american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

MIGRATORY AGENCY 143
that “communicate(s) a subject’s or subjects’ lived experiences”
(Rosman 129–130). A testimonio, though, is not memoir or autobiography;
it chronicles una lucha, a fight on behalf of la gente against
injustice. As Beverley writes, “The situation of narration in testimonio
has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression,
poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, [or] struggle for survival” (26).
In Latin America, it has traditionally been expected that poets enter
these battles on behalf of la gente if they can avoid appropriating and
romanticizing their struggles. Testimonio, though, has, if not obviated,
then called into question the poet’s role as people’s representative
because the oppressed poor now have a speaking voice.
“Mi Tío Baca el Poeta de Socorro,” though not a testimonio, is a
variation on it and an implicit commentary on its cultural function.
The speaker does not actively attempt to speak for the la gente like a
poem of authoritative agency does, but in holding up his uncle as an
effective poet of the people, he upholds the tradition of representation
he denies for himself. Baca’s speaker implies that his role is not to
speak for the oppressed voiceless nor to found their community. Is this
an orthodox North American view of poetry as private, ineffective? Or
does the speaker suggest that when you fight for la gente and the final
poem you write is “scrawled across the page, / ‘¡Aquí vienen! ¡Aquí
vienen! / Here they come!’ ” as an angry mob comes to “ ’Shoot the
Mexican!,” that in some sense poetry always fails as a political tool? Or
does the uncle’s murder vindicate poetry’s political power?
If Baca is concerned about the poet’s role in the community, it
relates intimately to what George Yúdice points out about testimonio—
that it “has contributed to the demise of the traditional role of the
intellectual/artist as spokesperson for the ‘voiceless.’ ” Now, he
shows, the “oppressed feel more enabled to speak for themselves in
the wake of the new social movements, Liberation Theology, and
other consciousness-raising grassroots movements.” Consequently,
“there is less of a social and cultural imperative for concerned writers
to heroically assume the grievances and demands of the oppressed”
(42). The issue that concluded chapter 1—the problems of representation
when poets assume an embattled first-person “I” in their witness
to extremity—is thus even more thorny now that outlets such as
the ones Yúdice mentions have empowered the oppressed. Yet this
assumes that poets speak only for the oppressed, not for themselves as
well. Baca’s speaker suggests this division—he speaks for himself and
no other because he believes himself unworthy of his uncle’s public
role. Baca’s speaker, unlike Baca’s uncle, whose poems “roused la
gente” to fight for their rights, implicitly moves away from the role of