The
idea that many racially diverse people have a lack of voice compared to
powerful, usually white, people is displayed in all three of Martín Espada’s
poems that we read in class, “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson”, “Two Mexicanos
Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877”, and “The New Bathroom Policy
at English High School.” I feel that
this theme slowly advances and grows stronger as the reader advances from one
poem to the next. In “Revolutionary
Spanish Lesson” Martín Espada talks about what he wants to do when someone does
something as simple as pronounce his name.
This poem never states how he actually does anything about the mispronunciation;
it just talks about how it makes him feel.
In “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School” Hispanic kids are
banned from speaking their native language (Spanish) in the bathrooms. Here they both figuratively and literally
don’t have a voice. Then finally in “Two
Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May, 3, 1877” shows how to
Mexicans were murdered for being racially different. This theme of lacking a voice grows more
intense through each of those three poems.
In the first poem by Martín Espada,
“Revolutionary Spanish Lesson”, he describes in detail what he wishes he could
do when people mispronounce his name. He
never says that he actually does anything about it. Espada shows that he feels disrespected when
people do this, and therefore he wants to disrespect them by hijacking “a
busload of Republican tourists from Wisconsin, force them to chant
anti-American slogans in Spanish, and wait for the bilingual SWAT team to
helicopter overhead, begging me to be reasonable.” He wants to force people to feel like their
culture and native country is being put down by forcing the Republican tourists
to chant anti-American slogans in Spanish.
Though the reader is unsure if he actually says anything or just lets it
go by. I think Martín Espada wanted us
to infer this. I think that he is trying
to prove that even though he might have said something about his name and the
correct pronunciation, many others don’t and they need to gain their voice
against “authority” again.
The second poem, “The New Bathroom
Policy at English High School”, shows the theme of a lack of voice for diverse
people a little stronger. Here the
reader doesn’t have to guess whether the victim stood up for himself or not. It is obvious that the Hispanic kids got
their voice taken away, literally. The
principal banned them from talking in Spanish in the bathrooms. This all occurred just because the principal
was uncomfortable hearing them talk in this foreign language to him while he
was in there. This shows how selfish
people of authority can be and how they can overuse their power and overstep
their boundaries. This is taking away
some people’s basic rights, such as freedom of speech. There is no good reason to take away this
freedom in the first place. This makes
these people feel uncomfortable and unwanted, and it makes them feel like
people are being ignorant against their culture, because they are. These kids need a voice against power,
because right now they are lacking one.
The final poem, “Two Mexicanos
Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877”, shows how two Mexicanos may
have had a voice, but now they very forcefully have had it taken away from
them. These two people most likely were
hung because they spoke out against society.
They have realized that they were being mistreated and tried to get
their voice back, but were killed for it.
Though hopefully Martín Espada meant to tell as many people about this
event as he could to inspire people to take a stand because they deserve to be
treated equally as everyone else. People
should not have their life, and voice, taken away from them for their
culture. This is such a terrible thing
that happened and I infer that Espada wanted us to remember that there are
risks when trying to speak out, but it’s possible to have some big advantages
and improvements of treatment come out of it.
Many racially diverse people’s
voices were lacking in this time period against the authorities. This was shown numerous times throughout
Martín Espada’s poems, especially these three that we read in class. His ideas and opinions on this theme grew and
developed throughout them. I think that
he first was just stating his personal feelings, then he used some small
evidence such as a change of a bathroom policy at a random high school, then he
used some intense evidence that two people were murdered for either speaking
out or their culture.
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