what does it mean for a firefly to no longer flicker?
how do we resiste total darkness? how do we not burn out?
¿qué significa que una luciérnaga ya no parpadee?
¿cómo resistimos la oscuridad total? ¿cómo hacemos para no quemarnos?
luciérnagas (que ya no) parpadean
in April 2018, I drove through flickering bioluminescence in a forest outside of Managua, while the city that raised me was rose up with uprising against a decrepit dictatorship. Students, retirees, feminists, farmers, LGBTQIA+, indigenous and afro-descendant communities, human rights activists, artists, and environmentalists simultaneously lit up like fireflies, self-convened through non-violent, creative forms of civic protest. We were met with violence, persecution and death from a political party and state that was once the vanguard against the dictatorship in power 40 years prior.
five years later, Nicaraguan communities are left with multiple griefs, including the loss of loved ones and a new diaspora leaving the country en masse. How do we embody collective mourning with a social body fragmented by violence and displacement? How do we re-member collectively despite and through this violence and displacement, and to struggles similar to ours? How and where to may fireflies return?
