Chicanos hear conquest's echo in quandaries about language

National Catholic Reporter, July 3, 1998 by Demetria Martinez

In April, I was invited to the University of Granada in Spain for a conference on Chicano literature. I read from my novel, Mother Tongue (set in New Mexico during the sanctuary movement) -which ironically has been translated into languages I can never even hope to comprehend. I read from the Spanish edition, stumbling over a word or two, but grateful to have come full circle, welcomed by young students hungry to know about the reality of their distant cousins.

I spoke of the painful ironies: that my work arises from my consciousness as a daughter of the genocide visited upon the New World (not to mention a daughter of Jewish ancestors forced out of Catholic Spain during the Inquisition). My dream, I said, is that one day all Chicanos would be fluent in English, Spanish and at least one indigenous language. I believe that in this way we will come to a greater wholeness, spiritually and intellectually, our tongues intact and our truths tumbling out into the world.