HECHIZOSPELLS

APRIL 11, 1974 ...
el chuco, tejas

Hechizos: Pieces of life

Hechizos, made or done on purpose or enchantments/ fascinations, are the pieces of life-the hectic skits of action-that everyone must grapple with in order to live and define the world, only to realize that the life process is one of continual re-definition/reflection/action. Beyond the circuity of pseudotheosophical/metaphysical circumlocutions, away from artifice and social approval, and far from plotted out venues for aggrandizement-we live in our inner spaces, splicing together hurt and realization, hope and apprehensive aspiration, frustration and self-negation and love and human affirmation.

"Shakespeare," so Mero Galicia is fond of saying, "asked merely about being or not being . . . " and as Mero's eyes light up, "Cervantes, he stated that 'to dream is to be!' "

So it is with people becoming aware of themselves as vital/living human beings. No longer content to work humdrum hours/days/weeks/months/years/decades out of their preciousand-time-limited lives away just for the sake of owning a dizzy array of instruments/cars/plastic ornaments-people beginning to seek answers within their own dialogical frame of reference. Dreaming people seeking an end to their human diáspora, at long last beginning to end their fruitless escapes from their life process, beginning to affirm that to be human is to act humanely, to think/ feel their rootedness to earth, to other human beings.

In that spirit of roots/permanence does the searing/howling cry of human indignation arise from the poetry of poets who have lived affirmatively. Poets like Raúl Salinas, José Montoya, Abelardo Delgado, Meredith Anderson, Juan Contreras, E. Antonio Mares, Omar Salinas, Charles Potts, Horacio "Chacho" Minjarez, Randall Ukrainian Ackley, Simón Ortiz, Leslie Silko, Jesfis Papalote Meléndez, Sandra Esteves, Juan Bruce-Novoa, Sylvia Gonzáles, Tigre, Len Avila, and numerous other souls struggling against the anti-human beast (society) while charting out humanistic horizons. Giants who create ever newer dimensions to life. Never lonely-ever alone.

Not only poets, but artists like Ernesto P. Martínez, Manuel G. Acosta, Melicio "Mel" Casas, Carlos Rosas, Lydia Madrid, Matilde Zúniga, Zarco Guerrero, and others also sting humanity with their adamant expression of human liberation. The cascading music of Javier Pacheco and the fieriness of Alberto Baros-such are the makings, the hechizos encantadores, of liberation.

The searing cry of Raúl Salinas in his "Trip Through the Mind jail," as he remembers his sense of barrio/tierra: "i needed you then . . . identity . . . a sense of belonging . . , " as he realizes that modern Amerika means to devour any sense of identity; his plight, like that of other Chicanos/Blacks/Indios (& even whites like Potts, Ackley, & Dale McCollough), was/is one of realizing that being in modern amerika is having to survive within the vacuousness of Howard Johnson, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donut, American Express-ways, & Sambo's. A world lacking earthiness and differences, where people are programmatically assembled out to create more human dysfunctions....

Even as this is being written, people are being violated by a callous political machinery lusting for the vote and answerable only to the powerful. The barrios that Salinas writes about-those now destroyed homes where love once abounded in spite of poverty-are mostly gone now; in their stead are superfreeways and neon monstrosities where more and more people lose their touch with human reality as they further socialize their feelings to conform with security.

Still, Chicanos and other minority people seethe with anger/ frustration, and the call for protest continues fomenting, seeking that spark that will make it blaze from one end of the country to the other. The idea of liberation and revolutionary transformation of the world cannot any longer be silenced. This is still a violent world, and people are still enslaved; Lalo still protests a "stupid amerika" for castigating those born differently and relagating talent and hope to a dust bin; José Montoya still feels the fields and sweat of his past and the anguish of his parents; Sylvia Gonzáles continues striving to create sense out of the senseless officiousness of power bases to return that power to the people; Lydia Madrid paints the processes our people must survive; Tomás Atencio and La Academia de la Nueva Raza lurk, dodge/weave, lash out, and continue to write/think/express reason and means to create change; Carlos Rosas and Ernesto P. Martínez and Mel Casas and Manuel Acosta, through their artist-eyes, project feeling and linkage to the universe-for art is a political statement that affirms humankind's right to liberation and asserts one's personal & collective responsibility to free oneself and one's people from any and/or all forms of tyranny at whatever the cost; and our youth/older people are still feeling/thinking/dialoguing in barrios/campos/colleges/armed services-wherever we exist-about the need for change, justice, dignity, liberation, and peace. The wanton murder of Santos Rodríguez, eleven year old child shot while handcuffed by a Dallas cop, the ruthless abuse of our people as they are psychically violated by Amerika-the-hurt-in-full, and all the other sordid actions/reactions of a nixonian world buttress our assertions that future generations must and shall not feel the social lashings we have felt.

No longer content to believe that it is right to suffer, that it is god's will that we shoulder up to dispossession and accept oppression-strong questions are being asked and righteous answers are being sought. Having realized that one is born to live that institutions should serve (rather than be served!), and that one's life is defined in terms of how one has existed, again are people committing themselves to struggle for liberation. Having tasted the heartiness of community involvement and protest, having declared our right to being free-we can no longer accept a world of expediency, exploitation, political manipulation, and moral cowardice.

     el vuelo de la mente 
     is an affirmation 
     that being human 
     merely means 
     fighting
     for more than just 
     the barest of social needs; 
     it means not bowing 
     nor feeling less
     than all I could be....

This book is a series of glimpses at a multifaceted world; seething with anger and discontent; pulsing with love and hope; and inspired by the humanity of those who have shared moments with me. The barrios of my past still live on, if only in the imagery coursing through my mind. The jadedness of prison and the callousness of tormented tourist-trapping streets in North Beach, Ciudad Juárez, Hollywood, Times Square, and the French Quarter still shrill out dehumanization-lustfully and sordidly, just as the political beast we call society still shreds up our humanity in order to exploit us. Each new word/phrase/thought/idea/feeling further define(s) the enemy. Clarity and coherence are further delineated with each experience, and society and its strictures become even more fearful-for their incessant demands that I conform, that everyone become even more linear and obedient to hierarchical dictates.

Thoughts/ideas/poetry/fiction/truth & fact, all these form the inner world(s) I inhabit. These also are the structure of this book. Brief llantos and Iloridos and locuras and looks at a process . . . un proceso vital that has matter-of-factly known the anomie of prison/army, the desolation of poverty, the love of family, the scorching/soothing/tenderness/strength/fulfillment of woman, the pungency of tierra-redolent earth and brown earth and yellow earth and verdant earth-and the soulfulness of being within the multidimensions of life.

     suero del haber podido vivir, 
     each moment an affirmation, 
     each moment either a caress
           or a hurting slap, 
     realizing that to live 
     is to feel, to share, to dream, 
     to know life
     with pungency, whether it be 
     your woman's aroma frothing 
     out your body's warm enclaves 
     or your voice creating new visions, 
     or lush earth or dynamic ideas 
     or un amigo sharing vino y queso 
     or familia enrapturing the moment, 
     or merely singing/shouting an adamant 
     affirmation that to live 
     is to have liberation....