The Poetry of Chicano Nationalism and Civil Rights

RODOLFO “CORKY” GONZALES, I Am Joaquín (1967)

In the 1960s, Mexican Americans were one of many groups who mobilized in the hopes of righting long-standing wrongs regarding their civil liberties. Earlier efforts had pushed a Mexican American agenda but failed to achieve lasting results. Beginning in the mid-1960s, activists launched a “homeland” campaign to force the federal government to honor nineteenth-century land claims in the American Southwest. In 1967, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, who founded the Chicano civil rights organization named Crusade for Justice, wrote “I am Joaquín,” a poem that became the movement’s anthem. In it, he grounds Chicano identity in the Aztec past and rehearses his people’s history of struggle.

My land is lost

and stolen,

My culture has been raped,

I 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 Joaquín.

The art of our great señores

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 the 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 the tears of anguish

as I see my children disappear

behind the shroud of mediocrity

never to look back to remember me.

I am Joaquín.

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

Clamoring voices

Mariachi strains

Fiery tequila explosions

The smell of chile verde and

Soft brown eyes of expectation for a

better life.

And in all the fertile farmlands,

the barren plains,

the mountain villages,

smoke-smeared cities,

we start to MOVE.

La raza!

Méjicano!

Español!

Latino!

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 Joaquín.

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!

Antonio Esquibel, ed., Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings of Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2001), 16–29.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS