La Jornada: The poet Israel Nicasio delves into the reality of the Afro-descendants of the Costa Chica

The writer Israel Nicasio Álvarez develops simple language in his poetic work: “I write so that my father and mother understand what I am saying.” In his three most recent collections of poems he addresses the reality of the Afro-Mexican people from which he descends, rugby, new masculinities, homeless people, the meaning of poetry and the infrarealist poet Darío Galicia.

The narrator and philosopher also won the Antonio Alatorre de Autlán de Navarro 2023 Emerging Poetry contest with I have a jaguar maskthe UNAM 2024 Starting Point Contest, in the field of poetry, with The point from which the comet broke off (Dogma) and the International Poetry Prize of the City of Mérida 2025 with This man’s chest rains in the park.

In interview with The DayIsrael Nicasio (Mexico City, 1987) commented that he has been told that due to the simplicity of his texts “it cannot be poetry. When I read the canon I felt stupid and here there is an objective: I write so that my father understands what I am saying. He will not read a more complex text.

“Perhaps the most difficult are some of the poems by I have a jaguar mask because of how they are built. They are just images of everything you see when you look at the sea, the palm trees, at the same time. In the other books the text is almost a story.

“This man’s chest rains in the park It’s a hybrid between narrative and poetry, what I’m doing right now. Almost all poems are like short stories, not even minifictions. “It has a remarkable hybridization.”

On I have a jaguar maskthe poet said that it revolves around the question about the past of Juchitán, Guerrero, his father’s community, and black towns on the Costa Chica of that state, in addition to “what they can tell you, for example, the sea, the houses, the dreams. It has that more dreamlike character.”

He recalled that the history of that area states that it was populated from Cuajinicuilapa and towards Acapulco. “From some ships with black people that they brought as slaves, at some point they organized and managed to escape. There are documentary versions that say that this is not possible.

“I’m not interested in whether it’s possible or not, because that story explains many things about the experiences of the Afro-descendants of the Costa Chica, from their character and even how they look at commerce, having to move to the cities to study. All of that is defined by that oral history.”

Israel Nicasio is interested in these spoken testimonies because they explain why they sing or dance that way. “When they talk to the sea, because people ask it questions and believe it is going to give them an answer, it is beautiful. To make literature that is important to me.”

Village of children and grandparents

He added that there are questions that these very forgotten towns “have for the world, for migration,” because many people leave them. “For example, Juchitán is a town of children or grandparents. Those who are my age are living in the United States. They left when I was 12 or 13 years old. I ran, played with them in the trees and I never saw them again. The migratory process is also very interesting narrated from there.”

The aforementioned collection of poems, he continued, “represents a gap in history that I will no longer be able to fill because my grandparents have already died and my uncles don’t remember. Many people tell you the stories of the town, but there is no way to document that. Besides, it is a very small and forgotten town. The question is present: what are the black towns of the Costa Chica?”

Meanwhile, The point from which the comet broke off is about questions that can be asked when someone plays rugby. “I practiced it for a while, but it was very bad. I always wanted to know what happens when a guy pauses watching you. They have found a more or less homoerotic speech, but in reality it can be interpreted in many ways, in what happens in those moments of great attention.”

On the other hand, This man’s chest rains in the parkNicasio Álvarez noted, was written with “questions of a more formal nature, such as what poetry is”; He also refers to the poet Darío Galicia, who died homeless, “out of admiration and the attention that people who live on the streets draw me and what they represent for us.

“The homeless are like black holes walking down the street, because no one sees them, but there they are. People see them, but you don’t approach them. It’s very strange. At the same time, I read Darío Galicia’s work and it impressed me.”

Israel Nicasio said that poetry came into his life in a strange way, because during the pandemic he did not want to write, but rather read it. “My mother was a high school teacher and she had the entire canon of poetry that I had not wanted to read because when I tried in primary and secondary school I felt stupid. During the pandemic I forced myself to read those books and I also began to find many literature magazines.”

Then he enrolled in a workshop taught by the poet Ángel Vargas – winner of the Aguascalientes Poetry Prize 2024 –, in which he had to write and comment. “That was where I began to see the characteristics of contemporary poetry, which no longer had so much to do with the canon,” the author recalled.