Learning from several Ethnic Studies-based courses throughout my education has taught me many things surrounding colonization and the lasting effects of settler colonialism. This helped me understand the causes and roots of oppressive structures we continue to face, our resilience, if it is resilience at all, and the patterns we still see today. However, my own knowledge and experiences I brought to the table tied together my conclusions of my exposures of the displacement of my community and gentrification.
My first time really being in the eye of the tenacious winds of the hurricane that is the American education system opened my eyes and pushed me to quickly grow as a brand-new student organizer. But, with this growth came the pains and backlash of being a young girl organizing her community and fellow students. What was left of a neighborhood school in a heavily gentrified area, one that I had spent much of my early years in, left me feeling the further loss of a larger community I had known and grown up in my entire life. I ached for even a slight sense of my community in a learning space. During the summer of 2022, I attended the Aquetza program at CU Boulder. I learned not only about the history of the campus, but also what I had not fully stepped into: the continuation of decolonial perspectives and framework of my education and the years that would follow. Surrounded by students like me, teachers like me, artists, and leaders like me, inspiration had struck. This was my step as a Latina student reclaiming the wounds of the past and present. A unique experience it was not, as many before and with me have fallen through the cracks of a failed educational system, but an opportunity that is very rarely experienced by those hurt by it. The educational determination I thought I would not again feel for a long time was found in that pocket of liberation. There, I began to write the beginning of my poem: El Paletero.
In my poem, I am angry. The first lines of my writing that had come to mind were born from the frustrations I had and continue to have from feeling invisible in predominantly white spaces, specifically the ones that used to be brown and black. I had frustrations with not only the closure of my former school, Escuela Tlatelolco, a school born from the Chicano movement, but with the abandonment of the memory and respect it had brought for many. History was – quite literally – washed away and painted over, all for it to turn into a modern home to overpriced coffee and daily yoga classes.
Gentrification is notorious for displacing and pushing out several communities of color. Housing, cultural empowerment, community wealth, and an overall sense of belonging are continuously harmed for the betterment of white comfort. We know these systems are not a peaceful attempt to bring structure and to “better” a society. Though I personally have not experienced housing displacement, the effects of it for one hurt all. It hurts students, longtime business owners, workers, and anyone who contributes to the community. This shared community pain is definitely not unique to East and North Siders in Denver.
In the end, I connect my poem to something larger than gentrification. I connect it to our healing. I connect it to our precious and beautiful knowledge, our community wealth. I reflect on family and memories, because that too is a part of our story. We may not live to see the end of our oppression, but we deserve to heal.
In my poem, I am angry, but I am also empowered. Though gentrification may not seem like a feminist issue, women of color, especially single moms and working-class caregivers, are most vulnerable to displacement. Like many of the issues my community is vocal about, these stories are largely told by and very centered around the men in it. My poem is not solely one stemming from community displacement, but a feminist manifesto for all women of color fighting for their communities. It’s time to grab the mic.
El Paletero
Could it be because it’s hot, and the place with the sweetest horchata that quenches our his is now home to a place where women do spin classes and look forward to their drinking their kale smoothies from the new urban market down the street.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s because there’s no more raza in his barrio to chase after him for a refreshing paleta de sandia anymore. Or could it be because you prefer the option of green tea sorbet at the newly opened ice cream shop that also replaced the tiendita my paletero worked at as a second job to try to keep his family in the new urban neighborhood? Maybe it’s because just like his neighbors, he got priced out.
Foreigner, let us remember the sweet smells of fresh pastries from the panaderia that used to be down the block. Let us remember the sounds of our neighbors singing along to suavecito on a warm Sunday afternoon.
Foreigner, do you know the meaning behind the graffiti you see on our streets? Do you know whose hood you’re in when you see my Chucks above you hanging on the telephone wire?
Foreigner, can you take a guess on whose people fixed the roof of your 1.2 million dollar home? Do you know whose immigrant hands picked your organic carrots, you bought from the same store whose floors were built by our parents?
My hood, evaporating before my eyes like the sweat and tears of those before me, also displaced by the many ways your system comes up with. Were our contributions ever here? Were we ever here? Was I ever here? Or have I too disappeared alongside my block? But how can I blame you? What do you know? You don’t know what it is to hear the comfort of your elders calling you hita or hito. You don’t know what it is to feel the power and love of my community, you don’t know the pain when you lose it.
You speak of the ways you are “woke” from loving authentic street tacos, to insisting that you understand the struggle, yet here you are claiming and renaming our hoods like you did our land. Unknowing and uncaring of the history and power it brought before. Foreigner, is this why I don’t see the paletero anymore?
Author Biography
Nayeli López grew up in West Denver and studies political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her writing and work is shaped by the classrooms, neighborhoods, and people who have passed down a love for community and justice. She is passionate about her community, public education, and amplifying young people’s voices. She works in student and education advocacy and will be graduating college in 2028.