LEGACY

I met my father when I was 6. He died when I was 11.

Although I heard him recite many of his poems, I wasn’t really aware of what I was hearing. I just knew what I felt.

Fire.

Magnitude.

Guts.

Beauty.

The afternoon we met, my father told my mother, "Pilár is the one to watch - she’s the dark horse.”

My parents met in Spain fighting the fascists.

Ramen, my father, was a soldier; and Rebecca, my mother, was a nurse.

Making his way across the Pyrenees by foot, ending up in hospital, which is how they met.

Fiery anti-Franco members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Both communists - true revolutionaries. Expatriots who, post-war, found a home in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

In the 50s, my father stepped deeply into his African-American heritage, and began to speak a radical position on racism.

His poetry born from the unique perspective of being black, but looking white.

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I always wondered why, out of all 5 daughters (Dolores, Vida, Pilar, Kenya, April), did I end up with missives of his hard copy poetry. 

Somewhere he knew I was an artist who worshipped at the altar of the muse. That his art mattered. That I would see that, and care enough not to let it die.

A few weeks after I first met my father, he said in a most nonchalant and edifying way, “there is going to be a Black revolution“ — I did the math and I was 6 years old when he put me on notice. And so began my own wicked angle of perspective on human values, kindness, conviction, and skin colour.

That, combined with my metaphysical bent and artistic need for harmony in all realms, made me see the futility of “isms.”

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