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.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
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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