The Cops and the Guards by Roque Dalton They always saw the people as a mass of backs running away as a field on which their clubs fell with hatred. They always saw the people with an eye on sharpening their aim and between the people and their eye the sight of a pistol or a rifle. (They too were once people but with the excuse of hunger and unemployment they accepted a weapon a club and a monthly salary to defend the makers of hunger and unemployment.) They always saw the people enduring sweating shouting raising placards raising fists and what's more telling them: "Dogs sons of whores, your day will come." (And with every passing day they figured they'd done a great thing betraying the people they were born of: "The people are a mass of cripples and fools they thought— it's great we've gone over to the side of the clever and strong"). And then the trigger was squeezed and bullets went from the side of the cops and guards to the side of the people they always went that way from there to here and the people fell bleeding week after week year after year broken-boned they wept through the eyes of the women and children fleeing in terror ceasing to be a people to become a fleeing mob disappearing every man for himself to his house and then there was nothing left but the fireman hosing the blood off the streets. (The colonels finished up by convincing them: "That's the way it is guys—they said— hard and to the heads of the civilians fire on the rabble you are uniformed pillars of the Nation priests of the first rank in the cult of the flag the shield the hymn the Fathers representative democracy the official party the free world whose sacrifices the decent people of this land won't forget though we can't give you a raise today though of course we'd like to"). They always saw the people convulsive in the torture chamber hanged beaten broken swollen asphyxiated raped ears and eyes pricked with needles electrified drowned in piss and shit spit-upon degraded their last remains giving off little froths of smoke in a hell of quicklime. (When the tenth National Guard was found dead, killed by the people and the fifth cop was roughed up by the urban guerilla the cops and the National Guard began to think, especially because the colonels had already changed their tune and laid the guilt for today's failure on "these rotten troop recruits we have"). The fact is the cops and the guards always saw the people from there to here and the bullets only traveled from there to here. Let them think about that a while let them decide whether it's too late to seek the people's side and shoot from there shoulder to shoulder with us. Let them think about that a bit but meanwhile they shouldn't be surprised let alone offended now that some bullets have begun to reach them from this side where it's still the same people as always except now with their heads held high and with more rifles all the time.