Little notice by other than Chicano writers and poets was paid to the emergence of the first Chicano literary quarterly, El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, in 1967. Needless to say, the Quinto Sol writers of El Grito were leading the way for what has since come to be known as "the Chicano Renaissance." And Chicano literary production since 1967 has indeed been a renaissance in every sense of the word.

In the great Renaissance of the Western World following what historians blithely call "the dark ages," the reborn and rekindled spirit of western man sought out the great verities of life in the words of bygone ages. But more importantly, there followed a creative surge to expand the revitalized awareness of the word by writing new dramas, new fictions, new proses, and new poetries. For a renaissance illuminates one's vision of his surroundings and of his future in terms of what he finds relevant in the past.

So, too, the Chicano Renaissance has expanded the revitalized awareness of Chicano writers beyond the peripheries of what most Americans accept as "the American experience." Chicano writers are challenging the truth of the American word. For the American experience has been a fiction perpetuated by the dominant Anglo American society at the exclusion of the realities of American life. In other words, the American experience came to be what Anglo America thought it was. This is part of the message in Canto y Grito. And controlling, of course, the public media, Anglo America foisted on all "Americans" the Anglo American way of life, rooted in the Puritan and Cavalier tradition of the Atlantic seaboard. In most cases, in only one generation the children of immigrants became thoroughly Americanized-"assimilated" has been the word for it. The "melting pot" concept was so successful that after a generation Americans whose forebears came from other than Anglo stock had so internalized the Anglo myth of America that they identified more with the Anglo tradition than with the tradition of their forebears. Considering that American education was predominantly in the hands of Anglo Americans, it is little wonder that in the space of a generation the children of immigrants were indoctrinated to the American way of life.

But "assimilation" worked only with "white" immigrants. "Colored Americans" were rejected by the assimilation process, though many of them had become Anglo in all but the color of their skins. "Integration" also failed because the concept left most "colored" Americans at the margins of Anglo society. The legal fiction of equality worked fine in the public domain save for the sector of social intercourse, the most vital pressure point. And, again, race was at the root of the failure of integration.

"Cultural pluralism" has emerged as a concept for curing the racial ills of American society, but it too operates from the point of view of the dominant culture. In the United States this is, of course, the Anglo culture. And as long as the American experience is defined from the perspective of the dominant culture, there is little likelihood that "cultural pluralism" will succeed. For "cultural pluralism" depends upon the wisdom and magnanimity of the dominant group, a wisdom and magnanimity which has been conspicuously absent from Anglo America judged in terms of its record with American Indians, Blacks, and Mexican Americans.

The only alternative is "cultureity," where AMERICAN Indians, Blacks, and Mexican Americans "up" the Anglo society and create their own viable alternatives for existence, without approval of the dominant society. This is the hardest road of all, but it appears there is little choice for non-white Americans. For we have reached the last racial frontier in the United States. The test of our survival as a nation depends upon whether we can overcome our racial prejudices and biases. The democracy we espouse must be more than symbols scratched upon a carefully guarded parchment; we must practice what we preach, otherwise there will surely be an Armageddon of the races.

And so Chicano writers are writing new dramas, new fictions, new proses, and new poetries. The Chicano writer has a vision for a better way of life. And perhaps, as the Chicano poet, Abelardo Delgado, put it, Chicanos may yet be the salvation of American society.

Frankly, it is the Chicano poet who most articulates this salvation. For the Chicano poet, like poets from other ethnic groups, articulates his vision of life with unparalleled clarity and force. One need look only at the Greek poet, Homer, or the British poet, Milton, or the French poet, Baudelaire, and many others to see that the poet is a special kind of human being. Unfortunately, though, the poetic vision of a better life is oftentimes a radical departure from the realities of controlled existence. For a poet advocates the ultimate freedom: to be. And humankind has ever been wary of freedom. This is why, no doubt, Plato thought to bar the poet from his utopian Republic.

One cannot help lament the visions of Ricardo Sánchez, for as a Chicano poet he has endured the hardships of his race. His every word is ladened with the travails imposed upon Chicanos by an insensitive and unresponsive Anglo society more concerned with the profit from Chicano labor than with compassion and care for their survival. Ricardo speaks of "all humanity/but an eternal convict/suffering the binding of its soul." His words cut across the tissue of hypocrisy like the surgeon's double-edged scalpel parting swiftly and surely the preliminary layers of flesh enroute to the disease. More often than not, Ricardo expresses only the grim vision of existence in Anglo America. But one detects in his poetry and prose a decided optimism when he is talking about the strength of Chicano carnalismo, the kind of brotherhood that creates respect and dionity for the worth of the individual though we may be of different persuasions. One cannot help but conclude, as one reads Canto y Grito, that only one who has suffered the whips and scorns of life could emerge with so much concern for his fellow man. For Ricardo is speaking in propria persona not to just Chicanos but to all of us. His voice, like the voice in the whirlwind, beseeches us all to redeem our humanity lest we perish by the ravages of the animal instinct confronting our spiritual essence.

No contemporary poet reminds me more of William Blake than Ricardo Sánchez. I do not mean in form or style, for Ricardo is a Chicano poet through and through. No. I mean in purpose. Like Blake in his time, Ricardo Sánchez is trying to tell us something. I only hope more of us stop and listen.

Philip D. Ortego
El Paso, Texas