Los Muertos: Day of the Dead Fiction - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adela Pineda Franco is the Lozano Long Endowed Professor in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies and director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She founded and directed the Center for Latin American Studies at Boston University, where she taught for twenty years. She is the author and coeditor of numerous books. She lives in Austin.  

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The Mediator

Ana Gloria Álvarez Pedrajo

Anisia Rodríguez, translation

In the town of San Sebastián Bernal situated in the Christian state of Querétaro, we are all

very devout. From the first to the fifth of May we hold festivities in honor of the Holy Cross, which is celebrated at the peak of a rocky outcrop. Although it is a three-hundred-fifty-meter climb over steep terrain, it is well worth it. At that height, it's as though we are close to the hand of God … our prayers are the ones He hears and answers because they are practically whispered in His ear. Generally, I pray for the poor souls in purgatory. Their cries during the night are not bothersome to hear, but their exile is what saddens me. Nobody should be neither alive nor dead, without a destiny, poor souls anchored to the earth by their sins.

            On bended knees I move forward until they bleed.

            I resort to Saint Marta, Saint Úrsula, and Saint Teresita to intercede before God the Father for the poor souls in purgatory. I know His heart is softened because I have clearly seen how many of them have been raised up to the light. Those who are left are content to follow me back into town. I cannot always guess their intentions, for at times they have saved me from dangers along the way but on other occasions they have attempted to kill me by pushing me against rocks. I don't hold it against them because I know they act out of desperation. Their efforts are all accounted for and they will be assigned a place in Heaven or Hell, ceasing to be drifting spirits tormented by uncertainty.

            Finally arriving at home, I am grieved to find their darkened cloudy eyes beyond the window pane, staring at me resentfully, as if to condemn my useless prayers. In the end, just like them, I am nothing but a sinner, just as forsaken and just as estranged from the world. Perhaps this is why each day, little by little, I distance myself from life and listen more intently to the beckoning voices of the dead.