As a few of us choose go on break from HARRIET (I’m off to the homeland to see my carnal, Texaco Alex), I’d like to end the year with this shout out because Montoya dedicated it “To Rigoberto De Michoacán.”
It’s “joda,” with a strong J, as in “joder,” as in“chingar,” as in “twenty years of struggle,” as in “twenty years of fighting back.” This collection, commemorating two decades worth of work by Chicano poet José Montoya, one of the writers who pioneered the use of Caló and code-switching in American poetry, was published in 1992 by Chusma House Publications. It includes a portfolio with representations of Pachucas y Pachucos, Cholas y Cholos, Chicanas y Chicanos and other images reflecting a vato’s worldview. “I chose to include ’em,” Montoya explains in his preface, “because they were done in el mismo espíritu that the poems were written in.” One of his watercolors graces the cover.

The book also includes lyrics to songs and corridos, many of which are performed by Montoya’s musical group Trío Casindio. (El vato always busts out with the guitar at his readings.) But the true engines in the book are his poems, many of which have become classics of Chicano letters, like “El Louie,” an all-attitude urban elegy. “Hoy enterraron al Louie,” the poem begins and then his resurrection through memory:
Era de Fowler el vato,
Carnal del Candi y el
Ponchi—Los Rodríguez—
The Westside knew ’em,
And Selma, even Gilroy.
’48 Fleetline, two-tone—
Buenas garras and always
Rucas—como La Mary y
La Helen…siempre con
Liras bien afinadas
Cantando La Palma, la
Que andaba en el florero.
The celebrated poem “The Movement Has Gone For It’s Ph.D Over at the University or, The Gang Wars Are Back,” begins with the queries:
What has happened to the Movement, camarada?
What has happened to la causa y the guns?
All those vatos de proposals y programas
Federales, dónde están?
Qué pasó con EOP and education
weren’t we going to build a nation
called Aztlán?
And the answer is written, not on the graffitied walls, but in the halls of academia, where the MECHistas are at risk of assimilation and complacency if they don’t hold on to their political consciousness. One of the Chicano Movement’s main preoccupations (besides the Vietnam War, besides better working wages and living conditions) was better education for the young, but a leap forward didn’t have to mean a leap out of the community that had reared them. Respeto y amor siempre, raza, aunque de lejos. No sean prendejos y regresen a sus casas (through your literary work). C/S
Hence why Montoya, like many veteran performers and artists, are concerned with preservation of history and memory, through art, song, poetry, plays. (José Montoya, by the way, is the brother of renown artist Malaquías Montoya, and uncle to the late poet Andrés Montoya, and to the talented photographer Delilah Montoya—a dynasty indeed!) The following are the opening stanzas to the corrido “Los Huelguistas”:
The yeas was ’73
A time we’ll always remember
And in the harvest of shame
The Union never surrendered
Año del ’73
Presente lo tengo yo
De aquella infame cosecha
Y el triunfo de nuestra Unión
Of course, not everything is politics and protests, there’s always room for barrio humor in the work of Montoya, like in the poem with the tongue-in-cheek title “Una Lágrima Por Tu Amor”:
She turned slowly, and said,
“Estoy aquí pistiando—Porque
me gusta!—What did you expect,
a sad story?”
Pos I’m Sorry!

12.20.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 9:16 am and is filed under Books, Poems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.