"Retomada / Reclaimed" by Julie Dorrico - Latin American Literature Today

Retomada / Reclaimed

by Trudruá Dorrico

May, 2021

Editor’s Note: This text is available to read in the original Portuguese and in translation to Spanish and English. Scroll down to read in English, and click “Español” to read in Spanish.

Retomada

Como você se atreve a nos chamar de pobres hoje
Se foi você que tirou nossa terra?

Como você se atreve a nos chamar de feios
Depois de ter violado nossas mulheres?

Como você se atreve a nos chamar de preguiçosos
Se foi você que nos matou de trabalhar?

Não somos pobres
Fomos empobrecidos

Não somos feios
Fomos embranquecidos

Não somos preguiçosos
Fomos escravizados, tutelados

Então, como você se atreve?

Há luas e luas
Nossos ancestrais teceram nossa história de glória
Por isso lutamos para reaver:
A terra que nos foi roubada,
A voz silenciada
O corpo ocultado

Nossas belezas
Nossos encantados
Nossos povos
Nossas vidas

Então
Nunca mais se atreva a nos diminuir no seu espelho.

Reclaimed

How dare you call us poor today
when you were the one who snatched our lands?

How dare you call us ugly
when you were the one who raped our women?

How dare you call us lazy
when you were the one who killed us with inhuman hours of work?

We are not poor
We were impoverished

We are not ugly
We were whitened

We are not lazy
We were enslaved and guarded

So how do you dare?

Moon after moon
Our ancestors weaved our glorious history
And so we fight to reclaim:
The stolen land
The silenced voice
The hidden body
Our beauty
Our incantations
Our peoples
Our existences

So,
Nevermore dare to humiliate us, looking at your own reflection.

Translated by Christian Elguera

Trudruá Dorrico

Trudruá Dorrico is a scholar of indigenous literature and a descendant of the Macuxi people. She holds a PhD in Literary Theory (PUCRS, 2021). She is author of Eu sou Macuxi e outras histórias (Caos e Letras, 2019).

Christian Elguera Olortegui

Christian Elguera Olortegui (1987) was born and raised in Lima, the capital city of Peru. However, he recognizes his family roots in Tingo María (a Peruvian Amazonian town in the province of Huanuco). He earned a bachelor’s degree in Literature from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and holds a PhD in Iberian and Latin American Languages and Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin. He also completed a Graduate Portfolio in the program in Native American and Indigenous Studies at this institution. Currently, Christian is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Marist College and, since 2021, he has been a translator and Indigenous Literature correspondent for Latin American Literature Today (LALT). As a creative writer, he has received literary accolades in Peru, such as an honorable mention in the XXI Biennial Copé Short Story Award for his text “El extraño caso del señor Panizza” (2020), the Copé Silver Award for his short story “El último sortilegio de Fernando Pessoa” (2022), and the Copé Gold Award for his first novel, Los espectros (2023).

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