Matt Sedillo, author of the recently published Mexican Style, gives a candid interview over craft, the current state of Chicano poetry, and many more insight
by Rey M. Rodríguez
Matt Sedillo is a prolific Chicano poet whose third poetry book is coming out this September, entitled “Mexican Style,” published by Flowersong Press. This new book opens the reader to a whole new expanse of history and art, setting the stage for a revolution of the mind and hopefully leading those feeling marginalized to a profound sense of belonging.
Based in Los Angeles, Sedillo is a Chicano poet, writer, creative director, and public intellectual. Recently, his form of Chicano poetry received international recognition when he read this summer with Nobel Prize winner, Jon Fosse, during an awards ceremony for the Dante’s Laurel at the tomb of Dante Alighieri in Ravenna, Italy, and then toured throughout Europe, engaging large audiences. Sedillo is no stranger to Ravena, because he received the Dante Laurel the prior year. In Medellin, Colombia, this summer, the International Festival of Poetry invited him to read his poetry in conversation with over 80 other poets from many international countries.
This type of international recognition is new for Chicano poets and gives pause to the idea that if the world is highlighting Chicano poetry then why is it only reluctantly being done in the United States? Of course, we have Ada Limón, the US Poet Laureate, but one poet from a population of over 65 million Latinos, sixty percent of whom are Mexican American and many of those under the age of 20, certainly requires more. Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luis J. Rodriguez, Vincent Cooper, Viva Padilla, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Octavio Quintanilla, Alejandro Jimenez, Eduardo Corral, Sonia Gonzalez, and others, represent a growing authentic, and powerful counter-narrative to an often negative representation of Brown people in the mass media. Each of these poets has something important to say as Chicana/o poets in their way during what feels like a Chicano Renaissance of poetry. And although all poetry is intrinsically political, Sedillo chooses to bring politics to the heart of his poetry. Sedillo articulates the needs and desires of working-class Chicano gente yearning to belong and trying to survive a capitalist construct that promotes scarcity instead of abundance.
What follows is a wide-ranging conversation of Sedillo’s work and views on everything from the state of Chicano poetry to how to craft a poem.
Matt, I know you've been traveling a lot. Set the table for us about who you are and your story. How did you start? Why do you write?
My father taught me how to play chess. He would never let me win. While we were playing he would give me advice like, “When you grow up you have to get a job.” And so, I thought if I have to get a job, then I want the best job there is. I wanna be President because he was the boss of everybody. So I memorized the names of all the US presidents. I might have been 7. And I remember the teacher asked a trick question. If you tell me what year you were born, I'll tell you who was president that year. But I tricked her by answering correctly. “That's Grover Cleveland,” I said. But later, my father told me, “Son, you're never gonna be president, because we're Mexican.” And that was a pretty devastating thing to hear. As an angsty teenager, I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to make art for art's sake, not political propaganda. I don't know where I got these ideas, but I was in my teens. I decided to start writing a novel for many years. It was supposed to be nonpolitical, but, of course, it was. After high school, like my father said, I had to get a job. And so I started working, but things got pretty rough. I found myself in a bad situation. I was hopping from couch to couch, and I had a really bad alcohol problem. One day, I found myself in the same library that my mother had always taken me to as a child. I found myself deciding that I was going to dedicate myself to the workers’ struggle. But here I was in the situation. So I started reading these books about the economy and political economy. With this knowledge, I decided I was going to march back to Lowe’s, where I was working at the time, and I was going to organize the workers. They might not like me, but they're going to respect me. I'd read this workbook that said that to earn respect, you had to be the most diligent worker.
There I was at Lowe's hauling these bags as fast as I could, and my plan backfired. Everyone in the break room hated me because I was seen as kissing up to the bosses. “How come you don't work hard like Sedillo?” Right? So it was not good advice. Oh, man, it was horrible! I was not a very good proletarian organizer, but I was very political at the time. The only good thing, I met my friend, Dave Romero. He was organizing to get USC to stop using sweatshop labor. And so we went to this May Day rally. Afterward, we went to this place with an open mic and dim lights. I saw people doing poetry, and someone even did a political poem. Immediately, when I heard it, I knew exactly how he did it. He started by introducing a concept. He developed it a little more, and then he brought us back to where we were. So it was a basic 3-act structure, where it started with a pre-crisis, a crisis, a low point, and then finally a conclusion, which I didn't have the words for at the time, but I knew exactly how to do what the guy had just done. So I was like, I'm gonna come back here and I'm gonna come back every week. I know how to write like that. And these people ain't like me, but they're gonna respect me. That was my attitude. It's ridiculous.
And how old are you?
At this point. I'm 26.
You're 26, and where was the place again?
Dim Lights in Pomona, California. So I started doing poetry there. The first week was pretty good. The second week was terrible because I went way over time, talking about these massacres and stuff, and everyone got bored and listless. And I got mad. I wasn't going to do it anymore. But I was going to write one last poem. I was going to tell them they're all idiots. And I did. And they loved it. And basically, they're looking at the person next to them. You are the idiot, not me.
I was not talking about them, right? And so they loved it. And then I came back the next week and the next week, and I wrote a new poem, “I Remember the Alamo,” which was celebrated, and another entitled “Gangsters,” which was also celebrated. They were secret pieces at the time.
Those first two poems are what the people cared about. And after that, I made a national slam team, and after that, I was in the newspapers. Now, I've spoken in over 100 universities in the United States. I have spoken at Cambridge. I've spoken in 10 different countries at this point, and my poetry has been translated into six different languages. I have been invited to speak in seven countries just this last week. I just returned from the Medellin Poetry Festival, where I made a big splash and many opportunities emerged. At this point, I'm an internationally renowned touring poet.
Well, what does it mean to be a poet now, especially a Chicano Poet?
Well, to be a poet in these times is (or at any time) the opportunity to crystallize what it means to be alive. Songwriting is close as well, but to write the anthems and the exact words that match what's going on is thrilling. So if you live in a historic moment where there's just so much going on, then you have the opportunity to be a great poet. There's a necessity to write poetry that's strong and that speaks to the world as it is to change it. So I think right now is a great time. It's a terrible time in many ways for many people. But the poets must step up and offer their gifts to the ongoing crisis. Whether it be Palestine, the US Border, the Congo, or Yemen, any number of crises are going on in the world, or whether it be that the kids are still in cages because these things are still happening.
All poetry is political, in a sense. Other Latinos are writing poetry at the moment, but you're much more forceful about writing political poetry.
I think that's true. Other people tend to write about their lives. They tend to write about their feelings on any given number of topics, and they write some incredible political stories because they're very talented and they're very thoughtful people. But I don't think they've taken on the same kind of responsibility or mantle that I have. I take my craft very seriously, and I take my content very seriously. I end up talking more these days about craft than content with most people because I don't feel like arguing with people anymore. I'm very interested in craft and how to craft a message. I'm known as this great political poet, but I don't talk politics with too many people.
Yes.
I'm too busy. I get frustrated with people who are just saying things that they haven't researched. But that doesn't mean I'm not deeply invested. That doesn't mean I don't care. It just means I don't spend time arguing with people about it.
Let’s talk about craft and how you have developed yours. How do you teach craft in the prisons?
Right. So I teach in prisons. I show them a basic three-act structure, which is stretched to four acts. You have a pre-crisis, crisis, low point, and then a resolution. Now, a low point doesn't necessarily have to be a low point. It is an emotional shift. So if your entire story is sad, your low point can be a ray of hope. And a crisis doesn't necessarily mean that something bad is happening. A crisis simply means that it is a break from the routine. They could be drug addicts, and the crisis is trying to get clean. They're going through something like that. So that's the way stories work. We see someone in the routine first, and that is how we learn about the character. It is how we get invested in the character. So that's how basic stories work. So I show them that. In each one of these quadrants, if you haven't answered these 4 questions in each one of these boxes, then you're not through with the section. So if you think about Spielberg films, they have these really kind of sappy endings. But the seeds for those endings have been planted throughout the movie to end that way. So it's still quality art.
Yes, you're invested. The students must love that structure.
They do. The prisoners love it, but college students love it, people in public libraries love it, and high schoolers love it. Everybody loves it. Oftentimes, we're taught to teach writing workshops as a form of therapy and healing. That's not what I do. I'm going to teach you how to write better. I'm not a therapist. I'm not qualified to be a therapist. I'm qualified to teach you how to write well, and that is what I do. You're going to feel better about yourself when you write this thing. It's great. I always have this feeling in me that quality is not something that exists within me, and it's not something that exists within another person. Quality exists outside of both of us. It's there like the mountain, and we climb the mountain and we reach the top of the mountain. It's not something that's within us. It's something that's outside of us, and it's something that we attain and we reach. And, of course, we have our weird little ways of getting there. We have our techniques. But it's something out there. There's very little in this world that feels as rewarding as that.
That's great. Let’s come back to this structure.
I've been doing this for 15 years now. I always tell them to develop a style, and then I tell them how they do that. Well, you study the masters. You study effective techniques to figure out how you can pull them off yourself and the techniques that made those masters' works so masterful. And you come up with a combination of those techniques. But even more than studying the techniques of others. Study your odd little things, your own odd little neurological things that you do, and then sharpen them. And you become this mixed bag of all these different little tricks and techniques. They're unique to you, and you develop them and get better. And that's how you develop your style. Then you turn that style into a discipline. Then, turn that discipline into a standard of excellence that you hold yourself to every time. Once you develop a style, turn it into discipline, and turn that discipline into a standard of excellence, you become the world's leading expert on why you are excellent. You can never be discredited, and you will never seek validation, because you know better than anyone why you're excellent.
This year, I had the opportunity to read with Jon Fosse, who was the 2023 Nobel Laureate in literature. I wrote a poem based on one of his poems, one of his novels, and one of his plays. My poem combined all of his elements. Afterward, we talked, and I got a chance to talk to him for about 5 minutes. He immediately asked me how I put the poem together, and we launched into a story about craft. And so here I am, having this conversation about writing and techniques with a Nobel Laureate. And he was interested in how I did it in my process, and I was interested in asking him questions about his writing process. And we had this kind of conversation about process, writing, structure, and techniques.
But here I am being validated by someone who won the Nobel Prize. I was happy because I wrote the poem for him, and I was happy that he received it well, but I didn't need Jon Fosse to tell me that I'm a great writer. I knew that because I had done the work.
That knowledge is what I want to inspire in other people.
As a writer, it is important to know your purpose, right?
Exactly, especially when it comes to writing.
Why are you writing?
My students need to have that purpose in them. They need to care about things. They need to be passionate about things. Nobody can put that in them. If they're not passionate about things, and they want to write because they want to be famous. I'm not invested in their success. I'm not invested in working with them. I don't care one way or the other. I just got back from the Medellin Poetry Festival. I performed a poem called “I Chicano,” which lays out all this history of Chicano poets and of Chicano people who have fought for social justice. It was important for me to be on this giant stage with 80 other poets from 40 different countries. It was important for me to represent Chicanismo on that stage. I'm the first person who has ever been on that stage referring to Chicano culture and art. I am very certain of that.
I would not be able to do that if I were not a great poet. The simple fact that I have something important to say does not make me a great poet. It is my skill and my craft that make me great.
Yes.
And it is the message that makes it important.
And there's also some magic around it, too. There are times when ideas and skills come together. I was in Florence and we went to see Michelangelo’s work. We had this guide, and she told us about Michelangelo's fascinating creative process. She said the difference between Michelangelo and another sculptor was what Michelangelo would think about when he was sculpting. He believed that the sculpture was already in a block of marble. It was his skill and his craft that released it from the stone. His hands and mind helped reveal the beauty already embedded in the rock.
That's fantastic. I mean that. See, that's what I'm seeking. I want to write in a way so that it seems like nobody wrote it. That was always there.
Yes.
It's so simple and perfect like in my first book "Mowing Leaves of Grass." I have a poem called, “Here's a Nation.” Towards the end, I say, “This is not a democracy. This is not a Republic. This is the state of the Union. They are killing our children.” To me that's perfect. And it's not like, oh, my God! Those lines are so beautiful, they're so mystical, they're magical. What does it mean? Those words in that order are perfect.
Yes.
Perfect.
So that's great. I'm finding that the truth is being told by poets. Poets are capturing the zeitgeist. But I feel like they are the only ones who are doing it. From a Chicano perspective, there's this erasure of history and culture.
Absolutely.
The danger of the erasure is that there is a direct line from the 500 years of systemic racism towards Brown people to that moment when a man with an AK47 walks into Walmart in El Paso and kills men, women, and children. All of that is very easy if our humanity is not captured in art. From my perspective, the voice of the poet is even more important now than ever.
So you're deeply involved in the struggle for greater representation, for our community.
Yes.
As am I? Can you name the people who were shot?
No.
Neither can I, and I don't feel like it's a failing on your part or my part. I feel like that is because it's not part of the national narrative. It's not woven into the way the country describes itself to itself. And so it becomes this thing where even people like you and me can't name them.
Yes.
We just know that 23 people were killed. The fact that 23 people were killed is also drifting into memory. It's drifting into the rabbit hole of memory. because, you know, things happen to us, but it's not seen as important.
How is it that you have a presidential candidate running who is mentioned in the manifesto and opened this door to hate?
Right. A presidential candidate who rose to prominence on the idea of calling Mexicans, drug dealers, and rapists.
Yes.
Whose main thing was to build the wall and Mexico would pay for it. He's now running on the simple phrase of mass deportation. Now. how is that? Because every time people talk about Donald Trump as a racist it’s always tied to some historical trend.
But the fact of the matter is that the border politics are at the center of these things, but everyone tries to tie it to some Southern roots. But the actual reality is that the centerpiece of Donald Trump's politics is the Mexican border and there's a denial of that basic fact even as it's happening. And so, even most Chicano scholars and intellectuals wouldn't say that. Yes. It's about many things. But the cornerstone, the focal point, is the question of the Mexican border.
Yes, I would go deeper. That's even why I interview Chicano poets, because few are covering your work.
Well, this is the reality. In this country, we are the most underrepresented group. We make up about 20% of the country, and we're like 2% of children's literature. We are about 4% of people on television. These numbers are staggeringly horrible. I'm always going to be relegated to some small thing. So I decided to go South and look towards Latin America to become a more well-known person. Over the last four or five years, I have read at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba, the most prestigious cultural center in the Americas. I've read at UNAM in Mexico City, the most prestigious university in all of Latin America. I've read at the Guadalajara Book Fair, one of the largest book fairs in the world. It ranks with Frankfurt. I've read at the Medellin Poetry Festival. That's the Big Four of Latin America, and I've done all that, and yet here in the United States I haven’t received the same recognition.
Do you feel like you're building momentum? I mean, I get the sense that you have.
I feel I'm building momentum. But I'm building it in the only way for me to truly thrive. In the poetic landscape, I'm framing it to what my talent merits. I am requiring a cultural shift that I'm trying to create, at least within the small world of poetry. We have to be recognized as capable as anyone.
This is bizarre because Chicano poets in the US are not seen as brilliant, capable artists They'll bring some diversity to the panel, but the idea that any of us could be equal or greater than others is not often accepted. No, we are as good as anyone. They can accept Frida Kahlo as brilliant. They can accept Octavio Paz as brilliant. They accept Pedro Páramo as an incredible book.
Oh, yeah. All these Mexicans.
They can accept Gabriel García Márquez as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. They can accept that Borges is great. They can accept that Neruda is great. They can accept all these authors as long as they weren't born in the US.
Well, it goes deeper than the border. I'm writing this book that tracks the Popul Vuh. But the Popul Vuh is not well known in the US, even though it is one of the most important books of the Americas. We don't know the Mayan Mexican Codex, which is the oldest book of the Americas. It is over 900 years old. The Maya were writers. It's that seed of racism that was planted by Hernán Cortés and Columbus in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Yes.
And this incomplete history is believed for 500 years, and it's not until now that we're starting to deconstruct it, and we're starting to decolonize it all.
Yeah, I agree with all that. But I'm saying that we live in a country that will readily accept that people who are born somewhere else because it's somehow exotic or somehow are brilliant, but that people born here can't also be brilliant.
I agree, but that's a layer of systemic racism.
Absolutely.
We have to build our institutions that we can trust. I just went to the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM and it's lifting Indigenous voices in a way that I would love for us as Latinos or Chicanos, or Mexican Americans to have. We need an academic setting where we can celebrate our greatness. But we don't have those institutions. They're absorbed into these other institutions. We can't proceed until we acknowledge our Indigenous past.
In this country, even if you have a Spanish surname, you won’t be seen. They can treat you badly because they think you're an Indian. I can't fully live my life, as long as we are seen
as unintelligent. There's no doubt about it. We are seen as people here to clean up after people. We are seen as the security. We're here to do something that makes other people's lives easier and function. Right? We're here as the workforce. We're seen as a stepping stone. We're here as donkeys. We're here basically to make life manageable for people who will think. And so that's how they think of us. And until we can shake that off, we will find it difficult to progress. In Latin America, I'm just allowed to be me and be great.
That's like James Baldwin when he goes to France. It's the same as for poets from the Harlem Renaissance.
Exactly, so in France, there's no resistance. The idea that an African American could be great right? I mean, I'm sure they had a lot of resistance to an Algerian being great, or something like this history on their own.
There's no doubt about it.
They have their own thing going on. So I don't want to glorify these places. I see what's happening to me in the United States. And so I will still be considered a second-class person. I don't want to sound like other things haven't happened to me. A lot of good things have happened in the US, and I have been successful. But there's always this odd contextualization of said success that is a weird thing because I'm seen as a Mexican.
Well, let’s talk about your poetry and some of the books you have written. You are wrestling with Whitman and in conversation with Langston Hughes and others. I love what you did with “Taco Trucks on Every Corner” in your new book, entitled “Mexican Style.” Your poems are important and show that your work is part of the canon.
Whitman was a phenomenal writer. He's a fascinating person. He's had an incredible impact on the world of poetry. However, Whitman was a racist in several ways. But one of the things he said was writing a journal that says, “What has miserable, inefficient Mexico—with her superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual tyranny by the few over the many—what has she to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race.” (Gathering 1:247).
He also wrote, I believe it's in Leaves of Grass. There's a poem called “A Promise to California,” he writes, “I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust American love.” He wrote this in the 1850s. So what does it mean to teach robust American love at this time, this time in history, in this space in California, I mean, there's a time when people are getting lynched at this time of the Greaser Act (In 1855 the California Greaser Act was an anti-vagrancy law targeting all ethnic Mexicans. Further, the California Act of 1855 ended the State Constitutional requirement that laws be translated into both Spanish and English).
This was also the time of the Indian Protection Act (In 1850 the California legislature passed an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude) which forced many Indigenous people into servitude and became the first statewide vagrancy law in the country's history. Also it was followed a few years later by the Greaser Act, which specifically attacked people of what they say of mixed Spanish and Indian stock. And Black people are still in slavery. The point I'm making is that this is the period in which Whitman is writing about robust American love that he's going to teach California. It is also a time of murder, land theft, and people being lynched. If you get an American education and you have some poetic inclination, you are going to be taught that Whitman is the standard. Whitman is the peak of the mountain, and I don't think it's good for Chicanos or anyone else to be taught this poetry without a proper historical context. And so for me, it's unhealthy to look up to someone who would look down upon you. Chicanos need alternatives, and that is why I write.
There you go, and that's fair. But first people have to read you.
That's right.
They have to find out about you. You need to talk about your poems. Tell me a little bit about them. The one that I believe you had a lot of fun with was “Taco Trucks on Every Corner.” So what is its genesis?
The head of Latinos for Trump came out and said in the last election cycle that we have to be careful because my people are very pushy, and if you're not careful, there would be a taco truck on every corner. And so this became a big meme about taco trucks on every corner. It became a little phrase that I use in a couple of poems: “Taco trucks on every corner.” I started advocating for it. Eventually, my friend, Dave, encouraged me to write a poem.
If you look at the poem, it's full of references. It refers to two books by Jack Forbes, a great Native American scholar. He argued that the majority of Mexicans are native peoples. It was a controversial stance at the time, and even today it is a controversial position.
But that was the basis of his argument. So I gave him two shout-outs. There's a point in the poem where it says, “Columbus and other cannibals.” That's the title of a book by Jack Forbes. Other references to Jack Forbes are buried within the poem. So if you don't know those references, it still sounds good when I write, “Pizarro, Columbus, and other cannibals.” So I just said a bunch of conquistadors, and then Columbus and other cannibals. And then I just jokingly said, “A peer-reviewed socioeconomic study shows how block by block, lot by lot. Reinforcement showed up, locked, and loaded.” And so that's the point.
The poem also made me hungry! Hungry for tacos and justice.
It has all kinds of other references, too, because of the way the poem starts was saying, “Iron cast hand / Press the heat / A pinch of salt / A cup of water / Masa de maiz.” So first you make the tortilla and then it says, “The heat / The cactus / The eagle / The meadows / Volcanoes / A stone on the road / Destined to roll.” So the meadows and volcano are references to a song called “Mexico Lindo y Querido.” The use of the lines, “The steel/The bridle,” references the Mexican National Anthem, and then “a stone on the road / Destined to roll,” is a reference to a song by Vicente Fernández “Chente” who sings “El Rey.”
That song is my theme song. Ha!
The structure of the poem begins with how to make a tortilla, then how to make a Mexican right, and after that I list all these troubles, and after that, it goes into America the beautiful, America, the exceptional, pilgrims pride, each gain Divine. and although that's a reference to the song, America, the Beautiful. And so you have the symbol of Mexican culture, these anthems and Mexican culture, and then the middle part, where these anthems of American culture are being forced on us. They are an imposition, and in the end, it talks about recovery and restoration, prophecy and legend, eagle and condor, with the eagle and condor pointing at Standing Rock. A lot of that revival is referenced by the flight of the butterfly.
As you know, the butterflies don't know borders. Why should we kind of think of this long-standing image, and then the return of the jaguar? So people might not know this, but jaguars are returning to Arizona. So you could think about this idea of jaguars returning. So it is the flight of the butterfly and the return of the jaguar. At the very end of the poem, it tells you how to make a taco, So it starts with how you make a tortilla and ends with making a taco, and that's how the poem begins and ends. So the poem is well-crafted, and it's got a lot of information in it.
Yes, it's great. I enjoyed the line “We didn’t ask to be born Mexican, we just got lucky” and then you end with “To be born when the Mexicans took back over, you just got lucky.”
“Born Mexican we just got lucky” is a very common little phrase and trope. Chicanos like to say, “You know we didn't ask to be born Mexican. We just got lucky.” So I need the end of the poem, “Why are you lucky?” Because there are taco trucks everywhere. That's why.
Tell me now about “I, Chicano.”
Originally, I was going to have these Chicano voices from different periods of history. But then, as I was writing, I was like, wait a minute. There's an opportunity here. I need to figure out what I need to do here and actually, it's interesting, because those two poems are related.
Yes.
In “Taco Turcks, Every Corner,” I write, “Prophecy and legend / Eagle and condor / The flight of the butterfly / The return of jaguar.” Then it was also another part. Where? When? Is something like, you know? The motive engine, the beating heart of the Mexican question there. And I was like, and it wasn't working. It wasn't working structurally because it was like having two carburetors in the car. You didn't need that. It was like having like two livers or something. It doesn't matter how good a part is if the part is already there. I can't have both these things, one has to go. And so that became a structuring motif that I used in “I, Chicano.” But once I put that in “I, Chicano.” All of a sudden, the poem revealed itself to me. I understood that this was going to be a poem that had to have a roll call of heroes. I wanted to get the figures I had not covered
Yes.
And so then, I started putting everybody in the poem that I had not yet covered. So it starts, I, Corona, Ocuña, Tenayuca, Cesar, Dolores, Gomez Quiñones,” and then I included events such as “The Plan de Santa Barbara, San Diego, Catalina, La Tierra Amarilla, I Tijerina.” And then I mention all of these political groups. And then I write, “500 years, then I, 500 more, I, Betita, Cortina, Jovita, Modesta, Morena, Barrera, Cabrera.” I also wanted to pick people who are doing incredible work right now and highlight them in this long tradition of heroes. And I say, that the past isn't dead. It's still with us. And it's the past that I wanted to put them in there to honor them. I highlighted Ernesto Ayala and Lupe Carrasco-Cardona, as well as Nolan Cabrera. These are all people doing a lot of great work right now. And so I highlighted them alongside these people who are very well established and who we all know. We all know the great work they've done.
Could you talk a little bit about El Martillo, the poem, and also your press?
So the poem El Martillo covers a lot of history. And it speaks to much of what we have been talking about. Most people understand we have the right to an attorney. They might even know that they are called “Miranda rights.” But very few people know the origin of the rights and who Nestor Miranda was.
The importance of that case is that the Mexicans were often denied their rights. And so that wasn't just a random guy who was born of a civil rights struggle. And so this thing that is just so deeply part of the general American. American life has its roots in the oppression of Mexican people in the State of Arizona, but the legal precedent for that is Escobedo vs Illinois, which provides the constitutional right to an attorney.
Escobedo was decided in 1964 and Miranda was decided in 1966. So that's also a question of Danny. He was also Mexican-American. These facts are swept under the rug, even as they have such a deep impact on the country as a whole. And so the poem El Martillo is about the oppression of Mexicans, and how fundamental we are to the US.
The poem expresses how fundamental we are to the building and construction of the US. And how often that's ignored. The poem reads, “I will build the bridge / I will destroy the wall / Yo soy el martillo / The hammer.” The poem echoes the motto of El Martillo Press, which is “the builder bridges and the destroyer walls.”
And it was very important to me to call it El Martillo Press, and not “Editorial El Martillo,” or something that was all in Spanish. I wanted part of it to be in Spanish because I wanted to represent this experience—the Spanish one and also the English expression of the Chicano experience.
It was founded by me and David Romero. And we've published authors from Italy. We publish Hungarian authors. We have publications on the way from writers all over the world. We have a few Mexican authors who are coming up pretty soon that we are excited about. We're also talking to some people from Chile. We're talking to people from Armenia by way of London. We're talking to people. Right now, we have European titles, but we're working on getting an anthology of Cuban slam together.
Well, Matt Sedillo, many thanks for your time and for your willingness to be interviewed by the Storyteller’s Corner. We appreciate you.
Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program. This fall his poetry will be published in Huizache. His other book reviews are at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Charter House's blog, IAIA's journal, and Los Angeles Review.
