{"id":23167,"date":"2012-08-09T00:06:37","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T00:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/underpaidgenius-el-cafetal-by-rafael-guillen-i\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T21:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T04:47:30","slug":"underpaidgenius-el-cafetal-by-rafael-guillen-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/underpaidgenius-el-cafetal-by-rafael-guillen-i\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-23167 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/underpaidgenius-el-cafetal-by-rafael-guillen-i\/attachment\/23168\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_m8fs79LzgR1qg2iulo1_r1_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.underpaidgenius.com\/post\/28980561481\">underpaidgenius<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"left\"><strong>El Cafetal <span>by Rafael Guillen<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>I came with the rising sun and I\u2019ve brought<br \/>nothing but two eyes, all I have,<br \/>simply two eyes, for the harvest<br \/>of grief that\u2019s hidden in this jungle<br \/>like the coffee shrubs. Fewer,<br \/>but they fling themselves upwards, untouchable,<br \/>are the trees that invidiously shut out<br \/>the light from this overwhelming indigence.<br \/>With my machete I go through the paths<br \/>of the cafetal.<\/p>\n<p>Intricate paths<br \/>where the tamags lies in wait, sunk<br \/>in the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics,<br \/>the carnal luxury that gleams<br \/>in the eyes of the Creole overseer; sinuous<br \/>paths between junipers and avocados<br \/>where human thought, cowed<br \/>since before the white man, has never<br \/>found any other light than the well<br \/>of Quich; blind; drowning in itself.<br \/>Picking berries, the guanacos<br \/>hope only for a snort to free them<br \/>from the cafetal.<\/p>\n<p>Through the humid shade beneath<br \/>the giant ceibas, Indian women<br \/>in all colors crawl like ants, one<br \/>behind the other, with the load balanced<br \/>on a waking sleep. They don\u2019t exist. They\u2019ve never been born<br \/>and still they are dying daily, rubbed raw,<br \/>turned to wet earth with the plantation,<br \/>hunkered for days in the road to watch over the man<br \/>eternally blasted on booze, as good as dead<br \/>from one rain to the next, under the shrubs<br \/>of the cafetal.<\/p>\n<p>The population has disappeared<br \/>into the coffee bean, and a tide of white lightning<br \/>seeps in to cover them. I stretch out a hand, pluck<br \/>the red berry, submit it to the test<br \/>of water, scrub it, wait for the fermentation<br \/>of the sweet pulp to release the bean.<br \/>How many centuries, now? How much misery<br \/>does it cost to become a man? How much mourning?<br \/>With a few strokes of the rake, the stripped bean<br \/>dries in the sun. It crackles, and I feel it<br \/>under my feet. Eternal drying shed<br \/>of the cafetal!<\/p>\n<p>Backwash of consciousness,<br \/>soul sown with corn-mush and corn cobs,<br \/>blood stained with the black native dye.<br \/>Man below. Above, the volcanos.<br \/>Guatemala throws me to my knees<br \/>while every afternoon, with rain and thunder,<br \/>Tohil the Powerful lashes<br \/>this newly-arrived back. Lamentation<br \/>is the vegetal murmur, tender<br \/>of the cafetal.<\/p>\n<p>Glossary:<\/p>\n<p>Cafetal: a coffee plantation<br \/>tamag\u0431s: a venomous serpent <br \/>guanaco: a pack animal, used insultingly to indicate the native laborers<br \/>ceiba: a tall tropical hardwood tree<\/div>\n<p>via <a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/journalofanobody.tumblr.com\/post\/28977698324\">journalofanobody<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>underpaidgenius: El Cafetal by Rafael Guillen I came with the rising sun and I\u2019ve broughtnothing but two eyes, all I have,simply two eyes, for the harvestof grief that\u2019s hidden in this junglelike the coffee shrubs. Fewer,but they fling themselves upwards, untouchable,are the trees that invidiously shut outthe light from this overwhelming indigence.With my machete I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-61F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23169,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167\/revisions\/23169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}