Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, "I Am Joaquin"
		Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales was born on June 18, 1928, in Denver, Colorado. He grew up in a difficult neighborhood, raised with his five brothers and sisters by his father. Gonzales claims that these circumstances taught him early the importance of defending himself. He became interested in boxing in 1943, but did not compete until after World War It. He was quite successful in competition, with a record of sixty-five wins, nine losses, and one draw. In addition to competing as a boxer, he was a bail bondsman and the owner of "Corky's Corner"-a bar where he became an advisor to barrio people who needed his counsel. Around 1957, Gonzales became the first Mexican-American district captain for the Democratic Party in Denver. In 1959, he financed Viva, the first barrio newspaper in Denver. Soon after, he served as the Colorado coordinator of the Viva Kennedy presidential campaign and the chairman of the city's antipoverty program, as well as a general agent for Summit Fidelity and Surety Company of Colorado. Los Voluntarios (The Volunteers), a politically activist unit formed to protect Chicano youth from the abuses of the system-particularly the police, was founded by Gonzales in 1963. It was funded by the government's Office of Economic Opportunity and provided low-income youth with employment. Gonzales continued his work for the inner-city youth of Denver, serving on the boards of a number of social service commissions, until 1966, when he was accused of discriminating against blacks and whites in favor of Chicanos. He responded by founding the Crusade for justice and developing a program that would allow for the Mexicanization of Chicano culture and the political Americanization of his people. He went on to produce a manifesto called the "Plan of the Barrio," adopting the concept of Aztlan to identify Chicanos with their Mexican Indian heritage. In 1972 Gonzales published I Am Joaquin/Yo soy Joaquin, an epic poem that some describe as a social document rather than art. The poem, however, is very much appreciated by Chicanos, because it provided the revolutionary movement with a very succinct statement of Chicano nationalism and ideology. The following selection, in effect, served as a battle cry to the Chicano movement and implied an invitation to rebel.         I Am Joaquin: an Epic Poem (1967)     I am Joaquin Lost in a world of confusion, Caught up in a whirl of a      gringo society, Confused by the rules, Scorned by attitudes, Suppressed by manipulations, And destroyed by modern society. My fathers have lost the economic battle and won the struggle of cultural survival. And now! I must choose Between the paradox of Victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger Or  to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis, sterilization of the soul  and a full stomach. Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere, Unwillingly dragged by that  monstrous, technical  Industrial giant called             Progress and Anglo success…  I look at myself.    I watch my brothers.      I shed tears of sorrow.      I sow seeds of hate.  I withdraw to the safety within the circle of life… MY OWN PEOPLE I am Cuauhtémoc, Proud and Noble     Leader of men, King of an empire, civilized beyond the dreams of the Gachupin Cortez. Who is also the blood,     the image of myself. I am the Maya Prince. I am Nezahualcóyotl, Great leader of the Chichimecas. I am the sword and flame of Cortez                                  the despot.                                  And I am the Eagle and Serpent of the                         Aztec civilization. I owned the land as far as the eye could see under the crown of Spain, and I toiled on my earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood     for the Spanish master, Who ruled with tyranny over man and beast and all that he could trample But…   THE GROUND WAS MINE... I was both tyrant and slave. As Christian church took its place in God's good name, to take and use my Virgin Strength and             Trusting faith,  The priests     both good and bad                                     took But   gave a lasting truth that         Spaniard,             Indio,                 Mestizo Were all God's children And   from these words grew men         who prayed and fought                                         for  their own worth as human beings,          for            that             GOLDEN MOMENT             Of          FREEDOM. I was part in blood and spirit  of that         courageous village priest             Hidalgo in the year eighteen hundred and ten who rang the bell of independence and gave out that lasting cry:  "El Grito de Dolores, Que mueran  los Guachupines y que viva  la Virgen de Guadalupe. ..” I sentenced him                     who was me. I excommunicated him my blood. I drove him from the pulpit to lead  a bloody revolution for him and me...             I killed him. His head,   which is mine and all of those   who have come this way, I placed on that fortress wall   to wait for independence, Morelos! Matamoros! Guerrero! All Companeros in the act, STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF                                     INFAMY to feel the hot gouge of lead    which my hand made. I died with them...  I lived with them    I lived to see our country free. Free from Spanish rule in  eighteen-hundred-twenty-one.         Mexico was free?? The crown was gone         but all his parasites remained             and ruled             and taught  with gun and flame and mystic power. I worked, I sweated, I bled, I prayed  and waited silently for life to again                                         commence. I fought and died             for   Don Benito Juárez Guardian of the Constitution.  I was him      on dusty roads             on barren land as he protected his archives  as Moses did his sacraments. He held his Mexico             in his hand                 on             the most desolate              and remote ground              which was his country, And this Giant         Little Zapotec gave  not one palm's breath of his country to  Kings or Monarchs or Presidents of foreign powers. I am Joaquin. I rode with Pancho Villa,  crude and warm. A tornado at full strength, nourished and inspired  by the passion and the fire  of all his earthy people. I am Emiliano Zapata. "This Land         This Earth           is             OURS" The Villages    The Mountains      The Streams        belong to the Zapatistas.             Our Life Or yours is the only trade for soft brown earth and maize. All of which is our reward, A creed that formed a constitution   for all who dare live free! "this land is ours…     Father, I give it back to you.         Mexico must be free. . ." I ride with Revolutionists                       against myself. I am Rural     Coarse and brutal, I am the mountain Indian,     superior over all. The thundering hoofbeats are my horses. The chattering of machine guns   is death to all of me:     Yaqui       Tarahumara         Chamula           Zapotec             Mestizo                   Espafiol I have been the Bloody Revolution, The Victor, The Vanquished, I have killed   and been killed.        I am despots Diaz        and Huerta  and the apostle of democracy         Francisco Madero I am the black shawled faithful women who die with me or live depending on the time and place. I am  faithful,     humble,        Juan Diego        the Virgin de Guadalupe Tonantzin, Aztec Goddess too. I rode the mountains of San Joaquin. I rode as far East and North     as the Rocky Mountains        and all men feared the guns of Joaquin Murrieta. I killed those men who dared  to steal my mine,  who raped and Killed                  my love                  my Wife Then I Killed to stay alive. I was Alfego Baca,  living my nine lives fully. I was the Espinosa brothers  of the Valle de San Luis All were added to the number of heads that  in the name of civilization were placed on the wall of independence. Heads of brave men who died for cause and principle. Good or Bad. Hidalgo! Zapata! Murrieta! Espinosa! are but a few.  They dared to face The force of tyranny                         of men                         who rule By farce and hypocrisy I stand here looking back, and now I see             the present and still     I am the campesino     I am the fat political coyote                                          I, of the same name,             Joaquin. In a country that has wiped out all my history,             stifled all my pride. In a country that has placed a different weight of indignity upon                         my                         age                         old burdened back. Inferiority is the new load…  The Indian has endured and still emerged the winner, The Mestizo must yet overcome,  And the Gauchupin we'll just ignore. I look at myself and see part of me who rejects my father and my mother and dissolves into the melting pot  to disappear in shame.   I sometimes  sell my brother out and reclaim him for my own, when society gives me  token leadership           in society's own name. I am Joaquin, who bleeds in many ways. The altars of Moctezuma             I stained a bloody red.  My back of Indian slavery             was stripped crimson   from the whips of masters   who would lose their blood so pure   when Revolution made them pay Standing against the walls of   Retribution. Blood...      Has flowed from           me on every battlefield between Campesino, Hacendado   Slave and Master         and   Revolution. I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec   into the sea of fame; My country's flag    my burial shroud; With Los Ninos, whose pride and courage could not surrender         with indignity           their country's flag To strangers ... in their land. Now  I bleed in some smelly cell  from club,  or gun,  or tyranny, I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger  cut my face and eyes, as I fight my way from stinking Barrios  to the glamour of the Ring   and lights of fame    or mutilated sorrow. My blood runs pure on the ice caked hills of the Alaskan Isles, on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy, the foreign land of Korea                                 and now                                 Vietnam. Here I stand before the court of Justice                    Guilty for all the glory of my Raza                to be sentenced to despair. Here I stand          Poor in money Arrogant with pride          Bold with Machismo          Rich in courage            and     Wealthy in spirit and faith. My knees are caked with mud. My hands calloused from the hoe. I have made the Anglo rich yet Equality is but a word,   the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken  and is but another treacherous promise. My land is lost             and stolen, My culture has been raped,                     I lengthen   the line at the welfare door and fill the jails with crime. These then are the rewards        this society has For sons of Chiefs                and Kings                and bloody Revolutionists. Who gave a foreign people             all their skills and ingenuity to pave the way with Brains and Blood for those hordes of Gold starved Strangers Who changed our language and plagiarized our deeds                        as feats of valor                        of their own. They frowned upon our way of life  and took what they could use.                Our Art                Our Literature                Our Music, they ignored so they left the real things of value and grabbed at their own destruction                    by their Greed and Avarice They overlooked that cleansing fountain of            nature and brotherhood Which is Joaquin. The art of our great señores              Diego Rivera              Siqueiros              Orozco is but another act of revolution for the Salvation of mankind.    Mariachi music, the    heart and soul    of the people of the earth,    the life of child,    and the happiness of love.    The Corridos tell the tales    of life and death,                 of tradition,    Legends old and new,    of Joy     of passion and sorrow    of the people... who I am. I am in the eyes of woman,             sheltered beneath her shawl of black,             deep and sorrowful             eyes, That bear the pain of sons long buried             or dying,             Dead on the battlefield or on the barbed wire             of social strife. Her rosary she prays and fingers endlessly     like the family working down a row of beets        to turn around        and work        and work      There is no end. Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth        and all the love for me, And I am her And she is me.     We face life together in sorrow,     anger, joy, faith and wishful     thoughts. I shed tears of anguish as I see my children disappear behind a shroud of mediocrity never to look back to remember me. I am Joaquin.         I must fight         And win this struggle         for my sons, and they         must know from me         Who I am. Part of the blood that runs deep in me Could not be vanquished by the Moors. I defeated them after five hundred years, and I endured.     The part of blood that is mine     has labored endlessly five-hundred years     under the heel of lustful Europeans I am still here! I have endured in the rugged mountains  of our country. I have survived the toils and slavery  of the fields. I have existed in the barrios of the city, in the suburbs of bigotry, in the mines of social snobbery, in the prisons of dejection, in the muck of exploitation and in the fierce heat of racial hatred. And now the trumpet sounds, The music of the people stirs the          Revolution,  Like a sleeping giant it slowly rears its head to the sound of Tramping feet        Clamoring voices      Mariachi strains     Fiery tequila explosions    The smell of chile verde and  Soft brown eyes of expectation for a                                         better life. And in all the fertile farm lands,                                 the barren plains, the mountain villages, smoke smeared cities             We start to MOVE.   La Raza! Mejicano!   Espahol!    Latino!     Hispano!      Chicano! or whatever I call myself, I look the same I feel the same I Cry            and Sing the same I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.             I am Joaquin The odds are great but my spirit is strong                My faith unbreakable                My blood is pure I am Aztec Prince and Christian Christ             I SHALL ENDURE!             I WILL ENDURE!