I'm going to finish with three poems which
have a common denominator.
The common denominator is my paying homage
to those who have the courage to speak,
even when it might cost them their lives.
People who are willing to sacrifice everything
for the right to speak.
And of course, without those people, none of us
would have anything at all.
So I pay homage to them.
And I'm going to read three poems which
take us back to Latin America.
The first poem is set in Puerto Rico, in 1937.
The second poem is set in Chile, in 1973.
And the third poem's set in El Salvador, in 1991.
The historical background for the first poem
is the independence movement in Puerto Rico, which
reached its height in the 1930s, and was repressed
at the behest of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, and Governor Blanton Winship, Governor
of Puerto Rico--
good Spanish name, there.
He was appointed governor of the island.
Puerto Ricans were not allowed to elect their own governor
until after World War II.
And so it was his job to put down the independence
movement in Puerto Rico.
In 1936, the leaders of the movement
were rounded up, thrown in jail.
In 1937, on Palm Sunday of that year,
there was a march in the coastal town of Ponce,
which was stopped by gunfire.
People shot down in the streets.
It came to be known as the Ponce Massacre.
It was quite a scandal at the time.
There was even a major ACLU report
on human rights violations coming out
of the Ponce Massacre, and then it was all forgotten.
I always knew that history as history.
But then, one day, a good friend of mine, Luis Acosta,
came along and told me a story, about his mother, Nina,
and her lover, Pellín, and this Ponce Massacre,
which gave it a human face.
And I guess that's what--
"The Marchers Gathered."
"Nationalists mass beneath the delicate white balconies
of Marina Street, and the colonial governor pronounced
the order with patrician calm.
50 years of family history says, it was Pellín who dipped
a finger into the bloody soup of his own body,
and scratched "defiance" in jagged,
wet letters on the sidewalk.
Around him stormed the frenzied, clattering drumbeat
of machine guns, the stampede of terrified limbs,
and the panicked wail that rushed
babbling past his dim senses.
Palm Sunday, 1937.
The news halted the circular motion of his lover's hands
as she embroidered the wedding dress.
She nodded, knew before she was told.
Years later, with another family in a country of freezing,
spring rain, called Nueva York, Nina
is quietly nervous when her son speaks
of rifles in a bullhorn shout.
When coffins are again bobbing on the furious swell of hands
and shoulders, and the whip of night sticks
brings fresh blood stinging from the scalp.
But rebellion is the circle of a lover's hands
that must keep moving, always weaving."