I have not written for a while honestly because I was busy at not doing anything in terms of writing. I'm not sure anybody really writes my books except when it affects them directly which is ok because they were part of the narrative I wrote about whether good or bad. I can be vindictive not in a inflicting pain but in showing how a bad can have a lasting legacy and I do what women do, snap back because I have not let it go. I am vindictive as my Apache blood seems to overwhelm my personality because in my view a wrong must be righted whereas my Mexican mother (my father was the Apache) lives with the attitude of washing it away with ignoring it or moving away. That was how she dealt with a problematic sister and opportunistic brother though my Baja grandparents were never like their offspring so its hard to imagine they were my mother's brother and sister. The Apaches from El Centro, California even with my mami as we called Luz, Light, whose reaching the end of her 87 years of life where one can never believe the story she says still snips hard at her eldest daughter or the grandchildren she raised who has seemed to forgotten her. I am lucky because all she says about me is the reporter; reportero which really means chismozo, the gossiper. But I laugh with her because my whole identity comes from her and her evil deeds, she is after all my mama grande as she always taught us. Making sense was never part of our lives equation, it just is. So contrary to what some might think of me as anti woman, my identity comes from this Apache woman who is slowly shivering away to nature and has already mentioned that she has seen two of her deceased sons and her daughter in law but not my father who was the first to go in 1980. This was the highlight of my summer.
But I have also written comments about immigration, feminism and even wearing ties but it seems that from the circles of politically correct professors I am not suppose to say anything or question assumptions that are not valid. Why they come to the defense seems to be more important than why they never question why I say those things. My answer is based on life. Fifteen years ago I went through a traumatic experience of tenure rejection after it was recommend for permanency because a female did not get her way and her comments were accepted as truth while mine were not. It showed me how women's voices even if filled with lies and lies can be accepted as gospel while my voice as a brown man can hold no merit even with facts. They won, I lost and I was tarnished permanently that until today it affects me. The same thing with immigration, once I believed that Mexicans especially along the border had the right to cross back and forth as native people have done because my Apache relatives did or as my mother said, "when I was born in Mexicali, there was only a plank and for us it was all the same". But when southern Mexicans showed up in large numbers it altered our region where my maternal grandparents did not really want to cross even though my grandfather had a border pass but it was no big deal, he milked cows in the Rancho del Cerro Prieto and my grandmother didn't want anything to do with the United States and crossing. She could not leave Baja California which included never going to Tijuana because it was too filthy, dangerous, ugly and not really the Mexico she knew of ranchos. Tijuana was never really part of Baja California ranchos, in my eyes still isn't. I viewed it in the eyes of us local people where my El Centro cousins would visit my other relatives but that world has died and alot of it is the violence, the large amount arriving from Central Mexico that even border residents can't handle and a view I feel they have which is full of greed. My view has now changed as trust of newcomers I do not have and people over staying their visas from any country is plain wrong. I don't see their excuse of a better life valid because many of my second and third cousins living in adobe or poor housing make due along the Baja border and are not taken by the lure of employment and more money. I would say they are not greedy and take what they can, just as my grandparents who never owned a home or property in Baja. They were landless and landless they died because their other children definitely would never pitch in to buy them anything. Everybody was on their own. In addition, I have seen how immigrants are favored for employment over Mexican Americans whether they are in education, professional or blue collor skilled labor. We don't live in a society of infinite employment and for US born to find themselves unemployed because White and immigrant employers believe they work harder which is subject to debate rubs me the wrong way. Especially when I have been unemployed and two of my closes friends with an MA and the other skilled but we are not good enough.
The irony these PC people don't like for me to question and attempt to quiet me up with anti everything comments as if I was some white person and seem to reject any rational position posted though how we feel is never acknowledged. I get a kick out of debating them which is how I ultimately see this because ultimately life is my teacher, but questioning is the most important freedom I believe I have and I exercise it. Thus this is where I am at today with no heroes in life just trying to survive which is the only ideology I believe in.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Universities Don't Define Me
Today in a conversation with the wife and female friend from high school, they both stated that their college education defined them while I argued it didnt for me because I had a life before and after. Yet it made me think that what defines me is the life i have lived. Which starts with my mother saying my paternal grandmother was una india which led me to conclude that it included me as she pointed at me and my father but equally that she was not. My mother only saw herself as a Mexican in an non india way because she didnt speak the language that my Apache grandmother spoke and she was fairskinned because my father had full red skin that was dark, even the brother in law defined him as indio de sangre pura and my father would distinguish the specific Apache like him on our forays into Baja California in Mexicali by pointing them out and them him or my grandmother too, as it happened on the bus. This has always shaped me into adulthood because ive always been judged this way both good or bad. I learned later in life that if a woman liked me it was because I was Apache and if she disliked me it was because I was Apache. My mother would not see herself this way probably because they only spoke Mexican Spanish but my mother did not discriminate as she chose the dark skin Apache even if the clan was crazy.
Then I was shaped by the work poverty struggles of my father and into adulthood. He never had a steady job and having lived close to my age 44 neither have I. From my teenage years of working job to my first adult recession in the early 1990s. Poverty has shaped me not that i want all the material goods i just wanted basics which i never had until my late 20s and lived in Lennox until age 25. That even after having graduated from undergrad and grad school i was in the same predicament sleepin in a shared room on a twin bed into adulthood with no privacy even for the masterbations all young males go through. The irony I was rejected for financial aid while I saw White females get assistance and I lived in Lennox then while at USC and UCLA hunger was a way of life at school, not affording the parking pass because it was either a a decision between that or my books much less living on campus or spring break. Life revolved hunger which is why I was arguing positions related to class which Whites at both campus could not comprehend becaue they did not live it. I went to college but never lived the college experience and even when I applied for those brown scholarships nothing came of it, it was just a waste of time applying for them. The poverty has shaped my life and my brothers, and no I'm not the immigrant kind just Mexican Americans left out of the equation which was generational. And yes we worked hard including my widowed mother, we just never got ahead and I know it affected my brothers too as my brother David left when he could at age 19 and split to Stillwater, Oklahoma and never looked back. He says what was there for me in Ca?Nothing, in Oklahoma i was somebody even if he equally struggled and he's never looked back. I feel resentment even until today not that life has gotten easier professionally its stagnated.
My third influence has been every job I have had from being a gardner at age 14 to college teaching. In simple terms, I have hated every job I have ever worked at. Specificially I have hated the people I have worked with because managers and supervisors have been pricks to abusive to envious as well as other workers. We are just strangers thrown together and everybody is out for themselves from their self advancement to their bigotry. I have never seen any camaraderie or help or cooperation just a place of combat and every manager I have had I have eventually wanted to fight them but my logic wins out as I have always been smarter than them. And this includes unions that are suppose to fight for workers as the lying professors preached they also turned out to be exactly as everybody else self serving conniving scums no different than management. And its no coincidence there is no correlation between merit and progress, its always never been about merit but more like being selected by a woman of their choice for their exploitation and their dirty work to satisfy them. The work place for me has been worse than hell and add living in Lennox and 2/3turns of my life has been hell in America. I hate the work place, the process of begging or whoring for a job and dont care anymore about it. As my friend Ruben says, "it doesnt matter if they are Chicanos, Blacks, Whites all of management are enemies and I say co workers too as we are strangers in competition.
My third influence more as an adult has been women I have come across in my life, they are like looking for a job and living with an abusive management who discart you when they get bored out so my attitude is the same now but with a critical eye of deconstructing the noble view of women, beware is all I say.
Lastly, death. Death has shaped me profoundly from the death of my father at age 10 to continues death until adulthood. It has just happened frequently which I know understand as a way of life but when my father, uncle, adopted father, childhood friend, cousin, it just becomes a painful part of life. But I am still in shock of my father because I was young and felt orphaned as happened to my both grandmothers who didn't have a father, my own father was raised without his father and even my children face life of never knowing either grandfather as their maternal grandfather died two years before their birth. They innocently call their cousins grandfather Papa but it hurts me because they will never know and I seem to have passed my family curse to them through no fault of theirs. Death angered me as I often viewed life through those lenses even hoping others especially cousins who were jerks would suffer the same fate which it did when I turned 18 making me feel guilty for wishing death unto my uncle the same man who called my father indio de sangre pura. Team has healed especially the birth of my children but at moments tears come upon me from that traumatic experience because we were all shocked.
Looking back through my 44 years I can't help but notice universities didn't define me or shaped me, all they did was get me debt and screw me over, life has been my true teacher, come to think of it universities don't define me, I won't give them that much credit, they were just quantity work with no quality. Anger though drives me and vengeance.
Then I was shaped by the work poverty struggles of my father and into adulthood. He never had a steady job and having lived close to my age 44 neither have I. From my teenage years of working job to my first adult recession in the early 1990s. Poverty has shaped me not that i want all the material goods i just wanted basics which i never had until my late 20s and lived in Lennox until age 25. That even after having graduated from undergrad and grad school i was in the same predicament sleepin in a shared room on a twin bed into adulthood with no privacy even for the masterbations all young males go through. The irony I was rejected for financial aid while I saw White females get assistance and I lived in Lennox then while at USC and UCLA hunger was a way of life at school, not affording the parking pass because it was either a a decision between that or my books much less living on campus or spring break. Life revolved hunger which is why I was arguing positions related to class which Whites at both campus could not comprehend becaue they did not live it. I went to college but never lived the college experience and even when I applied for those brown scholarships nothing came of it, it was just a waste of time applying for them. The poverty has shaped my life and my brothers, and no I'm not the immigrant kind just Mexican Americans left out of the equation which was generational. And yes we worked hard including my widowed mother, we just never got ahead and I know it affected my brothers too as my brother David left when he could at age 19 and split to Stillwater, Oklahoma and never looked back. He says what was there for me in Ca?Nothing, in Oklahoma i was somebody even if he equally struggled and he's never looked back. I feel resentment even until today not that life has gotten easier professionally its stagnated.
My third influence has been every job I have had from being a gardner at age 14 to college teaching. In simple terms, I have hated every job I have ever worked at. Specificially I have hated the people I have worked with because managers and supervisors have been pricks to abusive to envious as well as other workers. We are just strangers thrown together and everybody is out for themselves from their self advancement to their bigotry. I have never seen any camaraderie or help or cooperation just a place of combat and every manager I have had I have eventually wanted to fight them but my logic wins out as I have always been smarter than them. And this includes unions that are suppose to fight for workers as the lying professors preached they also turned out to be exactly as everybody else self serving conniving scums no different than management. And its no coincidence there is no correlation between merit and progress, its always never been about merit but more like being selected by a woman of their choice for their exploitation and their dirty work to satisfy them. The work place for me has been worse than hell and add living in Lennox and 2/3turns of my life has been hell in America. I hate the work place, the process of begging or whoring for a job and dont care anymore about it. As my friend Ruben says, "it doesnt matter if they are Chicanos, Blacks, Whites all of management are enemies and I say co workers too as we are strangers in competition.
My third influence more as an adult has been women I have come across in my life, they are like looking for a job and living with an abusive management who discart you when they get bored out so my attitude is the same now but with a critical eye of deconstructing the noble view of women, beware is all I say.
Lastly, death. Death has shaped me profoundly from the death of my father at age 10 to continues death until adulthood. It has just happened frequently which I know understand as a way of life but when my father, uncle, adopted father, childhood friend, cousin, it just becomes a painful part of life. But I am still in shock of my father because I was young and felt orphaned as happened to my both grandmothers who didn't have a father, my own father was raised without his father and even my children face life of never knowing either grandfather as their maternal grandfather died two years before their birth. They innocently call their cousins grandfather Papa but it hurts me because they will never know and I seem to have passed my family curse to them through no fault of theirs. Death angered me as I often viewed life through those lenses even hoping others especially cousins who were jerks would suffer the same fate which it did when I turned 18 making me feel guilty for wishing death unto my uncle the same man who called my father indio de sangre pura. Team has healed especially the birth of my children but at moments tears come upon me from that traumatic experience because we were all shocked.
Looking back through my 44 years I can't help but notice universities didn't define me or shaped me, all they did was get me debt and screw me over, life has been my true teacher, come to think of it universities don't define me, I won't give them that much credit, they were just quantity work with no quality. Anger though drives me and vengeance.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
The Meaning of Gettin Old
I have recently become concerned over aging and the meaning because I am aging fast. I am past midlife which for me is age 40 because average age is generally 80 if one is lucky assuming one is going to live to 100 is a bit pretentious and punishing because who wants to live mummified or as my grandfather use to say defleshing.
The most impacting aspect of aging is that it has arrived much faster than I expected almost as if I cannot stop the clock even if I wanted to. When I was a child I remember the clock moving too slow and wishing it did now I am trying to slow it down but I can't. I am reminded of it as the gray sideburns have become apparent, the weight which is slower to come down, the diabetes, the aching feet and the lack of attention from women. Fortunately, I have not bald but if I did, I would not keep the wig as my grandfather use to tell my tio Pocaluz who had a ponytail but was hairless on the top. Nino Gus would tell him, "straighten your wig you are wearing it upside down". As they aged the elder grandfather laughed at it and the silliness of holding on to being young and looking ridicously.
The men now have all now passed and did so young while Nino Gus died at age 83 in 2005 and as the oldest male nobody is really there to guide just relying on my own wits and defensiveness. So I spend alot of time observing older men, how they dress, walk, appear, if they look good in shorts with white socks or not even their shoes, sunglasses and what they drive. I tell myself that is my future and then wonder about sex because the biggest difference with my early 30's is the lack of attention from females. In my early 30's my sexuality flourished as females showed much more interest than they had in my early 20's and wondered if it was because I did not live in the South Bay area in LA County where White females showed zero interest and I find myself feeling resentment and anger because I knew I was being racialized. By my early 30's I was living in the east side city of Montebello where Mexican Americans were the majority and I felt I was respected as a man and it did not matter if I was manual labor or professional, I felt wanted by Mexican American females. However, I took it for granted though and did not appreciate enough the attention I was getting because I was enjoying what I felt women always got which was attention. I felt that circumstance would continue but to my surprise it did not and began to end around age 37 and it hasn't.
Now as I look at those older men and myself with all the attention going to women and feeling that women are not as interested in the purity of sex plus the real reality that women have always chosen when to have sex aging is difficult for the older men. Call it a change in biology or the skin defleshing but I understand why older men seek cultures where they are valued even if it cost them money at least money is the great equaliser but that wouldn't seem equal as women benefit more for they get financial and physical pleasure. Aging is now a way of life, just learning to live with this phase in my life.
The most impacting aspect of aging is that it has arrived much faster than I expected almost as if I cannot stop the clock even if I wanted to. When I was a child I remember the clock moving too slow and wishing it did now I am trying to slow it down but I can't. I am reminded of it as the gray sideburns have become apparent, the weight which is slower to come down, the diabetes, the aching feet and the lack of attention from women. Fortunately, I have not bald but if I did, I would not keep the wig as my grandfather use to tell my tio Pocaluz who had a ponytail but was hairless on the top. Nino Gus would tell him, "straighten your wig you are wearing it upside down". As they aged the elder grandfather laughed at it and the silliness of holding on to being young and looking ridicously.
The men now have all now passed and did so young while Nino Gus died at age 83 in 2005 and as the oldest male nobody is really there to guide just relying on my own wits and defensiveness. So I spend alot of time observing older men, how they dress, walk, appear, if they look good in shorts with white socks or not even their shoes, sunglasses and what they drive. I tell myself that is my future and then wonder about sex because the biggest difference with my early 30's is the lack of attention from females. In my early 30's my sexuality flourished as females showed much more interest than they had in my early 20's and wondered if it was because I did not live in the South Bay area in LA County where White females showed zero interest and I find myself feeling resentment and anger because I knew I was being racialized. By my early 30's I was living in the east side city of Montebello where Mexican Americans were the majority and I felt I was respected as a man and it did not matter if I was manual labor or professional, I felt wanted by Mexican American females. However, I took it for granted though and did not appreciate enough the attention I was getting because I was enjoying what I felt women always got which was attention. I felt that circumstance would continue but to my surprise it did not and began to end around age 37 and it hasn't.
Now as I look at those older men and myself with all the attention going to women and feeling that women are not as interested in the purity of sex plus the real reality that women have always chosen when to have sex aging is difficult for the older men. Call it a change in biology or the skin defleshing but I understand why older men seek cultures where they are valued even if it cost them money at least money is the great equaliser but that wouldn't seem equal as women benefit more for they get financial and physical pleasure. Aging is now a way of life, just learning to live with this phase in my life.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Mike Davis
When I attended graduate school in the early 1990s at UCLA I came across a public writer superstar named Mike Davis who had published the book City of Quartz. He the book were every where, in the LA Times, in the class rooms talking about the urban setting in a theoretical framework. My other professor Ed Soja threw him in there with the other books we were reading in our history of the city course and theory. I was one of the few Mexican Americans in that theoretical field because most minorities went into the Social and Built Environment which was more like social work. I could read that the average students went into that field and the thinkers went to the theory component. I chose the theory section because I liked history but had no ideal why I was in Urban Planning in the first place. And those professors from a German to an Australian to a White guy were not so nice, a person named Friedman was one of the persons who epitomized why Germans are hated. He thought he was smart and really was not and to prove my point when I mentioned that Hugo Chavez after his revolt in Venezuela might be somebody to keep an eye on, he dismissed my opinion only to see that Hugo Chavez got elected some years later. I just laughed but that was the type of hostile environment I was in.
Then I became part of a study group and met Mike Davis and I was star struck. This was the beginning of my downfall. He was great though, he was friendly, reached out, even gave me a copy of his book which I read religiously though I found it to not be reader friendly though subjectively good. And I read it because I liked the Los Angeles focus which we never seemed to had. Many of the urban theory professors believed they were in New York and London and could never accept they lived in Northern Mexico. I had an oral sense of history because of my grandparents and other relatives especially my beloved Nina Kika who was born in Inglewood and would tell me stories of the thirties how they and the Daniel Freeman family were some of the originals and that Freeman was half Mexican. That family donated land for the hospital along Prairie near Florence and my Nina's father worked for the Freeman family. I wanted to contextualize that history and found Mike Davis as someone I could share that history with as least he seemed to pay attention.
So I began to worship him as a movie star kind of author because of my background. I had grown up in Inglewood and then at age 15 moved to Lennox and in Lennox we never met anybody of merit beyond manual dirty labor. Nobody had even completed college, played a major sport even in high school much less even been viewed with respect. Lennox did not have that and even our Black heavy set mailman was afraid of 106th Street.
So I commited the worse mistake a human can do which is to worship another human being and I did because he was friendly to me, valued me and made me feel I was important. The other professors were bothered by my presence, I could feel it. And he saw me as a person with smarts and because I had read his book he was impressed I could reference his points when I would tell him, oh yeah I read that in your book. He invited me to do a city trip with a writer from Mexico City named Carlos Monsivais and we did but strange guy, was not impressed by him. We went to Lennox, he drank a glass of water at my mom's house and went to the Black, Salvadorian and downtown areas of Los Angeles only to end up at the Biltmore and be abandoned by him because he was tired. He sat in the car most of the time.
Then the worship on my part got out of hand because I did not know how to distinguish between giving people their private space with his family then I committed an error by not being able to take him to some church that was dealing with the aftermath of the Reginald Denning beatings. I did bale on him because I was chasing a woman but I should have let him know. Then our friendship stopped partly because I moved away because I was intruding too much and I never had any money. I never did because I didn't have a job because I could not get one. I did not receive any scholarships, work was none existent but I was trying to hang out with a superstar writer so I knew I wore out my welcome. How could I have not? But I did not have have the family background, my mother was widowed, she barely could survive to help my younger brothers, my father's pension of social security had been diminished because my two of us had become emancipated and somehow we didn't need the social security but we needed it the most. At least for spending money and gasoline. And it was embarassing going to eat somewhere but not being able to contribute so I realized I should not go anymore and I didn't.
So I disappeared and we didn't see each for a few years then a few years later through somebody Mike Davis would send me greetings through common people we knew so I felt that was very kind of him. Those were kind gestures and by this time I finally had some job, more income, invited him as a guest lecture only to hear from students at East LA College "we didn't understand him" but his chupacabra reference in the Ecology of Fear was cultural along with his reference to why the Spaniards came to California easily. They followed the Native trails north on the horse. I was appreciative of what he had done for me and wanted to compensate him as I could and I felt I did. I did for others like the cartoonist the Cucaracha but that was a big mistake. But Davis was different, then I started writing and forwarded my stuff to him which he used as a resource in his book Magical Realism: How Latinos Reinvent the US Big City but could not get over the fact he called me a second generation immigrant. How the hell could I be a second generation immigrant or the fact that there was no recognition of differences between so called brown groups. But we were friends again without the author worship, maybe I had grown up.
Afterwards he would invite me to his Pasadena home and would share stories of his new projects and my pictures of Peru, hell I was even invited to his marriage to some Mexico City woman. Don't really like those people? And after he moved to New York we kept in contact and upon his return to Southern California. He went out of his ways to keep contact with me until one day when I called him I heard in the background say, "what the hell does he want". I hung up the phone and never called again, threw away his number and never spoke again. I had stopped the wrongful worship and realized I don't belong. Even his long time friend Ron said, he's that way, I've known him for 40 years.
It was sad to see a friendship end and I could have used his support because when my first book was published titled "The Chicano Treatise" I asked about the publisher University Press he stated that was a good press. I could have used his guidance but like many things in life things don't always work out and they didn't with him as a friend. Maybe his new life, wife and UC position elevated him but who knows we never got to talk. But what I learned from him, I don't worship nobody.
Then I became part of a study group and met Mike Davis and I was star struck. This was the beginning of my downfall. He was great though, he was friendly, reached out, even gave me a copy of his book which I read religiously though I found it to not be reader friendly though subjectively good. And I read it because I liked the Los Angeles focus which we never seemed to had. Many of the urban theory professors believed they were in New York and London and could never accept they lived in Northern Mexico. I had an oral sense of history because of my grandparents and other relatives especially my beloved Nina Kika who was born in Inglewood and would tell me stories of the thirties how they and the Daniel Freeman family were some of the originals and that Freeman was half Mexican. That family donated land for the hospital along Prairie near Florence and my Nina's father worked for the Freeman family. I wanted to contextualize that history and found Mike Davis as someone I could share that history with as least he seemed to pay attention.
So I began to worship him as a movie star kind of author because of my background. I had grown up in Inglewood and then at age 15 moved to Lennox and in Lennox we never met anybody of merit beyond manual dirty labor. Nobody had even completed college, played a major sport even in high school much less even been viewed with respect. Lennox did not have that and even our Black heavy set mailman was afraid of 106th Street.
So I commited the worse mistake a human can do which is to worship another human being and I did because he was friendly to me, valued me and made me feel I was important. The other professors were bothered by my presence, I could feel it. And he saw me as a person with smarts and because I had read his book he was impressed I could reference his points when I would tell him, oh yeah I read that in your book. He invited me to do a city trip with a writer from Mexico City named Carlos Monsivais and we did but strange guy, was not impressed by him. We went to Lennox, he drank a glass of water at my mom's house and went to the Black, Salvadorian and downtown areas of Los Angeles only to end up at the Biltmore and be abandoned by him because he was tired. He sat in the car most of the time.
Then the worship on my part got out of hand because I did not know how to distinguish between giving people their private space with his family then I committed an error by not being able to take him to some church that was dealing with the aftermath of the Reginald Denning beatings. I did bale on him because I was chasing a woman but I should have let him know. Then our friendship stopped partly because I moved away because I was intruding too much and I never had any money. I never did because I didn't have a job because I could not get one. I did not receive any scholarships, work was none existent but I was trying to hang out with a superstar writer so I knew I wore out my welcome. How could I have not? But I did not have have the family background, my mother was widowed, she barely could survive to help my younger brothers, my father's pension of social security had been diminished because my two of us had become emancipated and somehow we didn't need the social security but we needed it the most. At least for spending money and gasoline. And it was embarassing going to eat somewhere but not being able to contribute so I realized I should not go anymore and I didn't.
So I disappeared and we didn't see each for a few years then a few years later through somebody Mike Davis would send me greetings through common people we knew so I felt that was very kind of him. Those were kind gestures and by this time I finally had some job, more income, invited him as a guest lecture only to hear from students at East LA College "we didn't understand him" but his chupacabra reference in the Ecology of Fear was cultural along with his reference to why the Spaniards came to California easily. They followed the Native trails north on the horse. I was appreciative of what he had done for me and wanted to compensate him as I could and I felt I did. I did for others like the cartoonist the Cucaracha but that was a big mistake. But Davis was different, then I started writing and forwarded my stuff to him which he used as a resource in his book Magical Realism: How Latinos Reinvent the US Big City but could not get over the fact he called me a second generation immigrant. How the hell could I be a second generation immigrant or the fact that there was no recognition of differences between so called brown groups. But we were friends again without the author worship, maybe I had grown up.
Afterwards he would invite me to his Pasadena home and would share stories of his new projects and my pictures of Peru, hell I was even invited to his marriage to some Mexico City woman. Don't really like those people? And after he moved to New York we kept in contact and upon his return to Southern California. He went out of his ways to keep contact with me until one day when I called him I heard in the background say, "what the hell does he want". I hung up the phone and never called again, threw away his number and never spoke again. I had stopped the wrongful worship and realized I don't belong. Even his long time friend Ron said, he's that way, I've known him for 40 years.
It was sad to see a friendship end and I could have used his support because when my first book was published titled "The Chicano Treatise" I asked about the publisher University Press he stated that was a good press. I could have used his guidance but like many things in life things don't always work out and they didn't with him as a friend. Maybe his new life, wife and UC position elevated him but who knows we never got to talk. But what I learned from him, I don't worship nobody.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The Next Big Thing Interview
"The Next Big Thing"
I was invited by Andrea Hernandez Holm.
What is the working title of the book?
If Jesus Could Not Save Himself, How Would He Save Me?
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Could-Save-Himself-Would/dp/0761858830/ref=la_B001JS8OK0_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1361382975&sr=1-7
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I had previously written other books on Mexican American issues but the story that lingered was my experience of having attended an Assembly of God Church as a teenager and I wanted to explore that.
What genre does your book fall under?
Mexican American Studies, Religious Studies, American Studies
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Have No Ideal, Don’t Know Any Teenage Mexican American actors and they would have to be tall, skinny, black hair Apache looking because that’s part of the story line.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Attending a Reagan Revolution Anglo Protestant Church as a brown person.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Two months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I was inspired about to write about this from my grandmother Alberta in Baja California who was a 7th Day Adventist and would spend my summers with her and Ken Hillman Sr. who was the person that would invite me to the church and became my adopted father because we developed a good friendship and burying him at age 17 due to colon cancer was very painful but I've never forgotten him. I wanted to honor both of them.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
The description of the sermons on devil music and against Darwinism.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My book was published by Rowman and Littlefield in Lanham, Maryland. They had published four other books of mine.
Please include the names of at least four authors you have invited to participate.
Oscar Barajas- Columnist-News Taco
David Ordaz- Cartoonist
Rodrigo Valles-
Hugo Moreno-
I was invited by Andrea Hernandez Holm.
What is the working title of the book?
If Jesus Could Not Save Himself, How Would He Save Me?
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Could-Save-Himself-Would/dp/0761858830/ref=la_B001JS8OK0_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1361382975&sr=1-7
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I had previously written other books on Mexican American issues but the story that lingered was my experience of having attended an Assembly of God Church as a teenager and I wanted to explore that.
What genre does your book fall under?
Mexican American Studies, Religious Studies, American Studies
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Have No Ideal, Don’t Know Any Teenage Mexican American actors and they would have to be tall, skinny, black hair Apache looking because that’s part of the story line.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Attending a Reagan Revolution Anglo Protestant Church as a brown person.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Two months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I was inspired about to write about this from my grandmother Alberta in Baja California who was a 7th Day Adventist and would spend my summers with her and Ken Hillman Sr. who was the person that would invite me to the church and became my adopted father because we developed a good friendship and burying him at age 17 due to colon cancer was very painful but I've never forgotten him. I wanted to honor both of them.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
The description of the sermons on devil music and against Darwinism.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My book was published by Rowman and Littlefield in Lanham, Maryland. They had published four other books of mine.
Please include the names of at least four authors you have invited to participate.
Oscar Barajas- Columnist-News Taco
David Ordaz- Cartoonist
Rodrigo Valles-
Hugo Moreno-
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Backwards
Two weeks ago, East Los Angeles College hired a Salvadorian immigrant named M. Martinez as its new president and had previously had a 15 year terror reign by a white man named Ernest Moreno. In both instances, they both had identifiers that could be labeled Mexican Americans because in the eyes of White people an Spanish surnames makes everybody a latino which is synonomous with being Mexican American because afterall they have the same names. In both instances, these two hires were an affront and a slap to Mexican Americans especially those who have been prepared to or aspired to be a college president.
Mexican Americans are defined as born in the US and two parents of Mexican heritage, or having three grandparents of Mexican American heritage, being born in El Salvador and from a mother who was German does not make one Mexican American yet the LACCD board then and now have hired people that seem latino but as just demonstrated they were not. Even if the White person has a Mexican American father or mother that does not make them one for the simple reason of coming from two Mexican parents is not the same as having only woman parent, yes its racial, cultural and the mixed Whites know that. Whites with a Mexican American parent can morph or hide as a White person and they know that which they do. Take the case in point of baseball's Ted Williams who was born in San Diego to a Mexican American mother and who according to a biography learned baseball from his uncle Salvador in Santa Barbara. Yet he hid that and could because as racial mixing indicates, the offspring with Whites, Blacks or Asians look like them even if they have a Moreno, Venegas or Camacho last name. They can hide racially while those of us with two Mexican parents cannot and we pay the consequences of that. Add to it the White mentally that arises from that because I don't see no White Mexican leading any charge to defend the rest of us. Ted Williams forever hid he was Mexican American and so did Mit Romney and they could. So my conclusion is that they are White and I'm not talking about strangers even family members in my family from nephews to cousins children and I even married one Dutch with a Mexican American mother but looks Dutch, really Dutch. But by reproducing with me there is an attempt of saving that Mexican American Apache blood because if she had married a White guy none of the offspring would be Mexican American as happened with a second cousin. He married a White female, has two females and honestly they are not Mexican anymore but having one Mexican grandmother is not the same as three. They are not by blood or names so endless they say they are this look based society will not judge them that way.
And the proof here is not my analysis but the testimony of people like E. Moreno who would say he was German and not Chicano which meant Mexican American and he said it proudly to distinguish himself from the brown people because he had blue eyes. The White institutions maintained White control by hiring a White person that they belief he could morph and it worked especially because they counted him as an example of an affirmative action when it was not. It was a regressive action and they got away with it under the one drop Black blood but those legal views don't apply to Mexican Americans. And he did alot of damage to Mexican Americans as a whole.
Now they have hired a Salvadorian immigrant as its new president without taking into consideration how contentious the relationship exists between both communities and in my eyes they have learned the anti Mexican rhetoric from mainstream culture much like Italians have learned their bigotry about Blacks in New York. The philosophy of "they're all the same" here is in full force and it just goes to show how Mexican Americans get no respect and are not given the opportunities to excell. I have the same credentials as M. Martinez plus a second Master's from UCLA where we were both in the same Urban Planning program. That same degree has gotten him the presidency while my same degree plus second Latin American Studies has only gotten me unemployment. Forget about the fact I have written 7 books and have 20 years of teaching somehow a person born in Central America is more knowledgeable from English speaking to American culture is preposterous and disrespectful. I too had applied for the position and my same credentials only got me a rejection letter but on the second round of hire of which he was asked to apply got him hired. They should just say don't apply and really why apply when the doors have been closed and they place people who supposedly look Mexican American but are not.
All this proves that in reality the post affirmative action era has resulted in the backward era and the losers are Mexican Americans but afterall whose really given a damn about us. I don't think we even give a damn about us.
Mexican Americans are defined as born in the US and two parents of Mexican heritage, or having three grandparents of Mexican American heritage, being born in El Salvador and from a mother who was German does not make one Mexican American yet the LACCD board then and now have hired people that seem latino but as just demonstrated they were not. Even if the White person has a Mexican American father or mother that does not make them one for the simple reason of coming from two Mexican parents is not the same as having only woman parent, yes its racial, cultural and the mixed Whites know that. Whites with a Mexican American parent can morph or hide as a White person and they know that which they do. Take the case in point of baseball's Ted Williams who was born in San Diego to a Mexican American mother and who according to a biography learned baseball from his uncle Salvador in Santa Barbara. Yet he hid that and could because as racial mixing indicates, the offspring with Whites, Blacks or Asians look like them even if they have a Moreno, Venegas or Camacho last name. They can hide racially while those of us with two Mexican parents cannot and we pay the consequences of that. Add to it the White mentally that arises from that because I don't see no White Mexican leading any charge to defend the rest of us. Ted Williams forever hid he was Mexican American and so did Mit Romney and they could. So my conclusion is that they are White and I'm not talking about strangers even family members in my family from nephews to cousins children and I even married one Dutch with a Mexican American mother but looks Dutch, really Dutch. But by reproducing with me there is an attempt of saving that Mexican American Apache blood because if she had married a White guy none of the offspring would be Mexican American as happened with a second cousin. He married a White female, has two females and honestly they are not Mexican anymore but having one Mexican grandmother is not the same as three. They are not by blood or names so endless they say they are this look based society will not judge them that way.
And the proof here is not my analysis but the testimony of people like E. Moreno who would say he was German and not Chicano which meant Mexican American and he said it proudly to distinguish himself from the brown people because he had blue eyes. The White institutions maintained White control by hiring a White person that they belief he could morph and it worked especially because they counted him as an example of an affirmative action when it was not. It was a regressive action and they got away with it under the one drop Black blood but those legal views don't apply to Mexican Americans. And he did alot of damage to Mexican Americans as a whole.
Now they have hired a Salvadorian immigrant as its new president without taking into consideration how contentious the relationship exists between both communities and in my eyes they have learned the anti Mexican rhetoric from mainstream culture much like Italians have learned their bigotry about Blacks in New York. The philosophy of "they're all the same" here is in full force and it just goes to show how Mexican Americans get no respect and are not given the opportunities to excell. I have the same credentials as M. Martinez plus a second Master's from UCLA where we were both in the same Urban Planning program. That same degree has gotten him the presidency while my same degree plus second Latin American Studies has only gotten me unemployment. Forget about the fact I have written 7 books and have 20 years of teaching somehow a person born in Central America is more knowledgeable from English speaking to American culture is preposterous and disrespectful. I too had applied for the position and my same credentials only got me a rejection letter but on the second round of hire of which he was asked to apply got him hired. They should just say don't apply and really why apply when the doors have been closed and they place people who supposedly look Mexican American but are not.
All this proves that in reality the post affirmative action era has resulted in the backward era and the losers are Mexican Americans but afterall whose really given a damn about us. I don't think we even give a damn about us.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
There Are No Friends In The World
Was my mother's philosophical saying or warning and she was adamant because she would open her eyeballs, keep them fixated on me and not wink. And then she would repeat, "en este mundo no hay amigos". I use to think she was crazy because she would continue with more warnings, "you can't trust what those friends will do because you don't know their motives"; "they'll use you and blame you for their deeds"; "they only want to use you and when they don't need you they'll forget you"; "or they'll use you for money and never pay you back"; even family proved that. Then she would say, "they'll do things of police danger and make you take the fall because they'll forget about you once in jail" while emphasizing in closing, "there are no friends in this world".
To be honest I was confused because certain strangers had become our friends through being Godparents but they were an older couple who never had children and had been friends with her aunt and uncle. But in reality Gus and Kika became grandparents and the limitation to other friendships stopped there. My father did not really have friends he had more acquaintences but then my mother would say, "see your father, he doesn't bring just anybody over, and if they do come they wait outside, he doesn't trust people coming over". And I remembered my father was like that but he was friend with my godfather Gus and his brother in law Pocaluz. And if he did, none of his work friends ever entered our house and I do remember an older man waiting for him across the street. My father was just that protective of the household and mistrusting of the outside world.
I didn't know why because I was the opposite, gullible and trusting of the outside world and maybe I should have been. These were the 70's of the hillside strangler and boys being kidnapped and murdered along with the normal street risks of unexpected cholos and prowering Blacks but I had no fear of that unless they started following me. I didn't really comprehend the world. I felt that the world was not as dangerous as it was portrayed and that other kids I knew from the neighborhood were brother like but my mother did not abide by those rules. She didn't like Sammy because there was something not there or others because they lived too far or didn't know them. But she liked my friend Scott who was Black but generally distrusted the other Mexican kids because tyhe would lead me down the wrong path. They were all potential criminals, just look at the family, even their look would reveal they were to not be trusted especially if they had any Sinaloa background. But I kept insisting it was not true but then I started seeing her points. Sammy was a prick, even I didn't really like him, then he dropped out of school, was a wondering kid because his mother always worked, other Mexican kids she judged by appearance. If they had slick back hair, cholo shoes, and a white JC Penny t-shirt I was not to ever hang out with them. Then I could see what she meant, because as I aged into teenageship, apart from Sammy, another guy across the street from Sammy, Enrique fit that cholo profile of attire, hair and attitude apart from the talk and an older brother that had that tshirt look but the jeans and converse tennis shoes confused me because he wasn't. He was like half cholo, half 501 Levi's and cholos wore Khaki pants not jeans. But I didn't like him either because he would bully and I wasn't one who liked to fight. If there was ever a downfall that I had was that I actually showed fear because I hadn't been taught to fight by my father and fighting was not something I was good at naturally. Even once I didn't stand up for my younger brother or myself against Sammy or Enrique only to have been defended by Sammy's step dad and then a scolding I got from my father for not defending my brother. I was scared and I felt fear so I did what I had always done in figthing, I always moved away and joined this Assembly of God church and hung out with my Black friend Scott Mosely who was not like those other morons. Maybe my mom was right. Cant really trust Mexicans.
Then we moved to Riverside in 1982 and 1983 and by then, I had become a stranger to Sammy and Enrique and we still lived in the neighborhood but one block up. I trusted the new church group who were majorily white and my sole Black friend Scott. Scott wasn't violent nor a jerk like the two other guys. In honesty, my mother sent me away from other Mexicans because the cholo syndrome, the competitive syndrome and the chusma low class syndrome. My mother didn't have this ethnic love most would think. I wasn't raised with the ideal of seeking solidarity with Mexicans because if there was one group that was not united were Mexicans so the rule was to generally stay away, we generally hated each other. The few white and black friends had not been like the Enriques and Sammy's and to find diamonds like Nino Gus and Nina Kika was almost impossible. And attending that White church was a better environment and I could see it, those other guys were beginning to experiment with cigarettes and then I just dropped out from hanging out with them. But they were also doing semi criminal elements that I would hear from others, later on I found out they were into heavier drugs so I did good plus why would I want to hang out with misfits. But I had friends from elementary who I attended high school with and felt a connection to them and they did too especially my senior year at Hawthorne High School.
We hung out like our friendship mattered which originated from elementary schooling even if we lived 8 blocks apart, we were linked and we even traveled together to Coahuila as they introduced me to Mexico beyond Baja California. Another equal friend from high school but one were we played football all three years, whom I sat next two in one or two classes for a year, helped him get hired at the local supermarket where I worked at and visited him on weekends on my way home from visiting my girlfriend. The Sammy's and Enriques faded away while the Guillermos and Gilbert's came along and continued into my mid 20's. My friendship with Scott diminished because we had to move from 99th street to 106th then he moved even further to Gardena and for his occasional visits we stopped visiting each other. That friendship ended but he would visit me until one day in 1989 he joined the military, was in the first Iraq and Panama Invasion and didn't see him again for 20 years until he looked me up on myspace. So much was lost but with Guillermo and Gilbert we continued and though I'm partially responsible at times for moving away because I got a girlfriend I tried to always keep in touch, until one day they both just stopped talking to me. By the late 1990's we had had only one conversation and we have not seen each other again. And here I thought because we were high school friends, I assumed we would always be tight but I kept hearing those words from my mother, "there are no friends in this world'. And just like that they disappeared and even when there was a possibility of conversation through facebook there has not been any effort that even I gave up. My mother stated, "its because they won the lottery" which they did and in her eyes didn't want any association.
In adulthood, my friendships have been even less. People have come and gone just like women have so the ideal of a friendship has been much like that high school sweetheart, a false illusion. Fortunately, I have found four new friends of different ages and levels which I am grateful for but those guys from my adolescent years hurt me more because I thought our past history meant something. We knew each other from kids, from being teenagers, from classes, from football practice, from walking home, from checking out their sisters to aging as young men to end up as if we never even knew each other is quite puzzling and sad.
I feel as if Im orphaned now removed from that era and it bothers me because the high school I attended was not a feeder school from my elementary to junior high years plus the move to Riverside. I spent junior high, my 8th grade year in two schools where I didn't know anybody and only knew a few so high school was a foreign place in 9th grade and 10th grade.
Yet as I paralleled my mother's aging process, she's also gone through ups and downs of so called friends and has only revolved around two. They too have come and gone and even cousins she hung out with now won't talk to her and as she stated, "well if they don't want to visit, that means they don't want to be around or be around their lives".
I accept this is now my fate for my past in an odd way does not exist anymore, it died years back. Without denying it, I see my mother's philosophy because she would say at times "from thousands 1 can be your friend" and fortunately, I have that. Now female friends, lets just say I don't have any, maybe paying the mortgage matters more.
Peace!
To be honest I was confused because certain strangers had become our friends through being Godparents but they were an older couple who never had children and had been friends with her aunt and uncle. But in reality Gus and Kika became grandparents and the limitation to other friendships stopped there. My father did not really have friends he had more acquaintences but then my mother would say, "see your father, he doesn't bring just anybody over, and if they do come they wait outside, he doesn't trust people coming over". And I remembered my father was like that but he was friend with my godfather Gus and his brother in law Pocaluz. And if he did, none of his work friends ever entered our house and I do remember an older man waiting for him across the street. My father was just that protective of the household and mistrusting of the outside world.
I didn't know why because I was the opposite, gullible and trusting of the outside world and maybe I should have been. These were the 70's of the hillside strangler and boys being kidnapped and murdered along with the normal street risks of unexpected cholos and prowering Blacks but I had no fear of that unless they started following me. I didn't really comprehend the world. I felt that the world was not as dangerous as it was portrayed and that other kids I knew from the neighborhood were brother like but my mother did not abide by those rules. She didn't like Sammy because there was something not there or others because they lived too far or didn't know them. But she liked my friend Scott who was Black but generally distrusted the other Mexican kids because tyhe would lead me down the wrong path. They were all potential criminals, just look at the family, even their look would reveal they were to not be trusted especially if they had any Sinaloa background. But I kept insisting it was not true but then I started seeing her points. Sammy was a prick, even I didn't really like him, then he dropped out of school, was a wondering kid because his mother always worked, other Mexican kids she judged by appearance. If they had slick back hair, cholo shoes, and a white JC Penny t-shirt I was not to ever hang out with them. Then I could see what she meant, because as I aged into teenageship, apart from Sammy, another guy across the street from Sammy, Enrique fit that cholo profile of attire, hair and attitude apart from the talk and an older brother that had that tshirt look but the jeans and converse tennis shoes confused me because he wasn't. He was like half cholo, half 501 Levi's and cholos wore Khaki pants not jeans. But I didn't like him either because he would bully and I wasn't one who liked to fight. If there was ever a downfall that I had was that I actually showed fear because I hadn't been taught to fight by my father and fighting was not something I was good at naturally. Even once I didn't stand up for my younger brother or myself against Sammy or Enrique only to have been defended by Sammy's step dad and then a scolding I got from my father for not defending my brother. I was scared and I felt fear so I did what I had always done in figthing, I always moved away and joined this Assembly of God church and hung out with my Black friend Scott Mosely who was not like those other morons. Maybe my mom was right. Cant really trust Mexicans.
Then we moved to Riverside in 1982 and 1983 and by then, I had become a stranger to Sammy and Enrique and we still lived in the neighborhood but one block up. I trusted the new church group who were majorily white and my sole Black friend Scott. Scott wasn't violent nor a jerk like the two other guys. In honesty, my mother sent me away from other Mexicans because the cholo syndrome, the competitive syndrome and the chusma low class syndrome. My mother didn't have this ethnic love most would think. I wasn't raised with the ideal of seeking solidarity with Mexicans because if there was one group that was not united were Mexicans so the rule was to generally stay away, we generally hated each other. The few white and black friends had not been like the Enriques and Sammy's and to find diamonds like Nino Gus and Nina Kika was almost impossible. And attending that White church was a better environment and I could see it, those other guys were beginning to experiment with cigarettes and then I just dropped out from hanging out with them. But they were also doing semi criminal elements that I would hear from others, later on I found out they were into heavier drugs so I did good plus why would I want to hang out with misfits. But I had friends from elementary who I attended high school with and felt a connection to them and they did too especially my senior year at Hawthorne High School.
We hung out like our friendship mattered which originated from elementary schooling even if we lived 8 blocks apart, we were linked and we even traveled together to Coahuila as they introduced me to Mexico beyond Baja California. Another equal friend from high school but one were we played football all three years, whom I sat next two in one or two classes for a year, helped him get hired at the local supermarket where I worked at and visited him on weekends on my way home from visiting my girlfriend. The Sammy's and Enriques faded away while the Guillermos and Gilbert's came along and continued into my mid 20's. My friendship with Scott diminished because we had to move from 99th street to 106th then he moved even further to Gardena and for his occasional visits we stopped visiting each other. That friendship ended but he would visit me until one day in 1989 he joined the military, was in the first Iraq and Panama Invasion and didn't see him again for 20 years until he looked me up on myspace. So much was lost but with Guillermo and Gilbert we continued and though I'm partially responsible at times for moving away because I got a girlfriend I tried to always keep in touch, until one day they both just stopped talking to me. By the late 1990's we had had only one conversation and we have not seen each other again. And here I thought because we were high school friends, I assumed we would always be tight but I kept hearing those words from my mother, "there are no friends in this world'. And just like that they disappeared and even when there was a possibility of conversation through facebook there has not been any effort that even I gave up. My mother stated, "its because they won the lottery" which they did and in her eyes didn't want any association.
In adulthood, my friendships have been even less. People have come and gone just like women have so the ideal of a friendship has been much like that high school sweetheart, a false illusion. Fortunately, I have found four new friends of different ages and levels which I am grateful for but those guys from my adolescent years hurt me more because I thought our past history meant something. We knew each other from kids, from being teenagers, from classes, from football practice, from walking home, from checking out their sisters to aging as young men to end up as if we never even knew each other is quite puzzling and sad.
I feel as if Im orphaned now removed from that era and it bothers me because the high school I attended was not a feeder school from my elementary to junior high years plus the move to Riverside. I spent junior high, my 8th grade year in two schools where I didn't know anybody and only knew a few so high school was a foreign place in 9th grade and 10th grade.
Yet as I paralleled my mother's aging process, she's also gone through ups and downs of so called friends and has only revolved around two. They too have come and gone and even cousins she hung out with now won't talk to her and as she stated, "well if they don't want to visit, that means they don't want to be around or be around their lives".
I accept this is now my fate for my past in an odd way does not exist anymore, it died years back. Without denying it, I see my mother's philosophy because she would say at times "from thousands 1 can be your friend" and fortunately, I have that. Now female friends, lets just say I don't have any, maybe paying the mortgage matters more.
Peace!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)