Late Reflection Post : (

My reflection post is about the poem we read by Gloria Anzaldua. This poem was a piece of writing that bothered and stuck with me long after I had read it. As the poem begins it sets a mood over-developed self-righteousness. This quickly moves to sentiments of disrespect and perhaps a little disdain. It had me confusedly thinking back to the treaty of Guadalupe hidalgo I had just read – was this poem referring to the “Mexicans” or “savage tribes”? It had me wondering how the US government had referred to the native Americans as “savage tribes” in a treaty with Mexico who I’d thought no longer viewed the natives as savages now that they “had souls”.
When I read the line about courts and land grants I knew the poem must have referred to the interaction between American soldiers and Mexican citizens. This was even more confusing since it seemed to me the duty of the army in the southwest to uphold order and the treaty. Instead this man in a position of authority was waving a document of Mexican rights as he drove them off their own land.
When I reached the final stanza the entire feeling of the poem shifted. It moved away from contempt for fellow man to hatred for some species of animal. The line “the boys wouldn’t look me in the eyes” helped a little I suppose with my disgust of the American army but still the imagery was heart-wrenching. As I first read the treaty of Guadalupe I thought how the Mexicans had it luckier than the Puerto Ricans; they were given instant citizenship if they chose while the Puerto Ricans had had to work through “the labyrinthine logic of American law” to get theirs. But this last stanza had me thinking maybe the Puerto Ricans had it less-un-lucky only to be looked at with an attitude “at best one of ignorance and, at worst, one of disdain” because at least they weren’t being lynched and raped and suffocated by the ass of a self-righteous army officer.