a la plaza giordano bruno by Jorge Ríos translated by Ivy Raff
Translator’s Note:
At 5:00 AM on January 20, 2025, the new American regime fulfilled its first campaign promise: shutting down the appointment functionality of the CBP One smartphone app. Immediately, 300,000 asylum seekers, who used the app daily in hopes of securing legal entry to the US, were stranded in Mexico. Months before, as the heat of the US presidential election thickened into dread, the Mexican government read the writing on the wall. They began sweeping migrant camps around Mexico City.
Last summer, the human rights attorney Jorge Ríos, woke to find that the sprawling migrant camp at Plaza Giordano Bruno was wiped out overnight. He had worked there just hours before the sweep, as he had for months, providing pro bono support to the children living under its tarps. “We got one of the girls a birthday cake,” he choked out. “I didn’t know we were saying good bye.”
All of us – across economic conditions, cultural backgrounds, geographies – are affected by the vast tides of migration and displacement that result from imperialist violence and ecocide. When I translated this poem, which Jorge wrote in the sweep’s wake, I used English construction to accuse. In part 2, the Spanish reads, “acabó detenido / desnudo quemado.” Literally, “he ended up arrested, naked, burned.” Mexican Spanish leans polite – a pleasant meandering of passive voice and past participles. English sentence structure is better equipped to name that someone(s) systematically creates these nightmares: “they arrested him / tore off his clothes burned him alive.” So I used it.
In three places, I preserved untranslated Spanish. Translators working Spanish into US English have the advantage of at least nominally bilingual readership. “Madre solo hay una,” for example, is a popular refrain that literally means “there’s only one mother.” This rendering doesn’t begin to convey the visceral, sacred centrality of mother figures in Latin American consciousness. Carrying this phrase across our linguistic border would break it.
Jorge Ríos does not call himself a poet. With his debut historical novel Viento del oeste forthcoming and a second manuscript complete, he firmly identifies as a narrador. Historians tell us who won battles, where history’s thrust re-drew borders. Poets tell us what it was like to be alive during it all. In this moment of rupture, we need both. With this piece, the writer offers it to us.
to giordano bruno plaza
translated from the Spanish
1
each migrant camp
is a mexico city
a barrio of long roads
not a dismembered body
but the sacrificial altar
a better not look
or you’ll lose yourself
and once you’re inside
it’s hard to leave, mi hermano
2
giordano bruno –
i don’t know much about him
just that he led a migrant’s life
he read the heavens & they arrested him
tore off his clothes burned him alive
children play between
the half-hundred tents
of his plaza-hostel
in may’s late afternoon sun
3
they draw
and ask for
flesh tone
five years of life
ten percent of it
de viaje
their fingers
heavy with
jungles borders hangnails
which they pinch off
while they ask me
for flesh tone
4
madre
solo hay una
patria
a ratos
5
one june fifth, across a restless sleep,
giordano bruno awoke, a migrant
he lay on his back
on a hard pallet
his convex belly furrowed with lesions
he raised his head
& saw his evictor
one breath away
6
last night they dismantled the camp
scrubbed pavement
& empty benches
bruno burns again
the city is the pyre
7
according to witness accounts,
not one of bruno’s bones remain:
every last one
migrated
8
with the rib He took from man,
God made migrants
to build cities &
traverse plains;
you see them even today
burning in the plazas
9
their steps
are already
powdered earth
their ashes
wander
still
10
i saw a man
in a cloud of opaque smoke
burned, perhaps, of polyester
or cardboard
remains of pallets
old tarps
beaten blankets
broken backpacks
fourth-hand shoes
if he smokes
donations in kind
they aren’t wasted:
they merge with his blood
& people his body
in this way everything,
even ordinary things,
migrate
y llegan a los estados unidos
hechos humo
opaque smoke
11
and you
if you sat & rested there
if you leaned your body on its stone walls
if you even passed la giordano
he marked you
you carry his ashes back to wherever you come from
now half unsure
half wanderer
you half-arrive
wherever he sends you
a la plaza giordano bruno
1
cada campamento migrante
es una ciudad de méxico
un barrio de lejanías
no es un cuerpo desmembrado
es el altar de sacrificios
es un mejor no mires
no vaya a ser que te halles
y una vez adentro
es difícil salir, mi hermano
2
giordano bruno
no sé mucho de él
sólo que llevó una vida migrante
que leyó los cielos y acabó detenido
desnudo quemado
su plaza alberga
media centena de carpas
niños juegan entre ellas
bajo los atardeceres de mayo
3
dibujan
y piden
el color carne
tienen cinco años de vida
y un diez por ciento
de viaje
sus dedos
cargan
selvas fronteras padrastros
que se arrancan a pellizcos
mientras me piden
el color carne
4
madre
sólo hay una
patria
a ratos
5
un 5 de junio, tras un sueño intranquilo,
giordano bruno despertó convertido en migrante
estaba echado de espaldas
sobre un duro jergón
y, al alzar la cabeza, sobre su vientre convexo,
surcado por callosidades,
vio que estaba a un paso
de ser desalojado
6
anoche deshicieron el campamento
suelos refregados
bancas vacías
bruno arde de nuevo
la ciudad es la pira
7
según testigos del lugar,
de G.B. no quedó ni un hueso:
todos y cada uno
migraron
8
con el fémur que sacó del hombre,
Dios hizo al migrante
para fundar pueblos y
recorrer llanos;
los ves aún hoy
ardiendo en las plazas
9
sus pasos
ya son
polvo
pero
sus cenizas
aún
viajan
10
vi a un migrante
fumarse un humo opaco
hecho quizá de poliéster
pero también de cartones
restos de pallet
lonas viejas
cobijas transpiradas
mochilas rotas
donativos en especie
y zapatos de cuarta mano;
si se los fuma
es para no desperdiciar:
pasarán a su sangre
y poblarán su cuerpo
así todos
hasta los objetos
migran
y llegan a los estados unidos
hechos humo
humo opaco
11
y a ti
si te sentaste en ella
si te recargaste en sus muros
si pasaste siquiera por la giordano
entonces te marcó
y cargas sus cenizas a otros lares
ahora eres medio incierto
medio errante
y llegarás a medias
a donde sea que te mande
Jorge Ríos is an immigration attorney and multi-genre writer from Monterrey, Mexico. His debut historical novel, Viento del oeste, is forthcoming from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León Press in 2025. English translations of his poems have appeared in International Poetry Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review. He was a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s competition for writing on immigration, and was awarded a residency at Under the Volcano, where he now serves as Director of Operations.
Ivy Raff is the author of What Remains/Qué queda (Editorial DALYA, forthcoming 2026), a bilingual English/Spanish poetry collection that won the Alberola International Poetry Prize, and Rooted and Reduced to Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Poems and translations appear in such noted journals as Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, Iron Horse Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Electric Literature, and International Poetry Review, as well as anthologies London Independent Story Prize Anthology (LISP, 2023), and Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize Annual (Aesthetica, 2023). Her Best of the Net-nominated work has garnered support from the Colgate Writers’ Conference, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the New York Mills Cultural Center, and Under the Volcano. Ivy serves artist communities as MacDowell’s Senior Digital Systems Strategist.
26 November 2025
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