Lalo Delgado RIP

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Wednesday September 08, 2004 19:10 by pat c

Lalo Delgado, Chicano poet and activist, was born on November 27, 1930. He died of liver cancer on July 23, 2004.

Aberlado (Lalo) Delgado was the father of Chicano literature and a pioneer of the Hispanic cultural identity in North America. A poet and an activist, his words commented on segregation, closed doors in education, casual racism and exploitation within the labour market.

He was born in the town of Boquilla de Chonchos, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At 12, he moved with his mother to the US border town of El Paso, Texas, and he grew up in a tenement packed with 23 migrant families. He knew little English, but made friends by writing “love poems for freckle-faced girls”. But while hundreds that crossed the porous border would embrace the American dream, Delgado’s attention to the rights of others would keep him just above the poverty line for most of his life.

After graduating in 1950, Delgado had to wait another decade before he could afford to go to university. He worked as a waiter and labourer, putting in just as much time at a youth community centre. After graduation he moved to California and then to Colorado, where he worked with Cesar Chavez in the farmworker movement. He later became executive director of the Colorado Migrant Council.

All his life he wrote poetry — on paper napkins, wrappers, toilet paper and the corners of newspapers. Although done out of necessity, he became fond of the way his crumpled, coffee-stained poems told a story of their time and place. He collated them into ring bound folders along with lottery tickets, job applications and the ephemera of his life and gave them to his 19 grandchildren as “34 Guadalupes of Abelardo”, so that his great-grandchildren might also know him.

His most famous poem, Stupid America, reads:


stupid america, see that chicano
with a big knife
in his steady hand
he doesn’t want to knife you
he wants to sit on a bench
and carve christ figures
but you won’t let him.

He loved performing his poetry, in English, Spanish, and the hybrid mixture of both that has become the norm on Tejano radio across Texas and the South West. He performed to women’s groups and children, always with passion and compassion in equal measure. He was presented with a vast array of awards from both American and Latin organisations. In 1998 the mayor of Denver declared November 2 Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado Day.

As a “people’s poet”, he regarded the rights of all workers as his concern. He never stopped criticising American farmers for using cheap Mexican labour instead of skilled native workers. As his appeal grew, he was courted by conservative Chicanos, and he dealt with them in his usual big-hearted way. The poet Ramon del Castillo recalled: “One time I got invited to read for the Hispanic Republicans and I said, ‘Lalo, what do I do?’ He said, ‘Go, Ramon, and make sure they never invite you back.’ ”