Children of the Sun
By Lorena Hernández
Leonard
Tyler James Bangkok, Post-Nothing (Too much) (Not Enough), acrylic, recycled objects, collage, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Children of the Sun
Lorena Hernández Leonard | MAR 2022 | ISSUE 14
I can’t recall the first time I heard gunshots as a kid, but my body remembers the fear. Or maybe it wasn’t my body responding to fear. I simply ran for cover; I followed the herd like a good sheep because that’s what everybody did. Stop what you’re doing, get away fast, find a safe place to hide. This wasn’t a drill, and no one ever walked us through an Active Shooter Training. When I heard the sharp POP! POP! POP! there was no time for reflection: Is that gunfire or fireworks? Or Where is it coming from? No time to think. Drop everything. Run. Hide.
It was not unusual for people in our town to leave their doors open during the day. In this way they could do house chores and stay up to date with neighborhood gossip, all while listening and even swinging their hips back and forth to the rhythms of cumbia drums. But the monotony of everyday life could be interrupted abruptly by gunfire. Everyone would quickly run inside; doors would be locked; radios, televisions, sound systems would be turned off; ears would tune in like sonar radars, monitoring and capturing information from the outside world.
The terrorizing sound of gunshots became more frequent as I got older, but no random shootings nor the increasing amount of wakes at our neighbors’ homes could keep us kids out of the streets. We were children of the sun, our skin permanently caramelized like delicious Panela, the hardened form of raw cane sugar, a rich shade of brown and complex golden tones. Between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer, we carelessly played for hours each day whenever we were not in school—day and night, weekday and weekend.
The infernal heat typical in this part of the world was never a problem for us either. El Valle de la Eterna Primavera, the Valley of Eternal Spring, as Medellín is known, was our dystopian playground. Nestled between two cordilleras, the city’s altitude and the immensity of the surrounding Andes mountains provided a natural cooling system in which we enjoyed spring-like weather all year round. The streets were ours. In our dilapidating concrete and brick neighborhood, sandwiched between homes lined on top of each other (single-level, two-story and three-story walk ups) on one side of the street and the tall wall that enclosed La Fábrica de Licores de Antioquia (the distillery where anise-flavored aguardiente is made) on the other side, we engaged in games of hide and seek, fútbol, and cycling races.
One Saturday afternoon when I was about ten years old, I was out riding my bike with my little sister Katerina and a bunch of kids from our neighborhood. The sun was high and shone bright, almost blinding against an impossibly blue sky. Only a silver gray plume over the distillery’s chimney hovered like a menacing cloud, the light breeze carrying its powerful aroma of anise. Katerina and I shared a Raleigh bike, so we took turns riding. Up and down our street we rode, crossing into the next few blocks. One of us would get off and the other would get on and ride the same course for a few turns.
Then POP! POP! POP!
The shots reverberated, sounding alarmingly close.
I froze in place. My belly cramped, my innards twisted into a knot. The sequence of events felt sluggish, like it was happening under water, while my body worked out what to do next. There was no time to think. We dropped everything, even the bikes, our treasures. No one cared for their bicycles in such moments. No one thought about them getting scratched, damaged, or stolen if left out on the street. The haze and panic made it hard to focus. We ran as fast as our twiggy legs could take us and hid at the entryway to my three-story walk up, slamming the metallic door shut behind us. Five or six of us children huddled, making our bodies compact for protection. We sought refuge in the dark, tight space, as if we were desperately crawling back into our mothers’ wombs, a familiar place of safety.
But scanning the kids, I quickly realized Katerina was not with us. I had left my little sister outside, unprotected. I felt an unbearable pressure in my chest, squeezing my heart, my lungs. What if she gets shot? This thought scared me, but I believe the guilt of having left my sister behind consumed me even more.
As the oldest, I was responsible for Katerina. I was her caretaker—when the adults weren’t around, I had to make sure she was by my side at all times. This, of course, was a nuisance because it meant that I couldn’t do anything alone; I couldn’t have time with just me and my friends. My pesky little sister always tagged along and had to do everything I did. I couldn’t go anywhere without her, and yet I had left her behind. But in that instant, I didn’t linger on those feelings. I broke free from the fear and pulled the door open. The sun hurt my eyes. I couldn’t quite see in front of me, I just ran.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw her. Standing in the middle of the street, straddling our bike, Katerina was alone, immobile. It is possible that her own fear had cemented her in place; throwing the bike on the ground and running away had skipped her thinking altogether. I could sense the dread she was feeling as she stared straight ahead. The street, usually vibrant with the noise of children at play and neighbors blasting music from living room speakers, had become ghostly quiet.
As I was running to get to my sister, I saw him coming. From the end of our block, right where the pothole-covered street and neglected brick apartments ended and where the jungle of wild flora began. From the place we were not ever allowed to go because our parents had deemed it dangerous, a man raced toward us—shirtless and messy-haired, his lanky frame carried him speedily as he bolted down the street in our direction. No time to run and hide again. I wrapped my arms around Katerina and contoured my scrawny body into the shape of an armadillo, as if I could somehow become a protective shield over her tiny frame. I remember feeling the blood pulsating in my head as I held Katerina closer to me, keeping my eyes focused on the man. The gun swung back and forth from his hand the closer he approached. As he ran past us, I felt a draft, the breeze from his body moving at high speed.
This is the last image I have of this encounter.
No matter how much time I spend thinking about it, working hard to put together the pieces, I cannot recall what happened next. I do not know how we got back home or who, if anyone, came to get us. Not even a gist of an image exists in my head. Having dodged a literal bullet, we were considered lucky. But we were damaged, only our damage was not visible to anyone.
By then, I knew about the Madellín Cartel, about Pablo Escobar, and about sicarios—the hitmen that worked for the drug cartels. I also knew about the conflict between the Colombian government and the various guerrilla groups. I knew that Las FARC (las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia––the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was the biggest guerrilla group. Everyone knew. It was on TV, on newspapers, and on people’s mouths. What I didn’t know was how all of the turmoil and violence had started. Turmoil and violence had been a part of my life from the time I was born.
The US had meddled in Colombia’s affairs long before the illicit drug trade grew into an empire, sealing the fate of the country. At the turn of the twentieth century, the US backed Panama’s insurgence against the Colombian government because they wanted to build the Canal. I think of this as a cunning, strategic, and hypocritical move; one which severed an entire state from Colombia’s body, granting the US exclusive possession of the Canal Zone, and giving it immense power over global trade. As for my country, Colombia was left dangling with continued political instability, but money is king. Twenty years after the Panama Canal debacle, the US mended the relationship by making a compensation payment to the Colombian government, in essence, buying off Colombia as a strong ally.
I didn’t know any of this history as a child. Perhaps I was too young for such lessons in school, or perhaps it was a part of Colombia’s story that was erased from memory, as it’s been the case throughout Latin America, and even here in the US as it pertains to the history of minority groups. But about a decade after migrating to the US, when I was an undergrad at the University of Massachusetts and had grown tired of the drug cartel stigma I carried, I set out to learn as much as I could about my birthplace. For weeks in between classes, I would visit the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, sequestering myself in one of the building’s top floors. Sitting by a large window I could see the vastness of the UMass Amherst campus spread out before me––everything frigid and gray reached the horizon line. It was there, perched atop a sanctuary of knowledge, where my mind expanded.
I learned about Colombia’s political unrest between Liberals and Conservatives and that a popular movement arose to protest the country’s widespread inequalities and injustices. This was the time of the Cold War and the US, in their efforts to contain the spread of communism in Latin America, intervened in Colombia once again by influencing the country’s economic, political, and military strategies. In periodicals and in thick modern history books, I read that because of the Cuban-Soviet association, the US was paranoid and assumed that all reformists in Latin America were communists. And so, they backed Colombia’s military with controlling armed insurgencies and suppressing unarmed civilians, including targeting campesinos (farmers) who were considered a threat because of their opposition to a repressive pro-US government. Ironically, these operations galvanized the creation of Las FARC. I also learned that these counter-insurgency tactics continued for decades until the emergence of the drug trade, when the US rebranded their Cold War mission and disguised it as the “war on drugs”—a war that continued to employ destructive military force. And while I knew as a child about the atrocities being committed across Colombia, and while I myself had felt the permanent and acute acts of violence, I was unaware that these missions were taking place. I, along with so many Colombians, was blissfully ignorant of the devastating damage the United States was causing the people in my country. And yet, the US provided me with a safe haven in which to raise children of my own.
Almost thirty years later, on a hot summer day, I was watching my oldest daughter riding her balance bike on our street—an upper middle class neighborhood just outside of Boston. The neighborhood kids, older than her, rode fast past her, but she didn’t shy away from wanting to race alongside them. My husband joked, calling them the Longfellow Bike Gang, as we took pictures of our toddler making a Look at me, I’m tough! kind of face.
Close to ten kids in their Specializeds and Treks zipped fast up and down our block. The sun was bright high above against a clear blue sky, and I couldn’t help but get choked up. This is not unusual. Since becoming a mother, there have been many instances when I’ve just crumbled, holding my belly in my hands or burying my face in my husband’s shoulder, humbly wondering, How did I get here? A safe and pleasant neighborhood, streets lined with lovingly cared for gardens, children at play supervised by their doting parents. Nothing to fear on Longfellow Road.
No bullets. No hiding. Safety.
In moments like this, I feel immensely lucky and also extremely sad. My daughters are experiencing an uninterrupted childhood with two parents who have a tendency to coddle them, perhaps even borderline helicopter-parenting them. It makes me question whether I’m too overprotective––I’m constantly shielding them from the dangers that lurk every day, like scraped knees, hurt feelings, or catching a cold. Not from shootings, as I once did with Katerina. And while an immeasurable feeling of relief and gratitude washes over me when I consciously recognize that my daughters are growing up under peaceful, safe, and secure circumstances, I still carry the choking tendrils of trauma in my body.
Every now and then, the memories tangle around me, squeezing my throat so tightly it’s hard to breathe. I imagine it’s the same for Katerina. Like me, she has reclaimed herself and has found joy and purpose in her work and in her relationships; but trauma never leaves the body. We just learn to live with it.
Lorena Hernández Leonard is a Colombian native living in the Boston area. She's a storyteller, writer, and filmmaker whose award-winning animated short film, Demi's Panic, was Oscar long-listed in 2021. As a storyteller, Lorena has appeared on World Channel’s television program Stories from the Stage and has performed on Suitcase Stories, a traveling storytelling event created by the International Institute of New England which features immigrant stories. Lorena is a Pauline Scheer Fellow at GrubStreet, where she is currently working on a memoir about her experiences growing up during the Colombian drug war and migrating to the United States.
Tyler James Bangkok (TJB) is a queer, American artist who has lived and worked in Asia for ten years. Currently, based in Bangkok, where it lives with its Thai-Taiwanese boyfriend and their dogs while freelancing as an artist, producer, and doing community engagement. TJB was a founding member of Minneapolis Art on Wheels. Through creating video, painting, programming interactive video instruments, and performances, TJB seeks to explore its queer fantasy and the abstract world within and to affect and shape reality. With life experiences between male and female, Eastern and Western culture/ideologies, capitalism and socialism, and the developed and developing world, TJB finds the history and tradition of dada collage techniques useful in engaging people and mixing perspectives that different groups might have. TJB's “collage lifestyle" aims to create intersectional points of view. Thus, it always wants to use collage to bring various ideas or objects together to show their context, clash, or how they work together. As a queer kid growing up in rural Minnesota, it always felt suffocated and like there was something off-balance about the USA. TJB is also deeply inspired by the Situationist International and their constant critique of capitalism, control, and creative and social agency in society. Their concept of "detournement" or flipping pop culture images to show the reality behind the facade of what they represent is vital to TJB's practice. Also, TJB firmly believes in the powers of collage in manifesting and creating “chaos magic.”