Martin Espada Essay

The three poems that we read and analyzed were New Bathroom Policy at New English High School, Revolutionary Spanish Lesson, and Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877. I think that the most important theme of the story was abuse of power. In each of these poems, there is a vibe set that somebody with power is taking control and using it unfairly.  I think that a very important lesson that our world needs to learn is to not use this power that is given to us like a privilege. You can lose it if you don’t use it wisely. I don’t think that people should use power to support their own needs.  I think that Martin Espada’s poems all point towards the facts that our society is filled with people who feel like they can dominate other using their strict power. I think that Martin Espada used his amazing talent and crafted poems that exemplified the meaning of what abuse of power is really doing to people and how it should be frowned upon.

            The first book that we read as a class was The New Bathroom Policy at New English High School. This poem illustrates two boys in a bathroom talking in fluent Spanish. The principal is in the stall and hears his name in context and is cryptic about the situation. He automatically bans a new policy that Spanish cannot be spoken in the bathroom. At the end of the poem it says that the principal is now relieved that nobody is gossiping about him. This poem I think shows that the principal was using an excessive amount of his power to makes frivolous rules. I think that by making this rule it shows that he doesn’t care about the two boys culture, ethnic race or language. It was disrespectful of him to cut off their 1^st language so now they feel like they cannot feel at hoe at school. I think that he could’ve used his power in a more positive way. He could’ve gone out of his way to figure out what they were saying instead of automatically assuming that it was something bad, and making a rule banning it.

            The second poem that we looked at was called Revolutionary Spanish Lesson. This is was more of an imaginative poem. In this Martin Espada was explaining when people mispronounce his name incorrectly, he felt very angry. He wanted to make other people feel like him. He felt like he wanted to shoot people and make Republicans chant in Spanish and make them feel his pain. I think that after an amount of times that tour name has been mispronounced you take it as an insult. The people who are mispronouncing their name are choosing the way that they are going to say it, and that is an abuse of power. They are taking the persons name and making it their own. It is disrespectful to the person because your name is part of who you are and when they are saying it incorrectly, it’s like they are making a choice for you about how it spelled and it makes you feel that you aren’t in control of your own name. This is a form of abuse of power because there are controlling part of who you are.

           

The last amazingly written poem that I experienced was Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877. This poem was a little bit more abstruse to read. It was based off a picture taken after a lynching in 1877 of two Latino men. It was about a crowd of people crowding around the two men hanging with broken necks, dead. This picture was trying to commemorate the day. Espada was explaining that people looked like they were crowding into the picture like they wanted to be a part of this tragic event. This poem illustrates abuse of power vividly. The people who lynched the two men, hanged them to show that they could. They were trying to make a point by killing innocent people, and showing the world that theyw ere in power of them and they had the power to kill them. I think that this amount of power that they use is horrible. I think that using their power to actually show there in charge of people is unimaginative. I think that this is a very disappointing memory to share in a poem because it reminds us that abuse of power comes in many forms.

Overall this very important theme is stressed throughout all of the poems. I think that this is a very important subject to talk about because it shows that this theme is very strong and can affect many different people in many different ways. I think that we have to be careful what we do with power and how we use it. We might be thinking that it would help people, but we could be doing it because of selfish reasons or even be doing cruel things.  Even if these poems were written a little while ago doesn’t mean that this problem isn’t still occurring. The government can still take advantage of the people and principals can still make careless errors in regulating policies at schools. I think that we all need to be aware of how and when we use power, and only then will people feel safe in their environments and happy with their rulers.