A una anciana

Venga, madre— 
         su rebozo arrastra telaraña negra
         y sus enaguas le enredan los tobillos;
apoya el peso de sus años
en trémulo bastón y sus manos temblorosas
empujan sobre el mostrador centavos sudados.
¿Aún todavía ve, viejecita,
la jara de su aguja arrastrando colores?
         Las flores que borda
         con hilazas de a tres-por-diez
no se marchitan tan pronto como las hojas del tiempo.
         ¿Qué cosas recuerda?
Su boca parece constantemente saborear
los restos de años rellenos de miel.
         ¿Dónde están los hijos que parió?
¿Hablan ahora solamente inglés
y dicen que son hispanos?
         Sé que un día no vendrá
         a pedirme que le que escoja
         los matices que ya no puede ver.
Sé que esperaré en vano
         su bendición desdentada.
Miraré hacia la calle polvorienta
refrescada por alas de paloma
hasta que un chiquillo mugroso me jale de la manga
y me pregunte:
                                    — Señor, jau mach is dis? --

To an Old Woman

Come, mother— 
         your rebozo trails a black web
         and your hem catches on your heels,
you lean the burden of your years
on shaky cane, and palsied hand pushes
sweat-grimed pennies on the counter.
Can you still see, old woman,
the darting color-trailed needle of your trade?
         The flowers you embroider
         with three-for-a-dime threads
cannot fade as quickly as the leaves of time.
         What things do you remember?
Your mouth seems to be forever tasting
the residue of nectar hearted years.
Where are the sons you bore?
         Do they speak only English now
         and say they’re Spanish?
One day I know you will not come
and ask for me to pick
the colors you can no longer see.
         I know I’ll wait in vain
for your toothless benediction.
         I’ll look into the dusty street
         made cool by pigeons’ wings
until a dirty kid will nudge me and say:
                  “Señor, how mach ees thees?”
 
 — RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ
© 2022 BY RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ

Nací y me creé en El Paso, Texas con familia a través del Río Bravo en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua y la identidad se convertía cada vez más en un problema. El español era mi primera lengua y hasta los mediados de los 1960s cuando me convertí en chicano, era simplemente mexicano aunque sabía que era ciudadano de los Estados Unidos de América. Aun hoy en día cuando se me pregunta, “¿Qué eres?” mi respuesta inmediata es “mexicano” aunque cuando estoy más alerta digo, “Chicano.” Aunque cuando se me pregunta, “Cual es tu ciudadanía” no titubeo en absoluto.
 
No aprendí inglés hasta los siete en la escuela pública Lamar y a principio no fue fácil. Ya leía y escribía básicamente en español y el sonido impredecible de las mismas letras en inglés me confundía. Estuve en la oscuridad la mayor parte del tiempo. Un día mi madre con mi hermanito me acompañó a la escuela y se fueron a casa de mis abuelos a unas cuadras de distancia. Me encontré en un patio de recreo totalmente vacío, las puertas de la escuela cerradas. Estuve aterrorizado. Caminé de regreso a una casa vacía. Me senté en el portal confundido, asustado, sólo hasta que mi madre y abuela vinieron con mi hermanito y me cubrieron de abrazos y besos. La maestra había anunciado un día de fiesta pero yo no había entendido.
 
No ayudaba que fuéramos castigados si se nos escuchaba hablar español en la aula, los corredores o el patio de recreo. Si le preguntábamos a un compañero de clase, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” se nos hacía pararnos en un rincón o nos mantenían después de clase. Tengo la distinción de haber reprobado el primer grado. Sobresalía en dibujo y pintura y recuerdo a una amable maestra, la Sra. Hall en cuarto grado, que me elogió y animó. Pero el director recomendó que mis padres nos llevaran a mí y a mi hermano Arturo (dos años menor que yo) a la Escuela Bailey para niños “retrasados.”
 
Mi padre lo hizo y el director de la Escuela Bailey que no pudo habernos tenido allí más de treinta minutos, le dijo a mi padre que no pertenecíamos allí y recomendó que nos cambiara de escuela. Mis padres se endeudaron y compraron su primera y única casa para que pudiéramos cambiar de distritos e ir a la escuela pública Morehead donde nuestros problemas desaparecieron. (Dos maestras se destacan: la Sra. Patricia Robinson, maestra de arte que hablaba excelente español e invitaba a algunos estudiantes a su casa para dibujar y pintar. Y la Srta. Mary Hignett, maestra de inglés, con quien hice amigos en mis años universitarios hasta su muerte.)

Para entonces en 1950 me había ajustado, aculturado si quiere; no fui asimilado (lo que para mí tiene la connotación de ser masticado, tragado y digerido). Para mí, el lenguaje ha sido una piedra de toque de asimilación. El indio mexicano yo había sido asimilado hacía mucho tiempo; mi abuelo materno Papanito, don Diego González Sosa a excepción por su color y facciones y su decir que éramos indio no hablaba lengua indígena para indicarlo sino solo un castellano formal. El mexicano mestizo yo, no así. Fui bendecido con padres, Jesús Fidel González de Coahuila y Carmen González Prieto de Durango, (traídos a los EE.UU. a los 13 y 12 años respetivamente) quienes siempre insistieron en que habláramos y escribiéramos tanto en español como en inglés. Tomé cursos en español durante la escuela secundaria y me gradué de la universidad con un bachillerato en literatura inglesa con suficientes horas en literatura española para una doble especialización. En una ironía del destino, he pasado la mayor parte de mi vida como profesor de inglés en universidades y colegios.
 
Resistir la asimilación es una lucha, especialmente en un imperio que impone su hegemonía (militar, económica, política, lingüística, cultural) en el mundo. Toda mi vida he tenido que defender aun mi nombre. Personas que deberían saber más insisten en escribir Rafael, Raphael (la ph no existe en español), omitir los acentos en Jesús y González y escribir González con S. Y algunos han tenido el descaro de dirigirse a mí como Ralph, entre ellos S. I. Hayakawa, un lingüista japonés-canadiense, firme oponente a la educación bilingüe y fundador del movimiento “Solo Inglés” para hacer el inglés el idioma oficial de los Estados Unidos.
 
Por supuesto que la asimilación implica mucho más que el nombre y la lengua materna de uno. Las presiones para asimilarse son grandes en los EE.UU. y se logra grado a grado por lo que sea que uno emprenda: educación, profesión, activismo político, participación social. Pero, como con la conquista de las Américas, se debe resistir. La pregunta es, ¿en que medida? Para mí una línea de identidad que se debe respetar es mi nombre y mi lengua materna aunque reconozco que algunos de mis compatriotas chicanos que más se resisten a la asimilación se les dieron nombres en inglés al nacer y se les enseñó sólo inglés por padres ansiosos por asimilarse para tratar de salvar a sus hijos de la discriminación virulenta, el racismo, endémico de los EE.UU.
 
Dos razones principales por las que vine a la Bahía de San Francisco fueron su sistema de colegios comunitarios. En el Colegio Laney, Oakland donde enseñe durante treinta años, muchos de mis estudiantes hablaban español, ebonics (dialecto africano-estadounidense), cantonés, japonés, tagalo, pachuco, náhuatl, quechua, un idioma maya y otras lenguas demasiadas para listar. En mis clases siempre enfaticé que enseñaría inglés estándar, no como un sustituto del idioma o idiomas que ya conocían sino simplemente como uno más para agregar. En muchos lugares y situaciones, como en su hogar, barrios, iglesia, su lengua materna serviría excelentemente bien. Al mismo tiempo, en otros lugares como la academia, el trabajo, la política, el banco, el inglés estándar sería un instrumento para abrir puertas que de otro modo estarían cerradas para ell@s. Cuídense y eviten los falso dilemas, les decía a mis alumn@s. Cuando se me pregunta si quiero helado de vainilla o de chocolate, respondo que sí, por favor, tomaré de los dos.
 
La resistencia terca, a veces vehemente, a la educación bilingüe en los EE.UU. solía desconcertarme. Cada idioma es un mundo en una Tierra compartida, una forma particular de formar una realidad, una aventura de la consciencia humana. ¿Por qué negar a l@s niñ@s un segundo idioma a una edad en la que pueden aprenderlo tan fácilmente? ¿Por qué insistir en la ignorancia?
 
Ahora me desconcierta menos. El excepcionalismo, como el narcisismo, es una identidad frágil que no tolera la variedad, las comparaciones. Prefiere un mundo en su imagen, su propia marca de realidad, su hegemonía. El excepcionalismo insiste en la “pureza” de raza, de política, de religión, de cultura, de idioma, etc. Celoso de sus propias fronteras, el excepcionalismo no vacila en violar las de los demás. Insiste en la asimilación, o si no . . . Se podría decir que el idioma es el aspecto más importante de la identidad, no solo de la nación, sino a menudo de la clase social. El objetivo de impartir clases sólo en inglés estándar en las escuelas públicas es, por supuesto, la estandarización, la homogeneización y la asimilación que son requisitos del estado nación en el que el angloamericano se considera el estándar étnico.
 
No soy partidario del estado nación; prefiero mucho más el estado multinacional, y por mucho que haya resistencia a él, históricamente violenta y genocida, los Estados Unidos es en hecho tal. No soy nacionalista. Cuando se me pregunta mi ciudadanía, lo más probable es que ahora responda, “del mundo”. O Berkeley (destinado a fronteras, la línea divisora entre la ciudad de Berkeley y la ciudad de Oakland pasa justo por el medio de mi casa así que preparo el desayuno en Berkeley y lo como en Oakland.)
 
Soy habitante de frontera; crecí sin creer en las fronteras. Me gustan las diferencias, soy tolerante con la contradicción, cómodo con la paradoja. Me gustan las distinciones pero también me gusta la mezcla, la difusión, las sombras y los matices. Entendí cuando mi cliente la viejita me pedía hilaza matizada para sus bordados.
 
En cuanto a mi escritura, negarme a sacrificar mi español no menos que mi nombre, me hace heredero de dos musas, hermanas congeniales, y no abandonaré la una por la otra. Nunca sé cual me hablará primero pero en cuanto una me da un verso, una frase, la otra inmediatamente me da su equivalente en la otra lengua, un diálogo, una discusión que afecta a cada versión tal que casi todos mis poemas son piezas únicas en dos lenguas, ninguna versión de la otra. Los editores a menudo no entienden el bilingüismo y preguntan que versión es la traducción de la otra, cual debe estar en cursiva. Parece desconcertarlos cuando digo que ni la una o la otra. Y aun más cuando insisto en que tampoco las palabras solas en el cuerpo del texto.
 
También podría notar que aunque respeto la mezcla, también me gustan las distinciones y que escribo tanto en inglés estadounidense bastante estándar como en español mexicano bastante estándar, cada uno por separado y distinto. Temo que esto no solo habla de mi identidad sino también de mi enseñanza y quizás de mi clase. Así sea el chicano que soy.
 
Pero hay que responderle a la pregunta del chiquillo en mi poema: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

by Rafael Jesús González

From my experience working there came my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” in 1959. I had formed a bond with a regular customer, a very elderly woman who often consulted me about embroidery floss to match or complement the colors of her exquisite embroidery. Beyond that, the poem is a work of my imagination. She did not trail a rebozo nor trip on her hems, nor did she pay for her purchases with “sweat-grimed pennies.” She could see well enough and our discussions of colors were purely aesthetic. I embellished her image for my own purposes as a writer and imagined a situation which might or might not have been hers to present a problem that had (has) always concerned me: assimilation.
 
I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, with family across the Río Bravo in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and identity increasingly became a problem. Spanish was my first language and, until about the mid 1960s when I became Chicano, I was simply Mexican though I knew that I was a citizen of the United States of America. Even today, when I am asked, “What are you?” my immediate response is “Mexican” though when I am more alert, I will say, “Chicano.” Though when I am asked, “What is your citizenship?” I do not hesitate at all.
 
I did not learn English until I was seven at Lamar Public School and at first it was not easy. I was already doing some basic reading and writing in Spanish and the unpredictable sound of the same letters in English confused me. I was in the dark most of the time. One day my mother with my little brother walked me to school and went on to my grandparents’ house a few blocks away. I found myself in a totally empty playground, doors of the school closed. I was terrified. I walked back home to an empty house. I sat on the porch confused, afraid, lonely until my mother and grandmother came with my little brother and covered me with abrazos and kisses. A holiday had been announced by the teacher, but I had not understood.
 
It did not help that we were punished if we were heard speaking Spanish in the classroom, the halls, or the playground. If we asked a classmate, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” we were made to stand in a corner or kept after school. I have the distinction of having failed first grade. I did excel in drawing and coloring and I recall a kind teacher Mrs. Hall in fourth grade who praised and encouraged me. But the principal recommended that my parents take me and my brother Arturo (two years younger that I) to Bailey School for “retarded” children.
 
My father did so and the principal at Bailey School who could not have kept us there more than thirty minutes or so, told my father that we did not belong there, and recommended that we change schools. My parents went into debt and bought their first and only house so that we could change districts and go to Morehead Public School where our problems vanished. (Two teachers stand out: Mrs. Patricia Robinson, art teacher, who spoke excellent Spanish and would invite a few students to her home on weekends to draw and paint. And Miss Mary Hignett, English teacher, with whom I became friends in my college years until her death.)

By then in 1950 I was adjusted, acculturated if you will; I was not assimilated (which to me has connoted being chewed, swallowed, and digested). For me, language has been a touchstone of assimilation. Mexican Indian me had long been assimilated; my maternal grandfather Papanito, don Diego González Sosa except for his color and features and his saying that we were indio spoke no indigenous language to indicate it, but only a formal castellano. Mexican mestizo me not so. I was blessed with parents, Jesús Fidel González of Coahuila and Carmen González Prieto of Durango (brought to the U.S. at 13 and 12, respectively), who always insisted that we speak and write both Spanish and English. I took Spanish courses throughout high school and graduated from college with a degree in English literature with enough hours in Spanish literature for a double major. In an irony of fate, I have spent most of my life as a professor of English in universities and colleges.
 
Resisting assimilation is a struggle, especially in an empire that imposes its hegemony (military, economic, political, linguistic, cultural) on the world. All my life I’ve had to defend even my name. Folk who should know better insist on spelling Rafael, Raphael (the ph does not exist in Spanish), leaving out the accents in Jesús and González, and spelling González with an S. And some have had the effrontery to address me as Ralph, among them S. I. Hayakawa, a Japanese-Canadian immigrant linguist, adamant opponent of bi-lingual education and founder of the English-only “U.S. English” movement to make English the official language of the United States.
 
Of course, assimilation involves much more than one’s name and one’s native tongue. The pressures to assimilate are great in the U.S. and it is accomplished by and to degrees by whatever one undertakes: schooling, profession, political activism—social involvement. But, as with the conquest of the Americas, it is to be resisted. The question is, to what degree. For me a line of identity to be respected is my name and my mother tongue though I recognize that some of my Chicanx compatriots most resisting assimilation were given English names at birth and taught only English by parents eager to assimilate to try to save their children from the virulent discrimination, racism, endemic to the U.S.
 
Two major reasons for my coming to San Francisco Bay were its community college system and the rich racial and ethnic variety of its people. At Laney College, Oakland where I taught for thirty years, many of my students spoke Spanish, Ebonics, Cantonese, Japanese, Tagalog, Pachuco, Nahuatl, Quechua, a Maya language, and other tongues too many to list. In my classes, I always emphasized that I would teach Standard English, not as a substitute for the language or languages they already knew but simply as another one to be added. In many places and situations such as in their home, ‘hoods, church, their native tongue would serve most excellently well. At the same time, in other places such as academia, work, politics, the bank, Standard English would be a tool to open doors otherwise closed to them. Beware of and avoid false dilemmas, I would say to my students. When asked if I wanted vanilla or chocolate ice-cream, I would reply, yes, please, I will have both.  
 
The mulish, sometimes vehement, resistance to bilingual education in the U.S. used to puzzle me. Each language is a world in a shared Earth, a particular way of shaping a reality, an adventure of human consciousness. Why deny children a second language at an age when they could so easily learn it? Why insist upon ignorance?
 
It now puzzles me less. Exceptionalism, like narcissism, is a fragile identity intolerant of variety, of comparisons. It prefers one world in its image, its own brand of reality, its hegemony. Exceptionalism insists on “purity” of race, politics, religion, culture, language, and so on. Jealous of its own borders, exceptionalism does not hesitate violating those of others. It insists on assimilation—or else. Language is arguably the single most important aspect of identity not only of nation but often of social class. The goal of teaching classes only in Standard English in public schools is of course standardization, homogenization, assimilation which are prerequisites of the nation state in which the Anglo-American is viewed as the ethnic standard.
 
I am not partisan of the nation state; I much prefer the multinational state, and much as there is resistance to it, historically violent and genocidal, the U.S. is in fact such. I am not a nationalist. When asked my citizenship, I would most likely now reply, “of the world.” Or Berkeley (destined to borders, the dividing line between the city of Berkeley and the city of Oakland runs right through the middle of my house so that I fix breakfast in Berkeley and eat it in Oakland).
 
I am a denizen of the border; I grew up disbelieving in borders. I like differences, am tolerant of contradiction, comfortable with paradox. I like distinctions but I also like the blending, the diffusion, shades and hues. I understood when my customer the old lady asked for hilaza matizada (variegated floss) for her embroidery.
 
As to my writing, my refusal to sacrifice my Spanish no less than my name, makes me heir to two muses, congenial sisters, and I will not forsake one for the other. I never know which will speak to me first, but as soon as one gives me a line, a phrase, a verse, the other will immediately give me its equivalent in the other tongue, a dialogue, a discussion that affects each version so that almost all of my poems are unique pieces in two tongues, neither version the translation of the other. Editors most often do not understand bilingualism and ask which version is the translation of the other, which should be set in italics. It seems to disconcert them when I say neither. And even more when I insist that neither should be individual words in the body of the text.
 
I might also note that though I respect blending, I also like distinctions and that I write in both fairly Standard U.S. English and fairly Standard Mexican Spanish, each separate and distinct. I am afraid that this not only speaks to my identity, but also to my schooling, and perhaps my class. Such be the Chicano I am.
 
But the kid in my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” must be answered his question: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

Previous publication credits:

To an Old Woman, González, Rafael Jesús. “To the Old Woman.” New Mexico Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4, 1961
 
A una Anciana, González, Rafael Jesús, New Poets of the American West; Lowell Jaeger, Ed.; 2010, Many Voices Press.
 
Riffs on the Poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, English Journal, Vol. III no. 5, May 2022, of the National Council of Teachers of English.
 
Riffs sobre el poema “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, Uncommon Ground, Seigel, Shizue, Ed.; San Francisco, Pease Press, 2022​​

Rafael Jesús González, profesor de escritura creativa y literatura enseño en varias universidades antes de establecerse en el Colegio Laney en Oakland, California, donde fundó el Departamento de Estudios Mexicanos y Latinoamericanos en 1969. Cuatro veces postulado para el Premio Pushcart, Rafael fue honrado por sus escritos por el Concilio Nacional de Docentes de Inglés en 2003. Recibió un premio por logros de toda una vida César Chávez en 2013 y uno de la ciudad de Berkeley en 2015. Rafael es el primer Poeta Laureado de Berkeley. Visite [email protected]. 

Rafael Jesús González, a professor of creative writing and literature, taught at several universities before he settled at Laney College in Oakland, California, where he founded the Department of Mexican and Latin American Studies in 1969. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Rafael was honored for his writing by NCTE in 2003. He received a César Chávez Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and one from the city of Berkeley, California, in 2015. Rafael is Berkeley’s first Poet Laureate. Visit [email protected].

​​Cuando yo cumplí los 13 años, mi familia se mudó del sur del Bronx a la ciudad de Filadelfia, en el estado de Pensilvania. Nos mudamos a una casa de ladrillo de tres pisos que incluía una tienda de esquina, una entre muchas de pequeños negocios de familia que salpicaban los vecindarios en esos días.
 
La casa tenía un gran sótano encalado que corría toda la longitud de la casa, donde almacenábamos los productos enlatados de venta en la tienda. En aquellos tiempos, por protección y preferencia, mis padres tenían tres perros pastores alemanes, y de noche los manteníamos atados debajo de las escaleras del sótano. De cómo nos podrían proteger los perros atados así en el sótano, no tengo idea.
 
Después de una visita de fin de semana a unos parientes a Long Island, mi padre y yo trajimos de vuelta un precioso gallo rojo de pura raza Rhode Island Red, hermosísimo en su plumaje de verde oscuro y rojo tirando a cobre. A pesar de atraer la curiosidad y la sospecha de los demás pasajeros, lo portamos en una caja de cartón con rotitos por el LIRR, el metro de Nueva York y en el tren de regreso a Filadelfia. Estoy segura de que le pusimos un nombre, olvidado desde entonces, pero, para remediarnos por ahora, le pondremos Don Gallo. Don Gallo salió ser genial y amistoso, un verdadero caballero de noble linaje.
 
Una vez que Don Gallo se colocó bien en el sótano, ya era tiempo de buscarle una novia. Con este propósito, nos dirigimos al Mercado Italiano en el sur de Filadelfia, donde tenían viveros, y regresamos con una bola de plumas que, para propósitos de esta historia, llamaremos Reina. En realidad no recuerdo mucho de ella, aparte de que era redonda y sumisa.
 
Pues bien, Don Gallo y Reina se dedicaron a la felicidad doméstica, pero sin producir ni un solo huevo. Resulta que, un día como cualquier otro, Reina desapareció misteriosamente. La buscamos por todas partes del sótano, sin tener resultados. Pensábamos que tal vez los perros la habían atacado en la noche, pero no había rastro—ni plumas, ni sangre, nada. Al fin y al cabo, nos resignamos a abandonar la búsqueda. No fue hasta años después que descubrimos los restos momificados de la pobre Reina, más plana que un panqueque, atrapada detrás de una vieja cómoda en el sótano. Aparentemente se había quedado atascada allá atrás sin poderse escapar.
 
Después de un tiempo apropiado de guardar luto, decidimos que el viudo Don Gallo necesitaba una nueva compañera para que no cayera en un estado de depresión. De nuevo nos emprendimos con mucho afán hacia el Mercado Italiano, donde encontramos una linda pollita, negra como el azabache, y regresamos muy satisfechos con la nueva compañera de Don Gallo, a quien llamaremos Reinita.
 
Surgió el problema de que Doña Reinita no quería nada que ver con Don Gallo y le huía como perro al escape, ¡resistiendo vigorosamente todos sus avances amorosos! Sus días se pasaban en una frenética persecución de un lado del sótano al otro! ¡Hay que darle crédito a Don Gallo aunque sea por su ardor!
 
Una madrugada, bajamos al sótano, como de costumbre, a darle comida a los pollos y a soltar a los perros. Nos encontramos con un desagradable reguero de plumas ensangrentadas, de lo que una vez había sido Don Gallo, al mismo frente de donde se amarraban los perros. Nos sentíamos absolutamente desconsolados por la muerte prematura y trágica de Don Gallo. Por supuesto, los perros se portaron muy avergonzados, con el rabo entra las patas, y no encontraban en donde meter las caras de sinvergüenzas. Nunca supimos lo que pasó esa noche, pero la Reinita nunca lo olvidó.
 
A la mañana siguiente, ¡la Reinita se subió a la tubería instalada cerca del techo en el sótano y cantó! ¡Proclamó su soberanía con un desafiante QUI-QUI-RI-QUIIIII!  Casi de la noche a la mañana, “ella” desarrolló una barba carnosa y una moña roja. Le brotó una cola majestuosa, un plumaje adornado con plumas largas y lustrosas, tan negras que brillaban como el azul de medianoche.
 
Claramente, él ya no era una “ella”. Creció a un tamaño imponente, con un porte arrogante, y con tremendo mal genio por añadidura! Todas las noches, “visitaba” a los perros y les daba tremenda paliza con sus alas extendidas, largas espuelas y ¡a picotazo limpio! Los tres enormes pastores alemanes estaban aterrorizados y no encontraban en donde esconderse cada vez que pasaba el gallo haciendo patrulla.
 
Siguió trepándose en la tubería del sótano y se le tiraba encima a cualquier persona que no le gustara, ¡queriendo decir a casi todo el mundo! Era tan bravo que finalmente encontramos un granjero dispuesto a llevárselo.  Quizás, con suerte, logró ser el rey del batey en un ambiente más apropiado a su nueva estación en la vida.
 
Y con eso termino este cuento, historia real, dato por dato. Tengo otras, pero en esas historias, el gallo no tiene muy buen fin. Así que me las reservo.

​Por Rafael Jesús González


(Ponencia sobre poesía política presentada en el VIII Congreso y Festival Internacional Proyecto Cultural Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay, octubre 2018)

Recientemente se me invitó a participar en un panel “¿Que es la poesía política?” con distinguidos colegas a quienes estimo mucho. Se nos pidió que consideremos si hay un género de poesía que es política y como diferiría esta de la poesía que ostensiblemente no fuera considerada política y si el mero acto de crear es en si político. Se nos pidió que leyéramos dos poemas nuestros y dos de otros poetas que ilustraran nuestro pensar sobre la poesía política. La idea era tener una discusión en mesa redonda y responder a preguntas del público.
Nunca pasó. Se me pidió que iniciara la discusión; presenté mi posición y leí mis dos poemas, uno de Roque Dalton y el último poema de Javier Sicilia. Mis colegas completamente ignoraron las instrucciones al panel, dijeron esencialmente que el acto de crear era en si político y entonces tal era toda poesía y siguieron a leer de una gavilla de poemas que habían traído consigo. El evento se volvió en simplemente una lectura de poesía; no hubo discusión en mesa redonda ni tuvo el público oportunidad de hacer preguntas.
Algo irritado dije que si el escribir poesía era en si acto político entonces no había nada que decir y que además no le podríamos llamar a un poema sobre un peral, o un cuervo, o el poema de Bashó sobre una rana o un poema de amor políticos en ningún sentido. Y con eso se cerró la conversación que nunca tuvimos.
Por supuesto mis colegas sabían bien lo que fuera un poema político y cual no y aunque mantuvieran que el escribir poemas en si es acto político y todo poema implícitamente tal, no leyeron poemas sobre perales o cuervos o ranas o el amor sino los poemas que habían escogido leer eran indudablemente, poderosamente políticos.
En mis observaciones de apertura había dicho que porque éramos criaturas sociales todo lo que hagamos es político; no votar cuando podamos en una elección es en sí acto político. A demás, dije, un acto, un poema es cargado o no con significado político por el contexto en el cual fue escrito. En el contexto de la degradación ambiental la poesía sobre la naturaleza se pudiera leer como implícitamente política.  
Eso dicho, si el poema sobre el peral fuera escrito cuando los perales fueran envenenados por pesticidas, o los cuervos cazados a cerca extinción, esos poemas pudieran tener brillo fuertemente político. Por lo tanto si Basho hubiera escrito bajo un régimen tirano que criminalizaba el derecho de expresión para mantener el statu quo, el chapoteo de su rana pudiera haber sido aunque implícitamente políticamente ruidoso. Todo es contexto cuando todo se ha dicho; todo lo que existe es relación. Tal es mi teoría de la relatividad.
Pero todavía necesitamos una definición práctica de lo que es la poesía política y para eso propongo esta:
“La poesía política es esa que habla en oposición o apoyo, en crítica o justificación de las instituciones y normas que nos gobiernan.”
Resiento de tener que escribir poesía política; mucho preferiría escribir poemas de amor, poemas en alabanza de la vida, de la Tierra que la sostiene, poemas de asombro por lo que se percibe y por lo que se imagina. Por lo cual resiento de tener que escribir poesía política es porque me siento obligado a oponerme a las instituciones que nos gobiernan. Si esas instituciones fueran fundadas en y gobernaran con justicia, con compasión, con reverencia a la vida y a la Tierra que nos da nacer, sería yo libre para escribir sin impedimento en celebración y mi poesía “política” sería en alabanza de esas instituciones y con dificultad se distinguieran de mi celebración de la vida misma. Por supuesto que eso sería una Utopía y siendo los humanos que somos siempre hubiera cosas que criticar, o ignorar.
Pero los Estados Unidos de América donde vivo y de cual soy ciudadano es mucho más cerca a una Distopía y en este contexto mi poesía (o mucha de ella porque también escribo mucha que es puramente celebratoria) tiene que ser abierta y fuertemente política en oposición a la injusticia, crueldad, locura que son las normas con las cuales se gobierna la nación (imperio). Mi poesía política es la poesía del amor violado.
Entre las muchas violaciones de los derechos humanos que el gobierno estadounidense comete una que más me llega es su política hacia la migración, inhumana, cruel, demente. Las fronteras son de por si políticas y solamente tal, nada más.

​Los mapas mienten

Borders are scratched across 
the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, 
judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed 
we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the
 map turn red.
                                                --Marya Mannes

​Nací en frontera cargada en particular de política— la frontera entre los EE.UU. y México, Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua y El Paso, Tejas. Lo particular de esta frontera es que la tierra estadounidense al norte del Río Bravo, “la frontera,” fue robada por invasión por los EE.UU. Mucha de la población en esa Tierra es de descendencia y cultura mexicana  — es tierra nuestra robada. A demás, la mayoría de nosotros somos de sangre mestiza, mezcla de sangre europea e indígena. Para nosotros, la parte nuestra indígena, las fronteras no existían como tales, la Tierra pertenecía a nadie, era de todos.
Mi familia llegaron cuando la revolución mexicana de 1910 llegaba a su fin en 1920, mis padres apenas adolescentes. Así es que yo me crié bicultural, bilingüe entre y participando en dos distintas culturas. Mis padres siempre insistieron que conserváramos nuestra cultura mexicana y lengua castellana a la vez que aprendiéramos el inglés. No siempre fue fácil. La cultura estadounidense es poco tolerante de lo extranjero e insiste en que el inmigrante se asimile.
En la escuela nos castigaban si hablábamos en español en la aula o el patio de recreo y aun muchos nos sentimos obligados a defender nuestros propios nombres. El prejuicio en la sociedad en general es grande. Muchos padres para proteger a sus hij@s de los efectos de este prejuicio les permitían hablar sólo inglés para que avanzaran económica y socialmente. El costo de asimilarse es grande.

​Demasiado, es mucho el costo. Pera paro sobrevivir mucho se arriesga y mucho se pierde. Se emigra raras veces por gusto y casi siempre por necesidad. Históricamente la mayor parte de nuestra gente que emigra a los EE.UU. es gente pobre, más que nada campesinos que vienen a trabajar por muy bajos sueldos, largas y duras horas, bajo pésimas condiciones, muchos analfabetos o con poca escuela, muchos hablando lenguas indígenas. Vienen indocumentados y muchas veces traen sus familia, hij@s de muy tierna edad, infantes muchos. Es@s chicuel@s todavía indocumentados han crecido en jóvenes en todo estadounidenses menos en ciudadanía, muchos hablando y escribiendo solamente en inglés, muchísimos estudiantes en colegios y universidades.

Y ahora el Presidente de los EE.UU. Pres. Trump (llamado entre nosotros con el no muy afectuoso apodo Pres. Trompudo) racista y fascista, ignorante, arrogante y descorazonado hasta las cachas intenta, con el apoyo de su índole, expulsarlos a sus países natales, países extraños para ell@s, países no suyos — México, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua y tantos más. Se les han llamado “Soñadores” apodo que origina en un plan del presidente anterior Pres. Obama para protegerl@s.


Nuestros soñadores

El país que echa fuera
por falta de documentos
a sus soñadores 
se hiere a si mismo.
¿Que otra tierra conocen?
¿Que vacío dejarían
en la consciencia,
en el corazón del pueblo?
Es arrancarle las balanzas
a la justicia, apagarle
el antorcha a la libertad.
Sería como si el águila
con su propio pico
y sus garras se rasgara
su propio corazón
ya envenenado por la crueldad.
De fronteras y muros
los sueños y la necesidad
saben los mismo
que las mariposas, las aves,
el olor de las flores.
Si no protegemos
a nuestros soñadores perdemos
nuestras almas y sueños.
  
Con la ascendencia del Pres. Trompudo se ha demonizado el emigrante. El presidente les ha llamado violadores, asesinos, ladrones, especialmente a los emigrantes mexicanos, centro-americanos, latino-americanos (y además terroristas a los emigrantes musulmanes.) El fascismo, el racismo, el nacionalismo y el odio son patentes y se han normalizado en la discusión política estadounidense. Pero lo tenemos que decir claro --


Decirlo Claro

Dicen los bobos
que venimos de mendigos
estómagos vacíos, vacías las manos
para quitarles lo que ya
sus propios canallas y bribones
les robaron.
Sí, venimos con hambre
huyendo la violencia
a donde la riqueza
del impero se concentra
pero con las manos llenas
de nuestras artesanías y labores,
corazones llenos de bailes y canciones,
con nuestra cocina rica en sabores.
Le traemos alma a una cultura desalmada;
traemos el arco iris
y prefieren el gris de sus temores.
Se empeñan en construir muros
si lo que se necesita es puentes.
  
La frontera se ha militarizado y se ha hecho un frente de batalla. Y el Tompudo se empeña un construir una gran muralla por toda la frontera entre los EE.UU. y México a un costo aproximado de construir de 70 billones de dólares y de mantener a 21.6 billones de dólares. Y neciamente insiste que la pagará México. Pero no se le puede poner precio al costo del sufrimiento que ha causado, que causa esta política. Los emigrantes son aprendidos y encarcelados, las madres, los padres separados de sus hijit@s, muchos de ellos infantes, l@s niñ@s metidos en cárceles separadas, desparramados, enviados lejos. Y aunque las cortes han declarado estos hechos ilegales y exigido que se reúnan las familias, muchas todavía no se han reunido y niñ@s se han perdido. La crueldad, el sufrimiento hiere la imaginación.


Es tan amable la luna

La luna llena se cuela
por entre las rejas de la cárcel
de niños
para recoger sus sollozos
en su delantal de luz
y llevárselos a sus padres
en cárcel de adultos
y traerles lamentos y bendiciones
de sus madres, sus padres
a los niños.
Es tan amable la luna
que no niega su luz
ni a los malvados traficantes de angustia.
Es tan amable la luna


Y ¿que graves exigencias motivan a estos padres, madres a arriesgar tanto por emigrar a los EE.UU.? Vienen a donde se concentra la riqueza del imperio huyendo de la pobreza y la violencia de sus países causados por la política estadounidense: tratados de “libre comercio” que han sido desastrosos para la economía de México, la cínica “guerra contra las drogas” que ha traído violencia atroz a México, los Acuerdos de Mérida que han militarizado el gobierno de México y lo ha hecho aun más violento.
Pero no es solamente México sino es así en toda América Central y en partes de Sud América. Se cultivan y se apoyan gobiernos abusivos por el poderoso EE. UU. que para el bien de los ricos mantienen a sus pueblos en pobreza y represión violenta, vendiendo sus tierras y recursos naturales a empresas extranjeras estadounidenses e globales. Y l@s que resisten y defienden la Tierra (gran parte indígenas y mujeres) son torturados y muertos. Un caso representante de muchos, muchos otros por todas las Américas es el de Berta Cáceres de Honduras:

Por medio milenio y más

a Berta Cáceres
y a todos los mártires
de las Américas
muertos defendiendo la tierra
​

​Nombrémoslo por lo que esencialmente es: la economía de imperio, el capitalismo, y su política, un sistema económico que se basa en dos cosas: el tratar a la Tierra solamente como deposito de materia prima para explotarse y la esclavitud de mano de obra para convertir esa materia prima en productos consumibles a abajo costo para vender a gran ganancia para el bien de los pocos. Fue nada más que esto lo que impulsó la conquista de las “Américas.” (De la religión que hacía mucho se había hecho instrumento del estado y justificaba la esclavitud y hasta el genocidio no diré nada, ni de la oposición dentro ella que nos llega ahora como la teología de la liberación.) Por ser los EE.UU. el más grande imperio actual y su presidente un Calígula moderno, es fácil hacerlo el único villano, pero esto pasa casi por el mundo entero.
El capitalismo desenfrenado lleva al fascismo y esto lo vemos por a través del mundo actual. Las guerras y tiranías casi todas a causa del capitalismo desplazan una gran cantidad de gente huyendo del la pobreza y la violencia para sobrevivir. La migración es unos de los “problemas” más grandes del día no obstante que la humanidad siempre ha migrado desde su origen en África hace tres cientos mil a dos cientos mil años.                                                                                        

Migración

¿Qué sabe la mariposa de fronteras?
        ¿Qué sabe de banderas?
Cruza todo un continente,
        el movimiento su herencia.
Así es con nosotros,
        nuestra historia migración
de años, de siglos, de milenios 
        antes de que historia hubiera
y que formáramos mitos en el cerebro.
Nuestros pasos hechos de sangre,
de lágrimas, de risas, de sudor
marcan nuestra eterna búsqueda
de hogar señalado por el Dios,
        o el águila comiéndose una culebra
o quien sabe que señas arbitrarias.
Pero son inseguras nuestras moradas --
hogar es la Tierra redonda y sin costura;
la circundamos y si patria veneramos
es pretensión, es mito, es mentira --
buscamos abrigo, alimento, libertad, la vida.
Abajo con fronteras, abajo con banderas
        que si justicia y paz hubiera
no tuviéramos que vagar tanto por la Tierra. 
                         

Nací, vivo en y soy ciudadano de los Estados Unidos de América pero más que nada me siento ciudadano del mundo. Mi lealtad es a la humanidad a cual pertenezco y a la Tierra que nos dio nacer y nos sostiene. Mi ciudadanía estadounidense y terrestre me obliga a ver críticamente a mi país, al mundo, a la humanidad. Pero si he pintado a mi país en matices sombríos no es completamente fiel el retrato. Muchos, muchos estadounidenses no son racista, ni tóxicamente nacionalistas, ni injustos, ni crueles, ni capitalistas. Y son muchos los problemas del imperio y me he enfocado sólo en la migración. Es muy grande la resistencia contra las fuerzas del fascismo, es grande la compasión y el deseo por la justicia. Muchas ciudades y aun estados se han declarado ciudades, estados “De asilo” para proteger a los inmigrantes indocumentados negándose a colaborar con la policía federal en la persecución de los inmigrantes. Diariamente hay manifestaciones a las puertas de las cárceles, la frontera, los aeropuertos, los edificios de gobierno, las calles en apoyo de los inmigrantes. Hay una gran lucha entre las fuerzas del fascismo que controlan el gobierno y las fuerzas demócratas. Estamos en crisis y son tiempos temerosos.
En cuanto a mí como viejo y poeta


Te Digo

Te digo que estoy cansado
de no poder darle la espalda
a la injusticia y crueldad del mundo.
Quisiera en vez contarte
lo que el sauco y la secoya,
la piedra en el arroyo hecha lisa
por el toque suave o brusco
del agua me dicen.
Quisiera decirte los cuentos
del lagartijo y la mariposa,
cantarte las canciones calladas
de la madreselva y el romero.
Quisiera escribir versos de amor
a la Tierra, a la vida, a ti.
Pero no puedo darle la espalda
a la injusticia y crueldad
del mundo que causa
tanta pena y sufrir en la Tierra.
Mis versos de furia y protesta
son también poemas de amor,
de un amor traicionado y herido.

© Rafael Jesús González 2018.

​Recently I was invited to take part on a panel “What is political poetry?” with three distinguished colleagues whom I hold in high esteem. We were asked to consider whether there was a genre of poetry that is political and how this might differ from poetry that is ostensibly not considered political, and whether indeed, the very act of creation is political in its own right. We were asked to read two poems of our own and two from other poets that could be illustrative of our thoughts on political poetry. The idea was to have a round table discussion and answer questions from the audience.
It never happened. I was asked to open the discussion; I stated my position, and read my two poems, one of Roque Dalton's, and the last poem of Javier Sicilia. My three colleagues completely ignored instructions to the panel, essentially said that the creative act was in itself political and hence so was all poetry, and proceeded to read from a sheaf of poems they had brought with them. The event became simply a poetry reading; there was no round-table discussion, nor did the audience have an opportunity to ask questions.
Somewhat exasperated, I said that if writing poetry is itself a political act and all poems are political, then there is nothing to say and furthermore that we could not call HD's pear tree poem, or Williams' red wheel-barrow poem, or Stevens' blackbird poem, or Basho's frog poem political at all. Though a love poem could be political such as Arnold's Dover Beach (definitely political, but is it a love poem?). And that closed the conversation that we never had.
Of course my colleagues know perfectly well what is a political poem and what is not, and though they maintained that the writing of poems in itself is political and hence all poems implicitly so, they did not read HD, nor Williams, nor Stevens, nor Basho to bolster their contention, but the poems they had chosen to read were unquestionably, undeniably, powerfully political.
In my opening remarks I had said that because we are social creatures everything we do is political; not voting in an election when we can is itself a political act. Furthermore, I said, an act, a poem, is weighted, or not, with political meaning by the context in which it is written. In the context of contemporary environmental degradation, I said, the nature poetry of Mary Oliver may be read as implicitly political.
That said, if HD had written her poem at a time when pears were poisoned by pesticides, or Williams' his when red wheel-barrows were outlawed in New England, or Stevens’ when blackbirds were hunted near extinction, their poems could have a strong political glow. For that matter, had Basho written under a tyrannical regime that criminalized freedom of expression to maintain the status quo, his frog's splash could have been, though implicit, politically loud indeed. It is all context when all is said and done; all that exists is relation. Such is my theory of relativity.
But we still need a working definition of what political poetry is, and for that I offer:

“Political poetry is that which addresses, in opposition or support, criticism or justification, the institutions and norms that govern us.”

I resent having to write political poetry; I would much rather write love poems, poems in praise of life, in praise of the Earth that bears it, poems of amazement for what is sensed and for what is imagined. Why I resent having to write political poetry is because I must oppose the institutions that govern us. Were those institutions founded on and governed with justice, with compassion, with reverence for life and the Earth that births us, I would be free to write in unhindered celebration and my political poetry would be in praise of those institutions and could be hard to distinguish from my celebration of life itself. Of course that would be a Utopia and being the humans we are, there would always be things to criticize, or ignore.
But the United States where I live and of which I am a citizen is much closer to a Dystopia and in that context, my poetry (or a great deal of it, though I also write much that is purely celebratory) must be overtly and strongly political in opposition to the injustice, the cruelty, the insanity that are the norms with which the nation (empire) is governed. My political poetry is the poetry of love outraged.
Among the many violations of human rights the U.S. government commits, one that most deeply touches me is its inhumane, unimaginably cruel, insane immigration policy. Borders are inherently political and just that, nothing more:

​Maps lie --
they are crazy quilts
of pastel colors
            (lilac, sky, lime,
            lemon, orange, pink)
with arbitrary names and seams
with which we imagine the Earth
pretending to posses it
and call it ‘world.’
The Earth does not have seams
nor borders --
rivers and ravines, sierras, swamps,
canyons, jungles and deserts,
cascades and falls, seas yes,
but never borders.
Maps lie.

I was born on one particularly politically charged — the U.S./Mexican border, Cd. Juárez/El Paso. What is particular to this border is that the U.S. land north of the Río Grande, The Border, was stolen by the U.S. by invasion. Much of the population in this land is of descent and culture Mexican — it is our stolen land. Also, the majority of us are of mestizo blood, a mixture of European and indigenous blood. For us, the indigenous part, borders did not exist as such, the Earth belonged to no one, it was everyone’s.
My family came as the Mexican revolution of 1910 drew to a close in 1920, my parents but adolescents. So it is that I grew bicultural, bilingual between and participating in two distinct cultures. My parents always insisted that we preserve our Mexican culture and the Castilian tongue at the same time that we learned English. It was not always easy. The U.S. culture is little tolerant of the foreign and insists that the immigrant assimilate. In school we were punished if we spoke Spanish in the classroom or playground and many of us felt obliged to defend our own names. Prejudice in the society in general is great. Many parents permitted their children to speak only English to protect them from the effects of this prejudice so that they could advance economically and socially. The cost of assimilation is great.


To an Old Woman

Come, mother --
            your rebozo trails a black web
            and your hem catches on your heels,
you lean the burden of your years
on shaky cane, and palsied hand pushes
            sweat-grimed pennies on the counter.
Can you still see, old woman,
the darting color-trailed needle of your trade?
            The flowers you embroider
            with three-for-a-dime threads
cannot fade as quickly as the leaves of time.
            What things do you remember?
Your mouth seems to be forever tasting
the residue of nectar hearted years.
Where are the sons you bore?
            Do they speak only English now
            and say they’re Spanish?
One day I know you will not come
and ask for me to pick
the colors you can no longer see.
            I know I’ll wait in vain
for your toothless benediction.
I’ll look into the dusty street
            made cool by pigeons’ wings
until a dirty child will nudge me and say:
                    Señor, how mush ees thees?

(New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. XXXI no. 4, 1962; author’s copyrights.)

Too much, it is too high a cost. But to survive much is risked and much is lost. One rarely immigrates by desire but almost always by necessity. Historically the majority of our people who emigrate to the U.S. are poor, mostly farmers who come to work for very low wages, long and hard hours, under abysmal conditions, many illiterate or with little schooling, many speaking indigenous languages. They come without documents and often bring their families, children of very tender age, infants many. These children still undocumented have grown to be youths in every way U. S. except in citizenship, many speaking and writing only in English, many students in colleges and universities.
And now, the president of the U.S.A., President Trump (named among ourselves with the not very affectionate nickname Pres. Trumpet-mouth), racist and fascist, ignorant, arrogant, and heartless to the hilt intends, with the backing of his ilk, to expel them to their countries of birth, countries strange to them, countries not theirs — Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and many more. They are called Dreamers, soubriquet originating in a plan of the previous president, Pres. Obama, to protect them.


Our Dreamers

The country that casts out
for lack of documents
its dreamers
wounds itself.
What other land do they know?
What emptiness would they leave
in the consciousness,
in the hearts of the people?
It is to tear the scales
from justice, to put out
the torch of liberty.
It would be as if the eagle
with its own beak
and its claws lacerated
its own heart
already poisoned by cruelty.
Of borders and walls
dreams and need
know the same
as do the butterflies and the birds,
the smell of the flowers.
If we do not protect
our dreamers we lose
our souls and our dreams.

(Overthrowing Capitalism, Vol. 4, Hirschman, Jack et al., editors, 2018 San Francisco; author's copyrights)

With the ascendency of Pres. Trumpet-mouth, the emigrant has been demonized. The president has called them rapists, murderers, thieves, especially the Mexican, Central-American, Latin-American emigrants (and also terrorists the Moslem emigrants.) Fascism, racism, nationalism, and hate are patent and have been normalized in the U.S. political discussion. But we have to say it clearly --


To Say It Clearly

The fools say
that we come as beggars
stomachs empty, empty hands
to take what already
their own scoundrels and knaves
have stolen from them.
Yes, we come hungry
fleeing violence
to where the riches
of the empire are concentrated
but with hands full
of our crafts and labors,
hearts full of dances and of songs,
with our cuisine rich in flavors.
We bring soul to a soulless culture;
we bring the rainbow
and they prefer the grayness of their fear.
They insist on building walls
when there is need of bridges.

The border has been militarized and has been made a battle front. And Trumpet-mouth insists on building a great wall through the entire border between the U.S. and Mexico at a cost of approximately 70 billion dollars and 21.6 billion dollars to maintain. And foolishly insists that Mexico pay for it. But a price cannot be placed on the suffering that it has caused, that this policy causes. Emigrants are apprehended and jailed, mothers, fathers separated from their little children, many of them infants, the children put in separate jails, scattered, sent far away. And even though the courts have declared these acts illegal and demanded that families be reunited, still they have not been reunited and children have been lost. The cruelty, the suffering wounds the imagination.


So Kind Is the Moon

The full moon slips
through the bars of the jail
of the children
to gather their sobs
in her apron of light
and carry them to their parents
in the jail for adults
and bring the laments and blessings
of their mothers, their fathers
back to the children.
The moon is so kind
that it does not deny its light
even to the evil dealers in anguish.
So kind is the moon.

And what grave needs motivate these fathers, mothers to risk so much to emigrate to the U.S.? They come to where the wealth of the empire is concentrated fleeing the poverty and violence of their countries caused by U.S. policy:
Free Trade treaties that have been disastrous for the economy of Mexico, the cynical War Against Drugs that has brought atrocious violence to Mexico, the Mérida Accords that have militarized the government of Mexico and made it more violent. But it is not only Mexico; it is thus in all Central America and parts of South America. The powerful U.S. supports abusive governments that for the benefit of the rich keep their people in poverty and violent repression, selling their lands and natural resources to U.S. and global foreign enterprises. And those who resist and defend the Earth (a great part indigenous and women) are tortured and killed. A case representative of many, many others throughout the Americas is that of Berta Cáceres of Honduras:

 For Half a Millennium and More
      to Berta Cáceres
and to all the martyrs
of the Americas
killed defending the land

For half a millennium and more
we have died defending
the land, the forests, the rivers
from foreign invaders
blinded by greed,
crazed by profit
in bloodied coin.
We have suffered traitors
Infected by that madness
that for that same coin
sell their own gods.
Our bones sow the earth,
Our blood waters it,
and the sacred corn
sometimes tastes bitter to us.
But we go on struggling
and our bones and our blood
will grow a new flowering world.

Let us name it for what it essentially is: the economy of empire, Capitalism and its policy, an economic system based on two things: the treatment of the Earth solely as a deposit of raw material to be exploited and the enslavement of labor to convert that raw material into consumable products at low cost to sell at great profit for the good of the few. It was nothing but this that impelled the conquest of the Americas.
(Of the religion that for a long time had made itself the tool of the state and justified slavery and even genocide, I will say nothing, nor of the opposition within it that now comes to us as Liberation Theology.) Because the U.S. is the largest empire today and its president a modern Caligula, it is easy to make it the only villain, but this happens through the entire world. Unbridled Capitalism leads to fascism and we see this across the world today. The wars and tyrannies almost all caused by Capitalism displace a great number of people fleeing poverty and violence in order to survive. Migration is one of the greatest problems of the day notwithstanding that humanity has always migrated since its origins in Africa three to two hundred thousand years ago.


Migration

What does the butterfly know of borders?
        What does it know of flags?
It crosses a whole continent,
        movement its inheritance.
So it is with us,
        migration our heritage
of years, of centuries, of millenniums
        before history was
and we formed myths within the brain.
Our steps made of blood,
of tears, of laughter, and of sweat
mark our eternal search
for home signaled by the God,
        or the eagle eating a snake,
or who knows what arbitrary signs.
But uncertain are our abodes --
home is the round and seamless Earth;
we circle it and if country we venerate
it is pretension, a myth, a lie --
we seek shelter, food, freedom, life.
Down with borders, down with flags
        for if there were justice and peace
we would not have to so much roam the Earth.

I was born in, live in, am a citizen of the United States of America but more than anything I feel myself a citizen of the world. My loyalty is to humanity to which I belong and to the Earth that bore us and sustains us. My U.S. and Terrestrial citizenship obligate me to view my country, the world, and humanity critically. But if I have painted my country in somber hues it is not entirely a true portrait. Many, many U.S. citizens are not racist, nor toxically nationalists, nor unjust, nor cruel, nor capitalists. And many are the problems of empire and I have focused only on migration. Very great is the resistance against the forces of fascism, great is the compassion and the desire for justice. Many cities and even states have declared themselves Asylum to protect the undocumented immigrants refusing to collaborate with the federal police in the persecution of immigrants. Daily there are demonstrations at the doors of jails, the border, the airports, the government buildings, the streets in support of the immigrants. There is a great struggle between the forces of fascism that control the government and the democratic forces. We are in a crisis and the times are fearful.
As for me as an old man and a poet


I Tell You

I tell you that I am tired
of not being able to turn my back
on the injustice and cruelty of the world.
I would like instead to tell you
what the alder and the redwood,
the rock in the stream made smooth
by the soft or rough touch
of the water tell me.
I would like to tell you the tales
of the lizard and the butterfly,
sing you the quiet songs
of the honeysuckle and the rosemary.
I would like to write poems of love
to the Earth, to life, to you.
But I cannot turn my back
to the injustice and cruelty
of the world that causes
such pain and suffering on the Earth.
My verses of rage and protest
are also poems of love,
of a love betrayed and wounded.

 © Rafael Jesús González 2018.
                    
Rafael Jesús González es Poeta Laureado de la Ciudad de Berkeley, California/is Poet Laureate of Berkeley, California. Por décadas, ha sido un activista pro la paz y justicia usando la palabra como una espada de la verdad. For decades, he has been an activist for peace and justice, wielding the word like a sword of truth.

​Review-Reseña en/in English y/ and Spanish, of/de: A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins. Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural/ Edited by Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. Mexico: Cúmulo de Tesla, 2018

By Cristóbal Garza

Several authors and translators from the United States and from Mexico join their pens —or rather, their keyboards— in this collection of short stories edited by writer Libia Brenda Castro Rojano, who also contributed with a short story of her own. This collective work was inspired by the presence of John Picacio’s Mexicanx Initiative in the 2018 Worldcon Literary Convention (Tobin). The electronic version has been distributed free online and the printed version sold out soon after its release.
Each piece appears in its original language and translated either from Spanish to English or vice versa. This double format serves as an apt frame for texts that imagine post-apocalyptic worlds, simultaneous realities, and alternative universes. These stories take us to liminal areas that surround walls, portals, entrances and exits and everything that can be preceded by the prefix “bi”: bicultural, bisexual, bilingual, binational, bilateral, bifocal, and so on. The collection shows us how binary categories collapse; the inside and the outside, the human and the monstrous, the lyrical and the graphic, the humorous and the terrifying, the future and the past, the you and the me, fantasy and realism become entangled.
The borders identified, enforced, traversed, and challenged here are not new, but the articulation and disintegration that the authors of Una realidad/A Wider Reality narrate are urgent and timely. Zombies, magicians, scientists, gypsies, cholos, translators, chupacabras, soldiers, superheroes, time travelers, dancers and baristas populate realities that have been bifurcated by violence but rejoined by imagination.

​In the forward, Castro Rojano explains that this volume’s purpose is establishing dialogues and friendships among writers and readers of both countries. “Fences” by José Luis Zárate revolves around a magician who, after having lived on the margins of society and reality, must go beyond a real and symbolic wall to “go back to” who he really isn’t. In “Aztlán liberated,” David Bowles tells us the story of a gang of misfits who furiously fight predators to save the two countries that rejected them for being who they are.
With “A universally known truth,” Julia Rios challenges us to enter realities where identities, affections and memory are transformed and dissolved as if they were mirages. Felecia Caton Garcia reimagines the colonial tradition of the “Matachín” dancer as a scientific and technological tale with results that are vertiginously human. “Kan/Trahc,” by Iliana Vargas, takes us into a claustrophobic world of artificially recomposed bodies that reveal the dissatisfaction, the loneliness and the fragility of life.
In the “Binders,” Angela Lujan invites us to identify with her quixotic superheroes and to read their struggles as the confrontation of the analog vs. the digital, the physical vs. the virtual. “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” by Raquel Castro, is a story of social isolation and childhood anxieties that combines the popular genre of the living dead with cutting dark humor. Pepe Rojo shares Castro’s interest in zombies, but his piece, “Shoot,” is the frantic and over-saturated experience of a man who eats, dreams, thinks and feels everything through a video game.
The contribution of Alberto Chimal, “It All Makes Sense Here,” contradicts and, at the same time, affirms its title by showing us that when suffering is mediated by a screen we really do not care for other people’s tragedies as long as technology keeps us safe. Abuse, trauma, family secrets, sexism and racism battle with seduction, friendship, and joy in “The Music and the Petals,” by Gabriela Demian Miravete.
“Clean Air Will Smell Like Silver Apricots,” by Andrea Chapela, seeks to restore hope in a return to nature and life after one of the most significant losses. Finally, Richard Zela illustrates in comic format “Rhizome,” by Castro Rojano, the editor, in which they tell us how ephemeral obects, fantastic secrets and absurd stories only make sense when they are shared and we seek intimate contact with each other.
In this anthology, translations and exchanges are not only linguistic, we also see mixes and borrowings of media and genre. Traditionally, movies, television, comics and video games have adapted literary narratives to make them accessible to mass audiences. Conversely, many writers resort to the “language of the cinema,” emphasizing images and actions so that the reader can “see” what the page offers.

​In Una realidad/A Wider Reality, these loans, thefts or emulations are taken to the extreme; images and digital sounds burst into the immobile black and white of the page to infuse it with cadence, color, movement and urgency. Internet searches, mobile phone messages, security camera videos, and digitally produced images become the medium, the language and the message with which humans, androids, monsters, machines that have yet to be invented, and fantastic beings communicate with each other and with the reader.
In a similar way, the bilingual nature of this anthology lends itself to reflect on experimentation and interpretation of reading and writing in two languages. Besides reaching out to a wide audience that may include monolingual readers, this double volume offers a unique opportunity for bilingual readers interested in translation, untranslatability, and the ways in which language limits or liberates our thinking.
Some words are translated with “dubious” cognates while several idiomatic expressions offer a different point of view in each language. “Entertain me,” as in “let’s say you believe and want to hear what I have to say,” seems hard to translate and may sound like a request for amusement in other languages, yet it appears directly translated into its Spanish equivalent. 

​Interestingly, though it started in the United States with the spelling Latinx for Latina/o, the use of an “x” for gendered nouns and adjectives seems only possible in Spanish. Besides these examples, the fact that “Speculative Fiction” from the English title appears as historias [stories] in Spanish signals more than the difficulty of translation of idioms and culturally bounded expressions; it shows a keen interest in representing the linguistic flexibility and fluid imagination of those who live, imagine and write about the US-Mexico border.
As a collection, Una realidad/A Wider Reality gives us access to a multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and ways of writing on both sides of the border that, at times, can be surprising and even unsettling. Here, the form is put at the service of the content; brevity does not impede depth, humor does not hide fear and neither does terror paralyze the movement of life. The authors in this anthology showcase a diverse set of themes, strategies, interests and anxieties that represent Mexican, Mexican American, Mexicanx, Latinx and Chicanx narrative.
Even today, in some circles, the literatures of these marginal areas are expected to express racial concerns, local mythologies, authenticity, and border exoticism; however, the imaginative heterogeneity of these stories is so wide that it exceeds thematic and stylistic limits. Readers and critics who believe that Mexican authors only address “Mexicaness” —whatever that means— and that those of Latino diasporas are only interested in the migratory experience will find that, where the State and its institutions divide the world in two, Una realidad/A Wider Reality takes fragments from here and there, narrative splinters, and lost instants to integrate them into a current that, much like the Rio Grande, brings together waters from various sources and branches off into multiple channels.
The critical potential of a work like Una realidad/A Wider Reality resides in that it invites us to question our own expectations about what the literatures written and read around the border of Mexico with the United States are or should be. This publication also calls us to recognize that these voices are part of the traditions of both countries and to witness how they claim their right to double cultural citizenship. The challenge is not superfluous and surpasses the novelty of fashionable trends.
Genres such as horror, science fiction and fantasy have been disqualified as less literary but have also served to express the experiences and existential conditions of those who live on the margins of society, culture and history. This marginality ​​coincides and is complicated when it is located and enunciated from the border’s interstices. Gloria Anzaldúa taught us that the border is a bleeding wound, an intermediate space (3), a non-place from which literature can erupt.

On his part, Ignacio Sánchez Prado has shown that Latin American literatures are still uncomfortable for European and Anglo-American centers of cultural capital which do not know what to do with them (8). In this sense, the marginality of these stories is twofold; in addition to resorting to genres of the literary peripheries, they belong to a tradition that oscillates between the West and its liminal areas, especially if we read Latinx as also Latin American.

​These short stories —these speculative fictions— can make us confront the realities that are continuously fragmented by borders and that those borders disappear and reappear thicker, taller and, at the same time, more brittle.

​A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins ebook is free and available at  this link.

Works Cited:
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera. San Francisco: Aun Lute Books, 1987.
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. América Latina en la “literatura mundial.” Pittsburg: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006.
Tobin, Stephen C. “El reconocimiento tan esperado a la ciencia ficción mexicanx en el WorldCon76 del 2018.” Latina American Literature Today 8 (2018). http://www.latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/es/2018/noviembre/el-reconocimiento-tan-esperado-la-ciencia-ficción-mexicanx-en-el-worldcon76-del-2018. Consultado el 7 de Noviembre de 2018.

​Reseña: Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural/A Wider Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins. Editado por Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. México: Cúmulo de Tesla, 2018.

By Cristóbal Garza

Varios autores y traductores de los Estados Unidos y México reúnen sus plumas —o mejor dicho, sus teclados— en una colección de relatos cortos editada por la también escritora Libia Brenda Castro Rojano. El trabajo en colectivo fue inspirado por la presencia de Mexicanx Initiative, de John Picacio, en la convención literaria Worldcon de 2018 (Tobin). La versión electrónica se distribuye gratuitamente en línea y la impresa pronto agotó su primer tiraje. Cada texto aparece en su idioma original y traducido del español al inglés o viceversa. Este doble formato enmarca textos que imaginan mundos posapocalípticos, realidades simultáneas y universos alternativos que se localizan en zonas liminales de muros, portales, entradas y salidas y todo aquello que pueda ser precedido por el prefijo “bi”: bicultural, bisexual, bilingüe, binacional, bilateral, bifocal, etc.
La colección nos muestra cómo las dualidades se colapsan en torno a binarismos entre el adentro y el afuera, lo humano y lo monstruoso, lo lírico y lo gráfico, el humor y el terror, el futuro y el pasado, el tú y el yo, la fantasía y los realismos. Las fronteras aquí identificadas, desafiadas, atravesadas y vueltas a imponer son viejas, pero las formas de articulación y disgregación son de nuestro tiempo. Zombis, magos, científicos, gitanos, cholos, traductores, chupacabras, soldados, superhéroes, viajeros del tiempo, bailarinas y baristas pueblan estas realidades bifurcadas por la violencia y vueltas a unir por la imaginación.
El prólogo de Castro Rojano explica que el impulso de este volumen es el de establecer diálogos y amistades entre las comunidades de escritores y lectores de ambos países. “Vallas”, de José Luis Zárate gira en torno al último acto de un mago que, luego de haber vivido en los márgenes de la sociedad y de la realidad, debe traspasar un muro real y simbólico para “volver a ser” quién en realidad no es.

​David Bowles nos relata, en “Aztlán liberado”, la furiosa lucha de una pandilla de seres marginales por salvar de la depredación alienígena a los dos países que los han rechazado por ser quienes son. Con “Una verdad universalmente conocida”, Julia Rios nos reta a entrar en universos en los que las identidades, los afectos y la memoria se transforman y disuelven.

Felecia Caton Garcia reimagina la tradición colonial del “Matachín” como relato científico y tecnológico con resultados que son vertiginosamente humanos.

“Kan/Trahc”, de Iliana Vargas, nos adentra en un mundo claustrofóbico de recomposición artificial del cuerpo humano que desnuda la insatisfacción, la soledad y la fragilidad de la vida. En la “Carpeta”, Angela Lujan nos invita a identificarnos con sus quijotescos superhéroes y con sus luchas, mismas que pueden ser interpretadas como alegorías del enfrentamiento entre lo análogo y lo digital, lo físico y lo virtual.
“Rosa de la infancia”, de Raquel Castro, aborda el aislamiento social dándole una vuelta de humor negro a uno de los géneros más en boga: el de los muertos vivientes. Pepe Rojo comparte el interés por los zombis, pero su “Dispara” es la veloz y sobre saturada experiencia del que come, sueña, piensa y siente todo mediante un videojuego.
La contribución de Alberto Chimal, “Aquí sí se entiende todo”, contradice —y no— su título por que nos muestra que, aunque no entendamos los sufrimientos y tragedias que aparecen en pantallas, a nadie le importan en tanto la tecnología nos mantenga a resguardo. El abuso, el trauma, los secretos familiares, el sexismo y el racismo se debaten con la seducción, la amistad y la alegría en “La música y los pétalos”, de Gabriela Demian Miravete.
“El aire limpio olerá a albaricoque plateado”, de Andrea Chapela, busca devolvernos la esperanza en una vuelta a la naturaleza y a la vida después de una de las pérdidas más significativas. Finalmente, Richard Zela ilustra con sus comics el cuento “Rizoma”, de Castro Rojano —la editora—, en el cual nos cuentan cómo las cosas efímeras, los secretos fantásticos y las historias disparatadas sólo adquieren sentido cuando se comparten y se busca el contacto íntimo con el otro.

​En estas exploraciones narrativas, los prestamos y traducciones no sólo se dan en términos lingüísticos sino de medio y de género. Tradicionalmente, el cine, la televisión, los comics y los videojuegos han adaptado narrativas literarias para hacerlas accesibles a públicos masivos. Al mismo tiempo, muchos escritores recurren “al lenguaje del cine”, en el sentido de que enfatizan imágenes y acciones de modo que el lector pueda “ver” lo que la página ofrece.
En Una Realidad/A Larger Reality, estos préstamos, robos o emulaciones son llevados al extremo; las imágenes y los sonidos digitales irrumpen en el blanco y negro inmóvil de la página para darle cadencia, color, movimiento y urgencia. Búsquedas en internet, mensajes de teléfono móvil, videos de cámaras de seguridad e imágenes digitales se vuelven el medio, el lenguaje y el mensaje en que se comunican humanos, androides, máquinas que aun no se inventan y seres fantásticos.
De manera similar, el carácter bilingüe del texto se presta a reflexiones sobre la experimentación y la interpretación de la escritura y la lectura. Además de ampliar el alcance hacia públicos monolingües, el doble volumen le ofrece una lectura comparativa a los lectores bilingües interesados en la traducción, la intraducibilidad y las formas en las que el idioma restringe o libera el pensamiento.
Escribir “traslación” por “traducción” podría parecer un error: el primer término es astronómico; el segundo, lingüístico. También podría parecer un cultismo anacrónico, pues ambos son “pasar de un lugar a otro”, de un idioma a otro. Decir “entretenme” para traducir “entertain me”, expresión idiomática que quiere decir algo así como “haz como que me crees”; usar “definitivamente” como respuesta afirmativa, o incluso usar en el título “Speculative Fiction” como equivalente de “historias” muestran tensiones enraizadas en diferencias lingüísticas y culturales profundas que nos pueden llevan a la reflexión y a una lectura lúdica.
Otro ejemplo digno de atención es la alteración ortográfica de adjetivos y sustantivos que en el español normativo solo aceptan el masculino como inclusivo y que en inglés son neutrales; dressed, ready, child son traducidos como vestidx, listx, ninx. Más que enfocarse en la arbitrariedad de los significantes o en la imposibilidad de la traducción, estos “traslados” de un lugar cultural e idiomático a otro reflejan la labilidad de nuestras lenguas, la flexibilidad de la imaginación y la fluidez de la literatura como medio para expresar la experiencia en las periferias.

​El hecho de que se trate de una colección de cuentos facilita el acercamiento a una multiplicidad de voces, perspectivas y maneras de escribir a ambos lados de la frontera que pueden resultar desconcertantes. La forma está puesta al servicio del contenido; la brevedad no impide la profundidad, el humor no nos quita el miedo, pero tampoco el terror paraliza las posibilidades de la vida. Las autoras y autores de esta antología diversifican sus estrategias narrativas para mostrarnos el variado panorama de intereses y ansiedades que existe en las letras mexicanas, Mexican American, Mexicanx, Latinx y Chicanx.
Aún hoy, en algunos círculos, se espera que las literaturas de estas zonas marginales expresen preocupaciones raciales, mitologías locales y la autenticidad del exotismo fronterizo; sin embargo, la heterogeneidad imaginativa de estos cuentos es tan amplia que rebasa límites temáticos y estilísticos. Los lectores y críticos que crean que los autores mexicanos sólo abordan “lo mexicano” —lo que eso signifique— y que los de las diásporas se interesan únicamente en la experiencia migratoria encontrarán que, donde el Estado y sus instituciones dividen al mundo en dos, Una Realidad/A Larger Reality toma fragmentos de aquí y de ahí, esquirlas narrativas e instantes perdidos para integrarlos en un cause que, como el Río Bravo, hace confluir aguas de varias fuentes y desemboca en múltiples canales.
El potencial crítico de un trabajo como Una Realidad/A Larger Reality reside en que nos invita a cuestionar nuestras propias expectativas sobre qué y cómo son las literaturas que se escriben y leen alrededor de la frontera de México con los Estados Unidos. Esta publicación nos llama también a reconocer que estas voces son parte de las tradiciones de ambos países y a atestiguar cómo reclaman su derecho a la doble ciudadanía cultural. El desafío no es superfluo y sobrepasa la novedad de las modas pasajeras.
Géneros como el horror, la ciencia ficción y lo fantástico han sido descalificados como menos literarios pero también han servido para expresar las experiencias y las condiciones existenciales de aquellos que viven en los márgenes de la sociedad, la cultura y la historia. Esta marginalidad coincide y se complica cuando se localiza y se pronuncia desde los intersticios fronterizos.
Gloria Anzaldúa nos enseñó que la frontera es una herida sangrante, un espacio intermedio (3), un no lugar desde el cual puede irrumpir una literatura que, como opina Ignacio Sánchez Prado sobre la latinoamericana, resulta incómoda para los centros del capital cultural europeos y estadounidenses que no saben qué hacer con ella (8). En este sentido, la marginalidad en estos cuentos es doble, pues además de recurrir a géneros de las periferias literarias, pertenecen a esa literatura que oscila entre occidente y sus orillas, sobre todo si hacemos extensivo el adjetivo latinoamericano e incluimos lo Latinx.
Uno de los resultados de una lectura como ésta es la conciencia de que enfrentamos una realidad fragmentada por fronteras que desaparecen y vuelven a aparecer más duras y, al mismo tiempo, más quebradizas.

Una realidad más amplia: Historias desde la periferia bicultural ebook es gratis aquí.

Obras citadas
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera. San Francisco: Aun Lute Books, 1987.
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. América Latina en la “literatura mundial”. Pittsburg: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006.
Tobin, Stephen C. “El reconocimiento tan esperado a la ciencia ficción mexicanx en el WorldCon76 del 2018”. Latina American Literature Today 8 (2018). http://www.latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/es/2018/noviembre/el-reconocimiento-tan-esperado-la-ciencia-ficción-mexicanx-en-el-worldcon76-del-2018. Consultado el 7 de Noviembre de 2018.

​Cristóbal Garza González, who grew up Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a doctoral candidate in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Indiana University, and an avid reader of science fiction and fiction about scientific history. His work has appeared in Revista Hiedra and in the IU Press sponsored Chiricú Magazine.

​  For too long, the indigenous-hispanic origin people in the U.S. have by default permitted institutions and individuals outside our community to impose their will as to what we are supposed to be called. The terms, Hispanic and Latino, were conjured up by federal agencies, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Budget Management, back in the 1970s and 1980s.
For some four decades, we have groused and prattled about how unjust it was to have these labels foisted on such a diverse population as ours, multiethnic, multicultural and multi-politicized. But no one did anything about it, including myself. I just complained and had a lurch in my stomach when someone used the word, hispanic, as a noun. (N.B.: I no longer capitalize hispanic to emphasize its sole use as an adjective.)
Comes now a segment of our community seeking a gender neutral and yet inclusive term for what I call indigenous-hispanic Americans—not exactly a phrase that rolls off the tongue easily and quickly. What I’ve concluded is that all of us have to get together to evolve a term that is ours, that meets the criteria I’ve loosely set out above, and arrive at a consensus, by coming to our combined senses.
In an earlier piece (To_X_or_Not_To_X − Part I), I argued for assembling one or more conclaves throughout the U.S.A. where we would have full discussions about the issue, and agree on a term that would describe/nickname/label who we are: the term would signify our identity, but it must be organic, that is, deriving from our own reality and worldview. We are essentially mestizaje, a people evolved from the blending of different cultures into one: the Hispanic or Spanish which is of European origin, and the indigenous which is our peculiar bond to the land now known as the Americas. Hence, my use of the term, indigenous Hispanic American.
I object and, I believe, many others who care about such things also object, that the term, LatinX, was decided upon, given the trappings of an otherwise deliberated notion and then accepted sin más in knee-jerk fashion  by organizations and institutions who were reacting most likely to the underlying pursuit of a self-identifying term that would be gender neutral. I assert that the Latinate or Hispanican community should address that concern but approach its resolution using an organic and inclusive-democratic process.
Otherwise, we are merely re-enforcing the damage done by bureaucrats in D.C. who knew nothing of nuance let alone the history and culture of the Latinan people in the U.S. and rather than a unifying term, foisted a divisive title upon us, which some advocates seek to supplant by foisting a really eXotic term on all indigenous-hispanic origin peoples in the U.S.
One other criteria, which has been generally accepted though not articulated, is that the designation be derived from the Spanish language rather than English. While the reasons may be obvious, it would be worth our time to make them specific.
Spanish is the lengua franca of the indigenous-hispanic Americans along with another 500 million people worldwide, which makes it the second most widely spoken language by native speakers. Our lineage does not derive from the Anglo Saxon world; in fact, our Spanish blood is directly affiliated through war, occupation and trade with the African, Arab, Hebrew and other cultures around the Mediterranean Sea.
Yesenia Padilla, the writer of an article in compleX.com, a website, titled, “What does ‘LatinX’ mean? A look at the term that's challenging gender norms,” says, “By dismantling some of the gendering (my emphasis) within Spanish, LatinX helped modernize the idea of a pan-Latin American eXperience—or Latinidad--one that reflects what it means to be of Latin American descent in today’s world. The term also better reflects Latin America's diversity, which is more in line with intersectionality, the study of the ways that different forms of oppression (e.g. seXism, racism, classism, and heteroseXism) intersect.” What proponents of the X don’t seem to realize or ignore is that the U.S. experience for Latinidad is totally different from any other Latin American population. The only demonym I know of in the U.S. that evolved from within is the word Chicano, which conveys an origin of indigenous Mexican and Spanish European descent. The intersectionalities Padilla clicks off go far beyond what the simple replacement of vowels with an X can resolve; it may even cloud the underlying issues.
She goes on to quote Professors María R. Scharrón-del Río and Alan A. Aja, who defend the term, arguing that it should replace "Latino" when referring to people of Latin American descent. They say moving towards non-gendered language is a way to escape the ghost of colonialism that still haunts Latin American culture.
What “ghost?” Latinians face a neocolonialism right now! We are still being labelled from outside our communities; we are still treated as second-class residents of a country of which our forebears, native and colonialist, were its earliest civilizers; we are labelled as “an immigrant people” in order to keep us subordinated to the majority population even though we, as indigenous and early colonizers, were here hundreds and even thousands of years before the non-hispanic Europeans.
Substituting a gender ending with an X re-enforces two socio-psychological realities: the neocolonialism we have had to endure for centuries and the Black Legend effect, which originated in the era of exploration when adventurers likes Columbus bumbled their way across oceans to “discover” new lands, ushering a new era of eXploitation. The latter has persisted for centuries and undergirds the racist stereotyping of indigenous-hispanic origin peoples in the U.S. and the Americas. In other words, our community is adversely affected for being indigenous and of hispanic origin.
Scharrón-del Río and Aja write, according to Padilla, that, "LatinX" actually represents the people the term is supposed to represent, so it's "a concerted attempt at inclusivity" that "fosters solidarity with all of our LatinX community." What the original proponents of the X factor failed to realize or chose to ignore was that they were attacking a language that is not theirs to manipulate unilaterally, and introduced a factor, the X, which supposedly addresses a pan-American concern with a binary idiom. In effect, they seek to address a social dynamic, gender disambiguation, which has nothing to do with noun endings, by seeking to turn an entire language upside down.
I propose we eXplore the language to find a term which we can all agree is gender neutral, organic, logical and does not do violence to the language of Cervantes, de la Cruz, Lorca, García Marquez, Neruda (some of my favorite masters of the Spanish idiom).
We should address the concern for a gender neutral term which could resolve the demand for inclusivity, through a process that is organic, arising from the nature of the language and its cultural foundation, which dates back to al-Andalus of 13th century Spain.
As another contributor to Somos en escrito, Sonny Boy Arias, put it so subtly, “I don’t need no stinkin’ X factor to tell me who I am or what I stand for. I got 500 years of X factor and all it got me was new forms of X factor, bato!”
Let’s not fall into the trap that Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned against in Democracy in America,that we may reach a point where we over-democratize, even in our words, and it will affect all symbolic meanings in everything we do—to the point of absurdity.
                                                                             Armando Rendón
                                                                                             −Editor

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Three commentaries on the power of X by Ray Padilla, a retired professor of education, posit a candidate for how to label people of Chicanan ancestry, that is, the mestizo of Mexican-U.S. evolution, based on shared biological, political and ethnocentric values. Although Padilla focuses on Chicanada, his principles are applicable to the broader and greater discourse we must have to arrive at a label that works for everyone born or living in the U.S. of mixed indo-hispano ancestry. I recognize some readers out there might object to the idea they might be lumped in as either indo or hispano, but the term is a construct offered for the sake of argument—work with me.

Commentary I, first put forth on October 18, 2016, in LaRed Latina, a listserv

By Ray Padilla

There is a simple yet important concept in the academic world that goes a long way toward reducing confusion in thought. It is the concept of "unit of analysis". When considering any phenomenon, it is critical that we know what we are talking about. Therefore, knowing the unit of analysis is critical.
Here is an example from education. Suppose that we are interested in the topic of educational attainment. The question is: What is the unit of analysis? Is it the individual student? The classroom? The school? The school district? The state? The nation? Comparisons in educational attainment can be made across all these units of analysis. So it is necessary to be clear as to which unit of analysis we are discussing. The unit of analysis will determine what evidence we can bring into the discussion and how we make our comparisons.
Note this: Standing alone, no unit of analysis is more or less important than any of the others. However, for whatever reason, we may choose to focus on one unit of analysis as opposed to another in any particular discussion. Yet, in a different discussion some other unit of analysis could come to the foreground.
Now switch topics. Say we are discussing the universe of peoples that we might label collectively as "Indo-Hispanic". These are the people that resulted from the Spanish conquest of the two American continents. In Spanish, the term used historically is "Indo-Hispano." It is related to the term "Hispano Americano," which historically was used to designate the peoples of the Americas that populated the Spanish empire in the place called "Hispano America."
The term "mestizo" is equivalent to Indo-Hispano with the direct reference to ethnicity eliminated. Mestizo power began to emerge after the wars of independence from the hegemony of Spain. In the twentieth century, the concept of mestizaje has bifurcated so that it has taken somewhat different paths on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Some authors think that mestizaje south of the border still privileges Europeans while the sameconcept north of the border is used as a way to resist the racialized ways in which mestizos have beentreated in the U.S.
But here is the central issue: If we want to refer to the collectivity of Indo-Hispanos or mestizos, what term should we use? Of course, we could use either of these terms but these terms seem to be outdated in the context of U.S. ethnic and racial diversity. In the last 50 years or so two terms emerged as favored candidates for a proper name: Latinos and Hispanics. Of course, there were others, but these two seem to have the most sticking power.
In spite of their favored status, these two terms have generated much heat and controversy. The uproar is related to ideology, politics, tribalism, and plain old misunderstanding (especially about the unit of analysis). No need to rehash here the controversy because lots of keystrokes have been devoted to this controversy on this forum.
Yet, anyone with even an ounce of political savvy knows that keeping the mestizos apart in little tribes is no way to gain political power and all that it entails. Ways must be sought to bring together the great mestizo people into one population that can act to promote its own interests. But how can that be done if we can't even agree on what to name the collectivity?
So here is a modest proposal: Let's invent a new name. All people go through different name changes until they hit upon the one that best suits them. Look at this sequence: Negro, Black, Afro, Afro-American, African American.
Never mind that negro means exactly black.
What is the name? Xkanx. Either X is pronounced "shi". So the word is pronounced shi-kan'-shi.
Some features: The word is both male and female; it is both singular and plural; it refers both to the people and the land they inhabit; it replaces mestizo.
So we are the Xkanx people. Under this large unit of analysis there are many nationality groups, ethnic groups, racial groups, etc. The term does not require that, for example, Puertorriqueños, Cubanos, Chicanos, etc. stop being themselves. It all depends on the unit of analysis. And when we discuss a relevant topic we must keep in mind the unit of analysis.
So Latino-phobes rejoice! Hispano-phobes rejoice! You are a Xkanx and that is that. Underneath that general rubric you can be whatever you wish to be at a different level of analysis.
But remember this: Tribalism only works if it is open to transactions across tribes. So OPEN tribalism is the order of the day. CLOSED tribalism is self-extinguishing.
And for those who are wide awake: Xkanx is, like mestizo, biologically driven. Developing a Xkanx culture and consciousness is a matter of socialization.

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Commentary II, on XikanX, also on LaRed Latina

By Ray Padilla

As evident from various past postings that I made to LaRed Latina, I consider the Chicano identity (really identities) and correlative labels to be a quintessentially postmodern identity, by which I mean that the identity is conditional, circumstantial, dynamically changing, uncertain, provocative, trans-racial, historically evolving, politically laden, etc. Much the same can be said about the Latino identity. The Newtonian universe of absolute categories went out over a hundred years ago with the advances in physics made by Albert Einstein. After that, philosophy became a free for all.
We Chicanada were ahead of our time, but not necessarily by choice. We became a postmodern people early on due to the vicissitudes of history, including the Columbian incursion into the Americas and the big stick of Uncle Sam, not to mention our own Mexican penchant for government of the few, for the few, by the few (fuchi government).
As La Raza evolves historically, there will be a natural tendency to form ever larger groupings. This will entail shifts in identities to enclose more diversity while maintaining some common ground as the basis for coming together. What is important is to look beyond the labels and identities to ascertain whether or not we are moving forward in increasing our economic and political power. Also, and this is important, whether or not we are moving in a more democratic direction.
The U.S. as a whole, and other nations worldwide, are now catching up with La Raza in terms of becoming postmodern peoples. But the first thing that the postmodern people of the U.S. did was to elect a postmodern president. How will our democracy fare? Postmodernity by definition is highly relativized and we have to wonder whether our classical ideas about democracy can stand the chaos.
Keeping these points in mind, earlier I proposed a new movement of La Raza that includes a new identity and grouping. I proposed the term "XikanX" (pronounced Shi-Kan-Shi, with stress on the last syllable). The term includes all the people who resulted from the intermingling of Native Americans with the various peoples who invaded or were brought to the American continents.
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Commentary Part III, first presented on November 11, 2016 in LaRed Latina, a listserv

For some time now, I have been trying to introduce Raza and Chicanada to new political thinking. Chicanada seem to be stuck politically somewhere between the old corrupt politics of Mexico and Latin America and the great U.S. experiment in democracy. The former is seen by Chicanada as something to avoid like the plague and the latter is seen as irrelevant and inscrutable. Thus, we are dubbed the "sleeping giant."
The great principle of U.S. politics is that individuals will rationally pursue their self-interest (NOTE: self-interest is not necessarily equal to selfish-interest). A corollary to this principle is that it is legitimate for individuals to use the power of government to pursue their self-interest (self-interest does not include corruption or illegal activity).
Following this principle, it was quickly realized by the U.S. electorate that a way to gain political empowerment was to ban together with people who shared similar interests and to vote as a block. That behavior quickly led to the organization of political parties.
A second consequence of the great principle is that individuals and interest groups quickly realized that to gain political power it was necessary to form coalitions. People don't have to agree on everything. If they can agree on something then they form a coalition with others to gain enough political power to achieve a specific goal. When interests diverge the coalitions fall apart and other coalitions form.
So for Chicanada and Raza to gain political power we need to understand the underlying principles of U.S. politics. What counts politically in the U.S. is amassing a large volume of votes in order to prevail. This means that Chicanada and Raza must assemble large voting blocs through groupings that share ideology and through coalitions that are ad hoc. This approach means that we need to expand our notions of who we are and that we are not isolating ourselves into some kind of purist notion of ethnicity.
The Chicano identity, as espoused by El Movimiento, turns out to be too restrictive to achieve a wide political base. Moreover, a narrow, ethnically based identity tends to restrict our ability to create coalitions of similar interests because we become absorbed by our own ethnocentricity.
As a result of all this (and a great deal more that could be added), I have advocated that we move to a biologically based identity. You may recall my proposal for an AmerEEcan identity. The most recent proposal that I made calls for full recognition of our enormous genetic diversity. The label that I proposed to recognize our biologically based diversity is “Xkanx.”
The Xkanx people will include millions of individuals that have resulted from the epic encounter between the peoples of the American continents and the rest of the world. It is this mestizo group, in the context of U.S. politics that can have a huge impact on the course of U.S. and world history.
In short, I no longer see Chicanada as a marginalized ethnic group that seems to have nowhere to go. I see Chicanada as the potential avant garde of the Xkanx. But we need to stop thinking naively about U.S. politics and base our political behavior on a sophisticated understanding of the U.S. political system.  And we need to be clear as to who we are and who we can become.

Ray Padilla, El Vato de Sananto, earned a doctorate in Higher Education Administration at UC Berkeley in the early 1970s, taught at Arizona State University for 19 years before joining the UT San Antonio faculty in 2001 where he retired in 2009. He has deep roots in San Antonio, he says, as his grandparents worked their way through there more than a hundred years ago on their way to Chicago.