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| “Evo Morales’s Chaotic Departure Won’t Define His Legacy: History won’t remember him for the ongoing unrest, but for the enfranchisement of Bolivia’s indigenous population.” –Foreign Policy, November 22, 2019. Photo: A supporter of former Bolivian President Evo Morales stands in front of graffiti that reads "Long live Evo" during a protest in La Paz, Bolivia, on Nov. 14. GASTON BRITO MISEROCCH/GETTY IMAGES via Foreign Policy. |
Dear Senator,
Did you ever hear of the valley where they found Che Guevara—
you were either in college or unborn when they corralled his band
in the valleys of tin in a country most boardroom men
Called Potosi
Bolivia
1967/2019
A land of riches governed by highland royalty who might have found
common cause with a Coca farmer from Cochabamba named Morales.
You have heard of him haven’t you, Senator? He’s in Mexico now.
Isn’t it a shame. What say you? Cocalero.
She and he and they see their compañeros y compañeras under the gun
of Uncle Sam’s war against an indigenous plant and the way of life its people
led because in the halls of Washington lucre flows in subsidy form to Big Pharma
and Law and Order.
What say you, Senator? Latin America. Has open veins and the president
at home is a tyrant but where are you when the indigenous working class see
their comrade presidente flee because the Americas are open for a certain kind
of business that will not obey the rights of Mother Nature who is a storyteller.
She’s a slam poet, Senator.
The rights of the forest. The breast of Mother Earth. The golden goose.
I’m sure there’s a hashtag for it. John Wayne fleeing the Indians riding
switchback across all of our constituencies.
Jeremy Nathan Marks is an American based in London, Ontario. Recent poetry, prose, and photography can and will be found in Literary Orphans, Writers Resist, Poets Reading The News, Unlikely Stories, Ottawa Arts Review, Bewildering Stories, 365 Tomorrows, The Courtship of Winds, Poetry Pacific, Eunoia Review, The Blue Nib, Stories of the Nature of Cities, and Lethe Magazine among others.