Hacha

Hacha

When I think Hacha, I think accessibility, especially when it comes to language and the use of it. And I believe that page 34 with the poem Lisiensan Ga’Lago is an excellent example of that. There is a key in the middle left hand side of the page, alerting the reader to what words mean what. That is done for the reader, but it doesn’t have to be. My take away being the words used to be purposeful to the culture they came from, and once these words are changed by violence, then the true root meaning of the word is lost.

I found this on page 23 too, Perez says “mata’pang” used to mean “proud and brave” used to mean “alert eyes” – he led the rebellion against the Spanish before he was captured and killed –

Now it means “silly” or “rude” or “misbehaved” or “uncivil”

[Achiote was used to stop bleeding was used as antivenom for snake bites, was used to heal wounds]” (Perez 23).

            What I loved about this passage was the message. There are whole languages that have been swallowed by the effects of war and colonization. And with language being a system of knowledge, it seems knowledge has been lost too with the changing of definitions. We see Perez engage with this in the brackets at the end of this poem. Perez reveals to us what the elders in his life knew, that Achiote has medicinal purposes. But because the language changed, and the definitions, now its benefits are not recognized as truth, not registered because of colonizer logic. It makes me wonder what other kinds of knowledges have been lost with the tearing down of language.

            I also really loved the spacing in that poem, it seemed to me to be making room for the weight of the message.

            I saw a lot of ecological references here too. On page 81, Perez says “For two years I ate rice and dirt and sun” (Perez 81). There’s a rhythm here…but also nature found in the body, with the image of ‘eating sun’. And I wonder if one was on a diet of eating the sun, in a metaphorical sense but maybe even in a mythical sense, what would that do to one’s body? With the food and nourishment (or non-nourishing) things we put in our body, what would the sun do?

            Through the book though, I also saw Perez do some work of reclaiming history, so that the victor doesn’t have the last say after a terrible war and massacre of an entire culture. I also saw that work in the boxes he provided in some of his poetry that acted as a key. Through context, through culture, Perez was able to fill in some of the words. But all of us do not have the tools to decode.

I also found myself interested in how that box operates in all of our own personal lives, A key of meaning that has yet to be filled in. Definitions that may have been lost but can be reclaimed.