e case.The question then arises as to whether Cervantes is writing this poem merely from the stand point of a person of Chicano decent, or are we to take this poem as not only a comment on the oppression of the Chicano, but also of the women in the Chicano culture. If we analyze the fifth stanza of the poem, we begin to see that Cervantes speaks of being marginalized not only because of her Chicano heritage, but also because of her gender. Im marked by the color of my skin. The bullets are designed to kill slowly. They are aiming at my children. These are facts. Let me show you my wounds, my stumbling mind, my excuse me tongue and this nagging preoccupation with the feeling of not being good enough. The stanza starts out as an obvious statement about the oppression of the Chicano people, but each progressive line has the undertone of gender oppression as well. Cervantes stumbling mind and excuse me tongue may very well be the product of living within a culture where the womens plight takes a back seat to the tribulations of the men. The nagging preoccupation with the feeling of not being good enough may stem from years of being told that she was not good enough to be the bread-winner in the family, or that a college education is not the type of thing that a Chicano woman should pursue. It is no secret that the Chicano woman has had to make greater strides towards equality than the Chicano male, yet as late as the 1970s it was unheard of for Chicano woman to speak out about their concerns. By placing her Chicano feminist perspective within a poem about the inequities suffered by the Chicano people at large, Cervantes may have felt that her message was being played to a much larger audience. As Tey Diana Rebolledo states in the Introduction to Infinite Divisions In the main, the Chicanas concerns for and about political and social oppression arising from long years of communal experience, are, according to Herrera-Sobek primary vectors s...
