Trabajadores are ripped out of the tiendas and can’t speak against the brute force because they have to hide their native tongue and conceal their raices.
The elotero in my neighborhood still comes around, he’s the bravest man I’ve ever seen. He serves everyone with a smile, even those who don’t want him here.
And the chavalillos, who say trucha, chales, and spensa, and call you a fool with love, hold up protest signs in every ancestral language: Spanish, to Zapotec, Nahuatl and even hieroglyphs.
Manos, callused and gentle, that raise the children, nurse the elderly, harvest and cook your food, build what they cannot afford. And still tend to the land as they have for milenios.
We are seen as expendable and criminals, as if we are not indigenous to this tierra. History can be erased but we cannot be confined. Not in cages, borders, or by perceptions.
My mother told me anytime I see a mariposa monarca it is one of our ancestors, drifting with the breeze without restrictions. And still, I question why we have to wait until death to be free.
