Chusma. It’s a great Spanish word that means rabble, common. Chusma can be a look, or an attitude. It can be bad manners, or inappropriate clothing. My family, lacking in all manner of finances, flung the word around accusatorily and with abandon. We were not chusma. Perhaps we were snobs.
I wait for that generational skill to make itself known. The unfiltered ferocity to unleash itself from deep within me. As my mother would have done.
El Varayoc fija y pronuncia la mirada, entonces lo ve, pero también la ve. Al sombrero, pero también a ella. Al fin comprende lo que ha intentado decirle el arquitecto. Sabe que será difícil ir hasta allá. Los ve distantes tanto como la luna o como los caracteres del castellano que alguna vez rechazó. A ella la ve aprisionada en un marco cuadrado. A sus pies puede leerse: «Mujer del Varayoc».
Suddenly, he is dashing along the Copper Canyon, passing villages with thatched roofs, great blue rivers winding through the giant cradle of rock. The Rarámuri run on either side of him, their feet keeping beat with his own.
Nada hasta que aparece la 618, una segunda oportunidad, un segundo intento y… Nuevamente se marcha el cabrón: se marcha, se marcha, a lo que le siguen los inocuos desahogos contra Peña Nieto, contra Obrador o contra el chingado que se ponga al frente […]
Así no estaba la calle. Hay lumbre en los carros y en las casas; huele mucho a cohete. En el cielo vuelan esas cosas. Suenan como abejorros grandotes.
The coughing came from deep inside her chest. It was intense, almost violent. La Bruja leaned forward, trying to calm the cough, holding a handkerchief over her mouth, but a dizzy spell hit her, and she found herself tipping over.
It’s been three days of isolation. They’re talking about building a trail through the state park so residents can get back and forth to civilization on foot. A helicopter is coming to evacuate the stranded tourists at Sorrento Lodge. The bakery is out of flour.
“What do you know about Aleph Syndrome?” Dr. Aristizábal averted Ivy’s penetrating gaze and began moving her hand away from her ear.
You forget Juárez. You don’t even look over I-10 on your way to campus; for all you know, it’s still El Paso. El Paso, who birthed you, who took you in after the divorce and sheltered you in warmth, made you American, instead of Mexican, like your Father, but deep down you don’t feel like her offspring.
His tongues are powerful, with minds of their own, like three elephant trunks always dancing in the air. Not like they would ever cause any real damage, they just purple the skin.
That’s when I’m no longer just an ordinary ese who wound up in an extraordinary situation… I’m something extra.
They were dancing, dancing, dancing African-Boricua music, taking them to palm tree’d places they’d never been, in Pittsburgh’s aching center, not worried about the time.
When we speak our languages, we claim our culture; we claim what’s ours, and like our ancestors, when we speak, there’s power.
Nothing could hurt me, I got married to a man I didn’t know and certainly didn’t love.
