Poema para los Californios Muertos

Lorra Dee Cervantes’ poem “Poema para los Californios Muertos” examines the feelings of Cervantes and other Californians of Hispanic descent on the colonization and eventual annexation of their native land. Cervantes, looking at a plaque outside a restaurant in Los Altos, California, gazes into the past and imagines how Mexican-Californian land and people were before the American occupation. In stanzas 1 and 2, Cervantes envisions how California was once a place with “valleys and fertile dust”. Running her finger across the brass plaque invokes the memory of silver buckles, native embroidered shawls and dark rebozos worn by Native Mexican women. In stanzas 3 and 4, Cervantes eventually switches from memories of the past to the California of the present. She is angered that everything was taken from her ancestors and nothing remains, not even their ghost. Throughout the poem, Cervantes switches from English to Spanish. This play of language shows the connection Cervantes shares with her past and also brings the feelings of her ancestors to the present.