Joining the Dead

When I first read Fredy Chicangana's, "We Still Have Life On This Earth," I thought that the speaker was a Native American man who was attending a celebration in memory of his dead ancestors. However, after our class discussion I realized that the speaker may be a recently deceased person who is viewing the celebration in memory of his own death and the death of others. In one line in the poem the speaker says,"We laugh and get drunk unhurriedly." The word "unhurriedly" implies that the speaker has an eternity to spend because he is no longer concerned with the limitations of time. In another line, the speaker says that he and others "penetrate the depths of this earth" which signifies that he is dead and buried beneath the earth. Afterwards, the speaker reveals that he is in the "warm navel that carries [them] and takes [them] to memory." The speaker is talking about being part of the dead. The "warm" feeling comes from being buried in the depths of the earth and the "navel" refers to the small whole that was dug to bury his lifeless remains in the enormous body of mother nature. He is being carried "to memory" because he will no longer be identified with his physical body but will live forever in the memory of those who knew him. One can deduct that the speaker is recently deceased because he refers to the dead as a different group when he says, "the space inhabited by our dead." He does not identify himself with the dead yet because he is just joining his ancestors that have been dead for a longer period. This poem can have different speakers depending on how you approach it.