WEBVTT

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I'm interested, of course, in
women not only on the border

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but women more broadly
in Latin America.

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And I had the opportunity
a couple of years

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ago to be in the
Dominican Republic

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and got to spend some time with
a woman who had done, I guess,

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what in some way we all struggle
to do, which is to take action.

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And she had owned a shop.

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And across the street,
there was a police compound.

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And she would hear the children
who were put in the compound

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every afternoon so as not
to bother the tourists.

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"Agua Negra."

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"I see her shadow rocking
in the candlelight.

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Wind and rain bang wood
slats, slash palm trees.

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We're two women caught
in a storm of stories.

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In the hills,
rivers leap to life,

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plunge through bougainvillea
into the green hiss,

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the island's víbora.

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Water rushes down
streets to shacks,

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to cardboard rooms, agua
negra oozes between small toes

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of shoeless children.

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I hear their whimpers, 'Mama,
mama,' from across the street.

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Her voice begins its spin,
a worn familiar record,

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the voice of tías and
abuelitas, storytellers.

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Ay, los blanquitos y su dinero.

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Their soft hands hunger for
amber and our pink mangoes,

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not the tugging, please.

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'Look, miss.

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Bye, miss.' Every afternoon, los
policías grabbed mis muchachos,

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threw them into the police yard,
kicked their toothpick ribs,

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no shade, no water.

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'Mama, mama,' they scream.

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And a club thuds a skull.

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Glare scorches their
eyes and throats

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until turistas y su dinero sail.

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Hands and hearts
heavy with bundles.

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'Mama, mama, por Dios,
son niños, I'd yell.

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But they baked
them in that horno,

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baked them to their
bones, pobrecitos.

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I bought a little house, a
hiding place, ay, qué tristeza.

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She rocks, shakes her head.

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It's our country,
and we have to hide.

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Wind runs round around
the widow's hushed home

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like children chase
themselves in the rain,

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mouths open, ready to swallow
what falls from the sky."

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