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Guachipilín in the

Miracle Corner
Art and Literature

Victor Manuel Cantely Sardiñas
Poet and actor
Havana, Cuba

I

magine the gigantic puppet from the Bread
and Puppets Theater, the passacaglia (parading) kind. Yet, this one’s size is for a tableau
and is handled by two actors. Its arms move via
wires. It is indescribable, or at least incomprehensible, if narrated that way, with no visuals or references, so it could explain itself. Its magic, its
communicative power rests in its aesthetics as a
wooden fetish-idol-statuette-sculpture. Ayágguna

— the storyteller, the warrior storyteller. Class
struggle, Central American resistance of ancestral
cultures as they face the “water thieves.” All this
is part of those stories they tell boys and girls, for
men and women of any country at any latitude—
through the marionette and his legendary world.
Without reservation, one of the actresses with the
Mayan profile and African lips acknowledges the

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