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144 Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought 6 Monica Cristiana Irimia Repressed Culture and Otherness in “Yo Soy Joaquín” and “Puerto Rican Obituary” Abstract This paper provides an analysis of two poems, Yo Soy Joaquin and Puerto Rican Obituary, which stand as manifestos for two radically sociopolitical engagements, the Chicano/a movement and the Nuyorican movement. Both texts deal with the inferior status of minorities in the US and reflect upon issues such as racism, oppression, cultural survival, cultural pride, diversity, ethnic pluralism. This article explores the similarities between two texts that come from rather different cultural areas. The paper also analyzes the stylistic devices involved in the making of the poems. Both poems are elegies for asserting one's cultural heritage and acknowledging one's true identity. Suggested Citation: Irimia, Monica Cristiana. “Repressed Culture and Otherness in ‘Yo Soy Joaquín’ and ‘Puerto Rican Obituary’.” Radical (Dis)Engagement: State – Society – Religion (Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought 6), edited by Murray Forman, Erlis Laçej, Frederick Reinprecht, and Kim Sawchuk. 2020, pp. 145-153, DOI: 10.25364/25.6:2020.11. Keywords: hybridity, identity, oppression, manifesto, survival Peer Review: This article was reviewed by the volume’s editors and professors of the GUSEGG Summer School. Copyright: © 2020 Monica Cristiana Irimia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CCBY 4.0), which allows for the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought 6 145 Monica Cristiana Irimia Repressed Culture and Otherness in “Yo Soy Joaquín” and “Puerto Rican Obituary” The purpose of this essay is to discuss two poems, “Yo Soy Joaquín” and “Puerto Rican Obituary,” by establishing the similarities and differences between them from an ideological and a stylistic point of view. Although the poems are from different cultural areas, they both send a powerful message for people to act and to fight for their rights. Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzales, poet, activist and amateur boxer, was one of the national leaders of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Gonzales and his wife, Geraldine Gonzales, created the “Crusade for Justice.” He was the son of migrant sugar beet farmers and lost his mother at the age of two. According to Gallego, “Gonzales’ childhood can best be described as confrontational – that is, of always looking to directly, actively and, if necessary, combatively offset the effects of systemic marginalization. His early years were characterized by the harsh realities of single parenthood and of migrant labor.” (Gallego, p. 1). He worked in the sugar beet fields throughout his schooling but still graduated from high school and enrolled the University of Denver with plans to become an engineer. The costs of an education soon became too high and he left college in order to pursue a boxing career (The Veterans of Hope Project). By the late 1950s, Gonzales entered the arena of civil rights work. Inspired by stories that his Mexican-born father told about the Mexican revolution, Mexican history, and the proud culture from which he came, Gonzales worked as a Democratic-party organizer and was appointed to become the director of Denver’s War on Poverty program. This program was introduced in the United States in the 1960s, by president Lyndon B. Johnson. Its aim was to reduce the poverty rate in the United States. The program was seen by critics as an attempt to authorize social welfare programs. Gonzales focused much of his energy and attention on youth, ensuring that they understood the traditions of their past and the possibilities of their future (The Veterans of Hope Project). Some of the issues that he addressed were: fair labour practices, adequate resource distribution, primarily education and housing, authentic political representation, and an ending police brutality. As Mexican-American groups began to form political organizations, solidarity became necessary to the making of these socio-political goals. (Flores, p. 20). In 1966, Gonzales wrote the epic poem “Yo soy Joaquín,” which in English is translated to “I Am Joaquín.” The poem expressed the tensions many Chicanos felt in seeing their culture “disappear behind the shroud of mediocrity” (Gonzales) in the hands of unjust social institutions. Gonzales became a central figure of the Chicano movement, organizing student walkouts in schools to protest against the low 146 Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought 6 expectations set for Chicano students and the lack of cultural appreciation reflected in the curriculum: “Our art, our literature, our music, they ignored” (Yo Soy Joaquín). The organization called for national youth conferences to promote a stronger Chican@ identity (The Veterans of Hope Project). The relationship between Mexicans and white Americans is similar to the clash between servitude and mastery, between the margin and the center, in Hegel’s terminology. In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel sees the historical mechanism as a perpetuum mobile in which margins (“servants”) and centers (“masters”) substitute for one another all the time and thus propel evolution. The servant, according to Hegel, is cunning, feigning his identity and intentions in order to eliminate the master from the center. The whole conflict can be reduced to the issue of recognition. The master is always recognized, while the servant only recognizes the master. The servant’s need for recognition is the source of social interaction between the margin and the center. Nonetheless, the margin will always try to replace the center (Hegel, 1807). The twentieth and twenty-first centuries are characterized by ethnic pluralism and also by a switch of perspective, a shift of paradigm from a situation of similarity and integration1 to one in which issues of difference, diversity, and specificity are emphasized (people start to rediscover and reclaim their roots) and so, hyphenated identities start to appear. Minorities want acknowledgement and the formerly “melting pot” will gradually become a “mosaic,” a “salad bowl.” Hybridity, impurity, intermingling, these are all concepts strongly tied to identity and the pride of the individual belonging to a different cultural heritage, one that sometimes speaks a different language and is part of a different ethnic group. He/she will become someone with multiple selves, which are more than often divided, the one who oscillates between two or more identities. In “I am Joaquín,” the narrative voice of the poem speaks of the struggles that the Chicano people have faced in trying to achieve economic justice and equal rights in the U.S, as well as to find an identity and to be part of a hybrid mestizo society. The poem is structured on a series of oppositions: “I was both tyrant and slave,” “the priests, both good and bad,” “slave and master,” “the tales of life and death,” “legends old and new,” “[legends] of passion and sorrow,” love and hatred, “Gringo” and Hispanic, slavery and freedom, victory and defeat (“the victor, the vanquished”), “I have killed and been killed” (Gonzales). This series of oppositions remind us of the Hegelian “master and servant” dichotomy and integrates past events into the present, a time of revolution, of awakening. Paradoxically, the speaker (the voice in the poem) identifies both with the oppressor and the oppressed. It is at the same time weak and strong, abused and abusive. 1 One strives to be exactly like a native inhabitant of a particular land, behaving, speaking and dressing up as an American for example – a process of acculturation Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought 6 147 Joaquín becomes “the one” whose voice speaks and cries out in the name of “many” – a hybrid Mestizo society: “Critic Juan Bruce-Novoa […] divides the poem into three sections, [...] All of this movement takes place under the name of Joaquín, the Chicano Everyman who functions as the symbolic unity of the people.” (Hartley). According to Joseph Rios, Rodolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales “without question, like Homer, gave Chicano letters our first great epic.” (inspiration2publication). As a Chicano, the individual needs to renegotiate his/her moral values, his/her cultural background and to (re)adapt to the American society. Even so, he/she is not fully accepted by the white American, nor treated equally. This creates a split in the individual’s personality, as he/she goes through a mental process of integration which is defined by a permanent clash of cultures. The oppositions reflect a double perspective, a double critique, a permanent and dynamic exchange of the roles of power in terms of “superior vs. inferior.” As for the theme of freedom, there are many lines in the poem that capture this idea/ ideal: “for that GOLDEN MOMENT of FREEDOM,” “I lived to see our country free,” “I SHALL ENDURE/ I WILL ENDURE” (Gonzales). The whole poem reinforces the idea of belonging and of possession, through various examples, such as: “MY OWN PEOPLE”, “I owned the land as far as the eye could see under the crown of Spain,” “THE GROUND WAS MINE,” “This land, this earth is OURS,” “This land is ours … Father, I give it back to you;” “My land is lost and stolen,” “My culture has been raped,” “my spirit,” “my faith,” “my blood” (Gonzales). Gonzales includes multiple references to historical figures. The voice in the poem (“I,” “Joaquín”) identifies itself with some of the most iconic individuals who took part in the revolutionary movement: “I am Cuauhtémoc, proud and noble,” “gachupín Cortés,” “I am the Maya prince,” “I am Nezahualcóyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas,” “I am the despots Diaz and Huerta and the apostle of democracy, Francisco Madero,” “I was Elfego Baca” (Gonzales). Other important historical figures with major contributions are also mentioned: Hidalgo, who was a Mexican Roman-Catholic priest and leader of the Mexican war of Independence; Jose Maria Morelos, a priest and an independence leader, and Joaquín Murrieta, who is also the figure that appears in the title.
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