Questioning

I have not written for a while honestly because I was busy at not doing anything in terms of writing.  I'm not sure anybody really writes my books except when it affects them directly which is ok because they were part of the narrative I wrote about whether good or bad.  I can be vindictive not in a inflicting pain but in showing how a bad can have a lasting legacy and I do what women do, snap back because I have not let it go.  I am vindictive as my Apache blood seems to overwhelm my personality because in my view a wrong must be righted whereas my Mexican mother (my father was the Apache) lives with the attitude of washing it away with ignoring it or moving away.  That was how she dealt with a problematic sister and opportunistic brother though my Baja grandparents were never like their offspring so its hard to imagine they were my mother's brother and sister. The Apaches from El Centro, California even with my mami as we called Luz, Light, whose reaching the end of her 87 years of life where one can never believe the story she says still snips hard at her eldest daughter or the grandchildren she raised who has seemed to forgotten her.  I am lucky because all she says about me is the reporter; reportero which really means chismozo, the gossiper.  But I laugh with her because my whole identity comes from her and her evil deeds, she is after all my mama grande as she always taught us.  Making sense was never part of our lives equation, it just is.  So contrary to what some might think of me as anti woman, my identity comes from this Apache woman who is slowly shivering away to nature and has already mentioned that she has seen two of her deceased sons and her daughter in law but not my father who was the first to go in 1980.  This was the highlight of my summer.

But I have also written comments about immigration, feminism and even wearing ties but it seems that from the circles of politically correct professors I am not suppose to say anything or question assumptions that are not valid.  Why they come to the defense seems to be more important than why they never question why I say those things.  My answer is based on life. Fifteen years ago I went through a traumatic experience of tenure rejection after it was recommend for permanency because a female did not get her way and her comments were accepted as truth while mine were not.  It showed me how women's voices even if filled with lies and lies can be accepted as gospel while my voice as a brown man can hold no merit even with facts.  They won, I lost and I was tarnished permanently that until today it affects me.  The same thing with immigration, once I believed that Mexicans especially along the border had the right to cross back and forth as native people have done because my Apache relatives did or as my mother said, "when I was born in Mexicali, there was only a plank and for us it was all the same".  But when southern Mexicans showed up in large numbers it altered our region where my maternal grandparents did not really want to cross even though my grandfather had a border pass but it was no big deal, he milked cows in the Rancho del Cerro Prieto and my grandmother didn't want anything to do with the United States and crossing.  She could not leave Baja California which included never going to Tijuana because it was too filthy, dangerous, ugly and not really the Mexico she knew of ranchos.  Tijuana was never really part of Baja California ranchos, in my eyes still isn't. I viewed it in the eyes of us local people where my El Centro cousins would visit my other relatives but that world has died and alot of it is the violence, the large amount arriving from Central Mexico that even border residents can't handle and a view I feel they have which is full of greed.  My view has now changed as trust of newcomers I do not have and people over staying their visas from any country is plain wrong.  I don't see their excuse of a better life valid because many of my second and third cousins living in adobe or poor housing make due along the Baja border and are not taken by the lure of employment and more money.  I would say they are not greedy and take what they can, just as my grandparents who never owned a home or property in Baja.  They were landless and landless they died because their other children definitely would never pitch in to buy them anything.  Everybody was on their own.  In addition, I have seen how immigrants are favored for employment over Mexican Americans whether they are in education, professional or blue collor skilled labor.  We don't live in a society of infinite employment and for US born to find themselves unemployed because White and immigrant employers believe they work harder which is subject to debate rubs me the wrong way.  Especially when I have been unemployed and two of my closes friends with an MA and the other skilled but we are not good enough.

The irony these PC people don't like for me to question and attempt to quiet me up with anti everything comments as if I was some white person and seem to reject any rational position posted though how we feel is never acknowledged. I get a kick out of debating them which is how I ultimately see this because ultimately life is my teacher, but questioning is the most important freedom I believe I have and I exercise it.  Thus this is where I am at today with no heroes in life just trying to survive which is the only ideology I believe in.