Tleca tiyaomiqui? (Why do you die in battle?)

Many words in this poem are in my Native Mexican tongue of Nahuatl. I will try and include a glossary as reference for non-Nahuatl speakers. *yaomiqui- to die in battle *tlahtohque- rulers *titotlazohtla- we love ourselves *ninotlazohtla- I love myse

Tleca tiyaomiqui?

Why do you die in battle?, you ask

It is an honest question because you really do not know

Why do you put struggle before even yourself?

What forces guide you to work day in and day out with little to no immediate reward?

Love, I respond. It is love;

 

It's a love for our parents whom we witnessed struggle for simple things

Like put food on our table and clothes on our back while enduring racism and disrespect;

It's a love for the campesino slaving in the fields of an unforgiving master,

In dire conditions from sun up until sun down and then sleeping under one roof

In the company of 20 other people if they are lucky;

It's a love for the single working mother with 3 jobs to barely survive;

It's love for the wide-eyed idealistic and hopeful Chicano youth

Who spend all their days organizing, studying, learning, teaching,

Struggling for a better tomorrow;

It's a love for the chol@s and Raza prisoners who are nothing more than our misguided warriors,

Trying to make sense of the hand they've been dealt,

Abandoned by the oppressive system and by our own people;

It's a love for the undocumented worker/person living their entire life in fear of getting caught,

Sentenced, and expelled from their own land for a crime they did not commit;

It's a love for our children who realize the power structure

And choose to play into it as means of survival,

Misguided into thinking that will make a difference in how they are treated and perceived;

 

It is pain

 

 

Pain caused by love for our children who deny their mother and their father and disappear in shame, as Corky Gonzales put it in I am Joaquin,

Shame for who they are because society tells them that it is bad to exist . . .

It's a love for OUR GENTE!

All of our gente experiencing all forms of oppression and reacting in all kinds of different ways!

We struggle so the vendidos won't have to be vendidos!

We struggle so our children can embrace who they are and hold their heads up high!

So our mujeres can prosper with dignity and without fear or repression!

We struggle so our people won't have to hide from ANYBODY!

We struggle so we don't have to live in fear or shame anymore!

We struggle so that our people are treated with dignity!

And not only human dignity but so that we are treated as who and what we are!

We are the sons and daughters of Cheifs , Emperors, warriors, Tlahtohqueh!

We are the strong surviving remnents of the greatest civilization that ever existed!

We struggle so that not only our own people can see what deep inside we already know,

but so that the world can see that and give us what we deserve.

Our land, prosperity, history, knowledge, and dignity back!

 

That is why we die in battle.

Love

Love

Love

Titotlazohtla

Ninotlazohtla