Espada Essay
In Martin Espadas poems many irrational decisions and brutal
misjudgments are made based on emotional responses. This is shown in Espada’s
works like “The New Bathroom Policy” when, because he is afraid of losing power
to his students, the principal bans Spanish in the school bathrooms. Also, in
another of Espada’s poems entitled “A Revolutionary Spanish Lesson” Espada
wants to take extreme action when his name is mispronounced because he believes
that they are offending his culture. Another example in Espada’s work is the
“Two Mexicanos” in which the fear of different people coming into America
causes white vigilantes to kill the Mexicans and then take a picture of
themselves hanging them.
“The New Bathroom Policy” shows how fear can corrupt someone
who is in a role of power and can end up influencing them to create ignorant
situations. In the poem, the Principal is afraid that two Spanish boys are
talking badly about him so he does something irrational and unconstitutional. His paranoia is demonstrated when Espada
states that “…The only word he recognizes is his own name/ and this constipates
him”, showing that he’s afraid of what he doesn’t know which leads to him
making an irrational decision, by banning Spanish in the bathrooms. By writing
about the situation in this manner Espada brings a sense of humor to the
situation by demonstrating how stupid the Principal really is.
In “A
Revolutionary Spanish Lesson,” Espada is provoked by the mispronunciation of
his name because he feels that his name represented his culture and by
mispronouncing it you are directly insulting his culture. “Whenever my name is mispronounced, I want to buy a toy
pistol, put on dark eyeglasses, push my beret at an angle, comb my beard to a
point, hijack a busload of Republican tourists from Wisconsin…” This quote
shows how when offended Espada can have irrational over-the-top ideas. A
corresponding observation I made was that even a very responsible calm man like
Espada can be influenced by emotions in such a powerful way.
Finally
in “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877” A group of
white vigilantes’ hatred for the Mexican’s and other Latin cultures drove them
to take a picture with two young men whom they had just hung. Why they hated
the Mexicanos could only be because the Mexicans are different from the Whites.
So the Whites hate them for being different, and that emotion of hatred causes
them to illegally murder the Mexicanos publicly. Espada’s description of “…A
high collar boy smirking,”, shows that they don’t care about the Mexicano
lives.
In
conclusion, Espada’s poems show how emotion effects the rationality of the
decisions people make. Whether it is fear, hatred, or anger, it always effects
the way people act and think. Espada
uses this to show us how people use emotions to lash out at one another. The
situations that Espada use in his poems show that he cares about the issues
affecting Latin American’s that occur within our society.
