NARRATOR
The opposition of the Latino population in the United States to the war in Vietnam has been little noticed, even by the antiwar movement. But some of the largest demonstrations against the war were of Chicanas and Chicanos of the West Coast. At one point (according to the extraordinary collection Aztlán in Viet Nam) between 20,000 and 30,000 people gathered in Laguna Park in Los Angeles, in August of 1970, to protest the war. The Chicana poet María Herrera-Sobek expresses that strong feeling in two of her poems.
MARÍA HERRERA-SOBEK
UNTITLED
We saw them coming
in funeral black bags
body bags they called them
eyes locked forever
they were our
brown men
shot
in a dishonest war
Vietnam taught us
not to trust
anyone over thirty
for they had the guns
and the power
to send our boyfriends
fathers, brothers
off to war
while they sauntered
in lily-white
segregated
country clubs
a bomb was planted
in our minds
a bomb exploded
in 1969
Watts, East Los Angeles
Black Panthers
Brown Berets
Drank the night
and lighted up the sky
with homemade
fireworks
the war had come
to roost
in our own backyard
made in the USA guns
turned inward
and shot our young
Dead in the streets
Dead in the battlefields
Dead in the schools
and yet a plaintive song
Crashing against the crackling explosion
of a Molotov cocktail
insisted
“We shall overcome.”
VIETNAM: A FOUR-LETTER WORD
Vietnam
Was a four-letter word
The stench of napalm
In the air
Seared our nightmares
California palm trees
Waving fronds of anti-patriotism
“Hell no, we won’t go”
Was not a TV jingle
It was the chant
Of those who marched
To a different tune
Of those who wore peace
On their foreheads
Love on their sleeves
And American flags
On their behinds