Not A Mexican American Issue

With all the uproar over the Arizona immigration rule which intends to enforce US immigration rules, I can't help but think that we need a Mexican American voice.

Contrary to what many believe, immigration is not a Mexican American issue.  It never has been because Mexican American refers to US born.  Hence if one is not US born then the legal protection granted to its citizenry does not pertain to foreign born even if born along the border, though there might be a cultural bond of a region versus someone who moves from the south of Mexico north.  Because to be born in Baja California along the border is different than to be born in Sinaloa, Zacatecas or Jalisco; they are not the same by geography, space, history.  When my mother was born in Baja California, Baja California Norte was only a territory and people born in Baja or those who lived there had to prove they were Mexicans to travel on to the mainland.

Can you believe that?  Baja California people had to show papers to step on to mainland Mexico.  I saw this once in 1978 when I traveled with my father to Cajeme, Cd. Obregon, Sonora.  Though my father was born in Mexicali and had his residency established by his mother in the late 1950's, my father got harassed because he was considered American and not Mexican because he had a US residency card and a California license.  My father never lived in Baja after 10 so he never had a Baja California identification.

My maternal grandmother also from Baja California told me how she was harassed by Mexican officials when she traveled to Guanajuato in the early 1980's.  The official did not believe she was a Mexican citizen though culturally she met the criteria.  She was a rancho woman from the valley of the Sierra Cucapah so she did not back down from a fight.  The Mexican Country immigration officer told her she would not travel any further without an identification and she resorted to her rancho ways by proving to him that she was born in Mexico.  The man tired but these two incidents taught me that Baja California people were not considered Mexicans in the continental definition, they were first Baja Califorences before they were Mexicans because my people came from a land that was separated from Mexico and it was.  That is what made Baja California people special.

Even our lingo was half English in the Spanish.  No wonder I could not pass the FBI Linguistic Exam because my Baja California language is made up of two mixed in with Apache words that only us Baja California people comprehended.  I hated this ex Bolivian girlfriend I had years ago because she was always correcting how I spoke.  What did the idiot understand about my upbringing?  Stupid South Americans show up to California and attempt to impose their mediocre cultural attributes.  I really hated this woman.

Thus returning to the immigration issue, look if you were not born here and if the family was not around for the amnesty that the Republicans passed and granted US residency to 3 plus millions who then think wonders of Ronald Reagan, ICE has the right to deport you at any given moment.  They do it all the time, why should some be deported and others not?

Mexican Americans are not going to get deported, hell if you have a criminal record which many of you do, even with non-criminal issues such as back pay child support, they won't give you a passport and let you out of the country.  The US is your prison.

The media in Spanish plays this up, the politicians who believe this is a civil rights issue which it is not because it is an issue of the US government allowing you in.  A civil rights issue is why are there so many Mexican Americans without employment versus foreign born have jobs.  And I do not only mean Mexico born, I mean Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Canada, China, England, Israel, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, the Netherlands and France born.  I do not even believe a Puerto Rican born should have a job over a US born Mexican American in California.

Why should all these foreign born have employment over US born and in particular over Mexican Americans?  What does American citizenship mean by birth?  As of now, nothing. 

Before all these people from India or Mexico arrived, there were still doctors and manual labor was being completed by Mexican Americans, so we don't need doctors from India or Iran.  Mexico produces an abundance of doctors and they earn less in Gross Domestic Products than the US.

These immigration protests are distracting the real issues facing Mexican Americans which is their right to the basics of food, shelter and a future.  Why should somebody born in southern Mexico be hired to teach Chicano Studies over a US born Mexican American?  What does a Mexican know about Mexican Americans?

And private institutions that allow undocumented students in when they could have educated a Mexican American such as Harvard, then shame on you for turning your backs on American citizens.  The focus on worldly issues is only doing harm to this country by ignoring US citizens who just happen to be brown, have a Spanish surname but are born in the US.  Yes, there are many brown people born in the US, all of US do not come from Mexico, we come from the US.

So as you think about these protests just remember that the immigrant population is crying louder and are paid more attention than Mexican Americans who are still pushed aside and called lazy by these very same immigrant Mexicans simply because being US born is considered to be a privilege when it is not.  But an immigrant Mexican would not know this because they do not have the history of from the cradle to the present.

I honestly could careless what happens to undocumented Mexicans, I have to worry about myself getting a job because those jobs went to foreigners at CSULB in Chicano Studies and had no qualms about my well being or me being without benefits for my children while they bask in luxury.

The Fed. Govt. will do what they want to and nobody can stop them.

Many of these people will adjust well in southern Mexico were most of them are from and we won't have to listen to them victimize themselves.  They could teach English down there, why should Mexico import White teachers when those Mexicans can teach them.  For those Indian doctors, you are needed in India.

If you get stopped by the police, show them your identification and if you aren't texting while driving, wearing your seatbelt, you should be fine.

JSC

The Cerebro

What does the cerebro mean?  I'm not sure.  I have limited usage and almost none when it comes to math but at times my instinct kicks in and my cerebro seems to function but first without making some of the most stupid mistakes in my life.  I won't say what they are because I want to forget but I at times have not used my cerebro whether it was in the woman I chose or they chose me.  I think they chose me and I was the no cerebro man that said yest.  What was I suppose to say no?  Let me think about it.  I just didn't believe it would destroy part of my career but is there really one when you work at a community college that seems to have the worse reputation or is that just being part of Los Angeles.

What is my cerebro?  Entertaining people, I'm not quite good at that or attempting to think things out.  Yet then again it seems that I am only copying something from the past because it does not seem to come from thin air.  Are we just fascist products of Americanism and Catholocism-Christiantiy that I am only suppose to follow orders that can't be followed.  Not that I believe in the opposite of fascism because they seem to be the same tenor of follow someone else's orders or to just say hello no matter how much the suppository hurts.

Or maybe it's my metformin speaking for me telling me that I need to balance my sugar and insulin because otherwise I can die from a heart attack which might not be a bad thing after all except that I would leave my children and dogs behind and I just could not betray them that way.  I can be faithful to them but not to no woman much less a strange woman.  I am after all an Apache Mayo Cucapah where many wives were the norm until women accepted Christianity.

Off I go to the delves of the spirit where I venture off and wonder if I will return.

New Challenges

I have not written in a while because I finished a new book on California--my California and started a new one on Christianity.  It is ironic that I am writing a book on this African Mediterrenean religion which has nothing to do with desert Apache culture but nonetheless it is ever present.  I will see what comes out because writing is like a relationship you never know what the end product will be.  They mostly end.

I don't write too much because I do not believe someone is reading except my faithful five friends whom I am ever thankful for.

I sat on a panel last week at Cypress College with Hugo Moreno, Sandra Lopez and Gustavo Arellano.  It was insane simply because the students had read my book "Higher Education as Ignorance" versus only hearing what the others read.  All were good in their uniqueness and we shared our views which depended on who we were as people.

The common questions to me were about "Machismo" simply because I put it out on the pages and obviously there is interest even if they disagree.  I like machismo as I told the class, it was my mother's fault in a good way.  It is a survival strategy because we do not live in a nice society.  If you do not know how to defend yourself, you won't survive.  I live it: all my work places have been places of conflict that have ruined my small career I have if you consider teaching as a part time faculty a career.  Some would argue community colleges are grade 13 from ages 18-30.  Women have been conflicting and how much money didn't I blow there.  Now I am smart, I spend it on my soccer games.

Most did not like what I said but they have their reasons but I have mine and obviously the two publishers of my books:  Floricanto Press and Rowman and Littlefield believe there is a necessity there.  Lastly, I just cannot accept being pushed around by anybody, much less a woman, I have my personal pride.

If you buy my books and read them I would love to discuss my thoughts because I do not believe in borrowing ideals nor quoting others.  I stand and fall on my own words and even though I do not have institutional support or a godfather, my books can be checked out at college libraries.  I do see life like hell because it is. 

Now I have to find a job which is the worse right now for Mexican American males who have the highest unemployment rate in California.  Degrees mean nothing for me.

LA Times Editorial on Women and College Admissions 1/27/10

Read this commentary by the editorial board. They argue that male, White men are being given unfair treatment in admissions to college as a form of unqualified admissions. White women are being hampered in college admissions. At the end, the article mentioned that the differences, academic, were even greater when compared to Black and latino males.

The assumption is that women do not get any societial favorable treatment. Everywhere I go and have been at, women are treated more favorably. From the younger years, females are better treated, better taken care of and not viewed as a threat even when they are cunning and deceiving.

Even in high school, women were better treated. They at least got attention. They received male attention which is what makes a woman feel like a woman. They would feel something wrong if males did not stare and yes gawk at them. They got the whistles or the psss, psss, psss. They got free coffees and burritos.

What have I received as a Mexican male? No burrito, much less no coffee and no psss, psss, psss except for the gay guys at UCLA. I took it as a compliment with a "no hands on" policy. I had to work for my grades even in high school. I had no easy grade, my 3.2 high school gpa was actually earned from 9th to 12 grade. That should have been my B.A. I had extra curricular activities, the helmet hits should have given me the spring semester off. The football grade of A was the most painful grade I have earned. It still hurts, 23 years later. Our helmets did not even have cushion the way they do today.

My high school teachers, never gave me a grade because I didn't have cleavage and had hairy legs. How are White women being left out? They get compliments, are not considered threatening and that alone is a great stress reliever. White women, are fortunate, they get preferences from their male teachers--most of which are White and their teachers--most of which are White too. Their grades are at best social promotions. My wife mentioned arrogant White females complaining about their grades in English at Orange Coast College, because their teachers at Newport Harbor High never gave them true grades. Once held accountable, they complaint and those same White men and White women were sure to hear their complaint out. If you are a Mexican American and you hear the word "illegal alien" by your White professors, don't waste your time complaining because they won't pay attention, academic freedom.

And if White women feel they are persecuted in their college endeavor, I would ask them the following, "Do you have to register for the draft"? I go to the Post Office and see the Selective Service registration cards. "Attention Men: You must register, it is the law". And yes, I was scared when I filled it out in 1987. Adulthood had set in and I do not remember any White female having to register at the post office in Hawthorne.

What more do White women want? The law protects women more even when they instigate. Divorce laws benefit them. Easier grades are given to them. They can at least get free coffee by smiling and never have to spend a dime. Free rides and never have to pay for sex as males do. By the way, sex is just as beneficial to women as to men. Males are not doing females a favor. While Mexican American males generally get left overs even by Mexican American females.

And the end result is the economy of today. White women are surviving the depression much better than males. This is the maleession. When racialized, Mexican American males are living the depression, ask me, I have 2 Masters' from UCLA and am on unemployment. But I see White females go about their merry ways in the places I like. If White males think they have it hard, walk in my shoes or my buddy Ruben who has been unemployed for 9 months.

For you Mexican American females who think White, keep thinking that way, sooner or later you'll wake up and see that you are still taking orders from White or now Black females.

If all you can do is discredit my sayings as rumblings, I know my reality and do not depend on your reaffirmations, like you mattered.

So according to the LA Times article, we Mexican American males are academically quite inferior to White females. Or better said, more stupid.

I would be ahead if I could sell my body for a grade, coffee, marriage or a job which still amounts to working the world's oldest profession.

Chalino: A Chronicle Play of Fulgor and Death

Is officially out! I received my copy from www.floricantopress.com or you can purchase it on amazon.com too.

I came across a book titled, "Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department" and the author Clemens Brown stated that outsiders teaching Black Studies has been detrimental to Black Students. I use the word Black because I am originally from Inglewood and Blacks called themselves Black. That is the only identity they have created themselves which should be valued.

But Mr. Brown stated that "Carribbean, Asian and White females teaching Black Studies has hurt Black students and Black professors". Meaning US Blacks.

This made me think about the points that I say about Mexican American Studies and the negative affects of outsiders teaching including those born in Mexico. First and foremost, any Centro American, Carribbean or South American who teaches Mexican American Studies is detrimental to Mexican American students. The simple reason is they do not know the culture and facts do not substitute for culture. These people are stealing from those Mexican Americans who have limited opportunities in higher education.

And White administrators who permit this should be held accountable for their racism including non-white administrators. How dare them disrespect the culture and our specific US Americaness.

Second, I would throw in Whites who have a Mexican parent and those born in Mexico. Those Whites who want to claim the Mexican American card, because this word is used now more for Whites who have a Mexican/White parent than for us US born Mexican Americans, the answer is simple. I do not have a White card in my pocket. I should know, I married one. They can morph into Whiteness, I cannot. So just because you dress up in folkloric dresses like the chair of Chicano Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills, that does not make you Mexican American. And for the record, no mother of mine ever dressed with those ballet folclorico dresses, she would think you were dancing in some festival. In addition, Mexican American mothers do not dress that way, they are in the US not in some Oaxaca market. Talk about stereotyping. The only time I see women wear those dresses are White women who want to be Oaxacan, travelled to or they moved to Oaxaca and feel they are now Zapotecs.

For those born in Mexico, the rule should also apply because they were not born in the US must the same as a Mexican American is not born in Mexico. They are two foreign entities. And if you think I am wrong, for Mexican Americans go to the Mexican Consulate or el Registro Civil in Baja California and ask them for your birth certificate. The Consulate in Los Angeles will make you feel quite American even if your parents are born in Mexico and in Baja California they will do a data search for your birth certificate and tell you that you do not exist. I learned that the hard way from both places.

So my Mexican Americaness is strictly American.

But the hard hear is to assume that somebody born in Mexico who is moved north will have the same upbringing as those from the US. The answer is simple, no. You can't arbitrarily say that they have the same upbringing. They do not.

US Mexican born have their own culture and if you throw in geography I would argue that Tejanos and Califorences have nothing in common. We don't even eat the same food. If you have travelled to Nuevo Mexico and Tejas one should know the difference. I have driven throughout the Southwest and the Sierra Madre Occidental east of Meza, Arizona serves as a true cultural continental divide.

But returning to the Mexico born who teaches Chicano Studies. The danger falls in one case I have seen from teaching in Glendale College. A full time job was given to a man named Carlos Ugalde who taught he was Che Guevara. He was hired to be a Mexican American Studies professor and in his warped communist vision of we are the world he killed Mexican American Studies. There was never any growth from 1980 for Mexican Americans. He felt he had to be Mr. Latin America. Like they care about us.

He created courses on Centro America, the Carribbean, South America and neglected Mexican American Studies. The same Mexican American course from 1980. This was a rotten hire for the future by these White administrators who wanted to have a brown face there. In addition, he made us look like clowns with his Fidel Castro look and usage of the word companhero, like we were "comrades". That is not even Mexican American cultural lingo from Los Angeles.

Thus he killed Mexican American Studies and created a curriculum that amounted to foreigners teaching classes versus Mexican Americans. No courses were created for MexAm literature, culture, sociology, male or family studies much less on the diversity of Mex Am communities. It's like we died. No wonder I use to think that Chicano Studies were low class grade studies; just take a look at the professors who did teach these subjects. The barrio mentality was present. Or how to differentiate between MexAm and recent arrivals from Mexico. Because immigration is not a Mexican American topic. We don't care about immigration, we were born here. If people don't have their residency what this demonstrates is new history which means not Mexican American. Ugalde killed any curriculum and pedagogical growth for the pleasure of his make believe mentality that all people from the Western Hemisphere is one when they are not.

So he retired and with budget cuts made it essay to just continue with one miserable course that amounts to peanuts. In 28 years of teaching he proved that Mexican Americans are not thinkers or philosophers but idiots of the modern era. And with a non Mexican American chair who believes in the Latinoness of the era and his feminist mindset, it is not shocking to see the Ethnization of Mexican Americans into a Feminization that amounts to "we hate Mexican American males" and that is the curriculum of today. If women want a feminization curriculum, why don't they attend female colleges. Go join the Wellesleys and Mills Colleges.

Thus foreigners not only monetarily take away from Mexican Americans they kill the curriculum.

And as a female from Saltillo, Coahuila once told me when I asked her what she thought about Mexican Americans, "We don't think about you guys, you are lost to us".

And we should not lose ourselves!

A New Type of Racism

Has arisen as Mexican Americans now have to face being lumped with other brown people even though we all know that we are a different culture and even from different lands which makes us foreigners untill each other.

Every time a US born Mexican American is lumped into the Latino or Hispanic category this results in a new benign kinder gentler form of racism. Very simple, to be merged with people from another citizen amounts to racism within the US because a US citizen by birth is placed with people from foreign countries simply based on a perceived resemblance. Hence we have racism and ignorance as one.

Would an Argentinean who moved to Chile be merged with a Chilean by birth because they have the same last name? No.

So why does it happen to me? Because it's easy to label me off with other countries that have no place of my existence there. Even The United Mexican States has no record of me so even by Mexican standards I am not one of them even if I look like them and talk like them. I was not born in their domain called Mexico. I am a foreigner so the same exist with those born in Mexico who move north. Because we are of two different citizenships we are not fellow anything. So, neither those born south of the border should be lumped with those born north. They have a different legal and cultural definition. If this exists, then to be lumped with Centro or Caribbean People is the ultimate form of disrespect and racism because I'm being eliminated from my place of birth. If that is not racism then what would it be.

I understand the Che Guevara feel but he died so this no borders view is not real because nobody else is going to write up legal documents where I will be given citizenship. Truth of the matter, people from the border of Mexico/US to Tierra del Fuego are not the same. They are not the same land, nor the same people, cultures or continents. The Chicano Generation was full of acid to make this illogical conception logical. There is no fact to this illusion. I have traveled throughout all of Central America, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina and saw how all these countries would not allow their neighbors in without a visa or a passport.

I do not need to be lumped with foreigners nor do I want to coexist with cultures I do not know. I remember as a child thinking how different all these people were and I have always been correct. But US keeps insisting in labeling me as an outsider and not from here when this is were I am from and by generations.

I do not accept being called a foreigner when I am not even when labeled with those born in Mexico. We are different even if you believe we are not, we are, I am of a different nationality.

New Month

A new month has arrived. Just waiting for time to end. Today is Dia de los Muertos and it is not an arts festival as many like to believe. It is a time to visit the loved ones in the cemetaries and as I can recall visiting my father's tomb is not about painting my face or acting out a play.

If your father has died like mine did in Inglewood on May 4th, 1980 on my mother's birthday, I just cry. That day has not died for me for it forever lives on and the anger at fate and life gives you a pain of eternity. My eternity.

Since my father died, my maternal grandparents have now given way to the earth, three tombs over from where he is at. Before they died and he died, my mother's brother died who sits next to my father. And 8 years later my father's good friend and uncle, father of my cousin died, so he's right next to him too. So no, we don't paint our face like some costume festival. Death is real.

My cousin, another one has also died who rest on the otherside of my grandparents. He too died young for carelessness.

And just this past August, my father's older sister and younger brother too succumbed to cancer. They died a week apart. My father's mother has now buried four of her children and she is still alive to tell it. I can quite say I mourned for them though, our relationship died in 1980 when their brother died and our reason for linkage died so they were not all that close either. I am not really mourning here in a strange way.

And lastly, my grandfather Gus is my reason to mourn. After my father died, we were bounded by the departure of our intermediary. My father was my father and a son to my grandfather who spent their Saturdays at the horseraces or eating breakfast with us. When my father died, my grandfather-Nino too died because the death was too painful. He would not come to our home though he always wanted us to visit him. I was lucky to have him until age 37 until he asked to die and I had to respect his wish by not mourning for him. His death was beautiful in a way. He made it happen to be reunited with my Nina Kika and his son.

Hence el dia de los muertos is not an art project from school rather a place of great pain. I await my arrival too!