Who is Joaquin in Corky Gonzáles’s poem, “I Am Joaquin”?

Corky Gonzáles’s widely read poem "I am Joaquin" first published in 1967 has become one of the major pieces of Chicano literature. Revealing the cultural and spiritual conflicts in the Chicano identity, the poem inspired Chicano pride and activism.

In a sense, it is both a search for historical continuity, which was severed by the Spanish, and a blueprint for that search. In the intro to the 1972 Bantman reprint, Gonzales wrote, "Writing I am Joaquin was a journey back through history, a painful self evaluation, a wandering search for my peoples and most of all, for my own identity"

In I am Joaquin, Joaquin (the narrative voice of the poem) speaks of the struggles that the Chicano people have faced in trying to achieve economic justice and equal rights in the U.S, as well as to find an identity of being part of a hybrid mestizo society. He promises that his culture will survive if all Chicano people stand proud and demand acceptance.

(d) alice notices that the glass is melting away. because that aint real

in "people in peace, not profit and war" chrisholm uses inductive reasoning for her argument against defense spending by stating that the new administration, like most americans, wanted to invest in social objectives, so they must not want to prioritize defense spending. mr. nixon said "we can delay no longer in launching new approaches to the problem that beset them", but chrisholm points out that the programs were delayed anyways.