I Speak Spanish, Yo Hablo InglĂ©s is an intersectional feminist work dealing with themes of America, immigration and the Latin diaspora, femininity, and motherhood. Velarde wanted to make a painting to summon her personal experience as an immigrant while also honoring Indigenous peoples of the land now known as the United States of America. Expressing the myriad realities and experiences of vast diasporas led to a deeply layered and symbolic work. âYou have an idea of what America is which, in many ways, is not the America you encounter” says Velarde, who stresses that she chose to leave her native Peru. âI was never pursuing âthe American dream.â Iâm an immigrant by choice but I can certainly imagine what itâs like for many people who do have to flee or escape.â
The painting is multilayered. The most obvious and recognizable iconography is the American flag behind a female body with multiple faces. The red stripes imply a history beyond the Declaration of Independence. The white stripes include the pattern of Lenni Lenape wampum belts. The Lenni Lenape people are from Lenapehoking, their expansive historical territory that included present-day northeastern Delaware, New York City, Western Long Island, the Lower Hudson Valley, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River Watershed. Velarde now lives in Philadelphia. Itâs believed the Lenni Lenape offered these traditional belts to William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, as a peace treaty between Penn and Tamanend, a chief of the Lenni Lenape in 1683. “The flowers in the red stripes have always been here, regardless of humans. They are indigenous to the land,â says Velarde, referring the flowers found within the flag. âFurther, the flag is fenced off as a reference to the difficulties of achieving âthe dreamââthereâs always an obstacle to achieve it, real or imaginary. And the fence become such a symbol in the Trump era, which is part of what provoked this painting,â says Velarde.
Velarde remembers seeing a four-faced, back forward figure in a church in her motherâs hometown of Huaro, Peru. It was painted in the colonial era by Teofilo Benavente.Â
Velardeâs figure is also four-faced and rear-presenting. First, itâs Velardeâs way of blocking objectification and refusing common narratives about the female body. One of the four faces is backwards, hidden from the public and looking at the flag and at history. Velardeâs figure is looking out toward America, and at the same time side-to-side and behind, as an attitude of awareness to her surroundings. All of this is painted as an almost-but-not-quite-Vitruvian-meets-the-crucified-Christ-woman to comment on the the cultural expectations of femme and female bodies in a culture that prescribes a paradigm that people cannot fulfill. âWith these ideas of universal human aesthetics, nobody can achieve that and we all become ugly. Itâs a commentary on erasure,â Velarde elaborates.
Finally, the female character, half superhero/half saint, is talking to the audience loud and clear, in a spiral of ribbons that signify speech. She is speaking English and Spanish to anybody who cares to listen/read, and is defending her rights to be herself within a social environment that has become toxic and dangerous for diversity and community. âWhat is her power?,â asks Velarde. âPerhaps her only power is not to allow others to silence her, to keep goingâto exist and resist.â
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For more on the Lenni Lenape, wampum belts, and the Penn treaty please visit our source:Â Native American Heritage Month: Penn Treaty Wampum Belts, by Richard Naples, November 23, 2016.
