Search for a command to run...
In the life of the writer, if we are awake and developing, we reach various critical junctures in our evolution, where we are forced to take stock and reevaluate our purpose, our mandate as artists. This is what I would like to speak to you about today those recent events that have catapulted me into reconsidering my work/my role as a Chicana artist living in the United States. I write this on the one-week anniversary of the death of the Nicaraguan revolution. We are told not to think of it as a death. But I am in mourning. It is an unmistakable feeling. I know death when I taste it. The Sandinistas lose the election. Why? Because el pueblo, in secret with a piece of paper, not bullets, oust Ortega. But it was bullets and bread (the U.S.-financed Contra war and its economic embargo) that forced their hand. A nation is once again brought to its knees. A nation, on the brink of stating to the entire world that revolution is the people's choice, betrays its own dead. Imperialism makes traitors of us all, makes us weak and tired and hungry. Look around you, how severely have our loyalties been tested living here in las entrafias del monstruo?