Spanglish

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Contrary to belief, Spanglish was never one of the languages I carried in my arsenal against Western imperialism. Spanish was the language I was given from Mexico; English was what I learned to survive and fight against the United States.

Both stem from colonization and I’m only thrown into a deeper existential crisis - the very same one that bubbles up my throat the moment I wake up and the moment before sleep finally takes me - even if my Spanish is riddled with Nahuatl the same way the innocent youth last seen wearing hoodies were riddled with bullets. Just how do you expect me to speak Spanish to you, Mamá?

1. Spanglish may not be the cultural product of Mexican-Americans like you think it is; it is the fear that you will hear the Western trill in our Spanish, pick up on how our rolled R’s are as muddy as a snare’s buzz roll while we manage to roll seemingly perfect blunts and enchiladas with our less-than-nimble fingers.

We hide in the language you forced us to learn when you birthed us here but we use your regional accents with the greatest pride when speaking to strangers who won’t matter in five minutes or in five years. Spanglish came not from our free will but from our shame and fear over our inarticulate tongues that forget everything when facing you.

2. The American school system has already erased our Spanish from us with the same precision that they butcher cattle in a Gilded Age slaughter house. Every new school year I’m four years old again and ending all over, more painfully each time because the teacher always manages to do their job and make it easier for next year’s dictator to take my Spanish, my comfort, my identity away because there’s always less Spanish and less fight left to deal with my the end of each school year.

3. Even in English I can hear my voice shake like any other California earthquake but no matter how small the actual shake is I can feel another San Andrea’s fault etch itself into my arteries and esophagus; it’s not because I fear the audience but because I fear this language and this country. I fear its rules and the standard I must fill as a Mexican-American to be fluent in English and Spanish because I’m standing right here in Gringolandia and mi México lindo y querido is right next door; I fear that any mistake I make will beg for the whole world to stand up and scream and suddenly I’m three again and I’m running away from the white children in the park because they didn’t have Spanish or understanding, so they didn’t have comfort. And this is all because my sophomore English teacher destroyed my confidence with his too loud criticism that was meant to crush me into a fine powder.

Now every word I write is a scribble from how my hand quivers so and even then I find myself trying to box my syllables and imprison my language for the sake of pleasing the teacher enough to get an A, but I had points knocked off for not italicizing my use of Spanish, a foreign language that in reality is not foreign to me, only my white teachers.

My aesthetic doesn’t fit their colonized taste anyways.

4. Palmdale isn’t Los Angeles Mamá; it’s too whitewashed for anything too foreign to survive here. El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula had already been desecrated, drug through the mud and thorns of self-entitled laziness and reduced into Los Angeles, but even then everyone else gives it one last kick by shortening it down to LA. Mamá, if Palmdale can’t and won’t even say Los Angeles, how do you expect them to speak Spanish comfortably as if we were in our motherland?

You’ll never know the cultural shock and heartbreak I felt when I realized in September following our displacement here that no one liked speaking Spanish, that they only wanted to speak English, or maybe you do; maybe that’s why you and Pa always yelled at me for any slip in my tongue as it slowly loss it’s muscle memory of what Spanish was.

5. We’re Mexican, but we’re white Mexicans Mamá. Yes, our skin had the most miniscule tinge of color even before we tanned slightly and turned into white-passing Mexicans, but the hue of our complexion already likes to whisper to every passerby, “We’re more European than indigenous.” I may be the only one to respect the indigenous people of our motherland and of every other colonized land, but my heart achingly can’t call out to our indigenous ancestors who are too far away in my bloodstream for me to call them my own and treat them as if they had birthed me and not you; I can’t use their language, but it’s growing more difficult to use Spanish, even if the Spanish we speak isn’t Castilian Spanish.

If my blood accounted for the amount of ownership I have over my indigenous ancestor’s belongings, I don’t think I even deserve the dormant seeds of Nahuatl that lie within our Spanish; I only deserve a grain of salt to put into my wounds.

 

I'm tired Ma; can we stop this travesty?

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community
Our world

Comments

Llustin

Beautiful, love it. Really says a lot...

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