Rematriation is Life

(Trigger warning: loss, suicide.)

On this last day of this moon cycle before the April 8th, 2024 New Moon/ Solar Eclipse, I reflect on the brief intersection between the rematriation journey of Darshan Elena Campos and my own. A brief crossing, brief sharing of space, first cybernetically, then in person for a series of months. We spoke hours before having ever met in person. Shared about the sea, Cofresí, ancestors, abolition, seeds.

It has taken me a month virtually, since first learning Darshan had gone missing, to begin really processing. At first, I reached out to folks they shared space with at CucubaNación, where Darshan had participated in various workshops, rematriation conversations, and distributed seeds and plants. Checking in to see if folks were okay, I didn’t realize till weeks later that it was my own way of not having to check in with myself. If I could focus on others, it would give me some time to process all that happened.

I did share a post, and for all I shared there, and what I hadn’t shared before, parts of it shared today in a new podcast episode, there are still those deepest parts that will be kept sacred. The parts I saw and knew of Darshan. What I witnessed/ witness in others. What I witnessed/ still witness in myself, in my mother. The shedding, the breaking, the transforming.

“Rematriation sibling” Meli, from who I am borrowing this beautiful term, called it initiation. And for every initiation, we juggle those parts we hope to share with those we must hold sacred, secret, dear. The ceremony/ wisdom made privy only to those crossing these “sands submerged” as I describe in the Rematriating Borikén Manifesto. Even still some of the parts revealed to each other became too much to bear.

Weeks ago I told myself, call Darshan. Do that interview. Document their story.  

I should’ve known. Spirit was nudging. Time was ticking.

Darshan’s story remains, I hope, in WhatsApp backups of random videos and rants. In art installations and all sorts of things. Videos sent of artesanos in Cabo Rojo. Abolition proclamations on incarcerated young men being led in school buses to trim weeds en carreteras municipales. PDF documents on rematriation and photo references of sarobey and other Indigenous plant medicine.

In that manifesto I speak to crossing the abyss, passing “the tragic remains of our ancestors whose spirits stay knowing and glowing like cosmic beings in starry blackness.”  We lost Darshan last month. It is said they had communicated a desire to leave with the sea. Asked that folks respect this decision. Leave with the sea as so many of our ancestors had done.

Of course. Something so sinister, so epic. So Ophelia. So Pablo Yandá—as cimarrón-turned-mangle-zapatero, setting foot across waters, home to Africa while being killed by the enslavers as Ana Lydia Vega writes in her book Celita y el Mangle Zapatero. So darn Darshan… Sweet, sinister, intense.

In these last weeks memories bubble up to the surface. The lunch spread before me when Darshan showed up at CucubaNación for a meeting last summer. I couldn’t stop eating those curried garbanzos. I have since tried repeatedly to recreate them, failing each time. I think of going to their favorite Mexican restaurant, the one that makes the fresh tortillas.

I sat with Karla at Bo.ka.do down the block. We sip tea and are just perplexed wondering how it all happened, what happened. Karla shares how Darshan would visit the restaurant and water all the plants.

We all have seeds. Darshan spread a vast community of them before leaving.

Messages come in from across the archipelago, beyond. By the time I was actually asked to hold space for someone, I had nothing more to give. What failed? What went wrong? What did we do, not do as a collective? One of us is gone and reasons seem to loom over everyone.

Right as the news hit, an image of a dear memory, a beautiful rematriation gathering, pops up in my memories triggering a social media post which I share here:

“These could be synchronicities. I think for Darshan there were many intentional intricacies. The sea is a place of both solace and solemnity. We know the charge of so many ancestors whose remains lay at the bottom of the saltwaters surrounding this archipelago, this whole Caribbean basin. There are intricacies in some reporting Darshan not having been seen since March 1st, day in which our revolutionaries stormed the US capitol in 1954. There are intricacies in my receiving the news on March 8th, International Women’s Day, that Darshan had gone missing. All deliberate dates. Darshan was misunderstood by many, flowing energies like water as sweet love to lava as rage in seconds. Feeling and raging at all the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, of patriarchy, of colonialism, of racism.

Rematriation cracks us open like seed husks before we are sent sprouting, flourishing. Some of us get to sprout. Some of us soar. Some of struggle, succumb. Rematriation is not romance. This quest to restore our essence before conquest, before colonialism ravaged it, runs counter to the patriarchal, white supremacist colonial system. To embody rematriation is to walk held and accompanied by the land, its trees, surrounding waters and ancestors, by the skies and the stars and simultaneously misunderstood, judged, rejected by your own people. Not all people but enough to keep your heart perpetually broken. I stopped those meetings because it was too heavy to meet the collective of our community, the magnitude of our needs, the limited resources, the desperation of survival mode that many of us are thrust into. For the ways, for this sacrifice, this ideal, that we eat shit, take shit, give shit, persist in harm, harm others or harm our own selves. We are a microcosm of this human condition, one that resounds acutely when displaced, again and again. Sent from our ancestral home to colonizer conquered territories and beyond and choosing to displace ourselves again with a complicated journey home that some of us don’t even know.

Some say we defected. Some say we don’t belong anywhere. Some say we are instable, unsustainable, idealistic dreamers. All of it might be true. What is also true is that for many of us this is a necessary sacrifice, not a choice. What is also true is that rematriation is deep soul work, a matter of life and death. Darshan set out into the water, walked the sandy beds submerged like ancestors setting on a reverse journey home. Perhaps that home was the resting place of the ancestors. Perhaps it was the longing for the saltwater womb where we curled as warm fetuses floating, confined, held and simultaneously suspended and free. May this journey guide Darshan towards the peace, the justice, the freedom of all dreams. And may those of us still journeying here find our footing, root, sprout, flower, flourish and rain on these islands as seeds.”

And so on this last day of this moon cycle before the April 8th, 2024 New Moon/ Solar Eclipse, I just posted the third episode of the new Podcast. It is dedicated to Darshan Elena Campos. It is a reflection on rematriation as life. A reminder that “wellness is the weapon”, that self-love, self-care and self-preservation must be prioritized before any ideal, any move. Let this be the energy we carry forward into the new moon cycle and post eclipses, together with gratitude for light exchanged and lessons learned.

Brooklyn-born & raised/ Borikén-based artist, writer, cultural organizer, Yasmín Hernández roots her work in rematriation and liberation practices and is the founder of CucubaNación, a community art space dedicated to Boricua bioluminescence.