Para tod@s that still spit back

Caló, trilongo, dialect, jargon, pachuco slang, pachuco caló, “code-switching” (as some academics like to call it), or simplemente el lenguaje que nace del barrio is my favorite way to commune with those I choose to commune with. To make myself legible and illegible, and knowing that I have this right, is hard-won wisdom when you grow up in this country. Illegibility gets a bad wrap, but ya que se dejen de sus pendejadas. Sometimes codes are spoken and only those of us who have “cracked the code” tienen el don de espigar lo que es dicho y eso me parece un trueque más que justo. Sometimes you can get accused of being “complicated” or, my favorite, “a little too much” when you write this way (yes, it still fucking happens, but you know that).  Pues, a estos les digo: guess what? Mi lengua es un músculo complicado, tenacious, que arde con palabras tenebrosas (dependiendo de quién las lea) que te dejan atónito, and this tongue moves in ways that monolinguals could only dream of if they had the capacity for such dreams.  I am complicated; this bridge on my back is complicated, this polyphonic chorus, this rhythm that only some can hear, my sense of Brown is particular; this veil is not for the faint of heart.

But somehow they have been trying to discern us, to un-complicate lo que ya está complicado por historia, by what is lived detrás de una experiencia que solamente lucidamente se puede expresar en el canto y poesía de un lenguaje fragmentado. También te canto con fragmented Náhuatl cuando dejo que las notas de este lenguaje particular te ilustren a mi abuelita by the comal tatemando elotes, y al lado semillas y chiles para el pipían. Words that have left my mouth so often, “quiero más pipián,” as I eat the words of my ancestors. So yes, our language is “complicated” and marred by the misunderstandings of outsiders who want to conquer what is not theirs to conquer—never has been.

When Cortés came for conquest, he gave orders to destroy the culture. By doing so, he aspired to strategically maim the psyche of those he conquered. What did he mean by culture? He meant to destroy the language; he meant to destroy the art; he meant to destroy the spiritual practice. This is why 500 years later, when I speak el dialect(ic)o de mis padres from Zacatecas, I am acutely aware of the Náhuatl, the Caxcan words that splice up or “complicate” the Spanish language; words that have resisted assimilation through their proliferation in our everyday lives forming part of the Mexican collective consciousness, and memory–duelale al quién le duela.

Fracturas, con más fracturas, y aún más fracturas remediando lo imposible.

By the late 1930s and all the way into the early 1970s, the linguistic gringos wanted to epistemologically categorize our language on the borderlands. They went into their science labs with pristine white coats and dissected our tongues on a platter while probing with languid curiosity at that tenacious muscle. They made statements. Statements meant to damn and fuel the animosity that was being hurled at us; all of these “studies” would aid the diction being used on Pachucas and Pachucos alike during the People v. Zamora case, or as it was derogatorily called, the Sleepy Lagoon case, the Zoot Zoot riots, the Chicanas and Chicanos viciously attacked and killed during the Chicano Moratorium, the lynching of Ruben Salazar by the LA Sheriffs’ mob, and don’t even get me started about today. It was a preliminary indictment; if we spoke it, we were “gangsters,” “delinquents,” we spoke “a coded language for nefarious dealings,” we were “prostitutes,” “barmaids,” “clandestine” or as one illiterate pendeja tried to put it, “the females who use it are the prostitutes of the area or the mates of gangsters.” I read the damn papeles de mierda so you wouldn’t have to.

We spat back in Caló and still spit back.

So next time que sientas esa necesidad de irte allá y regresar acá, de vagar y trascender con esa habilidad de saber lo que ellos no saben, relish that moment, feel La facultad embrace you in a homecoming. How beautiful that unruly tongue unfurls. Let your taste buds expand at the flavor of the words that stitch what you know, what you’ve lived. We have never needed permission, y menos ahora–duelale a quién le duela.

___

Daisy Elizeth Magallanes (she/they) is a Chicana poet, writer, and translator born and raised in Los Ángeles. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Acid Verse Literary Journal, the Black Warrior Review, Huizache and Hypertext Magazine. When they’re not hanging out with their cat, Barthelme, and chihuahua, Buddy, they can be found sorting through archives.

Artwork by Tyler Haberkorn