangling from a tree. But I dropped. That is how I survived. The rope they wrapped around my neck made these scars. I am touching the scars because I want to remember. I want to paint what happened that day.”
This revelation carries an incalculable calamity. Doña Elena, a woman that exudes wisdom and compassion, was suspended from a tree, left as dead, as a tragic fruit of madness. Doña Elena touched the scars of her neck to bring the memories as compass of her sorrow.
Doña Margarita, from Chimaltenango, seemed to be praying. She was on her knees, painting on the center of the mural. She was painting what appeared to be squares, one on top of the other, vertically. She was crying quietly. I approached and asked her if she needed anything, if I could be of any help?
“These that I am painting are boxes. The boxes we are given after the exhumations. These are the boxes that bring the remains of my six sons killed in the massacre. But we still need to find other sons and four daughters. We do not know where they are buried.”
Doña Margarita painted the boxes with the remains of her sons and she also painted the yet to be found killed sons and daughters. She did this with agonizing tenderness. She surrounded the boxes and the laying bodies on the field with a singular line that resembled a protected receptacle, a womb, confining organ of life, not of death.
When Doña Margarita finished with the depiction of this uterus of love and despair, she stepped away from it studying carefully what had emerged from the continent of her remembrance.
She said: “Now I want to paint a tree of chile and one of lemon because these memories are sharp and they are sour.”
El Chile y El Limón became a mantra amongst all of us, a way to summarize the incalculable multifaceted constellation of human suffering and the unimaginable endurance, the beauty, the determination to remain dignified.
On Thursday, the Guatemalan artists who had been cautious on Tuesday, timidly stating that they would never be able to cover the large surface of the canvas, were asking two days later if there was any extra fabric left to create an extension to our mural.
The right part of the mural representing the future became a joy of colors where a school is painted with great enthusiasm; a boy and a girl in the foreground dressed in Mayan garments have books in their hands; a lake; a helicopter not of war but of tourism; a church surrounded by people celebrating; a marimba and musicians; a doctor and a pregnant woman painted by Doña Elena who, at that point, said that she was willing to share the responsibility of bringing children to this world in partnership with a trained physician.
What the future hopes for is health and education. They deserve education and they expect health.
They have neither.
After much suffering they do not yet have the most elemental services that a community have the right to expect, to claim or to demand.
The mural was finished on the late afternoon of Thursday, to our shared surprised,
“Artists, please, take a step back and see how beautiful the mural is”, I said.
We all took several steps back to see the mural in its glory, a remarkable collaborative and communal experience that took the shape of colors and forms, a history book that narrated terrible events culminating with a vision of hope for a future less tragic than the past they all shared.
We all shared.
We were speechless. Soundless, nesting happiness so profound that words could not assist us in communicating the emotions.
Some of us cried.
We embraced and thanked each other aware that nothing of what had just happened could or would have taken place had it not been for a communal vision.
That was, in fact, the success of the mural.
The conference was scheduled to close on Friday afternoon. Initially, the Guatemalan artists had decided not to speak publicly which we respected and understood. But on the last day of the event, the Guatemalan artists changed their mind. Now, they wanted to present the mural publicly. They selected Domingo from Nebaj and Anabella from Rabinal to be the public presenters of the piece.
They requested to move the mural to a more visible and prominent part of the building. Painted on canvas, we could move the mural to the center of the building and attach it from the second floor balcony allowing it to be seen in its full magnificence.
There are unique moments in life when instants that are fugitive conglomerate in a form of light, like a diamond of truth.
This was such an instance. Domingo and Anabella spoke, the rest of the Guatemalan artists were behind them as a Greek chorus, echoing with their presence the witnessing of the massacres. They spoke about the damage they carry in their personal experiences. They told the audience about the importance of having come to work together in this mural. They voiced that they learned how to speak about terrible memories with beauty.
And for that, they thanked us.
More than two hundred people coming from all parts of the world, participants of this conference, celebrated the mural as the most successful part of the five days event. They congratulated the Guatemalan artists and asked them permission to photograph them and the artwork.
At the end of the day, the Guatemalan artists in groups or individually approached Dina, Claudia Verenice and myself to ask to create art schools in their communities.
Anabella, who is both a survivor of a massacre and a survivor of sexual violence as result of state terror said:
“We are now at the point in which we have to tell our daughters what happened to us. Please, come to Rabinal, we want to learn how to speak about terrible pasts with the beauty you have taught us. Come to Rabinal to create a school like the one you have in Perquin.”
We said we would.
The mural was ready for traveling. It would be shown first in Rabinal. From there it would travel to other locations.
In early April, I learned from Lydia Yok that the presentation of the mural in Rabinal had been a success. Its welcoming had surpassed all expectations. The problem now was the transporting of the mural to other communities. Safety and security could not be taken for granted. ECAP members were concern about receiving personal threats.
The peace process in Guatemala is precarious. This episode shows the fracture of a process towards justice. Our Guatemalan artists friends are beholders of monumental courage. They defiantly arrived to Antigua in February to share with us their truths in the pages of a history book made of memory, color and “candles” that have light at one end.
We are honored to have met and worked in partnership with the Guatemalan artists and with ECAP. We will remain devote to our promise to return to their communities to implant the seeds of another School of Art and Open Studio with the model of Perquin.
Claudia Bernardi
Perquin, El Salvador, 2007.
To view a Powerpoint about our friend Don Santiago, please click here: Don Santiago.ppt
Mural at the House of CEBES, Perquin, El Salvador
July/ August 2007
School of Art and Open Studio or Perquin
During the months of July and August of 2007, the School of Art and Open Studio or Perquin created a mural at the front of the House of CEBES, Comunidades Eclesiales de Base de El Salvador.
A mural had been painted on the same wall early in the 90’s and the first project was to recover the existing mural since, as artists, we do not like to deface artwork created before we arrive. However, after examining the damage of the mural and that of the wall it was evident that the wall would not resist for long time. It was, then, imperative to remove the existing mural, prepare the wall properly and paint another mural.
What would be this mural about? Padre Rogelio Ponseele, a legendary Belgium priest who fought the war in Morazan wanted the portraits of Monseñor Romero, of Sister Silvia and of Octavio Ortiz Luna. Three martyrs that perished in El Salvador during the 12 years Civil War.
Hermana Silvia Arriola died on January 17, 1981 in Cutumay Camones, Santa Ana, victim of a military operation that left very few survivors in a group of over 200 people.
Padre Octavio Ortiz Luna was 34 when he was murdered on January 20, 1979, together with four other very young seminarists. Not only they were shot at by a military operation inside the communal house “El Despertar”, they were also run over by a tank.
Monseñor Romero arrived that same day to the military morgue where the bodies had been sent. Monseñor was unable to identify Octavio, for he was a mass of blood and crashed bones. Monseñor, kneeling on the floor, drenched in Octavio’s blood collected his dilapidated body in his arms and like a mother to her child, repeated many times, “Octavio, my son”
Monseñor cried bitterly and continued to exclaim in loud voice for all military personal to hear: “I can not believe that you are so savage as to run over these people with a tank!!!!!
Then he ordered a woman who was part of the grieving group to get a photo camera to take a final image of the mortal damage inflicted to Octavio and the other four young seminarists to have as proof of military abuses.
“Octavio, my son”
Monseñor Romero became “The Voice of the Voiceless” and in his tenacious determination to bring justice to El Salvador, he indicted the military and the government of El Salvador. He accused the Death Squads and gave lists of names and last names of people who were responsible of violations of human rights.
On March 24, 1980, when he was giving mass at the small church of the “Hospitalito”, he was shot at while he was ascending the Sacred Host in the moment of the transformation of bread into the Body of Christ.
Monseñor Romero died instantly, and in that moment he crossed the passage of life of humans into the life of the immortals. He is the most revere martyr of El Salvador.
These three monumental people were to become part of our mural. We asked Claudia Verenice Flores Escolero and Rosa del Carmen Argueta to be the ones to render the portraits. Together with the presence of children and community of today and corn plantation we were asked to add as theme of the mural the issue of ownership of water.
We had the wonderful participation of guest artists in this project: Trudy Reagan, who visited us in July and who taught classes in figurative drawing, was generous enough as to create initial drawings of the three main portraits in the mural. Her contribution was enormous. Amelia Berumen, CCA graduate and dear friend of Perquin, joined us to teach classes to the women of CEBES in clothing alteration. The class was a great success ! Amelia, was also part of the painting group. Amelia’s cousin, “el Primo”, John Berumen who is in the field of education came to Perquin after being in Chiapas. John was easily captured in the mural project! John expressed his interest in returning next year to further research the educational model of the School of Art in Perquin. Esteban Dussart a Belgium scientist who works with FECANM in the expansion of Apiculture, painted bees and bee keepers. Our dear friend Valeria Galliso, who was with us in 2005 helping shape the first steps of our school, came back on July 26 and she is still in Perquin until August 28. Having Valeria with us, creating art and designing art projects has been a wonderful grift and such a joy!!! we are hoping that her visits from Argentina to Perquin will continue in the future.
Together with the “International” participants, we had as always, the participation of children, youth and adults who joined and partook in the creation of this mural. Youth from Villa del Rosario came every morning, which meant that they had to wake up at 4 am , in order to take the 5 am bus from their community to ours in order to be painting at 7:30 in Perquin. Remember that we were painting this mural in the rainy season which is maddening! it starts raining every day at around noon. The working hours of painting are only in the morning.
Early in July 2007, there was a pacifist uprising of civilians in Suchitoto, Sonsonate. People were demonstrating and protesting against the privatization of water. Salvadoran President Tony Saca, had the brilliant idea of selling the water, even “rain water” to a multinational corporation. The gathering of the community was a joined protest against this policy.
Unarmed people, a lot of them elderly and children were repressed by police and military forces. Brutally, the military attacked civilians, took people to prison with no allegation and conducted the usual savage performance of power against people who have the right to express their discontent.
Our mural addresses water coming from rivers and waterfalls, being tubed and being used by the people, who have all the right in this world NOT to pay to a private corporation for the use of water.
Or of rain!
By the time the mural was being finished, people came from far away to take pictures of themselves with Monseñor Romero, Octavio and Silvia.
On August 15, we had a small and moving public presentation of the “almost” finished mural.
Padre Rogelio Ponseele spoke. He thanked the artists for “having brought Monseñor Romero, Silvia and Octavio, far from beyond death”. Rogelio spoke of the power of art that brings to a community the people who we most love and most need in these times so cruel in so many ways. We need them for inspiration and to guide us to be better people and to serve our communities.
Carmen Elena Hernandez, who personally knew and worked with Silvia, Octavio and Monseñor, told me: “We will have to bring Don Alejandro Ortiz, Octavio’s father , who is elderly and very ill, but who still lives in Cacaopera. The trip will be worth, for he will be coming to visit his son who is now in Perquin, amongst us.”
Rosita del Carmen Argueta and Claudita Verenice Flores Escolero, the artists who had rendered the portraits were thanked specially for having allowed through their art the arrival of such beloved people.
Art in Perquin is a fabric of emotions, of historic memory and of community building that happens amidst colors, shapes, laughter and hope.
Thank you to all of you who have helped all of us and our beloved School of Art in Perquin to exist. We could not have created this project without your help and your trust in our work.
Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you !!!!
Claudia Bernardi
Berkeley, August 21, 2007.
Download a video of the Walls of Hope School of Art made by our friend Debi Lorenc: Walls_of_HopeQT.mov.zip
Report #9: June 2007
The first statement of this Report # 9 will be that the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin celebrated its second birthday on March 2007 and we are now transiting the third year of art in Morazán, always with new challenges, some easier to go through than others but, the school is alive, it is expanding and like a healthy baby, it is starting to give the first steps in many new directions in Morazan and beyond El Salvador.
Read the rest of Report #9: June 2007
Report #8: December 29, 2006
Ten days in Buenos Aires find me still with difficulties on how to write this report, this “conversation”. The multiplicity of events and the overwhelming episodes of the last few intense months make me feel that I do not know where or how to start. As always, at a point like this, I wish I were a poet! Not being one, I convoke Roberto Juarroz, an Argentina poet, unfairly unknown outside Argentina, but revered here for his innovative metric and his austere poetics. He says: “ A net of gazing eyes, keeps the world united, it does not allow it to fall”.
Read the rest of Report #8: December 29, 2006
Report #7
October in Perquin finds us all very well, witnessing the remarkable and, hopefully, last huge storms of the rainy season and very busy with the preparation of the events of the 25th anniversary of the massacre at El Mozote.
It is hard to summarize the importance of this last sentence. The multilayered complexity of the lives of the participants of this event shapes the enormity of the historical relevance of this celebration.
Report #6: Perquin, July 8, 2006
It is the time of rains in Morazán. The mornings are, generally, warm and sunny. At noontime, the sky starts getting threateningly dark and before one has a moment of doubt, an astonishing storm seems to break the universe in pieces.
One of those storms is taking place at this very moment. The sky is dense and purple and the force of the rain rushes into the house making me feel that it is raining as much inside as it rains outside.
Read the rest of Report #6: Perquin, July 8, 2006
Saturday, April 22 @ Luna's Cafe in Sacramento
Event Date: Saturday, April 22, 2006
Event Time: 6:00-8:00pm
Address: Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento; 916/441-3931
Internationally-recognized visual artist, human rights worker, and member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (AFAT), Claudia Bernardi, will present a slide/lecture at Luna’s Café, Saturday April 22 from 6-8 p.m. as a benefit for the School of Arts and Open Studio of Perquín.
Read the rest of Saturday, April 22 @ Luna's Cafe in Sacramento
Report #5
I would like to begin by saying that the community of Perquin in this first year of the creation of the School of Art and Open Studio has welcomed art and creativity, comfortably, as another aspect of their daily life and concerns. That, in itself, is quite remarkable considering the economic crisis that El Salvador is undergoing and the many needs that people have to create a sustainable life.