american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

MIGRATORY AGENCY 145
the existing legal structures do not account for the ways in which they
are capable of living, given in part their opportunities for legal
employment (21; original emphasis). Because of these circumstances,
migrants have “to compete not only against other people but against
the system as well” (84).
De Soto notes that in the nineteenth century, U.S. politicians
“expressed the revolutionary idea that legal institutions can survive
only if they respond to [the] social needs” of the people, many of
whom live, work, and hold property outside of existing legal structures
(150). However, they currently have failed to integrate
(im)migrants into the legal system. Espada’s poem, then, implicitly
examines the ramifications of cross-cultural (mis)communication,
especially between presumed extralegal migrants and the legal system
of the world’s imperial power, and how they impact the possibilities
for justice. 14 Given the conspicuous title, however, the possibilities for
justice are extremely limited. One Spanish-speaking (im)migrant versus
U.S. colonialism? An individual charged with a crime versus a
judge charged with enforcing colonialism, law, and order? Yet if anyone
can “explain” Yankee colonialism, it is a migrant charged with a
crime against that colonial power. The title suggests further that
Mariano is in the act of speaking truth to that power.
Mariano’s confrontational demeanor in front of the Judge and the
system of justice he represents belies the fact that the dynamics
between prisoner and system are very complicated. These dynamics
coalesce in the voice of the “Interpreter,” who represents the fluid
space between cultures and languages, between ways of understanding
the world—not between ideologies, but between the Spanish-speaking
extralegal migrant and the English-speaking neocolonizer charged
with maintaining the legal structures of U.S. global hegemony. The
Interpreter, then, is agent of neither party, but the go-between who
mediates the communication between Latin and North American,
prisoner and captor, powerless and powerful. If Mariano is charged and
Judge Collings is in charge, then the Interpreter is charged with the
greatest responsibility. He must facilitate communication and ensure
that justice is possible. Without the Interpreter’s presence, there can be
no cultural or linguistic interchange, especially as Judge and Prisoner
never talk to each other directly. In effect, there is no dialogue between
cultures or languages or across power differences. Even though the
Judge has more power than Mariano, the Interpreter presumably tries
to level the playing field. Mariano’s power is his subversion of the system
and his ability to speak a language (and curse in a language) that
Judge Collings does not understand.