Martín Espada Poetry Analysis

Martín Espada's poetry shows a clear common theme of discrimination based on ignorance and selfishness.  This is developed through the word repetition and stanza focus in the three poems "The New Bathroom Policy At English High School," "Revolutionary Spanish Lesson," and "Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cru, California May 3, 1877."

In the poem, "The New Bathroom Policy At English High School," the words have a tendency to be based on the views of the principal.  The first two lines talk about the boys, but the rest of the poem is about the principal.  The words "him," "his," and "he" are repeated throughout the poem all relating back to the principal, but only mentions the boys once, as a general group.  This makes me think that Espada is trying to represent the power and authority the principal has against "the boys," who get categorized rather than specified.  I think that Espada was trying to show how, through the principal's eyes, the boys are all the same, and deserving of nothing but his own culture, and language, English.  This shows how the principal is completely oblivious to the importance of all cultures, and enforced the rules of no Spanish just because of his lack of understanding.  The poem displays power to the English principal, who takes away all other power of the Spanish culture.  The theme occurs in this poem that the principal discriminates against these boys because of his oblivion on the Spanish language, and selfishness to be able to understand all of the boys’ words.  Taking away their language shows this theme of unfair policies.

In the poem, "Revolutionary Spanish Lesson," Espada is trying to show the ignorance of people and their lack of respect towards different cultures.  He went to the extremities using hyperboles to show how much it bothered him when people mispronounced his name, or anyone’s name that may have cultural significance.  From this poem I got that Espada felt that it was wrong to either not care enough about a person's history to get a persons name pronunciation right, or even turning a persons name into a more American name.  This poem is trying to show the selfishness that Americans can have in thinking a name is wrong unless it is familiar, and the discrimination that can come from the ignorance of "Republican tourists from Wisconsin," and all white Americans.  

In the final poem, "Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cru, California May 3, 1877," this reoccurring theme of discrimination based on selfishness and power continued to develop.  The poem repeatedly used the words "more than..." before each stanza talking about the two Mexicanos that got lynched, and used the last stanza to show what the gringo vigilantes wanted.  This poem talked all about the sadness of the lynching, yet used those words more than to degrade them, and show how through all the pain and torture and discrimination the lynching party was proud, and supposedly, "the more important aspect."  That the photo that all the lynching party had squeezed into was what remained.  The selfishness of these people was shown through this word choice trying to explain how the lynchers were focused on rather than the deceased, giving this selfish discrimination its power.  

Through all of Martín Espada's poems, he shows the readers the reoccurring theme of discrimination based on power, ignorance and selfishness.  The word choice and main focus on the people who were discriminating helped to get the point across and show this main idea.