As I have aged, what I believed before as normal has ceased to exist. For example, I use to believe that friends would last for a long time or that every one would have a high school sweetheart. Well neither of that existed for me and my mother's words of "there are no true friends in life seems" even more prophetic in actuality.
The same now applies to family members I assumed were always family members. But time, recognition, death and reunitement has proven that those family members were not really related. With Facebook, family reunifications have become somewhat possible for me and it has been good to connect with my cousin even if only over the phone especially because he's only 6 months younger is a the historian of the family in ways that no Mormon or genelogical website can do especially when there are no papers along the way.
Part of the unity urge has been driven by the fact that my father died 31 plus years ago and only lived to the age of 30 so the desire for him is ever present and this clan are the children of his sister who was also from the same father. We are cousins, both my father and his sister had an additional Camacho brother formerly known as Miguel Angel or Mike and he too has now died.
These three sets were the Camacho clan but as my brother Alberto said, we were the better looking ones and we all laugh. However, the clan did not end there but the Camachos did. My father was from my grandmother's second marriage, the first clan of three children were the Guardados, two of whom have already died too (we are bewitched: Jose and Rosa). Then there were four more each from different father's (yes she was) but all were raised that they were all siblings because they came from the same mother and that wasn't questioned but the fatherly differences were ever present. So I could tell the difference but put it to the back.
As we aged, it became ever present that different grandfathers made us all different, because we developed into unique families however, amongst the Camachos we knew were were bounded because of the same grandfather/grandmother. Besides death and time we associated more with my mother's clan because out of fear from the Camachos however the Segura cousins could also be dangerous which was ignored by my mother because it was her family but the Camachos were related to me so I sensed that difference. Not that I wanted to hang out with them either because they were crazy but they were all I had from the death of my father. I felt amputated and worse, my appearance came from the Camachos not the Seguras, if I looked like the Seguras maybe I would have felt different but I didn't have my mother's good looks. I had the Apache's look especially the ugly ones so how could I negate my blood if I looked like them. The eagle looking semi crossed eyes and nose, high cheek bones, fat and dark black hair were always reaffirmed by southern Mexican females who would say "your not my type of guy". Or the man from Jalisco telling me, "you look like you are from Sonora", I looked Yaqui Indian to him. We have chubby faces.
But time and drama separated us for 20 years and honestly I felt we were excommunicated because my father's half older brother Jose Guardado, died, then the half older sister Rosa Guardado died and a week later, Miguel Angel Camacho died. This family is cursed. And we were not notified about the deaths until after they were buried and weren't really invited. I learned about Jose's death because my eldest cousin from Maine went to visit my sister after the burial and then we learned of his death. Rosa, she was a Jehovah Witness so they only invite themselves and Miguel even less though I knew he was sick and had body parts amputated due to his diabetes complications and lack of attention. He was hacked to death. I'm not quite sure I wanted to attend, but an invite would have been nice. And those younger half siblings of my father by now have been long and gone so that time, lack of acknowledgement have really turned us all into the strangers we have always been, even if we shared memories in the 70's.
However, sensing that the female Camacho might die, curosity, outreach and wanting to see what pictures they had of my father we reunited. I had actually already seen Lorenzo but I wanted more. And we met with only the first cousins from the Camacho's. They were happy to see us as men in our late 30's early 40's and in a flashback we were little kids of time once lived, except our little kids were also partaking in the newness of these people partially confused. It felt good but the reception was not so warm from the Camacho aunt because in all honesty, we hadn't seen eachother in 20 years. We had developed into unknown people even if we were related. I didn't even recognize the half sister Rosa of my father because I hadn't seen her in 15 years when she had black hair and was gray haired. The aunt was not receptive nor warm but she gave my brother a painting of my father as a toddler which I never knew existed. She insisted we take it and maybe felt it was due to us. Even I don't recognize my father in that baby picture.
Then as I was changing my son, a hand stretched across and stated, "nice to meet you". It was my father's youngest half sister Angie who I hadn't seen in 20 plus years and 1-2 times in 30 years. I found it odd I did not get a hug or share a moment in the past as she's only 8-9 years older, I remembered her, how could she not remember me. I felt it was a sympathy shake but that confirmed for me what I have always known is that those half siblings of my father are not really my siblings first because they were of a different father and that difference only developed through the years proven by the fact that we don't look a like.
Yes, I understand it's all in the mind and attitude but there is a difference that cannot be denied that we are just too distinct even if they all came from my grandmother which I don't deny they have a bond but that bond does not carry over to me much like my cousins' cousins are not related to me. And this is hard for me to say because I have an older sister from a different father but this has always been an issue of divide because she felt she was different and now that she has young adult children, she feels that because my niece and nephew are not Camachos that they are treated less than. Even now that there are 10 Camacho grandchildren, my sister has stated enough times that there is a distinction of treatment from my mother and my brother's but we did the best we could in terms of inviting them to places or spending money on them when they were kids though we never received the same in return. Even my niece and nephew feel that there is a distinction side themselves away from us but not because we exclude them. If we battle it's personality clashes.
And when I least expect it, I get a slap in the face that only proves my point. At my maternal grandmother's funeral in Mexicali, my sister out of the blue states, "let me introduce you to my niece". I was shocked by that because my sister was never raised by her father and never had contact with them then 40 years later, I'm introduced to her niece. I was blindsided and jeolous my sister belonged to somebody else and was never truly my sister by mother/father.
That hurt but I brush that aside and acted normal because our communication still continues but down deep inside I know the difference and realized I never had a Camacho sister because we were all male offsprings from Julian Padilla Camacho.
As for my father's family, I only have 1 aunt that still lives.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
US Born Means Something
A few weeks back I came across an article written by Sara Calderon in newstaco.com on the difference between US born and Mexico born and as she pinpointed there is a difference for all reasons. Yet the part that got my attention was the response by people on facebook especially the Mexico born. Some of the comments read, "you think you are better; this is White wash; what happened to you; unemployment has really messed you up" and the list continued.
I was actually surprised because I actually thought that Calderon's article was stressing something vital which is quite easily sweeped under, which is the belief that Mexican Americans and Mexican Nationals are the same. And in the eyes of White people that might be the perception especially from universities that prove that there is no distinction between US born and foreign born but I guess the 14th Amendment does not matter. University ignorance is so prevalent they just lump undocumented Mexicans, legally admitted, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Cuban all as one. Though we the actual people they profess to be teaching about distinguish instantly. If Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are island brothers don't share the same culture even if they speak the same how is someone from the deserts going to share anything with a Latin America.
Yet as I have aged into my mid forties the characteristic of being Mexico born in my eyes has become that much more prevalent simply because being Mexico born and central and southernly born implies for me an entirely distinct cultural animal. Though this is not a new feeling, it has always been present since I can remember. The first actual cultural fact is the culture into one is born and due to the fact that the majority of Mexico born are not born in Baja California but from hundreds to thousands of miles away in lands I never saw until I was 18 years old and have never seen because most people come from small cities or pueblos I'll never see because I don't have a personal or family connection to. Those differences were even visible with cousins born in Baja California just across the entry point to Baja California because somehow we were of a different culture and we were though we shared many common cultural norms beyond just family and they seemed to be copying US customs too from the cholo dress to love of trucks, danish pastries to the constant usage of English in their Spanish. And grammatically they spoke correctly using raite, pichell, marketa, pickup, carro to Anglocizing their nicknames, Antonio to Tony, Maria to Mary, Pedro to Pete and Miguel to Mike. Nobody thought of it until southern Mexicans showed up and began correcting them and us on the US side to an abnoxious point. Hence if I noticed differences with people within the same region and similarities, I really noticed the differences with people from Sinaloa south.
For one I could never comprehend their word usages because they used words I did not comprehend and them correcting my California Spanish got to my nerve because they felt they culturally superior and they let it be known. I saw this with Mexico born girlfriends and a Bolivian foreigner too. I came to dispiss them because I felt they were all trying to impose a proper way of being without actually accepting me for who I was. I further saw we ate different foods, never quite liked their foods and even then they would try to say that isn't real Mexican food but it was to me California Mexican food and the most obvious difference was space.
Spatially much like the neighborhood definitions of defining ethnicity I saw them not spatially the same as me even with US born with their families originating from Zacatecas or Michoacan for the simple reason that my people were from both California/Baja California border region in Calexico. Even my mother doesn't see herself related to people from Sinaloa or Durango and neither do I. So culturally we are not the same and my grandmother being an Apache Yuma born in Arizona and never denying but stressing that she grew up speaking Apache Kunahuati Chalea Turi and practicing brujeria I was raised with that culture from the desert that did make us different from somebody not born in that region. Even my mother would stress that we were Apache (not her) because of my grandmother and was proven to me when people from Jalisco would tell me I looked like I came from Sonora, Indios.
Even from the US side I see myself different from Phoenix or New Mexicans and much less Tejanos--who likes them-- but when I was warmly received in Zuni or was asked what tribe I belonged to when visiting Acoma west of Alburquerque I can't help to notice I do belong to those desert ranchos where I originate from. Or better yet when I'm not viewed as a Mexican by recent arrivals because they don't view my spatialnicity related to theirs and neither do I. I was even told by Zamora, Michoacan people that my children didn't look Mexican even though their abuela Teresa was born in Los Angeles, their grandmother in Clifton, AZ, their great grandmother in Isleta, Texas and the great grandfather in Safford and they were Apache Mexican Americans. Even my great grandfather was born in Yuma from my Apache grandmother and only my father turns out to have been born in Baja Ca/ the Mexico side for protection. Birth certificates were not given to my grandmother born in Yuma but she didn't learn Spanish until age 10 so Baja Ca was more of a refuge place. Yes being US born does matter and it's not the same as Mexico born much less born 1000 miles south.
And there is also the 14th Amendment but why discuss that, it's no big deal. But the part that irritates me the most is this, who are Mexico born people to judge those of us born in the US? Do we need their permission to express how we feel? Are they the torchbearers of Mexican American culture? Do we need their permission to express ourselves or their reaffirmation because somehow we are Mexicanless in their eyes? Are they our cultural bestowers? Do I only exist because of them? Or as I just heard the other day, "I wasn't raised as Mexican American because my family stated they were all cholos and cholas", like the southern Mexicans knew what that was. Please don't speak for me. I don't speak for you nor profess to know Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit or Zacatecas culture. Plus I don't really like those foods.
Mexico born even if raised in the US need to stop thinking they know how we US born think because you don't, you don't have the same cultural upbringing and definition muchless in my case where as an Apache, I continue to live in the desert no different than my great grandparents or my children. I don't go to the Federal Building to obtain my permission to live in the US, I was born into this animal.
I was actually surprised because I actually thought that Calderon's article was stressing something vital which is quite easily sweeped under, which is the belief that Mexican Americans and Mexican Nationals are the same. And in the eyes of White people that might be the perception especially from universities that prove that there is no distinction between US born and foreign born but I guess the 14th Amendment does not matter. University ignorance is so prevalent they just lump undocumented Mexicans, legally admitted, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Cuban all as one. Though we the actual people they profess to be teaching about distinguish instantly. If Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are island brothers don't share the same culture even if they speak the same how is someone from the deserts going to share anything with a Latin America.
Yet as I have aged into my mid forties the characteristic of being Mexico born in my eyes has become that much more prevalent simply because being Mexico born and central and southernly born implies for me an entirely distinct cultural animal. Though this is not a new feeling, it has always been present since I can remember. The first actual cultural fact is the culture into one is born and due to the fact that the majority of Mexico born are not born in Baja California but from hundreds to thousands of miles away in lands I never saw until I was 18 years old and have never seen because most people come from small cities or pueblos I'll never see because I don't have a personal or family connection to. Those differences were even visible with cousins born in Baja California just across the entry point to Baja California because somehow we were of a different culture and we were though we shared many common cultural norms beyond just family and they seemed to be copying US customs too from the cholo dress to love of trucks, danish pastries to the constant usage of English in their Spanish. And grammatically they spoke correctly using raite, pichell, marketa, pickup, carro to Anglocizing their nicknames, Antonio to Tony, Maria to Mary, Pedro to Pete and Miguel to Mike. Nobody thought of it until southern Mexicans showed up and began correcting them and us on the US side to an abnoxious point. Hence if I noticed differences with people within the same region and similarities, I really noticed the differences with people from Sinaloa south.
For one I could never comprehend their word usages because they used words I did not comprehend and them correcting my California Spanish got to my nerve because they felt they culturally superior and they let it be known. I saw this with Mexico born girlfriends and a Bolivian foreigner too. I came to dispiss them because I felt they were all trying to impose a proper way of being without actually accepting me for who I was. I further saw we ate different foods, never quite liked their foods and even then they would try to say that isn't real Mexican food but it was to me California Mexican food and the most obvious difference was space.
Spatially much like the neighborhood definitions of defining ethnicity I saw them not spatially the same as me even with US born with their families originating from Zacatecas or Michoacan for the simple reason that my people were from both California/Baja California border region in Calexico. Even my mother doesn't see herself related to people from Sinaloa or Durango and neither do I. So culturally we are not the same and my grandmother being an Apache Yuma born in Arizona and never denying but stressing that she grew up speaking Apache Kunahuati Chalea Turi and practicing brujeria I was raised with that culture from the desert that did make us different from somebody not born in that region. Even my mother would stress that we were Apache (not her) because of my grandmother and was proven to me when people from Jalisco would tell me I looked like I came from Sonora, Indios.
Even from the US side I see myself different from Phoenix or New Mexicans and much less Tejanos--who likes them-- but when I was warmly received in Zuni or was asked what tribe I belonged to when visiting Acoma west of Alburquerque I can't help to notice I do belong to those desert ranchos where I originate from. Or better yet when I'm not viewed as a Mexican by recent arrivals because they don't view my spatialnicity related to theirs and neither do I. I was even told by Zamora, Michoacan people that my children didn't look Mexican even though their abuela Teresa was born in Los Angeles, their grandmother in Clifton, AZ, their great grandmother in Isleta, Texas and the great grandfather in Safford and they were Apache Mexican Americans. Even my great grandfather was born in Yuma from my Apache grandmother and only my father turns out to have been born in Baja Ca/ the Mexico side for protection. Birth certificates were not given to my grandmother born in Yuma but she didn't learn Spanish until age 10 so Baja Ca was more of a refuge place. Yes being US born does matter and it's not the same as Mexico born much less born 1000 miles south.
And there is also the 14th Amendment but why discuss that, it's no big deal. But the part that irritates me the most is this, who are Mexico born people to judge those of us born in the US? Do we need their permission to express how we feel? Are they the torchbearers of Mexican American culture? Do we need their permission to express ourselves or their reaffirmation because somehow we are Mexicanless in their eyes? Are they our cultural bestowers? Do I only exist because of them? Or as I just heard the other day, "I wasn't raised as Mexican American because my family stated they were all cholos and cholas", like the southern Mexicans knew what that was. Please don't speak for me. I don't speak for you nor profess to know Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit or Zacatecas culture. Plus I don't really like those foods.
Mexico born even if raised in the US need to stop thinking they know how we US born think because you don't, you don't have the same cultural upbringing and definition muchless in my case where as an Apache, I continue to live in the desert no different than my great grandparents or my children. I don't go to the Federal Building to obtain my permission to live in the US, I was born into this animal.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Ignorant Academicians
As I age into my mid 40's I realize I hate ignorant people especially ignorant PhD's like most I have come across in my adulthood because all they do is press the play button of their professors. One in particular was a stupid White woman who was interviewing for a Chicano Studies position at CSULB which proves that the full time Chicano Studies faculty was just as stupid for interviewing a non Mexican American, but what do I expect from people who are not even Mexican Americans themselves.
She was referring to Mexican Americans as immigrants but last I recall, Mexican Americans dont exist in Mexico they would not be and then talked about new Oaxaca people in Baja California which she then referred that because a certain amount had moved in so now they could change the name of my people's land to Oaxacalifornia. That irritated me because it was a direct assault on those who had lived in Baja and were from Cucapah, Kumeyaay or other groups that were now part of the peninsula and the culture. So just because new people show up the identity of the place has to be changed to accomdodate them because they are so deserving. I was mad because my family history is being obliterated and never given an opportunity to be known but now because ugly people from 2000 miles away arrive they have to be catered to. And because some idiotic professor believes they can create new labels they now have carte blanche to do as they please. Lets call women men then and men women.
This is very similar to the definition of Mexican American or Chicano, I only use Mexican American, which somehow now includes Mexico born when it never did and others from Central America. And if we Mexican Americans speak up we are wrong when outsiders as I previously stated have no right to come and impose themselves on us. We didn't ask them to and we don't need them much less do we need so called White or Brown academicians creating false identities or changing the identities to suite their little box.
Call this a gripe, I don't care but don't profess to present an argument and ignore the other millions that live in that place because you believe these exotic subethnic Mexican migrants have to be showcased because they moved and moving is akin to some religious pilgrimmage. The natives of Baja didn't ask them to show up much less like Whites or Asians who want to turn the upper half of California into their homeland while they ignore those that have been living there the longest. This isn't a free for all to take. And as a person who believes space is identity the attempted swap is paramount to destroying my history all because academicians do not want to acknowledge a population existed prior and continue to live there.
Go to your home state and change that name not mine because when I was born in the Imperial Valley we were Mexican Americans only and not Latinos or anything else, well except that we were Apache too. I was born in Apacheria and I kind of like it that way, I don't need no more White woman ignorance.
I will be reading this and posting to youtube and am only two stories away from finishing my new book that has no title but does have 26 chapters. I will post more blogs sooner.
She was referring to Mexican Americans as immigrants but last I recall, Mexican Americans dont exist in Mexico they would not be and then talked about new Oaxaca people in Baja California which she then referred that because a certain amount had moved in so now they could change the name of my people's land to Oaxacalifornia. That irritated me because it was a direct assault on those who had lived in Baja and were from Cucapah, Kumeyaay or other groups that were now part of the peninsula and the culture. So just because new people show up the identity of the place has to be changed to accomdodate them because they are so deserving. I was mad because my family history is being obliterated and never given an opportunity to be known but now because ugly people from 2000 miles away arrive they have to be catered to. And because some idiotic professor believes they can create new labels they now have carte blanche to do as they please. Lets call women men then and men women.
This is very similar to the definition of Mexican American or Chicano, I only use Mexican American, which somehow now includes Mexico born when it never did and others from Central America. And if we Mexican Americans speak up we are wrong when outsiders as I previously stated have no right to come and impose themselves on us. We didn't ask them to and we don't need them much less do we need so called White or Brown academicians creating false identities or changing the identities to suite their little box.
Call this a gripe, I don't care but don't profess to present an argument and ignore the other millions that live in that place because you believe these exotic subethnic Mexican migrants have to be showcased because they moved and moving is akin to some religious pilgrimmage. The natives of Baja didn't ask them to show up much less like Whites or Asians who want to turn the upper half of California into their homeland while they ignore those that have been living there the longest. This isn't a free for all to take. And as a person who believes space is identity the attempted swap is paramount to destroying my history all because academicians do not want to acknowledge a population existed prior and continue to live there.
Go to your home state and change that name not mine because when I was born in the Imperial Valley we were Mexican Americans only and not Latinos or anything else, well except that we were Apache too. I was born in Apacheria and I kind of like it that way, I don't need no more White woman ignorance.
I will be reading this and posting to youtube and am only two stories away from finishing my new book that has no title but does have 26 chapters. I will post more blogs sooner.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Outsiders Telling Us Who We Are
Sometime this past June, I attended a meeting with the dean of CSULA who oversaw Chicano Studies and the chair of Chicano Studies, Michael Soldatenko whose not a Chicano which means Mexican American, born in the US.
I was part of The Chicano Task Force which is a subcommittee of the Chicano Roundtable that meet weekly at the Boys and Girls Club in East Los Angeles one block east from Ford/710 freeway exit. I attended with great guys who even though we have different perspectives on all things we agreed that changing the name from Chicano Studies to Latino Studies was an affront to Mexican Americans and wrong for the sake of the politically correct era that somehow people born in Latin America have to be accomodated while Mexican Americans born in the US are thrown under the bus.
I have not written about because I needed to process the words and reasoning from both the dean and the chair. Dean Henderson sounded like he was given a script from the non Mexican American faculty in Chicano Studies that justifies why Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Southern Mexicans have to be given recognition when they are not historically Americans. Can Guatemalans and Salvadorians trace their history to California or Arizona or New Mexico? Where are their historical monuments in California?
And I do take it personal because as someone from Apache Cucapah lineage from Southern California/Yuma I view outsiders with mistrust especially when they arrive and feel entitled. They sure don't show any consideration to those of us born here and the same can be stated for southern Mexicans who show up to the north and believe they are owed something.
The likes of Saul Figueroa, Chihuan Montalvo, David Sanchez, Ruben Lopez, Agustin Cebada, Luis Garcia and Popeii Aguilar were in attendance to protest the proposed name change.
After back and forth respectable but heated debate the dialogue took us to the most important part of the meeting that began with Michael Soldatenko stating the following:
"The problem here is I think we have a different definition of what is a Mexican American, according to your definition, somebody like Rudy Acunha is not a Chicano".
And for the record, Soldatenko admitted he was born in Mexico City too when questioned where was he during the Chicano Movement of the early 70's and he stated, "I was in Mexico". Meaning he was not in the US.
"That's true, Chicanos are US born people". I replied.
He was not happy at my reply and yet the most poignant point was made when Luis Garcia asked him: "What's your definition of a Chicano"? And he remained quiet.
I couldn't help but think the following in the subsequent months since that meeting.
Since the time of my birth in 1969 a constant legal definition of a US citizen has been birth with naturalization coming in at second. Though some might say that they are the same, there are certain qualifications that only applies to US born and not those naturalized. Second, in an era where laws are being changed and those that naturalized but engaged in illegal activities find themselves being deported after their time, one can't help to comprehend that those Mexican Americans won't be on any bus for deportation. And vice versa, Mexican Americans in Mexico do not exist as an anything because they weren't born there so to them we are foreigners and gringos to them too. Birth is sacred to both countries. At least those born in Mexico have a place to return to, we don't. And it shows history to both countries. When someone is born in Mexico it means they have had a presence there for at least one generation. The same can be said for those of us born here, we have presence. I was born here, my grandmother was born in Yuma eventhough she gave birth to my father in Mexicali, her father and mother were born in Arizona, my children are born in the US too. Birth isn't just luck, its a connection which people born outside don't have. My children are 7th generation by their Mexican American grandmother: born in Los Angeles, grandmother born in Clifton, AZ, great grandmother born in El Paso, great great in Isleta, mother in Santa Ana. How do others compare to my children's history. They don't.
And I'm not the only one, Cebada was born in Cuba, New Mexico whereas Soldatenko and his mention of the so called father of Chicanos was not so how do they compare to somebody like Cebada or myself.
But the part that irks me the most is the following: Who are foreigners to come to the US and tell us, US citizens, Mexican Americans who we are.
That is the part I cannot reconcile because its these outsiders who are the heads of so called academia of Chicanos when they are not Mexican Americans. Non Mexican Americans are telling us who we are and I find that to be disgusting because it's another form of colonialism.
Mexican Americans don't go to their universities and tell them who they are thus what gives them the right to feel that they can dictate to us. Where else is this permitted?
The assumption is that because Whites see us all as "Mexicans" then we can be lumped with people from Mexico but in actuality for US Whites to lump US citizens with another country is in itself racism. Just because we might share the same name then Mexican Americans must be from Mexico. Can people not distinguish between the American part? Why because we're racialized? It is easier to write us off as foreigners versus considering us to be American. But I don't deal with anything that a Mexican national has to deal with when migrating to the US. I don't stand in line for a green card, take a citizenship test or deal with relatives in southern Mexico. That is not my history.
So yes, I find it insulting and disrespectful that universities permit foreigners from Mexico and now Central America to dictate to me a Mexican American what I am which is not a foreigner. If I don't allow Whites, my fellow US citizens to dictate who I am why should we permit a Mexican national to dictate. Who the hell are them? If they want to talk about Mexican Nationals in the US go ahead but don't speak for Mexican Americans and don't steal from us what little we have.
The same could be said for Central Americans, they don't know Mexican American culture, we don't speak the same, have a different cosmic vision and look different and the same can be said when employing other US citizens such as Puerto Ricans in Chicano Studies much like CSULB has done. They don't know Mexican American culture and we don't know them either and this I can tell you by the two Puerto Rican boyfriends my mother has had, we don't have cultural simularity.
Though the issue is not isolated to CSULA, it's at CSULB as I mentioned along with their current chair who was undocumented by his own admission, Mexican Americans have never been illegal, that narrative does not apply to us. And even the UCLA has faculty from Mexico like Raul Hinojosa who was my instructor at UCLA in Urban Planning but he's not Mexican Ameican because he was born in Mexico City.
That is University racism by lumping them into Chicano Studies which has always been about those from the US not those that migrate north but those faculty don't care because it's a job, a retirement to them and they benefit while we US born lose.
And the best part, these foreigners born in Mexico hire others born in Mexico because that's their shared narrative and screw over those born here. Some say, they have qualifications, but why do they hire an EDD when that's not a PHD or MA in Fine Arts or Creative Writing. They make up rules as they please and attempt to change to meet their cultural needs which always ends up coming at the expense of US born Mexican Americans because nobody believes they exist today because they are all assumed to be immigrants.
Lastly, I could help but thing that the majority of us complaining about the proposed name change were the Mexican Americans looking in while the foreigners where the ones in positions that belonged to Mexican Americans.
So they had the last laugh.
I was part of The Chicano Task Force which is a subcommittee of the Chicano Roundtable that meet weekly at the Boys and Girls Club in East Los Angeles one block east from Ford/710 freeway exit. I attended with great guys who even though we have different perspectives on all things we agreed that changing the name from Chicano Studies to Latino Studies was an affront to Mexican Americans and wrong for the sake of the politically correct era that somehow people born in Latin America have to be accomodated while Mexican Americans born in the US are thrown under the bus.
I have not written about because I needed to process the words and reasoning from both the dean and the chair. Dean Henderson sounded like he was given a script from the non Mexican American faculty in Chicano Studies that justifies why Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Southern Mexicans have to be given recognition when they are not historically Americans. Can Guatemalans and Salvadorians trace their history to California or Arizona or New Mexico? Where are their historical monuments in California?
And I do take it personal because as someone from Apache Cucapah lineage from Southern California/Yuma I view outsiders with mistrust especially when they arrive and feel entitled. They sure don't show any consideration to those of us born here and the same can be stated for southern Mexicans who show up to the north and believe they are owed something.
The likes of Saul Figueroa, Chihuan Montalvo, David Sanchez, Ruben Lopez, Agustin Cebada, Luis Garcia and Popeii Aguilar were in attendance to protest the proposed name change.
After back and forth respectable but heated debate the dialogue took us to the most important part of the meeting that began with Michael Soldatenko stating the following:
"The problem here is I think we have a different definition of what is a Mexican American, according to your definition, somebody like Rudy Acunha is not a Chicano".
And for the record, Soldatenko admitted he was born in Mexico City too when questioned where was he during the Chicano Movement of the early 70's and he stated, "I was in Mexico". Meaning he was not in the US.
"That's true, Chicanos are US born people". I replied.
He was not happy at my reply and yet the most poignant point was made when Luis Garcia asked him: "What's your definition of a Chicano"? And he remained quiet.
I couldn't help but think the following in the subsequent months since that meeting.
Since the time of my birth in 1969 a constant legal definition of a US citizen has been birth with naturalization coming in at second. Though some might say that they are the same, there are certain qualifications that only applies to US born and not those naturalized. Second, in an era where laws are being changed and those that naturalized but engaged in illegal activities find themselves being deported after their time, one can't help to comprehend that those Mexican Americans won't be on any bus for deportation. And vice versa, Mexican Americans in Mexico do not exist as an anything because they weren't born there so to them we are foreigners and gringos to them too. Birth is sacred to both countries. At least those born in Mexico have a place to return to, we don't. And it shows history to both countries. When someone is born in Mexico it means they have had a presence there for at least one generation. The same can be said for those of us born here, we have presence. I was born here, my grandmother was born in Yuma eventhough she gave birth to my father in Mexicali, her father and mother were born in Arizona, my children are born in the US too. Birth isn't just luck, its a connection which people born outside don't have. My children are 7th generation by their Mexican American grandmother: born in Los Angeles, grandmother born in Clifton, AZ, great grandmother born in El Paso, great great in Isleta, mother in Santa Ana. How do others compare to my children's history. They don't.
And I'm not the only one, Cebada was born in Cuba, New Mexico whereas Soldatenko and his mention of the so called father of Chicanos was not so how do they compare to somebody like Cebada or myself.
But the part that irks me the most is the following: Who are foreigners to come to the US and tell us, US citizens, Mexican Americans who we are.
That is the part I cannot reconcile because its these outsiders who are the heads of so called academia of Chicanos when they are not Mexican Americans. Non Mexican Americans are telling us who we are and I find that to be disgusting because it's another form of colonialism.
Mexican Americans don't go to their universities and tell them who they are thus what gives them the right to feel that they can dictate to us. Where else is this permitted?
The assumption is that because Whites see us all as "Mexicans" then we can be lumped with people from Mexico but in actuality for US Whites to lump US citizens with another country is in itself racism. Just because we might share the same name then Mexican Americans must be from Mexico. Can people not distinguish between the American part? Why because we're racialized? It is easier to write us off as foreigners versus considering us to be American. But I don't deal with anything that a Mexican national has to deal with when migrating to the US. I don't stand in line for a green card, take a citizenship test or deal with relatives in southern Mexico. That is not my history.
So yes, I find it insulting and disrespectful that universities permit foreigners from Mexico and now Central America to dictate to me a Mexican American what I am which is not a foreigner. If I don't allow Whites, my fellow US citizens to dictate who I am why should we permit a Mexican national to dictate. Who the hell are them? If they want to talk about Mexican Nationals in the US go ahead but don't speak for Mexican Americans and don't steal from us what little we have.
The same could be said for Central Americans, they don't know Mexican American culture, we don't speak the same, have a different cosmic vision and look different and the same can be said when employing other US citizens such as Puerto Ricans in Chicano Studies much like CSULB has done. They don't know Mexican American culture and we don't know them either and this I can tell you by the two Puerto Rican boyfriends my mother has had, we don't have cultural simularity.
Though the issue is not isolated to CSULA, it's at CSULB as I mentioned along with their current chair who was undocumented by his own admission, Mexican Americans have never been illegal, that narrative does not apply to us. And even the UCLA has faculty from Mexico like Raul Hinojosa who was my instructor at UCLA in Urban Planning but he's not Mexican Ameican because he was born in Mexico City.
That is University racism by lumping them into Chicano Studies which has always been about those from the US not those that migrate north but those faculty don't care because it's a job, a retirement to them and they benefit while we US born lose.
And the best part, these foreigners born in Mexico hire others born in Mexico because that's their shared narrative and screw over those born here. Some say, they have qualifications, but why do they hire an EDD when that's not a PHD or MA in Fine Arts or Creative Writing. They make up rules as they please and attempt to change to meet their cultural needs which always ends up coming at the expense of US born Mexican Americans because nobody believes they exist today because they are all assumed to be immigrants.
Lastly, I could help but thing that the majority of us complaining about the proposed name change were the Mexican Americans looking in while the foreigners where the ones in positions that belonged to Mexican Americans.
So they had the last laugh.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The X Files
I recently came across a chapter in year 9 of The X Files, I have been watching every episode from season 1, have turned on the subtitle and have read like if it was a novel. In this episode, they are on an oil ring investigating how one Mestizo was killed by a specific radiation but were not effected by the alien virus, oil.
Then in a dialogue over the so called Mestizo Mexican, that even the human like White aliens referred to them as mestizo, Scully tells Skinner, her boss the following line in the autopsy:
“Mr Simon de la Cruz is listed of mixed Mexican ancestry, when in fact he is of Hecha Indian, the Huecha are an indigenous Mexican culture that has a rate undiluted gene pool. Now, these genes may have an innate immunity to infection.”
Considering the Aztecs saw themselves as People of the Sun, literally coming from the sun and a belief in outer space is quite prevalent without having to ever go on an airplane, I could not help but think why this television program basically spelled out who Mexicans are and Mexican Americans but colleges who specialize in Mexico and Mexican American Studies keep insisting that they are something they are not. Why do these centers of higher education keep shoving down ignorance when the opposite is true.
To keep insisting Mexican Americans are mestizos with categories that are invalid perpetuates not just a mislabeling of the very people they profess to know but also a confusion of identities because they the very professors of knowledge are themselves confused. What more evidence do they need other than Black hair and brown or red skin to prove what they are? Or eating the same diet for centuries even if the cow came from Europe. As Dick Cheney said, "so". Are Spaniards or Germans Mexican because they have incorporated chocolate or a papa into their diet? They don't change other than better looking teeth and satisfied females, so why doesn't that argument hold truth for Mexicans. US whites drink more tequila than the tequila Gods just listen to country music and you would think hot water comes from Tenneesee. Maybe it does.
For you Chicano lost professors just look in the mirror and if you don't resemble maybe you are not which is ok, just don't confuse those who are "indigenous" because if the writers of The X Files got it correct why can't you?
Or as my fellow Mexican American Apache friend Ruben Lopez was told by the American Red Cross when he donated blood: "you have rare antagems, we want you to come back". And he just wanted the extra credit.
I personally love being a Cucapah Apache!
Kunahuati Chalea Turi!
Then in a dialogue over the so called Mestizo Mexican, that even the human like White aliens referred to them as mestizo, Scully tells Skinner, her boss the following line in the autopsy:
“Mr Simon de la Cruz is listed of mixed Mexican ancestry, when in fact he is of Hecha Indian, the Huecha are an indigenous Mexican culture that has a rate undiluted gene pool. Now, these genes may have an innate immunity to infection.”
Considering the Aztecs saw themselves as People of the Sun, literally coming from the sun and a belief in outer space is quite prevalent without having to ever go on an airplane, I could not help but think why this television program basically spelled out who Mexicans are and Mexican Americans but colleges who specialize in Mexico and Mexican American Studies keep insisting that they are something they are not. Why do these centers of higher education keep shoving down ignorance when the opposite is true.
To keep insisting Mexican Americans are mestizos with categories that are invalid perpetuates not just a mislabeling of the very people they profess to know but also a confusion of identities because they the very professors of knowledge are themselves confused. What more evidence do they need other than Black hair and brown or red skin to prove what they are? Or eating the same diet for centuries even if the cow came from Europe. As Dick Cheney said, "so". Are Spaniards or Germans Mexican because they have incorporated chocolate or a papa into their diet? They don't change other than better looking teeth and satisfied females, so why doesn't that argument hold truth for Mexicans. US whites drink more tequila than the tequila Gods just listen to country music and you would think hot water comes from Tenneesee. Maybe it does.
For you Chicano lost professors just look in the mirror and if you don't resemble maybe you are not which is ok, just don't confuse those who are "indigenous" because if the writers of The X Files got it correct why can't you?
Or as my fellow Mexican American Apache friend Ruben Lopez was told by the American Red Cross when he donated blood: "you have rare antagems, we want you to come back". And he just wanted the extra credit.
I personally love being a Cucapah Apache!
Kunahuati Chalea Turi!
Friday, September 9, 2011
From Leon
I once met a man named Antonio from Leon, Guanajuato who made me think about emigration from Central Mexico and the reasons associated with migration. The easiest assumption is that they are unemployed and looking for an opportunity. But I'm not sure that holds merit because when people are unemployed they rarely have the money to move. I see my buddy Ruben whose been unemployed, walks and takes the bus everywhere because his car gave out and cannot afford another one. My other unemployed friend Rodrigo survives only because he lives at home but as he has stated, "I can't afford to move to another state, I only get $32 per week from unemployment" and he has a Master's in Chicano Studies. I could go on here but I hope you catch my point, no money, no movement.
Thus as Antonio and I continued talking, I asked him why he moved north. Did he have a job, did he have feel he had to move for an opportunity when his answer surprised me. Antonio stated, "I had a little welding shop in Leon, was self employed doing well for myself, then one day I went to the bank and I saw this woman in front of me with a bundle of dollars. My eyes got crazy, I said to myself, I want what she had, I wanted those bundles of dollars. At that moment I said to myself I'm heading north, and I closed my shop and left and here I am 30 years later. Doing the same job that I did in Leon, welding. Those dollars drove me wild"
Then he further told me he settled in Long Beach because there was a community of Guanajuato people and was constantly employed as a welder and was able to purchase a condo with his wife. At that moment I wondered why people much poorer in my Mexicali, Baja California visits who lived in quite humble conditions never attempted to move across the line while somebody 1200 miles away did. And Antonio was not the only example but it lead me to conclude that what drove him was the simple desire of greed because he wanted more than what he was earning though by his own admission he had a comfortable business, something my friends wont have access to even though they might dream about it and they are Americans in the birth and paper definition sense.
In a strange way this bothers me because this attitude is a negative source of energy because this person moved without having to and all because of greed while people in Baja would settle for what they have and the guys I know find themselves victims of the current recession and truth of the matter they will probably never own a home because their job prospect is nil and they dont have enough money for anything else. Immigrant Mexicans have better opportunities than any one will admit and they don't always come because they do not have a employment, they just want those bundles of dollars because of greed. And that attitude is not positive for our society because all they think about is me me me. How many do not say they have an empty home where they come? From our US experience none of us have homes period except for one guy I know whose mother left him her home because he was the only offspring alive. And he's the one who travels between Vegas and Los Angeles for his job because he can afford to.
Some will say that this is one example and holds no validity for the majority but his reason for coming is not about the majority but him and yet if you believe you need examples, the Pew Hispanic Center last year published a report that stipulated that since June 2009, foreign born Latinos gained more employment by 600,000, a 1/3 were undocumented so it doesn't matter when referred to status while US born Latinos 9/10 are Mexican Americans in California, 3/4 in US are also Mexican Americans and they lost 1.2 million jobs. Hence that attitude or desire of wanting more does hurt, has hurt Mexican Americans because they confront more numbers competition, more attitudes of greed and "me, me, me" along with other people who have arrived and US born themselves of any color.
Antonio's attitude was troubling for me because I hate greed and that attitude permeates greater Los Angeles into many different aspects of a non community because the sense of collectivity never develops exist for new gold rush people who want a quick rich scheme and as Dr. Lopez stated about other newcomers from Jalisco into his beloved East LA they think they are better than us which really destroyed my neighborhood.
And I remembered once with my beloved Baja California apa, grandfather Matiaz visiting the Colorado River near Algodonez just across from Sonora. He told me he once worked in this area in the 40's, even in Winterhaven but that was all he wanted from the US side he never thought about crossing and he could have because he had relatives born in the US and his own father had lived in Redondo Beach area in the 1890's. When all of a sudden, two males approached us with their backpacks and their lost gaze of being in a new country eventhough they were still in Mexico when they asked us for a few pesos and told us they were trying to cross over and had traveled on the train. We gave them a few pesos and my apa told them to becareful and I thought to myself, "you haven't crossed yet and you are already begging for money, why travel".
My apa knew better and was enchanted with his humble home which he didn't even own. Too bad the US didn't have his gentle non greedy spirit.
Thus as Antonio and I continued talking, I asked him why he moved north. Did he have a job, did he have feel he had to move for an opportunity when his answer surprised me. Antonio stated, "I had a little welding shop in Leon, was self employed doing well for myself, then one day I went to the bank and I saw this woman in front of me with a bundle of dollars. My eyes got crazy, I said to myself, I want what she had, I wanted those bundles of dollars. At that moment I said to myself I'm heading north, and I closed my shop and left and here I am 30 years later. Doing the same job that I did in Leon, welding. Those dollars drove me wild"
Then he further told me he settled in Long Beach because there was a community of Guanajuato people and was constantly employed as a welder and was able to purchase a condo with his wife. At that moment I wondered why people much poorer in my Mexicali, Baja California visits who lived in quite humble conditions never attempted to move across the line while somebody 1200 miles away did. And Antonio was not the only example but it lead me to conclude that what drove him was the simple desire of greed because he wanted more than what he was earning though by his own admission he had a comfortable business, something my friends wont have access to even though they might dream about it and they are Americans in the birth and paper definition sense.
In a strange way this bothers me because this attitude is a negative source of energy because this person moved without having to and all because of greed while people in Baja would settle for what they have and the guys I know find themselves victims of the current recession and truth of the matter they will probably never own a home because their job prospect is nil and they dont have enough money for anything else. Immigrant Mexicans have better opportunities than any one will admit and they don't always come because they do not have a employment, they just want those bundles of dollars because of greed. And that attitude is not positive for our society because all they think about is me me me. How many do not say they have an empty home where they come? From our US experience none of us have homes period except for one guy I know whose mother left him her home because he was the only offspring alive. And he's the one who travels between Vegas and Los Angeles for his job because he can afford to.
Some will say that this is one example and holds no validity for the majority but his reason for coming is not about the majority but him and yet if you believe you need examples, the Pew Hispanic Center last year published a report that stipulated that since June 2009, foreign born Latinos gained more employment by 600,000, a 1/3 were undocumented so it doesn't matter when referred to status while US born Latinos 9/10 are Mexican Americans in California, 3/4 in US are also Mexican Americans and they lost 1.2 million jobs. Hence that attitude or desire of wanting more does hurt, has hurt Mexican Americans because they confront more numbers competition, more attitudes of greed and "me, me, me" along with other people who have arrived and US born themselves of any color.
Antonio's attitude was troubling for me because I hate greed and that attitude permeates greater Los Angeles into many different aspects of a non community because the sense of collectivity never develops exist for new gold rush people who want a quick rich scheme and as Dr. Lopez stated about other newcomers from Jalisco into his beloved East LA they think they are better than us which really destroyed my neighborhood.
And I remembered once with my beloved Baja California apa, grandfather Matiaz visiting the Colorado River near Algodonez just across from Sonora. He told me he once worked in this area in the 40's, even in Winterhaven but that was all he wanted from the US side he never thought about crossing and he could have because he had relatives born in the US and his own father had lived in Redondo Beach area in the 1890's. When all of a sudden, two males approached us with their backpacks and their lost gaze of being in a new country eventhough they were still in Mexico when they asked us for a few pesos and told us they were trying to cross over and had traveled on the train. We gave them a few pesos and my apa told them to becareful and I thought to myself, "you haven't crossed yet and you are already begging for money, why travel".
My apa knew better and was enchanted with his humble home which he didn't even own. Too bad the US didn't have his gentle non greedy spirit.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Bonita
On a recent trip to that wonderful event called the San Diego Chargers, my buddy and I came across an interesting discussion of Mexican Americans and Mexicans from Tijuana that have moved into a place called Bonita. I was already on an awe because we took the trolley to the stadium and saw that one of the stops is literally titled, "Barrio Logan" professionally labeled on the route map. I have never seen anything in Los Angeles-Orange County that states Barrio anywhere on the contrary, the word barrio is quieted away, not really pronounced except maybe in Barrio Studies class if they teach those anymore or if ever did. In Los Angeles the name of the place will tell you the racial makeup of the barrio: East LA= Chicanos; South Central LA=Blacks, the ghetto kind, Silverlake=Jotos, the White kind with too much money; Inglewood better off Blacks though Mexican Americans lived there and once had a barrio called Ballona no longer there because of suburbanization; Manhattan Beach= Filthy rich Whites; Sherman Oaks= Israel; Chinatown=Vietnamese; Monterey Park=Chinese non American; MacArthur Park=Marasalvatrucha though most Salvadorians have moved or been deported; Glendale: Armenia; Pacoima=George Lopez; Pasadena=Old Protestant Anglo Saxon Money; Movie Studios=Jews who are Whites and La Habra=OC Chicanos who are part White.
We don't have the barrio in front of the barrio, the place speaks for itself but to have a Trolley stop recognition scored points in my radar for the simple fact that no matter how barrio meaning how brown poor that neighborhood is, it still deserves it's due recognition. I took a picture because it moved me. Then we saw the drunk fest called professional football and because we were crowded we would talk, how could we not? As we ate the fillers, we had a conversation with a person next to us who would share with us football talk, then city or county talk. It was exciting to talk to somebody whose only point of reference to Los Angeles was visiting Disneyland in Anaheim. I was kind of surprised but maybe I should not have been, it's not exactly I know San Diego that well but through 20 plus years of adulthood, occasional trips have driven me into Pete Wilson country. That Camp Pendleton always made it seem too far and too disconnected from Los Angeles as if in another time zone.
As trust ensued and I enquired about her Santa Muerte tattoo, she began to open up about work, family, city or residence and city of growth. She even admitted she was a proud bitch in high school who liked the trouble makers, cholo bad boys. After a while I asked myself, am I at a Raider game but she settled my jitters by saying she's outgrown all that, she enjoys football and is raising her daughter to the best of her ability. Then she stated she lived in Chula Vista but had grown up in Bonita. I knew Chula Vista or Chulajuana as she calls it as to imply a relationship to Tijuana though she had not crossed the border in years, it was too dangerous. My aunt lived there in the early 1980's, where didn't she live, and the E Street exit was one place. But then she stated she was raised in Bonita where all the "fresas" lived. My buddy didn't catch on but I knew that well off Mexican nationals were called "strawberries" as class competition from my teenage travels to Torreon, Coahuila. It carries an attitude of "we are better" that those poor folks, but I had only heard it in central Mexico.
When she further stated, "Bonita is full of those fresas, who think they are better than us Mexican Americans because they have money. They are the ones that are born there then move across and view us as inferiors". I was shocked and yet I wasn't because I have come to the awareness that Mexican nationals think they are better than those of us born in the US for the simple reason that we are too Gringo for them and in my case too Apache. My type of Mexican American is rooted in being Apache and my height proves it for me so I have always sense this ethnic national north divide because we are really different ethnic people and I don't even like their offspring even if born in the north, I still see them distinct because their history is not in the north but somewhere in Zacatecas or Jalisco.
But her comment came from somebody geographically born in the same California who for many decades were also not viewed as Mexicans even if born behind the border because they were too far from the center. My mother was born in the Rancho Cucapah of Mexicali near the Cerro Prieto Volcano and she has always been viewed almost an non Mexican and my father was a Yuma Apache and he always dealt with Mexicans thinking he was not Mexican because he was "Puro Indio" as my uncle and many would say, de sangre pura.
"Yeah, they think they are better than us because they were born in Tijuana, have money and we weren't. And I grew up in Bonita. We are different".
It left me bewildered because of their arrogance, who the hell do they think they are, whose the foreigner, the one with papers, I'll say it, the pollos but at the same time it shows how space really defines Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans are spatial creatures defined by space and though we might have names like them or look like them we are not. We are our own people.
Then I told my East LA buddy Ruben who told me, "Hey, they remind me of the Soldatenkos", who was the Cal State LA Chicano Studies chair who was trying to change the name to Latino Studies like an act of revolution. As we, the Chicano Task Force Committee debated him about what a Mexican American is, his answer was "I think we have a different definition". We went ballistic at that comment because he stated that our definition did not include anybody born in Mexico and we stated yes, but the arrogance of him a foreigner to attempt to tell us Mexican Americans who we were because he felt entitled to change the meaning of our definition, of those born in the United States. And what that showed was that he nor those born in Tijuana really give a damn about Mexican Americans. One can feel he can change our identity though he was born in Mexico City and ignore our comments and the others straight forward show that they do not like us because we were born in the US. At least the Bonita residents don't pretend to be inclusive, they out right exclude through their dislike. In my eyes there was nothing beautiful about Bonita and was glad I was given insight to an area I have no knowledge of. And that there are alot of Cholos who are coyotes but that's for another day.
We don't have the barrio in front of the barrio, the place speaks for itself but to have a Trolley stop recognition scored points in my radar for the simple fact that no matter how barrio meaning how brown poor that neighborhood is, it still deserves it's due recognition. I took a picture because it moved me. Then we saw the drunk fest called professional football and because we were crowded we would talk, how could we not? As we ate the fillers, we had a conversation with a person next to us who would share with us football talk, then city or county talk. It was exciting to talk to somebody whose only point of reference to Los Angeles was visiting Disneyland in Anaheim. I was kind of surprised but maybe I should not have been, it's not exactly I know San Diego that well but through 20 plus years of adulthood, occasional trips have driven me into Pete Wilson country. That Camp Pendleton always made it seem too far and too disconnected from Los Angeles as if in another time zone.
As trust ensued and I enquired about her Santa Muerte tattoo, she began to open up about work, family, city or residence and city of growth. She even admitted she was a proud bitch in high school who liked the trouble makers, cholo bad boys. After a while I asked myself, am I at a Raider game but she settled my jitters by saying she's outgrown all that, she enjoys football and is raising her daughter to the best of her ability. Then she stated she lived in Chula Vista but had grown up in Bonita. I knew Chula Vista or Chulajuana as she calls it as to imply a relationship to Tijuana though she had not crossed the border in years, it was too dangerous. My aunt lived there in the early 1980's, where didn't she live, and the E Street exit was one place. But then she stated she was raised in Bonita where all the "fresas" lived. My buddy didn't catch on but I knew that well off Mexican nationals were called "strawberries" as class competition from my teenage travels to Torreon, Coahuila. It carries an attitude of "we are better" that those poor folks, but I had only heard it in central Mexico.
When she further stated, "Bonita is full of those fresas, who think they are better than us Mexican Americans because they have money. They are the ones that are born there then move across and view us as inferiors". I was shocked and yet I wasn't because I have come to the awareness that Mexican nationals think they are better than those of us born in the US for the simple reason that we are too Gringo for them and in my case too Apache. My type of Mexican American is rooted in being Apache and my height proves it for me so I have always sense this ethnic national north divide because we are really different ethnic people and I don't even like their offspring even if born in the north, I still see them distinct because their history is not in the north but somewhere in Zacatecas or Jalisco.
But her comment came from somebody geographically born in the same California who for many decades were also not viewed as Mexicans even if born behind the border because they were too far from the center. My mother was born in the Rancho Cucapah of Mexicali near the Cerro Prieto Volcano and she has always been viewed almost an non Mexican and my father was a Yuma Apache and he always dealt with Mexicans thinking he was not Mexican because he was "Puro Indio" as my uncle and many would say, de sangre pura.
"Yeah, they think they are better than us because they were born in Tijuana, have money and we weren't. And I grew up in Bonita. We are different".
It left me bewildered because of their arrogance, who the hell do they think they are, whose the foreigner, the one with papers, I'll say it, the pollos but at the same time it shows how space really defines Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans are spatial creatures defined by space and though we might have names like them or look like them we are not. We are our own people.
Then I told my East LA buddy Ruben who told me, "Hey, they remind me of the Soldatenkos", who was the Cal State LA Chicano Studies chair who was trying to change the name to Latino Studies like an act of revolution. As we, the Chicano Task Force Committee debated him about what a Mexican American is, his answer was "I think we have a different definition". We went ballistic at that comment because he stated that our definition did not include anybody born in Mexico and we stated yes, but the arrogance of him a foreigner to attempt to tell us Mexican Americans who we were because he felt entitled to change the meaning of our definition, of those born in the United States. And what that showed was that he nor those born in Tijuana really give a damn about Mexican Americans. One can feel he can change our identity though he was born in Mexico City and ignore our comments and the others straight forward show that they do not like us because we were born in the US. At least the Bonita residents don't pretend to be inclusive, they out right exclude through their dislike. In my eyes there was nothing beautiful about Bonita and was glad I was given insight to an area I have no knowledge of. And that there are alot of Cholos who are coyotes but that's for another day.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
One Reason I Do Not Like Female Bosses
Is due to the fact that I have not had a positive experience with female bosses or potential female bosses. Does that make me upset, angry, macho hurt or all three? I will stick with angry because I returned to my memory and counted how many had rejected me and denied me my place of opportunity.
But how did I get here. I cam across the job specifications for a Chicano Studies position at Cal State Fullerton and as I read the qualifications, the minimum all wanted doctoral degrees but in fields that did not make sense like Spanish. Mexican Americans were not educated in Spanish because we are from the US, it was an elective but then we didn't comprehend it because they used Castellian and had a Cuban or a White person teaching the class and neither were comprehensible. Plus my brand of Mexican American was really Apache Spanish which was more Apache than Spanish and that Spanish was Nahuatl based like Chingado and pinche loco which meant Spaniards wouldn't understand what I said and neither would southern Mexicans.
Then I looked at the preferred qualifications and they have queer studies and feminism spelled out loud and clear. They wanted a queer emphasis which meant one had to be queer too, you just couldn't write about it and not be joto (NACS accepted term). What degree would be needed to meet that qualification? Then the feminism which meant that one had to be a woman and hate males (think of your father-Darth Padre) or be a man who thinks like a woman and hates being men or males. I couldn't believe it, what kind of soupy qualifications were being written up by these professors who professed to be Chicano. No righteous Chicano would hate on themselves even if they wanted to fight or be embarassed about his testosterone but I had doubts as I read those quals. Then feminism which I have always read as "I hate Mexican American men" but I know my mother would fight any feminist who hated on me so if I was beloved by one woman, it was the most important one, my mother, my jefa who would not hesitate to say, "defend yourself mijo, what kind of man are you?"
So I decided to defend myself and I thought about all those places where I have had female bosses and come to think about it I have been on the negative receiving end of female hatred in the work place. Though no fault of my 6'5 height and 320 pound body I found myself reciting like the lord's prayer the evil of estrogen and it read like this:
1. Trade Tech: I was not rehired by A Rodriguez because she did not like my style of teaching eventhough she admitted she would teach online because students would not enroll in her class. And she laughed proudly of that.
2. CSULA: I was given a needs improvement evaluation by Talavera though I had more teaching experience than her and had been teaching at that place longer than her in a subject (literature) she never taught. I should have gone with the interim gay chair's evaluation. His rebuttal was upset at my rebuttal because I was still recommended for employment but I would not have a needs improvement from an unqualified person. And I was rehired.
3. Southwest: At this campus where discipline is lacking I was not placed on the seniority list because I did not have the right hair and colour. This was a Black campus and the Black female chair SLee would not place me on the seniority list even though I taught online for her and wrote the class up and got approved. She even admitted she did not place me on the seniority list and the union bylaws do not protect me against not being rehired and I wasn't.
4. CSULB: I once was hired to teach US history courses after 5 years of trying and being denied by the elder White woman who recently died. Though I was hired by a prolabor historian Quamwickham I learned why: 8 am classes. I learned full time faculty do not like to teach at those hours and have to get up so early. I had to rough it out in traffic and traffic sometimes got the best of me. Then I was evaluated and was not given a good one because I critiqued country club unions and that went counter to this White woman's lifestyle. Unions protected her but not me from her. Though in Chicano Studies where they placed on the Mexicans and even those that looked Mexican even though they were not, I was given satisfactory evaluations teaching courses that overlapped.
5. ELAC: those that know me know I was denied tenure at this place even after being recommended for tenure and them changing their votes from yes on Friday to No on Monday. I was thrashed by the Greek Woman in Chicano Studies who was the chair because I did not do as she pleased. Why should I have been a toy? I didn't go to college for that and she testified against me even though she was not around the last year because she resigned as chair and took a leave though her word meant more even as she had not been on campus during the 4th year. She could do no harm.
6. Loyola Marymount: even though I was being fired from ELAC, Loyola Marymount hired me as visiting professor. To be fired from ELAC which they didn't, I continued teaching but not as a full time faculty, I had seniority for part time then be hired by a 4 year institution was a redemption of the first class. How could they compete? I give props to Graciela Limon who hired me even after I informed her of ELAC though by reference of my former student Jorge Fajardo, a male who defended me and married me off once as the minister of ceremony. Unfortunately, Limon left in mid term for retirement and left me unprotected or without my manager. The other faculty was a female named Davalos who believed she was the superior one and Ms. Feminism a la macho, cried wolf to the Dean an Asian and ELAC's academic affairs vp badmouthing led to my ouster for I had no protection. Though Graciela Limon asked me to receive a female educator award on her behalf and when I showed up I was asked by Davalos what was I doing there and proudly I stated: "I'm here to pick up Graciela's award". I took a picture with other female recepients and enjoyed the moment that a woman of stature would confide in me a tall male to accept an award over a female feminist colleague. Revenge was sweet even if I was not employed the following year. It's the Apache blood I carry.
7. CSUDH: At this place I had resigned out of protest because (it was part time) the Black dean wanted to weaken the Chicano Studies Department and he did so by hiring a White woman named Irene Morris over a much more experience author Antonio Rios Bustamante. The Dean simply gave her the job and ignored the varous student and faculty suggestions. All S. Williams could say was that Rios was wierd. Some dean. The hiring of Morris meant that myself and others would not be rehired regardless of our experience and accomplishments. She was going to imposte her own female white view on Mexican Americans.
8. Santa Ana: this was the best where I interviewed for a miserable 1 class in Ethnic Studies. The commitee was made up of 6 women and the dean, another woman who was White. Though I did not show any botherness, I was suspicious of the all women committee. By this time in my life I had learned do not trust women and this place was evident. I presented the material the best I ever had and no call. I should have wore a dress. And this happened when I taught upper division at CSULB so it was funny to see their reactions because they did not know what they were questioning me on for it wasn't Ethnic Studies-they were instructors from different fields and that is what angered me the most. No hire there.
9. Female union reps have also been dismal at ELAC: A C Castro and A. Ornelas would not represent me in union matters though they were mandated to by district laws. Castro stated to me she would not be objective with me and shoved me off to somebody who wore a wig and did not know the union contract. Ornelas was worse, she didn't return my calls after one conversation. So here I distrusted both the union and females.
In summary, I have learned that I do not like female bosses because they are allowed to be male prejudice and they get away with it with no legal ramifications because they are protected under civil rights laws but a brown man like me has to take the violence and is not even able to defend himself. Even when filing harassment reports to no avail, the women are more protected. At least with male bosses including Whites I have had fairer opportunities if not the best scenario.
For the CSUF announcement a letter of protest was sent with other males but we are not sure it will succeed or better said, we don't expect it to. Not in this climate.
I trust the devil more.
But how did I get here. I cam across the job specifications for a Chicano Studies position at Cal State Fullerton and as I read the qualifications, the minimum all wanted doctoral degrees but in fields that did not make sense like Spanish. Mexican Americans were not educated in Spanish because we are from the US, it was an elective but then we didn't comprehend it because they used Castellian and had a Cuban or a White person teaching the class and neither were comprehensible. Plus my brand of Mexican American was really Apache Spanish which was more Apache than Spanish and that Spanish was Nahuatl based like Chingado and pinche loco which meant Spaniards wouldn't understand what I said and neither would southern Mexicans.
Then I looked at the preferred qualifications and they have queer studies and feminism spelled out loud and clear. They wanted a queer emphasis which meant one had to be queer too, you just couldn't write about it and not be joto (NACS accepted term). What degree would be needed to meet that qualification? Then the feminism which meant that one had to be a woman and hate males (think of your father-Darth Padre) or be a man who thinks like a woman and hates being men or males. I couldn't believe it, what kind of soupy qualifications were being written up by these professors who professed to be Chicano. No righteous Chicano would hate on themselves even if they wanted to fight or be embarassed about his testosterone but I had doubts as I read those quals. Then feminism which I have always read as "I hate Mexican American men" but I know my mother would fight any feminist who hated on me so if I was beloved by one woman, it was the most important one, my mother, my jefa who would not hesitate to say, "defend yourself mijo, what kind of man are you?"
So I decided to defend myself and I thought about all those places where I have had female bosses and come to think about it I have been on the negative receiving end of female hatred in the work place. Though no fault of my 6'5 height and 320 pound body I found myself reciting like the lord's prayer the evil of estrogen and it read like this:
1. Trade Tech: I was not rehired by A Rodriguez because she did not like my style of teaching eventhough she admitted she would teach online because students would not enroll in her class. And she laughed proudly of that.
2. CSULA: I was given a needs improvement evaluation by Talavera though I had more teaching experience than her and had been teaching at that place longer than her in a subject (literature) she never taught. I should have gone with the interim gay chair's evaluation. His rebuttal was upset at my rebuttal because I was still recommended for employment but I would not have a needs improvement from an unqualified person. And I was rehired.
3. Southwest: At this campus where discipline is lacking I was not placed on the seniority list because I did not have the right hair and colour. This was a Black campus and the Black female chair SLee would not place me on the seniority list even though I taught online for her and wrote the class up and got approved. She even admitted she did not place me on the seniority list and the union bylaws do not protect me against not being rehired and I wasn't.
4. CSULB: I once was hired to teach US history courses after 5 years of trying and being denied by the elder White woman who recently died. Though I was hired by a prolabor historian Quamwickham I learned why: 8 am classes. I learned full time faculty do not like to teach at those hours and have to get up so early. I had to rough it out in traffic and traffic sometimes got the best of me. Then I was evaluated and was not given a good one because I critiqued country club unions and that went counter to this White woman's lifestyle. Unions protected her but not me from her. Though in Chicano Studies where they placed on the Mexicans and even those that looked Mexican even though they were not, I was given satisfactory evaluations teaching courses that overlapped.
5. ELAC: those that know me know I was denied tenure at this place even after being recommended for tenure and them changing their votes from yes on Friday to No on Monday. I was thrashed by the Greek Woman in Chicano Studies who was the chair because I did not do as she pleased. Why should I have been a toy? I didn't go to college for that and she testified against me even though she was not around the last year because she resigned as chair and took a leave though her word meant more even as she had not been on campus during the 4th year. She could do no harm.
6. Loyola Marymount: even though I was being fired from ELAC, Loyola Marymount hired me as visiting professor. To be fired from ELAC which they didn't, I continued teaching but not as a full time faculty, I had seniority for part time then be hired by a 4 year institution was a redemption of the first class. How could they compete? I give props to Graciela Limon who hired me even after I informed her of ELAC though by reference of my former student Jorge Fajardo, a male who defended me and married me off once as the minister of ceremony. Unfortunately, Limon left in mid term for retirement and left me unprotected or without my manager. The other faculty was a female named Davalos who believed she was the superior one and Ms. Feminism a la macho, cried wolf to the Dean an Asian and ELAC's academic affairs vp badmouthing led to my ouster for I had no protection. Though Graciela Limon asked me to receive a female educator award on her behalf and when I showed up I was asked by Davalos what was I doing there and proudly I stated: "I'm here to pick up Graciela's award". I took a picture with other female recepients and enjoyed the moment that a woman of stature would confide in me a tall male to accept an award over a female feminist colleague. Revenge was sweet even if I was not employed the following year. It's the Apache blood I carry.
7. CSUDH: At this place I had resigned out of protest because (it was part time) the Black dean wanted to weaken the Chicano Studies Department and he did so by hiring a White woman named Irene Morris over a much more experience author Antonio Rios Bustamante. The Dean simply gave her the job and ignored the varous student and faculty suggestions. All S. Williams could say was that Rios was wierd. Some dean. The hiring of Morris meant that myself and others would not be rehired regardless of our experience and accomplishments. She was going to imposte her own female white view on Mexican Americans.
8. Santa Ana: this was the best where I interviewed for a miserable 1 class in Ethnic Studies. The commitee was made up of 6 women and the dean, another woman who was White. Though I did not show any botherness, I was suspicious of the all women committee. By this time in my life I had learned do not trust women and this place was evident. I presented the material the best I ever had and no call. I should have wore a dress. And this happened when I taught upper division at CSULB so it was funny to see their reactions because they did not know what they were questioning me on for it wasn't Ethnic Studies-they were instructors from different fields and that is what angered me the most. No hire there.
9. Female union reps have also been dismal at ELAC: A C Castro and A. Ornelas would not represent me in union matters though they were mandated to by district laws. Castro stated to me she would not be objective with me and shoved me off to somebody who wore a wig and did not know the union contract. Ornelas was worse, she didn't return my calls after one conversation. So here I distrusted both the union and females.
In summary, I have learned that I do not like female bosses because they are allowed to be male prejudice and they get away with it with no legal ramifications because they are protected under civil rights laws but a brown man like me has to take the violence and is not even able to defend himself. Even when filing harassment reports to no avail, the women are more protected. At least with male bosses including Whites I have had fairer opportunities if not the best scenario.
For the CSUF announcement a letter of protest was sent with other males but we are not sure it will succeed or better said, we don't expect it to. Not in this climate.
I trust the devil more.
Monday, July 18, 2011
White Women as Recipients of Affirmative Action
I recently reread a generic political science book and was surprised to learn not some much generic information. Information that is actually very valuable for many of my arguments in furthering the comprehension of Mexican Americans. As I read the section on civil rights, there was a breakdown as usual revolving around Blacks first though every inch of expansion was on Native American countries including Mexico. Hence to focus only Blacks white red people were fighting for their survival is one example of selective historiality. Whites feel they in essence created the Black but with Mexican Americans they can't say that specifically for the simple reason of our prior existence. And as an Apache I know we were not invented by Whites rather interuppted by them.
Then I came across the section on Hispanics which refers only to Mexican Americans as stated in the chapter and by birth, US which I found interesting because an ongoing theme has been to focus on US born for me. Many disagree with me but US birth means something and these authors agree with me or I with them. Then I came across the United Farmworker info and a phrase that caught my attention: "In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in the Cisneros vs. Independent School District of Corpus Christi that Mexican Americans were a national minority and were now entitled to the 1964 Civil Rights Act". It blew my mind that even when I was born I was not considered a minority but I was a red man, black hair, spoke the California language prior to the US arrival mixed with so much Apache lingo that even southern Mexicans did not comprehend my workds. Civil Rights and affirmative action did not apply to my kind.
Then I read the section on Women's Liberation which I have extensively written about because in simple terms I don't see White women as a minority because they weren't segregated or looked down upon and even if poorer they could still pick who marry and better their societal position. Afterall they were still White and if the money issue did not pan out they could still chose who to have sex with and that for me is the ultimate power of any woman. The power to chose who they want to have sex with is the ultimate power of the human being.
So I read the prior struggle that even during the carnage days of the Cherokees or Black enslavement, White women were still citizens even if they couldn't vote. States determined that women could not vote but they were still citizens whereas no Native American or Black was a citizen. How bad were White women off? The Supreme Court ruled that voting came from the states yet the White women were still part of the country club so to speak. Not being able to vote was not the worst thing out there. Women are still not allowed to be priest in the Catholic Church and the majority in attendance are women. It must not be that bad.
Then I read that women were given the right to vote in 1919 but Native Americans born in this land were not even citizens until 1924 so who had it rough. An d with Jim Crow Laws, Plessy vs Ferguson the law of the land, poll taxes, No Dogs, Negroes, Mexicans signed and Hombres Aqui abounding plus Mexican schools how bad did White women have it? Then to my amazement when the Civil Rights legislation was passed White women were included though they had not been segregated by any of the laws I mentioned. How in the world did they then get included into the Civil Rights legislation when they were not forced to ride in the back of the bus? Or better yet, the White woman who felt offended by the Emmit Till whistle would have the same protection as Emmit Till.
The end result of that legislation is astounding that White women without ever having been segregated where given civil rights protection yet Mexican Americans who were legally segregated or called "wetbacks" as my father was in Imperial County was not given Civil Rights protection when the Mexicans needed it the most. My birth certificate states my father was a caucasian tomate packer but he was an Apache, how White could he have been. White women later benefitted from Title IX legislation in 1972 in higher education while for my family finishing high school was equivalent to getting a PhD without any professors favoristism in the committee.
White women were given affirmative action 7 years ahead of Mexican Americans yet who was more segregated and doing the low paying jobs. Because without doubt no affirmative action ever came down my road or ever saw White barrios akin to the Lennox's of the world. As a matter of fact the current data reveals the success of Title 9, more White women are earning PhDs than White males. Why even compare to Mexican American males? It's noncomparable.
Yet the irony of this discovery, is that White women, and women in general still choice who to have sex with, marry and now they have the money which amounts as a type of triple societal affirmative action because as females have stated, their teachers always graded them easier or the best quote I liked was this, "We never get our hearts broken". The arrogance.
Next time you think women are persecuted just think that White women were given racial cover while Mexican Americans, a minority by conquest was excluded even when their laws proved dejure discrimination. Something is wrong with this legal animal.
Then I came across the section on Hispanics which refers only to Mexican Americans as stated in the chapter and by birth, US which I found interesting because an ongoing theme has been to focus on US born for me. Many disagree with me but US birth means something and these authors agree with me or I with them. Then I came across the United Farmworker info and a phrase that caught my attention: "In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in the Cisneros vs. Independent School District of Corpus Christi that Mexican Americans were a national minority and were now entitled to the 1964 Civil Rights Act". It blew my mind that even when I was born I was not considered a minority but I was a red man, black hair, spoke the California language prior to the US arrival mixed with so much Apache lingo that even southern Mexicans did not comprehend my workds. Civil Rights and affirmative action did not apply to my kind.
Then I read the section on Women's Liberation which I have extensively written about because in simple terms I don't see White women as a minority because they weren't segregated or looked down upon and even if poorer they could still pick who marry and better their societal position. Afterall they were still White and if the money issue did not pan out they could still chose who to have sex with and that for me is the ultimate power of any woman. The power to chose who they want to have sex with is the ultimate power of the human being.
So I read the prior struggle that even during the carnage days of the Cherokees or Black enslavement, White women were still citizens even if they couldn't vote. States determined that women could not vote but they were still citizens whereas no Native American or Black was a citizen. How bad were White women off? The Supreme Court ruled that voting came from the states yet the White women were still part of the country club so to speak. Not being able to vote was not the worst thing out there. Women are still not allowed to be priest in the Catholic Church and the majority in attendance are women. It must not be that bad.
Then I read that women were given the right to vote in 1919 but Native Americans born in this land were not even citizens until 1924 so who had it rough. An d with Jim Crow Laws, Plessy vs Ferguson the law of the land, poll taxes, No Dogs, Negroes, Mexicans signed and Hombres Aqui abounding plus Mexican schools how bad did White women have it? Then to my amazement when the Civil Rights legislation was passed White women were included though they had not been segregated by any of the laws I mentioned. How in the world did they then get included into the Civil Rights legislation when they were not forced to ride in the back of the bus? Or better yet, the White woman who felt offended by the Emmit Till whistle would have the same protection as Emmit Till.
The end result of that legislation is astounding that White women without ever having been segregated where given civil rights protection yet Mexican Americans who were legally segregated or called "wetbacks" as my father was in Imperial County was not given Civil Rights protection when the Mexicans needed it the most. My birth certificate states my father was a caucasian tomate packer but he was an Apache, how White could he have been. White women later benefitted from Title IX legislation in 1972 in higher education while for my family finishing high school was equivalent to getting a PhD without any professors favoristism in the committee.
White women were given affirmative action 7 years ahead of Mexican Americans yet who was more segregated and doing the low paying jobs. Because without doubt no affirmative action ever came down my road or ever saw White barrios akin to the Lennox's of the world. As a matter of fact the current data reveals the success of Title 9, more White women are earning PhDs than White males. Why even compare to Mexican American males? It's noncomparable.
Yet the irony of this discovery, is that White women, and women in general still choice who to have sex with, marry and now they have the money which amounts as a type of triple societal affirmative action because as females have stated, their teachers always graded them easier or the best quote I liked was this, "We never get our hearts broken". The arrogance.
Next time you think women are persecuted just think that White women were given racial cover while Mexican Americans, a minority by conquest was excluded even when their laws proved dejure discrimination. Something is wrong with this legal animal.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Fighting for Mexican American Studies
Mexican American Studies
Self Preservation & the Right to Exist:
by Mexican Americans born and raised in the US
Julian Camacho: (US Birth Certificate states Caucasian and Tomato Packer for father)
Ruben Lopez: (US birth certificate states Caucasian and Unknown for father)
1. Chicano refers only to Mexican American, meaning US born
2. Mexican American refers to people of both parents and or 3 grandparents of Mexican American origin
3. Mexican American does not include mix people
4. Mexican Americans are racialized as White on birth certificates and student enrollment purposes but treated as non-White
5. Mexican Americans do not immigrate to the US therefore immigration is a non-issue
6. Mexico does not recognize Mexican Americans as citizens but as foreigners
7. Mexican Americans are a National Minority because of US conquest
8. Mexican Americans are desert US people distinct from Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are Caribbean Island people, Chicanos are mainlanders not islanders
9. Mexican American identity is rooted in US history from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the many Mexican American Civil Rights Movements
10. US Commerce Department on Birth Certificate forms classify Mexican Americans as a distinct category independent of people born in Mexico and from Centro and South America
11. Mexican Americans because they are arid people of Aztlan (Deserts of the US) according to Dr. Daniel Potter, MD, their DNA is unique, separate, distinct from people in Southern Mexico and no relationship to Centro Americans who are tropical people
12. Mexican American culture is defined by birth, upbringing, tradition and folklore
13. Mexican Americans are defined by the 14th Amendment as US born and various Supreme Court Cases such as Cisneros, Hernandez and Miranda Cases
14. Mexican Americans according to the US 2000 Census earn the least of all groups in the US at $9400.00 of annual earnings
15. Mexican American comprise 9 out of every 10 Spanish Surnames in California
16. Mexican American US population is 30 million whereas Puerto Ricans in the US are 4 million which is the next closes group
17. Mexican Americans account for 1 out every 14 US person
18. Mexican Americans are the only native people from California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado because of their pre USA existence
19. Mexican American literature works reference only Mexican Americans not Salvadorians or Shakespeare
20. Mexican Americans are a recognized US culture through language: Spanglish; food; art; identity; accent and blood
21. Mexican Americans cannot be deported nor can their citizenship be revoked
22. In Black Studies, non Blacks are not allowed to teach therefore why are non Chicanos allowed in Mexican American Studies
23. In Women Studies, males are not allowed to teach then why are non Mexican Americans allowed in Mexican American Studies
24. Due to the fact that there are no Mexican American PhD programs, how relevant is a PhD only candidate for Mexican American Studies?
25. The CSU allows for expertise qualification then why does the same standard not apply to CSULA Chicano Studies
26. MA Terminal degrees in Theater, Fine Arts and creative writing is permitted why is it not for Chicano Studies or other relevant MA programs including publications
27. Hiring of non Mexican Americans purposely undercuts Mexican Americans of employment opportunities at CSULA, which is an indication of the highest unemployment rates in the state of California
28. Mexican American cultural distinctions set them apart from Mexico and Latin American born by: identity, accent, culture, race, psychology, experience and poverty
29. Mexican Americans have been in the US longer than any other “Latino” in particular to California
30. By merging Mexican American history with other Latinos, the assumption is that Mexican Americans do not have their own history, then what does Tex Mex, burrito, Zoot Suit, lowriders, Serrano vs Priest, Mendez vs. Westminster, Californian, Apache, Pueblo mean? Does that refer to people from El Salvador and Cuba?
31. What relevance do California Mexican American historical sites have? Such as the San Pascual Pass Museum in San Diego, Cahuenga Signing House, Pio Pico House, Rancho de Cerritos Adobe, The Centinela Adobe, the San Fernando Mission, The Avila Adobe in Montebello. Does this refer to Latinos from Central America, people from the Caribbean and the Philippines Islands because they have Spanish surnames?
32. Would the word Chicano also apply to Phillipinos or Spaniards because they have Spanish surnames? Where does one draw the fine line?
33. Did Latinos from Central and South America face segregation-legal or have their property eminent domained?
34. Did the voting rights act apply to people from Centro and South America?
35. The exclusion of Mexican Americans in the current curriculum development has interrupted the academic understanding of those born in the US and of multiple generations
36. Latinos do not have a comprehension, command, grasp of Mexican Americans therefore how can they teach about them, if even Mexico born do not understand them and they are closer by geography
37. Latinos incorporate US societal bigotry of Mexican Americans into the teaching realm
38. In the current era, Mexican American males face higher unemployment rates then their female counterparts and there is no educational awareness of the impact on the Mexican American community, whereas Columbia University is being sued by a male student because they do not have a male center versus a women’s center.
39. Chicano male needs are not being addressed, whereas Chicana feminist issues are openly welcomed and encouraged through White feminist ideology because White females have been the largest recipients of affirmative action and Title IX at the expense of Mexican American males visible in the low graduation rates of the men
40. The current hiring practice discriminates against Mexican Americans who have published books on Mexican Americans
41. The name change from Chicano Studies at other CSU to Chicano/Chicana Studies or Chicano/Latinos Studies set a bad precedent because it allowed for the name change to include non Mexican Americans, including the hiring of non Mexican Americans such as Puerto Ricans, Spaniards or Mexico born (including the current chair at CSULB or at CSULA)
42. CSULA Chair admitted and stated that just as the word “n” was redefined by Blacks to mean a term of endearment, we can change the meaning of Mexican American
43. CSULA chair was asked what was his definition of Mexican American and he did not answer, meaning the chairs own admission to want to name of the department and simultaneously had no clear answer to what Mexican American was
The ideal of lumping an American minority group with a foreign population is both racist and incomprehensible. This is racist because CSULA and many other governmental institutions want to artificially piece everybody in the same category without respect to Mexican American citizenry and history of which many are multi-generational, meaning from 3rd to 6th generations.
By merging Mexican Americans with others, Chicanos stand to lose more because scarce resources in academic teaching positions, student slots or job development programs are then diminished and allocated to non Mexican Americans. Which in turn as in the case of the name change for Chicano Studies, these outsiders have changed the curriculum or the departmental degree name into something non Chicano. For example, when current chair of CSULA was asked where was he at in the early 1970’s during the Mexican American Civil Rights movement by Agustin Cebada, a participant and a Mexican American born in New Mexico of Pueblo ancestry, the chair responded that he was in Mexico. Which is precisely the point that the Mexican American fight for equal US citizenry is in the US not in Mexico or in any other country of Latin America.
Self Preservation & the Right to Exist:
by Mexican Americans born and raised in the US
Julian Camacho: (US Birth Certificate states Caucasian and Tomato Packer for father)
Ruben Lopez: (US birth certificate states Caucasian and Unknown for father)
1. Chicano refers only to Mexican American, meaning US born
2. Mexican American refers to people of both parents and or 3 grandparents of Mexican American origin
3. Mexican American does not include mix people
4. Mexican Americans are racialized as White on birth certificates and student enrollment purposes but treated as non-White
5. Mexican Americans do not immigrate to the US therefore immigration is a non-issue
6. Mexico does not recognize Mexican Americans as citizens but as foreigners
7. Mexican Americans are a National Minority because of US conquest
8. Mexican Americans are desert US people distinct from Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are Caribbean Island people, Chicanos are mainlanders not islanders
9. Mexican American identity is rooted in US history from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the many Mexican American Civil Rights Movements
10. US Commerce Department on Birth Certificate forms classify Mexican Americans as a distinct category independent of people born in Mexico and from Centro and South America
11. Mexican Americans because they are arid people of Aztlan (Deserts of the US) according to Dr. Daniel Potter, MD, their DNA is unique, separate, distinct from people in Southern Mexico and no relationship to Centro Americans who are tropical people
12. Mexican American culture is defined by birth, upbringing, tradition and folklore
13. Mexican Americans are defined by the 14th Amendment as US born and various Supreme Court Cases such as Cisneros, Hernandez and Miranda Cases
14. Mexican Americans according to the US 2000 Census earn the least of all groups in the US at $9400.00 of annual earnings
15. Mexican American comprise 9 out of every 10 Spanish Surnames in California
16. Mexican American US population is 30 million whereas Puerto Ricans in the US are 4 million which is the next closes group
17. Mexican Americans account for 1 out every 14 US person
18. Mexican Americans are the only native people from California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado because of their pre USA existence
19. Mexican American literature works reference only Mexican Americans not Salvadorians or Shakespeare
20. Mexican Americans are a recognized US culture through language: Spanglish; food; art; identity; accent and blood
21. Mexican Americans cannot be deported nor can their citizenship be revoked
22. In Black Studies, non Blacks are not allowed to teach therefore why are non Chicanos allowed in Mexican American Studies
23. In Women Studies, males are not allowed to teach then why are non Mexican Americans allowed in Mexican American Studies
24. Due to the fact that there are no Mexican American PhD programs, how relevant is a PhD only candidate for Mexican American Studies?
25. The CSU allows for expertise qualification then why does the same standard not apply to CSULA Chicano Studies
26. MA Terminal degrees in Theater, Fine Arts and creative writing is permitted why is it not for Chicano Studies or other relevant MA programs including publications
27. Hiring of non Mexican Americans purposely undercuts Mexican Americans of employment opportunities at CSULA, which is an indication of the highest unemployment rates in the state of California
28. Mexican American cultural distinctions set them apart from Mexico and Latin American born by: identity, accent, culture, race, psychology, experience and poverty
29. Mexican Americans have been in the US longer than any other “Latino” in particular to California
30. By merging Mexican American history with other Latinos, the assumption is that Mexican Americans do not have their own history, then what does Tex Mex, burrito, Zoot Suit, lowriders, Serrano vs Priest, Mendez vs. Westminster, Californian, Apache, Pueblo mean? Does that refer to people from El Salvador and Cuba?
31. What relevance do California Mexican American historical sites have? Such as the San Pascual Pass Museum in San Diego, Cahuenga Signing House, Pio Pico House, Rancho de Cerritos Adobe, The Centinela Adobe, the San Fernando Mission, The Avila Adobe in Montebello. Does this refer to Latinos from Central America, people from the Caribbean and the Philippines Islands because they have Spanish surnames?
32. Would the word Chicano also apply to Phillipinos or Spaniards because they have Spanish surnames? Where does one draw the fine line?
33. Did Latinos from Central and South America face segregation-legal or have their property eminent domained?
34. Did the voting rights act apply to people from Centro and South America?
35. The exclusion of Mexican Americans in the current curriculum development has interrupted the academic understanding of those born in the US and of multiple generations
36. Latinos do not have a comprehension, command, grasp of Mexican Americans therefore how can they teach about them, if even Mexico born do not understand them and they are closer by geography
37. Latinos incorporate US societal bigotry of Mexican Americans into the teaching realm
38. In the current era, Mexican American males face higher unemployment rates then their female counterparts and there is no educational awareness of the impact on the Mexican American community, whereas Columbia University is being sued by a male student because they do not have a male center versus a women’s center.
39. Chicano male needs are not being addressed, whereas Chicana feminist issues are openly welcomed and encouraged through White feminist ideology because White females have been the largest recipients of affirmative action and Title IX at the expense of Mexican American males visible in the low graduation rates of the men
40. The current hiring practice discriminates against Mexican Americans who have published books on Mexican Americans
41. The name change from Chicano Studies at other CSU to Chicano/Chicana Studies or Chicano/Latinos Studies set a bad precedent because it allowed for the name change to include non Mexican Americans, including the hiring of non Mexican Americans such as Puerto Ricans, Spaniards or Mexico born (including the current chair at CSULB or at CSULA)
42. CSULA Chair admitted and stated that just as the word “n” was redefined by Blacks to mean a term of endearment, we can change the meaning of Mexican American
43. CSULA chair was asked what was his definition of Mexican American and he did not answer, meaning the chairs own admission to want to name of the department and simultaneously had no clear answer to what Mexican American was
The ideal of lumping an American minority group with a foreign population is both racist and incomprehensible. This is racist because CSULA and many other governmental institutions want to artificially piece everybody in the same category without respect to Mexican American citizenry and history of which many are multi-generational, meaning from 3rd to 6th generations.
By merging Mexican Americans with others, Chicanos stand to lose more because scarce resources in academic teaching positions, student slots or job development programs are then diminished and allocated to non Mexican Americans. Which in turn as in the case of the name change for Chicano Studies, these outsiders have changed the curriculum or the departmental degree name into something non Chicano. For example, when current chair of CSULA was asked where was he at in the early 1970’s during the Mexican American Civil Rights movement by Agustin Cebada, a participant and a Mexican American born in New Mexico of Pueblo ancestry, the chair responded that he was in Mexico. Which is precisely the point that the Mexican American fight for equal US citizenry is in the US not in Mexico or in any other country of Latin America.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Apache Mexican: Intermarriage and becoming White
Apache Mexican: Intermarriage and becoming White: "'By Jonah Goldberg May 31, 2011; Los Angeles Times 'Princeton's Cornel West, one of the most famous black intellectuals in America, says ..."
Friday, June 3, 2011
Intermarriage and becoming White
"By Jonah Goldberg
May 31, 2011; Los Angeles Times
"Princeton's Cornel West, one of the most famous black intellectuals in America, says that President Obama is afraid of "free black men." Because of Obama's atypical upbringing, West says, "when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow [sic] and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a de-racination."
I like this debate from Cornel West who is actually talking some reality and defining what Black is which is by two parents and telling Whites that their offspring is also White even if they look Black. Cornel West is saying Obama does not have the Black history and treatment as such when he alludes to Jim Crow. He might be Black looking but he's not Black, especially when mama is White. This is vital because he's saying apart from his Wall Street politics of favoritism that he's ignoring the job crisis which is what Civil Rights was all about but he's also challenging the White imposition of identity on Blacks. When Whites procreate with Blacks, Whites view the offspring as Black but the truth is that they are White and that is ignored. Cornel is saying to be Black means you must come from both parents and Whites should accept their kin and mixed Whites should comprehend that they are not the same as Blacks especially when history is thrown in. Torii Hunter was correct when he said that Carribbean baseball players were not Black in the US definition.
This made me think about Mexican Americans and in particular the women who marry out and have the highest intermarriage rates in the US according to National Geographic and as one Mexican American woman stated named Marlette Cortez, she knows a good number of Mexican American women who want their White male trophy. With these high intermarriage rates to Whites and men of other cultures their offspring must be viewed in the context of their reproduction, that their offspring become those peoples for blood, culture, appearance, philosophy, history. They do stop being Mexican American if they ever were because if they were Mexico born then they never were even if raised in the US but Whites like to consider them Mexican Americans without considering those of us by both parents who are Mexican Americans. I personally don't consider them Mexican Americans but what the parent married into because ultimately that is what woman wanted, to leave the skin she carried.
And because this is a phenomenon of women marrying out because under the human rule women chose and make themselves available to men, the same social context cannot be extended to Mexican American males because they on the otherhand chose what comes to them. In other words, Mexican American males can't be picky because there aren't than many options so they are very limited in availibilty and sometimes that means that the psychological personalogical test is ignored when shouldn't because there is a fear that another will not pay attention and that is fear to live by. A recent study in young people revealed that sex for males reaffirms and enhances their confidence so every time a woman says yes which wasn't very often for me in my early 20's, the feeling of not being wanted is a reality and now as near 50's, as my friend Ron said, imagine being 65, there is less loving.
The part I hate the most is the institutional racism visible in many places when White institutions use Whites with a Mexican parent to claim that they are being inclusive. It is the most dishonest, racist insulting practice spit at those of us who didn't benefit from that racial inclusion. That Whiteness and white name means better opportunities, no bad credit and the opportunity to hear all the bigotry first hand which is what Whiteness means and the White girls because they aren't looking at us dark black hair people. I can tell you from someone who grew up in Lennox-one of the most dense Mexican nieghborhoods where everything was outside of the unincorporated strips from the movies, to high school, churches and even the morgues. The only places that existed where two of the most dirtiest supermarkets that would make you vomit as you entered them and the ugliest post office in America. Anybody who lived here felt hell was a better place at least the she devils would pay attention.
So those Whites with a Mexican parent wouldn't live this because their mother procreated to get out for all love is economical. Therefore when institutions hire Whites and try to pass them off as Mexicans that is really one of the most disrespectful and racist acts because it maintains Whites in power and covertly discriminates against us Mexican Americans. And they get away with it. So Cornel is right, they don't know what it's like to live as vermin.
And for those that argue it wasn't their fault, they didn't chose to be born that way, I would say neither did I but I pay for that appearance and you benefit from that look.
May 31, 2011; Los Angeles Times
"Princeton's Cornel West, one of the most famous black intellectuals in America, says that President Obama is afraid of "free black men." Because of Obama's atypical upbringing, West says, "when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow [sic] and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a de-racination."
I like this debate from Cornel West who is actually talking some reality and defining what Black is which is by two parents and telling Whites that their offspring is also White even if they look Black. Cornel West is saying Obama does not have the Black history and treatment as such when he alludes to Jim Crow. He might be Black looking but he's not Black, especially when mama is White. This is vital because he's saying apart from his Wall Street politics of favoritism that he's ignoring the job crisis which is what Civil Rights was all about but he's also challenging the White imposition of identity on Blacks. When Whites procreate with Blacks, Whites view the offspring as Black but the truth is that they are White and that is ignored. Cornel is saying to be Black means you must come from both parents and Whites should accept their kin and mixed Whites should comprehend that they are not the same as Blacks especially when history is thrown in. Torii Hunter was correct when he said that Carribbean baseball players were not Black in the US definition.
This made me think about Mexican Americans and in particular the women who marry out and have the highest intermarriage rates in the US according to National Geographic and as one Mexican American woman stated named Marlette Cortez, she knows a good number of Mexican American women who want their White male trophy. With these high intermarriage rates to Whites and men of other cultures their offspring must be viewed in the context of their reproduction, that their offspring become those peoples for blood, culture, appearance, philosophy, history. They do stop being Mexican American if they ever were because if they were Mexico born then they never were even if raised in the US but Whites like to consider them Mexican Americans without considering those of us by both parents who are Mexican Americans. I personally don't consider them Mexican Americans but what the parent married into because ultimately that is what woman wanted, to leave the skin she carried.
And because this is a phenomenon of women marrying out because under the human rule women chose and make themselves available to men, the same social context cannot be extended to Mexican American males because they on the otherhand chose what comes to them. In other words, Mexican American males can't be picky because there aren't than many options so they are very limited in availibilty and sometimes that means that the psychological personalogical test is ignored when shouldn't because there is a fear that another will not pay attention and that is fear to live by. A recent study in young people revealed that sex for males reaffirms and enhances their confidence so every time a woman says yes which wasn't very often for me in my early 20's, the feeling of not being wanted is a reality and now as near 50's, as my friend Ron said, imagine being 65, there is less loving.
The part I hate the most is the institutional racism visible in many places when White institutions use Whites with a Mexican parent to claim that they are being inclusive. It is the most dishonest, racist insulting practice spit at those of us who didn't benefit from that racial inclusion. That Whiteness and white name means better opportunities, no bad credit and the opportunity to hear all the bigotry first hand which is what Whiteness means and the White girls because they aren't looking at us dark black hair people. I can tell you from someone who grew up in Lennox-one of the most dense Mexican nieghborhoods where everything was outside of the unincorporated strips from the movies, to high school, churches and even the morgues. The only places that existed where two of the most dirtiest supermarkets that would make you vomit as you entered them and the ugliest post office in America. Anybody who lived here felt hell was a better place at least the she devils would pay attention.
So those Whites with a Mexican parent wouldn't live this because their mother procreated to get out for all love is economical. Therefore when institutions hire Whites and try to pass them off as Mexicans that is really one of the most disrespectful and racist acts because it maintains Whites in power and covertly discriminates against us Mexican Americans. And they get away with it. So Cornel is right, they don't know what it's like to live as vermin.
And for those that argue it wasn't their fault, they didn't chose to be born that way, I would say neither did I but I pay for that appearance and you benefit from that look.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Loving Strangers Is A Myth
Some time ago I came across some books from UCSB Chicano Studies professors who are suppose to be enhancing the study of Mexican Americans because that is what Chicano means, but since I don't use that term I take a different approach. As I saw the titles from the female Chicano Studies professors, there was one I think from Chela Sandoval that stated something about loving and that if one didn't love there was a fault in that person. But then I thought if she practiced that philosophy how come I never got any love when I applied to teach part time. All I got was the cold shoulder even after Francisco Lomeli wrote a nice recommendation which I never get because I am not loved by the Chicano community but then again not even my extended family loves me and I don't love them either. I care for two brothers and the other two well lets just say they we mutually dislike eachother. At least we are honest with our dislike. So I didn't get hired and thought those titles were not realistic.
Then I came across Cornel West and his books which can go either way with me though I have read "Why Race Matters" though I'm not Black and many Blacks believe Mexican Americans are not really part of the racial question eventhough we are in the part of Northern Mexico that was conquered by the US have been in the deserts of California for much much longer. And he too has his share of Living and Loving Loud but as I have concluded, this is all mythical.
My most obvious reason goes back to my world view, I can't love strangers. How can one love someone they don't know? That is ludicrious and illogical. So because I see a stranger even if he or she is Mexican American I'm suppose to love them when I don't know their intentions. Talk about not being prepared for life. Someone might take advantage of such openness. I was raised to mistrust the world so when I had to sit through classes on the Multiethnic Experience at CSULB I couldn't take the fact that female professors kept insisting that they had to be shown respect when they were strangers. In my world view, you have to earn that it isn't given willingly and stupidly. So when I stated I was raised to not respect a woman or strangers it was with the intent that I could not trust someone I did not know and even if we were friends we could turn on eachother at any moment. Ask any guy about that. But according to the self serving make belief world of a Cal State University who were self serving, they got upset at my cultural perspective because it didn't suite their purpose. The female professors got mad but I didn't care because they weren't showing me any love so they were being hypocritical and self serving. As long as they were being served they were happy but when challenged at that warp thinking they got mad.
Which brings me back to these not so bright articles and books about loving when the word is a verb not a noun. And for UCSB, I never got any love for all I was requesting was to be judged on my merit.
Then I came across Cornel West and his books which can go either way with me though I have read "Why Race Matters" though I'm not Black and many Blacks believe Mexican Americans are not really part of the racial question eventhough we are in the part of Northern Mexico that was conquered by the US have been in the deserts of California for much much longer. And he too has his share of Living and Loving Loud but as I have concluded, this is all mythical.
My most obvious reason goes back to my world view, I can't love strangers. How can one love someone they don't know? That is ludicrious and illogical. So because I see a stranger even if he or she is Mexican American I'm suppose to love them when I don't know their intentions. Talk about not being prepared for life. Someone might take advantage of such openness. I was raised to mistrust the world so when I had to sit through classes on the Multiethnic Experience at CSULB I couldn't take the fact that female professors kept insisting that they had to be shown respect when they were strangers. In my world view, you have to earn that it isn't given willingly and stupidly. So when I stated I was raised to not respect a woman or strangers it was with the intent that I could not trust someone I did not know and even if we were friends we could turn on eachother at any moment. Ask any guy about that. But according to the self serving make belief world of a Cal State University who were self serving, they got upset at my cultural perspective because it didn't suite their purpose. The female professors got mad but I didn't care because they weren't showing me any love so they were being hypocritical and self serving. As long as they were being served they were happy but when challenged at that warp thinking they got mad.
Which brings me back to these not so bright articles and books about loving when the word is a verb not a noun. And for UCSB, I never got any love for all I was requesting was to be judged on my merit.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Rampart Records
Some ten plus years ago I was at the now closed Towers Records on Atlantic Blvd. in East LA/Monterey Park whatever. I was in my cultural awareness era where I felt that to be Mexican meant that I had to follow musical influence from southern Mexico. I had bought my fair share of Mana, Jose Alfredo and other crap that I was beginning to grow tired of. So I returned to another era that reminded me of my pre teen and teen years. I looked for one of my favorite in Freddy Fender and didn't find his music in the Nortenho section. I assumed they had sold out and then I looked for Los Lobos because in my teenage years "Will the Wolf Survive?" was being played on KROQ plus they sang nortenho and ranchera songs in Spanish much like Freddy Fender. To my surprise I did not find either artist in the Mexico Spanish sections.
Then my curiosity took me to the English sections of rock and to my surprise I found Los Lobos del Este in the rocknroll section and when I couldn't find Freddy, I asked and found him in the country section. I thought damn, Los Lobos are in Rocknroll and Freddy Fender in country western. I was surprised to have found Mexican American nortenha songs in RocknRoll and in Countrywestern. It left me with alot of questions about how Mexican Americans were categorized and one of them was not in the Latin America section and not even in the Mexico section. I was confused.
Through the years I have realized that the separation and not inclusion would come to predict the future in directly. Now in my early 40's I have gone through a metamorphis of the sort that has epiphatized into the fact that I as a Mexican American am a different kind of animal apart from that Mexico section that does not depend on anything from Mexico or person to determine who I am, how I think and how I perceive others. This is not popular because the Chicano academic circles believe we are all the same when the fact US born and by generation and Apache heritage I have come to conclude that Mexico does not determine who I am. I do not depend on them for my cultural expression.
When I shared this belief with a person I met recently in the last year and a half by the name of Hector Gonzalez who I met through East LA College. Our unique distinction is that we were both forced out of East LA College by the Greek Chair of Chicano Studies. So we bonded under those tiring circumstances. But as I got to know him I learned that he inherited a music label by the name of Rampart Records when the original owner Eddie Davis passed away. Hector's connection was that he played with a music group called Eastside Connection and then later Lava and the Hot Rocks. Hector is a throw back to the 1970's kind of Mexican American who called themselves Chicanos. He is still kind of an original Chicano but because non Mexican Americans have stolen that identity including not just Mexico born but even Central Americans, the word has lost meaning.
When I expressed my thoughts with Hector that Mexican Americans have been thrown under the bus in this era because all brown people have been lumped as one with more attention given to those born in Mexico who succeeded and now those without documents plastering their faces all over television begging to be granted amnesty when they broke US law. The Mexican American like Hector or myself have been forgotten because we are easy to and their is this belief that we have it made because we were born in the US and also because we are lazy. We don't need White people to tell us we're lazy, the foreign born Mexicans will tell us we are not hardworkers.
Hector's response was surprising to me because I come across as some right wing nut but forget about the fact that I have a right to defend myself when he stated, "Paisa radio stations don't pay attention to Mexican Americans. Even if we sing in Spanish they won't play our music so we don't have an outlet". I don't know anything about music and radio play but I do know that I never heard Los Lobos or Freddy Fender on no KWKW or KLVE. "We don't get any radio play so all of our music is underground" only proves what I have been feeling for a long time. That the arrival of Mexican nationals endangers our American existence because our needs get pushed aside and forgotten along with our history. And nobody is advocating for us because we have no legal definition nor income and much less sympathy.
I remember once reading commentaries from a White woman in the LA Times over the direction at that time of Self Help Graphics, while a new guy advocated for Latin America by the name of Gustavo LeClerc who righteously thought it was time to include people like him, the White lady opposed it because she stated it hurt Mexican Americans and moved the focus away from the community. And was she ever right.
Lastly, even Hector has been told by a White person in the music industry that the arrivals of the "Paisas" have really hurt the Mexican Americans from the US. Was he ever correct.
And Hector continues to push the sound that existed way before the paisas arrived and the sound that was paid with through flipping burgers as the man funded the Eastside Sounds through his restaurant and who believed Mexican Americans had a vital cultural component. Eddie Davis proved that by giving ownership to Hector when he passed. And for me, I stopped listening to music from Mexico because my heart's not there, my heart is at home.
Then my curiosity took me to the English sections of rock and to my surprise I found Los Lobos del Este in the rocknroll section and when I couldn't find Freddy, I asked and found him in the country section. I thought damn, Los Lobos are in Rocknroll and Freddy Fender in country western. I was surprised to have found Mexican American nortenha songs in RocknRoll and in Countrywestern. It left me with alot of questions about how Mexican Americans were categorized and one of them was not in the Latin America section and not even in the Mexico section. I was confused.
Through the years I have realized that the separation and not inclusion would come to predict the future in directly. Now in my early 40's I have gone through a metamorphis of the sort that has epiphatized into the fact that I as a Mexican American am a different kind of animal apart from that Mexico section that does not depend on anything from Mexico or person to determine who I am, how I think and how I perceive others. This is not popular because the Chicano academic circles believe we are all the same when the fact US born and by generation and Apache heritage I have come to conclude that Mexico does not determine who I am. I do not depend on them for my cultural expression.
When I shared this belief with a person I met recently in the last year and a half by the name of Hector Gonzalez who I met through East LA College. Our unique distinction is that we were both forced out of East LA College by the Greek Chair of Chicano Studies. So we bonded under those tiring circumstances. But as I got to know him I learned that he inherited a music label by the name of Rampart Records when the original owner Eddie Davis passed away. Hector's connection was that he played with a music group called Eastside Connection and then later Lava and the Hot Rocks. Hector is a throw back to the 1970's kind of Mexican American who called themselves Chicanos. He is still kind of an original Chicano but because non Mexican Americans have stolen that identity including not just Mexico born but even Central Americans, the word has lost meaning.
When I expressed my thoughts with Hector that Mexican Americans have been thrown under the bus in this era because all brown people have been lumped as one with more attention given to those born in Mexico who succeeded and now those without documents plastering their faces all over television begging to be granted amnesty when they broke US law. The Mexican American like Hector or myself have been forgotten because we are easy to and their is this belief that we have it made because we were born in the US and also because we are lazy. We don't need White people to tell us we're lazy, the foreign born Mexicans will tell us we are not hardworkers.
Hector's response was surprising to me because I come across as some right wing nut but forget about the fact that I have a right to defend myself when he stated, "Paisa radio stations don't pay attention to Mexican Americans. Even if we sing in Spanish they won't play our music so we don't have an outlet". I don't know anything about music and radio play but I do know that I never heard Los Lobos or Freddy Fender on no KWKW or KLVE. "We don't get any radio play so all of our music is underground" only proves what I have been feeling for a long time. That the arrival of Mexican nationals endangers our American existence because our needs get pushed aside and forgotten along with our history. And nobody is advocating for us because we have no legal definition nor income and much less sympathy.
I remember once reading commentaries from a White woman in the LA Times over the direction at that time of Self Help Graphics, while a new guy advocated for Latin America by the name of Gustavo LeClerc who righteously thought it was time to include people like him, the White lady opposed it because she stated it hurt Mexican Americans and moved the focus away from the community. And was she ever right.
Lastly, even Hector has been told by a White person in the music industry that the arrivals of the "Paisas" have really hurt the Mexican Americans from the US. Was he ever correct.
And Hector continues to push the sound that existed way before the paisas arrived and the sound that was paid with through flipping burgers as the man funded the Eastside Sounds through his restaurant and who believed Mexican Americans had a vital cultural component. Eddie Davis proved that by giving ownership to Hector when he passed. And for me, I stopped listening to music from Mexico because my heart's not there, my heart is at home.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Mexican American?
So I'm at Cal State LA with the Chicano Rountable who are a group of individuals that range from Agustin Cebada and David Sanchez from the Brown Berets in the late 1960's to Saul Figueroa and Xihuan Montalvo both Chicanos from the South LA area and one generation younger than the Brown Berets. Saul and Xihuan represent the Mexican Americans that tend to be forgotten because they don't originate from East LA but as all should know, Mexican Americans don't just come from East LA though another compa Ruben Lopez does and he was also in attendance.
We were all there meeting with the Dean and chair of Chicano Studies, Henderson and Soldatenko attempting to prevent the destruction of the departmental name to the guilt ridden inclusive word of Latino. I decided to help because I believe that Mexican Americans, are spat on and stepped on while others benefit and we are ignored. The first issue is simple the administration hired 4 non Mexican Americans which is really part of the problem which is why they would push to change the name because they are not Mexican Americans and the others of one is also a non Mexican American but Mexican national who has been there so long everybody assumed he was but me. The other two females who are Mexican Americans don't have a pedagogical background in Chicano Studies or even a cultural relevant approach: Education and English is not Chicano Studies and the only qualification seems to have been some matching system the college liked.
So we argued not to change the name and the chair defended the name change and the notion that the Chicano Roundtable had a different definition to what Mexican American means which has always meant US born. And there we were being told by a non Mexican American that our definition was wrong, he's Ukrainian by his own admission, that us who are Mexican Americans by birth were wrong. I couldn't believe his arrogance and the dean arguing that Mexican American Studies should be more inclusive of other Latinos with the assumption we were being exclusive. When the continued life for Mexican Americans is that others are not inclusive of us.
Finally, our elder Luis Garcia who comprehends our argument asked him, "can you tell me what your definition of a Mexican American is". A silent reply and then a Che Guevara answer that the author of Occupied America would not fit our definition because he was not US born. And our answer was yes because those of us US born have no legal definition in Mexico and as we argued we were the ones outside looking in asking non Mexican Americans to keep the word Chicano for the department.
Whose really not included?
We were all there meeting with the Dean and chair of Chicano Studies, Henderson and Soldatenko attempting to prevent the destruction of the departmental name to the guilt ridden inclusive word of Latino. I decided to help because I believe that Mexican Americans, are spat on and stepped on while others benefit and we are ignored. The first issue is simple the administration hired 4 non Mexican Americans which is really part of the problem which is why they would push to change the name because they are not Mexican Americans and the others of one is also a non Mexican American but Mexican national who has been there so long everybody assumed he was but me. The other two females who are Mexican Americans don't have a pedagogical background in Chicano Studies or even a cultural relevant approach: Education and English is not Chicano Studies and the only qualification seems to have been some matching system the college liked.
So we argued not to change the name and the chair defended the name change and the notion that the Chicano Roundtable had a different definition to what Mexican American means which has always meant US born. And there we were being told by a non Mexican American that our definition was wrong, he's Ukrainian by his own admission, that us who are Mexican Americans by birth were wrong. I couldn't believe his arrogance and the dean arguing that Mexican American Studies should be more inclusive of other Latinos with the assumption we were being exclusive. When the continued life for Mexican Americans is that others are not inclusive of us.
Finally, our elder Luis Garcia who comprehends our argument asked him, "can you tell me what your definition of a Mexican American is". A silent reply and then a Che Guevara answer that the author of Occupied America would not fit our definition because he was not US born. And our answer was yes because those of us US born have no legal definition in Mexico and as we argued we were the ones outside looking in asking non Mexican Americans to keep the word Chicano for the department.
Whose really not included?
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Being Gay is not Chicano
I have noticed that one trend that will get an aspiring Mexican American writer is to say you are gay. And you will get more attention. I read some article about a new writer whose name I forgot and the one point the Harvard article pinpointed was that he was gay and Chicano which are really two words that don't go together. Gay because any racial group can be a homosexual but not all racial groups can be Chicanos. And if anybody knows, Chicanos do not want to be identified as gay because most are not. So it is disingenious to try to lump both together when the majority don't want to be labeled in the popular Hollywood or Academia esqueness. Now if that is what is getting published, shame on the publishers for pushing that genre onto a community that believes in children, reproduction, legacy of blood and the beauty of the female body.
Normal Mexican Americans like women and considering US born Mexican Americans are of desert Apache to Mescalero to Yuma heritage, the love of women or polygamy was is part of the male cultural heritage for the simple reason more offspring kept expanding the group. And the women agreed to that cultural norm because unlike southern Mexicans who move north, Apaches and other Northern Mexicans were not Catholocized so the ideal of monogamy is not in my cultural lineage. We view women as having the ultimate power because they choose who to mate with and that is the ultimate power of the female line, even if they are old. Even the older ladies can reject the older men.
Thus to try to focus on Mexican Americans as gay ignores the vast Mexican American community that is anything but gay and are interested in normal struggles and questions of life with womanizing on the side. By accepting more gay writers, the publishers are identifying what is Mexican American in print and that is very dangerous. They are also saying that only gay narratives are worthy of publication whereas the others are not valuable lives worth mentioning or considering for analysis or acceptance. In the academic circle of Mexican American Studies, there is an overimposition of gay and feminist writers which amounts to one conclusion only: the hatred of macho culture. Gay and feminism in Chicano academic (if you can call it that) circles dominates the curriculum that people who fought for such fields of study feel excluded because the gays and female haters have taken over with complicity of the White academic world for they facilitated those hirings and curriculum imposition at the expense of 90% population that is not gay nor feminist. Gays can push their lifestyles but if a heterosexual male writer talks about wanting to have multiple women he is shun. Or if he counters feminist any male hatred he is called all the negative labels available and I don't have a problem with that but let me get my voice out. Gays should stay with their gay community because their lifestyle is important than race and so should feminist because they believe gender is more important than race which I disagree with both. Yet because they are accepted by the White circles as their tokens, their self centered lifestyles become sacred but ask us normal Mexican Americans and we'll laugh.
I don't want to be known as liking men nor as pro women at the expense of my gender because I don't see the gays or the feminist advocating on my behalf and my needs. Those people don't speak for me and I'm not politically correct nor religious, I believe my own mind and don't believe in a popularity contest. And because I haven't been annointed by the gay White literary circle my writings continue to go unnoticed but they are out there pushing for normal Mexican Americans who are trying to survive all these impositions who are only self centered.
Julian Camacho
Normal Mexican Americans like women and considering US born Mexican Americans are of desert Apache to Mescalero to Yuma heritage, the love of women or polygamy was is part of the male cultural heritage for the simple reason more offspring kept expanding the group. And the women agreed to that cultural norm because unlike southern Mexicans who move north, Apaches and other Northern Mexicans were not Catholocized so the ideal of monogamy is not in my cultural lineage. We view women as having the ultimate power because they choose who to mate with and that is the ultimate power of the female line, even if they are old. Even the older ladies can reject the older men.
Thus to try to focus on Mexican Americans as gay ignores the vast Mexican American community that is anything but gay and are interested in normal struggles and questions of life with womanizing on the side. By accepting more gay writers, the publishers are identifying what is Mexican American in print and that is very dangerous. They are also saying that only gay narratives are worthy of publication whereas the others are not valuable lives worth mentioning or considering for analysis or acceptance. In the academic circle of Mexican American Studies, there is an overimposition of gay and feminist writers which amounts to one conclusion only: the hatred of macho culture. Gay and feminism in Chicano academic (if you can call it that) circles dominates the curriculum that people who fought for such fields of study feel excluded because the gays and female haters have taken over with complicity of the White academic world for they facilitated those hirings and curriculum imposition at the expense of 90% population that is not gay nor feminist. Gays can push their lifestyles but if a heterosexual male writer talks about wanting to have multiple women he is shun. Or if he counters feminist any male hatred he is called all the negative labels available and I don't have a problem with that but let me get my voice out. Gays should stay with their gay community because their lifestyle is important than race and so should feminist because they believe gender is more important than race which I disagree with both. Yet because they are accepted by the White circles as their tokens, their self centered lifestyles become sacred but ask us normal Mexican Americans and we'll laugh.
I don't want to be known as liking men nor as pro women at the expense of my gender because I don't see the gays or the feminist advocating on my behalf and my needs. Those people don't speak for me and I'm not politically correct nor religious, I believe my own mind and don't believe in a popularity contest. And because I haven't been annointed by the gay White literary circle my writings continue to go unnoticed but they are out there pushing for normal Mexican Americans who are trying to survive all these impositions who are only self centered.
Julian Camacho
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
To My Friend Hector Gonzalez
Hec, (Reply to Tejanos claims of Spanish heritage and the immigration debate)
This is too Spanish, most of the Tejanos are not Spanish nor Spanish culture except for some lost people but really Arapaho, Mescalero, Comanche, Apache, Coahuila, Kikapuh and those that claim they are Hispanics are basically Catholic Converts and not somebody from Spain.
As long as US born Tejanos are not threaten southern Mexicans/ citizens from another country don't really matter, they come and go anyway. It's not the duty of Mexican Americans to worry about people that recently arrived if recently was 20 years ago. Mexican Americans can barely afford to pay the rent, its not their duty to be responsible for Mexico's people like they are not responsible for US born Mexicans. They import Argentineans en masse numbers, accomodate them into the economy but those born there are not. That's an internal issue of Mexico and immigration is not an issue for those of US born in the US.
My niece who was born in California and had her struggles with high school can't get a job because they say she doesn't have a diploma but people who arrive from the south do though they don't have a diploma or citizenship of the US. Mexican Americans need to let the immigration issue go because that becomes priority while we get pushed to the side, are forgotten, dont' get hired by many colleges because it goes to immigrant born like at CSULB in Chicano Studies, don't get into graduate schools and can't even get hired to basic jobs because of White stereotypes of being lazy that immigrants from Mexico state themselves.
We have work discrimination for those that remain employed and who defends them, not the LULACS or the MALDEFS.
I'm not going to waste my vote on foreigners which also include Canadians, Europeans, Centro/South Americans and Asians for they sure progress much faster while not US born.
They are also taking our narrative, CSULA wants to change the name to Latino Studies but the precedent of 40 years of a diploma in Mexican American Studies is being intentionally eliminated. What don't people understand, are they that stupid? A person born in Mexico or Central America is not a Mexican American. What am I missing in this? Even the Department of Commerce differentiates in US birth certificate form that Mexican Americans are different from Mexico born people--14th amendment and racially and different from Centro America and South America. The very US knows the difference but mainstream academicians don't, go figure.
As you always say, "in the music world, the paisas have taken the Mexican American slot" and "Mexico doesn't want you to perform over there as they make their permit process impossible".
It's racist to lump US born Mexicans with foreigners.
This is too Spanish, most of the Tejanos are not Spanish nor Spanish culture except for some lost people but really Arapaho, Mescalero, Comanche, Apache, Coahuila, Kikapuh and those that claim they are Hispanics are basically Catholic Converts and not somebody from Spain.
As long as US born Tejanos are not threaten southern Mexicans/ citizens from another country don't really matter, they come and go anyway. It's not the duty of Mexican Americans to worry about people that recently arrived if recently was 20 years ago. Mexican Americans can barely afford to pay the rent, its not their duty to be responsible for Mexico's people like they are not responsible for US born Mexicans. They import Argentineans en masse numbers, accomodate them into the economy but those born there are not. That's an internal issue of Mexico and immigration is not an issue for those of US born in the US.
My niece who was born in California and had her struggles with high school can't get a job because they say she doesn't have a diploma but people who arrive from the south do though they don't have a diploma or citizenship of the US. Mexican Americans need to let the immigration issue go because that becomes priority while we get pushed to the side, are forgotten, dont' get hired by many colleges because it goes to immigrant born like at CSULB in Chicano Studies, don't get into graduate schools and can't even get hired to basic jobs because of White stereotypes of being lazy that immigrants from Mexico state themselves.
We have work discrimination for those that remain employed and who defends them, not the LULACS or the MALDEFS.
I'm not going to waste my vote on foreigners which also include Canadians, Europeans, Centro/South Americans and Asians for they sure progress much faster while not US born.
They are also taking our narrative, CSULA wants to change the name to Latino Studies but the precedent of 40 years of a diploma in Mexican American Studies is being intentionally eliminated. What don't people understand, are they that stupid? A person born in Mexico or Central America is not a Mexican American. What am I missing in this? Even the Department of Commerce differentiates in US birth certificate form that Mexican Americans are different from Mexico born people--14th amendment and racially and different from Centro America and South America. The very US knows the difference but mainstream academicians don't, go figure.
As you always say, "in the music world, the paisas have taken the Mexican American slot" and "Mexico doesn't want you to perform over there as they make their permit process impossible".
It's racist to lump US born Mexicans with foreigners.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Immigrant books in Chicano Studies Courses
I recently found out where UC Irvine was located at, next to some creek and on the edge of some rolling hills. Can't say I was really impressed, rather disappointed as I expected something like UCLA's architecture that made you believe you were seeing something ancient or at least well kept up.
Fortunately with a handicap pass as I now chauffuer a person with health issues, I was able to park closely to the bookstore and peaked at their Chicano Studies books and was I disappointed. Actually I began my disappointment in the Spanish section and realized those professors were using similar books I had to read back in the late 80's while at USC. No innovation in their book collection. I'm not sure I would pay big money again to read books about the Mexican Revolution or others from Spain. You would think there would be a better collection considering the population of generic Spanish speaking countries is quite high. I know their Spanish is all different but it seems much like the Chicano movement activists or artists who seem to be the same five people always competing. Here they were the same five books.
Then I moved to the Chicano Studies section and out of 10 authors, 8 were immigrant authors from Mexico. One was interesting about the Mexican American race formation while the other one was from my former boss Graciela Limon but still based on the immigrant Mexico. To be honest, I am tired about the immigrant Mexican infiltrating Mexican American Studies. Can't they tell there is a difference? Mexican Americans are born in the US, northern people. Immigrant Mexicans are not and maybe I would be sympathetic if they were border people from northern people because they would be in the terrain of the deserts but not these people who move from Zacatecas, Jalisco, Guerrero, Colima, Michoacan that are not even desert lands.
They act like they are the first ones here and no other Mexicans were present before they stepped foot on Mexican American realm. It's like if they show up to Mexicali on the Baja side and write their narrative as if nobody else was living there. They do bother me as they lament their immigrant narrative onto the rest of us. Why don't they write about their culture shock in Mexico of moving to a region they are not from even within Mexico?
It bothers me to see that the weak intellegentsia believe that the Chicano narrative is undocumented or foreign and for us born here, the word Chicano only referred to Mexican Americans and nobody else. What don't they understand that there is a difference between people born 1300 miles south to somebody born in California? We are not the same and neither are my children who are Apaches so far back that their descendents cannot be traced to anywhere other than the US. And if that is what is being taught I rather my children not learn that immigrant narrative which has nothing to do with them.
I left disgusted.
Fortunately with a handicap pass as I now chauffuer a person with health issues, I was able to park closely to the bookstore and peaked at their Chicano Studies books and was I disappointed. Actually I began my disappointment in the Spanish section and realized those professors were using similar books I had to read back in the late 80's while at USC. No innovation in their book collection. I'm not sure I would pay big money again to read books about the Mexican Revolution or others from Spain. You would think there would be a better collection considering the population of generic Spanish speaking countries is quite high. I know their Spanish is all different but it seems much like the Chicano movement activists or artists who seem to be the same five people always competing. Here they were the same five books.
Then I moved to the Chicano Studies section and out of 10 authors, 8 were immigrant authors from Mexico. One was interesting about the Mexican American race formation while the other one was from my former boss Graciela Limon but still based on the immigrant Mexico. To be honest, I am tired about the immigrant Mexican infiltrating Mexican American Studies. Can't they tell there is a difference? Mexican Americans are born in the US, northern people. Immigrant Mexicans are not and maybe I would be sympathetic if they were border people from northern people because they would be in the terrain of the deserts but not these people who move from Zacatecas, Jalisco, Guerrero, Colima, Michoacan that are not even desert lands.
They act like they are the first ones here and no other Mexicans were present before they stepped foot on Mexican American realm. It's like if they show up to Mexicali on the Baja side and write their narrative as if nobody else was living there. They do bother me as they lament their immigrant narrative onto the rest of us. Why don't they write about their culture shock in Mexico of moving to a region they are not from even within Mexico?
It bothers me to see that the weak intellegentsia believe that the Chicano narrative is undocumented or foreign and for us born here, the word Chicano only referred to Mexican Americans and nobody else. What don't they understand that there is a difference between people born 1300 miles south to somebody born in California? We are not the same and neither are my children who are Apaches so far back that their descendents cannot be traced to anywhere other than the US. And if that is what is being taught I rather my children not learn that immigrant narrative which has nothing to do with them.
I left disgusted.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Chorizo Moments and Death
http://www.amazon.com/Chorizo-Moments-and-Death-ebook/dp/B004K6MJRM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1295666338&sr=1-4
My new ebook, "Chorizo Moments and Death".
My new ebook, "Chorizo Moments and Death".
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Epublishing on Nook and Kindle
http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=julian+camacho&page=index&prod=univ&choice=ebooks&query=Julian+Camacho&flag=False&ugrp=2
I have published 4 books on the Nook and the Kindle. Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com
Books that would have just sat but now they are in.
1)Repossession (Fiction)
2)My Lifeforce (Fiction)
3)Amexican: A Southern California Story
4)If Jesus Could Not Save Himself, How Would He Save Me?
They are up for purchase and I'm proud of them.
I have published 4 books on the Nook and the Kindle. Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com
Books that would have just sat but now they are in.
1)Repossession (Fiction)
2)My Lifeforce (Fiction)
3)Amexican: A Southern California Story
4)If Jesus Could Not Save Himself, How Would He Save Me?
They are up for purchase and I'm proud of them.
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