Ilka Oliva Corado

She can see her fingertips cracked by the use of so many chemicals, her hands that have worked the land for 24 years cleaning restaurants and shopping centres. Originally from Camotán, Chiquimula, Guatemala, Tana left her indigenous clothing, from the…

When Victorina agreed, she was already perched on a tyre tube crossing the waters of the Rio Grande. The shouts of the other migrants brought her to her senses. What time was it? Maybe it was 1 or 2 a.m.,…

The humiliations suffered by undocumented Central American migrants who try to cross Mexico to reach the United States, seeking safety from the institutional violence of the narco-state, in the case of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, have hurt a lot.…

Or from the ground up As if it wasn’t enough to live with a narco-state that violates with police and army, by air, sea and land, and imposes curfews and a state of siege on the native populations who fight…

Generationally we have been told, since post-dictatorship times, that flies cannot enter a closed mouth, which is why we hang ourselves and are so brazen, because it is not a question of fear for what our grandparents lived through in…

After the siege, the homeland becomes a perennial longing. The undocumented know this more than anyone else. It becomes that old letter of paper torn by so much folding and unfolding. It is in the memory of rainy days, of…

El día que estuviste en Arsenal, mientras hablabas a las multitudes, yo conducía por las calles de Chicago, estaba en el trabajo y mi empleadora me había enviado a hacer un mandado, le puse los audífonos al teléfono celular y…

El día que estuviste en Arsenal, mientras hablabas a las multitudes, yo conducía por las calles de Chicago, estaba en el trabajo y mi empleadora me había enviado a hacer un mandado, le puse los audífonos al teléfono celular y…

El día que estuviste en Arsenal, mientras hablabas a las multitudes, yo conducía por las calles de Chicago, estaba en el trabajo y mi empleadora me había enviado a hacer un mandado, le puse los audífonos al teléfono celular y…

I’m not a feminist, neither red, nor leftist, nor revolutionary. I know very well where I do belong: I am a pariah and Cristina is my love. As well as Mercedes Sosa, Dilma, Evita and Violetona Parra. And as a…