![]() “There is a deep history of seeing Central Americans as victims of violence or as actual gang members, like MS-13,” journalist Roberto Lovato said. Soto is not alone in feeling that Salvadorans are often narrowly portrayed and associated with violence. “I feel like, for the media, it is easier to talk about our deaths - rather than the breadth of our lives, the beauty we produce, and joy we share, as a people, when we are together.”Įl Salvador is home to over 6.4 million people, and there are roughly 2.3 million Latinos of Salvadoran origin in the U.S. When it comes to Salvadorans, Soto believes the U.S. While there is persecution of transgender community in El Salvador, Soto pointed out that anti-transgender violence and legislation is happening across the U.S. ![]() ![]() In a lot of ways, I feel like my life is fuller there than it is here.” “I want to push back on the idea that America is so exceptional, and that El Salvador is a void of queer culture and poetry. Through their work, Soto also hopes to disrupt the narrative around El Salvador. and abroad.” Changing the one-dimensional view of El Salvador “It achieves playfulness while at the same time maintaining gravitas, especially as that gravitas relates to the violence that minoritized communities face in the U.S. “I think that (Soto’s) work walks a tightrope,” Serrano Gurba added. “I see (Soto’s) poetry as activism, and I also perceive their activism as poetry,” said Myriam Gurba Serrano, acclaimed writer and author of “Mean.” I think their work has a prophetic character to it.” Soto has written for The New York Times and The Nation, and is a co-founder of the Undocupoets Campaign, which successfully lobbied publishers to remove proof of citizenship requirements from some book contests.Ī recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Soto also co-founded Writers for Migrant Justice, to protest the detention and separation of migrant families. My obligation is to imagine a more just, caring, and equitable world.” ![]() My obligation as a poet is not to work on legislative strategy. “I don’t feel distracted by what other people are doing. Polling and popular sentiment do not faze Soto. Although calls to defund the police spread in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in 2020, since then even Democrats have moved away from embracing this approach. Among Latinos, 46% said that police spending in their area should be increased, 16% believed that it should be decreased, and 37% thought it should remain the same. shouldn’t we be investing in systems that help them, rather than relying on a prison framework that re-perpetuates systems of violence?”Īccording to a Pew Research Center report last year, a growing share of Americans want more spending on police in their area. “If only 3% lead to incarceration, why are we so heavily invested in police and prisons? What about the other 97% of victims of sexual assaults. Soto cited statistics from RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) that show that only 2.5% of sexual assaults lead to incarceration. The arts, as mediated by experiences with policing and prisons, is intergenerational for his family. This cousin later became an artist and taught Soto that a life in the arts was possible. As a child, one of Soto’s uncles was incarcerated and would send letters with drawings made in prison to Soto’s older cousin.
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