WEBVTT

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So my bisabuela, my
grandmother's mother, her name

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was Rosario, and
she went by Chayo.

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My nana Chayo had
a tiendita also,

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a little store in
front of her house,

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and she sold raspados
and chicle and soda.

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And on certain days of
the week, she had menudo.

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And in '72, the conservative
legislature passed a law

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prohibiting collective
organizing striking

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during the lettuce harvest,
during the harvest,

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and Dolores Huerta and Cesar
Chavez came to town to protest.

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And Chavez hunger struck.

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He did a hunger
strike, and he did so

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at a community center
that just happened

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to be across the street from
my nana Chayo's tiendita.

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And this poem
referenced that history.

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Raspadas.

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A keening sent throughout
Barrio Campito,

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Nana Chayo's grinder crushed
black ice for her raspadas.

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Just west of stockyard,
slaughter, and Union Pacific

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tracks, she, too,
conducted that silver arm

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in her home's small storefront,
feeding ice to shaving teeth.

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In raspar, hear her voice's
saw scratch and wood

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fire below enameled pots.

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Ronco, my nana,
her daughter says

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when I call up infirmo
like bronco and bronchitis

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and those roping
winds in mesquite--

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open opera, these trees
hoarse with asthma.

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Huelga came too from
pant, blow, and breathe.

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Bellows resist.

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So in '72 when Huerta and Chavez
came to Campito for his fast

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at Santa Rita Hall that
summer amid monsoon no less,

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they chanted with Coretta Scott
King and Joan Baez sí se puede.

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Across the street from my
nana's tiendita y raspadas.

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Con leche, con piña, con fresa,
she poured flavors from bottles

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lit like church glass.

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Up from Sinaloa 1917,
she came bird breasts

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to her breasts,
bra-pinioned wings,

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smuggling swaddled
tight cockatoos,

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silenced over the border
with coos and seed.

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Rosario, entrepreneur,
renter of tar roofs

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to gold-toothed cattlemen,
stood over pitfire ladling

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to sod farmers tripe and hominy
and started out some years

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prior from lettuce cars
packed, bound for markets east,

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swiping ice cakes for her
raspadas, their bright rosary

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our heirloom.

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Went by Chayo, for short,
rancheras from her radio.

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I saw her once shake
out her dress and molt.

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