by Judd Handler, SpinWriter,
May 9, 2000 - spinrecords.com
Did you know that "Hispanic"
is actually a derogatory term? Do you really know what a Chicano
is? How about the difference between Latino and Mexican-American?
As a comfortable suburbanite, I never thought of these terms
until I met the Taco Shop Poets, a group of writers and musicians
devoted to community empowerment through spoken word and music
(bass, drums, and flute). The Taco Shop Poets celebrate the triumphs
and hardships of the Chicano essence.
The members of the Taco
Shop Poets live in southern San Diego County, within minutes
from the international border. Because illegal entry into San
Diego is a daily occurrence on the news, most residents of the
pristine beach areas rarely pay any attention to what goes on
around the border areas. Living north of the Mexican-American
cultural epicenter of San Diego, I never imagined what it would
be like to live in an area where helicopters are constantly buzzing
overhead, conducting border sweeps.
As I sit down inside Poet
member Mikey Figgens' modest and comfortable house in Imperial
Beach, a mere five minutes from the border, I ask Taco Shop Poet
Adolfo Guzman Lopez some of the graphic images he remembers growing
up in Tijuana (he moved to San Diego at age seven).
"I remember the search
lights, the wind from the helicopter blades separating the corn
stalks," recalls Guzman, an assistant producer on San Diego's
KPBS. He also visualizes people scurrying about, running to the
then-vacant hills, and the "heavy-duty speakers calling
out 'Don't move, stop!'"
Just as Guzman describes
the nightly helicopter sweeps, Miguel Angel Soria tells me, "You
can hear a sweep going on right now, listen." I ask Miguel,
"How do you know it's not a medical copter?" Immediately,
the collective group all let out a hard laugh and Miguel tells
the naïve interviewer, "That's no medical copter--there
are two kinds of copters here: 'ghetto birds' that put out calls
to the police cars and the border patrol helicopters."
Living under the maddening
swirl of helicopter blades is one facet of the Chicano experience
in southern San Diego. Guzman, Figgens (bass), Soria, and the
other Taco Shop Poets, Adrian Arancibia, and Kevin Green (drums)
portray these experiences on Chorizo Tonguefire, the group's
most recent CD. Guzman explains, "chorizo is the hamburger
of our culture, and tonguefire is the impact and strength of
our words."
While Figgen's bass and
Green's drums provide a scuttling, city life theme, Guzman emotionally
recites "Sal," one of the tracks from Chorizo Tonguefire.
Sal is short for Salvador
Salvador Valtierra preaches
on the corner of Fifth and BroadwayThe bus depot and crossroad
for pedestrian massesThis is the corner where the stock market
crashedWhere Reagonomics and its cranes revived a financial districtBooming
with peep-show parlors, residence hotels and adult bookstoresNow
it's the corner of ninety-nine cent storesAnd ninety-nine cent
livesLives lived out with stubby fingersClorox cracked skin and
tennis elbowFrom pushing vacuum cleaners ...
You can find the Taco Shop
Poets performing their mix of spoken word and music at art galleries,
student unions, The Alamo (where they were escorted away by Texas
rangers), cultural centers, coffee shops, and as their name implies,
taco shops.
"The taco shop is equivalent
to the corner markets; it's where people meet, talk, eat good
food and find out what's going on in the neighborhood,"
says Guzman. "It's a metaphor for our growing up in San
Diego. It's a safe place for our lives, where we're not bound
by this parallel English language, work world."
When asked what his favorite
taco shop item is and how it relates to his poetry, Guzman answers,
"Quesadilla with guacamole." He pauses to think of
the entrée's relationship to his poetry. Before he gets
a chance to answer, Riley jumps in, "It's cheesy!"
The first Taco Shop Poets
performance at a taco shop was at La Posta #6 in Hillcrest. Since
then, the collective has spontaneously played at well over 50
taco shops. Why play at taco shops?
The members say that taco
shops are a cross-cultural and economic stomping ground for people
in search of the perfect carne asada. Taco shops provide a sense
of community and comfort; they symbolize the Chicano experience.
"Chicano," as
defined by Merrian-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: a noun, etymology:
Mexican Spanish, alteration of Spanish mexicano.
While the term Chicano can
be traced back to 1947, it was redefined in the '60s to better
classify the community and political activism of Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans. Soria's four-part poem, "Mujer (women),"
is a Chicano snapshot of life in industrial Tijuana. With a somber
flute pattern and down tempo slow jazz-blues, Soria recites,
Mujer, this is a psalm to
wreck maquilanaftaWhere you whisper weak cacophoniesAnd your
fingers linger in mineThis is the rainbow in the acid rainA maquiladora
jesus Rises to kiss two-headed babiesThat have one heart to share
with all of us...
Maquiladoras are the industrial
factories in always-striving-to-catch-up-to-modern-capitalism,
Tijuana. Tijuana is not third world according to Riley; he says
third world is Bangladesh. Instead, he describes "TJ"
as "third world high modernism with first world postmodernism
clashing on a daily basis." The industrial beast of TJ is
packed with women working with cancer-cluster-causing chemicals.
"There needs to be a hero among the regular, everyday working
man and woman," says Riley.
The Taco Shop Poets are
cognizant of their heritage, and it would be a mistake if they
were all called Hispanic. The word is an adjective derived from
the Latin hispanicus, from Hispania--the Iberian Peninsula. Its
origins can be traced back to 1889; "Hispanic" is defined
by Merriam-Webster as "being a person of Latin American
descent living in the U.S.; especially one of Cuban, Mexican,
or Puerto Rican origin."
Taco Shop Poet Adrian Arancibia
claims that during Richard Nixon's administration, "Hispanic"
took on a whole new meaning, as it became adopted by census takers
to generalize a race of brown-skinned people. Don't call Arancibia
a Hispanic. While he may appear Mexican to the untrained eye,
he is of Chilean descent. His family was blackballed there (during
the [Pinochet] era) and his uncles were taken into concentration
camps (they were released years later.)
While Hispanic may not seem
as vile as the "N" word, it is insulting to The Taco
Shop Poets and other Latino-Americans. While white people may
not be pressing the issue to be called German, Dutch, or Polish
Americans, Latinos can be sensitive when someone automatically
assumes that a person with brown skin is of Mexican origin.
To truly understand the
Americano-Latino experience, watch an upcoming HBO special entitled
Americanos: Latino Life in the U.S., which is co-produced by
Edward James Olmos, and features an eight-minute segment on the
Taco Shop Poets. The program airs on May 11, 8 p.m. (E.S.T.)
and will be rebroadcast at later dates.
This June, The Taco Shop
Poets will release the second printing of Anthology, a collection
of their poems. The group recently returned from a successful
mini tour of the East Coast, including a stop at the famous New
Rican Poets Café (a spoken word Mecca in New York's lower
east side).
I was enlightened by the
experiences that the Taco Shop Poets shared, as well as their
sharp spoken words and soulful musical accompaniment, but all
this talk of tacos, quesadillas, and carne asadas made me hungry.
Mikey informs me that there are 11 taco shops within a one-mile
radius of his Palm Avenue house.
"11?" I ask.
"Yeah," Mikey
says, "one of them is just a drive through."
Hungry for some chorizo
tonguefire, I thanked the Taco Shop Poets for the engaging interview,
hopped in my car, popped in their CD, and drove to the closest
taco shop I could find. As I ate my chorizo burrito, the setting
sun appeared as a giant orange disc crashing into South Bay,
San Diego. I was grateful that for the first time in my life,
I tasted the Chicano experience.
