I remember the day I first learned what “Freedom” meant…
I was in fourth grade (roughly 10 years old) when my teacher assigned us a project – we had to write a biography on our “favorite person in the world.” Naturally, I wrote about my abuela.
My abuela’s life was filled with excitement and adventure, but also involved large amounts of hardship — her life experience I thought would make for a great project. I was so ecstatic when she agreed to be my subject. I had a list of questions to ask her (even follow-up questions! I liked to think I was a younger version of Helen Thomas at the time (and yes, a 10 year old knew who Helen Thomas was – I watched a lot of TV with my parents)), but I never got to ask her a single one of my questions.
As I sat on her bed preparing my interviewing materials, she smiled at me from across the room as she sat in her rocking chair.
“Elisa, sabes lo que significa ‘libertad’?” she asked.
Me being me – a fucking smartass – blurted back a basic dictionary definition of “Freedom” thinking I just crushed that question, a boost to my young intellectual ego.
(From here on out I’ll translate – the first line was a way for me to see if there were any xenophobes and racists hiding out)
“Very good. Exactly,” abuela chirped, only feeding my ego more.
“But do you know what it means to have ‘freedom’? To be ‘free’?” she asked slyly. She knew that I, her privileged granddaughter, would have no idea what that would mean. She was right and my ego was completely shattered.
She slowly got up out of the rocking chair and made her way to the bed. She held me in her arms and turned my face up to her and said, “Freedom is like going for a swim in the river on a hot summer day. It’s that feeling of relief that you’ve escaped the heat and found some peace.”
From there she talked about what it was like for her and the rest of my family to live through the Franco regime, without holding grim details – growing up in Spain during the country’s civil war and subsequent (oppressive) dictatorship are not seen as “good times."
Even though history has considered Franco to be a “benevolent” dictator, is any dictator ever really benevolent? I know my family’s experience proved otherwise. Living under Franco was dark – it was Orwellian-level shit. I’m not comfortable disclosing a lot of the details about what my family went through, but to put it simply: fear, poverty, murder, work camps, lies, and oppression were all part of the narrative.
When she started having a family of her own she worried for her children's future – she wanted them to live without la inquietud. She longed to live in a place founded on freedom – America. Finally, after years of navigating the American immigration system, my abuela made it to California. She bathed in the river of freedom, happy to escape the red (fascist) heat that burned her so much back home.
Despite missing her homeland, she was much happier knowing that she – along with others – could have the opportunity to say, do, and/or be whatever she wanted because under a fascist regime that was near impossible.
Fast forward to the present: This past March, my abuela was hospitalized for a variety of complications. I was at the hospital everyday she was there – keeping her company and talking to her whenever she felt comfortable.
One thing she loved to do was talk about Trump. She said he reminded her of “her dear” Franco. She would joke and say, “Elisa, I have to vote for him. He’s a spitting replica of el caudillo.” That would get me in such a tisy – the woman was just trolling me.
But I’ll never forget one of our last conversations – of course, it involved politics, but in a more philosophical/meta sense.
Trump was on the TV.
“Ugh, I can’t with this fucking twat of a human,” I said rather bluntly.
“ALYSSA! WATCH YOUR MOUTH! WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?” My mother shouted from across the room. As she stepped out to get lunch, my abuela whispered, “Elisa, vente aquí."
“Sorry, Abuela,” I said embarrassedly.
“Ha! Oh Elisa, I know you’re not sorry. Ha, you’ll never change. But that’s okay – the world needs more women like you. So tell me – why has he gotten you so upset now?”
I went on a Trump rant for the next 10 minutes.
“Vale, but see Elisa, men like him and Franco – they feed on emotion: fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, whatever. That is how they get to where they are – emotions are a way of control. Don’t ever react – if you do, they come to power. Do you remember our talk on freedom?”
“How it’s like a river, right?”
“Right. Don’t let monsters near that river – they’ll slurp it up and soon you will be left with a dried up riverbed,” she grabbed my hand and said, “Keep your calm. Keep swimming. Growing up I wanted to be free – and now it’s all I want for you. Trump is no Franco, but he’s close. When all the country is going to hell, and both sides take their sides to create a civil war, stay steadfast – you can vote, so vote him off. Write him and others like him off – be the niña traviesa that you are. And God forbid it doesn’t go the way you want, think before you react on emotion - think on how to promote change everyone can rally behind. Be the leader these men never could be. ”
