Ramón López
Eduardo Arocho was born and raised in Humboldt Park, wrapped in a Puerto Ricanness so constant and familiar that it stirred neither curiosity nor questions. His parents spoke Spanish at all times, as did everyone in the neighborhood, the church, and the school. His neighborhood—Puerto Rican and African American—felt like a self-contained universe. His father, annexationist in politics yet deeply proud of his hometown of Moca, raised Eduardo to believe without doubt that Puerto Rico was part of the United States. He saw no need to know more than what he already knew, unaware that his people had their own history and rich culture. With that mindset, he joined the ROTC and the school’s steel band, and upon graduating from Roberto Clemente High School, he was ready to enlist in the Navy.
His plans changed when Northeastern University admitted him. There, he encountered African American activists and poets, and felt the pull of radical politics. Yet he still wasn’t stirred by any urge for Puerto Rican affirmation.
One day, he read a letter in the newspaper by a Puerto Rican woman opposing the installation of an Albizu Campos statue in Humboldt Park. Her annexationist stance and her insulting comments about the neighborhood unsettled Arocho, and he decided to investigate the controversy that was shaking the community. On his own, he found and read Albizu Campos: The Revolutionary by Federico Ribes Tovar. The book’s opening words etched themselves into his memory:
“I come from the hurricane,” said the Maestro once. He was born of the hurricane, that native meteorological force, and with similar force, he sweeps across Borinquen, razing, destroying, and purifying the mephitic air created by colonialism in Puerto Rico.
Eduardo Arocho, who at twenty had already begun writing poems—about love, gangs, and other matters—who had discovered Black protest poetry and was already reciting on stage, now produced a new poem that became a revelation of his Puerto Ricanness. In a cemetery near his university, it gave him a vision as profound as Corretjer’s in the Tower of Ciales:
He came from the hurricane,
“El Maestro” said,
as he stood overlooking
the children in the dirt
with a calm
and peaceful eye
and when he opened
his mouth
to sing their names
a truthful hurricane
of words came
storming and destroying
the lies created by the palace white
purifying with tropical rains
the colonized minds
of the Colorful Children of Borinquen.
Thus began his crossing, his journey to and from the Island, and Arocho found a voice of his own, not borrowed, infusing his words with the sounds and colors of his neighborhood’s people. The poem kept growing, and with Albizu came the sky, the sun, the sea, plena music, and the rainbow. Though it was harder for people to access their erased history—hidden from textbooks, newspapers, and television—Albizu arrived, and the statue controversy became a vessel into which people poured knowledge never before shared. Much was learned about Puerto Rican history. In the end, the children of Humboldt Park still waited alone, hoping the bronze Albizu would stand with them in their vibrant Boricua neighborhood.
Eduardo had never realized his own pride in his neighborhood until this moment. He began declaiming the poem in public, raising his voice and shouting hard so everyone could hear what so many failed to see. Shouting twice as loud, because there aren’t many Puerto Rican public poets in Chicago.
From the start, he was a performer. A fellow poet once told him that reciting from memory helps the spirit express itself more fully. Since then, when I go to perform, I have many of my poems already memorized.
The Albizu poem found him at a crossroads. He was studying literature at university, took his first poetry course, and failed—it was the same story with other courses. Just as he was finding his poetic calling, he was expelled from school. At the same time, he discovered a poet who set Shakespeare’s verse to blues, and that inspiration led Eduardo to study Blake and other classic poets, even transforming Blake’s poems into rap.
Their spirits soared
So high
That they coalesced
Into beautiful rainbows
El Maestro said, these are
The colorful children
Of Borinquen.
It was a new gaze at the same colorful people he’d watched from the window of his house as a child, not allowed outside for fear of gangs, while inside he faced the terror of an alcoholic father who came home in a rage, destroying the household.
I lived in a house at Potomac and Washtenaw. Across the street there was a giant mural of the Disciples, and they’d come and paint a big heart with horns and all that. This was in the seventies—big and beautiful—and when they finished, the police would come and spray paint over it. But I don’t know why they waited until it was finished, because it took them two or three days. From our bedroom window, the mural was always there.
There was that constant fear of gangs, and I started writing about it, but I didn’t want to be stereotyped, you know, as a gang-ghetto poet. Then I found this. I wrote the Albizu poem. Before that, I had discovered the word poet-opera, and I started to write something designed like a journey, and that has kept me focused because sometimes I don’t write for months, but I can always return to that focus, that same journey, and pick up the path I was on. I started adding poems I’d written and thinking, well, this is part of this opera, even though I’ve never studied opera or seen another poet-opera. But I always loved going to plays. In many ways, I’ve always been close to art. My dad sang in the church choir, I was in church dramas, and I was in steel bands. I’d always go to musicals alone. I would go see Cabaret, you know, the popular musicals. Phantom of the Opera.
A life close to art. An identification with the people of the neighborhood. A desire not to limit or box himself into restrictive labels. A memory of sound and color. On the brink of his encounter with Puerto Rican history, he already knew that his poetry was a lifelong journey in which the episodes—turned into poems—link together in a greater poem, a poet-opera that serves as a roadmap, a framework that weaves life’s pieces into a larger whole that resolves in poetry.
Before Albizu’s revolutionary struggle, he had lived the gunfire of the neighborhood.
It was
A summer afternoon
And it was
the sun that lit our view
And it was
a day to spend with friends.
//
And there was
sunlight
Camera eyes
And action
From a hand gun.
//
And it was
At the corner store
And he laid
On the cement floor
And it was the neighbors
That gathered to see
He that was
Fourteen.
//
And it was his cheeks
Stuck on the street
And he had
three bullets in his back
and he was alone
with no mother to cry
goodbye.
//
And it was
The police that came
And it was one cop
That smiled and said,
“this is better
than the movies.”
Arocho is a performer who delivers poetry from memory, provoking roaring reactions from his audience. His personal aesthetic is to work, edit, revise, alter, and refine each word until, when the poem is complete, it is also memorized. Once he found and confirmed this method, he wanted to go further and establish his own style as a departure from the Nuyorican poets, among whom he considers Pedro Pietri the most innovative.
The others sound the same: the same use of Spanglish, the same musical rhythm. There is this gigantic depression they carry. And I wanted something hopeful, you know. I wanted hope and I wanted a different music. The same goes with African American poets. They have their style and it’s part of their culture. But you can always identify it, and to me, it sounds like the same thing. I wanted to distance myself from those styles and influences and create something more distinct. That’s why I’ve broken my head over some of these poems because I saw it visually: I’ve seen the whole poem. I’ve seen everything, the color and all. And working on that music.
Eduardo Arocho sees and hears poems, and then goes through painstaking effort to turn them into words that flow from his mind onto the page—and, after wrestling them into shape, return to his mind as memorized texts for performance. These are poems to read and poems to proclaim. When the struggle of art succeeds, the result resonates because it becomes ovation and applause. An example of a poem realized through this strategy is:
They Wear Zapatos de Arco-Íris (Rainbow Shoes) to the Epiphany.
Marching down
an impasse street
seen parading on TV
the children of the colony
are dancing proudly
exiled with the flag
they inherited from history.
Now that the poet is clear-eyed and knows how to journey through his own life and his people’s history, the language stands firm and moves with nothing extra, nothing missing, centering on the image of the parade: the people’s encounter with themselves, and the poet’s union with his people, joined together in the march of reclaimed history. It is January 6th in Humboldt Park, and the parade celebrates the inauguration of the world’s largest Puerto Rican flags at Paseo Boricua. But the poem had already been born before: this moment is just one of those additions that fall perfectly into place because Arocho’s poetry is a journey that weaves together disparate experiences with shared meaning.
Meanwhile, the Three Kings are in Borikén,
Where the Jíbaro-Santero
has carved them
and calls them in prayer
asking please bring gifts
to the poor niños y niñas
of this estrella.
The Kings fulfill their mission on the Island, but from Humboldt Park,
A new star shines in the sky
Seen by the middle saint divine
Melchor is his name
Africa’s negro Rey.
He says to the wise,
“look there on the street,
deep in a city canyon
a beckoning light
and hidden among the shadows
are niños y niñas heirs to this estrella.”
Melchor insists on visiting those Boricua children who live in the North, but the other Kings warn him they have no more gifts—they have given everything away on the Island.
So the wise Melchor
on his white horse
contemplated and prayed
and then he said to the wise
“bring them history and song
bring them zapatos de arco-íris
so they may walk
to the future with dignity.”
And the Kings arrive at Division Street, guided by the other star, calling out to the children:
“Ven, ven little Boricuas!
Look at what we brought you
History, song, and zapatos de arco-íris
for the Reyes y Reinas de La Bandera.”
Meanwhile, outside the poem, the children wake up and rush out to receive their gifts, unfazed by the snow and the cold, and imagination and reality blend into the same joy. After inaugurating the flags, three neighborhood residents play the roles of the Three Kings, riding horseback at the head of the parade down Paseo Boricua, finishing by distributing toys to every child thanks to the effort of community organizations. But the poet, of course, writes his chronicle from another level of the event: the magic that leaves a lasting, beautifully inexplicable trace.
A trail of shackles remain on the street
a phenomenon never seen on TV
as they wear zapatos de arco-íris.
Once the miracle is realized, the children—who in another poem had wished for the arrival of a bronze Albizu—have received a much greater gift.
History they live and make
on Division Street renamed
and, they wear zapatos de arco-íris.
The poem is much more than a transformation of a legend. It is also the triumph of an intimate, personal struggle by the poet, who was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I wanted to journey back and rescue that little boy, give him something that would help him move into the future without those dangers and the things that were happening. So, that was a really hard poem for me because it was so personal. When you read it, you don’t know that’s the subject. It’s something of pride and hope. It’s the knowledge of history and culture: zapatos de arco-íris.
That gift is the fruit of a search for peace and freedom. The image itself comes from Eduardo’s own life. When I was young, I dressed really wild. I had a huge tail and dressed in black with lots of ugly buttons. I had some All Stars with those thick rainbow shoelaces, okay? I guess it was to get attention, right? Everybody would look at me. The only place I didn’t get attention was when I got to New York, and everybody thought I was normal. That was in the Bronx.
The abused child becomes all Puerto Rican children. This isn’t my story alone. It’s the story of all of us here.
The rainbow shoes are, therefore, part of the poet-opera, an image that finds its place in the theme of parades and marches. Something consistent with this people: they are always in motion, always marching, and their history comes with them. How do the rainbow shoes express that unity in history and culture? In the seventies, the gangs used to wear All Stars with big thick shoelaces, but black and yellow or black and blue. And I wanted shoes that would let me walk anywhere without gang retaliation because in every place you went, they had a different color. That’s something I’ve always been super aware of—the gangs and the places I went.
Therefore, the image is enriched with biography and magnified by magic. The rainbow shoes allow you to walk freely, a freedom made possible by unity, the fruit of shared history and culture. Only one final touch was missing—the image that rounds out the poem and elevates it to its highest level of collective experience. The poet—by this time deeply immersed in community activism—received a letter from Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera in which, among other things, he mentioned that he was born on January 6th and was therefore “a child of the Epiphany.” Arocho had never heard the word before. I didn’t know that word until he told me, and I researched it, and I found that word fit perfectly. I was stuck until I found that word. That’s how I was able to finish the poem.
Completing the poem left him shaken and on the brink of losing his mind, and he had to put it away. The epiphany was such a total and overwhelming encounter and discovery that he couldn’t hold it all inside at once. Later, he recovered and brought the poem to the people, and the public acclaimed it and asked for many new poems that could express their feelings with the magic of poetry. Arocho used the poem to spark poetry in his students—and succeeded. He became even more committed to his method of research and creation. I’m very careful. When I write, I always try to be responsible. Do research, get as much information as possible, talk to the people who know—so nothing is left out, because I wanted to create a new mythology that represents everybody.
Wrapped in his journey, poet-opera, culture, and mythology, he continues writing his Puerto Rican identity and his connection to the non-Puerto Rican world that also surrounds him. I’ll always perform because I love performing. I love the stage. Especially when you have a new poem. It’s not ready until you give it away by reciting it. For a poem to be finished, it has to be brought to the public, performed from memory, and refined based on the audience’s reaction—that’s what makes it better.
And finally, the synchronicity. In 1998, Arocho began a poem that still isn’t finished and will be his poet-opera. From that year comes this fragment:
Negrito detects a demon in the crowd
that stalks him with sins of colonia
It beats him hard with historia
for forgetting ancestors que lloran
with shame no maturation to parade
//
Elegua is witness to that scene
disguised as el niño de Atocha
y dijo Negrito your not a child
your ancient like Bomba Victoria.
//
Ode to your past Negrito
El niño de Atocha dijo
Put on your mask and disguise
y baila la bomba victoria.
Eduardo Arocho was asking questions and reading about vejigantes. He helped organize a vejigante exhibition with me, and I dressed the Albizu statue—placed in a gallery because they never allowed it in the park—as a spectacular yellow vejigante, gathering all the other costumes around it. Arocho had his own vejigante costume made and wore it in the People’s Parade in Humboldt Park and later wore it to protest in Washington for the release of the political prisoners. The poet became a craftsman and began making small vejigante masks painted onto nut shells. He turned his whole life into a vejigante’s dance, and later, to complete the circle, he approached Santería—and there, three years after writing the fragment above, he discovered a startling secret. When he underwent Orula’s divination, it turned out that he was a son of Eleguá. No wonder there was so much journeying, traveling, and crossing of paths. Now the poet-opera has become clearer.
