Jeffrey Valencia Lechón For over three hundred years under Spanish rule, I've watched my people bleed like pigs — the one before a celebration. First it's freshly butchered. You can hear its helpless squeal the moment the cold blade touches its throat, sliced cleanly blood dripping like hot wax, staining the hands. The carcass is cleaned the entrails removed. My people, we do not waste a thing. Dinuguan: its own intestines boiled in its own peppered flesh. We say it's chocolate meat. The pig is stuffed with spices and banana leaves before it is mounted lifeless on a bamboo spit, hanging submissive over the charcoal fire like a sacrifice made for God, slowly burning. And when it's fully roasted, a shiny red apple is placed in its mouth as if its own silence was never enough. My people we die, we survive, we suffer. Let us eat and remember.

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