By Gabriel Corral
During the Chicano Movement, El Movimiento, in the 1970s, Ricardo Sánchez voiced the oppression and racial divide Chicanos had come to protest. Sánchez, born in El Paso, lived a life greatly affected by these issues. He dropped out of high school due to racial profiling and engaged in gang activity. Still, after growing tired of the gang life, with an impassioned message, he guided others in the right direction by teaching at universities across America.
Sánchez used writing as a conduit to express himself for most of his life, using his experiences as a Chicano from El Paso, as others did in El Movimiento, to inspire his poetry. He worked his way to becoming an activist, a professor, and a poet, often regarded as the “Grandfather of Chicano poetry.” Along with others like Abelardo Delgado [See article on Abelardo Delgado in the online issue of Borderlands], Sánchez inspired many through his writings and his work as a professor. As a fellow El Pasoan, he merits greater recognition and remembrance in the El Paso community and beyond as an influential poetic voice.
Image caption: A younger Ricardo Sánchez reading from his work. Courtesy of Wikimcdia Commons
Sánchez had a very relatable life to El Pasoans and Chicanos in general during the 1940s through the 1960s. Like much of the El Paso population, he was born in a traditional Hispanic household on March 29, 1941, the 13th baby of his family. He grew up in a recognizably poor neighborhood, Barrio del Diablo, on the city’s east side. He attended Zavala Elementary School and Jefferson High School, where he recalled being oppressed and mistreated by white staff. Sánchez relished writing since he was a young boy; however, his environment, views on the world, and upbringing led him to create poetry that reflected his personality. He was a good student and a promising poet, but a high school teacher told him, The New York Times writes, that “Chicano boys don’t grow up to be poets. Janitors maybe, but not poets,” significantly affecting his future. The following year, 1959, he dropped out of school to join the Army. There, he acquired a GED and started to publish his poetry, says Miguel R. López and Francisco A. Lomelí in Chicano Timespace: The Poetry and Politics of Ricardo Sánchez. However, The New York Times reports Sánchez received, at age 19, a dishonorable discharge after being arrested and sentenced to prison for three years beginning in 1960.
After Sánchez’s release, he married Maria Teresa Silva but struggled to support his family. In 1965, according to a Ricardo Sánchez biography, Sánchez was tried and sentenced again for armed robbery, kidnapping, and assault, and served another sentence at the Soledad State Prison in California shortly before the birth of his first child. However, he wrote and published poetry in prison prompted by the tough lessons he had learned.
Sánchez published Canto y Grito de Mi Liberación (I Sing and Shout My Liberation), a book he composed while serving his time. Sánchez writes about his book: “It is the birth of an idea first gestated in the frenzy of Soledad Prison ten years ago, and now becoming a bronze reality. El Paso, with all its memories, remains the cauldron of Chicanismo for me; thus, now I return via my writings to my birthplace to explode out expletives and cantos.” Sánchez describes his life as a Chicano convict and voices his anger and emotions through the written word, captivating many with his work, mainly activists of the Chicano Movement, which was at its peak.
Sánchez’s work stretched beyond his cell walls, reaching Chicanos and supporters of the Civil Rights Movement with his prominent, powerful voice and wise words expressing his discontent with how his country treated Chicanos. The Writers of the Southwest website reports that “Sánchez was the first Chicano writer to have a book of poetry published by a mainstream commercial publisher when Anchor/Doubleday issued his Canto y Grito de Mi Liberación in 1973. This was also the first bilingual poetry book to be published by a major publishing house.”
To further get his work out to the masses, he founded Mictlan Productions, a Chicano publishing house used as a platform for many other Mexican Americans to express themselves through writing or art. At the time, many mainstream publishers did not accept the works of people of color and other diverse ethnic groups. However, Sánchez envisioned establishing a hallmark for Chicano literacy and art, says The Spokesman-Review. With Mictlan Productions, Sánchez published hard copies of Canto y Grito de mi Liberación. He gained more and greater recognition through this platform as he criticized the mainstream press and publishers for misrepresenting Mexican Americans, and demanded they fix the damage created by the media’s negligence. Sánchez became a man of the people and argued for respect for his culture and people at any cost.
The Texas Archival Research Online indicates that having turned things around, in 1970, Sánchez earned a highly coveted Fredrick Douglass journalism fellowship and enrolled in the Union Institute and University doctoral program, ultimately receiving his Ph.D. in American Studies in 1974 and landing a tenure-track faculty position at Washington State University. Life experiences had significantly turned around for Sánchez.
Image caption: El Grito: A journal of contemporary Mexican-American thought. An important journal in "El Movimiento". Courtesy of Latinopia.
The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) describes Sánchez’s Hechizospells as “awesome in its sweep and profundity about the human condition.” Philip D. Ortega Y Gasca, in the MELUS article, strongly contends that “no other contemporary poet reminds me more of William Blake than Ricardo Sánchez. I do not mean in form and style, for Ricardo is a Chicano through and through. No. I mean in purpose. Like Blake in his time, Ricardo Sánchez is trying to tell us something. I only hope more of us stop and listen.” The Spokesman-Review has Maya Angelou describing Sánchez as a “great poet. He’s at once a preacher, a teacher, a priest, a rabbi. He’s a guru, he’s a master. And because he is that, he’s also a rebel. He’s a maverick. Every great teacher is a maverick.” And The New York Times argues, “Sánchez’s ‘raging cries for cultural justice’ and ‘startling, angry verse’ are often credited as foundational to the fields of Chicano poetry and modern Chicano literature.”
Sánchez and other poets, authors, and activists like him each helped build a solid voice to change the way America viewed Chicanos and fought diligently for their rights. Many El Pasoans and Hispanics alike could relate to his strong words and emotions on being mistreated and not receiving the same opportunities due to their ethnic background. Most of Sánchez’s works dealt with issues like what it meant to be an American as a Chicano, class identity as a Chicano, and overall cultural identity.
Sánchez gained even more recognition writing two syndicated columns, one in the San Antonio Express-News and the other in the El Paso Herald Post, and he engaged in projects involving different media like film and television. Many of his works are archived in the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University.
The New York Times asserts that Sánchez’s work contains an aggressive and violent tone. He utilized this voice to express his strong emotion toward the mistreatment and misrepresentation of him and his people throughout his life. One of his poems published in the 1970s depicts wealthy neighborhoods in El Paso burnt due to his hatred of the city’s inequality. The power and fierceness in his writing made him a prolific literary voice as it aided the Chicano Movement. It was an inspiration to many, a beacon of hope. Sánchez’s goal was to assist in “humanizing” the population, believing in equal rights for Mexican Americans, all people of color, and the oppressed.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Sánchez’s writings became more forgiving, though, and graceful as change began to occur. However, Sánchez did not stop his energetic voice against inequality until his eventual death from cancer in September 1995.
Sánchez taught criminal justice while attacking political and ethnic issues, still a beloved activist in his community and recognized nationally as a great professor and poet. “Despite the full-time professorship,” writes Style Weekly, “Sánchez was destitute and on permanent disability from his illness. ‘I feel fortunate. I don’t feel moribund,’ he proudly told poets, students, and colleagues at a fundraising benefit for him in Pullman, Washington, on March 29, 1994. He died September 3, 1995, at age 54,” a loss to Chicanos and to all those who value the essence of culture, identity, and self respect.
Image caption: Ricardo Sánchez later in life. Courtesy of Latinopia.
Today, Sánchez does not have the resounding recognition he most certainly merits for his life-altering activism. Chicanos have it better today because Sánchez and others like him in El Movimiento were not afraid to expose the injustices that permeated throughout the El Paso community and beyond. His poetry should be recited and taught at colleges and universities throughout. People, in general, should read his works, if it’s not through community or literary events around the country, at least in El Paso. A literary center in honor of the great poet bearing his name can aid those struggling with reading and writing, especially children. El Movimiento must move forward! Viva Ricardo Sánchez, el abuelo de poesía Chicana!
Chicano timespace : the poetry and politics of Ricardo Sánchez