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Indigenous Literature

Three Poems

  • by Jarol Segura Rivera

When You Call Me

When you call me
I’ll go, get into the boat
that waits to carry me across those waters
that drag away everything in their path.

The day you call me
my soul will rejoice,
taking on the colors of the mountains and the rivers,
singing a brilliant song
on a mountain of the sun’s rays.

When you call me
I won’t say anything
I’ll just get into that boat
I’ll travel with my soul at peace,
because that day the mountains,
the birds and the coyotes
will run faster than ever,
remembering me, a man who once existed
in this beautiful place we call earth.

T’ja uoprue e quisco
I am fulfilled

 

I Write Senselessly

I write senselessly,
because I have been robbed,
I have been stripped of my land,
I write senselessly because they want to enslave me,
to a world that devours us,
to a world that man has created,
where those who belong to a different ethnicity
are not accepted,
simply because we protect the only thing that
we have,
this land that gives us shelter.
I write senselessly,
because that’s how they have forced me to.

 

Sitting on a Chair

Sitting on a chair,
I see the time pass by,
and with it,
the extinction of the flames of my Bröran people.

There! Yes, there!
Under the shadow of that tree,
the memories of this time are gathered,
refusing to disappear.

Sitting on a chair,
I hear a beautiful hymn,
which springs from the waters of the majestic Diquís,1
that refuses to be dominated.

Sitting on a chair,
I see time go by,
I see far away a shadow pass by,
and with it,
all the memories of my people,
who have vanished with some of the elders.

Sitting on a chair,
I hear the voices of some who have left,
taking the hope of a better world with them,
of a world that refuses to die,
embracing us without hate.

1 Also, known as Dikís or Dikés, this term means “the big river.” Here it refers specifically to the Río Grande of Térraba.

 

“When You Call Me” translated by Paul M. Worley; “I Write Senselessly” and “Sitting on a Chair”
translated by Jorge Alberto Tapia Ortiz

Bröran poet and activist Jarol Segura Rivera with his children.
  • Jarol Segura Rivera

Jarol Segura Rivera, Nasö Bröran, Costa Rica. He was born in 1978 in the San Isidro, Pérez Zeledón. Since the age of fifteen he has been an activist involved in the struggles of Costa Rica’s Indigenous Peoples. He began to write poetry at the same age. He studied at the CINDEA Satellite campus in San Antonio. He currently works for the Ministry of Public Education and is involved with the literary magazine Los come libros.

  • Jorge Alberto Tapia Ortiz, Paul M. Worley
01

Dr. Jorge Alberto Tapia Ortiz obtained his PhD in Latin American Literature from the University of Pittsburgh (2016). He is an academic and researcher specializing in contemporary indigenous literatures. He has published the following books: Hasta que muera el sol: Antología de escritoras y escritores indígenas bröran-térraba (2014), Educación comunidad y literatura: Condiciones para la emergencia de una literatura indígena contemporánea (caso bröran-térraba en Costa Rica (2019). He teaches literary workshops in Amerindian communities to promote the emergence of new writers, as well as the empowerment and recognition of ancestral epistemologies.

He has just finished his second postdoctoral year (August 2019) in the Masters of Amerindian Studies and Bilingual Education, Faculty of Philosophy, at the Autonomous University of Querétaro, where he also serves as professor and coordinator of the program. He is a member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico (SNI level I).

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