By Lisbeth Coiman
In Günter Grass’ Post WWII German novel, The Tin Drum, the chapter “The Onion Cellar” reveals the emotional struggle of an entire country grappling with the guilt of their most recent history. I imagine the cellar to be no larger than a dive bar with stairs leading to a dungeon-like space with round tables, where post-war Germans went daily to drink, peel onions, and cry. In my reading, the onion represents the layers of guilt the Germans had to work through to understand their role in the Holocaust even though in the bar they continue to see themselves as regular citizens, devout Christians who did not really know about the crimes committed by the Nazis.
It took several generations after WWII, for Germans to fully comprehend the slow erosion of democracy: the creation of paramilitary squads to intimidate any budding dissent among the general population; the effort to keep neighbors against neighbors creating divisions instead of dialogue; the role of propaganda to brainwash the population; the political maneuvers to perpetuate power in the hands of the Nazi party; the handout of favors, lavish parties, and gifts to collaborators and sympathizers; lucrative contracts for the industry favoring for the party. Some eventually understood that they had sold their soul to the devil to survive.
Post-war German art is heavy with guilt.
Venezuelans wrestle with guilt too. I recognized it when a friend told me, almost in a confessional tone that he regretted voting for Chavez, for believing in him. “He threw sand in my eyes,” my friend said.
The die-hard Chavistas who sworn to defend Chavez with their lives held onto their somehow privileged political positions until oil money ran out, and they, too, began to question the moral fabric of the “revolution.” By then it was too late to save the country, so they jumped ship and emigrated. The guilt and finger pointing runs rampant in the Venezuelan diaspora.
Like Post WWII Germans, and Venezuelans today, Americans will have to reckon with current history and our role in it.
We are witnessing a “regime-in-the-making.” A quick look at the history of any totalitarian regime is enough to find all the signs of a democracy in demise. Every absurdity has been carefully planned to make the followers laugh, the opposition cringe, and keep the megalomaniac omnipresent in the media. I dare to say, the goal is to produce enough political unrest to the point of chaos to justify the cancelation or postponement of elections in November.
The great majority of people in this country believe themselves good citizens, church going, good neighbors, hard-working individuals. Some who would have died with a knife in their throats for Sanders, but not for their nation. Some stopped believing in the system; others allowed robots to drive the conversation on social media; the great majority just joked about the demagogue’s enlarged ego. Never forget the devout Christians, bless their hearts, who voted against the possibility of an abortion, but didn’t care much about the death of democracy. Like Venezuelans twenty years ago, some thought this will never fly. And yet it did.
The worst are those who continued to give a demagogue starving for attention a platform on mass media because people were watching and numbers were more relevant than the future of the country.
Four years later, we are now at this point. We are rightfully worried and horrified at the outrageous efforts by the White House to undermine democratic process, repeatedly attempting to toss out votes . The peak of this anti-democracy campaign recorded on video when a group of domestic terrorist try to derail the campaign bus of his opponent.
The nation is swinging in the pendulum of cold war era ideologies, accusing each other of communist and imperialist while funeral homes run out of space for the bodies waiting for burial.
Have we sold our soul to the devil to keep our slice of privilege intact? As my friend Angela Franklin points out, “whiteness will not protect you.”
This is happening on our watch whether we were always aware or not. The history books are going to say 330 million Americans let this happen. Twenty years down the road, when the Canadians need to invade the USA to free us from a brutal dictator, we will all sit in dive bars called the Onion Cellar to peel our eight layers of guilt, and cry.
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator, and adult teacher. Her work has been published in Spectrum, Cultural Weekly, Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches ESL and dances salsa.