Martin Espada

Argumentative Essay

In the three poems I read by Martin Espada they all had a similar theme which was a form of racism. Martin Espada was a smart poet and made the reader think while they read the poem. The author didn’t tell the reader who was from anywhere and instead he made us infer like if the person was white, tan or if he was dark skinned. In one poem there is a person who keeps getting his name mispronounced and so he says he wants to take people hostage. In another poem Spanish speaking was banned in the bathrooms. The meaning of these poems is that if you are mistreated accidentally or purposely you should not take actions that will hurt people or ones that you will regret. \

            In the poem about the new bathroom policy by Martin Espada Spanish is banned and even though I am not in this situation I know it is wrong. In this poem kids are speaking Spanish in the bathroom and since the principle didn’t understand what they were saying he banned Spanish speaking in the bathroom. People are discriminated a lot just like the kids in this poem but I still don’t think bad actions should be taken.

            In the other poem the person wants to take action for when he thinks he is being made fun of. In this poem people mispronounce his name either purposely or accidentally but he doesn’t really care because it happened a lot of times. The person in this situation says that he wants to take people republican tourists hostage and that he wants a bilingual SWAT team to tell him to be reasonable. He says this because his name was probably not originated from here and that’s why they can’t pronounce it. I understand what the person with the difficult name to pronounce is going through. So he basically wants to do this because he felt that people weren’t trying hard enough.   

            In conclusion, Martin Espada wanted the reader to know that people are being discriminated and that they do want to take action because of these small problems. But I think that even if a person is being discriminated but not too harshly they should not take actions that can put many innocent people and people that were being discriminative at risk. So I think people should do something if they are being discriminated or hurt but nothing that will put people in danger.