Jackie Lopez Lopez Where Do You Come From? By Jackie Lopez I come from Wars blood Sugar plantations slavery gold hate love maiz My grandmother told me that I come from the city of Guatemala. Where she was respected as a curandera; a woman healer outside of the catholic church. She retained the Indian ways. She cleansed people’s auras, and exorcised their demons. She raised her children on these beliefs, of which I retained. I am of the spoken herstories and of the written histories. I am from the ships that crossed the Atlantic, and from the people who populated these very lands we walk on. I am of the Hacendado’s wife who recoiled at her husband’s touch. She turned away from him in bed, with the white sheets and in so doing , she was turning away from the injustices imposed on the brown people of her land. She said,” Why must you push them to the ground?” I come from masters and from servants, and from those in between. I come from the churches built from missionaries zeal; built on the backs of the Maya. Stone by stone, stones as big as three watermelons, they carried me to the foundation of the church, building by the whip of Catholicism’s reign. I come from the kiss Of two mestizos in love, whispering to each other in the night, amidst the maiz, amidst the war, amidst the beauty of their baskets, and their adorned garments of blue and red and purple and orange. Behind the queen’s back. Behind the hacendado’s back. Despite the slavery. In the midst of a rising merchant class. I am their baby. Their dear one born, out of growing Americas. The fruit that is born from prayer; In the built churches and the sacrificed people that built them.
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 05:27:40 +0000
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