Laura Lomas ‘‘The War Cut Out My Tongue’’: Domestic Violence, Foreign Wars, and Translation in Demetria Martínez We always had a hard time getting the Atlacatl soldiers to take prisoners instead of ears.—Visiting professor at the School of the Americas, Newsweek, 26 January 1990 I refused to believe that what I was seeing was a pattern of scars, the legend to the map of his life—1982, some- one had branded those numbers into his back.—Demetria Martínez, Mother Tongue (1994) This empire fears translation.—Amy Kaplan, Presidential address to the American Studies Association, 17 October 2003 F or her work in 1987 as a reporter covering Salva- doran refugees seeking U.S. Sanctuary, Demetria Martínez was in- dicted on charges of conspiracy. Having successfully defended her- self, she continues to write about the effects of war on language. 1 Her poems, fiction, and essays courageously question the longstand- ing myth of the United States as a new beginning, an inclusive social order, a nation that provides protection against—rather than per- petrates—terror. A preoccupation with language informs the alter- natives Martínez imagines to the shrill anti-immigrant claim that Americans must dream strictly in English. Marked by expansion and annexation, language complements class, race, sex, and citizenship as a shaping discourse of American culture. 2 Our attention to linguistic difference can help us decipher imperialism’s scars and may render more subtle and trenchant our critique of terrorism, especially U.S.- sponsored terrorism in the Americas and around the globe. 3 American Literature, Volume 78, Number 2. June 2006. DOI 10.1215/00029831-2006-006 © 2006 by Duke University Press. Tseng 2006.2.20 08:13 7594 AMERICAN LITERATURE / 78:2 / sheet 155 of 228