El Wenufoye, and: Negro Matapacos

El wenufoye*

Tear gas swells through the plaza. We coverour faces with sweaters as a blue, green, and red flag

flails wildly in the smoke. A bottle shattersinto flame against an armored vehicle.

In the palace across the avenue, gunshotsfrom ’73 still sound, Allende’s blood still staining

the wooden floor. We run across a Santiagotwice destroyed—September 11, 1541,

the Mapuche reclaiming their stolen land;September 11, 1973, the U.S. coup—

back into Casa Violetta as the military policefire rubber bullets into the mass of Mapuche

children and grandparents. When does historycollapse into tragedy? Three thousand dead

in our towers? Four thousand dead or missing?A musician’s hands broken? A poet poisoned?

Forty thousand years of culture destroyed?We flee, but a gas-masked woman stands

in the plaza, and though surrounded by watercannons, she watches as her flag burns.

Negro matapacos

Author’s Note: In 2011, a street dog became famous in Santiago by joining student protestors, who named him Negro Matapacos. During protests in 2019, the image of the dog, wearing a red handkerchief around his neck, was used on posters and murals as a symbol of resistance.

A black room.A thin bar oflight. A blackriver—blackoil, a rainbowrefracted overa black surface.Black soot inblack nostrils,a black bullet ina black chamber,black eyes, gas.Here, a body’sblack gold—a mountain’sshadow: blackwires, a carbattery, a blacklatex glove,black waterspilled, a screamsilenced in ablack night.A burned body—the black fingersgrasp a blackbed frame.A black dogpainted acrossa black street—