Författare: xikano_2

Este gabacho gives the Maya Culture a new cultural twist

In fact, I liked the story so much that I hijacked the entire narrative and placed it here, where it might get a chance to stand on itself through your Xican@ eyes.
…

A young Mayan woman walks along the Laguna de Chicabal. The lake is in the crater of a volcano and is the home of one of the gods of the Mayan spiritual pantheon. It was May 3, 2001. On this day every year, the Mayan shamans journey to this holy place. It is a family event. There are a couple hundred Mayans picnicking, talking, playing, and worshiping. Above all, the lake is respected. No one is skipping rocks, swimming, or bathing.

The lake has an eerie life about it. The fog of the cloud forest swirls around the lake giving way to brilliant sun of the Guatemalan highlands. Bubbles of volcano gas disturb the lake’s surface and join the wind and the fog. It is never lost to me that these people think there is a god in that water. My western mind does not buy it. But if somebody offers me $1000 dollars to swim to the other side, I wouldn’t do it. ”Dude, what happens if there is something really pissed off at me in that lake?”

The lake is ringed with bunches of lilies and small shrines made from branches. As we walk around the lake, we hear the chanting of the Mayan shamans back in the dense forest. Chicabal is habitat for the very rare Quetzal bird. We look, but it remains as hidden as the god in the Laguna.

The only person I see touch the water is the young woman. She walks slowly ankle deep; there is a kind of rhythm in her step. She seems to be lost in a conversation. Is it with the god in the water? There is a legend that a young woman from the village at the base of volcano swam out into the lake to which she gave her spirit. Is she talking with this spirit? She stops and turns to the center of the lake. The ”conversation” seems to intensify. Her body seems like it is being pulled further out into the water; she takes another small step. I gasp. But she stops, but just barely. We continue on our walk.

Even now, this scene haunts me. I know I was an intruder. This was not my world. In fact, my world has treated the Mayans as enemies from the time of first contact. I have been obsessed with the number of questions: Why have indigenous people been so threatening to Europeans? Is it religious intolerance? Our stories are at least were about clearing a promised land of unrighteous and ungodly. Is this all that it is? How could we as Europeans even think of planting flags on the land of others and claim it in the name of God? Is this an anomaly, or does it proceed from the core of my spiritual ancestors–Abraham and Sarah being promised land by Yahweh which eventually require genocide via holy war?

Somehow the Columbus’s and the Pisarro’s believed that land not claimed by another European country was fair game. Land not lived on by Europeans was uninhabited. But now we do not believe that, and still indigenous peoples can still threaten the ”civilized world.” Why would this be? There seems to be something very profound about this question?

The encounter with the woman of the Luguna de Chicabal acts as a window into my identity as white, Euro/American, male, and even further into the world that has created that identity. I have come to view Western modernity as a kind of beautiful galaxy. To use this analogy, the aspects of the West that are so admirable, the technology, the personal freedom, the economic opportunity, are the visible aspects of this galaxy. But it has only recently been discovered that most if not all large galaxies have black holes at their centers. These black holes are essential in some way to their formation possible continued organization. As you might remember, black holes are not visible because they are so massive as to prevent light from escaping.

The young Mayan woman was for me to gain a clue as to the nature of the black hole that is at the center of modernity. Although I do not consider black holes as an image of evil, you can reasonably expect that in this case I am speaking of a kind of heart of darkness which helps to organize the whole of Western civilization, is essential to its existence, and which assures its demise. But this dark post must give way to the beautiful sunshine that is shinging. Maybe I will write more later.

I got my first anti-aztlán comment in like eons or shoud I say first one at all? Come to pappa baby, let me see you walk …

I think that this “Aztlan” bull-s**t needs to end NOW! The Government claims that it is finally going to do something about it, but until I see bus loads of illegals heading home south of the boarder I will not be satisfied. What we need to do is take apply the lessons learned from the Eisenhower administration in Operation Wetback. A similar policy is desperately needed now, more than ever.

Read the rest of the comment here.

It was written by this guy whose ip address is stated as Vancouver, in Washington.

I always wondered a lot about the term Aztlán and Google. This idea of ours is being trashed around by ultra neo conservatives like a threat greater than you-know-who.

We got history behind us, they, they just have a stupid argument based on ideology.

Can you see a smile in my face? It’s right here, next to my dimple …

Tijuana is a city that goes above ”violent & chaotic”. Is volatile like the souls that utilize it as a springboard to jump accross to the other side, thru the river or the desert. It is a mixing bowl of cultures. It is the bar & whorehouse of the gringos. She is inocent & perverse. She is the battle line, the microcosm of what is and will become Mexico, the beachhead for the Hispano-American wave that will reach all the way to the tip of South America. It is the city that scares everyone. She is considered terrible, everyday we become more Americanized, but the United States also becomes more Hispanized every day. But who will assimilate who? What would be the name of the nation which has as its base this new breed?

It’s a long ass post but men! It’s full of goodies 🙂 get more popcorn, please

Dios mio, like finding the Holy Grail:

LV: The problem is very deep here. And I hope that in this interplay, as we get cultural exchanges and we get more aware, that Mexico will begin to see it’s own reflection in Chicano works like we see ourselves in Mexican works.

VP: And is that already happening?

LV: I think there’s a great deal of dialogue that’s happening. It’s a flow. I think San Diego/Tijuana is one of the key joints in the whole mechanism here, because there’s a steady flow here. And there’s really in some case very little distinction between a Chicano in Tijuana and a Chicano in San Diego.

Hí­jole, this is huge.

I have been arguing for this possiblity here, here, and here albeit in spanish.

The query at hand is what is a Xican@?

I readily admit that this frase in itself is a rather ambiguos one at that. I may apoligize for that at some time in the future, though that future escapes las yemas de mis dedos in this moment.

Now, I wrote at la Bloga a discourse that has been developing at Academia.

Namely the Spanish factor.

As far as the Spanish lingua is concerned where are we headed?

And I joke not when I ask this because the majority of the narrative that Chicanismo feeds on is anglia rooted.

As much as I am love with English as a language I also despise it very nature. So it is.

Though I confessed an optimism for Spanish I’ve yet to see the fruit mature, will I see a full blown literature, knowingly of itself?

I usually don’t mingle my Spanish and English though am known by my most fervent reader, editor, proofreader, slacker, gíüevón, patron (that is, me) to occasionally indulge in doing so. So far I have managed to mesh the prime philosophy behind my chicanismo, that is, Xicanismo from Tijuana. I am from two nations albeit my xicanismo of lately has had the gull to push me into stating what I have always been, a Mexican citizen. People think that Xicanos are a social construct from the US. I would like to think that I am proof that that is not so and fervently will go to no lengths in discussing with everyone that because I exist, Tijuana must be a realm of Aztlán too. Don’t ask how much of this stuff is a social construct. I suppose that some of it is, gained knowledge that just piles up on old stuff like an Aztec pyramid. I base all of my xicanismo on linguistics. The truth, the being in me that cries out Xicano, bases his ens on language. I trace my being on the spoken word.

I speak therefore soy.

But the point of this is not that but the following. A little background is need though. Eduardo Valle is in self imposed exile because his sort of journalism brought him too close to the mexican mafia. He left México for security reasons and ever since has been writing for newspapers. I have followed his career somewhat and read when chance presents itself what he has to say. I have been doing so for the past diez o quince años or so. For the first time, today he has disappointed me. You can read the rest on the post why was I left muy encabronado.

En referencia a: ¿Jim Crow o John Brown?

Ideologicamente estás equivocado y realmente no estas sintonizado a la esencia mexicoamericana. Mucho más desde donde estas (creo que te encuentras en Washington) pues no estas donde las cosas de Aztlán se discuten en su mero apogeo, el Southwest.

Digo ideologicamente equivocado porque eres monolingíüe y tu cosmovisión sólo abarca la ideologí­a interpuesta por el español.

Acusar a los mexicoamericanos de no decirle nada a Hungtinton deja ver tu carencia de lectura en la red o por lo menos de frecuentar tu biblioteca más cercana. Deja ver mucho tus creencias personales además de la extensión de tu comprensión de este grupo étnico [¿qué tanto te has molestado en estudiarnos?] que nada tiene que ver con tu nacionalismo o tu frustración. Por estos dí­as hay cientos de blogs que cubren un buen el espectrum de la comunidad mexicoamericana del Southwest. Te recomiendo que nos leas a diario por lo menos un año para que te puedas formular una idea de lo que semos. Busca en la red la respuesta y leenos en inglés ya que en español casi no escribimos [muy poco dirí­a yo, pero ya nos estamos reacostumbrando] además de que estoy seguro que nuestro español no lo comprenderias por no tener el bagaje cultural para ello además del histórico prejuicio que la clase media mexicana ha inculcado a los monolingíües hispanoparlantes sobre nosotros los mexicoamericanos.

Te recomiendo que leas Latinos, Global Change, and American Foreign policy. Un proyecto de la Stanley Foundation en colaboración con The Tomás Rivera Center (1994), para empezar, es un buen punto de partida.

Tú lo que buscas es un lider que se ajuste a tus criterios polí­ticos dentro de Aztlán y eso no va a suceder por dos cosas y no por cuestiones nacionalistas: Una, estamos muy sintonizados a las ideas sobre racismo tanto mexicanas como estadunidenses, lo que tu ves como debilidad nosotros vemos como fuerza, creemos en la constitución americana; dos, compartimos el sueño americano, el mismo que se puede leer sugieres descartemos, no porque lo queramos sino por cuestiones religiosas, somos tanto católicos como protestantes. Una dicotomí­a dificl de comprender y que lleva muchos años en estudiar.

Comprendo el proceso de adaptación que estas pasando, por eso pasamos todos, después del todo, ¿que llevas en el exterior? ¿10, 15 años? Se entiende, lo que no es comprensible son tus acusaciones sin fundamentos algunos que sólo conllevan a una meta, la distorción de la imagen de los mexicoamericanos en México.

The good xente over at la bloga have a good discussion going on. Not because the comments of the offices at Yonder Lies It received an answer but because it is clear to the xente del más allá, who for an odd reason of sorts, frecuent the offices, seem to be in agreement (though Geronimo keeps rather silent most of the times) that a Chicano Norton Anthology literature compilation is needed and I see it on the horizon. [yeah, that’s a long ass sentence there, got a problem with that?]

Except that instead of naming it Norton Anthology we could name it like Santa Ana or Stockton Anthology maybe Zorro but that would be a long shot perhaps a lady heroine of sorts. Like the Pachuca Anthology literature for the vox populi in Aztlán proper. Cherrie Moraga or Gloria Anzaldua Anthology would read just as well. But the title we could discuss much later.

There are many threads to start a good huipil with here.

There are the linguistics aspects that I brought forth con todo y my cultural baggage. Though the very fine gente at vivir latino raised the issue of racism in the lengua issue I brought forth.

Make no mistake about it, when it comes to languages, the issues are not about racism. They are instead ones of purity. I understand that the word purity has that race purity what not, connotation but it has an entirely new sense when I use it with language. Instead there is what one can very well see as social fabrications of languages. Everybody thinks they speak real english though there isn’t such a thing as pure english. That notion is just a pure concoction from the last century that has managed to creep itself all the way to this century. In fact, english has about as much latin words in its vocabulary as about spanish does. Well, maybe not, but a good chunk of it composes much of the prestige vocabulary of english. [no, am not about to give you examples, you go find for yerself that ese!] American english speaks wads about it since much of its cowboy mythology is composed of words that have a root on the mexican spanish that helped compose the West/pioneer myth.

Be that as it may we continue con la literatura, in this case, literatura Chicana. Now, english and spanish have had a tumultous upbringing in the Southwest.

For the past 150 years or more english has had the upper hand. Spanish has had to bear the brunt of classroom spankings for utering its vowels in the midst of angloparlandia. Though the first european languages that the land of Aztlán heard were spanish vowels in all the splendor that the conquistadores and Friars used back then.

In this lingua fight, it is we the Aztlán generation that have had to bear the whips and lashes of both households. Both from the spanish part and the english part as well. We can not simply speak anything without having a rebuke at hand to remind us that we speak gibberish at best.

We don’t speak good english and worst yet, we don’t speak good spanish and even yet worst we don’t take care good of our siblings, the new Aztlán generations, from this violent circle. We simply allow the violent language to continue unchallenged with each generation taking sides with either spanish or english or every now and then a few wise voices stating that both languages are good this and that. Or having to hear, like Richard Rodriguez argues, much to the chagrin of the many in Aztlan proper, that english is our light that shines at the end of the tunnel.

It is hard to please two cultures. We have not managed to come across as a unifed entity, at best, we are a footnote in the many essays, commentary, books out there.

But that is ok. We are still defining ourselves. Though I must confess that the issues that we blanket ourselves with are very universal and literature, canon literature at that, is universal driven. Perhaps the issues lies in the universitality of our speech. Perhaps we need to take advantage of this. No matter what english or spanish have to say about it because by then, we will be a different lingua to be reckoned with.

Apá cierre las ventanas, the Swedish winter days with their cold winds are sneaking in, there is a draft.

Txale m’ijo, don’t give me any of that military jingoism in the weather nor that Father Winter caca, fuchila. The only winds allowed here are the Santa Ana winds. Traitor to proper Mexicans and an unholy father to the Xicanos. Curios how…

Pa’ dont go on with those soliloquies of yours. Besides the Santa Ana winds have nothing to do with Antonio López de Santa Anna.

M’ijo, ese, am dead, you’re not, let me tell my own tall tales will you? So keep your beak shut. Maybe you’ll learn something, Right Geronimo? Besides, patience es the virtue least sought these days so be paciente.

Paciente? am not sick ese.

I tell you Quetzalcóatl, please don’t let me say something that I may regret.

Pa’, you don’t understand my English so why should I understand your Spanish?

What the? Either way, as I was saying, Santa Anna, the unholy father of the Chicanos, hardly gets credit. Kinda reminds me of la Malinche. I saw him the other day. He stopped by the offices here at Yonder Lies It.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Good fellow. He was looking for his leg. He had it buried with full military honors and then forgot where he buried it. He smelled that stuff Cuco Sanchez drank before his death.

You mean Gusano Rojo?

Yeah.

M’ijo, it’s getting cold in here, you shut all the windows?

Pa’, am telling you.

I’ve seen Califas. Writing Califas in a piece of paper or anywhere else, your left buttock, for example, means that Aztlán is not too far from you. Usually the address is Califas, Aztlán. I suppose that Tejas would be the one to drape it self with the word Aztlán all over. Like a sarape from Saltillo. And get a load of that J in Tejas!

On the internet it is the Chicanos from Texas the ones that are putting up the fight for the rest of us. We Xicanos from Califas are seemingly the fashion staters. Texas, in my opinion seems more and more involved in this cultural identity on the politics of the nation. They say what they want to say and best yet, they have, for far longer than the Xicanos in Califas, putting up a fight for our political rights. We all have a dream, Aztlán. Yet Texas, more than any other state, seems to be working harder at it. In fact, Texas produces more Chicanismo than any other state in proper Aztlán. It seems to permeate it’s living life somehow. I don’t know why it is so but it is. I mean my political heroe (RIP) is Henry B. González.

I wrote this not so long ago:

I wish we had Henry Gonzalez around, the former Democrat from Texas who dared challenge Bush Senior then. In 1993, Flag Day he did the unthinkable.

Jeanne Beach Eigner from the San diego Union Tribune reported the incident thus:

During the 1988 presidential campaign, when George Bush attacked Micheal Dukakis for vetoing a bill mandating the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance in Massachusetts public schools, the members of the House of Representatives began a tradition of saying the pledge at the beginning of proceedings every day.

Three weeks ago on Flag Day, Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, vented his outrage at the practice, reports Roll Call. ‘Nothing is sadder’ he said in a speech on the floor of the House, ‘than to see the herd instinct in taking the Pledge of Allegiance here in the House of Representatives. What is that pledge? That Pledge was not around until just three decades, three and a half, four decades ago … We have taken an oath, an that oath is to the Constitution, not the flag … Here we are, like a good little herd, reminiscent of the Hitlerian period: ‘Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.’

Where o where art thou now Henry?

Así­ que saludos van pues, a la gente de Flaco Jí­menez.

Tejaztlán can be found on the internet here.

More and better explained than in this post can be found here: Chicano Nationalism and Its Philosophical Roots in Texas

TIFTON — Saddened by the killings of six Mexican immigrants in his town, Mayor Paul Johnson flew their country’s flag outside his City Hall in their honor.

Foreign flags weren’t a first for the south Georgia city — Canadian flags routinely fly outside motels there in honor of snowbirds who drive through to spend their winters in Florida.

Johnson didn’t expect to be criticized for flying a Mexican flag. But a local radio station received seven back-to-back callers Thursday who said the U.S. and Mexican flags should not fly together.

Johnson, a veteran who is well versed on flag protocol, said he made the decision to fly the Mexican flag after consulting with the city attorney.

”I did that as an expression of sorrow to the Hispanic community,” said Johnson. ”For those who we offended, I apologize, but I think it was the right thing to do.”

Read all about it straight from the hourses mouth at The Tifton Gazette
More at google

*** that’s a nice way to put your town on the map