I can read the labels, I know what they say
but I still eat bananas, for pennies a day
I kick a can down the street to Circle K
and pay a buck thirty nine for fresh OJ
I lie awake at the end of every day
thinking of the repression it takes
to make sure that the prices stay that way
people must feel lucky, just not to get beat
and feel lucky to have a safe space to sleep
and they have some beans and rice to eat
because that’s how you keep their labor cheap
I can read the labels, I know what they say
the coffee, Nicaragua, bananas, Guatemala
but what makes human life worth less than a dollar?
— what makes human life worth less than a dollar?
almost every Latin American national border, engraved
according to the Habsburg plan for a New World Order
y’all can mock the idea as conspiracy mumbo jumbo
but ya’ll know the real OG, Christoph Colombo
the man with three ships
the nina, the santa maria, and the pinta
who said Guatemalans live
between the Montagua and Usumacinta
and that Nicaraguans
live between the San Juan and the Coco
across Latin America,
you can follow along as the pattern goes
but take a Delorean back to the time of the Victorians
and whether Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, or Ecuadorians
they all just labels for people we’re comfortable ignorin’
because we don’t see the murder, mayhem and men
who act like beasts, underneath, the “country of origin”
US dollars and UK pounds paid for all the trains
that ensured lines drawn by the Spanish stayed
the wheels on those trains have gone round and round
ever since the time of the sterling pound
round and round
like the sunrises and seasons and agricultural cycles
like the mass graves, dug for victims of assault rifles
like they told Arbenz, get back to reading the Bible
and don’t you dare criticize the Church’s land titles
— so time marches on, but human progress is stifled
we laced the spine of the Americas with trains
and kept the people bound in commodity chains
export taxes fund the extortionists and gangs
the midwives to New World Order labor pains
and we enjoy the fruits of their murderous labors
because advertising washes off the bloodstains
I hear rappers talk about going after the loot
but real G’s don’t run in the streets and shoot
they traffic in fruit and wear the finest tailored suits
the legal syndicates, of New York and London investors
who paid for rural paramilitaries to have Winchesters
who paid their salaries, for their camo, and their boots
the better to rip the indigenous villages out by the roots
when you eat fruit, do you think of all of the youth
who’ve sweat, screamed, and suffered, for generations
that we’ve written off in the name of building nations?
when you read the labels,
do you know what they mean?
the kids with no cradles,
the slaves to our machines?
we might not call for them to be hunted, as “illegals,”
we oppose the wall, but we’re at best the lesser evil
we still follow a social order that’s literally medieval
and we accept that borders make for different people
—Jordan Bubin
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