Latinos, bueno para ser mas sincero boricuas in the 70’s… Es decir a few Puerto Rican poets, did this boldly via the art form call the Spoken Word en esa epoca. This is when poetry meets the revolution and becomes a mouthpiece of those in the barrios, spitting fuego, la verdad, la pura. Now this poetry was not the \u201croses are red, and violets are blue\u201d nonsense\u2026 no, claro que no. It was their community\u2019s I.D. card in rhymes, poetry that show the world ~especialmente the Anglos~ the identity of the Nuyoricans papa! It was their art, their identity in their language, no one boxed theses Boricuas in a subgroup for census purposes, no way Jos\u00e9. They were both Puerto Ricans and New Yorkers and spoke both Spanish and English, together\u2026asi como un arroz con pollo. And they were great at this, to experience it all one had to do was go to the \u201cPuerto Rican Obituary\u201d and listen to Pedro Pietri speak the truth hermano. After all, the dominant themes in his poem were about racial injustice, labor, and death.<\/span><\/p>\n The pain he felt to see his Puerto Rican brethrens and sisters as \u201cthey work, they work, and they work\u201d under so much injustice was evident in his work. El dolor to see them all “died yesterday, today and will die again tomorrow passing their bill collectors on to the next of kin, all died waiting for the garden of Eden to open up again, all died,\u201d era su gran dolor.\u00a0 Powerful hermano, fist up in solidarity, one hears the message and understands clearly, that many have died chasing a utopian dream, the American Dream in a dystopian society.<\/span> To live via the words of these talented artists, to really embrace them era un extasis. Oyeme, to understand meant you were welcome to the revolution. Por ejemplo, when the grand street teacher from Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side; Miguel Pi\u00f1ero once spoke about \u201cSeekin the Cause\u201d.\u00a0 He wanted all to comprender that he meant staying woke and not chasing \u201cThe American Dream.\u201d Which was problematic because for many chasing the dream only meant gaining many material things. Pero\u00a0 Pi\u00f1ero sabia that it came with a steep price, your soul.. tu alma bacano. Miguel\u2019s voice still echoes through time, can you hear him, oye, listen closely as he recites his poema\u2026”downtown. . . uptown . . . midtown . . . crosstown.” This need to be part of the push for change (si…la revoluci\u00f3n), led Pi\u00f1ero and others to create a home for this art form, la casa of the spoken word the Nuyorican Poets Caf\u00e9. Where art became the revolution and gave all a sense of one\u2019s real identity, shredding away the colonial tag. Where one could speak Spanglish sin que nadie les diga na\u2019. Where any latino would walk in feeling helplessness and would walk out as a powerful as ever.<\/span><\/p>\n Yo comprendo what it means to live under the duality of two cultures as those Nuyoricans who created that safe haven in L.E.S. did. Es que yo soy un Dominicano-Americano, yo soy un Dominican-York. Who speaks English, speaks Spanish and guess what? Cuando me da la gana I speak Spanglish. And this is why I understand how important it was for all those extraordinary artists to lend their talents to the deconstruction of the false narratives. Those imposed by those colonizers who try to erase who they were, who we are and who we have become. After all como dijo Pi\u00f1ero, “the cause we are seeking, that cause we have always desire is us\u2026downtown . . . uptown . . . midtown . . . crosstown\u201d…. La pura verdad, es que el arte tambi\u00e9n es nuestra revoluci\u00f3n.<\/span><\/p>\n Edwin Rosario Mazara<\/span><\/a> is the founder of Spanglish Voces<\/span><\/a>, a non-profit promoting community building through the arts. He also founded La Sala Talks<\/span><\/a>, an outlet that communicates diverse perspectives within our cultures. Currently serves as a Communications Director at the NY State Senate\u2014an activist who loves reading, la m\u00fasica & conversations & las miles de historias de los desconocidos.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" History teaches us that the marginalized always use art as a means of speaking about their pain and sorrows. Art, whether it was music or poetry, was also used as coded language that motivated those who suffer to rise and fight. It was the means of communicating the next battleground strategy for their freedom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[191,187,186,185,184,183],"yoast_head":"\n
\nNow on paper these poems were also jewels.. muy buenos, they were laser and would slice through metal. Those written poems would sliced through all the hate. Willie Perdomo did just that con sus poemas, he advised future writers that the best way to accomplish this was \u201cWriting About What You Know.\u201d Perdomo explained\u00a0 that with the following words; \u201c I would stop feeding the wind that takes all the lives in the urban studies and from now on I would use true colors to write about what I know.\u201d True colors, oye los colores verdaderos… a remarkably interesting point, despu\u00e9s de todo our beautiful people son todos people of color, extremely powerful fue Perdomo con ese pensamiento.<\/span><\/p>\n
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