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The Payment: An Indigenous Day Poem
To all those conquistadors
who came here and tried
to replace our culture
with their own:
This is what the world
shall know about you.
You were nothing but unwelcome
visitors here,
you took our people’s welcome,
the welcome of our leaders,
and answered with
land lust and flesh lust
and murder.
Here’s what we have done:
We have kept your names
and language as partial payment
for the destruction you left
behind,
for lives lost,
for rape and enslavement,
for your gold lust.
Let no one say
we are Hispanic or Latino.
We are Indigenous People.
You did not change who
we are.
The names we carry and
the common language we speak,
once possessed by you alone,
belong to the Indigenous now,
reminders to the world
that you are gone, but
we are still here.
Let no one say these
are Spanish names—they are Mexican names;
or that the language we speak
is the Spanish language—
it is a Mexican language now.
Yes, when people hear our names
and when people hear us speak,
they will say,
“Ah, there is one who carries
the blood,
A child of The Survivors.”
Our People live on.
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Haiku poem