Oh boy.
Well, for the inaugural post on this blog of mine, I have for your consideration the poem “I Am Joaquin” by the Chicano poet Rodolfo Corky Gonzalez (a name which I must say is fantastic). This poem seems to be one about conflicting cultural identities. However, before we get into this, a personal note:
Picking up this poem, I find myself with the American white person's dilemma; namely, how do I relate to this? I suppose I do have attachments to the culture I have been raised in (all hail the mighty television and his apostles the internet and consumerism) but it feels more like a preference out of comfort than any kind of pride. As for any kind of ancient heritage, I hardly know what I am (Swedish? Norwegian? I heard that I have some distant grandmother or other who was Comanche) and even if I did it has nothing to do with my life. And here I am with this poem that's just dripping with cultural identity, and I've got to figure out what to do with it. I guess I'll manage something.
So, this guy Rodolfo has a lot to say about all the different people in his complicated heritage. A good portion of it is spent naming off all of the guys who contributed in a great way to the Méjicano/Español/Latino/Chicano/whatever-he-has-decided-he-identifies-with culture, but at the same time claiming them as himself.
This certainly informed me of a lot about the culture of Mexico, but I did have a small connection to the allusions to Mexican migrant workers because I remember at least learning about this subject in high school. To be honest I was glad when I saw this mentioned in the poem, because it was something that I knew SOMETHING about. Pretty much everything else historical that was mentioned isn't really taught in the Washington state public school system.
Even so, I did find that this poem had some really great and descriptive imagery. Lines like “The altars of Moctezuma/I stained bloody red.” and “dead on the battlefield or on the barbed wire of social strife.” struck me as very visceral, so even if I couldn't relate as easily to the motivation behind the work I could still connect to it on an emotional level.
As I think about this poem, though, I can't help but come back to that idea of strong cultural identity. It's not just identity though, is it? Because I do have that, surely. What I'm having trouble connecting to is that concept of pride. Having a culture and loving it. Knowing years of history and feeling connected to it. I look back at the American Revolution and I don't feel connected to it. I know the impact that it has had on my country, but it doesn't feel significant to me on a personal level. Gonzales talks about hundreds of years worth of everything that happened in Mexico, and is that everything. He is the Aztecs. He is Cortes. He talks about “MY OWN PEOPLE” with such conviction, and I don't even know who I would call my own people.
But really... that's okay. It seems kind of empowering to connect to hundreds of years of people, but I'm fine not having that. Plus, it seems like it would be a bad idea to just decide to have that all of a sudden.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why would Gonzales relate to the coming together of the Spanish and Indigenous cultures, but not the coming together of the Mexican and “Anglo” cultures?
