SFR: In 1987, 1988 you were federally indicted and tried in connection with the alleged smuggling of Salvadoran refugees into the United States as part of the Sanctuary Movement. You faced a 25-year prison sentence and your poetry was read and used against you in court. How did that experience ultimately change you as a writer or as an activist? Do you feel like you're more at risk if you're political now?
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DM
: I'm small fish. Those were the good old days when they accused you of being a commie. Now it's terrorists. That experience had two effects-well, many, but two main ones. One, for years afterwards I felt my tongue had been cut out. It was very difficult to write, very difficult to entertain radical political ideas within myself. That's called self-censorship and what seemed to break that silence almost by magic was when I first heard within myself the words "mother tongue" and began writing my novel. I wrote it over a period of nine months while I was journalist. I wrote it in 50 minute units-with a longer day on the weekend-and everything broke open for me and my voice was freed up. The other effect of that trial that has been hugely positive is that when your life is ripped open for the government to see and everyone to see, at a certain point you realize you have absolutely nothing to lose. Now in my work on immigrants' rights issues, with Enlace Comunitario, I feel extremely empowered.
What does that work involve?
We serve a Spanish-speaking population on issues of domestic violence, and we educate immigrants about their rights. I'm on the board and half of the board is made up of Mexican immigrants-women who have become real leaders in their community-and the other half are people like myself. We conduct our meetings in Spanish. We plan workshops and family nights where people can come and discuss their concerns-whether it's getting a driver's license or the continuing fear that cops will get the right to act as immigration agents.
How did you get involved with immigration rights?
I come from a very political family and so I just grew up with the idea that if something wasn't right you work to change it. That was very much a part of my growing up. As a Catholic I grew up with the examples of Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez. But I think at a more gut level-I'm such a nester, the idea of having a home is sacred to me and the thought that so many people are forced to leave their homes because they can't provide for their families is anathema.
In your essay in the new book, "Driving While Brown," you talk about racial profiling because of beefed-up border patrol. You wrote that particular essay a few years ago; do you think this problem has changed?
No, not much, because North Americans are not yet ready to pay $5 for a head of lettuce and they can't bring themselves to admit it. They can't bring themselves to admit we're the ones who are hiring people and that we haven't lost jobs because of immigrants, we've lost jobs because of factories and CEOs who have moved their businesses to the Mexico border. There's this strange disconnect. Mexican immigrants who come here are not only extraordinarily hard-working but they bring their cultural values and I think they will help us to keep our Spanish alive, to keep our Spanish alive in other traditions, in the realm of art, in the realm of religion.
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In the title essay of the book, "Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana," that we're reprinting this week, you write about the phenomenon of Latinos of your generation having to learn Spanish. Do you think that is changing now?
I'd say right now it's split; there are those who haven't grown up speaking the language and it just takes too much energy to speak it and they can function so well as English speakers that they just drop the ball and the other 50 percent recognize that in terms of sheer economics and job opportunities it makes sense to know a second language, to speak a second language. So we'll see how that plays out.
Your essay "Oh Holy Night" is a wonderful vignette about the religion of politics, and that theme-of politics and poetry and spirituality-winds through your work. Yet some might think poetry and politics don't usually go well together.
If you look at the experience of so many other countries, the split between poetry and politics is a weird mutation that you see mostly in the United States. Poets have always responded to their political situations with their poetry; the political situation always informs their poetry-and often at great cost. And it's not just about being a poet, like somehow that makes you special, it's about being literate. When you think of all the people in the world who are not literate, if you have the privilege to write out and speak out, it's a responsibility to do so.
You're still involved with the anti-war movement in Albuquerque?
Yes. Yes, definitely. You know, I saw a bumper sticker the other day-I'm a great fan of bumper stickers-that said: We're making enemies faster than we can kill them. I'm just fearful we're going to be in Iraq forever, and that any kind of hope for those things that make a society a civilized place-health care, education-are going to be dashed because of what the war is costing us. And we're certainly not going to achieve national security in that way if kids are going without health care, without a good education. These issues are so connected that whatever work you're doing you also have to be working to stop this war.
What's your next project?
I'm working on what looks like another novel. I'm scared to death to say that, though, so they are inter-related short stories, but it may well morph into a novel. And of course I'm always reading poetry and always writing it down, a metaphor here and a simile there.
And you teach.
I teach a workshop with Anya Achtenberg, "Writing for Social Change." We get people in all fields, from the trenches, nurses to activists, who are looking for ways to express their vision for what they'd like to see in the world. We believe that writing can be a way to both personal and political empowerment. We look at other writers from around the world who have, in response to their time and in response to their historical moment, have had to speak out because they felt they had no choice. And then we give practical ways to get into the question of 'what is it that you most need to say?' When you can get people to identify that then you've got people who have the power to go out and change the world-or at least their corner of it. And improve their writing while they're at it.
