Conquista de las Americas: 1995, by Janel Galnares

Rokeby Venus, by Diego Velazquez (Spain) 1644

 
Conquista de las Americas: 1995

“But the skin of the earth is seamless.” - Gloria Anzaldúa
 
This series of poems was written in response to the art series, Conquista de las Americas, by Raúl Guerrero (USA) 1995
https://raulguerrero.com/conquista-de-las-americas-series

Las Indias
 
Love is a native woman looking back from the mirror. 
The fat belly of angelic Cupid giggles as he dotes on his mother. 
 
She dreams of survival, her children’s future, kinship, companionship. 
The dreams of every earth-grounded woman. 
 
Populated by rivers, swamps and forests, 
whole communities, she cradles thousands. 
 
Admires her sun-kissed reflection in a moment of repose:
everything at peace, joy free as a stream. 
 
Love is a native woman looking within herself from a mirror.
 
Then, to the pale visitors she gives gifts of food, water, even golden trinkets. 
They bring with them irreparable tidings: War, Disease, Conquest. 
 
Proclamations and homilies of one all-mighty God, glory, the Spanish monarchies, 
a cross like a spear. Grim reapers’ scythes in men’s lustful eyes.
 
On her northeastern shoulder live the A’i people, Kofanes. 
Their ancestors were warriors so fierce they were feared by their neighbors 
 
and destroyed three separate Spanish armies. 
Resistance a legacy of necessity.
 
Ancestral history’s palimpsest effaced by conqueror’s pens.
Erased like a Quetzal camouflaged by its plumes in the rainforest.
 
As though she were only a reflection of Spain before a red curtain or golden door.
Genocide’s enactment her final act.
 
Love is a native woman kidnapped into a mirror.
 
We know love’s true genesis: original mother 
who carved space for her children, reflecting back from within them. 
 
Amazonas, Gonzalo Pizarro y Francisco Orellana, 1540

She sees you, not herself in the mirror.
Relaxed as the pock-marked, pidgeholed earth, 
she poses while her nude spine is mapped
by conquistadors, their punctures and wars.
 
Amazon, warrior woman, skin branded 
with foreign names, staked by outlandish claims.
Harbingers of massacres trace her 
to Lago de Parima, bloody lake of her hip,
 
near El Dorado, legended land of the golden king.
Her sacrifice for treasure that was never found.
Cut her along their dotted lines, you will find 
a drowned people inside her.
 
Nueva Galicia, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, 1535
 
horned masks grimace
corn spills from fields 
Coronado's war horses stampede in hills 
hooves echo among canyon walls
apocalyptic shadows 
 
La Florida, Cabeza de Vaca, 1528 
 
Swamp lily, gila monster, egret. 
The swampland is a new land for the white man
where alien plants and wildlife breed and thrive.
The bosom of life. Willows sweep 
lacy and sweet across her face
in dark contemplation.
Impenetrable, Spaniards scorned.
 
Mexico, Hernán Cortés, 1517
 
Deadly winters. 
Continued hunt for gold and slaves.
Trade lined up like a factory: 
donkeys, hats, people, and pearls. 
 
Tributes under the Aztecs, 
under the Spanish, bloody transfer 
of imperial power indebting the people.
 
Who is in the mirror? 
La Malinche? 
La Llorona? 
The image obscured.
 
Peru, Francisco Pizarro, 1531
 
Incan princess, cotton yield, 
gold stamped from her very throne. 
Plague and weapons of steel invade. 
Military campaigns sponsored from Spain
raged by ravenous captains.
These common thieves steal everything
they get their hands on. Art becomes artifact,
crops—exports, lives—meat 
butchered quicker than livestock. 
They cannot be trusted.
They will never be satisfied. 
 
Panama, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, 1513
 
Balboa claimed the whole of the ocean blue
and its entire underwater abundance for Spain.
"El Mar Del Sur" he renamed it. Confused 
seeing for possessing, as men tend to, 
or for a natural preamble to ownership. 
 
A man, pulled by his hair, is choked with melted gold.
Venus gives a long sigh, a lost look, her love of war waning.
Men murdered like dogs by war dogs, 
mastiffs in armor, bowels trail from fanged mouths.
 
Brown queen, indigenous queen,
earth-goddess, sky-goddess
and all first goddesses, for you 
the ocean cries and heaven lies prostrate.
 
These men who rape, raze, and reposess
try to hurry your oblivion, but you persist. 
Both the beginning and the end entire, you 
sound the endless outcry for resistance and redemption.

Janel Galnares
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Author's note: "In Raúl Guerrero’s Conquista de Las Americas Series (1995) paintings, Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus (1647-51) is made into a post-colonial map of “Las Indias”: the Amazon, New Galicia, Florida, Mexico, Peru, and Panama."
​
Janel Galnares is a poet, teacher, and editor from Tucson, Arizona. Her work and translations have appeared in Poetry International, riverbabble, Madwoman Etc, among others. She is currently Editor-in-Chief for Harpy Hybrid Review and a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Poetry Center.