ISABEL GONZÁLEZ
New Jersey, 1935
After the court case
that denied my citizenship
back at the turn of the century,
I decided to fight for the rights
of puertorriqueños
with heartfelt letters
to the New York Times,
writing over and over,
always defending justice,
with words as my only weapons.
Now, when I open the newspaper to read
my own protests, I see shocking articles
about events in California, where children
born American are being deported to Mexico.
What does it take to be fully accepted?
We know the truth—we belong here.
We’re citizens.
A FAMOUS ARTIST
PATROCIÑO BARELA
New Mexico, 1936
As a child, I had to work hard, wandering
from state to state, taking jobs on farms
and in mines, mills, rail yards.
I never learned to read or write,
but my hands know how to carve
wild juniper wood
into statues
of santos—saints.
Time magazine calls me the discovery
of the year, because I am the first artist
of Hispanic ancestry
to have my work shown
at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, even though my statues
are an ancient style,
not modern,
and all I ever
finishing two arms
intended to do
was stay up late
and hands, leaving
the dream
of a face
for the next
morning.
SMOKE
DOLORES
California, 1937
On cold winter nights
when a hard frost threatens to destroy
the orange crop,
orchard foremen bang on our doors
to wake us up
and make us go out to light flames
in smudge pots
surrounded by darkness.
We pour oil into the pots,
hoping to keep the air warm enough
to save the lives of treasured trees,
our only source
of jobs.
My lungs
fill with soot
that makes me cough,
and while I’m gasping,
my smoke-blackened skirt
catches fire!
Now, from this hospital window,
I can see a billboard that shows
smiling blond ladies
in flowered dresses,
wearing clean straw hats
as they perch on tidy ladders
to pluck ripe oranges
and place them in quaint
baskets.
Do city people who shop
in neatly organized grocery stores
actually believe that the fiery lives
of real farmworkers
don’t exist?
AIRBORNE
MANUEL GONZÁLEZ
Hawaii, 1941
I’m a fighter pilot from Texas,
but rude strangers keep calling me
“the Mexican,” instead of using my name
and my rank: ensign.
I don’t even care too much
once I’m up here in mid-sky
hoping these Pearl Harbor
bombs
don’t strike
too close,
catching my plane
in the crossfire
so that I’ll fall
into the ocean
a sacrifice,
nameless.
SEGREGATED
EUGENE CALDERÓN
Alabama, 1942
No one knows how to classify
an East Harlem Puerto Rican
gang leader.
In the white officers’ barracks,
everyone complains that I’m too dark,
but in the black officers’ barracks,
they tell me I’m too light,
so the Tuskegee Airmen
end up inventing
a third barrack,
just for me
and one other
Latino.
Then they start moving me
from state to state,
all over this cold,
snowy country,
just to keep me
enough
training hours
to fly …
but I know the meaning
of the word perseverance.
I’ll never give up, so they won’t
defeat me!
MEDICINE
HÉCTOR GARCÍA
Texas, 1942
I’m a doctor, so I should be
a medical officer,
but recruiters send me
to the infantry,
refusing to believe
that someone born
in another country
could ever be so educated,
even though my parents
were both teachers
before they were forced
to flee the violent revolution
in Mexico
many years ago.
So now I fight two wars,
this armed one against enemies
of my beloved United States,
and a quiet, personal struggle
against racism, fought just by proving
my dedication
to healing wounds
and saving lives
with equal concern
for all.
ZOOT SUIT
RAMÓN
California, 1943
All we wanted to do was dance
the jitterbug, like everyone else.
Twelve years old, stripped of my clothes,
attacked, beaten, humiliated, simply because
my jacket and slacks are a new style, loose, cool.
When the police finally arrive,
they just laugh and praise
all those racist sailors
for raging against
the color of skin
beneath
clothes.
Is there any way in the world
that I’ll ever understand hatred?
Why do all the newspapermen
who take my picture
write about Zoot Suit Riots
instead of giving their articles
more truthful titles
like Sailor Rage?
Why have we
been arrested,
instead of them?
This is wartime!
Shouldn’t those US Navy men
find real enemies to attack
instead of ordinary
neighborhood kids
like me and my
friends?
GUEST WORKERS
CARMEN
California, 1944
With so many men away at war,
once again, mexicanos are welcomed
to the north as laborers, recruited
by big companies and the US government,
invited to work on farms and in factories,
building airplanes.
They call me Rosita the Riveter,
ignoring
my real name.
I sweat side by side with white and black
women, all of us strong, hardworking, brave.
Just watch us; we’re strong women; we won’t
go back to being silent, not after this.
BUS RIDE
ARMANDO SÁNCHEZ
Florida, 1945
I’m a drummer for a band.
I’m tired, so I sit in the middle
of the bus, not the back.
When someone tells
me to move,
I refuse.
So what if I’m dark skinned,
and Cuban?
I’m American, too, with the right
to sit freely.
So I keep that seat
all the way to New York.
Sometimes staying in one place
is what it takes to move forward.
WAR HERO
MACARIO GARCÍA
Texas, 1947
I landed at Normandy, fought my way across France,
survived explosions in Belgium, destroyed
whole machine-gun nests, and charged
a dangerous hill to protect my buddies.
Bronze Star.
Purple Heart.
Medal of Honor.
Not even the way newspapers praise my courage,
calling me the Fearless Mexican—not even that
was enough to make a restaurant owner back home
in Texas
serve me a meal
two years ago, when I stepped through a door
that had a sign warning:
NO DOGS, NO MEXICANS.
I entered anyway,
determined to prove
that I have rights,
but when a fight started,
I was the only one
who ended up
in jail.
It’s going to take a few more years
of courageous protests before all people
from every background can enjoy the freedom
we fought for
when we were
heroes
overseas.
THE COURAGE TO DANCE
JOSÉ LIMÓN
New York, 1947
After serving in the US Army,
I return
to my own
natural world,
the stage!
So many people say that ballet
and modern dance
are too feminine for men,
but I crave wings,
so I soar
inside the theater,
proving that strong muscles
can help me become
an eagle.
Human movement is a bridge
between solid ground
and dreamlike air.
•
Leap, fall, rise!
Work, listen, learn!
At school in Tucson, Arizona,
other children made fun of my accent,
so I studied constantly, mastering
the pronunciation of each English syllable
perfectly.
Now I work just as hard at teaching
young dancers how to fly
like the songbirds I watched
in my grandmother’s garden
back in Mexico, long before
I became
my winged
self.
BRACERO
EMILIO
California, 1948
Millions of laborers from Mexico
are recruited by the US, to use
our strong brazos—our arms—
for farm work.
My first home in this rich
northern nation
is a chicken coop.
I promise myself it won’t be my last home,
because I plan to work hard, sending money
back to my family and saving whatever I can,
making sure my children will be able to stay in school
instead of bending
over strawberry plants,
sweating so that someone else enjoys
a sweet dessert.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
HÉCTOR GARCÍA
Texas, 1949
As a doctor, I managed
to become respected
after the war,
but when I see
how other veterans
are treated, it makes me so angry,
especially when funeral homes
refuse to bury the remains of men
like Félix Longoria—a war hero
who died in battle, his bones
finally
delivered
to his family
after four years
of peace.
My anger gradually
turns into a plan: I’ll fight back
against unfairness, but not with weapons,
just words.
•
I’ll organize a civil rights movement
for soldiers, and another for farmworkers,
and a third to defend
voting rights.
No politician
will dare to ignore us
when we unite at the polls!
BORDER CROSSING
JUAN
California, 1950
I walk
all night
jump fences
outrun dogs
escape gunfire
end up
lost
then somehow discover
my own footsteps,
leading me back
to this path of weariness
under an avocado tree
where I sleep
in a bed of leaves
trembling
from this mixed-up sense
of loss and gain
that makes me yearn
to follow my papi
who left home
as a bracero
and never found
his way
back
to
me.
AN INDIVIDUAL
YMA SUMAC
New Jersey, 1953
Radio in the ’40s,
then Capitol Records,
my South American folk songs,
half a million albums sold
so swiftly!
And now, this melody of forest creatures,
my rare, five-octave vocal range, a chance
to reveal the double voice, a talent
called eerie because, alone, I sound
like two people
singing together.
Low and warm.
High and birdlike.
Music critics praise my variations,
in between their endless descriptions
of my Peruvian childhood
as a direct descendant
of the Inca emperor Atahualpa.
•
I refuse to be remembered
only for my ancestry.
I insist that reporters acknowledge
my completely unique
voice.
HOLLYWOOD
JOSÉ FERRER
California, 1954
My family brought me to the mainland
from our island home in Puerto Rico
when I was only six.
I studied hard and was accepted
by Princeton at the age of fourteen—
but I didn’t choose to start right away—first
I prepared at a school in Switzerland
for an extra year.
College at fifteen. Architecture. Jazz. Theater!
I experiment until I realize that I’m a natural actor,
capable of switching
back and forth
between Shakespeare plays
and light comedy,
all of it equally enjoyable.
As the first US Latino to win an Oscar,
I should be respected, but unlike so many others,
I never agree to change my name to an English one,
and I don’t like to accept roles that mock my ancestry
with silly
stereotypes.
So now, when I’m asked by the FBI
to accuse my colleagues of being disloyal
to the United States government, I refuse.
Blacklisted in Hollywood, I leave for New York’s
Broadway stage plays, where I feel right at home
transforming myself into Don Quixote,
&nb
sp; the imaginative knight who strives to right
all the wrongs
of life’s
complicated
reality.
EDUCATION CHANGES EVERYTHING
EUGENE CALDERÓN
New York, 1957
All that segregated unfairness
when I was a Tuskegee Airman
back in the war years
definitely
left its mark.
Instead of going back
to my East Harlem gang,
I went to college
and then graduate school,
and now I’ve returned
to my old turf
as a police officer,
recruiting other puertorriqueños
to defend the neighborhood—
el barrio—from violence.
Next, I plan to join
the Department of Education,
where I’ll be an official,
recruiting Latino teachers
so that children will have a chance
to survive
and enjoy
an educated
future.
Maybe I’ll even organize
a museo del barrio—our own
unique museum
for teaching history
through art!
PEDRO PAN
CRISTINA AND ELENA
Rhode Island, 1962
They call us the Peter Pan children
because we arrived alone, our parents
left behind
in Cuba.
The revolution on our island
is too complicated for us to understand.
We’re only nine years old—twin sisters
with living parents who sent us to the US
as if we were orphans, because they thought
we would be safe here.
We’ve had to live in one foster home
after another, sometimes together, often
separate.
Miami was a little bit easier,
but Denver was just lonely snow,
and here all we can think of all winter
is when will Mami and Papi
finally
arrive?
What if they never
get permission
to leave
the isolated
island
at all?