about the rich and only the rich
In the richest country in the world . . . I’ve heard the phrase repeated over and over these past few weeks, as the United States escalates its imperial wars. It’s deployed to underscore the discrepancy between the apparently endless resources for mass murder in places that contest our dominance and the ever-accelerating divestment from well-being within our borders: people cannot access healthcare or people are living on the streets or people are starving, the sentence concludes. This syntax, though it aims to expose the nation’s brutality, actually obscures it. There is, after all, no tension between our abundance and our immiseration; rather, our wealth depends on the very extractive orders the sentence purports to disclaim.
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera’s poem “about the rich and only the rich” upends such slogans’ imperial common sense. It opens by plainly stating the compatibility of wealth and violence—“the rich keep telling us this is the best possible world. they kill and we die”—and then unspools to bring a constellation of capital’s brutal strictures into view. In no uncertain terms, we are confronted with various technologies of control: not only “prizes” and “papers” and “cops,” but also supposed sources of anti-capitalist solidarity like the AFL-CIO—which has long had, as the historian Jeff Schuhrke put it, an “unsavory relationship with US militarism and imperialism,” including a history of support for Zionism and attempts to undermine the movements of Puerto Rican workers. Many of us in the US might overlook such institutional complicity, but the poet is writing from Puerto Rico, and the metropole’s delusions will not be sustained in the colony. Amid the poem’s imperial debris, the Sandinista slogan ¡qué se rinda tu madre! emerges as a refrain of refusal—a steadfast retort to those who would demand surrender, and a reminder of the other, greater currents that might move us.
— Claire Schwartz
Listen to Roque Raquel Salas Rivera read "acerca de los ricos y solo los ricos" in Spanish.
Listen to Roque Raquel Salas Rivera read "about the rich and only the rich" in English.
(English follows the Spanish, below.)
acerca de los ricos y solo los ricos
los ricos insisten en que este es el mejor de los mundos posibles. nos matan y nos morimos, pero hasta aquí llegó el sueño del cambio. alguna gente rica se viste de gala y qué esplendor. sigo pendiente a las noticias por si anuncian el fin del genocidio. hace años me hubiesen llamado poeta con tono burlón y todo esto sería producto de mi privilegio. me dirían que genocidio es un término muy fuerte y todes, más o menos, asentirían. hoy día, han decidido que no existimos lo suficiente como para merecer su esfuerzo. lo dicen mediante premios. lo dicen mediante el papeleo. lo dicen mediante guardias, que este es el mejor mundo posible. érase una vez que a leonel rugama lo mataron de joven para que los dictadores terminaran de firmar sus contratos y recibieran subvenciones. todavía puedo oírlo gritar ¡qué se rinda tu madre! les poetas han sido asesinades y para nosotres es siempre noticia, una confirmación de que el mejor de los mundos perdió otro soñador. ¿cuántas ventanas quedan intactas en gaza? le pregunto al hombre que quiere iniciar un gofundme para cristóbal. colón y sus amigos olían a mierda, a vómito, a ratas y a europa, no porque estuvieran sitiados y hambrientos, sino porque no tenían en qué ocuparse. una especie de coachella, por así decirlo. hoy la luz me abandonó tres veces, como un abusador ansioso. la compañía a cargo se llama luma. su supervisor es la junta, cuyo supervisor es el gobierno estadounidense, cuyos supervisores son los ricos. ay, los ricos. ¿quién fue el que dijo que no tenían religión, ni lealtad, ni respeto? un comunista. los fascistas atacan los campamentos y los ricos reparten multas doradas. es un chiste entre pares. le pedí dinero a los ricos a cambio de mi labor. por eso no podemos tener sindicatos. puerto rico siempre fue mucho más que una colonia. por eso no podemos tener sindicatos que no sean la afl-cio. perdí el sentido del humor cuando dos influencers le mataron la tierra a un anciano. los policías civiles son (casi) los peores. sean bonney dijo al carajo la policía. lo repito por costumbre. alguien, escandalizada, protege las perlas de la constitución y declara que podemos estar en desacuerdo sobre toda esa matanza, ¡siempre y cuando el primer mundo que se imaginan los ricos esté a salvo! otro, con demasiado tiempo de ocio, dirá que esto no se trata de los ricos, pero he tenido tan solo una riña. tengo un único enemigo. ¡qué se rinda tu madre!
about the rich and only the rich
the rich keep telling us this is the best possible world. they kill and we die, but this is all we get to hope for. some rich people put on dresses and what splendor. i keep watching for news that the genocide has ended. years ago, i'd be called a poet, with a scoff, and all this would be a figment of my privilege. they would say genocide is too strong a term, and everyone would half-agree. today, they've decided we don't exist enough to bother. they tell us through prizes. they tell us through papers. they tell us through cops that this is the best possible world. leonel rugama was murdered once when he was young and dictators with funding finished signing their contracts. i can still hear him screaming ¡qué se rinda tu madre! the poets have been murdered and it is always news for us, confirmation that the best possible world has one less dreamer. how many windows were broken in gaza? i ask the man who wants to start a gofundme for chris. columbus and his friends smelled like shit, vomit, rats, and europe, not because they were surrounded and starved, but because they had nothing better to do. a sort of coachella, if you will. today the power has left me three times, like an anxious abuser. the company is luma. its supervisor is the junta. its supervisor is the u.s. government. its supervisor is the rich. ah, the rich. who was it that said they had no religion, no loyalty, no respect? a commie. the fascists raid encampments. the rich give out golden parking tickets. it is an inside joke. i have asked the rich for some money in exchange for my labor. this is why we can't have unions. puerto rico was always more than a colony. this is why we can't have unions that aren't the afl-cio. i lost my sense of humor when two influencers killed an old man off his land. civilian cops are (almost) the worst. sean bonney said fuck the police. i repeat it out of habit. clutching the pearls of the constitution, someone declares that we can disagree about all that murder, as long as the-first-world-as-imagined-by-the-rich is safe! someone with too much time will say this isn't about the rich, but i have only ever had one beef. i have only ever had one enemy. ¡qué se rinda tu madre!
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Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a poet, educator, and translator who lives in Puerto Rico. His seventh collection, Algarabía, was published in 2025 by Graywolf Press. Roque believes in a free Puerto Rico and a better world.
