I am Joaquín – Chicano History and Culture

I am Joaquín

lost in a world of confusion,

Caught up in a whirl of a gringo society,

Confused by the rules,

Scorned by attitudes,

Suppressed by manipulations

And destroyed by modern society.

My fathers

have lost the economic battle

and won

the struggle of cultural survival.

And now!

I must choose

Between the paradox of

Victory of the sprit,

despite physical hunger

to exist in the grasp

of American social neurosis,

sterilization of the soul

and a full stomach.

Yes,

I have come a long way to nowhere,

Unwillingly dragged by that

monstrous, technical

industrial giant called progress

and Anglo success . . .

I look at myself.

I watch my brothers.

I shed tears of sorrow.

I sow seeds of hate.

I withdraw to the safety within the

circle of life . . .

MY OWN PEOPLE

I am Cuauhtémoc,

Proud and Noble

Leader of men,

King of an empire,

civilized beyond the dreams

of the Gachupín Cortez.

Who is also the blood,

the image of myself.

I am the Maya Prince.

I am Nezahualcóyotl,

Great leader of the Chichimecas.

I am the sort and flame of Cortez

the despot.

And

I am the Eagle and Serpent of

the Aztec civilization.

I owned the land as far as the eye

could see under the crown of Spain,

and I toiled on my earth

and gave my Indian sweat and blood

for the Spanish master,

Who ruled with tyranny over man and

beast and all that he could trample

But. . .

THE GROUND WAS MINE. . .

I was both tyrant and slave.

As Christian church took its place

in God’s good name,

to take and use my Virgin Strength and

Trusting faith,

The priests

both good and bad

took

But

gave a lasting truth that

Spaniard,

Indo

Mestizo

Were all God’s children

And

from these words grew men

who prayed and fought

for

their own worth as human beings,

for

that

GOLDEN MOMENT

FREEDOM.

I was part in blood and spirit

of that

courageous village priest

Hidalgo

in the year eighteen hundred and ten

who rang the bell of independence

and gave out that lasting cry:

“El Grito de Dolores, Que mueran

los Gachupines y que viva

la Virgen de Guadalupe. . .”

I sentenced him

who was me.

I excommunicated him my blood.

I drove him from the pulpit to lead

a bloody revolution for him and me. . .

I killed him.

His head,

which is mine and all of those

who have come this way,

I placed on that fortress wall

to wait for independence.

Morellos!

Matamoros!

Guerrero!

All Compañeros in the act,

STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF

INFAMY

to feel the hot gouge of lead

which my had made.

I died with them . . .

I lived with them

I lived to see our country free.

Free

from Spanish rule in

eighteen-hundred-twenty-one.

Mexico was free ? ?

The crown was gone

but

all his parasites remained

and ruled

and taught

with gun and flame and mystic power.

I worked,

I sweated

I lead

I prayed

and

waited silently for life to again

commence.

I fought and died

for

Don Bento Juárez

Guardian of the Constitution.

I was him

on dusty roads

on baron land

as he protected his archives

as Moses did his sacraments.

He held his Mexico

in his hand

the most desolate

and remote ground

which was his country,

And this Giant

little Zpotec

gave

not one palm’s breath

of his country to

Kings or Monarchs or Presidents

of foreign powers.

I am Joaquín

I rode with Pancho Villa,

crude and war.

A tornado at full strength,

nourished and inspired

by the passion and the fire

of all his earthly people.

I am Emiliano Zapata.

“This Land

This earth

OURS”

The Villages

The Mountains

The Streams

belong to the Zapatistas.

Our life

Or yours

is the only trade for soft brown earth

and maize.

All of which is our reward,

A creed that formed a constitution

for all who dare live free!

“this land is ours . . .

Father, I give it back to you.

Mexico must be free . . .”

I ride with Revolutionists

against myself.

I am Rural

Course and brutal,

I am the mountain Indian,

superior over all.

The thundering hoofbeats are my horses.

The chattering of machine guns

is death to all of me:

Yaqui

Tarahumara

Chamula

Zapotec

Mestizo

Español

I have been the Bloody Revolution,

The Victor,

The Vanquished,

I have killed

and been killed.

I am despots Díaz

and Huerta

and the apostle of democracy

Francisco Madero

I am

the black shawled

faithful women

who die with me

or live

depending on the time and place.

I am

faithful,

humble,

Juan Diego

the Virgin de Guadalupe

Tonantzio, Aztec Goddess too.

I rode the mountains of San Joaquín.

I rode as far East and North

as the Rocky Mountains

and

all mean feared the guns of

Joaquín Murrieta.

I killed those men who dared

to steal my mine,

who raped and Killed

my love

my Wife

Then

I killed to stay alive.

I was Alfego Baca,

living my nine lives fully.

I was the Espinoza brothers

of the Valle de San Louis

All

were added to the number of heads

that

in the name of civilization

were placed on the wall of independence.

Heads of brave men

who died for cause and principle.

Good or bad.

Hidalgo! Zapata!

Murrieta! Espinosa!

are but a few.

They

dared to face

The force of tyranny

of men

who rule

By farce and hypocrisy

I stand here looking back,

and now I see

the present

and still

I am the campesino

I am the fat political coyote

of the same name,

Joaquín .

In a country that has wiped out

all my history,

stifled all my pride.

In a country that has placed a

different weight of indignity upon

age

old

burdened back.

Inferiority

is the new load. . .

the Indian has endured and still

emerged the winner,

The Mestizo must yet overcome,

And the Gauchupín we’ll just ignore.

I look at myself

and see part of me

who rejects my father and my mother

and dissolves into the melting pot

to disappear in shame

I sometimes

sell my brother out

and reclaim him

for my own, when society gives me

token leadership

in society’s own name.

I am Joaquín

who bleeds in many ways.

The altars of Moctezuma

I stained a bloody red.

My back of Indian slavery

was stripped crimson

from the whips of masters

who would lose their blood so pure

when Revolution made them pay

Standing against the walls of

Retribution.

Blood . . .

Has flowed from

on every battlefield

between

Campesino, Hacendado

Slave and Master

and

Revolution.

I jumped from the tower Chapultapec

into the sea of fame;

My country’s flag

my burial shroud;

With Los Niños

whose pride and courage

could not surrender

with indignity

their country’s flag

To strangers . . . in their land.

Now

I bleed in some smelly sell

from club

or gun,

or tyranny,

I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger

cut my face and eyes,

as I fight my way from sticking Barios

to the glamour of the Ring

and lights of fame

or mutilated sorrow.

My blood run pure on the ice caked

hills of the Alaskan Isles,

on the oppose strewn beach of Normandy,

the foreign lan of Korea

and now

Vietnam.

Here I stand

before the court of Justice

Guilty

for all the glory of my Raza

to be sentenced to despair.

Here I stand

Poor in money

Arrogant with pride

Bold with Machismo

Rich in courage

and

Wealthy in spirit and faith.

My knees are caked with mud.

My hands calloused from the hoe.

I have made the Anglo rich

yet

Equality is but a word,

the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken

and is but another treacherous promise.

My land is lost

and stolen,

My culture has been raped,

I lengthen

the line at the welfare door

and fill the jails with crime.

These then

are the rewards

this society has

For sons of Chiefs

and Kings

and bloddy Revolutionists.

Who

gave a foreign people

all the skills of ingenuity

to pave the way with Brains and Blood

for

those hordes of Gold starved

Strangers

Who

changed our language

and plagiarized our deeds

as feats of valor

of their own.

They frowned upon our way of life

and took what they could use.

Our Art

Our Literature

Our Music, they ignored

so they left the real things of value

and grabbed at their own destruction

by their Greed and Avarice

They overlooked that cleansing fountain of

nature and brotherhood

Which is Joaquín

The art of our great señoras

Diego Rivera

Siqueiros

Orozco is but

another act of revolution for

the Salvation of mankind.

Marichai music, the

heart and soul

of the people of the earth,

the life of Child,

and the happiness of love.

The corridor tell the tales

of life and death,

of tradition,

Legends old and new,

of Joy

of passion and sorrow

of the people . . . who I am.

I am in the eyes of woman,

sheltered beneath

her shawl of black,

deep and sorrowful

eyes,

That bear the pain of sons long buried

or dying,

Dead

on the battlefield or on the barbed wire

of social strife.

Her rosary she prays and fingers

endlessly

like the family

working down a row of beets

to turn around

and work

There is no end.

Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth

and all the love for me,

And I am her

And she is me.

We face life together in sorrow,

anger, joy, faith and wishful

thoughts.

I shed tears of anguish

as I see my children disappear

behind a shroud of mediocrity

never to look back to remember me.

I am Joaquín.

I must fight

And win this struggle

for my sons, and they

must know from me

Who I am.

Perf of the blood that runs deep in me

Could not be vanquished by the Moors.

I defeated them after five hundred years,

and I endured.

The part of blood that is mine

has labored endlessly five-hundred

years under the heel of lustful

Europeans

I am still here!

I have endured in the rugged mountains

of our country.

I have survived the toils of slavery

of the fields.

I have existed

in the barrios of the city,

in the suburbs of bigotry,

in the mines of social snobbery,

in the prisons of dejection,

in the muck of exploitation

and

in the fierce heat of racial hatred.

And now the trump sounds,

The music of the people stirs the

Revolution,

Like a sleeping giant it slowly

rears its head

to the sound of

Tramping feet

Clamoring Voices

Mariachi strains

Fiery tequila explosions

The smell of chile verde and

Soft brown eyes of expectation for a

better life.

and in all the fertile farm lands,

the barn plains,

the mountain villages,

smoke smeared cities

We start to MOVE.

La Raza!

Mejicano!

Español!

Latino!

Hispano!

Chicano!

or whatever I call myself,

I look the same

I feel the same

I Cry

and

Sing the same

I am the masses of my people and

I refuse to be absorbed.

I am Joaquín

The odds are great

but my sprit is strong

My faith unbreakable

My load is pure

I am the Aztec Prince and Christian Christ

I SHALL ENDURE!

I WILL ENDURE!