Colonized: Spanglish by Alejandrx Martinez
Butch and Sweaty
Skinny Brown arms
Purple-green stains like ancient colors
Cigarette smoke and U.S. Spanish flowing through a generation soon
to be lost
Indigenous spirits lost to alternative aesthetics
Rocka-Billy Queens and lowriders
skanking and kicking the whiteness away
Brown girls who smell like sweet breads and hard work with thick
brows and destined to be tattoo artists
Chican@ mixed Spanish-English, 100 percent colonized voices
Girl’s who like to get punched and don’t care about lung cancer
They are the movement
They are our backbone
They make this revolution flow
They keep the anger alive
They are the ones who will survive
Not the ones who Hispanicize their ancestry
Butch and sweaty punk latin@ Queer girls will save our motherland
About the Author
Alejandrx Martinez is a butch femme Xhicanx in the department of CCGRS. They chose to focus on critiques of the Xhicanx movement and work toward decolonity and work against the violent erasure of Black Latinx and Central and south Latinx individuals in the Xhicanx movement by applying critical queer theory to their work and advocacy. They are co-chair of M.E.Ch.A de WSU and Queer People of Color and Allies. They / Them / Theirs