Poem: América was never America to Abuela

Camilo Romero wrote this poem in response to his 95-year-old grandmother having to show her papers to ICE in Orange County, California, in a Home Depot parking lot last week. It nods to Langston Hughes' "Let America be America Again."

Cristina will be 95 years old next month

She lives in Orange County, California

She plays with her four great-granddaughters

She celebrates Mass everyday

She drives herself to her church and to her clinic

She fights stage 4 breast cancer

She is happily single since 1957

Last week Cristina was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement

She was leaving her local Home Depot that morning

She was pushing her shopping cart

She had just purchased flowers and mulch for her garden

She wore a light blue mask that matched her sweater

She takes care to not get sick on her many errands around town

One agent asked her for her papers

Another agent asked why she wore a mask

Cristina always carries her purse

She pulled out her two passports

She is a dual citizen

She wants to make sure the authorities know she belongs

She has been trying to have them understand this since she arrived

One agent asked her for her name

Another agent said a woman of her age should be at home or in the hospital

Cristina loaded her car

No agents offered to help

No employees did either

Nobody else was around

Just Cristina, her flowers, and her mulch

Cristina drove home

She does not remember how

She sat in her driveway

She left the car on

She felt so upset, unseen, used

The agents had tried to intimidate her

She did not show them

But they did

They have for over 50 years

América was never America to Abuela Cristina

The Simpson-Mazzoli Act could not erase that wound

Neither could her 1040s or her election volunteering

Langston Hughes named the intergenerational trauma

Feeling a threat in one’s own street

Feeling a servant in one’s own home

Feeling a guest in one’s own skin

Maybe that is the point of today’s America

To make the “other” feel we do not belong

Confirming for “them” that we never did

To protect this stolen homeland by emotional Manifest Destiny

By any means necessary: Liam Conejo Ramos, ChongLy Thao, Teyana Gibson-Brown

The end justifies the means for today’s America

América was never America to Abuela Cristina

She knows América is a continent (con tilde, carajo)

Fragmented Abya Yala into North, Central, South

Land conveniently misnamed for an Italian

Gringos displacing and dehumanizing the original peoples

Project 2025 still displacing and dehumanizing its inconvenient inhabitants

Violating the Constitution’s 4th Amendment with “apparent ethnicity" of “reasonable suspicion”

América was never America to Abuela Cristina

America is yet to be

Maybe it never will

Solely an anthropocentric ideal

An aspiration of Snowballs seeking public good

An anathema to Napoleons seeking private gain

If America is to be

It ought to be like Cristina

She remains defiant

She planted her flowers that same afternoon

She has been humbly cultivating on this land for generations

Like so many poderosas and immigrant communities always have

ICE cannot touch her harvest

Trump cannot match her wealth

Cancer cannot reach her spirit

Next week Cristina will be buying herself a new car

A compact SUV with all the cameras and sensors

The kind with an automated trunk

To make loading her flowers and mulch a bit easier

To continue living “la good life”