Not If I Still Hunger
From Martínez Roque v. USA by Samuel Martínez Roque
February 11, 2026 · 11 min · Season 1 · Episode 6
About this episode
This episode examines hunger as a mechanism of power in the context of human trafficking and labor exploitation, highlighting the experiences of an immigrant survivor.
Not If I Still Hunger (Explicit) is a first-person political testimony that examines hunger not as metaphor, but as a mechanism of power operating at the intersection of human trafficking, labor exploitation, and institutional delay. Written from the lived experience of an immigrant survivor, Samuel Martínez Roque argues that deprivation of food, safety, stability, and recognition is routinely weaponized to discipline vulnerable populations into silence and compliance. Through a sustained critique of waiting, “process,” and forced forgiveness, this episode exposes how bureaucratic language launder violence by recasting harm as procedure and survival as patience. Central to the narrative is Ramon Ontiveros , named not as an anomaly but as an enactment of a broader structural logic in which wage withholding, forced starvation, and retaliation function as tools of control in the context of human trafficking and labor exploitation. Martínez Roque rejects regret and closure as moral obligations imposed on the harmed while conditions of exploitation remain ongoing. Instead, hunger is reframed as historical memory and political refusal, an embodied indictment of systems that demand…
People in this episode
Host: Samuel Martínez Roque
Topics covered
- hunger
- human trafficking
- labor exploitation
- political testimony
- bureaucratic violence
- vulnerable populations
- survivor narrative
Keywords
- survivor
- silence
- compliance
- deprivation
- structural violence
- hunger
- human trafficking
- labor exploitation
- political testimony
- bureaucratic language
More episodes of Martínez Roque v. USA
- Ramon Ontiveros' Laundering of Immigrants' Labor Exploitation Through the Myth of the Drug Cartel Power: An Open Letter to the Juárez Cartel · April 8, 2026 · 6 min
- Wet Paper · March 25, 2026 · 14 min
- El Paso's House of Cards: The Police Department’s Architecture of Negligence and Complicity · March 22, 2026 · 16 min
- This Is What Human Trafficking in the Form of Ramon Ontiveros Looks Like · February 25, 2026 · 11 min
- Killed In USA, Part 2 · January 28, 2026 · 11 min
- Killed In USA · January 14, 2026 · 12 min
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