Teach them fluency, you say, 

As if my kids were affluent, 

As if we had time to play

Around. 

Can you not hear their voices

Already, 

Gathered in the playground, 

Improvising like rappers, 

Swapping words like poets? 

Fluency flowing like water! 

This is not the time

To help you hear instead of
Listen 

To their fluency. 

We do not have the time 

To watch your kids reach the finish 

Line  

While your fluency leaves mine 

Behind. 

——-

Let me have my words,
My language is power! 

Lo más cool about my language 

Is that it is heavy 

With history, 

Brimming with
Identity. 

Deja que mis palabras broten 

With latinity,
Let my words dance Salsa
Y Plena Libre, 

Let my language

Move her hips!  

I’m not from here, 

Yo soy de allá, 

So let me keep my homeland
When I speak,
Déjame ser bilingual.
Just let me be
Free!
Adiós to your hegemony. 

LPCH

“Children have the right to their own language, their own culture. We must fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools. To push children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary.”