My dad, Filiberto Ramirez, was born August 22, 1930. He was born in a poor village outside the capital of San Salvador called Huizucar, he'd jokingly say, "Soy de la República Libre de Huizucar!"
He grew up poor, he'd tell me, he'd run around barefoot. Even though my grandfather Papa Marcos was a cop (supposedly a metermaid), they still struggled with the number of kids and expenses. My dad was the second-oldest of six, they were: Miguel (deceased, he died before I was born), my pops, tía Lola, tía Mila, tía Esperanza and tío Marcos. He said that he grew up in a house with many animals, lots of dogs and with an orchard with many different types of trees (mango, avocado, plantain, etc.) He was always talking about this orchard, he loved them! My dad had a green hand; our small, one-bedroom apartment on 144th resembled the Amazon. (Mom would complain about him ruining her bowls and plates with his damn plants.)
When he was young, he'd run around barefoot and bathe in the river. He used to walk 15 km (10 m) to get to the capital on foot . I know lots of people have heard these kinds of stories from their grandparents and felt like they were exaggerating, I know for a fact my dad wasn't.
First of all, there's my dad's green toe. No, that's not a bad pun. No, it's not a typo. My dad's big toe, the right one, I think, had a nail split in two that grew from the corners and formed an X, not to mention it was this gnarly khaki color. The story goes that he was playing football (soccer) with the boys of his village in a local lot and he was barefoot. He went to kick the ball and there was something sharp and metallic jutting out from the ground that hooked his toenail, ripping it off in the motion. It got infected and didn't heal properly hence the X-Men toe, he didn't seem to care about it though.
Secondly, my dad, when he still had the will to shower, would do it with a bucket and bowl (in Salvi Spanish that's: bañarse con un guacal) and the water would be cold, even during the winter. I thought he was insane: why on Earth would you bathe with cold water when you can shower with hot water?! However, I noticed something when I visited El Salvador for the first time last summer, it's a luxury to shower with warm water. Maybe this is obvious to you, maybe not, it wasn't to me before visiting El Salvador. The first hotel we stayed at only had one temperature setting for the water and that was cold, in fact, many places we stayed at only had cold water (I was under the impression that tropical climate equals hot water, man, was I wrong!). Suffice it to say, I took some of the fastest showers of my life!
My dad used to tell me how he'd walk all those kilometers on the way to the capital in the wee hours of the morning, barefoot, accompanying the ladies of the village who were on their way to sell their wares at markets in Sivar (San Salvador). He said that each time they set off from the village a black dog would appear and keep them company until they got to the outskirts of the metropolis. This wasn't a known dog, just a random stray like the many you'll see any day of the week in El Salvador. Turns out there's an urban legend called "el cadejo", there's a black dog and a white dog and both are good in their own ways: the black one scares straight those that are going down the wrong path and the white one protects those in need. I've seen these street dogs accompany us, wild dogs that let me pet them and were super sweet, sweeter and nicer than some dogs owned by upstanding citizens with a leash. My dad was kinda like those strays, mi viejo era un chucho de la calle.
In his adolescence, he befriended a boy named Lorenzo, Lorenzo De Sola. (The De Sola were supposedly one of the 14 families that ruled El Salvador as an oligarchy.) He said that one day he was walking on his way to school when Lorenzo, driving his own car, recognized him from school and offered to give him a lift. He said that along with taking him to school from time to time he also invited him over to his mansion. He developed a crush on Lorenzo's sister (but nothing ever came of it). He also developed a love and admiration for Lorenzo for being so kind and generous despite the obvious difference between them. He made such an impression on him that he decided to name his fifth child after him, thing is, my mom wanted me to have an English name. So she asked one of the staff at the hospital where I was born, "How do you say 'Lorenzo' in English?" and they replied, "Lawrence". That's how I wound up being one of the first of my family to have an English-sounding name, my mom's thinking was that I'd have it easier this way (until they read my last name). Larry, being the shortened version of Lawrence (and probably easier for my folks to pronounce with their rolling R's), is what everyone calls me now but, every now and then, my dad would call me "Lorenzo!" in his gruff, joking tone. My siblings and I had our doubts because my dad had a penchant for telling anecdotes with improbable elements like they were the most natural thing in the world (see: cadejo story). He was like a walking, breathing Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. So we decided to look it up and he does exist, the De Sola family were a rich family that made their fortune in Curacao and later emigrated to El Salvador. A kid from an obscenely wealthy family and another from the sticks, the two friends, it sounds like The Prince and the Pauper.
My dad loved architecture. He was always talking about how he studied it in school, in uni, and how he was never able to fulfill his dream of being an architect. He graduated from college with his architecture degree and even completed some small projects but he fell into what would become his career, working as a foreman and later accountant at the International Railways of Central America (
IRCA). He worked there for many years, rising through the ranks through hard work and charisma. It was during this time that he met my mom, Gloria Sanchez Chavez, who was working there as a secretary. My dad, smitten by her, decided to ask her out and so began their romance. (This story was much more romantic when I was younger and hearing it retold as an adult was bookended by insults like "
ese imbécil" and "
ese inútil" as well as introducing the notion that their marriage wasn't so Shakespearean.) They would go on dates chaperoned by my grandma and aunt Adela and if they were lucky they might hold hands (No touching!).
Before getting married and all that, there were other stories. My dad had a child out of wedlock (my half-brother Pablo, he's the oldest) and the details surrounding his birth and sudden disappearance of his mom a few years later (she up and left, according to my parents, one day) are still murky to this day. It's a touchy subject for many involved, dad would never really talk about who she was, how they met, and I never thought to ask (or maybe I just wasn't brave enough).
My dad was the biggest pinkie liberal you could meet. He became politicized in college, railing against the right-wing, military government. El Salvador was prosperous for those in power yet increasingly unjust to the lower echelons: landless farm labor and tenant farmers. To give you an idea, read up on the
1932 Peasant Massacre. Peasants, aiming to pass through reforms which would give them a semblance of justice in dealing with the wealthy land barons, were massacred by government forces. They didn't stop at killing the leaders of the revolt, they indiscriminately killed anyone carrying a machete (a machete is a farm tool used to cut down crops, most peasant farmers could be seen carrying one not as a weapon but as a simple tool of the trade). The same reforms that the insurgents tried to push through in 1932 were the same that were being proposed as late as the late 70's when El Salvador entered another stage in its history. This was a time when there was a lot of political activity in Latin America and the US had a tentative grip on the situation. My dad became active by protesting, organizing and collaborating with leftist groups. This was a time marked by disappearances of dissidents by the infamous "death squads" (
escuadrones de la muerte) who silently dispatched their victims. He was lucky enough to avoid detection during these years when a college education could equal a death sentence. It was this civic fervor that he brought to the US with him when he immigrated. Remember IRCA? IRCA is a North American company and my dad petitioned to get a work visa so he could work in the US, he wanted to follow in my aunt Esperanza's footsteps. Once in the US, he'd become an active and prominent member of the Centro Salvadoreño (which is now the Centro Cuzcatlán).
There was a lot at stake. El Salvador, a banana republic, was an industrial hub in the heart of Central America. Here's Salvadoran history (and some geography) in a nutshell: El Salvador was a vassal state or fringe Maya region in the pre-columbian era (before the 1500's). It's on a tiny, dense land filled with volcanoes, 23 to be exact, and tropical jungles. Civilizations would spring up, flourish and fall with the pulverizing force of an eruption. Wash, rinse, repeat. Cue the Spaniards, they thought that after defeating the Aztecs in Mexico that Central America would be a breeze but they were wrong, the first expedition into what is now El Salvador by Alvarado would end in failure (though the second, with a sizable force, were victorious in subjugating the local tribes. Under the Spanish, El Salvador's main crop initially was indigo but that later changed to coffee. To this day, El Salvador's main export is still coffee (due to the volcanoes; volcanic soil is extremely fertile and the high altitudes make for the best Arabica). When Central America gained its independence from the Spanish (it would later split into the countries we now know: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica), it traded one imperial power for another; the US. The US exercised dominion over this region, and the rest of Latin America, through its economic interests by way of the
United Fruit Company (the original UFC, which is now Chiquita Brands International). The United Fruit Company would buy huge swaths of land at bargain prices from the local governments and its these multinationals that helped install repressive regimes who helped the machine run smoothly. When a government decided to rein in these injustices with pesky reforms, CIA operatives and paramilitary forces were sent to protect American interests (check the 1954 coup of the democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala which radicalized a young doctor named Che Guevara). In fact, IRCA was a US company started with the express purpose of transporting those United Fruit Company crops to shipping ports. It was during the sixties and seventies that more and more movements started empowering peasants and the poor into claiming their basic human rights. A powerful figure in this movement was
Monseñor Romero. He was a catholic priest who spoke out against the inhuman conditions that Salvadorans were living in and for them to reclaim those rights. He was dubbed "the Voice of the Voiceless" by his followers and became a thorn in the side of the totalitarian government. So much so that, on March 24, 1980, armed gunmen entered the church where he was officiating and assassinated him on the altar while he was giving mass. His murder caused an uproar and his funeral drew thousands to the Cathedral in San Salvador. The government forces, it's unclear under what auspices, fired into the crowds, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people (my aunt Miriam recalled that day, she said she climbed over a construction site fence to save herself from the shower of bullets and huddled along with others in the sanctuary of the cathedral). This event, like the many cataclysmic eruptions in El Salvador's history, would lead to the Civil War, one of the bloodiest in human history and a reason why I and many of my brethren find themselves outside El Salvador, there are more Salvadorans abroad than there. It's this history that marked my dad in his political ideals and that marks us all as Salvadorans, whether or not you share with same idealogies you're affected nonetheless.
I heard a lot about this history, my history, our history, at the protests, meetings and parties. And he would drag me to most of them, I was his sidekick by default. I remember when we went to DC to a national protest (and saw the White House and Lincoln Memorial for the first time). The parties, going to Hempstead for meetings, going to rallies. I remember walking around Far Rockaway in a parade to celebrate Central America's independence (Sept 15th). In my household, Castro was the Virgen de Guadalupe. Hugo Chavez was another member of the pantheon. I remember when I was 7 or 8 and I came home talking how I learned about this dude named Columbus who was a great man. My dad muttered under his breath, "ese criminal". I'll never forget it, it was the first time anything I learned was challenged. This had a profound impact on me, it taught me critical thinking at an early age.
I mostly saw my dad at night or on the weekends. He worked a lotta shit jobs; as a cook, a furniture mover, a messenger and as a factory worker among other things. He worked long hours for little pay and drank too much when he wasn't working. I resented him as a child, he used to be trigger happy with the belt after a couple "escrudraibers" in his belly. I didn't and couldn't understand the kind of work he was doing or the obstacles he was facing on a daily basis. As an immigrant myself now (I detest the term "expat"), I'm beginning to see to a small extent what he might've gone through. He lived in Hell's Kitchen when it deserved its moniker, fresh off the boat.
For a time, I was a Spoken Word poet. I performed at various universities (including NYU, Yale, Amherst and CUNY) as well as poetry cafes around the city. I performed once at Queens College and mentioned it to my dad as I hustled out to catch the Q44. When I stepped up to the mic I could see my dad in the back of the room and we came back home in his car (I think it was the 1978 Ford Thunderbird, a beaut in her day and a relic by this point). There was the time my parents, along with my sis Evelyn, Ruddy and Eddie (Ruddy's boy), came to see me compete at the Friday night slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (a friend of mine was one of the MCs and would regularly offer me a spot). It was one of my fondest moments being able to perform in front of them, they were really supportive (even if half the shit I said probably went over their heads) and they both expressed how they were proud of me. Years went by, I used to religiously go to our writing workshop (Mindf*ck), facilitate my own and hit up as many open mics and slams as possible. One day my dad called me over to his room (as was his habit) and pulled a yellowed cutout from a newspaper. He unfolded it and began to explain how when he was a young man in his twenties he'd write poetry and a local newspaper would publish it. There it was on the cutout, "Celos por Filiberto Ramírez", a short poem about his envy of his partner's previous lovers. He never mentioned writing or poetry, this was news to me, and not only was he a writer but he was published. Despite trying to find my own path, to be my own person, our paths kept paralleling each others.
You could say I'm a chip off the old blockhead.
