This is what a collapsing empire does.

El Salvador, 1979.

A country in collapse. A coup - mass protests against the coup - massacres of protesters. A long-simmering civil war exploding into the open.

Fellow undercover operatives, I am currently crouched down in a dumpster, dodging the Death Squads who are looking for my comrade Leonel. He is scared but he is not scared. We stink of rotten meat and sun-baked maggots and we are smiling.

I time-traveled here with the help of What You Have Heard Is True, a magnificent memoir by poet Carolyn Forché of her time in El Salvador.

You might know her from "The Colonel," a fucking incredible poem, one of my all-time favorites. Also about her time in El Salvador. The title of the memoir is the first line of the poem. You should read them both.

I think a lot about the history of U.S. interference in Latin America. I think about the brutal military dictatorships propped up with American money and American military expertise (meaning: soldiers who trained torturers). I think about the democratically-elected governments brought down by US-backed coups, and the horrific human rights abuses that followed. I think about the lopsided treaties that destabilized economies and impoverished millions and sent them on harrowing journeys through the northern desert because staying meant starvation. I think about the cola we all love, that murdered labor organizers in Colombia.

This is not a Venezuela think piece. I have strong feelings but no special insights to share on the subject of that country, which my own country recently bombed and invaded and kidnapped its head of state.

But I have paid a lot of attention to how artists in the Western hemisphere have responded to U.S.-backed atrocity across the past century.

American poets documenting Salvadoran massacres; Chilean playwrights grappling with torture; Nobel laureates from Peru chronicling Dominican dictators. Mexican punk rockers celebrating indigenous resistance.

These artists, this work - it means so much to me! My life and craft have been so enriched by them!

And. Also. The thing that I keep seeing, that What You Have Heard Is True brought home all over again, is:

Poetry teaches us that we are powerless.

The most beautiful song in the world won't stop a bullet; a poem that can bring a million people to tears can't hasten the end of a bloody civil war.

It's a hard lesson to learn. One that goes against every rule of narrative. One we spend our whole lives fighting.

And as someone who believes in liberation and resistance, on some level I don't believe it's true.

There is always something we can do. And we have an obligation to act. To say or do something, in the face of injustice.

But there is also a limit on what we can accomplish.

It is not that we are utterly powerless, it's that we are profoundly powerless. We can't destroy the Death Star single-handed. Change comes from mass movement, and we can be part of that mass, we can give voice to that movement. We can make people feel something, and that feeling can move people to action.

What You Have Heard Is True tells the origin story of a poem that is held sacred by an entire generation (or two) (or three) - and how for the entirety of the Salvadoran Civil War its author traveled tirelessly around the United States trying to raise awareness and move Americans to oppose their government's bloody actions.

And the civil war still lasted twelve years.

And America hasn't learned any lessons.

We are watching the fall of an empire, fellow undercover operatives. That's what this apocalypse is. What's happening in Venezuela, what's threatened in Greenland, what's happening in our domestic streets and our arts institutions - these are the death throes of a global superpower, a big dumb baby thrashing about and bringing down buildings. Same as we're seeing with Russia in Ukraine.

The dominant death cult wants to distract its people from its cataclysmic failures at home by opening up new fronts far away.

By their nature, empires do not respect the rule of law, and they accept no ethics beyond their own supremacy. Stealing other people's stuff is HOW you get an empire; using that ill-gotten wealth to amass weapons and threaten (and harm) others is how you hold onto it.

So yeah it's going to get a lot worse.

And yeah we can't stop it.

And yeah we still have to do something.

when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
 
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
- Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival"

It's a profoundly liberating lesson, leaning how powerless you are. It frees you from the pragmatics of politics, of having to make compromises with monsters. It teaches you to act boldly and bravely, because

It teaches you to sing your songs.

Write your poems.

Tell your stories.