Beliefs expressed in Personal Creed shaped Claribel Alegría’s writings after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution and forced her admitted “awakening” to the world around her. A second major jolt was the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, just after he had invoked the name of God to order the Salvadoran National Guard, military, and police to obey a higher commandment and end their repression of the people.

Patterned on the Apostles’ Creed, the poem redirects the focus from Christianity’s promised afterlife to this world’s reality, depicts disappeared and murdered victims as Christ-like in their sacrifice, and suggests a non-individualized, collective identity among believers.

An important context for Personal Creed is Liberation Theology’s impact throughout Latin America and the contention that Roman Catholicism entailed more than its customary message to the downtrodden that suffering on Earth be humbly accepted as God’s will. The church hierarchy in Latin America historically had aligned itself with the richest social sectors and the military, and in some countries these groups operated in tandem to oppress and exploit the populace. Liberation Theology proposed a reading of the Bible that justified daily struggle for better conditions here and now, and Alegría’s poem reflects this reorientation.

Personal Creed wholly rewrites the Apostles’ Creed (an import via Europe) using American historical realities, starting with Spain’s conquest of the New World by “sword and cross,” which established a pattern of pillage and exploitation abetted by the church. But like the ancient Roman governor ignorant of the power of martyrdom who attempted to subdue subversion by crucifying Christ, American government leaders unwittingly fan the flames of insurgency by condoning official or renegade violence and casting a blind eye on indiscriminate detentions, disappearances, and murders by military or paramilitary death squads.

As the poem suggests, historical accounts portray the 1979–92 civil war in El Salvador as a living hell for the defenseless—75,000 dead; hundreds of thousands displaced, tortured, raped; one-third of the population missing family members.

In Claribel Alegría’s New World Personal Creed, death is not final, and hope is renewed by reinventing the Bible’s greater lesson: the crucified descended into the hell of detention centers like the “Media Luna” and rose again, not to ascend into heaven but to return to the struggle, and not as individuals but as members of a collective force called “the people,” united against their oppressors—as a force that will eventually triumph and demand the final judgment, on Earth, of their assassins.

The suggestion is that peace and justice will come to the land only after that “force” (like the truth and reconciliation commissions in countries recovering from civil strife) addresses the multitude of crimes committed against the people of El Salvador.

In its “bare bones” poetic expression devoid of rhetorical devices, Personal Creed valorizes righteous struggle against oppression but also beauty and art in the broadest sense—Marc Chagall’s invention of blue cows, Julio Cortázar’s playful “cronopios,” that might decorate airmail packages with feathers (random acts of beauty). More significant than a communion of saints and life everlasting are unity and a communion of all who embrace the ethos of hope derived from death portrayed in this, actually, not-at-all-personal creed.

Bibliography
Alegría, Claribel. “Personal Creed.” In Luisa in Realityland. Translated by Darwin J. Flakoll. Willimantic, Conn.: Curbstone, 1987, 135.

Categories: Literature, World Literature

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