years later, musings 
                                in time/space, yet far 
                                from where we once were 
                                as a people in struggle...
                                     751 Kentucky
                                     San Anto, Tejas 78201
                                     9th July 1986

The why of
adobes & feathers:
a foreword five years later

WHEN this collection of poems and sketches was written, it was a response to the empty-scapes of arts and letters by raza in New Mexico. There were many artesans working, as well as journeyman writers, but few were those involved in questioning the very fabric of life in that enchanted land.

Sojourns in Santa Fé, as well as visits to El Paso and Albuquerque sandwiched in between moments in Northern New Mexico, produced few visions of a people in struggle. What I mostly saw were groupings of people hectically pursuing acceptance by an America deaf to the pain and hurt in barrios and rural areas where Chicanos howled a much more hurting lament than any ever penned by Ginsberg.

The same touristy mentality permeating Santa Fé can be experienced in San Antonio, for both sites dance to tourist dollars with a certain elán-anti-lo-vital.

It was depressing, such as any discordant note can be jarringly depressing. Searching for faces which once peopled the "Chicano Movement" in manitoland, I found and indolence. A deep fear of repercussions was pervasive.

La Academia de la Nueva Raza had become but a flimsy shell of its former, robust declarations of activism. Its leaders had succumbed and joined those whom they had once protested. Pogo's admonition had arrived in full uniform-- feathers and beads, hash pipes, tired jokes and a depressing wish for entrance into mainstream America. Railing against former compañeros was an exercise in futility.

Returning to Texas, the same conditions prevailed, and where the Academia had faltered and lost its meaning, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center [at that time under the auspices of Performing Artists Nucleus (PAN)] was likewise beginning to exhibit a voracious appetite for joining the American mainstream. It did so by becoming a showcase theater in the barrio catering to the well-heeled who so often enjoy moseying down to barrios and ghettos and slumming with the peasants.

The promise of the movement had been subverted, its values perverted, and its future almost cast asunder.

It is in the spirit and hope of posing questions which might lead to furthering that cause which created Chicano literature and poetry as a viable alternative to an invisible plight suffered by us [as a people] that these poems have been published.

During the heyday of the Chicano Movement, it was considered sacrilege to openly criticize leaders or fellow Chicanos. We were supposed to turn away from the graft and corruption afflicting our movement and pretend that we were truly the only honorable people in the world. Such foolishness merely crippled the movement and retarded its growth.

Having once been hustled and almost destroyed by the despotism of Anglo America in its manic drive toward total conquest of the land from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans and Canada to México, we became prey to our own sharks and charlatans.

It is now a different time, one in which we can afford to look deeper into our history and uncover the truth. The Chicano Movement produced many fine and excellent activists, some of whom died in defense of the people, i.e., Heriberto Terán, Rubén Salazar and others. It also produced many who never did gravitate to positions of power and social acceptability, but who have continued waging a struggle for the betterment of 'La Raza.'

Persons like Nephtalí de León, Dolores Huerta, Abelardo Delgado, Zarco Guerrero, Carmen de Novaís, Carlos Rosas, Bert Corona, César Chávez and the hordes of UFW, MAYA, Berets, and many others too numerous to name, brought public attention to the plight of our people.

In the space of two decades-more or less-a literature flourished, and its most valuable elements came from the streets and prison compounds. Those who began writing in academia merely wrote the nice and acceptable things demanded by tenure committees, and those works never did reach into the hearts and minds of the barrio. Though critics like Juan Bruce-Novoa continue pushing the works of academically trained poets, though Juan Rodríguez still persists in promoting the Gary Sotos of Anglicized Hispanic America, other poets will carry forth the struggle they began for the subsequent liberation of our people-a liberation which will give us the dignity we were born to enjoy, a willingness to confront our oppression, and a sensibility singing to the beauty of human diversity and cultural self-worth.

Perhaps those poets who value their words and who are willing and determined to create from their own visions a better world will ultimately topple those programs now manned by self-serving opportunists. Artists and poets should realize that assistance with strings attached is no assistance, for it is a trap which robs one of integrity and meaning. In toppling city and state- sponsored cultural programs, we might just do away with parasitic patronage. There can be no autonomy when one is forced to submit to authorities for one's livelihood, and the Guakamolee Theater in La Oreja is an example of a gutted process which could have made a difference for the people.

It is in protest to such manipulated programs, to the castrating of poetics and the de-nativizing of our cultural beings by politics and opportunism, that this selection of poems is presented.

If a poet has anything of value, it is the word which the poet lives by. In accusing programs and individuals, I stand before the reader openly. Furthermore, as a poet I wholeheartedly take full responsibility for my words. Before being a poet, before being a professor and before having a Ph.D., I am merely one man, one solitary voice who is not at all heroic ... just a person with imperfections and limitations, but also a person who dreams, one who loves vision ... a person hungry for that moment when our raza will have truly lived up to its promise, its beautiful potential.

No one else is responsible for the words and works in this book, thus I stand before you openly....

Ricardo Sánchez