Only in America
could I flip through the slick pages
of LIFE
and find the only Chicanos I have ever seen
grace that magazine
portrayed in living color
sprawled dead in a San Ysidro, California street
At their local McDonalds restaurant
an angry white unemployed gunman
went postal
had target practice
on seventeen young chicanos and mexicanos
who were caught
waiting for a fast food lunch
and were treated
with a long siesta
on a sunny California late afternoon
later that week
the townspeople held a candlelight march
down the street in front of that McDonald’s
demanded that the site be torn down
and a neighborhood park be created
in their memory
instead of reopening the
gunshot riddled restaurant
and the festering wounds
and the sad part is
how the lives of these seventeen
anonymous chicanos
were swept out of the news
in the time
it took
to burn a hamburger
in the drive-thru lane
I Didn't Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin: Three Decades of Hispanic Writing, Paperback
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