I wanted to blog something spectacular, something classy on New Year’s Day.  It didn’t happen.  This is the best I can do.

[wikipop]I AM JOAQUIN[/wikipop]

I am Joaquin,

Lost in a world of confusion,

Caught up in a whirl of a

gringo society,

Confused by the rules,

Scorned by attitudes,

Suppressed by manipulations,

And destroyed by modern society.

My fathers

have lost the economic battle

and won

the struggle of cultural survival.

And now!

I must choose

Between

the paradox of

Victory of the spirit,

despite physical hunger

Or

to exist in the grasp

of American social neurosis,

sterilization of the soul

and a full stomach.

Yes,

I have come a long way to nowhere,

Unwillingly dragged by that

monstrous, technical

industrial giant called

Progress

and Anglo success…

I look at myself.

I watch my brothers.

I shed tears of sorrow.

I sow seeds of hate.

I withdraw to the safety within the

Circle of life . . .

MY OWN PEOPLE

I am Cuauhtemoc,

Proud and Noble

Leader of men,

King of an empire,

civilized beyond the dreams

of the Gachupin Cortez,

Who also is the blood,

the image of myself.

I am the Maya Prince.

I am Netzahualcoyotl,

Great leader of the Chichimecas.

I am the sword and flame of Cortez

the despot.

And

I am the Eagle and Serpent of

the Aztec civilization.

I owned the land as far as the eye

could see under the crown of Spain,

and I toiled on my earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood

for the Spanish master,

Who ruled with tyranny over man and

beast and all that he could trample

But . . .

THE GROUND WAS MINE.

I was both tyrant and slave.

As Christian church took its place

in God’s good name,

to take and use my Virgin strength and

Trusting faith,

The priests

both good and bad,

took

But

gave a lasting truth that

Spaniard,

Indian,

Mestizo

Were all God’s children

And

from these words grew men

who prayed and fought

for

their own worth as human beings,

for

that

GOLDEN MOMENT

Of

FREEDOM.

I was part in blood and spirit

of that

courageous village priest

Hidalgo

in the year eighteen hundred and ten

who rang the bell of independence

and gave out that lasting cry:

“El Grito de Dolores, Que mueran

los Gachupines y que viva

la Virgin de Guadalupe”

I sentenced him who was me.

I excommunicated him my blood.

I drove him from the Pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me I killed him.

His head, which is mine and all of those who have conic this way,

I placed on that fortress wall to wall for Independence.

Morelos!

Matamoros!

Guerrero!

All Compañeros in the act,

STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY

to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made.

I died with them . . .

I lived with them

I lived to see our country free.

Free from Spanish rule in eighteen -hundred- twenty-one.

Mexico was Free

The crown was gone but

all his parasites remained

and ruled and taught

with gun and flame and mystic power.

I worked,

I sweated,

I bled,

I prayed

and

waited silently for life to again commence.

I fought and died for

Don Benito Juarez

Guardian of the Constitution.

I was him on clusty roads on barren land

as he protected his archives as Moses did his sacraments.

He held his Mexico

in his hand

on

the most desolate

and remote ground

which was his country

And this Giant

Little Zapotec

gave

not one palm’s breadth

of his country’s land to

Kings or Monarchs or Presidents

of foreign powers.

I am Joaquin. I rode with Pancho Villa, crude and warm. A tornado at full strength, nourished and inspired

by the passion and the fire of all his earth, people. I am Emillano Zapata.

“This Land

This Earth

Is

OURS”

The Villages

The Mountains

The Streams

belong to Zapatistas.

Our life

Or yours

is the only trade for soft brown earth

.and maiz.

All of which is our reward,

A creed that formed a constitution for all who dare live free!

“This land is ours . . . Father, I give it back to you.

Mexico must be free . . .’

I ride with Revolutionists

against myself.

I am Rural

Course and brutal,

I am the mountain Indian, superior over all.

The thundering hoof beats are my horses.

The chattering of machine guns’

are death to all of me:

Yaqui

Tarahumara

Chamula

Zapotec

Mestizo

Español

I have been the Bloody Revolution,

The Victor,

The Vanquished,

I have killed

and been killed.

I am despots Diaz

and Huerta

and the apostle of democracy

Francisco Madero.

I am the black shawled

faithful women

who die with me

or live depending on the time and place.

I am

faithful,

humble,

Juan Diego,

the Virgen de Guadalupe,

Tonatzin, Aztec Goddess too.

I rode the mountains of San Joaquin. I rode as far East and North as the Rocky Mountains

and

all men feared the guns of

Joaquin Murrietta.

I killed those men who dared

to steal my mine,

who raped and Killed

my Love

my Wife

Then

I Killed to stay alive.

I was Alfego. Baca,

living my nine lives fully.

I was the Espinoza brothers

of the Valle de San Luis.

All,

were added to the number of heads

that

in the name of civilization

were placed on the wall of independence.

Heads of brave men

who died for cause or principle.

Good or Bad.

Hidalgo! Zapata!

Murrietta! Espinozas!

are but a few. They dared to face The force of

tyranny of men who rule

By farce and hypocrisy

I stand here looking back, and now I see the present

and still

I arn the campesino

I am the fat political coyote

I, of the same name,

Joaquin.

In a country that has wiped out AI my history, stiffled all my pride.

In a country that has placed a different weight of indignity upon my age old

burdened back.

Inferiority

is the new load . . .

The Indian has endured and still

emerged the winner,

The Mestizo must yet overcome,

And the Gachupin will just ignore.

I look at myself

and see part of me

who rejects my father and my mother

and dissolves into the melting pot

to disappear in shame.

I sometimes

sell my brother out

and reclaim him

for my own when society, gives me

token leadership

in society’s own name.

I am Joaquin, who bleeds in many ways. The altars of Moctezuma

I stained a bloody red.

My back of Indian Slavery

was stripped crimson from the whips of masters who would lose their blood so pure when

Revolution made them pay Standing against the walls of Retribution,

Blood . . .

Has flowed from

me on every battlefield

between Campesino, Hacendado Slave and Master and

Revolution.

I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec into the sea of fame;

My country’s flag my burial shroud;

With Los Niños, whose pride and courage

could not surrender with indignity their country’s flag . . . in their land.

To strangers

Now

I bleed in some smelly cell

from club.

or gun.

or tyranny.

I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger

cut my face and eyes,

as I fight my way from stinking Barrios

to the glamour of the Ring

and lights of fame

or mutilated sorrow.

My blood runs pure on the ice caked

hills of the Alaskan Isles,

on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,

the foreign land of Korea

and now

Viet Nam.

Here I stand

before the Court of justice Guilty for all the glory of my Raza to be sentenced to despair.

Here I stand Poor in money Arrogant with pride

Bold with Machismo

Rich in courage and

Wealthy in spirit and faith

My knees are caked with mud. My hands calloused from the hoe.

I have made the Anglo rich yet

Equality is but a word, the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken

and is but another treacherous promise.

My land is lost

and stolen,

My culture has been raped,

lengthen

the line at the welfare door and fill the jails with crime.

These then are the rewards this society has

For sons of Chiefs

and Kings and bloody Revolutionists.

Who gave a foreign people all their skills and ingenuity

to pave the way with Brains and Blood

for

those hordes of Gold starved

Strangers

Who changed our language and plagiarized our deeds

as feats of valor of their own. They frowned upon our way of life

and took what they could use.

Our Art

Our Literature

Our music, they ignored so they left the real things of value and grabbed at their own destruction by their

Greed and Avarice

They overlooked that cleansing fountain of

nature and brotherhood

Which is Joaquin.

The art of our great señors

Diego Rivera

Siqueiros

Orozco is but

another act of revolution for the Salvation of mankind. Mariachi music, the heart and soul of the people of the earth, the life of child, and the happiness of love

The Corridos tell the tales of life and death, of tradition, Legends old and new, of Joy of passion and sorrow of the people: who I am.

I am in the eyes of woman, sheltered beneath

her shawl of black, deep and sorrowful eyes,

That bear the pain of sons long buried or dying,

Dead

on the battlefield or on the barbwire of social strife.

Her rosary she prays and fingers

endlessly like the family working down a row of beets to turn around and work and work There is no end. Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth and all the love for me, And I am her And she is me. We face life together in sorrow. anger, joy faith and wishful thoughts.

I shed tears of anguish as I see my children disappear behind the shroud of mediocrity never to look back to remember me. I am Joaquin.

I must fight And win this struggle for my sons, and they must know from me Who I am. Part of the blood that runs deep in me Could not be vanquished by the Moors I defeated them after five hundred years, and I endured. The part of blood that is mine has labored endlessly five-hundred years under the heel of lustful Europeans

I am still here!

I have endured in the rugged mountains

of our country

I have survived the toils and slavery,

of the fields.

I have existed

in the barrios of the city,

in the suburbs of bigotry,

in the mines of social snobbery,

in the prisons of dejection,

in the muck of exploitation

and

in the fierce heat of racial hatred.

And now the trumpet sounds,

The music of the people stirs the

Revolution,

Like a sleeping giant it slowly rears its head

to the sound of

Tramping feet

Clamouring voices

Marlachi strains

Fiery tequila explosions

The smell of chile verde and

Soft brown eyes of expectation for a

better life

And in all the fertile farm lands,

the barren plains,

the mountain villages,

smoke smeared cities

We start to MOVE.

La Raza! Mejicano!

Español!

Latino!

Hispano!

Chicano!

or whatever I call myself,

I look the same

I feel the same

I cry

and

Sing the same

I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.

I am Joaquin

The odds are great but my spirit is strong

My faith unbreakable

My blood is pure

I am Aztec Prince and Christian Christ

I SHALL ENDURE!

I WILL ENDURE!