Zapata's Disciple: Essays [1 ed.] 0896085899, 9780896085893

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Academic

Library

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Advance Praise

In this book,

full

for

Zapata's Disciple

of Martin Espada’s intelligence

emerges as passionate artistic practice, essays as acts of tough-minded engagement. heart, poetiy

and and

- Adrienne Rich In this finely

wrought

collection of essays, Martin

Espada

embodies the heroic character of the poet who intersects truths with beauty. Keep telling our truths, carnal. Keep singing for us their horrible beauty! - Luis J. Rodriguez

Martin Espada

who

is

an

articulate

and compassionate man

writes with controlled fuiy about the difficult history

He has a delightful sense of humor, makes use of scathing irony, and wields a very sharp cutlass on behalf of all underdogs. The essays in Zapata’s Disciple are cogent, exquisitely crafted, and important. This fine of our times.

poet creates a marvelous prose. -

John Nichols

Other Books by Martin Espada

Poetry Imagine the Angels of Bread City of Coughing and Dead Radiators Rebellion

is

the Circle of a Lover’s

Hands

Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero

Translation The Blood That Keeps Singing: Selected Poems of Clemente Soto Velez (with Camilo Perez-Bustillo)

Edited Volumes El Coro:

A Chorus

of Latino

and Latina Poetry

Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination

from Curbstone Press

ZAPATA’S DISCIPLE Essays

ZAPATA’S DISCIPLE Essays

by Martin Espada

South End Press Cambridge, MA

Copyright ©1998 by Martin Espada

Cover photo: Frank Espada, “‘Reagan (Washington, D.C., 1981) Cover design by Beth Fortune

le

roba a los pobres’”

Printed in the U.S.A.

Any

properly footnoted quotation of

may be used of

up

to

500 sequential words

without permission, as long as the

total

number

words quoted does not exceed 2,000. For longer quotations

number of South End Press.

or for a greater

sion to

total

words, please write for permis-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Espada, Martin, 1957Zapata’s disciple

:

essays

cm. ISBN 0-89608-590-2

/

by Martin Espada.

p.

I.

(cloth).

— ISBN 0-89608-589-9 (pbk.)

Title.

PS3555.S53Z36 1998

—dc2

8 1 4’. 54

98- 1 7384

1

CIP

South End Press, 7 Brookline 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 ®

Street, #1,

Cambridge, 1

745C

MA

02139

2 3 4 5 6 7

This book

is

dedicated

to

my father

Contents I.

ZAPATA’S DISCIPLE

Zapata’s Disciple and Perfect Brie

3

Postcard from the Empire of Queen Ixolib

13

Argue Not Concerning God

31

The Puerto Rican II.

Dummy and

the Merciful

Son

37

DISPATCHES

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis?: The Painful Patience of a Colony at the Close of the Twentieth Century

The New Bathroom

Policy at English High School:

Dispatches from the Language Wars Multiculturalism in the Year of

73

Columbus 85

and Rodney King III.

POETRY LIKE BREAD

Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination

The Good Liar Meets His Executioners: The Evolution of a Poem The All

57

Poetics of

99 107

Commerce: The Nike Poetry Slam

115

Things Censored:

The Poem NPR Doesn’t Want You

to

Hear

125

Acknowledgments

137

Index

139

About the Author

145

About South End Press

146

I.

ZAPATA’S DISCIPLE

Zapata’ s Disciple

and Perfect Brie

In

December 1949,

my father was arbus. A darkskinned

in Biloxi, Mississippi,

rested for not going to the back of the

Puerto Rican raised in

New York, he

did not accept the laws

Jim Crow. A judge sentenced him to a week in jail. This is what he learned: 1) he would be branded for the rest of his life by the brown pigment of his skin; and 2) he would fight. He would rather sit in jail than at the back of the bus. My father’s social class was defined by the opportunities denied him because of racism, and the opportunities he of

created for himself in spite of racism; the assignment of a servile status

based on skin

of that status, for himself

frustrations

and

color,

and

and

his furious rejection

others. His experiences

rages, the stubborn resistance, the dignity

—formed the environment in which

of his defiance

as son and poet, contributing to its

punishments.

—the

my

I

evolved,

awareness of class and

Martin Espada

4

What most damaged my lege education. Instead, there

Mechanic

places.

father

was the lack

was a succession

in the Air Force, a training

of a col-

and

of jobs

he was not

permitted to use as a civilian in the segregated airline in-

A grocery

dustry.

store,

which he abandoned

gun on thugs demanding sional baseball.

Tunnel

in

New of

tells

typewriter,

sanitation crew cleaning the Holland fell

off

a truck and injured

may have been music somewhere: A drums

sold to pay the rent.

Or

family

writing:

A

hocked many times, didn’t come back one day.

When was bom, I

contractor,

a

protection money. Semiprofes-

York, where he

his back. There

legend

A

after pulling

and by

in 1957, all

he was working

accounts hating

was

Political activism

own community, He organized rent

of Brooklyn.

an

electrical

it.

his salvation.

ganizing in his

for

the East

He began by

New York

or-

section

strikes, voter registration

drives, sit-ins of welfare mothers,

marches

for safe streets

He was a fierce stump speaker, who once shared a podium at a rally with Malcolm X. He went to jail again. He was that most dangerous of creatures, a workingclass radical. James Graham, in The Enemies of the Poor, and

civil rights.

compared my father to a guerrilla-disciple pata, the Mexican revolutionary.

He

rose through the political ranks in

directing a series of

of Emiliano Za-

New York

City,

community-based organizations and

programs. At the height of his influence as a leader, he

walked away from the wars. He had always been a photographer,

and

in the late

1970s a grant enabled him

to create

the Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project, a photo-

documentary and

oral history of the Puerto

across the United States.

He

is still

Rican migration

a photographer today.

Zapata’s Disciple and Perfect Brie

I

spent

my

5

childhood in working-class housing projects in

New York. The projects were not yet the stereotypical swamps breeding the malaria of crime and drugs, but proEast

urban reservation meant to coniine the urban savage. The environment was full of paranoia and tinged with violence: A grocer murdered in a robbery, a friend beaten and stripped by a local gang. Yet, in this environment, was raised with an ethos of resistance all around me. Some of my earliest drawings depict demonstrations, sketched on the back of remember, flyers announcing those same demonstrations.

jects nevertheless, dreary institutional housing, the

I

I

from the age of

eight,

a march and candlelight

vigil for

a

short-order cook kicked to death by junkies, a spontaneous

outpouring of

my

grief

and compassion burned so deeply

imagination that

years

later:

“The

my

As

I

Moon

father

poem about

wrote a

Shatters on

moved from

work, our social status changed. being Puerto Rican in

ever,

middle-class trappings

Long Island high white

flight,

painted on cake.

I

my

over twenty

Alabama Avenue.”

blue-collar to white-collar

We

effect

left

the projects.

How-

canceled out whatever

we had acquired

school,

it

into

for ourselves. In

surrounded by the children of

faced racial obscenities everywhere, spraylocker

The brawls were

and even scrawled inevitable:

in the icing

on a

Being kicked repeatedly in

a classroom while the teacher looked away, or having

head slammed

a

into a water fountain. Here, the

my

gangs were

called fraternities.

Not coincidentally, at this time

I

began

to write poetry,

as an attempt to explain myself to myself. This writing, however, was not for the consumption of teachers, or for school.

was so

I

was a

spectacularly marginal student. In fact,

seriously alienated that

I

once

failed English.

I

I

failed

Martin Espada

6

was because was tapping out poems instead of the Quick Brown Fox, etc. In the recession of the 1970s and early 1980s, wandered in and out of school, from job to job. This is my

Typing, too, but that

I

I

resume: janitor at Sears, bindery worker in a printing plant, gas station attendant, door-to-door encyclopedia salesman,

washer

pizza cook, telephone solicitor, car

showroom, bouncer tory,

in

a factory

for

a bar, caretaker in a primate labora-

night desk clerk in a transient hotel, worker on a

cleaning crew for a minor league ballpark, radio journalist

Wisconsin mental

in Nicaragua, patient rights advocate in

and welfare

hospitals,

rights paralegal,

among

other jobs.

I

was not in the business of collecting colorful anecdotes: when took a job, was always in need of a job. Recently, an interviewer asked why chose to work as a bouncer. Because thought it would look good when came up for I

I

I

I

tenure,

I

I

said.

Working was

better than not working.

wide variety of social service programs. vouchers

Roman

like

checkout

scrolls in

I

sampled a

I

unraveled food

lines.

I

marveled at

the irony of Jefferson signing the Declaration of Inde-

my

pendence on

food stamps.

stood in line for General

former

client, recently

are you here

for,

Relief,

on

my

finger.

and found myself next

released from a mental hospital.

he wanted

phrase from Herbert

sold the ring

I

Hill,

a

Who

To borrow a have been both a client and a

to

I

know. Me,

to

I

I

said.

constituent.

Like

my

father,

I

refused to accept

my

place in

line.

obtained a law degree from Northeastern University School, too,

and worked as an attorney

channeled

my

energy into

bilingual education law with tion,

Training and Advocacy,

for

a

number

political activism.

META

Inc.),

Law

of years. I

I

I,

practiced

(Multicultural

Educa-

and served as Supervisor

Zapata’s Disciple and Perfect Brie of

Su

Clinica Legal, a legal services

program

for low- income,

Spanish-speaking tenants in Chelsea, outside Boston. I

work as a Professor

in the English

7

Department

Now

at the Uni-

versity of Massachusetts-Amherst, teaching creative writing

and Latino poetry. Given my history, next? Chimney sweep? Rodeo clown?

For some poets, social class

is

ask myself: What

I

the triangle in the orchestra,

a distant tinkling. For me, the matter of social class beat

itself,

an

about

pay homage,

ther’s struggles.

for

social class,

and

witness, act as advocate,

sit-in at

tell

example,

My poem

secrets.

when

being served a cheeseburger.

who

granted with the news of this event.

who have endured

those

mirror to their faces,

Paying homage

ences. visible

my

fa-

show them is

I

want

to

take their privileges I

also

want

to

com-

similar humiliations, hold a

the pride there.

about the acceptance of an inheri-

tance, the refusal to forsake ancestors, I

write about

I

“The Other Alamo” deals with his

confront the complacency of those

fort

pay homage, bear

I

a segregated lunch counter in San Antonio, Texas,

for the privilege of

for

the

insistent percussion (mine is a Latin jazz or-

chestra). In writing

I

is

community,

class.

when write about my work experiFor many years, was a spy. Since laborers are inin many eyes, valued only for what their hands can

bear witness

I

I

and do things in front of them which reveal true motivations, unspoken bigotries. My boss at the factory showroom felt free to ask me why the spies at his Air Force do, people say

base always cut the lunch for

him. This

poet-spy, ferently

I

invisibility

line,

because

I

wasn’t really there

has been a blessing

for

me. As a

not only saw and heard, but saw and heard

from the people around me. As

I

pumped

gas,

dif-

no

Martin Espada

8

would write a poem about the intoxicated hearse driver who asked me directions. As I hosed down cages coated with monkeyshit, no one could predict one was aware that

that

I

would write a poem

I

in the Freezer.”

called

The drunk

bouncer, breaking

my

I

“Do Not Put Dead Monkeys

punched

in the

head as a bar

finger, certainly didn’t anticipate

I

would write a poem about him. Neither did the judge in Chelsea District Court, where argued as a lawyer, realize I

that

I

would someday write verse comparing his face to a fist. I am an advocate when I write poems speaking on be-

an opportunity

half of those without

to

be heard,

for

the curses of segregation and subordination by class

imposition of silence. The

caught in the

poems seek

collective throat. Here,

I

to release

am

one of is

the

a voice

influenced by a

long Latin American tradition: Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal,

Clemente Soto Velez,

Galeano has written,

These are the

“I

human

Alegria.

Eduardo

who cannot

read me.”

Claribel

write for those

beings who, in the words of Wolfgang

Binder, “run the risk of leaving this earth unrecorded.”

know

I

Mrs. Baez, a Dominican immigrant living in the

bumed-out wreckage then

If

I

am

of a building torched

obligated to record her painfully dignified ritual of

serving coffee to strangers.

malan

by her landlord,

artist,

If

I

a refugee from

verge of being deported,

who

know Jacobo Mena, a Guatepolitical

persecution on the

cleaned offices by night and

painted stunning landscapes by day,

I

am

compelled to

and red. To know that a cockroach may become embedded in a child’s ear is to accept responsibility for that knowledge, to communicate that knowledge for the sake of those who do not know, and those who do. How could know what know, and not tell what know? write of his colors, his green

I

I

I

Zapata’s Disciple and Perfect Brie

I

tell

is

secrets

when

I

write about social class.

that class matters, very

much,

The

great secret

in this society dizzy with

the illusion of classlessness. Writing about class

about power relationships as they

9

is to

really are, in their

write

naked-

and so to write about how this system actually works. And where better to learn about the emphasis on property over people than in court, with landlord-tenant cases? The ness,

poem,

Stacked in the Hallways of

“Tires

ments an actual exchange

in

Civilization,”

docu-

Chelsea District Court, where

a landlord admitted that there were rodents infesting the building, but justified himself

lowed the tenant to have a In the

words

cat.

of critic

by proclaiming that he I call this my cat poem.

Thomas

tions are the great dividing line in

more

al-

Disch, “Class distinc-

American

divisive for being, officially, invisible.”

poetry,

Far too

all

the

many

myth of a society without any real class conflict. They do so by assuming that everya certain elite, and writing accordingly, with

poets maintain the distinctions or

one belongs

an

elitist

to

diction

full

of

elitist

references for

elite

audiences,

revealing their class biases in unintended, and, for me, unflattering

ways. Once, while judging a national poetry com-

petition,

I

distinct

came across a

from

series

of vacation

poems

(as

by a poet who bragged Paris and “lunched on perfect Brie.” The

travel poems), written

that she went to

arrogance and snobbery of that statement simply dazzled me. I was reminded of lines from Neruda, speaking of a fel-

low poet who ate bread every day, but had never seen a baker.

Not everyone belongs poetry.

to the elite,

The damned are not only

even in the world of

subject, but also audience,

and even poets themselves. Not every poetry reading occurs on a college campus, at a bookstore or cafe. There are read-

1

Martin Espada

0

community centers and prisons, for adult literacy/GED and ESL (English as a Second Language) programs, at nursing homes and reservations. Not every poet works, or has always worked, as an academic. ings

and workshops

Some

at

poets are poets of the kitchen. Their lives are

fogged with sweat, loud with the noise of their labor. To be

heard over the crashing of pots, these poets

may

shout, in a

language understood by the other workers in the kitchen, to

remind them of their humanity even

in the

midst of flames.

As always with kitchen work, many of the poets are darkskinned or female; there may be no English, or a new English. The kitchen, for these poets, may literally be a city jail, a welfare

office,

a housing project, a factory, or a migrant

bor camp. Even those not

bom

la-

somehow caught in its chaos, breathe the same heat, learn the same songs, and then testify. What they all have to say and how they say

it

reflect

of the kitchen, but

the turbulence of this existence, past

and

present. Their poetry has the capacity to create solidarity

among

those in the kitchen and empathy

among

those out-

side the kitchen.

There are so

many

community alone, who write from the kitchen with grace and power. Jack Agueros of East Harlem gives us Sonnets Jrom the Puerto Rican, demanding respect for his street subjects with poets, in the Latino

the use of the sonnet form. Luis Rodriguez writes of “La

Vida Loca,” his gang days in Chicano East Los Angeles. Enid Santiago Welch records the ritual interrogations of

and Loma Dee Cervantes recalls growing up in “a woman-family” where she translated the same welfare notices. Frank Lima and Jimmy Santiago Baca sing of their resilient humanity as survivors of the prison experience. Gary Soto, Tino Villanueva, and Diana Garcia evoke childhood in a migrant farmworker family. Demetria Martinez welfare,

Zapata’s Disciple and Perfect Brie has documented the

women

in

of two Salvadoran refugee

realities

her poem, “Nativity,” and was prosecuted for

was

legedly smuggling “aliens” (she fact that the

Then

11

poem was

no one has

a boy from Michoacan, Mexico, ence, “There

no gold

is

who

I

to

read:

Jesus Rangel,

encountered in an Oregon

wrote of his farmworker experi-

But feathers

/

another boy, introduced

me

/

At Lynden Farms”;

as “Brandon” at a reading in

a Boston juvenile detention center, his poetry that he

acquitted, despite the

introduced against her as evidence).

there are the poets

high school workshop,

who was

so dedicated to

would provoke brawls with the other

mates and be thrown

al-

into solitary confinement,

in-

where he

could write in relative tranquility. All of

us write about

class, not

as abstraction, not with

a capital C, but as a consequence of lived experience. As with any other poet, our poems are about family, friends,

community,

lovers, clients,

people in these

than benefit by All this is

issues

must

poems

The

self.

suffer

difference is that the

from the class system rather

it.

not to say that a poet

who writes about

these

necessarily forgo the concerns of language.

no contradiction between writing about being poor, or working-class, or Latino, and writing well. When we write about the collisions of class, we are writing about conflict,

There

is

and we were always

was at vocabulary is more

told in school that conflict

heart of good literature. Perhaps the

gent than usual, but then again the house

What do we want, awareness of class and

finally,

its

is

when we

punishments?

on

the ur-

fire.

write from

We want

an

change,

which, as Frederick Douglass pointed out, does not come

without a demand. This

is

the

poem as an

act of political

imagination, the poet not merely as prosecutor, but as sionary. For this purpose, a

poem can be as

vi-

useful as a

1

Martin Espada

2

hammer. think of all the reversals want to see, the reversals of a poem called “Imagine the Angels of Bread”: squatters I

I

evicting landlords, refugees deporting judges,

immigrants

crossing the border to be greeted with trumpets and drums, the food stamps of adolescent mothers auctioned like gold

doubloons.

been

his.

I

think of my father, and the peace that has never

Here

is

my

disciple is lunching

vision: the

on perfect

war

Brie.

is over,

and Zapatas

Postcard from

Queen

the Empire of

Recently,

I

made a

pilgrimage to a parking

Ixolib

lot at

the

comer

and Howard Avenue in Biloxi, Mississippi, across from the Masonic Temple. Almost fifty years ago, a few days before Christmas, a Trailways bus stopped at around midnight in this town on the Gulf of Mexico. A young man, nineteen years old, bom of

Main

Street

in Puerto Rico, slept in the seat immediately driver, the only

behind the

passenger on the bus, en route to

visit his

He was wearing a Class A khaki uniform from the Air Force, having finished four months of basic training at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio. His dark skin was darker still after his time in the omnipotent Texas heat. He must have been tired, which may explain why he did not stir in Biloxi until he was shaken family in

New York

City.

awake.

13

1

Martin Espada

4

A new

was poking him. The driver said: “You have to get to the back of the bus.” The airman muttered, “Fuck you,” and waved the driver away, then tilted his cap over his eyes. A few minutes later, he awoke to a bus

driver

flashlight bleaching his face, exploring the

A huge

skin.

was was

police officer said:

“It’s

geography of his

He

time for you to go.”

and taken in a police car to the local jail; it the first time he had ever been arrested. He was not fingerprinted, photographed, or allowed a phone call. He noticed that everyone in jail was Black. The following day, the airman stood before a justice of the peace. He had no lawyer. The judge was white-haired, arrested

with the jowls of a bloodhound, oozing eyes that stared

down

over bifocals, and a dangling string

The judge lectured on respect for the law and the local custom of segregation, then asked: “Boy, how many days you have on that furlough?” This was a ten-day furlough, before the next assignment at an Air Force base in Illinois. The judge calculated the distance by bus between Mississippi and Illinois, then pronounced sentence: “You can stay with us for seven days.” The hearing lasted less than ten minutes. The airman spent a week in jail, every day in his dress uniform, since his duffle bag

were

polite,

most

likely

was

tie.

confiscated. His jailers

because of the uniform. After asking

repeatedly for several days, he found a jailer

him use a their tor

left

let

phone

in

telephone. His family did not have a

apartment on West 98th

and

who would

Street, so

he called the jani-

a message that he was not coming home, with-

He saw a number of Black men brought to jail that week: some drunk, one badly beaten. He heard blues harmonizing and hollers, the wooo out revealing the circumstances.

of a distant train spiraling from a

human mouth.

four inches, he splayed across his bunk,

At six

feet

ambushed by

the

Empire chill of

of

Queen

becoming more

Mississippi nights in December,

ous every

night.

When

he

left Biloxi,

15

Ixolib

headed

furi-

for Illinois,

he

bus again, this time without incident. He says that the week of Christmas 1949 in Biloxi, Mississippi, was “wonderful.” He says that he decided what to do with his life.

sat in the front of the

A man without religion, of epiphany.

He

he experienced a

and other

he was

incidents,

intimate with the breath of racist encounters; at nine-

teen, to

kind

did not glimpse an angel in the gleam of

that flashlight. But, after this

now

different

he committed himself to resisting that

use his word, “primed"

From

that point forward,

bigotiy.

to join the civil rights all

his work, from

ganizing to documentary photography,

He was,

movement.

community

was anchored

or-

in op-

position to racism.

my father, never told me about my upbringing. When was fifteen years old, Frank Espada,

I

I

Biloxi

during

discovered a

discarded page from his resume which summarized the experience in a few terse sentences. Later,

I

would hear him

had learned to be an expert eavesdropper around my father. The first time he ever told me the entire story directly was when I informed him that I was going to visit Biloxi, Mississippi, myself. was forty years old. A few years before this, I had written a poem called “Sleeping on the Bus.” The third stanza refers to the Biloxi incident. My father is not named; rather, he is an anonymous “brown man” who “sneered at the custom of the back tell

the story to others;

I

I

seat,”

ficed

meant

nameless people who

sacri-

themselves to protest the laws of American apartheid.

Even as

poem

to represent all the

I

that

honor the act of resistance, I

do not

fully

I

acknowledge

appreciate that act: “and

in the

still

I

for-

1

Martin Espada

6

The stanza is partly fictionalized: the judge “proclaimed a week in jail / and went back to bed with a shot of whiskey.” The drama is deliberately intensified, for the sake get.”

of representing

all

such incidents through

“how the brownskinned

dent:

he listened

for the

and cardplaying

soldier could not sleep / as

prowling of his

of the

this single inci-

hangmen

jailers, /

/ they

the muttering

might become.”

At times a poet resembles a bird, patching together the nest from string, the cellophane of cigarette packs, and

human

other

artifacts.

I

borrowed the emotional state in

these last few lines from another racial incident involving

my

father: his confrontation at

counter in San Antonio, a

tale

a certain segregated lunch

more

familiar to me.

leaving the scene after that incident

calls

and

He

re-

listening

tensely for the footsteps of possible pursuers crunching the gravel in the parking

lot.

January 1998. Glimpsing the highway sign that read “Welcome to Mississippi” triggered a pulsation of dread. Even before I knew of my father’s visited Biloxi in

I

experience there, the Mississippi of

was an ing

Here Emmett

my young

imagination

was murdered for insulta white woman; NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assasinferno.

sinated; three

dam,

killed

police. Phil

their

civil

Till

rights workers

were found buried in a

by the Klan with the collaboration of the local Ochs sang of the cops in Mississippi: “Behind

broken badges / they are murderers and more.”

father played that record over

hood years, and

Nearly

fifty

I

years

less casinos line

dent Casino,

and over during

my

My

child-

never understood why.

later, Biloxi is

now a

casino town. Count-

Highway 90 along the Gulf Coast:

Isle of

Presi-

Capri Casino, Imperial Palace Hotel and

Empire

of

Queen

17

Ixolib

Casino, Casino Magic Biloxi, Grand Casino Biloxi.

A

gar-

gantuan sign on Highway 90 features a cackling pirate and his parrot advertising the Treasure Bay Casino. The casino boasts “a 400-foot authentic replica of an 18th century rate

which hosts Scalawags Show Bar,

ship,

Gourmet

Buffet

Laflitte’s

the loosest slots on the coast, friendliest

...

table in the South,

full

gaming 24 hours a

somehow

pi-

service poker

rooms” and “dockside

The gamblers

day.”

at Treasure

Bay

themselves as the robbers, and not the

see

robbed.

The This

is

coastline glitters at night, pirate ship included.

not the Mississippi of Robert Johnson, his “blues

falling

down

bacon

frying.

like hail”

on a 1937 recording that crackles

There are clues, however, that another Missisbut cherished.

sippi is not only present,

In the midst of the casinos

white-pillared

Home is

like

mansion

on the highway

sits

a

called Beauvoir, the “Historic Last

of Jefferson Davis.”

The President

of the Confederacy

memorialized there by the “Jefferson Davis Shrine,” pre-

sumably

to facilitate the

worship of Jefferson Davis. In the

center of town, a dignified restaurant called

honey’s

bills itself

as “Old French House and Slave Quar-

The plaque on the

ters.”

wall of the eighteenth-century

building refers to a “romantic past”; indeed, until recently, the restaurant preferred to

Black

men

Mary Ma-

I

was

told that,

employ

elderly

as waiters. This recalls a joke by an African-

American comic whose name

I

have forgotten. He reports

having had a cheery vacation at “Colonial Williamsburg,” the reconstructed historical village in Virginia

was

—until

he

sold.

Upon on Main

entering the town,

Street,

which,

structed in 1947.

I

I

I

encountered a bus station

had heard secondhand, was con-

paced between the diagonal yellow lines

1

Martin Espada

8

where the buses stop and wondered stepped across those same yellow

When

I

if

lines.

entered the bus station,

that pulsing dread.

ning the checkered

I

a stranger with no business there

but the tracking of ghostly footprints. white shirt watched suspicion.

I

me

was struck again by

I

through the tiny depot, scan-

drifted

floor,

Frank Espada had

from the

ticket

A

clerk in a starched

counter with seeming

had always wondered what would happen

to

me if airport metal detectors could screen the gray baggage of my mind; now wondered if the clerk could do the same. knew my reaction was irrational. The days of Jim Crow are over, and am lightskinned anyway. This thought stumbled into another: my father is a different color. How I

I

I

could

I

possibly

Jim Crow

comprehend the experience

Mississippi?

My

How

could

I

put

of dark skin in

my hand

on that

would describe the glower of white people in the South as “the Look.” remember, from adolescence, watching my father pay the tab at a seafood joint in rural Virginia while one of the poolplaying locals coarse texture?

father

I

fixed

him with

the Look. But the Look

Searching

any

was not

for

remain

me.

bus station, slipped a few quarters into a soda machine and bought an orange soda that did not drink. then dropped more change into a pay phone, and dialed a local number. for

justification to

in the

I

I

I

I

got the

number wrong. When

I

walked outside the station

and scratched in my notebook, the clerk strolled out with me. Maybe he thought was the federal bus station inspector. had been attempting to call Deanna Newers, a Professor at Gulf Coast Community College and community historian who also worked at the Mardi Gras Museum in the I

I

Magnolia Hotel, which, the brochure the aura of the Old South.” ers at the

Museum. While

I

said,

“still

possesses

finally located Professor

waiting for her,

I

drifted

New-

through

Empire the exhibits of

of

mannequins

mutely strutting

tion of

white, as were

Queen

all

Ixolib

masks and capes, a collecgargoyles. The mannequins were all in

the faces in the vintage photographs on

the wall. The brochure said that “The black

own

their

parade.” (No

melodramatic tribute wall,

I

19

museum,

to the

community had

though.) After reading a

“Southern Gentleman” on the

noted that the Mardi Gras King and Queen for 1949

were Howard McDonnell and Mary Rose Venus, respectively. The queen of the festival was officially dubbed

“Queen

Ixolib,”

which

is Biloxi

spelled backwards, like read-

ing the word in a mirror. untarily lent their

The Native Americans who involname to this town might consider the

inversion a telling commentary.

me on

Professor Newers graciously guided

tour of the town. As

we walked, she was

a walking

able to point out

the buildings that stood in 1949, and recall their demol-

ished siblings. “Your father would have seen the Woolworth’s over there," she said, or “your father would have

seen the Masonic Temple here.”

I

wanted

to

remind Deanna

Newers that he was not in Biloxi on vacation in 1949, that there was no tour for him, that the Woolworth’s would not have served him at the white lunch counter and the denizens of the Masonic Temple would not have ushered him

wanted to tell her to stop referring too, were demolished brick, to tell her

into their secret society. to

my

father as

that he

if

he,

was a human being

diseased heart. But I

I

I

wanted

of almost seventy years with a to

match her graciousness, so

said nothing.

we

comer

Main Street and Howard Avenue. She informed me that the jail and municiFinally,

arrived at the

pal courthouse once stood here.

parking place of

We

of

found ourselves in a

was confronted with the startling fact that my pilgrimage was gone. While was still working to

lot.

I

I

Martin Espada

20

Professor

information,

that

assimilate

Newers gestured

We had circled back to the bus station where, she said, my father must have been arrested. But that had to be wrong. My father clearly recalled across the street.

being driven some distance in a police car from the bus station to the

jail. If

he had been arrested here, the police sim-

would have walked him across the street. Now nothing was certain. That procession of spectres, Frank Espada among them, was marching silently back into 1949 without a glance at me, as if that year were the foggy gulf and they ply

were wading into

its

waters.

Then, at the Biloxi

community

historian

we encountered another

library,

named Ray

Bellande.

Bom

in 1943,

he recalled from childhood a Trailways station by the

and

seawall,

offered to

station once stood.

explain

why my

me and

On

walk with the way,

father

was

Euphemism

I

yearned

to the place

for

where the

Ray Bellande endeavored

to

He squinted

at

jailed in Biloxi.

said, slowly: “People

back then.”

me

had fewer personal freedoms a Distinguished Professor of

words “people” and “freedoms.” a casino was being constructed on

to translate the

Rather predictably,

the spot where the Trailways station had been. This

was

Beau Rivage, or “Beautiful Shore,” a huge, yellow, concrete and steel shell where cranes dangled like the fishing poles of a god lazily creating yet another world. Beau Rivage was owned by Golden Nugget Casinos of Las Vegas, and would open

to the

gamblers by the end of the year.

Wearily confusing

my

dealing blackjack at the

him

in

timelines,

Beau

I

Rivage.

visualized

Then

I

my

father

searched for

the newspapers: the Daily Herald for

December

1949, on microfilm at the library. Ray Bellande watched over

my

shoulder, reading

me

reading the microfilm, and

Empire repeating:

“I

of

Queen

don’t think they

21

Ixolib

would have reported

this sort

of thing.”

They reported everything else. In the Daily Herald for December 24th, we read that judge J.D. Stennis fmed John Michael Buren and Robert Harold Carter $10 apiece for disorderly conduct; fined Willie Parker, George Carlson, and Broker Huddleston $5 apiece Percy Case the

Some pany

sum

for

drunkenness; and fined

of $1 for a parking violation.

of these

men were

probably

who sent my father to jail. Stennis who championed segregation

judge

whose name

was certainly the There was a Senator John

judge

years.

com-

father’s

in jail that week. Moreover, J.D. Stennis,

surfaces repeatedly in the Daily Herald

It is

may have been

week

in

,

Congress

for

many

not unreasonable to speculate that a Mississippi kin to the Senator.

There was more news of crime the

my

in the Daily

Herald from

before Christmas 1949. Spec’s Service Station

was

robbed, ten dollars in nickels taken from the cash register.

A

movie camera and binoculars were stolen from a car at

the Hotel Biloxi. Police arrested an “armed negro” Willie Richardson,

who

allegedly attempted to shoot “an-

other negro,” one Ernest Frank.

my father saw in jail,

named

Was

Richardson the

man

badly beaten?

The newspaper reported other happenings in the “negro” community: the “Colored 4-H Banquet,” the “Colored Toy Doll Fund Distribution,” and “Colored Death.” That was the headline for an obituary, as in, “Colored Death: Christopher Columbus Monroe, colored, a native of Alabama and a resident of Saucier for

many years.”

week that Joseph Stalin turned seventy, and eveiy day the newspaper featured stories and columns such as, “Is Atheistic Communism Making a Deity of Stalin?” DeWitt MacKenzie

By

bizarre coincidence, this

was

also the

Martin Espada

22

opined that the answer was affirmative, and reasoned:

“vir-

tually all peoples, including primitive savages, believe in

some kind of god.” Apparently, the worship of Jefferson Davis was not considered primitive. There were also announcements of numerous Christmas parties and advertisements from local businesses proclaiming their belief in the Christian deity.

But Ray Bellande was right. The name of Frank Espada was nowhere mentioned in these pages. There was one more place to search for him: a law library back home, where

I

could research the legal history of segregation in

public transportation.

I

am,

after

all,

a lawyer, a

fact

I

some-

times forget myself in this English- professor phase of existence. At the law library,

I

made one

final discovery:

Frank Espada never broke the law at all. In June 1946, three and a half years before the dent in

Biloxi, the

Morgan

v.

Commonwealth of

travelers.

inci-

United States Supreme Court ruled in Virginia (66 S.Ct.

state laws of segregation could not

bus

my

be applied

Bus companies engaged

1050) that

to interstate

in interstate travel

could not segregate their passengers by color, and the driver could not

compel a passenger

to

change seats be-

cause of color. Irene

Morgan,

a

Black

woman

traveling

Gloucester County, Virginia, to Baltimore,

was

from

arrested

and convicted of violating Section 4097d of the Virginia Code. She appealed, eventually to the Supreme Court. The argument ingeniously constructed by her attorneys, Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie, attacked the Virginia law as an “invalid burden on interstate commerce.” They could not

when she

refused to

sit in

the back of the bus,

Empire

Queen

of

23

Ixolib

address the inherent injustice of de jure segregation in 1946

and win the invoking the

case.

The Court agreed with

Commerce Clause

their

argument,

of the U.S. Constitution.

Marshall and Hastie demonstrated that the application

—in ten different

of local segregation laws to interstate buses

Southern states

—was impractical,

disruptive. Moreover, as

the Court pointed out, the buses had “seats convenient for rest.

On such

quirements

interstate journeys the enforcement of the re-

would be disturbing.”

for reseating

In other

words, the driver might have to awaken a sleeping passenger; the

Court envisioned the exact scenario in which

ther found himself. This would be interstate

commerce.” The

an

“invalid

ironic fact that the

my fa-

burden on

Court decided

the case on these narrow technical grounds, never directly

challenging the system of racial segregation nor recognizing

Morgan as a human

the deeper injury to Irene trates

why

the

Supreme Court

is

being, illus-

rarely a source of great

lit-

erature or profound moral guidance.

According to Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, his

movement, the decision was not “widely enforced in the South.” The Congress of Racial Equality sponsored a bus ride through the South in

landmark study

of the

civil

rights

1947, called the Journey of Reconciliation, to test enforce-

ment

of the

new

ruling.

Branch

relates that “white oppo-

nents met the challenge with beatings,” and leader Bayard Rustin “was

among

cal segregation laws.” In the

civil

rights

those convicted under

midst of appeals,

NAACP

lo-

law-

yers lost critical evidence: the interstate bus tickets. Rustin

on a Southern chain gang. In 1963, my father would meet Bayard Rustin at the March on Washington; the following year, they worked

and

his friends found themselves

closely together

on a New York City public school boycott.

Martin Espada

24

Throughout the South,

and

mayors, judges,

nors,

Court and continued generation.

Jacqueline

to

state

and

police

—gover-

local officials

—defied

the

implement segregation

Supreme

for

another

An attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, Bowman, once told me of a town in Tennessee

where Blacks were

still

required to

sit

at the

in the 1970s, years after all segregation

back of the bus

on public transpor-

had been outlawed. For every George Wallace, blocking the doorway to Black students and television cameras tation

Alabama, there must have been legions throughout the hierarchy quietly, even

at the University of

of lesser officials

surreptitiously, enforcing the

same

racial code.

some of the actors in the Biloxi drama knew that Jim Crow could no longer reach into the door of that bus. It had been three and a half years since a In all probability, at least

police officer in Mississippi could legally arrest

anyone

re-

back of a Trailways bus coming from or headed to another state; three and a half years since a judge in Mississippi could by law incarcerate an interstate bus traveler who refused to change seats because of color. Perhaps the bus driver was unaware of changes in the law, and was simply acting to preserve the order of his tiny fusing to

sit

at the

on an empty bus, as the black and white pieces on a chessboard.

racial universe, at midnight,

if

fling

On

shufthe

other hand, Trailways drivers should have been informed by the company that they could no longer segregate their pas-

sengers on interstate

trips; that

may

explain

why

the driver

San Antonio allowed my father to sit directly behind him. What the arresting officers or jailers knew can never be proven. Yet, my father was not fingerprinted, photographed, or allowed a phone call when he was brought to the Biloxi in

Empire

of

Queen

a shadowy scenario closer

25

Ixolib

an abduction than a legal arrest. The farther this case moved up the ladder of authority, the more likely it was that someone acted consciously to enforce a law that was no longer law. The Biloxi judge was part of a judiciary in the South that was acutely sensitive to the edicts of the Supreme Court on segregation, and re-

jail,

to

my father not be rebom of a desire to avoid

sisted those edicts. His concern that

ported

AWOL may well

an Air Force inquiry

into the

the bench, he scolded for the law,

have been

my

airmans disappearance. From

father about his lack of respect

a backwater fiefdom where the Supreme

in

Court had no jurisdiction. Finally, the

absence of a journalistic record

In a small-town

newspaper

in

is striking.

which everything was

re-

ported, from one-dollar parking violations to the theft of

nickels at the gas station, there dent.

was no

An understanding between

newspaper

in Biloxi

report of this inci-

the authorities

and the

would hardly be unique.

Frank Espada did not know that the law had changed.

He was aware

that he might be subjected to the rules of

Those mles usually required only “any appre-

segregation.

ciable Negro blood” to be invoked, and, as

been

called ‘nigger

engaged law.

an

in

When

I

by the cops

act of

told

civil

he put

before.” In his

it,

“I’d

mind, he was

disobedience against an unjust

him about

the Morgan case, that he

never violated the law, he said: “Then

I

had

was kidnapped.”

was moving in the rhythms of a strangely familiar ceremony. I was acting like a lawyer preparing the defense of a client. I was Sitting in the

law

libraiy,

I

became aware

that

I

ready to argue Frank Espada’s case before that judge in Mississippi half a century ago.

I

wanted

to

brandish

my

Martin Espada

26 copy of Morgan

v.

Commonwealth of

Virginia before the

judge and demand the acquittal of the defendant.

The jail

he probably would have been sent

fact is that

anyway.

I

have argued before too

to

many judges who were

cleverly

venomous, arrogant as petty

doltish.

From my days representing indigent tenants in remember one white-haired judge who would imme-

court, diately

I

award

victory to the landlord

was

aristocracy, or merely

if it

were revealed that

which the judge regarded as shameful. Another judge would hold hearings that consisted of one question: Does the tenant owe rent? The laws the tenant

receiving welfare,

of rent withholding aside, this judge

judgment

for the landlord,

would instantly render

with the breezy advice to the ten-

ant that he or she could appeal. Most

vividly,

I

recall repre-

senting a prison inmate at a disciplinary hearing. “judges” were two guards fore the hearing, as

I

and a

reviewed

was a

the supposed offense

social worker.

my

Moments

The be-

opening argument that

physical impossibility,

my

dreadlocked client leaned across the table and whispered to

me: “Now don’t forget the appeal!” His instincts proved to be reliable.

So

cannot unscrew the jailhouse door from

I

make justice appear

hinges, nor

in

my hands

like

its

a magi-

cian’s dove.

What

I

found in Biloxi was the splintering of history.

I

unearthed a fragment, jagged and inscrutable as a shard of pottery or bone. But this fragment my father’s story is

—

evidence of

how

actual

human

—

beings behaved in the face of

an enormous crime: the orchestration of a racial caste system with its roots in slavery. The crime is so vast that the scattered fragments of

its

history are buried everywhere,

and everywhere the graves are unmarked.

Empire Now casinos.

my

of

Queen

Biloxi’s history fossilizes

A

father

casino

was

is

27

Ixolib

beneath a proliferation of

under construction at the place where

arrested; the parking lot

courthouse stood belongs

to

where the

jail

and

a corporation called Casino

America. The casinos sprout along the coastline for eco-

nomic reasons, not for the calculated interment of the past. But in their pseudo-elegance, their air of ersatz adventure, the casinos simultaneously evoke the shiny, prosperous im-

age of the

New South and

the misty, romantic image of the

Old South. Both myths demand that

must plow

collective

memory

the bodies of segregration and slavery deep into

the ground. Certain histories have always been obliterated for the

sake of commerce. And what better metaphor

impulse

to forget

for the

than the act of gambling, the vertigo of the

roulette wheel? Everybody can play pirate.

The community

historians

want

to preserve old Biloxi, con-

serve the old buildings in a historic district.

knowledge

is

useful,

and

I

am

Some

of that

grateful for their cooperation,

which would have been impossible in my father’s Mississippi. But, for all their good will and good manners, they cannot seem to transcend the notion that history consists of minutiae in neutral colors, the what- was- where- when. This also constitutes a splintering of history.

I

think of wan-

Museum, in the palace of Queen and her mannequin handmaidens, an empire where

dering in the Mardi Gras Ixolib

words are mirrored backwards and all the revelers are white. It is here that the front of the bus becomes the back of the bus.

The

splintering of

father’s history

began at the

in-

By not taking his fingerprints, the police wiped away their own. This is characteristic of

stant of his arrest. in effect

my

Martin Espada

28

splintered histoiy: the fragments are scattered immediately

becoming driftwood, beach

in the sand, over time

Thus

the perpetrators, the collaborators, the bystanders,

the ambivalent, and the ignorant can for

glass.

all

claim innocence

themselves and future generations: everyone

On

occasion, in a euphoria of alcohol

and

good.

is

bloodlust, a

lynching party and the witnesses to that killing would pose

camera, smirking and pointing at the corpse in the

for the

But soon

trees.

mouths pursed

after,

was

the corpse

ash, the smirking

my

was not lynched; but segregating the buses, or jailing someone for refusing segregation, falls somewhere along the same spectrum of terror and humiliation. Quotidian segregation could only be enforced by the constant threat of violence, and was itself

in secrecy.

a form of violence. In

Bread,”

I

envision a time

Of course,

my

father

poem, “Imagine the Angels of

when “darkskinned men

/ lynched

a century ago / return to sip coffee quietly / with the apologizing descendants / of their executioners.” During my time

met expressed the slightest compassion or regret for what happened there to my father. Yet, have that fragment, an heirloom more prized in Biloxi,

no one

I

I

than the family pocketwatch

I

twenty years ago.

lost

I

can

no longer rub the brick of jailhouse or bus station, but I still have words, my fathers and mine. write this account, and I

so build

my

father a

museum

of words,

where a glass case

displays the seat on the I

bus where he said “no.” may build that museum more for myself than for still want to read the walls, like a high school student

him.

I

on a

field trip,

my

father.

and educate myself on the complex subject

We

years. At forty,

were estranged once, not speaking I

realize that

we must speak

have the power of speech, that there

enough

for silence.

will

of

for three

while

we

still

be millennia

Empire

At the end of

Queen

my visit

of

to Biloxi,

I

Ixolib

29

returned without

my

local

Main Street and Howard Avenue. Here, said to myself, and carved my heel into the concrete and dirt. There was an epiphany on the bottom of my shoe. keep returning to one moment in Frank Espada’s narrative. When my father left Biloxi for Illinois, after a week

guides to the parking

lot at

the

comer

of

I

I

in

he sat

jail,

in the front

of the

probably would have moved

bits.

to the

He says today

that he

do

so, that

back

if

told to

he was concerned about going AWOL. If that were the case, however, he could have sat in the back to begin with and eliminated the possibility of another arrest.

What he

did

was dangerous: a second act of defiance could have provoked a far more hostile reaction than the vicious pettiness of that

shielded

first

confrontation.

him from

lethal

consequences. Taylor Branch

mobs

ports that Southern

His uniform might not have re-

“assassinated no fewer than six

Negro war veterans in a single three week period” during the

summer of

1946.

The second This

moment fifty

metaphor

ings

am

From

my

father’s political

years.

As a

poet,

I

and

significant.

of that gesture.

sending Biloxi”

my

I

ethical choices for

aspire to the grace

of that gesture; as a teacher,

and conviction I

was even more

points like a storm-pounded weathervane in

the direction of

the next

act of defiance

always

I

and

aspire to the clarity

will.

father a postcard that reads “Greet-

—unless he holds

it

up

to

a mirror.

Argue Not Concerning God

I

was

raised by a Puerto Rican father

and a Jewish-Jehovah’s

Witness mother. They met while working at the same

fac-

was a shipping clerk, my mother a receptionist. Frank Espada was a skeptical, and wayward, Catholic. Marilyn Levine ate cheeseburgers and expected to be bug-zapped by God for mixing meat and tory in

Brooklyn;

my

father

milk, in violation of dietary laws.

There

and

faith

is

a context

for

her repudiation of the Jewish

identity in favor of a relentlessly proselytizing

door-to-door Christian sect most people find more irritating

than a case of ringworm. Sometime between her marriage to

my

father in 1952

and

my

arrival in 1957,

family disowned her. At age two, ther, is

who escaped from

the only time

I

glimpsed

my

mother’s

fa-

a nursing home; in forty years, this

can remember meeting anyone on her side

of the family, so complete

Boxed

I

my mothers

was our

ostracism.

into the Linden projects of East

three children in the early 1960s,

31

my

New York

with

mother heeded a

Martin Espada

32

stranger at the door selling magazines and prophecy. During

my

father’s regular absences,

in effect. Witnesses as well.

We

my

and

siblings

became,

I

learned that the Witnesses

predicted “the end of this system of things,” or Armageddon,

a reference to the apocalypse, characterized in the magazines by pictures of crowds shrieking hail of

However, the Witnesses always chirped about

fire.

“the good news”

whenever they forecast the tongue- rotting

demise of the damned After

and cowering under a

anyone not a Jehovah’s Witness).

(i.e.

Armageddon came

Paradise, like dessert.

Illustrations of Paradise featured

somnambulent bene-

ficiaries of eternal life petting equally stupefied lions:

vah as taxidermist. The gardens were

numb

Jeho-

the faces

sterile,

with narcotic smiles. The Witnesses equated perfec-

when they sang. At an their hymns were based on

tion with the deliberately bland, even

early age,

was convinced

I

theme songs from

that

television

shows. Their aversion to any

exuberant or celebratory worship, their awkward austerity, also explain

why

the Witnesses do not observe Christmas.

Of course, millions of people in the United States have no need for this particular holiday; but Christmas, or the lack thereof, became a metaphor for my family’s contradictions and illusions.

r

—

We

celebrated Christmas

call

swatting

when

my brother into

I

was veiy young.

I

can

re-

the Christmas tree, which col-

lapsed with the explosion of ornamental bulbs, a detonation of holiday grenades.

my

brother,

My

parents discovered

and a great bellowing ensued.

me (I

untangling

have learned

since that other families also use their Christmas trees as projectiles. like

My father-in-law once

heaved his Christmas tree

a harpoon through a picture window.)

Argue Not Concerning God Some

time thereafter,

my

33

mother announced that she

would no longer observe Christmas. She took the official Witness position that Jesus was not actually bom on December 25th. This was an ancient Roman holiday a pagan holiday. My father ruled in turn that, if my mother wouldn’t celebrate Christmas, then nobody would. This was a family

—

holiday,

then

and

my

if

we wouldn’t

mother wouldn’t celebrate Christmas,

celebrate Christmas together, like a family. 0

my

However,

father kept

his

lifelong

collection

Christmas ornaments, presumably hoping that

my

of

mother

would change her mind. My mother made her state of mind very clear one December, a few days before Christmas, during my adolescence. She gathered my father’s Christmas ornaments, dropped them in a garbage can, dragged the can to the comer, waited for the trashman to jingle the garbage into his truck, then returned to the house and declared to my father that she had thrown out his treasures. She did it on his birthday. The Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, either. This idol

considered self-exaltation,

is

worship. For one day, you are the Golden Calf. Besides,

the only two people to have birthday celebrations in the Bible are

Pharoah and Herod. Following

loons and conical party hats girl

to

may

this logic,

a few bal-

lead the birthday boy or

conquer vast deserts and dragoon thousands of

slaves to build pyramids.

Thus my mother tossed compactor. The argument that features of a theological debate

Feliz

Navidad into a trash

followed

and a

combined the best

cockfight: God, Dar-

cannot recall my father’s and feathers. words. First his jaw trembled, which was always the prelude to a seismic event. Then the eruption began, his mouth open so wide swore that could see his uvula, that tiny punching bag, as if he were a cartoon opera singer.

win, screeching,

I

I

I

Martin Espada

34 One

of

my

comes

Bible

mother’s most frequent quotations from the

mind: Jesus said,

to

but a sword” (Matthew

10:34).

came

“I

to put,

not peace,

Jehovah’s Witnesses would

verse to justify the breakup of families. Of course,

cite this

this is the Witnesses’

own “New World”

translation of the

Holy Scriptures. Considering the intricacies of translation

from an ancient language, Jesus might well have

came

to

After

my

mas. He I

mother’s Garbage Offensive, there was no talk of

My

father

bought

me

a duffle bag one Christ-

me: “Hey. I’m buying you a duffle bag.” To

told

replied:

“I

don’t

want a

duffle bag.”

And would know

He responded:

“You’re getting a duffle bag.”

so he gave

bag, unwrapped, so

that

I

it

me

was a

a duffle

duffle bag.

was not planning on going anywhere. high school, became a Christmas anarchist.

Oddly enough, In

“I

poach a naughty piece of swordfish.”

Christmas.

which

said,

I

I

plained the fact that

my

in revolutionary terms.

I

ex-

family didn’t celebrate Christmas

Christmas was a manifestation of

corrupt consumer culture, a capitalist conspiracy, a hypo-

ceremony of the war-mongering state. Some of which is no doubt true, though what mattered was the marriage of convenient logic and high sanctimony. was critical

I

feeling very spiritual.

But

I

arguments

did not need the Witnesses anymore. for

father’s

agnosticism and evolutionary theory were ul-

timately persuasive.

My

mother’s only response to the the-

ory of evolution was, “You

but I’m not.”

My

My

mother’s

may be descended from an ape, credibility also suffered when the

Witnesses predicted “the end”

for

October 1975, and noth-

ing ended but the baseball season. Moreover, in high school I

had discovered

girls.

One cherubic

creature from the local

Argue Not Concerning God congregation

left

me

a sledgehammer.

I

35

with the demeanor of a cow brained by

became enamored

of this particular

headache, and, since the Witnesses dictated a code of sexual behavior only a

Ken

doll

could obey,

my

choices were

crystallized.

This

mas

an account

is

history

My

Christ-

was redeemed by

pork: pemil in steaming

slivers of garlic,

and cuero, the skin that

chunks, with cracked in

of redemption, however.

my

squeaking

Every Christmas season,

teeth.

during our Brooklyn years, we would travel to the Bronx dinner at

my grandmothers

my

suit,

blue

apartment.

I

a diminutive pallbearer.

I

was buttoned

for

into

then drifted in a

dramamine twilight as the car lumbered through traffic. The only mention of God was my father’s litany of “Goddammit! Goddammit!" as we inched down the oxymoronic freeway. Once we arrived in the Bronx, my father would load me with presents for my cousins, and reeled up five flights of tenement stairs. The door opened on what must I

have been thousands of Puerto Ricans,

and the slow swaying

like

dizzy bolero

all

related to me,

on the record player that

a buoy at high

A

me

tide.

Then came my grandmother’s pemil, with gandules.

left

boy of generous

arroz con

girth is apt to believe that di-

and pigeon peas. This was the celestial feast. Mysteriously, my grandmother never ate. No one ever saw Tata chew or swallow anything. That was further evidence of the miraculous, a virtual weeping statue in the town plaza. After dinner, my father would organize the family pho-

vinity is

a plate of roast pork with

rice

tograph, a gallery of faces with the broad Roig nose,

grandmother’s nose and mine, a

hill

with two caves.

mother posed with the pagan Puerto Ricans, the

moment

that Christmas

was not

my My

forgetting for

the birthday of Jesus,

Martin Espada

36

ignoring the omnipresent plaster saints of the Bronx, simply because the

pagans insisted on waving her

into their

snapshots.

My mother

is still

a Jehovah’s Witness. Unlike me,

my

young son has never heard a debate over whether his father is descended from an ape. My wife, bom on a Connecticut dairy farm, crafts ornaments by hand and saws down her

own Christmas

tree in the

and the Dia de Reyes,

am

too.

woods.

We

celebrate

Hanukkah

Expensive, true, but this year

I

planning to moonlight as a professional wrestler to

—

some holiday cash ring name El Pemil leave the final word to that great Puerto Rican poet, Walt Whitman, from the 1855 introduction to Leaves of Grass: “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not conbring in I

cerning God.

...”

The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son

I

have a six-year-old son, named Clemente. He

named

for

Roberto Clemente, the baseball player, as

is

not

many

are quick to guess, but rather for a Puerto Rican poet. His

name, in translation, means “merciful.” Like the cheetah, he can reach speeds of up to sixty miles an hour. He is also, demographically speaking, a Latino male, a “macho” for the twenty-first century.

Several years ago,

when a

we were watching

ventriloquist appeared with his

triloquist

was

Rican in

fact, like

television together

dummy. The

ven-

dummy was a Latino male, Puerto like my son. Complete with pencil

Anglo; the

me,

and jawbreaking Spanish accent, the dummy acted out an Anglo fantasy for an Anglo crowd that roared its approval. My son was transfixed; he did not recognize the character onscreen, because he knows no one who fits that description, but he sensed my discomfort. Too mustache, greased

hair,

37

Martin Espada

38 late,

my

changed the channel. The next morning,

I

watched Luis and Maria on Sesame Street but

this

,

adequate compensation. Sesame Street television, the only

where Latino

is

son

was

in-

the only barrio on

neighborhood on mainstream television

families live

and work, but the comedians are

everywhere, with that frat-boy sneer, and so are the crowds.

However, explain

I

cannot simply switch

them (how do you explain

crowd of strangers

We

live in

is

off the

to

comedians, or

a small boy that a

angrily laughing at the idea of him?).

Western Massachusetts, not

far

from Springfield

and Holyoke, hardscrabble small cities which, in the last generation, have witnessed a huge influx of Puerto Ricans, now constituting some of the poorest Puerto Rican communities in the country. The evening news from Springfield features what call “the Puerto Rican minute.” This is the one minute of the newscast where we see the faces of Puerto Rican men, the mug shot or the arraignment in I

court or witnesses pointing to the bloodstained sidewalk,

while the newscaster solemnly intones the mantra of gangs, drugs,

jail.

The notion

of spending the Puerto Rican

minute

on a teacher or a health care worker or an artist in the community apparently never occurs to the producers of this programming. The Latino male is the bogeyman of the Pioneer Valley, which includes the area where we live. Not long ago, there

was a rumor

circulating in the

atmosphere that Latino

gangs would be prowling the streets on Halloween, shooting anyone in costume. My wife Katherine reports that one Anglo

citizen at the local

swimming

pool (a veritable Paul

Revere in swim trunks) took responsibility everyone that “the Latinos are going een!” Note

how

1)

Latino gangs

for

to kill kids

became

warning

on Hallow-

“Latinos”

and

2)

Latinos and “kids” became mutually exclusive categories.

Dummy

The Puerto Rican My

wife

males

wondered her

in

life,

if

if

this

39

warning contemplated the Latino

this racially paranoid imagination in-

cluded visions of her professor husband and his toddling offspring as gunslingers in

macho

full

“gringos” in Halloween costumes.

swagger, hunting for

The rumor, needless

to

was unfounded. Then there is the national political climate. In 1995, we saw the spectacle of a politician, California Governor say,

Pete Wilson, being seriously considered for the presidency

on the strength

of his support for Proposition 187, the

blatantly anti-Latino,

anti- immigrant

initiative

in

most

recent

memory. There is no guarantee, as my son grows older, that this political pendulum will swing back to the left; if anything, the pendulum may well swing further to the right. That means more fear and fuiy and bitter laughter.

Into this world enters Clemente, tions:

How

do

I

think of

my

which raises certain ques-

son as a Latino male?

How do

I

teach him to disappoint and disorient the bigots everywhere

around him,

all

of whom have

bought

mateach him to

tickets to see the

cho pantomime? At the same time, how do

I

inoculate himself against the very real diseases of violence

and sexism and homophobia

How do My

I

infecting our

teach Clemente to be Clemente? son’s identity as a Puerto Rican male has already

been defined by a number of experiences so early an age.

whereas

From

community?

I

He has

did not have at

already spent time in Puerto Rico,

did not visit the island until

the time he

I

was a few months

I

old,

was

ten years old.

he has witnessed

his Puerto Rican father engaged in the decidedly nonstereotypical business of giving poetry readings.

We

savor

Martin Espada

40

new Spanish words

goes together, knowing the

And

same

yet, that

same way we devour mansame tartness and succulence.

together the

identity will

be shaped by negative

as well as positive experiences. The ventriloquist and his Puerto Rican

dummy

Clemente a glimpse of his

offered

evitable future: Not only bigotry, but his growing

in-

awareness

some people have con-

of that bigotry, his realization that

him because he is Puerto Rican. Here his sense of maleness will come into play, because he must learn to deal tempt

for

own

with his

rage, his inability to extinguish the source of

his torment.

By

adolescence,

had learned

I

my

internalize

to

rage.

I

learned to do this in response to a growing awareness of

having

bigotry,

left

my

Brooklyn birthplace

Valley Stream, Long Island, where

I

for the

was dubbed a

town of spic.

defend myself against a few people would have been ble; to

feasi-

defend myself against dozens and dozens of people

deeply in love with their sibility.

To

So

or friend,

I

told

own racism was a

no one, no parent or counselor or teacher

about the constant

punched a lamp, not once but

racial

twice,

hostility.

how well

I

Instead,

I

and watched the blood

my knuckles, as if somehow could leach the my body. My evolving manhood was defined by

ooze between

poison from

practical impos-

I

could take punishment, and paradoxically

ished myself for not being miliation. Later in

life,

I

openly. Rarely, however,

man enough

would emulate

was

the real

end

to

my

pun-

my own

father,

enemy

I

hu-

and rage

within earshot,

or even visible.

Someday, this is as

much

my son will

be called a spic

for the first time;

a part of the Puerto Rican experience as the

music that inspires him

to

dance

gleefully.

I

hope he

will tell

Dummy

The Puerto Rican me.

hope that

I

I

waste of his rage.

can help him handle the glowing

toxic

why

there

hope that

I

41

are those waiting for

him

I

can explain

clearly

confirm their stereo-

to explode, to

types of the hot-blooded, bad-tempered Latino male

who

has, without provocation, injured the Anglo innocents. His

anger

—and that anger must come—has to be controlled,

rected,

di-

articulated but not all-con-

creatively channeled,

suming, neither destructive nor self-destructive.

between the covers of the books

I

I

keep

it

write.

The anger will continue to manifest itself as he matures and discovers the utter resourcefulness of bigotry, the ability of racism to change shape and survive all attempts to snuff

it

out. “Spic” is a

crude expression of certain senti-

ments that become subtle and sophisticated and insidious at other levels.

Speaking of crudity,

group organized by whites

under the acronym

of

in

SPONGE: by Anglo

reminded of a

Brooklyn during the 1960s the Society for the Preven-

tion of the Niggers Getting Everything. tion is criticized today

am

I

When

politicians

affirmative ac-

and pundits with

and erudite vocabulary, that is still SPONGE. When and if my son is admitted to school or obtains a job by way of affirmative action, and is resented for it by his colleagues, that will be SPONGE, too.

exquisite

diction

Violence front rage is

is

the

first

cousin to rage.

an important element

of violence

with equal urgency. Violence

is terribly

becomes

learning to con-

of developing Latino

manhood, then the question

especially males, are trained to gaze

If

must be addressed seductive;

upon

all

violence until

it

way

to

beautiful. Beautiful violence is not only the

victory for armies

and

football teams; this

lution to everyday problems as well. For

on the movie or

television screen,

of us,

becomes the

many

so-

characters

problems are solved by

Martin Espada

42

shooting them. This

most emphatic way

certainly the

is

to

win an argument. Katherine and

minimize the seductiveness of

try to

I

But his dinosaurs

violence for Clemente.

other, with great relish. His trains

still

still

eat each

crash, to their de-

He is experimenting with power and control, with acand reaction, which brings him to an imitation of

light.

tion

between

violence. Needless to say, there is a vast difference

Stegosaurus and Desert Storm.

upon my own experience as an example. not only found violence seductive; at some point, found myself enjoying it. remember one brawl in Valley Stream when snatched a chain away from an assailant, knocked him down, and needlessly lashed the Again,

all

I

can do

is call

I

I

I

I

chain across his knees as he lay sobbing in the I

was now

street.

That

the assailant with the chain did not occur to me.

remember the day stopped enjoying the act of fistfighting. was working as a bouncer in a bar, and found myself struggling with a man who was so drunk that he apalso

I

I

I

peared denly,

numb I

to the

heard

sound. Later,

I

my

blows bouncing

fist

echo: thok.

learned that

ger with that punch, but I

must have caused him.

all I

I

I

ing to people

I

my

right ring fin-

could recall was the headache

never had a

much

cranium. Sud-

was sickened by the

had broken

fistfight again.

ended another romance: the

Parenthetically, that job

one with alcohol. Too

off his

of

who had passed

my job

consisted of minister-

out at the bar, finding their

hats and coats, calling a cab, dragging them in their stupor

down

the stairs. Years

tivated as

later,

bouncer into

I

channeled those instincts cul-

my work

as a legal services lawyer,

representing Latino tenants, finding landlords

who

to heat buildings in winter or exterminate rats to

deserving targets of my wrath. Eventually,

I

even

left

“forgot”

be more the law.

The Puerto Rican Will

I

urge

my

son to be a

Dummy

pacifist,

43

thereby gutting one

manhood, the pleasure taken in violence and the power derived from it? That is an ideal state. hope that he lives a life which permits him pacifism. hope that the world around him evolves in such would not a way that pacifism is a viable choice. Still, deny him the option of physical self-defense. would not deny him, on philosophical grounds, the right to resistance in any form that resistance must take to be effective. Nor

of the foundations of traditional

I

I

I

I

would

I

have him deny that right

of distance.

Too many people

to others, with the

luxuiy

world

need a

in this

still

revolution.

When

he

is

old enough,

Clemente and

I

will talk

about

matters of justification, which must be carefully and narrowly defined. He must understand that abstractions like

and “honor” are not reasons to fight in the street, and abstractions like “patriotism” and “country” are not reasons to fight on the battlefield. He must understand that violence against women is not acceptable, a message which “respect”

will

have

to

be somehow repeated every time another movie

trailer blazes the art of

misogyny across his subconscious

mind. Rather than sloganeering, however, the best way

can communicate that message is by the way I mother. How else will he know that jealousy is not a lover

is

I

treat his love, that

not property?

Knowing Katherine introduced me to a new awareness of compassion and intimacy, domestic violence and recoveiy. Her history of savage physical abuse as a child in a Connecticut farming community compelled me to consider

—

—

what

it

means

to heal

another

human

being, or to help that

Martin Espada

44 human store

being heal herself.

What

small gestures begin to re-

humanity?

When is

the Leather a Whip

At night, with

my wife

sitting I

on the bed,

turn from her

to

unbuckle

my belt so she won’t see

her father

unbuckling his belt

Clemente was difficult birth.

bom

on December 28, 1991. This was a

Katherine’s coccyx, or tailbone, broken in

childhood, would break again during delivery. Yet, only with

we move from gesture to fulfillment, from generous moments to real giving. The extraordinary healing which took place was not only physical, but emotional and the birth could

spiritual as well. After years of constant pain, her coccyx

bone

set properly, as

if

a

living

metaphor

for the

tunity represented by the birth of this child.

new oppor-

The Puerto Rican

Dummy

45

White Birch Two decades ago

rye whiskey

scalded your fathers throat, stinking from the

mouth

as he stamped his shoe in the groove

between your hips,

dizzy flailing cartwheel

down

the stairs.

The tail of your spine split, became a scraping hook. For twenty years a

fire

raced

across the boughs of your bones, his

drunken mouth a movie

flashing with every stabbed gesture.

Now the white room the

numbers

of birth is throbbing:

palpitating red

on the screen

tentacled to your arm; the oxygen in

a wheeze on your

face;

the

of machinery

mask wedged

numbing medication

injected through the spine.

The boy was snagged on that

spiraling bone.

Medical fingers prodded your raw pink center while you stared at a horizon of water

no one with like

else could see, creatures leaping silver

tails

that slashed the air

your agonized tongue.

You were

bom

in the river valley,

hard green checkerboard of farms, a town of white birches

and a churchyard from the workhorse

time,

Martin Espada

46

weathered headstones naming

women

drained of blood with infants coiled inside

hymns swaying over the mounded earth.

the caging hips,

as

if

lanterns

Then the white birch of your bones, resilient and yielding, yielded again, into

snapped as the boy spilled out of you hands burst open by beckoning

and

voices pouring praise like water,

root

two beings tangled

in exhaustion,

blood- painted, but

full

of breath.

After a generation of burning

the hook unfurled in your body, the crack in the bone dissolved:

One day you

stood, expected again

the branch of nerves

fanning across your back to flame,

and

felt

only the grace of birches.

my wife and son have my poetry. This might be

Obviously,

even changed

can poem swaying with white birch palms.

On

this a Puerto

sleep with roaring salsa.

Puerto Rican frogs

historical roots,

first

Puerto Ri-

and

Rican baby.

I

I

coconut

immediately set

danced him

to

—tiny

Katherine painted coquis

—on his pajamas. We spoon-fed him

and beans. He met

The behavior we

the

trees instead of

the other hand, Katherine

about making

changed me, have

rice

his great-grandmother in Puerto Rico.

collectively refer to

but the trigger

is

as "macho” has deep

often a profound insecu-

The Puerto Rican rity,

Dummy

a sense of being threatened. Clemente

as possible, and that security self-knowledge.

He

will

know

stem

will

will

47

be as secure

the meaning of his name.

Clemente Soto Velez was a great Puerto Rican fighter for the

from

in large part

poet,

a

independence of Puerto Rico who spent years

He was also our good friend. The two Clementes met once, when the elder Clemente was eightyseven years old, and the younger Clemente was nine months. Fittingly, it was Columbus Day, 1992, the 500th in prison as a result.

We

anniversary of the conquest.

who

passed the day with a

man

and his art to battling the very colonialism personified by Columbus. The two Clementes traced the topography of one another’s faces. Even from his sickbed, the elder Clemente was gentle and generous. We took devoted his

life

photographs, signed books. Clemente Soto Velez died the following spring.

My

son

still

graph of the two Clementes, long white hair

who

asks

still

to see the

framed photo-

man with

asks about the

gave him his name. This

legend, family ritual, the origins of the

will

name

the

be family

explained in

and greater detail as the years pass, a source of knowledge and power as meaningful as the Book of Genesis.

greater

Thankfully, “Clemente” also has a merciful. Every time

portunity presents

power

my

teach the power of mercy, the

When

Clemente, in later years, con-

sciously acts out these qualities, he does so

he

is

gives

can

doing what his very

him

aspire. Merciful:

how

name

knowing that

expects of him. His

name

the beginnings of a moral code, a goal to which he

Not the

first

word scrawled on the

to the phrase, “Puerto

Rican male.”

appropriate, given that, for Katherine

and me, the

mental blackboard next Yet

meaning:

son asks about his name, an op-

itself to

of compassion.

literal

act of mercy has

become an expression

mente’s existence.

of gratitude for Cle-

Martin Espada

48

Because Clemente Means Merciful for Clemente Gilbert-Espada

February 1992

we watched the emergency room doctor press a thumb against your cheekbone

At three

A.M.,

to bleach

your eye with

The spinal

fluid

was

light.

clear,

drained

from the hole in your back,

but the X-ray film

grew a stain on the lung, explained the seizing cough, the wailing heat of fever:

pneumonia

at the age

of six weeks, a bedside

Your mother

slept beside you,

the stitches of birth

When

still

burning.

asked, “Will he be OK?”

I

no one would answer: I

vigil.

closed

“Yes.”

my eyes and dreamed

my father dead, naked on a steel as

I

table

turned away. In the dream,

when

I

looked again,

my father had become my son. So the hospital kept a frayed wire taped for

us: the

to

oxygen mask,

your toe

reading the blood,

the medication forgotten from shift to

shift,

The Puerto Rican

Dummy

a doctor bickering with radiology over the the bald

girl

film,

with a cancerous rib removed,

the pediatrician the hospital

who

never called, the yawning intern,

roommates

father

from Guatemala, ignored by the doctors as

if

he had picked their morning

the checkmarks and initals at

coffee,

five

a.m,

the pages of forms flipping like a deck of cards,

recordkeeping

for the

records

office,

the lawyers and the morgue.

One

day, while the laundry

basement hissed white sheets, and sheets of paper documented dwindling breath, you spat mucus, gulped air, and lived. We listened to the bassoon of your lungs, in the

the cadenza of the next century, resonate.

The Guatemalan

father

did not need a stethoscope to hear

the breathing, and he grinned. I

grinned

means

too,

and because Clemente

merciful, stood beside the Guatemalteco,

repeating in Spanish everything that

I

was not

said to him.

know someday you’ll stand

beside

the Guatemalan fathers,

speak

in the

49

tongue

shunned faces, breathe in a music we have never heard, and of all the

live

by the meaning of your name.

Martin Espada

50

Inevitably,

we

try to envision the next century. Will there

a “men’s movement” in twenty years,

when my son

is

be

an

someday alienate and exclude Clemente, the way it has alienated and excluded me? The counterculture can be as exclusive and elitist as the mainstream; to be kept out of both is a supreme frustration. I do not expect the men’s movement to address its own racism in depth. The self-congratulatory tone of that movement drowns out any significant self-criticism. I only wish that the men’s movement wouldn’t be so proud of its own ignorance. The blatant expropriation of Native American symbols and rituals by certain factions of the movement leaves me with a adult? Will

twitch in

sponse

it

my

face.

What should

Puerto Rican

men do

in re-

to this colonizing definition of maleness, particularly

considering the presence of our indigenous Taino blood?

remember watching one such men’s movement riton public television believe, and becoming infuriated I

ual,

I

because the lead drummer couldn’t keep a beat.

I

imagined

myself cloistered in a tent with some Anglo accountant from

New Jersey who was stripped to the waist and whacking a drum with no regard for rhythm, the differthe suburbs of

ence being that

could hear

I

Mongo Santamaria

in

my head,

and he couldn’t. am tom between hoping that the men’s movement reforms itself by the time my son reaches adultI

hood, or that

it

assimilates,

its

language going the way of

Esperanto.

Another habit of language which the time Clemente reaches adulthood

term “macho.” Before

ism and

violence,

this

hope

term came into use

is

itself.

is

extinct

by

the Anglo use of the

no particular ethnic or

implicated by language

ployed by Anglos,

is

I

to define sex-

racial

group was

“Macho,” especially as em-

a Spanish word that particularly seems

Dummy

The Puerto Rican to identify Latino

ism and

51

male behavior as the very standard of sex-

made by Anglos both

violence. This connection,

in-

and explicitly, then justifies a host of repressive measures against Latino males, as our presence on the honor roll of many a jail and prison will attest. Sometimes, tuitively

of course, the perception of

remember,

at age fifteen, hearing

Martin

ther’s,

York City

man

macho

“Tito” Perez,

jail cell.

A

volatility

turns deadly.

about a friend of

who was

my

“suicided” in a

grand jury determined that

is

it

I

fa-

New

possible

hang himself with his hands cuffed behind him. While Latino male behavior is, indeed, all too often sexist and violent. Latino males in this countiy are in fact no worse in this regard than their Anglo counterparts. Arguably, European and European -American males have set for

a

to

the world standard for violence in the twentieth century,

from the Holocaust

to

Hiroshima

to

Vietnam.

any assertiveness on the part of Latino males, especially any form of resistance to Anglo authority, is labeled “macho” and instantly discredited. can recall one occasion, Yet,

I

an “alternative” radio station in Wisconsin, when became involved in a protest over the station’s refusal to air a Spanish-language program for the local Chiworking

for

I

cano community.

When

a meeting was held to debate the

became frustrated and staged a walkout. The meeting went on without us, and issue, the protesters, myself included,

we

later learned that

we were

defended, ironically enough,

by someone who saw us as acting “macho.” ture,” this

return,

Puerto Rican that

my

their cul-

person explained apologetically to the gathered

liberal intelligentsia. I

“It’s

We got

ultimately,

dummy, and

the program on the

that ventriloquist

to I

air.

and

his

return too to the simple fact

example as a father

will

have

much

to

do with

whether Clemente frustrates the worshippers of stereotype.

Martin Espada

52

—

To begin with, my very presence as an attentive husband contradicts the stereotype. However,

—

times in

my life,

I

have been that Puerto Rican

someone else’s voice coming out of else’s hand in my back making me

my

expected the

macho

shouting verified species.

I

all

I

have

my

flail

arms.

swung

satisfied

who were

brute,

many dummy, with have

I

wildly at

audiences

who

when my

thrilled

their anthropological theories

served the purposes of those

too

mouth, someone

read aloud a script of cruelty or rage, and

imagined or distant enemies.

and

father

about

who would

my

see the

Puerto Rican species self-destruct, become as rare as the parrots of our

own

rain forest.

But, in recent years,

I

have betrayed

my

puppeteers

and disappointed the crowd. When my new sister-in-law met me, she pouted that did not look Puerto Rican. was not as “scary” as she expected me to be; did not roar and flail. When a teacher at a suburban school invited me to read there, and openly expressed the usual unspoken exI

I

I

pectations,

the following incident occurred, proving that

sometimes a belly laugh is infinitely more revolutionary than the howl of outrage that would have left me pegged, yet again, as a snarling, stubborn “macho.”

My Native Costume When you come

to visit,

said a teacher

from the suburban school, don’t forget to

wear

your native costume.

Dummy

The Puerto Rican

53

But I’m a lawyer, I

said.

My native costume is

a pinstriped

suit.

You know, the teacher

said,

a Puerto Rican costume. Like a guayabera?

The But

shirt? it’s

I

said.

February.

The children want

to see

a native costume, the teacher said.

So went to the suburban school, embroidered guayabera I

short-sleeved shirt

over a turtleneck,

and

said,

Look

kids,

cultural adaptation.

The Puerto Rican

dummy

read today. Claro que si His son

brought his own poems is

always watching.

to

II.

DISPATCHES

&

Viva Puerto Rico Gratis?

The Painful Patience of a Colony at the Close of the Twentieth Century

Puerto Rico, as a colony in

its

centennial year under U.S.

occupation, has a choice of battle cries: “Viva Puerto Rico Libre” or “Viva Puerto Rico Gratis.” literally

Both could be translated

as “Long Live a Free Puerto Rico”

—but such are the

means “free” in the sense of libindependent. “Gratis” means free of charge, for

perils of translation. “Libre”

erated,

nothing, cheaper than the cheapest price. “Puerto Rico exists as

Libre”

still

many

realize,

an

ideal,

a more widespread ideal than

but “Puerto Rico Gratis”

is

a daily

reality of

minds and colonized bodies, cheap labor, unemployment, dependence, and indignity. “Gratis” is the watchword of colonialism, for the right to self-determination itself has been given away. Still, the empty hands of a colony apcolonized

57

Martin Espada

58

plaud on command, celebrating a foreign invasion that be-

gan

1898 and has not ended

in I

1997.

visited Puerto Rico with

We

—in

wife

and son

in

January

in Viejo

—Three

celebration of the Dia de Reyes

official

Day

my

San Juan during the inauguration pro-statehood Governor Pedro Rossello, and

were

of re-elected

the

yet.

the

first

week

of January.

We saw

Kings

Puerto Rico

Gratis.

In

an apparent attempt

conquistadores

who

first

to associate himself

with the

plundered the island, the governor

decided to deliver his inaugural address from El Morro.

huge platform with a podium rose before the

The night

before the governor’s speech,

I

walked with a

My

friend to the platform at the gates of El Morro.

a painter with

ties to

in federal prison for his part in an-

other independentista “conspiracy.”

my

friend insisted

Though she

is

Spanish-

on speaking English as we

walked through El Morro. Puzzled,

I

Spanish several times, only

up and

I

friend is

the independence movement; her great

amor will spend decades

English.

Spanish

old

a Puerto Rican Trojan Horse.

fortress like

dominant,

A

to give

switched back into

then noticed that the various

finally

police,

speak

security

guards, and construction workers surrounding the governor’s

platform were allowing us to walk anywhere

wanted.

We

walked up

to the platform

under the governor’s podium.

we were

If

FBI imagination, we could have

and stood

left

we

directly

the terrorists of

an incendiary bundle

under that podium. But we were speaking English, so we could not possibly be Puerto Ricans.

We were

terrorists, safe.

or independentistas, or

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis?

59

Governor Rossello spent several million dollars on his own

My

away from the speech, which created a crush of tailored dignitaries and aggravated the usual Viejo San Juan traffic. Instead, we wandered over to El Morro shortly after the inaugural address. The scene inauguration.

family

and

I

stayed

resembled a golpe de estado, the aftermath of a coup: the U.S. Army, the Puerto Rican National Guard,

Juan

Police

had conquered the environs

were helicopters

mounted

slicing the air like

and the San

of El Morro. There

monster dragonflies,

police wheeling their steeds into formation,

and

sidearms everywhere. The soldiers and police were not

marching

some for

in a

parade that afternoon.

Many were

watching,

casually, but watching. Perhaps they were watching

people with ideas like mine. Could they hear the whir-

ring of

my brain?

One young man

man—grinned and

in

Army

saluted

asked another soldier

if

I

fatigues

my

—a

camera.

military police-

Emboldened,

I

He

could take his photograph.

nodded, leaning against a stone wall where two helmets rested like sleeping turtles. After

I

clicked the shutter, the

soldier asked, unsmiling: “^Es esta foto para Claridad

had been watching me as “No, no, soy barista,”

graphs were not

I

closely as

I

left

I

protested. In truth, while the photo-

for the island’s socialist

newspaper,

for security reasons.

tention

was

else

I

telling

before the soldier decided he needed to keep

camera

ment

He

was watching him.

published poems in Claridad, and came close to that.

?"

Maybe what had caught

had him

my

his at-

the small Puerto Rican flag painted on a frag-

of coconut shell hanging

around

my

neck; nowhere

but in a colony does a display of the national

flag,

with-

out the flag of the colonizer, raise suspicions of subversive thinking.

Someone

later theorized that

my

beard was the

Martin Espada

60

problem, bushy and graying in the tradition of Fidel, which at least explains

those “random” searches by airport

all

authorities.

The scene

at El

Morro that afternoon was

like

a dream

induced by indigestion. Amid the infestation of Army, National Guard, and mounted police, there was a free carnival

—inflated

with clowns

latex clowns.

An enormous,

disem-

bodied clown head, purple and yellow, squatted before El Morro, strangely reminiscent of those ancient stone heads

carved by the Olmec. Children dashed in and out of the clown’s mouth. Parents

lifted their flailing

seats of demonstration jeeps

and

toddlers into the

helicopters.

Two

other in-

clowns towered over the pandemonium, grinning blankly at the sight of the portable toilets along the flated latex

wall of the nearby cemetery.

The Cementerio de San Juan abuts El Morro. Pedro Albizu Campos is entombed there. Yet the “apostle" of the independence movement, the leader of the Nationalist Party

who spent nearly three decades imprisoned, is still locked up—when we attempted to visit his tomb, we found that the gate of the cemetery had been padlocked. If we could not visit the tomb, however, we could at least urinate in proximity to

it.

The portable

toilets,

khaki-colored, awaited us in

soldierly rows.

The governor was gone. But he left his water behind. Rossello’s photograph appeared on small boxes of spring water, distributed for free. The legend at the top of the box read, “Compromiso Cumplido”: “The Pledge Honored.” The governor posed on the box in a dark suit, with a half-smile and his hands folded in front of him. The portrait radiated insincerity, the picture of a man asking us to trust him

when

his

body language alone made clear that he could not

be trusted. However, given his association with the conquis-

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis? tadores, the governor’s intimacy with spring water

zarre sense. Perhaps Governor Rossello

he was Juan Ponce de Leon, the Rico,

who

came

first

61 made

bi-

to believe that

governor of Puerto

died searching for the fountain of youth. Staring

crumpled boxes strewn on the ground, the following poem:

at the

I

hallucinated

The Governor of Puerto Rico Reveals at His Inaugural That He is the Reincarnation of Ponce de Leon Marching through Florida

in 1513,

Juan Ponce de Leon smacked a mosquito against his neck and cursed the fountain of youth. His tongue was breaded with saliva; cracks webbed his lips. Ponce de Leon squinted at the sky,

remembering San Juan, where as governor he could drowse to the

mating songs of frogs at dusk,

stroking his goatee in contemplation of gold mines.

Again he smacked his welted neck

and

tottered in his armor,

a tortoise straining Flash

to

five centuries.

of Ponce de

Leon

is

walk

like

a man.

The tongue

dust

behind a marble slab in the cathedral of San

The

Juan.

elected governor of Puerto Rico

Martin Espada

62

salutes the assembly at his inaugural,

as eight-ounce boxes of spring water with the governors picture circulate through the crowd.

On

the box, his posture

is

upright

with hands folded like the

high school principal of a nation.

At the gates of the conquistadores’

fortress,

the governor announces that he

is

the reincarnation

of Juan Ponce de Leon,

that he has dipped his

smooth hands

in the fountain of youth at last, yes,

that

all

Puerto Ricans

will live forever

and always have if

rice

and beans

they drink the spring water

with his picture on the box. “jBrindis!”

someone

The crowd

toasts the reincarnation

cries.

of the thirsty conquistador,

and everyone drinks the water but the governor.

From

the speech at El Morro to the face on the box of

spring water, from the

mounted

police to the flocks of heli-

copters, from the padlocked cemetery to the giant latex

was both a manifestation of power and a parpower. This was force menacing and beneficent, the

clowns, this

ody of

genial patriarch

on

his

day of triumph demonstrating his

charitable sensibility as well as his capacity to intimidate.

Yet this

was

farce, the chest- pounding of

a colonial gover-

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis? nor,

pompous bravado from

63

the elected leader of a nation

with no control over whether that nation goes to war. U.S.

Navy decided that

bombardment

for live

El

If

the

Morro would make a useful target

—as

war games

in its

the Navy de-

cided about the offshore islands of Culebra and Vieques

then the governor would have to scurry eveiyone

A

with

for shelter

else.

few days

later,

quistadores.

the governor

He was now one

was no longer one

of the con-

of the Three Kings.

The morn-

ing of January 6th began with a

commotion beneath our

balcony on the street called La Caleta de las Monjas. There

was a

Guard tent across the street, where a banner announced: Abusar las Drogas es Abusar la Vida (To Abuse Drugs is to Abuse Life). The abuse of alcohol was not National

mentioned, a discreet gesture given the presence of the factory

on the other

Stamped on this banner and emblazoned on the free,

side of the bay.

warning of drug dependence

—

yellow National Guard balloons tional lution,

A Minuteman,

Guard:

—was

the logo of the Na-

symbol of the American Revo-

standing against the backdrop of the American

We

set off in search of the

Three Kings.

the crowds to a “Gran Fiesta de Reyes Princesa.”

the Kings.

rum

A sign

—Hacia

flag.

directed

Paseo La

was illustrated by a childlike drawing of Beneath was a banner bearing the logo of the

The

sign

corporate sponsor for the Dia de Reyes

fiesta:

Burger King.

monarchy of chopped beef tattooed the streets of the old city. Later, we saw Burger King himself, an actor in cape and crown hurrying through the cobblestoned

The banners

for this

streets, trailed

him with

by a pack of children who probably confused

Baltasar.

Martin Espada

64

Walking along the Paseo, we saw a towering

inflated

more Burger King banners; a gigantic, black and white fiberglass cow; a Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services van giving out free cookies and juice; more

bottle of Pepsi;

scary giant latex clowns; a children’s salsa band; a police salsa band, giiiro,

khaki uniforms with saxophone, conga,

in

sidearms, and seamless harmonies; a young

man

Army jeep as if he might voland a bomb squad exhibit, featuring a

peering into a demonstration

unteer the next day;

dummy

propped against a

bomb squad

gear.

No

week was a

a helmet and padded

Kings, though. In fact, the only physi-

Reyes Magos we saw in Viejo San Juan

cal evidence of the

that

tree in

live

camel

in a cage,

under another parade

balloon bottle of Pepsi, guarded by police file

who

directed the

of camel-worshippers streaming past.

Our search

human

beings

I

for the

Kings led us to the longest

have ever seen. The

of the Paseo fiesta,

Calle Fortaleza, past

Executive Mansion

line

began

line of

at the edge

wound through the Plaza Colon onto the Plaza de Armas to La Fortaleza, the

itself.

The San Juan Star estimated, con-

servatively, that the line stretched for eight city blocks.

was

the line to receive a free holiday

Rossello, First

and the Kings,

gift

This

from Governor

Lady Irma Margarita Nevares de Rossello, all

waiting in the interior courtyard of La

Fortaleza.

The San Juan Star interviewed Gilberto Diaz Lorenzo, for five

free

who

arrived with his family at

San

of

6 a.m. and waited

hours so his two-year-old daughter could receive a

Minnie Mouse

doll.

He expressed

giveaway was “a big help, since reported this

comment without

I

gratitude; the gift

don’t have a job.”

irony.

There

is

The Star

a direct con-

—at

nection, of course, between the policies of the governor

the service of a ruling

elite

as well as the corporate interests

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis? of the colonizer Rico,

and

—and

the

unemployment

which takes human shape

his painful patience. Diaz

In all likelihood,

The

rate in Puerto

in the face of Gilberto Diaz

was

grateful for the free doll.

he would rather have a job.

painful patience of Gilberto Diaz

every face on that

mated

65

line,

which one

was

reflected in

police lieutenant esti-

more than 60,000. As we walked alongside the line for blocks, we heard virtually no arguments, no complaints, saw no shoving or jockeying for position. We also heard no laughter, saw almost no one grinning. There was no shade from the explosive sun. There was no food or water. There were no portable toilets. There was no music, until the last block. Vendors of piraguas pushed their carts down the line, but rarely sold their cups of fruit syrup and shaved ice. No matter how parched, this was a congregation without a dollar to spend for ice in the sun, which would only dissolve and be gone. A few dropped out of the line, at

sprawling in doorways with stunned eyes, sidewalk murals of defeat.

The government, with the duplicitous media, would have us believe that this spectacle of mass humiliation in fact represented an outpouring of popular affection for Rossello and his party. This was a public relations smorgasbord. The gift giveaway was covered live on local television. Cheery

TV

reporters were careful to interview only those at

the front of the

line, finally

about

to

pass through the gates

Then the microphones turned to various government officials and members of the First Famof the Executive Mansion.

ily

who pronounced

themselves pleased with their

own

be-

The next day, the Star reported the case of Veronica Cordero, who now had sixty-eight Barbies after nevolence.

we saw, parenthetiadopted by many a brown girl that

her odyssey to La Fortaleza; the Barbies cally,

were

all

blonde,

Martin Espada

66 day.

The Star

also

made

this observation, with the rever-

ence of a celebrity-smitten tabloid: “Smartly dressed in dark blue, the governor

smile and a

what kind

warm

and

his wife greeted everyone with a

greeting. Rossello tended to

ask the child

wanted while his wife generally held out a gift selected by one of her assistants.” This brand of reportage may explain why the Star is, as the masthead of toy he or she

proclaims, “The Only Pulitizer Prize-Winning Publication in

Puerto Rico.” Staggering back to our apartment,

pro-govemment jumping jacks on

we watched more

television. Brief profiles of

the governor announced that he held degrees from Harvard

and

Yale.

On

occasion, the face of Pedro Rossello would al-

whose nickname, had an epiphany. Al-

ternate with the face of the First Lady,

Maga, sounded curiously

like

Mago.

I

though Puerto Rico had become a laboratory imperialism and

name

all

political

manipulation, at least

for cultural I

could

still

Three Kings: Pedro, Maga, and Burger King.

Certainly, there for Rossello.

were those standing

in line

There must have been those

who had voted who wanted to

shake his hand. There were a few big blue styrofoam fingers waving

in the crowd, indicating

support

for the

governors

But the bankers and bureaucrats who supported Rossello were not standing in line. People do not stand in line for five hours or more in the sun to walk away with a party.

free

Barbie doll or Tonka truck

thing else. Here

if

was a gathering

they can possibly do anyof the working class

and

the poor, carrying the crush of time on their shoulders like

any other fifty-pound sack, tragically patient with their rulers, who promise jobs and distribute toys. So the colonized

^Viva Puerto Rico Gratis? are conditioned in obedience

ward

and dependency,

67

shuflling for-

for charity or warfare. Still,

often hear this question from those unfamiliar

I

with the Puerto Rican

political

landscape:

Why do

poor and

working-class Puerto Ricans not vote for the pro-inde-

pendence parties? The answer requires a

historical context:

namely, the repression of the independence movement in the twentieth century. Without repressive history tion trials

some understanding of that and the fear it spawned from the sedi-

—

and imprisonment

1936 and 1950,

to the killings of independentistas

at the

Ponce Massacre

1978,

to

the

of independentista leaders in

by

police

1937 and Cerro Maravilla in harrassment and surveillance of inde-

—the

pendentistas today

in

apparent alienation of the Puerto

Rican majority from the option of independence

is

incom-

prehensible. In this, the centennial year,

an increasing number of

Puerto Ricans in the United States express their support for

independence. Statehood has not benefited the Puerto Ri-

cans

living in the states of

setts.

Wounded by raw

Ricans

bom

willing to

New York,

Illinois,

or

Massachu-

confrontations with racism, Puerto

or raised in the United States see a system un-

embrace

either the barrio or the island

itself.

Should the mainland Puerto Rican community be allowed to vote in the next island plebiscite

be

—the percentage

for

Meanwhile, the

—as unlikely as that may

independence might be

elite of

startling.

Puerto Rico have mastered the

art of manipulating the electorate to vote against its

up

and anger and hope,

own

in-

away shiny trinkets in exchange for the treasure of the ballot. The irony is that the free toys aren’t free at all. The militarized carnivals of the inauguration and Three Kings Day were exercises in distraction. With one hand the governor sows the terests, stirring

fear

giving

Martin Espada

68

crop of free toys; with the other hand he surrenders the

economy, the workforce, the islands natural resources, and the right of self-determination to a colonial power.

That

is

Puerto Rico Gratis. Where

is

Puerto Rico Libre?

Begin with history, the refusal of oblivion. In 1993, our

—poet, independentista, 1942 —died and was buried

companero Clemente Soto Velez from 1936

political prisoner

in a grave ter.

unmarked but

When

to

for

a stick with a

number and

a small group of his friends, including

my

let-

wife

and I, discovered the grave in this condition of oblivion, we bought a gravestone and gave the poet his name back. Now, leaving San Juan after the Dia de Reyes, we drove into the mountain town of Barranquitas, where my grandfather, Francisco Espada Marrero, was bom in 1890.

He was

eight years old at the time of the U.S. invasion.

never thought to ask him about the absurdities he

have witnessed. (The absurdities of conquest:

minded

of the poet Carl Sandburg,

foot soldier

from

Illinois

landed in Puerto Rico.

who was then

I

man

grandfather,

fifteen

wide-brimmed straw I

me who

approaching

now

am

re-

a youthful

of Barranquitas,

could have been

years dead. This

man wore

I

my

a white,

hat.

expected him to do what

thirty years

may

and part of the invasion force that He was responsible for rowing his

commander’s dog ashore at Guanica.) walked through the plaza As glimpsed a

I

I

ago in Brooklyn:

sit

my

grandfather would do

down on a bench, tug

the

creases of his pants, unfurl his brown, veined tobacco-leaf

hands and say

to

ranquitas never

me: “Vente.”

Come

saw me, but was I

here.

The man

replenished.

in Bar-

Puerto Rico Gratis?