by Debbie L. Miller
Elena Santiago, 43, is standing in the office of Alejandro Serranto, at B.A. Petroleum Corporation, New York, New York, 1993. She is pointing a revolver at him.
You have no idea, Alejandro. You sit there in your expensive chair in your big office, which I clean, and you know nothing about me or why I came here. Do you think I came to this country to take your job? To marry a citizen? I did not. I came here on a mission, to correct an injustice.
I didn’t pay the coyote to smuggle me across the border and I didn’t ride 28 hours in a bus to New York for nothing. Not like you. You flew here from Argentina on a tourist visa. Did your ancestors come from the jungle, like mine? They did not. They came from Italy.
I know that before you came to study plants in my region, before you met me, you had never met an indigenous person. When we met, you said that you had never met an Indian before and I answered through the interpreter, “Well, you’re meeting one now.” Even though I speak Spanish now, I am one of Los Indios and my people have their own language and have lived in the rain forest for centuries. And, we will stay there, too. We will not be driven away by your hired assassins and your polluters.
