Whatever you do, dont judge my home: Poetic Homelands and Diasporic Identities in the

Funerary Poems of Miguel Piero and Javier Zamora

William Palomo

To know its history the freeloaders, the beggars, the potheads,

One must extract blood from a worm Salvadorian sons of bitches,
One must cry at the foot of an equestrian the ones who barely made it back,
figure. the ones who were a bit luckier,
Ignore so many empty texts the eternal illegals,
Written with lies and ink and with bestial make-all, sell-all, eat-all,
feet. the first to pull out a knife,
the saddest sad people in the world,
Here, in El Salvador, one must say things my countrymen,
heart split open and with cojones. my brothers.

Chronicle by Jos Roberto Cea1 Poem of Love by Roque Dalton,

translated by Luis Gonzalez Serrano.

1
Authors translation of the original Spanish.
 2

To the left, find Jos Roberto Cea. Cea, who saw the search for national identity as the

lifes work of his generation. Cea, one of the few writers of his generation who refused to leave

El Salvador, despite the threats of violence and opportunities abroad. To the right, find Roque

Dalton. Dalton, El Salvadors most beloved poet, who lived the politics of his poetry as a

guerrilla soldier on the front lines. Dalton, destined to die a martyr and face execution in the

name of equality. These canonical representations of Salvadoran literature encapsulate the

difficult relationship Salvadorans have with their history and the world. To the right, Dalton

addresses a litany of stereotypes that follow Salvadorans, stereotypes that one would expect

Dalton to reject but that he instead embraces with his last lines my countrymen, / my brothers.

To the left, Cea describes what it takes to know El Salvador, to research and write about it in

the face of this oppression, where the scholar finds so many empty texts, red with racism,

written with lies and ink and with bestial feet. To study El Salvador takes stalwart resistance to

the almost irreparable sense of loss and national deficiency centerpiece to Salvadoran identity

and a refusal to submit to the disparaging ideologies of colonizers.

Ceas reference to speaking heart split open and with cojones captures what I call el

espiritu salvatrucho of Salvadorans, or salvatrucho spirit2. Daltons celebration of the lowest,

saddest sad Salvadorans alludes to their espiritu salvatrucho as well. The espiritu salvatrucho is

that seemingly indomitable spirit of survival Salvadorans carry. Being Salvadoran means to

survive, not without our wounds, hardly with grace, but alas to survive. Salvadoran novelist

Horacio Moya describes this spirit of survival reflected in Salvadoran literature as the same spirit

that drove Salvadorans to push through such a brutal civil war and that continues to drive

2
Salvatrucho/a is a nickname for Salvadorans. Here, I use the masculine form to distinguish between the
transnational gang La Mara Salvatrucha. La Mara Salvatrucha does utilize a similar conceit that I take on in my
coining however. In Salvadoran Spanish, a mara comes from marabunta, a ferocious type of ant or an especially
rowdy clique. The name La Mara Salvatrucha calls upon the association of Salvadorans as hardcore survivors.
 3

Salvadorans into the borders of the U.S. at such an alarming rate. To create Salvadoran literature

takes espiritu salvatrucho because the countrys condition has forced many of our writers into

exile or to face execution. To study El Salvador is to study a country the size of a scratch, as

Salvadoran poet laureate Alfonso Kijaduras puts it, with the complexity of an atom, a country

whose internal contradictions and incessant violence trap it in a state of pandemonium and whose

national consciousness is still plagued by the shackles of colonialism and the memory of

genocide. As such, Salvadoran literature necessitates a postcolonial lens. The scholar of

Salvadoran literature must face the blistering sociopolitical realities of the country without

reducing its texts to a sociological or ethnographical enterprise and robbing Salvadorans of their

triumphs, humanity, and depth. In the face of so much shoddy scholarship and empty texts,

Salvadoran literature has had to fight for survival. Despite the political turbulence of Salvadoran

history and its scholarship, Pleitez Vela notes that in El Salvador, there never ceased to exist an

interest in literature and that even in the most extreme momentsof massacre and civil

warthey continued writing (Literatura, Anlisis de situacin de la expresin artstica en El

Salvador 20-21)3. Salvadoran literature is the literature of survival, and, like all art, it deserves

to be evaluated for the labor it accomplishes.

Moreover, the scholar of Salvadoran literature faces the added challenge that every

marginalized literature faces: namely, the burden of needing to justify ones existence within the

U.S. academy. Even among Latin American and Latina/o studies, scholars specializing in

Salvadoran literature and issues are scarce (Boland El Salvador). Currently, there exists only

one Central American studies program in the entire US, housed at California State University

Northridge, and it only operates on the undergraduate level. As Latin American studies scholar

Arturo Arias suggests, Salvadorans and other Central Americans are on the murky margins, not
3
My translation of the original Spanish.
 4

even of the Anglo, North American, or South American center but of the margins itself,

particularly on the margins of Mexican-Americans and other larger Hispanic groups (171).

Of the scholarly work that exists on Salvadoran literature, much of it fails to adequately

analyze the complexity of the Salvadoran experience, sometimes due to scholars condescending

tone and assumptions. For example, scholarly reviews of Salvadoran literature generally dismiss

much of the Salvadoran tradition as secondary to and unequal participants in European and

American modes. Boland provides the insight that El Salvador has not left behind many

significant schools or movements (El Salvador). Like most scholars, he places emphasis on

how El Salvador has followed the literary trends of Europe (Erickson 150; Pleitez Vela Anlisis

de Situacin de la Expression Artstica en El Salvador 31; Hernandez 129; El Salvador). At

times, Salvadorans themselves internalize this sense of deficiency most severely. In an essay

interrogating Salvadoran identity, Salvadoran Rafael Rodriguez Diaz goes so far to declare that

in El Salvador there is no music, no poetry; a thing that perhaps wouldnt sound so ugly if we

could just tie ourselves to the tail of the great musical and poetic currents of Latin America

(149).4 Diazs reflections are remnants of colonialism and do not adequately reflect the

contributions Salvadorans have made to the literary landscapes of Latin America.

Even compliments about El Salvadors literary history tend to contain a hint of

condescension. Boland remarks that El Salvador is characterized by small clusters of writers

who stand out like beacons amongst their contemporaries, implying that among Salvadoran

writers the majority of work is lackluster and there are only a few worthwhile reads, a situation

that actually reflects the majority of artistic production in any location (Boland El Salvador).

In a contrasting but similarly patronizing statement, Spanish scholar Marcelino Melendez y

Pelayo marvels at how a country as small as El Salvador should be able to lay claim to so many
4
My translation of the original Spanish.
 5

fine poets (qtd. in Bolano El Salvador, Poetry of). Scholars seem to be especially concerned

with the diminutive size of El Salvador whenever they write about ita move that borders on

emasculationeven though it is more than twice the size of Puerto Rico, whose literature,

though still marginalized, occupies a larger space than Salvadoran literature in Latina/o studies.

On another note, Gonzalez comments that "paradoxically, perhaps, Central America is also the

home of many outstanding figures in the avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s"

(Central America). Gonzalezs comment is only paradoxical if one were to assume Central

America could not produce outstanding figures in the first place. Moreover, in the 1940s,

Erickson declared El Salvador a fertile field for literary investigation while calling Salvadoran

writers slow in following the historical trend of prose-writing [and exploration of folklore] in

Central America (154, 151). Instead of simply acknowledging that they began following literary

trends later, Ericksons use of the word slow assumes that Salvadoran writers lack intelligence

and prudence. These scholars assume inferiority on the part of Salvadorans, a move which

reflects their colonial attitude.

Only two of these major reviewers, Tania Pleitez Vela and Ana Patricia Rodriguez, cover

Salvadoran literature after the civil war. Consequentially, not much of the research takes into

account the last thirty or so years of literary development. Not surprisingly, the civil war had

profound effects on Salvadorans, including the death of 75,000 citizens and the migration of 30%

of the countrys people into the US, Canada, and elsewhere (Allison; Machuca 4).5 While the

Salvadoran experience is multifarious, the development of a transnational Salvadoran identity

and experience has become a uniting characteristic for Salvadorans everywhere. Dyrness found

5
One-fifth of Salvadorans now reside in the United States (Machuca 8; Pleitez Vela Theater Under my Skin 40).
Further studies suggest that 90% of Salvadorans abroad live exclusively in the U.S., making up somewhere
between 2.0 and 2.7 million Salvadorans residing in the United States (Machuca 7; Brown and Patten; Delugan
974). Salvadorans, once one of the smallest immigrant communities in the US, are now about to be the third largest
Hispanic group in the country (Lopez and Gonzalez-Barrera).
 6

that Salvadoran high school seniors from both sides of El Salvadors class and ideological divide

make reference to the Salvadoran diaspora when asked to define what does being Salvadoran

mean to you? (76).6 In turn, Rodriguez has found that many Salvadorans migrate to San

Francisco, Washington DC, and other Salvadoran centers in the U.S. in an effort to maintain

material, affective, and symbolic connections to their homeland and produce significant social

networks, cultures, and identities in their new home-sites (22).

In my own work, I complicate our understanding of the transnational Latina/o by

comparing and contrasting how different U.S. Hipsanic groups construct a transnational identity.

In this essay, I elucidate our understanding of transnational Salvadoran identity by comparing

and contrasting it with transnational Puerto Rican identity. In particular, I use two poems to

explore the effects the relatively easy-going acceptance of a transnational Salvadorans into the

Salvadoran national imaginary and the rejection of transnational Puerto Ricans from the Puerto

Rican national imaginary has on these writers connection to place: the first is Puerto Rican poet

Miguel Pieros earth-shaking A Lower East Side Poem; the second is Salvadoran poet Javier

Zamoras beautiful Instructions for my funeral means Estero de Jaltepec. In particular, I

explore how both these poets create a third space, which is neither homeland or abroad, to

express their cultural identities. I follow this exploration with an analysis of masculinity in both

poems to explore gaps in their portrayals of transnational identity. I have chosen to contrast the

work of a Nuyorican poet in particular because, as Juan Flores states, Puerto Ricans in the U.S.

experience a cultural in-between-ness, much like that experienced by Salvadoran immigrants

(55). Furthermore, both poems take on a similar conceit in that they provide instructions to

readers about how to commemorate their lives and deaths. Ultimately, I argue that Zamora

6
99% of upper-class Salvadoran high school students have family living in the U.S. and 76% of working class
Salvadoran high school students had family living in the US, suggesting that Salvadorans are well-connected to life
outside of the mainland (Dyrness 76).
 7

expresses a dynamic relationship to place; in contrast, Piero expresses a more rigid relationship

to place, one firmly rooted in NYCs Lower East Side; both, however, find the truest expression

of their identity in a third space created by poetry. Thus, both poems reflect the differences in

transnational Puerto Rican and Salvadoran identity found in Latina/o literary discourse. Of

course, both of these poems are by no means wholly representative of their respective cultures

and only provide helpful glimpses to their communities. Moreover, I do not intend to favor either

conception of identity, only provide close readings that will illuminate the intersections and

differences between Salvadoran and Puerto Rican transnational identity.

First, Miguel Pieros A Lower East Side Poem embraces a singular notion of identity

strongly rooted in the Lower East Side. Here, the reader will find no familiar tropes of Puerto

Rican culture, no Spanish or Spanglish. In fact, the only place Piero alludes to Puerto Rico is to

negate it: I dont want to be buried in Puerto Rico, he says (A Lower East Side Poem).

Instead, he strongly affirms his local identity, proclaiming so here I am, look at me / I stand as

proud as you can see / pleased to be from the Lower East (A Lower East Side Poem). He

further emphasizes this point by calling himself a dweller of prison time and by proclaiming

this concrete tomb is my home (A Lower East Side Poem, emphasis mine). Just like a

tomb or prison, this is a home Piero does not feel like he can leave. Furthermore, his

identity isnt complicated by conflicting identities. Piero boldly states theres no other place

for me to be, a statement so direct it requires little argumentative force on my part to suggest

that Piero does in fact feel unconflicted in his desire to be one with the Lower East Side (A

Lower East Side Poem).

The ritual of Pieros death fully embraces the vulgarity associated with the Lower East

Side as a part of his new identity. While others resist stereotypes associated with the Lower East
 8

by rejecting them outright or trying to rise above them, Piero finds in them strength, a testing

ground where to belong to survive you gotta be strong (A Lower East Side Poem). The

harsher the environment, the stronger Piero becomes, so it makes sense that Piero would revel

in the vulgarity of his surroundings. A thief, a junkie Ive been / committed every known sin,

Piero recounts, making it seem as if no place could possibly be as rough as the Lower East and,

therefore, no place could possibly be more like home (A Lower East Side Poem). The Lower

East Side becomes a firm, if chaotic and violent, place where he has earned his keep and that

now surpasses other aspects of his identity. The macho attitude of the quotes above suggests that

one of the identities Piero finds is a masculinein fact, a hyper-masculineidentity. However,

Piero nuances this masculinity by communing with some of societys most emasculated people

in the Lower East. Piero tells us that the faggots and freaks will all get high / on the ashes that

have been scattered / thru the Lower East Side (A Lower East Side Poem). The scattering of

his ashes in the Lower East makes the speaker one with the barrio and all of its violence and

transient ecstasy. The smoking of the speakers ashes connects him with the energy, danger, and

depravity associated with drug abuse. While the use of the slur faggots can be read as an

affirmation of Pieros patriarchal attitude, the smoking of the speakers ashes by these faggots

queers the speaker and literally makes him penetrate them, become one with them, a move that

suggests he actually identifies with them. Finally, the poem ends on Pieros own rebirth as part

of the Lower East. Piero says, I wanna be near the stabbing shooting / gambling fighting and

unnatural dying / and new birth crying (Piero A Lower East Side Poem). The new birth here

signals the relentlessness of survival, a rebirth where Piero becomes one with the space of the

Lower East Side.

 9

In my thesis, I argue that Piero creates a third space, which is neither homeland or

abroad, created by poetry; although the focus on the Lower East Side in my analysis above may

appear to contradict this argument, Pieros rebirth isnt created solely through the poets

embracing of the places vulgarity. Piero begins his poem, Just once before I die / I want to

climb up on a / tenement sky / to dream my lungs out till I cry (Piero A Lower East Side

Poem). Pieros use of birth imagerythe climbing up and cryingsuggests that just once

before [he] die[s] he wants to be born, a line that implies that the vulgarity of the Lower East

Side did not permit Piero to ever be born. In other words, the Lower East Side both holds the

promise of his birth, yet foretells his premature death, his inability to dream his lungs out until

he cries. So how does Piero find rebirth in this vulgarity that longs to kill him? The answer is in

this cry, which is poetry. Piero follows his confession that he wants to be born with So let

me sing my song tonight / let me feel out of sight (Piero A Lower East Side Poem). In this

context, So is a conjunction that works much the same way as therefore. Hence, the So

suggests that it is only through poetry that Piero creates this place of meaningful rebirth, only

through poetry is Piero able to be born in the Lower East Side. This relationship to place

suggests that Pieros closest homeland is not the Lower East Side but poetry, which explains

why this poem is titled A Lower East Side Poem, instead of just The Lower East Side.

Ultimately, Pieros A Lower East Side Poem is representative of the historical tension

between Puerto Ricans in the homeland and those abroad. Puerto Rican writers in the diaspora,

huddled in places such as New York, Philadelphia, and Newark, often describe a deep frustration

with the island Puerto Rican community, who overall disenfranchised and marginalized their

diasporic Puerto Rican community. In a similar vein, Juan Flores landmark text From Bomba to

Hip-hop takes challenges to diasporic Puerto Rican identity head-on, paying special attention to
 10

the riff in collective memory that so often leaves emigrant Puerto Ricans out of the picture

(Flores 50-51). Elsewhere, Pieros work takes on this motif. For example, Pieros This Is Not

The Place Where I Was Born describes how the paradisiacal Puerto Rican motherland of

Pieros imagination, fed by fantasizing images [his] mother planted within [his] head, became

a nightmare upon his visit to the island (Piero This is not). In particular, he notes how

foreigners scream that puertorriqueos are foreigners / & have no right to claim any benefit on

the birth port / nuyoricans come in search of spiritual identity / are greeted with profanity

(Piero This is not). These lines directly call out the tension in the Puerto Rican community

in the homeland and abroad. The denial of any benefit on the birth port to puertorriqueos by

foreigners now in charge of Puerto Rico suggests that Puerto Rico, like the Lower East Side,

does not permit Piero to ever be born. The profanity spit in the face of nuyoricans, like the

vulgarity of the Lower East Side, disrupts Pieros spiritual quest for identity and forces him to

find recourse elsewhere, as he does in A Lower East Side Poem.

Furthermore, in This Is Not The Place Where I Was Born, Piero addresses a political

complication of Puerto Rican identity on the island: puertorriqueos inability to display a

Puerto Rican flag, to sing a patriotic tune, to talk of independence, and to fight for liberation

on the island due to the infamous gag laws (Puerto Ricos History). Piero writes,

puertorriqueos cannot assemble displaying the emblemthe Puerto Rican flag

nuyoricans are fighting & dying for in newark, lower east side / south bronx (Piero This is

not). While Piero implies that homeland puertorriqueos are unwilling to die for their

identity and do not earn their Puerto Rican identity in this passage, his allusion to the gag laws

makes another point that needs emphasis: ultimately, both the transnational Puerto Rican and the

homeland Puerto Rican are victims of colonial violence. Pieros emphasis on foreigners
 11

previously demonstrates just that. Here, the repression of the flag, as an emblem of Puerto Rican

identity, also symbolizes the repression of Puerto Rican masculinity, a point that will become

clearer after my analysis of Zamoras work.

Contrasting with Pieros rigid relationship to space in A Lower East Side Poem, in

Zamoras Instructions for my funeral means Estero de Jaltepec, his Salvadoran and U.S.

identities engage one another in a sort of lyrical dance. On one hand, Zamora writes lines that

negate his U.S. identity. For instance, he asks that please no american mierdas be played at his

funeral (Pleitez Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). The poem includes no references to places in

the U.S.. On the other hand, Zamoras poem clearly borrows from U.S. pop culture with the

phrase dress to impress (Pleitez Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). And most importantly,

English, the dominant language in the US, has penetrated Zamoras psyche enough that his most

intimate language, poetry, is now largely in English, suggesting that Zamora is now inseparable

from the U.S. aspects of his identity.

Zamora, unlike Piero though, strongly embraces his homeland identity. Zamora roots

himself firmly in the Salvadoran tradition by alluding to Como t, the most celebrated poem

by Roque Dalton. Furthermore, he asks that his body be wrapped in blue-white-and-blue and

burned in his Abuelitas garden (Pleitez Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). The blue-white-

and-blue is clearly a reference to El Salvadors flag. Zamora doesnt blindly embrace a patriotic

Salvadoran identity, however. He follows the allusion to El Salvadors flag with the parenthetical

phrase [ a la mierda patriotism ] (Pleitez Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). A la mierda

patriotism is a sentiment that could be interpreted as and patriotism can go to hell or and

fuck patriotism. Zamora drives this point home when he asks that they wrap / my pito in the

panties of the wives, / daughters, and granddaughters of presidents, / so I dream of pisar (Pleitez
 12

Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). This line is not just a patriarchal affirmation of the speakers

virulence or dominance over women; its also a golpe de estado, a more literal fucking of the

system. Another less obvious move Zamora makes to push against his Salvadoran identity is his

wishes that there please be no priests, no crosses, no flowers at his funeral (Pleitez Vela

Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). Traditionally, El Salvador has a strong Catholic heritage; alas, its

the only country in the world literally named after the Savior. Zamoras suggestion that there be

no priests, no crosses therefore can be read as a reaction against part of El Salvadors colonial

heritage. While Zamora embraces his Salvadoran heritage, he rejects the legacy of its

colonialism, its problematic religiosity and patriotism.

The only way to make sense of these contradictory impulses for and against his

Salvadoran and U.S. identities is to study the place of the poem: el estero de jaltepec. On the

surface, Zamora situates the action of the poem in the space of El Salvador by emphasizing

abuelitas garden and the estero de jaltepec. The estero de jaltepec, however, complicates the

place of the poem as a singularly Salvadoran place. An estero is an estuary, a place where river

meets sea, where freshwater and salt water mix. Thereby, Zamora places the action of his poem

in a place of leaving, a border, a non-space where both his cultural identities combine. The last

lines of the poem emphasize the unity Zamora experiences here, not the contradiction. He writes

Read / Como t and toss pieces of bread. / As the motorboat circles, / open the flask / so Im

breathed, so Im bread, / so Im drunkthen, forget me / and let medrown (Pleitez Vela

Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256-258). The mixing of Zamoras ashes in the flask with the bread,

alcohol, and water alludes to the purification achieved through the atonement of Christ. This

ritual reverses Zamoras initial rejection of Christian imagery and recreates it on his own terms.

Here, Zamora finds purity when united with the estero de jaltepec, perhaps the only place where
 13

his identity finds harmony with itself despite its conflicting axes. Here, one must also remember

that the most famous line in Roque Daltons Como t is poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

Therefore, the act of throwing pieces of bread also comes to symbolize the spreading of poetry.

Ultimately, Zamora resurrects as the embodiment of poetry. Similar to Piero, the third space,

the rebirth Zamora creates is one rooted in poetry.

Zamora illustrates a key difference between diasporic Salvadorans and Puerto Ricans.

Exiled and emigrant Salvadoran writers have enjoyed a relatively hospitable acceptance into

Salvadoran literary discourse. An emblem of this acceptance is Theater Under my Skin, a

bilingual anthology of Salvadoran poetry published early in 2014 that unites writers in the

homeland with writers abroad. The anthology has had success in El Salvador and has been

received well by the countrys literary champions, including Miguel Huezo Mixco, a Salvadoran

intellectual whose only critique of the anthology was that it didnt embrace its transnational

identity enough. Mixco notes that

In the first part, entitled Fobiapolis, poets who live in El Salvador are grouped

together. The second part, entitled Immigrant Blues, unites poets who reside in the

United States. Will the day come when these anthologies of Salvadoran literature stop

organizing themselves by their prospective territories and the names of the poets from

San Francisco, Santa Tecla, Washington DC or San Salvador will appear interwoven and

differentiated solely by their voice? (Mixco)7

So far, it appears that Salvadorans transnational networks have saved their compatriots abroad

from the rejection Nuyorican writers faced. As this is only the first published anthology of

Salvadoran literature that incorporates transnational Salvadorans and the first generation of

Salvadoran writers to mature in the US, perhaps it is only too early to tell.
7
My translation of the original Spanish.
 14

For instance, one of the factors complicating the transnational Salvadoran narrative as

Zamora has articulated it is its emphasis on masculinity. Recall how Zamora embraces his

Salvadoran identity by asking that the reader wrap his body in the blue-white-blue of the

Salvadoran flag. This image parallels his suggestion that the reader wrap / my pito in the panties

of the wives, / daughters, and granddaughters of presidents, / so I dream of pisar (Pleitez Vela

Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). Wrapping his body in the Salvadoran flag is thus a way of

penetrating El Salvador, as in intercourse, and becoming one with the nationa distinctly

masculine way of imagining transnational identity. In the poem, Zamora portrays women in the

all-too-familiar mother/whore dichotomy. Here, the only women to appear are Zamoras

abuelita, who plays the role of the maternal figure, and the presidents wives and offspring, who

Zamora ultimately conspires to fuck. By dreaming of fucking the wives, daughters, and

granddaughters of presidents, Zamora imagines regaining power and masculinity within the

Salvadoran imaginary for generations to come, a power and masculinity lost in the oppression of

colonialism, tyranny, and exile. Notably, this negotiation is between men, between Zamora and

the presidents, and the women serve only as things to conquer, like pieces of land. In order for

Zamora to regain this power and masculinity, these women have to be women of the elites, of the

presidents, and as such, they are not fellow transnational Salvadoreas or women from the

working and peasant classes of El Salvador. Moreover, Zamora doesnt appear to have other

recourses to regaining this power without resorting to an alternative masculinity. While it

obviously would be unfair to suggest that Zamora only views women as mothers or whores

based on his portrayal of women in one poem, a true reading of transnational Salvadoran identity

requires a feminist intervention.

 15

Notably, Zamoras focus on masculinity parallels the narrative that the Salvadoran

government promotes in general about its migrants. As Ana Rodriguez notes, transnational

Salvadorans have been mythologized in monuments, songs, and other public displays as

hermanos lejanos or faraway brethren (25). Of course, any group of people with at least one

man are referred to as masculine in Spanish, but its an affirmation of phallocentrism

nonetheless. Furthermore, Rodriguez goes on to note that at all levels, the notions and image of

el hermano lejano are inflected by gender difference: migrants as males, reinforcing notions

of the males as breadwinners, the male as adventurer, the male as the architect of the national

imaginary (qtd in Rodriguez 25). Rodriguezs analysis calls forth new questions that would

need to be addressed in order to fully understand how Salvadorans abroad negotiate their

transnational identities; namely, what are the gender differences in transnational identities and

how do feminine transnational identities compare to masculine ones? The aforementioned

anthology of Salvadoran poetry, Theater Under my Skin, includes nine homeland Salvadoran

poets, five of which are women, and nine transnational poets, four of which are women. The

equal representation of women in the anthology and the almost equal representation of women in

the transnational section is groundbreaking because men have traditionally dominated

Salvadoran literature. The two excerpts with which I began this essay illustrate that with

Daltons emphasis on the countrymen and brothers and with Ceas emphasis on speaking

with cojones. As of now, men have dominated transnational Salvadoran literature as well.

Zamora acknowledged that to me in an e-mail:

for the question you asked last time, if I knew any Salvi muxeres writing in the US, fijate

que no. I've yet to meet one or know of one, except for Alexandra Lytton Regalado,
 16

Leticia Hernandez, and everyone that's already in that anthology. It's weird how that's

gendered, or my own gender has gotten in the way of noticing. (Zamora)

Interestingly, Zamora was able to name emerging Salvadoran male writers who were not

included in the anthology. Even more interestingly, I never posed this question to Zamora. In the

email, I asked him if he could name any Salvadoran-American fiction writers, and he responded

with this statement concerning gender, a response that suggests that he recognizes the blinding

effects of male privilege and has meditated upon it lately. Daltons, Ceas, and Zamoras

blindness to the presence of Salvadoreas in the aforementioned poems suggests that more work

needs to be done analyzing the literature of Salvadoran women, especially transnational women,

in order to fully appreciate nuances in homeland and transnational Salvadoran identities.

Looking at Piero, I cannot help but note the fractured image of femininity he portrays as

well. In Pieros poems, women are invisible, portrayed only in the all-too-familiar

mother/whore dichotomy as well. In A Lower East Side Poem, Piero alludes to women only

implicitly, presumably somewhere in the pimps bars or possibly one of the freaks besides

the homosexual men of the Lower East Side (A Lower East Side Poem). Meanwhile,

feminized attributes lead to assassination since you cant be shy less without request / someone

will scatter your ashes thru / the Lower East Side, a line that suggests no feminized individual

could survive in the Lower East (A Lower East Side Poem). In This Is Not The Place Where I

Was Born, Piero alludes to femininity in the form of mother and, in turn, motherland. Pieros

utopic childhood vision of Puerto Rico came from the fantasizing images my mother planted /

within my head / the shadows of her childhood recounted to me (This Is Not The Place

Where I Was Born). The loss of Puerto Rico for Piero reads as a coming of age, where

childhood is lost through the loss of a mother(land), a mourning over the loss of the symbolically
 17

femininean exile on multiple levels. Indeed, Pieros idealistic descriptions of Puerto Rico

illustrate a way of relating that would have put the inhabitants of the Lower East Side in danger

for being too feminine or childlike:

where people left their doors open at night

where courting for loved ones was not treated over-confidentially

where childrens laughter did not sound empty & savagely alive

with self destruction (This Is Not Where I Was Born)

In the loss of these open, trusting, and ultimately what Piero sees as feminine and childlike

ways of being, he takes on the mask of masculinity. Due the repression of Puerto Rican

masculinity, symbolically represented through the repression of the flag, the masculinity Piero

embraces emerges doubly fierce. As A Lower East Side Poem suggests, hyper-masculinity is a

strategy for survival, a strategy that Piero embraces as the only other option is death. This exilic

masculinity protects itself by rejecting femininity. While Piero largely seems to embrace this

masculinity without any qualms, he subverts it when he longs to be born, to cry. Although

the cry is usually interpreted as a masculine act, the enunciation of language, it can also be

literally read as the feminized and childlike act of weeping. This cry serves for Piero as the

only push against the hyper-masculinity hes trapped in, the only way to access lost femininity,

and ultimately the only way he can create a third space where his spirit can dream [his] lungs

out.

Both Zamora and Piero dream for this lost femininity, repressed masculinity,

disenfranchised humanity (A Lower East Poem; Pleitez Vela Teatro Bajo mi Piel 256). This

dream expresses profound hope amidst the trauma of warfare, exile, and subjugation that is

colonization. Overall, transnational Salvadoran and Puerto Rican identities are, of course, diverse
 18

and the factors contributing to these manifestations all the more convoluted. However, Pieros

poem reflects the tear that sometimes occurs between Puerto Ricans in the homeland and abroad,

and Zamoras poem is demonstrative of the transnational identity that connects many

Salvadorans to their homelands. Both demonstrate different ways masculine identities are

salvaged and feminine identities are mourned through the third space of poetry. The creation of

the third space fits well with what other writers have suggested about transnational Latinos and

Latinas connection to place. When discussing salseros relationship to place, Flores found that

salsa is the salseros homeland and self-validation (72). Roman de la Campa suggests likewise

of Nuyorican poets, who breathe a futuristic ontology, an unexpectedly refreshing sense of

belonging nowhere, except in the verbal agility and poetic movement we have come to expect

from border artists" (378). Transnational Salvadoran writers share this characteristic as well;

Tania Pleitez Vela, editor of Theater Under my Skin, notes how she found that those working on

the anthology were passionate about the project because it would give them a sense of

belonging, not to a country, but to a non-location, an imagined place rooted in poetry (Teatro

Bajo mi Piel 69).

In future research, I seek to connect the work of masculine, feminine, and queer

transnational Salvadorans to develop a more complete picture of how transnational Salvadoran

identities develop. I also seek to connect the work of Salvadoran writers abroad with those in the

homeland to demonstrate how both these groups of writers find their Salvadoran identity in a

third space, like that experienced by Zamora. A great part of my work will also include revisiting

Salvadoran literature throughout history and revitalizing the empty texts that have dominated

Salvadoran scholarship. In conjunction with this work, I seek to contextualize Salvadoran

literature in relation to Latin American, Latina/o, North American and other literatures. My
 19

ultimate goal is to support the work of Latina/o and Latin American scholars and develop a

stronger discourse community on Central American and Salvadoran literature in the U.S. and El

Salvador. If you find me weeping in front of any statues, do not be alarmed.

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---.El Salvador, Poetry of." The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton:
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Lopez, Mark Hugo and Gonzalez-Barrera, Ana. Salvadorans may soon replace Cubans as third-
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