Jorge Montes

Jorge Montes

7/29/14

     The poem "Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May3,  May3, 1877," "Revolutionary Spanish Lesson," and "The New Bathroom Policy at English High School," by Martin Espada makes the reader  think about discrimination against Latinos. How Espada shows discrimination against Latinos is in each of his poems a person is discriminating against another person due to their race, culture and skin color. Espada is expressing his feelings through these poems and wants to make the reader realize that he doesn't like people mistreating and discriminating against others.

    The poem "New Bathroom Policy at English High School" makes the reader think about all the things that have to do with discrimination, unfair equal treatment towards a specific person due to a cause. One example from the text that makes me think this is "New Bathroom Policy at English High School" it says "So he decides/ to ban Spanish/ from the bathrooms." This shows discrimination because the principal is not allowing the children to speak their native language which is Spanish. This happens be their native language which is Spanish. This happens because the principal since the principal is next to the stalls he hears the children speak Spanish not only that, he also hears his name while they speak Spanish. This causes him to ban Spanish. This makes the reader think that they're victims of unfair treatment because the principal just banned Spanish from all the bathrooms at his high school which is an unfair equal treatment because the children can only speak English at his high school.

     In Espada's poem "Revolutionary Spanish lesson,"  the reader is asked to think about rebellion. The reader knows or thinks what it is like to rebel against something or someone. In the text it says that "for the bilingual swat team to helicopter overhead, begging me to be reasonable." This shows rebellion because the narrator is being commanded by a swat. This happens because he has kidnapped a busload of tourist – a fantasy of he has in response to his name being mispronounced.This makes him rebel. This teaches the reader that sometimes people rebel against something or someone, it makes them rebel so they can stand up for themselves and rebel against a religion or a general thing.

     In Espada's poem "Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May3, 1877" the reader is asked to think about discrimination. The reader knows or thinks what it is like to discriminate against someone based on their culture, race, skin color, etc. in the text it says "When forty gringo vigilantes cheered the rope that snapped two Mexicanos into the grimacing sleep of broken necks."  This shows discrimination because two Mexicanos were being killed by gringo  vigilantes. This happens because the gringos killed to Mexicans with ropes instead of letting the legal system give them a trial. This teaches the reader that discrimination is not good because people think they're better than others and maybe also mistreat them in some way which causes discrimination and the person feels that they're being put down in a certain way just because of their skin color.

   In conclusion, these three poems by Martin Espada teach the reader about discrimination because they make the reader think about discrimination in each of the poems and they effects of it specifically discrimination against Latino. How Espada does this is he gets an idea in the readers head that all these three poems make the reader think about what each of the Espada's poems are about.