Bards and Burritos : Raffish Poetry Readings Intersect With Latino Culture at Roberto’s Taco Shop

The bards of the borderlands invade Roberto’s Taco Shop.

A regiment of artists and connoisseurs of the spoken word deploys from pickup trucks and Jeep Cherokees--all ponytails, bongo drums, cameras, baggy denim, faded flannel, bespectacled cool and pent-up aspirations. They come armed with verses for the masses.

Representing the masses on this Friday night are the Mexican immigrant cooks toiling in the steam behind the counter and two young female customers in sullen makeup and tight jeans. They watch the poets in the parking lot through the glass, warily.

Richard McCaskill, a 27-year-old ex-Marine with a saxophone slung around his neck, blows an introductory Coltranesque riff into the microphone. The notes wander across the crowded parking lot of the mini-mall into the intersection of 25th and Broadway, a stark arena ringed by a fire station, Kentucky Fried Chicken and 7-Eleven. Neon-streaked concrete shimmers in the afterglow of an evening rain. Buses rumble by. A firetruck wails off to a catastrophe.

McCaskill recites:

“ Alley flies prance, dance a catch-me-if-you-can dance on top of hot garbage cans

A homeless man stands and mans his world stuffed into a cart

Concrete jungle dove coos for the crumbs I toss down by my shoes

And the radio station at Roberto’s plays the Taco Shop Blues. “

Forget coffeehouses tonight. Forget universities. Forget bookstores. This cheerful and raffish band of scribes from San Diego and Tijuana want to bring the poetry to the people and the people to the poetry. They have selected what they consider a bulwark of authentic, unmediated, unchoreographed Latino culture in action: the taco shop.

“The idea started because it got boring to read to the same people all the time,” said Adolfo Guzman, a music curator at the city’s Latino cultural center who organized the readings at four eateries. “What we decided to do is take it to different sites, to combine two different spaces: the taco shop space and the spoken word space . . . to see what happens when they intersect. The people who go to buy food, they kind of trip out and they stick around. And the people who go to listen to the poetry, they also eat.”

The performers represent a range of ages, ethnicities and styles, although Chicano and Mexican themes predominate. There is sly, rapid-fire subversion of both border languages (“frijolier- than-thou” is one example from poet Victor Payan) and plenty of political denunciations aimed at Washington and Mexico City.

“ La migra disparo y la poesia murio (The Border Patrol fired and poetry died),” declaims shaggy-haired Elias Ramirez. In a growling barrio lament melding Spanish and English, he recounts the death of a friend in a confrontation with law enforcement. “ He made a suspicious movement--and I feared for my life! “

After limping away from the microphone, Ramirez describes himself as an 11-year survivor of the neighborhood known as Golden Hill. That name lingers wistfully, decades after the elegant old homes on the heights overlooking downtown San Diego lost their cachet.

“This place is what I write about,” Ramirez says, referring to the neighborhood.

It is an edgy place where inner-city and gentrification collide. Where an Asian American man, perhaps 5 feet tall, with baggy shorts, short silver hair and feverish eyes, emerges out of the night. He drifts among the earnest, stylish, young men and women leaning on cars and sitting cross-legged on the pavement. He applauds uncertainly, goes inside and starts hitting on patrons for spare change.

“Lot of money out there,” a youth tells him in accented English, gesturing at the crowd.

Shaking his head repeatedly as if banishing a thought, the little man mutters: “What’s the meeting about? Political protest? Jesus? What they talking about?”

Meanwhile, Manuel Mancillas--literary alias Zopilote (Vulture)--is talking in Spanish about the recent Mexican presidential elections. He assails the tyranny of Mexico’s ruling party. He crescendos to a satiric final image of the party as God, of virgins bathed in waters that are “ crystalline and transparent like the glasses of Jacobo ,” (a renowned television anchorman despised by government critics), which reflect the future: “social peace, McDonald’s, the Hanks (an allegedly corrupt political clan) and CitiBank !”

Sophisticated stuff for 25th and Broadway. But that’s the point, says Adrian Arancibia, 23. He recently earned a degree in Spanish literature from UC San Diego, where his mentor was poet Quincy Troupe. Arancibia’s work features an ode to his native Chula Vista and a reflection on the fall of O.J. Simpson. His personal canon includes Pablo Neruda of Arancibia’s native Chile, a group of Puerto Rican writers from New York and the hip-hop culture that he says is creating his kind of urgent and gritty literature.

“It’s a real force,” he says. “It used to be that hip-hop imitated poetry. Now poetry’s imitating hip-hop.”

Arancibia hopes the taco shop series will “take it to the masses.” Previous readings attracted quite a few passersby, he says. At one event a crack addict grabbed the microphone and delivered a diatribe on race. “He was really seriously into it.”

But the most enthusiastic response occurred in Tijuana at the enormously popular Tacos El Gordo; taquerias in the Mexican border city tend to draw a more socio-economically diverse and educated clientele.

Unfortunately, tonight at Roberto’s, many of the regulars--laborers in work boots, families, husky youths in cholo attire--seem uninterested, surprised, even intimidated by the crowd of almost 100 congregated at the entrance. Few stick around for the show.

The amplified verses and musical accompaniment provoke downright hostility from one of the two young women lounging inside. Her black hair is swept up on her head; she wears maroon lipstick and dusky eye shadow; she is lean, skittish and graceful in a black halter top.

“I’m gonna kick all of them out here,” she snaps in Spanish at the manager, who turns away quickly.

“She doesn’t like poetry,” says her friend, who has blond- streaked hair. She has been peering intently through the glass.

“I think that lady used to be my teacher,” she murmurs. “The one sitting down, in the black jacket? I think she was my teacher in middle school. A long time ago.”

The mystery remains unsolved. Minutes later the woman in black stalks away through the lot, trailed by her friend.

Too bad, because they could have been living inspiration for one of the night’s final offerings: “Taco Shop Love.” Author John Partida, an admittedly nervous 15-year-old, wins over the audience with his adolescent wooing of a redheaded temptress amid shouting countermen:

“(‘ Number 14 !’) ‘ I say, ‘ What’s your name ?’ She says , ‘ Jean .’ I said, ‘My name’s John.’ She asked me , ‘ Are you strong, John ?’ I say , ‘ No .’ I say, ‘ Would you like to go to a show with me ?’ She says , ‘ Si .’ ”

At about 10:30, just as things are winding down, the San Diego police show up.

The black-and-white cruiser has nosed through the parking lot earlier, perhaps trying to figure out what is going on. But this time the squad car stops. Two muscular officers climb out, looking stern; official tolerance for loud literary loitering appears to have run out.

The potential clash is averted, however. At that moment, master of ceremonies Guzman is thanking the listeners and bidding them good night.

The police officers look at each other and get back in their car. The visitors disperse gradually. The parking lot empties.

But at the taco shop, the people keep coming and going. Because Roberto’s at 25th and Broadway, the newly anointed cultural crossroads of the transborder metropolis, never closes. And the poetry never stops.