Para Las Mujeres de Juares; Ni Una Mas (2007)

For five dollars a day
you can drop out of school at sixteen
drop into a full time job
and bid your dreams goodbye
you can hold a factory job
buy a ticket to your future
forget the look of daylight
you can don a uniform
drenched in sweat
while you unwillingly compete
with other girls for the unwanted
affections of your floor supervisor
you can out earn your parents
forget your mother's face
emasculate your father
leave your sisters with no one

for five dollars a day
you can be touched, fondled, harassed
leave work feeling dirty and impure
you can live in fear as one by one
women continue to disappear
you can avoid looking
as your pale and sunken face
in the mirror
kiss your mother goodbye
as your childhood becomes
a distant, faded memory
your restless soul longs for
you can forget fairytales of love,
living happily ever after
having a family of your own
you can look into the eyes
of another girl who looks just like you
who you will never see again
you can pretend to be the girl
en el otro lado
that lives the life
you only dream about

for five dollars a day
your parents can sit in a precinct
sobbing, full of fear and longing
waiting for their number to be called
your picture can hang from a telephone pole
in the company of the posters
of other missing girls
you can be raped, beaten and tortured
your mangled body
left to fester in the desert
you can lose your spirit
lose your energy
lose your life

La Operacíon

Can you hear
The silent sobs of
Babies crying?
A generation lost

Mass genocide of our future
They talk in whisssss-pers
No one knows them
Hundreds of thousands of
Singers, writers, teachers, doctors, politicians, poets
Madres, padres, hermanas, amantes y amistades

Look
Into their faces
40 years of women robbed
40 years of girls destroyed
40 years of bodies scarred
40 years of memory loss

Doctors on salary
Preying on los pobres
Prescribing sterilization for the poor
Carving up innocent wombs
Praying that mothers
Never learn of their
Crimes against humanity

Generations of Boricuas gone
Generations of Puertorriqueños wiped out
Generations lost with the swift swipe
of tainted scalpels

Look to your left
Look to your right
We are here

The voices of the living
The minds of the thinking
The spirits of a new collective
It is through us that
The souls of these unborn children
Survive