Passports, Identity and the Expiration/Renewal of Each
For most of my elementary and teenage years in San Diego my Mexican passport was the most important document I owned. The multi-colored, stamped U.S. visa was the only way to get back into this country. Then, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Amnesty in 1986 those passports became obsolete. All the value I'd put in them - my identity as a Mexican and as an undocumented outsider in the U.S. - began to dissolve like a sandcastle into the ocean. The exclamation point came eleven years ago when I took the oath of U.S. citizenship. I haven't renewed my Mexican passport in seven years. What's the use? Aren't they objects of constructed nationalism? The passport's green cover and its Mexican coat of arms doesn't do it for me anymore.
My mother saved five of these passports and told me about the hardship she'd gone through to secure each one of them. My friend Roberto Leni Olivares also has five passports. His were issued by Chile as he and his family arrived in the U.S. as refugees from the Pinochet dictatorship.
I sat down with him a few days ago to share our passport stories. The above video is of our game, "Passport Hold 'Em." We wrote the poem below.
All the passports I've ever loved before
Mi pasaporte
Verde
Azul
Mi sangre
Vuela
Viene
Llega
Se va
Y vuelve a volar
Circula errante en la tierra
Y me enferma
Como a veces
En otras rio
Corre el agua entre las paginas visadas
No escurre la tinta
De Viña del Mar
Hacia Todo El Mundo
La promesa
Of the bureaucrat
Mejor loco con algo
Con sombrero
Sin alas ni vuelos
Mejor Val-paraiso
Mejor el mar
Y sin pasaporte
Toda la vida
I have a passport
Therefore I am
Always a passport
To be in this country
Always a passport
To stay
Always a passport
On my chest
The eagle
And green, thorny flesh
Now faded
Mi mama kept them all
Don't know for how long
Until she gave them to me
& U & I & We have them all
For you
For me
For them
Each one a painful walk
Each one in the darkness
Of a tunnel
Each one a light
Once in her hands
Nos podemos quedar
Hacer nuestra vida
Gozar
Luchar
Llorar
Y las fotos de cada uno?
Y como es que la huella digital
Fue cambiando?
Pero no tod@s podiamos viajar
We are
Don't leave
Poet and Journalist Adolfo Guzman-Lopez writes his column Movie Miento every week on KCET's SoCal Focus blog. It is a poetic exploration of Los Angeles history, Latino culture and the overall sense of place, darting across LA's physical and psychic borders.