Antepasados/Ancestors
1980
Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano was born in 1934 in New York City. A founding member of the activist group Pocho Che Collective (later the San Francisco Mission Poets) and Third World Communications, she helped publish a literary review, several poetry books, and one of the first Englisha language anthologies by women of color, Third World Women (1972). She has also worked as a filmmaker and radio producer, and was a founding member of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. She currently lives in Oakland, where she is a storyteller in schools and community and senior centers.

—Under the Fifth Sun, Latino Literature from California

We are one
because America is one continent
tied by the slender curves of Panama.
We are one people
tied by the buried bones of ancestors
the buried bones of ancestors
         from Asia to America
         from Africa to America
         from Europe to America
Back to the first mothers and the first fathers
back to the first gardens of flowers and fruits,
where vegetables grew wild.
The soft thick grasses cushioned their bodies
when they lay down to love.
Warm water gurgled up from the earth
and spilled down into clear pools.
Feathers waved their heads
and floated across their bodies
as they strutted in the afternoon

But then the snake of greed
grew like a weed
planted the seed
that made one person think that to fill their need
or to succeed
they had to use someone else's labor
for their own profit.
Wars came. Animals died.
Women and cattle became property,
Slaves were chained, put to work,
endless work
that finally built factories and smog,
rich parts of town and poor
built on the buried bones of antepasados
the buried bones of ancestors.
Shake the bones
hear their ghostly moans.
We learn from our past
to build our future.