For hundreds of years my people have lived on nothing but masa, tales handed down from our elders, and the blood of our enemies. We have stared in the eyes of a thousand cactus plants only to realize that these plants had no eyes. We have have seen our Cuban brothers and sisters dance to the charanga all day and all night and we have given them our women and our women did not like that part very much, but they did it anyway because we are men and the music . . well, it lives inside us all - it is nuestra cosa. So, please think of this before you post your 'ranchero hops' - think of the timbales whose skins were stained with gore and tears and still, laughter. Think of my father and his father - men who built accordions with their own hands. Men who smelted their own bellows year after year until their lungs and hands were black. Si, they also worked in the coal mines but don't change the subject. The gringo is so wily like that! Think of this before you play your technomusic discos in the fancy night clubs with the women and the fur coats and the spinach tortillas and men with brown rice dangling from their impeccable mustaches. You dance to your beats while my people, my beautiful brown people, are crying throughout the valleys of the Sierra Madre and in the back alleys of an unnamed metropolitan area. They are waiting to run . . to run . . into the arms . . of America.
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For hundreds of years my people have lived on nothing but masa, tales handed down from our elders, and the blood of our enemies. We have stared in the eyes of a thousand cactus plants only to realize that these plants had no eyes. We have have seen our Cuban brothers and sisters dance to the charanga all day and all night and we have given them our women and our women did not like that part very much, but they did it anyway because we are men and the music . . well, it lives inside us all - it is nuestra cosa. So, please think of this before you post your 'ranchero hops' - think of the timbales whose skins were stained with gore and tears and still, laughter. Think of my father and his father - men who built accordions with their own hands. Men who smelted their own bellows year after year until their lungs and hands were black. Si, they also worked in the coal mines but don't change the subject. The gringo is so wily like that! Think of this before you play your technomusic discos in the fancy night clubs with the women and the fur coats and the spinach tortillas and men with brown rice dangling from their impeccable mustaches. You dance to your beats while my people, my beautiful brown people, are crying throughout the valleys of the Sierra Madre and in the back alleys of an unnamed metropolitan area. They are waiting to run . . to run . . into the arms . . of America.
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