Sugar

Please don't call me Spanish, I'm asking nicely
Hispanic...Latina...Dominican...whatever you wanna call me. Just please don't call me Spanish
I am not from Spain
Though I do bear a Spanish surname
Nuñez... the name of some asshole, conqueror, oppressor
I want to hate it
I think to change it
But then I realize that it serves as a reminder
A reminder of where we came from and how we can take something so fucking ugly
And turn it into something beautiful — family
We are fifty shades of colonized
Our skin varies like our stories
We speak the language of our rapists
And pray to the God of our slave masters
...And so do you
Plantation... encomienda, what's the difference?
Sugar canes or cotton fields, but what's the difference?
I don't call you English
So please don't call me Spanish
I am not from Spain
Though I do bear a Spanish surname
Though we do speak the Spanish language
And worship the God of the Roman Catholics
Let us not forget... that we are the eyes and ears of the indigenous
We are the hands and hips of Africa
We are the sugar
White or brown
We are sugar
We take our bitter history and turn it into something sweet
We speak the dialects of the colonized and dance to the rhythms of the oppressed
Azucar
Please don't call me Spanish
Unless you're going to add AND Taina AND African
Please don't whitewash our history any more than it's already been
We are the original inhabitants of this continent
We are the prisoners brought here to build it up into what it is today
And we are the conquistadors who wrote the history books and took all the credit
We are the fruit of genocide
We are the crop of slavery
We are the offspring of rape
But don't be ashamed of who you are, because we can't change the past
Just never forget that we are standing on stolen land
This is a burial ground
The place they say Columbus found
But really, he's the reason we lost it
We lost our languages
We lost our idols
Our culture
Our traditions
But we are sugar
And you can still taste us
They tried to sugarcoat our past
But our past IS sugar-coated hardworking hands
We are sugar
Let us not forget that we are the nose and neck of the indigenous
We are the legs and lips of Africa
We are the sugar
White or brown
We are sugar
We take our bitter history and turn it into something sweet
We are sugar
So please don't call us Spanish