WEBVTT

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This next series
of poems come out

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of the history of
the Farm Worker Acts

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that we've had here in
this country from the 1920s

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through to the one that they're
struggling to put together

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now, a visiting worker
program to the United States,

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so that we can have enough
people working in the fields.

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Back in the '30s
during the Depression,

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when all of the Oklahoma
and Midwestern farmland

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was being blown to the winds,
many of the people in power

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decided that this
was a good time

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to start trekking Mexicans
back across the border,

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because we needed jobs here.

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So, they were a bold lot,
that congressional group.

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They passed an act called
The Repatriation Act.

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And this poem is
called "Repatriation."

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But what you have to consider
is that many of the people

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repatriated had been living
here for a generation already

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and had families here.

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"Repatriation, they
called the process.

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Red wheat senators and corn belt
congressmen, Oklahoma farmers,

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and stock market
analysts bellowed,

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'Repatriation,' a long
word dipping into cracks

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and crevices, an abstract word.

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No conscience here.

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A shorthand way to
say, 'Get them out.

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We're in the Depression.

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They don't speak our
language, send them

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back to where they come from.

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They're taking our jobs in
the fields.'" Sound familiar,

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by the way?

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"A heartbeat later, a
bright-lit nation cleansed you,

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sped you away to Zacatecas,
Guanajuato, the border's

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membrane just a breath away.

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On the other side, LA's
finest clashed with Dust Bowl

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migrants, native sons
chasing a wind-blown land.

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A nation's troubadour hummed,
This land is your land,

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this land is my
land, a distorted

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cradle in either tongue."

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