by PC Muñoz
At a recent event for my friends in the Quinteto Latino universe, I performed a completely reimagined, solo version of my piece “Legacy”, a meditation on the mental and spiritual residue of colonialism.
The piece has a long journey. It was first published in the early 90s as a poem in a journal called MoonRabbit Review, and then again in my 1995 chapbook Half-Truths. Later, I recorded a version with Kulintang master/NEA National Heritage Fellow Danny Kalanduyan, and performed a musically modified version of it at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley with percussionist Jason Jong. In the past decade I have been incorporating the text into various iterations of my multi-media performance piece Half-Breed. For this recent performance for Quinteto Latino I arranged it for Slapstick and voice, which brought out some interesting nuances in the recitation. I am currently planning to record this new solo arrangement and release the text as a standalone card and include a QR code to access the audio. Look for that piece of art in early 2023. In the meantime, you can read the current version (it remains in progress) below. I definitely and perhaps obviously was thinking about Guahan and my own family when I wrote it; I had just come back from a trip there when I began writing it. However, over the years I have found that the piece resonates with folks of many backgrounds and instances/experiences of colonialism.
“Legacy”
i am standing on the point where my forefathers fought
and if singular moments live on
the atoms and cells undisturbed through time
psychically tangible with the right will
then there are one million sacred moments in my being this evening
rage and euphoria
disgust and desire
the best kind of love and the worst sort of spite
half and half
conquerors and priests with surnames like mine
look out upon the natives
half-civilized, they say
half-savage
they trade the culture for the cross
as i watch,
clutching a rosary half-heartedly
i am witness to every lost custom and word
helpless as i watch these once mighty remnants
drifting
floating
slipping
into lost caverns
of history and time
to be only possibly
half-remembered
i remain standing
half-bitter
half-moved
exhausted
tears in eyes
pit in stomach
the legacy of this vision
in my name
and on my soul
forever
Illustration of a pre-Spanish Chamoru latte settlement by David Lujan Sablan
