Toro 1 Struggles of being Latino When I was assigned to read this poem, I expected it to be boring and not understand it like most of the poems I have read. A lot of poems use many metaphors or literary meanings, but this poem does not. It is quite easy to read and understand. I love the message that it gives. When I read the Puerto Rican Obituary by Pedro Pietri, I was surprised. I did not expect it to be so realistic of the discrimination that Puerto Ricans live. This poem talks about the many injustices Puerto Ricans had and still suffer in the United States. Injustice in employment, health, education, criminal justice, voting rights and so much more. It also talks about how a community is united, but at the same time divided by the hatred they feel for one another. They were so filled with jealousy that they never saw what they had. They were blind by the hate. I love how it did not paint the American Dream as a paradise as they do on the island. And because of that dream, a lot of people move out. The poem reminded me of the earthquakes and Hurricane María in Puerto Rico. A lot of my friends moved to the United States, and when they got there it was not what they imagined. They wanted to move back. I remember that some of them had trouble with the change of language and environments. They felt out of place, they did not fit in. Some of them called me crying and telling me they wanted to move back home. This broke my heart, I wanted to be able to help them but could not. When I reached the end of the poem, it made me realize how many Latinos living in the States lose their roots. Specially in the part that says “Aqui se habla español”. It demonstrates that they cannot speak Spanish freely because they will get discriminated against, they are obligated to only speak English. Even by only speaking English they get judged because of their accent. My family and I had a situation where we got Toro 2 criticized for speaking Spanish. We were on a cruise ship, and it had Aruba as a destination. We had a tour of the island, but there were only two families on that tour. A white family and my family, that we are Latino. While we were on the tour, my dad saw a weird lizard and had questions about it so, he asked our tour guide, but he asked him in Spanish because our tour guide knew how to speak it. The tour guide, my parents, and I were talking in Spanish about the lizard, nothing related to the tour. Then the woman from the other family interrupted us and told our tour guide that he could not speak Spanish with us because on the official page it said that the tour was in English. Mind you that the whole tour was done in English, we just talked in Spanish for about five minutes, and it was about a lizard. Her husband stopped her and apologized for her behavior. We experienced that discrimination only by speaking five minutes our language imagines what it would be like if we spoke Spanish freely. The poem also talks about how unreal the American Dream is. Puerto Ricans leave after that dream, and they kept trying to accomplish the promised land that they were guaranteed. In Puerto Rico the American Dream is idealized, it is painted as the best thing in the world but in real life, it is not. It is sad to see how they lose their lives and time after that fantasy. To prove what Pedro Pietri was saying, there is a video on YouTube called “Why the American Dream is a Myth” which explains the United States system, which makes the American Dream impossible. The American dream establishes that anyone who works hard enough can get rich, but it is not true. Living poor is more expensive because they cannot afford to buy on a big scale, which makes the product cheaper. The poor cannot take a loan or a credit card because it requires to have good credit. The poem and the video show us that what Puerto Ricans are being promised of having in the States is fake, no matter how hard they work. Overall, I like this poem, and I think is something all Toro 3 Latinos should read because it shows and describes reality. Sadly, this is our reality, but it is not something we can control. Toro 4 Citations: Pietri, Pedro. “Puerto Rican Obituary”. Selected Poetry. City Lights Books, 2015. “The American Dream is a Myth”. YouTube, uploaded by CollegeHumor, 12 August 2019, https://youtu.be/TPcmCpbiDiw.
