Translation:
“You can’t win
You can win
Win no,
You can
Not”
As an individual who viewed this gallery from a preformed perspective, I felt even more empowered by the art on display. There were a lot of pieces that struck me as great activist art with a clear, provocative intention. However, this particular piece seemed a bit understated to me. It seems to extend beyond the boundaries of activism and shed light on the daily lives of immigrant families.
Being half Latino, part of my upbringing was in Spanish. My grandmother speaks Spanish fluently in addition to English, so I was raised bilingually as a young child and then I lost my fluency as I grew older. I still understand certain dialects of Spanish to a great extent, but speaking Spanish is a different story. Possibly because I was able to understand it upon first sight, I related to this piece.
My grandmother first came to New York in the 1950s as a young woman with her first child and very few possessions to her name. After family dinners, she’d often retreat into an introspective stupor and recount how difficult it was to get by in New York City at that time. She lived in Harlem with her uncle and worked various odd jobs. Being Belizean, it was a rarity to find people from her home country. She was often lumped in with Puerto Rican and Mexican immigrants at many of the jobs she worked; first at a pen factory, then as a nanny for upper-class white families, and then as a nurse’s aid at the maternity ward of a now-defunct hospital. The Spanish language is something I have a love-hate relationship with. I feel distant from it, yet hearing and reading it tugs on a part of me I regretfully admit I’ve rejected.
I feel a sense of fraternity with Spanish-speaking people. I followed the trends of police brutality against undocumented Latino citizens and the incidences of police shootings in Latino communities, and I became personally outraged. As Latino populations in the five boroughs continue to grow, art such as this reflect their views of American society. Social mobility isn’t as attainable as many immigrants believe it to be, but there’s still a sense of hope that future generations can thrive in this chaotic city. There is a paradoxical attitude towards American society:
Puedes ganar. You can win.
No puedes ganar. You can’t win.
It’s a cycle that repeats itself daily.
Whether or not it was the artist’s intention, this piece speaks to Spanish speakers. It’s meant as a whisper to native speakers that terrible things are happening to brothers and sisters bound by language. To non-Spanish speakers, it’s a piece of strand board with letters on it.
But maybe those who don’t speak Spanish take it to heart. They see the words and want to put a meaning to them. This is the step essential to ending police slayings— others must care, and we must have a unifying platform that encapsulates the needs of society at large. We must find a way to respond that takes all voices into account— not just those whose words we hear and understand.
This piece is cultural narrative. It’s activist art. It’s a rallying cry. It’s the lamentation of thousands of undocumented citizens who work six days a week for less than minimum wage. It’s an elegy for all minorities lost to police brutality.
