Canciones
Canciones
What told us that the day was over?
The shadows that bled together over the tired earth?
The sun that dropped behind the mountains?
Remember, brother, how we followed
the pickers who sang mariachi music to one
another, egged each other on with profanity
or a high yell that arched over the treetops
more piercing than the scorching sun?
Remember how we sat beneath the eucalyptus,
our paychecks lost to beer from the Japanese market?
One season the names were Pedro, Ramon,
the next season they were different.
Did they remember the two boys they taught
to drink and sing each summer?
Each summer we hoped never to return.
Of what longings did the men sing? - -
of women they left behind,
of the complaints about the hard work
they had resigned themselves to.
Those summers when the straps from the heavy
canvas bags seemed to cut into our flesh
I wished the orchards would vanish,
be paved over by blacktop and malls.
Now I wish I could renege on that curse.
Look where the houses are and the golf course:
these are the orchards where
we used to work and beyond the mountains
where the orange sun is setting, are the vineyards.
Brother, perhaps, there’s one orchard left,
men sitting on crates and laughing in the dark.
Perhaps, they’ll call out to us.
This poem by Kenneth Zamora Damacion was published in “Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades,” A poetry anthology from Milkweed Editions, 1999.
…
Once I asked my father if he wanted to visit the Philippines, and he replied “Nah, too poor.” I was always desperate to learn more about my Filipino identity and our family’s ancestry, so I was dismayed by his answer. But my understanding of what it meant to be Filipino was much different than my father’s. My biracial Filipino American identity had never closed any doors, and in many ways it had opened them. For Papa and especially his mother and father, being Filipino in America had been cause for exclusion, degradation, and even shame throughout the 1940’s-1970’s when our family was first establishing itself. For simply being Filipino Grandpa had been prevented from applying for jobs, owning property, entering certain establishments, and leaving specified parts of town. In Little Manila is In the Heart, Dr. Mabalon illustrated these barriers. “Filipinas/os from a wide range of backgrounds worked together in the fields as exploited laborers- as brown others. Visayans, Illocanas/os, and Tagalog immigrants soon came to the humiliating realization that the dominant society treated them all alike, regardless of their class background or regional origins. Nor did their supposedly special status as wards of the American flag and having American educations make any difference. Ilocanos who had come as sakadas from the sugar plantations of Hawai’i cut asparagus next to Tagalog pensionados studying for their PhDs, and Illonggo and Ilocana/o school teachers sewed celery seed and topped onions next to teenage provincianas/os from Capiz, La Union, Tarlac, and Pangasinan who aspired to be doctors and engineers.”
For Papa, being Filipino American before the American Civil Rights Movement meant inheriting the burdens of Grandpa’s oppression: poverty, stoop labor, racial stereotypes, and class divisions. To shield our family from shame Grandpa decided to prevent his children from learning our ancestral dialect -Pangasinan- and in doing so he had extinguished a vital aspect of our traditions and identity. By sending the message that our Filipino heritage was unworthy of sharing with his children, my father came to overlook the importance of his culture. Throughout his life, he would look to other cultures for guidance and means of expressing himself. Black Americans such as Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane would be the vocalists of his pain. The Latin American writers Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez would articulate his longing. But no one could describe to him what it was to be a Filipino American other than a Filipino American. Without this company, he was at a loss to fully understand himself.
In “Canciones,” Papa writes of the struggle to reclaim himself as a Filipino American. Before the faint traces of Filipino American literature and history were celebrated in society and education through the works of giants like Carlos Bulosan, Larry Itliong, and Dawn Mabalon, Filipinos in America had to rely on oral histories and personal references for understanding. The lack of Filipino representation in popular and educational matters led Filipino Americans to embody a lack of interest in Filipino American culture. But even under the most oppressive circumstances, our experiences were undeniably noteworthy. The formation of the Filipino Agricultural Labor Association in 1939, the asparagus strikes of 1948 and 1949, and the Delano Grape Strike which fomented the United Farmworkers Movement and Cesar Chavez’s legacy, produced milestones for our culture and greater American history. By taking full agency over authority of their position as marginalized agricultural workers, Filipinos, and Filipino Americans defied the menial existence architected for them and instead became an essential part of the country that denied them.
Considering the significance of Filipino Americans in our country’s labor history, it is of no surprise that “Canciones” became Papa’s most popular piece. In April 1999, the poem was published in an anthology titled Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades. Through one of his most descriptive poems about his autobiographical experiences as a field hand, Papa had achieved the inclusion that had been denied to Filipinos in America for over a century. In following the footsteps of renegades like Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, Papa had defined a space for Filipino America through the expansion of a narrative that was once confined to racist stereotypes.
At first, Papa speaks of fieldwork with the contempt that I knew him to have, remembering “complaints about the hard work,” and a longing “to never return.” He visualizes in detail the excruciating circumstances of agricultural labor: the “scorching sun,” the “tired earth,” and “those summers when the straps from the heavy canvas bags seemed to cut into our flesh.” Again we are to imagine the violence that such an existence would provoke, focusing on words like “bled,” “cut,” and “piercing.” But once his resentments have been relieved he seems to penetrate to a new understanding of their grit, recalling:
I wished the orchards would vanish,
be paved over by blacktop and malls.
Now I wish I could renege on that curse.
Look where the houses are and the golf course:
these are the orchards where
we used to work and beyond the mountains
where the orange sun is setting, are the vineyards.
Brother, perhaps, there’s one orchard left,
men sitting on crates and laughing in the dark.
Perhaps, they’ll call out to us.
In contemplating the change of scenery he was once so familiar with, Papa realizes the significance of his former environment. The vineyards he had once despised were also the setting for his maturity into adulthood. During those summers in his youth, he had been exposed to existential wisdom from both nature and humankind. He had been intimate with earth, sun, mountains, and treetops. He had learned to sing mariachi music and enjoy beer from Japanese markets. Most importantly he had learned to value self-reliance, personal ability, and himself. In paving over the setting for his life’s story and those of “Pedro, Ramon,” and the others who had sacrificed so much to strive for a better life, he feels the familiar threat of marginalization. When the comforts of sprawling housing complexes and a golf course overtake the orchards where men like Papa and Grandpa had once endured agonizing conditions, their humanity is “paved over,” and rendered invisible. The reaches of systemic racism that allowed for the exclusive few, the country club members, to dominate the landscape of history and opportunity once again threatened to cast them off. But Papa’s poem also hints at rebellion.
By taking an interest in his story as an agricultural worker he becomes a threat to the narrative of classism and the elite. The act of writing down his experiences provides further validity for the contributions and humanity of himself and the others he worked alongside. Where men like his father had once died loveless and forgotten, there is now a written history of their names, motivations, and characteristics. Through his words, people who were denied humanity became relatable and human. The impact of their testament is amplified through the poem’s conversational structure as if Papa is inviting others to take part in this radical perspective. Repeatedly he speaks to his “brother,” which could be any potential number of comrades who also understand the plight of the unnamed agricultural worker. At the very end, he notes their potential congregation, saying:
Brother, perhaps there’s one orchard left,
men sitting on crates and laughing in the dark.
Perhaps, they’ll call out to us.
What the response to that call would be, is left to the interpretation of those who would answer that call. It’s as if Papa wonders if others with his experiences feel the same way as he does; forgotten and overlooked but capable. If his dreams for the orchards to disappear were powerful enough to come true, how much more powerful would be dreams that imagine the appearance and representation of those who served them? The poem offers a reimagining of the history, and therefore the future, of Filipino America. If this community was able to endure the pressures of environments hostile to their physical and historical livelihood, what are the further possibilities? The authority with which Papa maps the landscape seems to suggest that there is much to discover beneath the sights of the common onlooker. His understanding of those sights and their previous lives also indicates that the workers are the most adept at navigating these histories. This heightened awareness shifts the position of the marginalized into a position of power. Where there was once a singular, dominating narrative focused on productivity and the audience for whom outcomes were intended, there now stands alternative interpretations from communities that had been previously overlooked. The rarity of these neglected stories situates Filipino Americans in positions of authority from which we can all learn.