Lee Winkelman Says

June 25, 2020 – Para La Espera by Silvio Rodriquez (2020) Spotify

Silvio Rodríguez has a new album out, his first since 2015. If you know Silvio’s music, stop reading and go listen right now and then come back afterwards for the tale of my time in El Salvador working for the FMLN revolutionary movement. If you are not familiar with the legendary Cuban folk singer-songwriter and poet, let me tell you about him.

Silvio Rodríguez was 13 years old when the Cuban Revolution happened, too young to take up arms, but old enough to be swept up in the dreams and aspirations of the early revolutionary period. He was one of a group of Cuban musicians, also including the great Pablo Milanés, who combined revolutionary dreams with poetic intimacy in lyrics and indigenous folk sounds with pop and rock influences in music.

Their music was called Nueva Trova (“New Troubadours”) and was initially suppressed by the Cuban authorities, not because of its lyrics, but because of the foreign influences in its music. But ultimately, Rodríguez’s songs became beloved, not just in Cuba but throughout the Spanish-speaking world, where his music is widely listened to and covered by other artists.

Silvio can be compared to Bob Dylan in terms of his impact in Cuba and beyond. Like Dylan, Silvio combines folk and rock, the personal and the political. Like Dylan, he is a symbol of hope and change. Like Dylan, he has not stopped making music and has a new album in 2020. Silvio’s music is political in the way that Blowing in the Wind and Imagine are political: his songs are not tied to a specific political moment or issue but convey a deep sadness at injustice and an equally deep yearning for a more just world. But unlike Bob Dylan, Silvio has a beautiful, delicate voice. Imagine the songwriting of Bob Dylan combined with the voice of Aaron Neville.

Silvio’s Music

From La Maza:

What would the mason’s hammer be without the stone
A figurehead of the traitorous applause
A serving of the old in a new cup
A making eternal of a declining god
Exaltation boiled with rags and sequins
 
Que cosa fuera la maza sin cantera
Un testaferro del traidor de los aplausos
Un servidor de pasado en copa nueva
Un eternizador de dioses del ocaso
Jubilo hervido con trapo y lentejuela

From: Ojalá:

May your constant gaze fade away
The precise word, the perfect smile
May something happen soon to erase you
A blinding light, a shot of snow.
May at least death take me
So that I won’t see you so often, so that I won’t see you always
In every second, in every vision
May I not be able to touch you, even in song
              
Ojalá se te acabe la mirada constante,
La palabra precisa, la sonrisa perfecta.
Ojalá pase algo que te borre de pronto:
Una luz cegadora, un disparo de nieve.
Ojalá por lo menos que me lleve la muerte,
Para no verte tanto, para no verte siempre
En todos los segundos, en todas las visiones:
Ojalá que no pueda tocarte ni en canciones

The lyrics sound much better, more poetic in Spanish, but even in the awkward English translations the urgent sense of yearning for a different, better world comes through. Even if you don’t understand a word of Spanish the yearning comes through clearly in Silvio’s singing. You can hear a playlist of my favorite Silvio Rodríguez songs.

The new record, Para La Espera, is probably not his best record ever, but it is very, very good, one of my favorite records of the year so far. The instrumentation is simple, mostly acoustic guitar. The lyrics are poetic and moving as always. If none of the songs are quite as urgent and catchy as his best classic songs, there also isn’t a weak song on the record. The song Noche Sin Fe y Mar is really moving, and Viene la Cosa has a catchy, halting rhythm and an almost bluesy touch.

I first heard Silvio’s music when David Byrne’s label Luaka Bop released a collection of his music in 1991, the first time his music was readily available in the United States. But I didn’t really get to know and love Silvio’s music until I started living in El Salvador in 1992, where his songs were everywhere: sung at rallies, sold in bootleg cassettes at every marketplace, listened to at parties and during romantic moments. If I hadn’t known he was from Cuba, I would have thought Silvio was a beloved Salvadoran singer.

Working for The El Salvador FMLN Revolutionary Movement

In 1992, I had been doing neighborhood organizing in Boston for six years. I liked the work and had had some organizing victories, but I was frustrated that the impact of my work was not bigger. I got into organizing out of a desire for big transformational change, the kind of change alluded to in Blowing in the Wind, Imagine, and Silvio’s Ojalá, but I was only winning a few dozen units of affordable housing and space for community gardens – good things but hardly revolutionary.

When my then-girlfriend had a chance to become the staff person in El Salvador for CISPES, the largest U.S/El Salvador solidarity group, I jumped at the chance to move to El Salvador with her and learn from that country’s movement for change.

When I moved there, El Salvador was in the middle of a year-long period of transition from a 12-year civil war that killed 75,000 civilians to a permanent peace. I went to work for the FMLN, the left political-military force in the civil war that was transitioning to become a political party. Not surprisingly, the FMLN was less interested in my organizing skills – not so useful when I didn’t know the culture and could barely speak Spanish – than they were in my computer skills, which were no greater than an average knowledgeable computer user in the U.S. but rare in El Salvador. While the FMLN soldiers were still in transition camps turning over their weapons to UN observers, I began teaching word processing to union activists.

The war was essentially over and things were mostly safe at this time, but a union office I was teaching in was riddled with gunfire only a few hours after I left. The shooting was a bit of a fluke — it appeared that the rightwing thugs had meant to present a fearful threat without violence, but things got out of hand. A union security guard died, and I was lucky that I missed the shooting.

The cease-fire period ended in December of 1992, and I used a forged press pass to attend the ceremony marking the permanent peace. I heard speeches by a bunch of dignitaries, including Dan Quail (then just finishing his term as U.S. Vice President) and Daniel Ortega (the once and future President of Nicaragua, then a figure of inspiration and today just another brutal, autocratic ruler). Not the two best Dans in human history.

I soon joined the FMLN electoral commission, preparing for the first-ever fair election in El Salvador where the left could participate. I was at the first meeting of the FMLN electoral commission. There were five or so of us, all Salvadoran but me. I was the only one there who had ever voted or had any electoral organizing experience. The FMLN’s only electoral experience was in burning ballot boxes during the war.

Again, the FMLN was more interested in my computer experience – which in the U.S. would have been considered merely adequate for everyday use – then my organizing experience without the command of the culture or language. I created a spreadsheet of past election results, and I began to learn how to program databases so we could find fraud in the voter rolls and track whether all the FMLN candidates’ requirements were met.

My one organizing contribution was providing training to FMLN activists in door-to-door canvassing. Of course, the FMLN was clandestine during the civil war and could not openly go knocking on doors. The only experience they had with canvassing was when a Jehovah’s witness came to their doors. I helped organize a day of canvassing in San Salvador with all five FMLN factions participating. The five FMLN factions did not come together like this often.

You could tell which faction canvassers were from by how they canvassed. A Salvadoran Communist Party canvasser would talk for half an hour straight at each door and then hand the person at the door a 300-page manifesto written by Communist Party leader Schafik Handal. The poor person at the door did not get in a single word during the canvass visit. The Communist Party canvassers were not receptive to my repeated suggestions that this was perhaps not the best way to reach new voters – I guess everyone has to learn for themselves.

Election Day was in March 1994. On election day, I was running eight Novell computer networks spread across the country in an effort to create an alternative vote count that could help prevent the election from being stolen. I was not qualified to do this, of course, but it all worked out OK. The FMLN won significant representation in the legislative assembly but alas lost the presidency to the right-wing ARENA party. While there was sporadic violence and intimidation in the election, overall it was pretty fair, certainly fairer than 2020 elections in U.S. states like Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Working in El Salvador for two-years with the revolutionary movement was one of the best things I have ever done. It was not always easy being away from home in a country where I did not know the language or how to do the most basic things like buying something in a store or crossing the street. But in El Salvador, I was asked to do things no one would ever ask me to do, like program a database or set up and run multiple Novell computer networks. After all, a handful of Salvadoran activists with a handgun went into hills and formed the FLMN and only a few years later had a huge political/military movement that fought the U.S.-backed Salvadoran Army to a draw. They were used to doing what they needed to do without prior experience. That was a nice learning for me.

I came back home with more confidence in myself and a deeper understanding of what immigrants go through trying to make a life in a new country. I had a hard enough time in El Salvador even though I had legal papers to be there and many more resources to ease my way than undocumented immigrants typically have in the United States. This deeper understanding of the immigrant experience has had a huge influence on my organizing work.

I also learned how the Salvadoran popular movement incorporates political analysis and popular education in their organizing work, although I still struggle to incorporate this into my own organizing work in the States.

I felt a part of something big and historic in El Salvador. I was living out the aspirations of the words of the Silvio Rodríguez songs I stumbled to sing along with at Salvadoran rallies (why couldn’t Ojalá have a chorus that was easier to sing along with?). I am still trying to live out those aspirations today.