What Are You by Yvette Sandoval

What are you?
I’ve been asked this before
quite often
actually.

Well,
Ill tell you where I’m from.
I’m from the
heart
of the Southwest

Where the mountains
ooze
watermelon colored glory.

Where the sky
never ends
the horizon
never falters
and our ancestors
are shrouded in
mystery.

I am a Nuevo Mexicana
and that,
that should be
explanation
enough

but
if you don’t know
your history
you won’t know
that

Many
Nuevo Mexicanos
believe in folklore
Falsified stories
built upon racist desire
for the satisfaction of being
European.

The horror of reality
glorified and martyrized
twisted and distorted
hating ourselves yet
clinging to
age old traditions

Like
chile, ristras,
spanglish, luminarias
corn masa and
ee a la’s
as if our lives depended
on it,
and yet, doesn’t it?

Deep down we know our roots.
Its in our blood
its in the wind.

My people were here before
Nuevo Mexico became
Nuevo Mexico,
before the border crossed
Mexico.

I am the Spanish
that came up
and terrorized, massacred
the Indigenous People
I am not proud.

I am the Indigenous People
terrorized by the Spaniards,
I am not ashamed

I am all the settlers
that came to this place
that I call home.
I am everyone, from all the continents
because I am
Nuevo Mexicana

That,
That is what I am.