Remembering Maggi Popkin

Jennifer Casolo

May 22, 2005

Dear family and friends of Maggie,

I am unable to be with you this afternoon--to hug each other and to cry and to tell Maggie stories and to feel her presence in the wind. I am thousands of miles away at another memorial for a friend´s deceased mother, but I will hold all of you in my heart today.

Let me share just a little of who Maggie was to me, how her friendship transformed my life, and what I wish I had said to her in the years since I left El Salvador.

I arrived in El Salvador in March of 1985. The community of North Americans was smaller in those days--it seemed as though we all knew each other -human rights workers, progressive journalists, and church workers-and we helped keep each other both politically informed and emotionally saneŠor as sane as one could be amidst the terror.

Maggie knew my co-worker, Linda Garrett from Los Angeles and so was one of the first other North Americans that I met. I was the young kid on the block, just 23. Maggie was in her 30s, and I was something of a loose cannon--too ingenuous, spontaneous, impassioned to take the proper security precautions. But what Maggie offered me, is what she offered so many of us--unconditional acceptance. Combined with her brilliant, analytical mind she possessed a deep understanding of human weakness and so she didn't write people off for one mistake or ill-placed comment.

She said she was looking for someone to jog in the early mornings--jog in civil war El Salvador. I quickly volunteered. I don't know how much real exercise we got. Our pace was slow and the 5:30 am encounters quickly became times to share personal dilemmas or political discoveries. Maggie was one of the first people to help lay out a road map of the various NGOs, labor unions, cooperatives and other political forces for me. Some mornings she would share the testimony of a political prisoner she had interviewed, sometime I would have a new information from one of the churches or government offices. She would counsel me on my foibles, advise me as to who to approach and how, explain where conflict of interests turned into a mine field. She guided me without being asked--not with some hidden agenda or condescending superiority, but with an understanding of how hard it was to navigate the Salvadoran political geography. And perhaps I sometimes had a piece of personal advice about the sea of emotions we encountered. During those mornings, I felt that Maggie let me embrace her exceptional mind and generous heart as well as her places of fragility--how acceptance seemed in those days so earnestly sought and so hard to come by.

Those runs wove a friendship that time and distance could not tear. Often accompanied by a beautiful rose-gold sky and a wistfulness in our voices, those runs were a time when our feet could move forward even as we admitted to one another how incredibly impotent we felt before the death and cruelty strewn by the U.S.-sponsored war.

As I write this the tears come--I can picture Maggie cocking her head a little to the side and cracking a slight smile that often conveyed that she knew much more than she was saying. I remember trying to put the Maggie I knew together with her stories of New England days in hand made long cotton skirts

Holidays, birthdays, moments when friends were arrested--these are the times we shared--as I am sure everyone is mentioning. And I remember the day she first told me that she was thinking of being a single mother. As child of a single mother, I was frightened for her--but wanted to support her decision. Maggie chose to believe in a better world--and to be part of bringing one to birth by uncovering the hidden injustice. In her faith that the world could be better, she decided with strength and courage that she could bear and raise a child. How happy we all were at her baby shower, and how we celebrated when Damian was born. How he brought new smiles to so many of us! And then I left El Salvador...Damian only a toddler.

Many years later when I stayed with Maggie and Damian at their home in Takoma Park and met this vivacious boy who chatted with his mom and guests with great ease. I felt that mother and son had given birth to one another. That all the beauty in Maggie had surfaced--nothing hidden, that Maggie's quick mind invited Damian to always verbalize what he though or felt and that Damian with his love for sports and high energy pushed Maggie beyond herself in ways she never imagined.

And now four years have passed--and I didn't tell Maggie all of the above, nor did I tell her that her book was assigned to me for reading in graduate school at her alma mater, UC Berkeley. But I want to tell you--and I want to tell that part of Maggie that lives in each of us.

There was a time in El Salvador of great hope, great commitment, great risk, and great tenderness. Maggie was shaped by and helped to shape that time. In truth that time exists as does Maggie in the hearts of sooooooo many of us foreigners and Salvadorans.

Maybe to end this reflection I would rework one of the songs to the martyrs,,,

With you Maggie, there are thousands that have died
Valuable compañeros that truly loved
With you Maggie the best ones have already left us
Those who fell for our freedom...

Maggie´s life was a life dedicated to freedom, may she live in us as we continue that path.

I love you, Maggie

Jennifer Casolo

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