Premature Old Age
Sandra Trafilaf (c.1988)
Translated by Dinah Livingstone
Like a lightning bolt
the dark glass shows me
my reflection,
my deep-set eyes,
wrinkled forehead
and faint smile fading
as it faces the reality.
With astonished nostalgia
I remember the woman I was.
What happened to your plaits?
History has undone them.
Where has the fun gone,
all those games?
Gone to a distant park
eroded by memories.
Where is the trust
in your smiling hands?
They destroyed it by gunshot
on that night of frozen horror.
Sandra Trafilaf
Ante la vida, eds. Sandra Trafilaf, Flor Lorca, Belinda Zubicueta, Angelica Rojas, Miriam Bergholz (Ediciones 13 de diciembre, 1989). Private Collection. A copy of this book is also housed at the Documenting Chile collection at the LRA, UEL.
Born in 1965, Sandra Trafilaf Yañez was nine years old at the time of the coup d'état when one of his brothers, a member of the Communist Youth (JJCC), began studying graphic design and set up a makeshift printing press in their house. It was from then on that she became very close to propaganda and books, and began her militancy in the Communist Youth. At the age of 17 she graduated from the INSUCO 4 Technical High School, as a secretary and, without losing her commitment to the Party, she began to occupy important political spaces. First in the Zero Front and then, in 1983, in the FPMR (1983). "Pola", as she was known, was arrested the following year and imprisoned for 7 years (from 1985 to 1991). Currently a journalist and activist, she is a member of the Coordinator for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Valparaiso and the Network of Free and Popular Media.
A recent interview with Sandra is available via El desconcierto.cl.