Poetry
Solidarity Baby
I’m just a solidarity baby
don’t know what it’s really like.
Played on fire escapes and danced on rooftops
Making fortresses out of boxes and paper plates
My first march I rode above the crowd
In a yellow baby backpack with a metal frame.
Even then quiet and observant
I didn’t cry or complain
‘Cause mami and papi were planning solidarity baby
organizing dreams, taking on telling the truth
Running the Central American Underground Railroad
thru my living room
My second-hand clothes given third-hand with first-rate love
Giving the little we had to those who had less
This is my inheritance
While all I did was play with office supplies
And draw pictures of ET with highlighters
And learn to break dance in the halls
between the offices in front of Macarthur park on 7th
Drawing aliens playing with friends with aliases
Wearing huipiles for solidarity baby
This one’s for you Uncle Sam we don’t want another Vietnam
This one’s for you Uncle Sam we don’t want another Vietnam***
I’m just a revolutionary honee
A product of an international relation.
Imaginary Guatemalan, porque Guate no existe
Mistaken identity: undercover gringa-chapina-alemana-mestiza
Coming from a long line of resilience
Mamá, Papá, companeros de los centros de información
Extended family of activists
Raising rebellious daughter
Never doing as I was told
I understand now that you being ahead of your time means much suffering from it
But it’s beautiful to love the world with eyes that have not yet been born.*
I remember hiding under literature tables
listening to proud mayan woman
mujer de maíz
using the conquerors language to testify
while mami interprets
I used to curl up on my fathers lap
while he debated what lay between the lines
Chapín Spanish booming from his chest
comforting
I used to get names of dictators and leaders of the people mixed up:
Samoza and Sandino? Rios Montt and Otto René Castillo?
Farabundo, Romero, Roque, Asturias, Menchú?
Banana Republicans, Cold warriors, Contras quien?
I’m just looking for my place
Am I a CENTRAL American?
Si pues, soy del EpiCentro.
So what have I ever done for revolution, honey?
But entertain thoughts of clandestine self-righteous militant explosions.
Si el poeta sos vos que tengo yo que hablarte?**
I mean its just a revolution honey, why they getting so crazy?
I’m just trying to stay away from letting them impose their guru on me.
I don’t have to prove who’s more down, I’m just trying to keep my head up.
But, what have I ever done??
But survive race riots in high school
Picking up the pieces using translator techniques
But get through college when the high school counselor said it couldn’t be done
But tell stories on a microphone,
possibly just touching one.
Companeros mios yo cumplo mi papel luchando con lo major que tengo.*
With the best that I’ve got.
No one knows my secret plans
Documentary dias, radio nights, printed palabras
What I am capable of
Practicing storyteller strategies and messenger maneras
Holding the door open for the little ones who are coming thru
What I am planning to do
Its part of my dynamically undisciplined destiny
To observe what is not obvious
Risking reporting truths untold
Campaigning and complaining for the silent
who carry this country on their back
Layering laughter between tears
Unless we document ourselves we are invisible
There is so much left to do.
I’m taking on telling the truth.
I’m just a revolutionary mama,
Solidarity! Baby!
Otto Rene Castillo *Before the Scales, Tomorrow: ,**Viudo de mundo ***Song by SABIA
CentralAmericanAmerican
by Maya Chinchilla
First published Spring, 1999 La Revista, UC Santa Cruz
Centralamerican American
does that come with a hyphen?
a space?
Central America
America
América
Las Américas
Español chapín
black beans and white rice
tortillas de maiz almost an inch thick
refugees and exiles
as playmates
movies with trembling
mountains, bombs and
gunfire raging in my heart.
black lists and secrets.
Huipiles and mysterious people
passing through my home.
Where is the center of America, anyway?
Are there flowers on a volcano?
You can find the center in my heart
where I imagine the flowers never die
But today the volcano explodes in the way
it has every day for 30 years.
No it is not a sacrifice it desires,
for we already have sacrificed too much,
They want us out of this country
they say we don’t belong here
vamos pa’ el norte
they tell us the American dream is the truth
but that our stories of escape from horror are not.
When can we rest from running?
When will the explosions in my heart stop
and show me where my home is?
Are there flowers on a volcano?
am I a CENTRAL
American?
Where is the center of America?