BEATRIZ ALCAINE'S LA LUNA VISION

Gaudi's Casa Batlló

On a recent trip to Europe, I stopped in Madrid to catch up with my former student, Sonia Megias, a marvelous original poet of musical composition, whose scores are often a feast for the eyes as well as a festival of sound. She was a marvelous host, introducing me to the joys and madness of Madrid. I had mentioned I would like to take a day trip to Barcelona, and she accompanied me on the high-speed train connecting the two cities. The wonders of Barcelona were overwhelming, and my experience in roaming through the home Casa Batlló built by the architect and artist Antoni Gaudi is worth a separate description in a later entry. But after a scenic ride through Barcelona that was being whipped by severe wind gusts, we managed to end up at Gaudi's masterpiece, and Sonia had arranged for us to meet her friend, Beatriz, after we finished touring the house---a magnificent home built without blueprints, just Gaudi on the scene, directing everything to be sculpted and handmade on the spot. It was under the intoxication of this tour, that I met Beatriz, who was waiting for us outside the Gaudi House. It has started to rain lightly, so we ran to a nearby bar with outside seating and the cover of umbrellas. We managed to order drinks and a few small dishes, but the weather became more intense, and we finally sought refuge in a taxi that took us to a small coffee place Beatriz knew that was near the Train Station.

Beatriz, John, & Sonia at Train Station in Barcelona

Our conversation was magical, and I saw why Sonia had wanted us to meet. Beatriz was thinking about starting a business connected to wellness and well-being, and I told her of Jeju Island, where I had lived for awhile. 5000 years ago, the first Emperor of China sent an emissary, Seobul,  to Jeju in search of plants and animals that might provide the means to health and immortality. Seobul spend many years there, and found all manner of natural elements and plants to improve and extend life, and promote the general well-being of a people. I lived at the foot of a sacred mountain, Sanbangsan, and I could feel the spiritual energy emanating from that area.  This was the area where Seobul lived and pursued his research. I had thought of Jeju as being a home for an Institute for Arts Collaboration that sought to promote wellness and well-being.

Soon, it became time to catch the last train to Madrid. Beatriz was leaving also for a town nearby Barcelona. The rain stopped briefly, enough for us to hurry to our train, which returned to Madrid, arriving around 1 a.m.

During the train ride, I reflected on our conversation.  I learned that Beatriz had come to Spain from El Salvadore, where she had run a cafe, a hangout for artists and literati, La Luna Casa y Arte. This had become a haven for cultural and political exchange and collaboration.  Even then, I was planning a newsletter, and I was determined to learn more about Beariz's adventure and why it came to an end. But perhaps more importantly, the creative vortex of events that led to the establishment of this movement needed to be better known.

Caught up in crime and  events of San Salvador, Beatriz Alcaine's family lived in exile in Mexico, but in 1983, as she, at age 17, along with her younger sister, Isabel Cristina, visited their Grandmother, they were kidnapped by the government and brutally tortured. This became an international incident and the U.S. Government intervened to secure their release, but not without difficulty. Even today, El Salvador continues to be in the news, being the source of violent MS-13 Gangs nested in various locales in the United States committing violence and selling drugs. It was the renewal of violence that finally led to the closing of La Luna Casa y Arte in 2012 and escaping to Spain.

From 1979 to 1991, civil war raged in El Salvador. This was a time of extreme violence and devastation in El Salvador, and the young poet, Carolyn Forché had come to this country caught in the glare political controversy in the United States. Leonel Gómez Vides drove all the way from there, with his two daughters, to Forché's home in California.   Forché had not known Gómez, but he was a cousin of Claribel Alegría, a Salvadorian poet exiled in Spain, whose work Forché, had been translating, and whom she had visited in Mallorca.

In 1978, Forché traveled to El Salvadore on a Guggenheim Fellowship. She stayed in El Salvador with Beatriz's mother. From her experiences in the shattering miasma of cruelty and dismemberment, Forché published The Country Between Us in 1981, a powerful publication became that rarity: a book of poems that becomes a bestseller. These poems chronicle her experience in El Salvador and reinforce the conversation with Gómez when after describing the desperate situation of his country, Forché suggested he should get a journalist, someone with training to deal with the complexities of the country. He replied he wanted a poet.

Beatriz and her sister had been held hostage and tortured by the Salvadorian government. They were lucky to be released alive when the U.S. Government intervened. But what happen to Beatriz and her sister was an example of violence erupting as Gómez had prophesied to Forché "War is coming," and Forché recounts these epic moments in her recent book What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Press, 2019.)
For a dozen years violence raged in the war that caused the flight of so many people, caught in the rage and cruelty of warring factions. It may be difficult to understand the depth of despair that prevailed, but this was countered by a sense of hope as exiles returned to El Salvadore, among them, Beatriz Alcain who had studied in France and had a rich history of performance and pursuit of the arts.
Bea, as she is known to all her friends, was searching for a way to establish a positive force for the arts. She had no money as family funds had been depleted by 12 years of civil war. When she returned to her country after the war, she had only the legacy of her family home, and the germ of an idea to create and establish a place for artists and musicians to renew their country through  collaboration to express a new era of creativity and freedom. It is only from the perspective of the sheer desperation of a country depleted of its resources, energy, and vision, that we can understand the emergence of a cultural phenomenon such as La Luna Casa y Arte.

Bea recalls:

With the advent of peace in El Salvador,  many exiles returned. One afternoon I was sitting all by myself in that house...and suddenly I had this daydream...I could see a piano...and then I could feel the music all over the house, and saw colors on the wall...and....yes... That is what I have to do... I ran to my friend, an architect, and a writer friend... it should be an enterprise... created with a multi-talent teamed ...a Composer came,  and a Photographer, and a Ballet Dancer who worked with women... and a Painter... they were from the right or left...but we gathered people from both sides... it was like many circles all interlocked.... these students became the artists ...we started with $7000 and I donated the house.... and then we continued for 21 years....

There was cultural arts fair planned, and we wanted to open during this fair... we created a temporary space... incredible space and recruited everyone.... a lot of people... started with a stamp of a new address... a very organic place... started as a cultural space at first. La Luna....feminine energies for San Salvador also... funny place to go...to go to the Moon......we were not the center...we were on the outside... we apparently were not cultural enough because the arts fair excluded La Luna House and Arts... our open space through time and imagination...

Many spaces for dance, music, workshops for kids... a bar and a kitchen...First night instead of the 40 expected, we were overwhelmed with more than 250....different ideologies meeting... it became a place of reconciliation and respect.... 21 years it lasted... we never received funds... we did it on our own.

We began the adventure of La Luna Casa y Arte in 1991.  It was a meeting ground of not only artists, writers and musicians of El Salvador, but also artists from around the world often visited and contributed to the cultural scene.  It was a time of hope and fulfillment. But after two decades, El Salvador slid back into the despair of a new tyranny of gang violence. 

In 2012, El Salvadore experienced widespread violence through highly organized gangs, and it was no longer safe for Beatriz to remain in the country as women were often the target of violence. She knew it was time to leave.

Beatriz carefully timed the closing of  La Luna Casa y Arte to coincide with the ending of the Mayan Calendar... December 21, 2012 completing a cycle of creativity, consilience and reconciliation unparalleled in the history of El Salvador, and special for all those who created and participated in that moment in time.