by a tijuanense xicano: identity, religion, a dab of politics & wads literature @ 2¢ a pop – exegete at large
I got a hold of this post on Shovelware. Go read it, it’s full of godies from the San Diego-Tijuana border area, my area. And more text related theories on Xicanismo, links and what not. It’s an update, I know, am munching it as we speak, qué esperas, órale! I may spit out a few comments on it later, this is too good to let pass on a simply post.
For the first am thankful I was introduced to Sal Rojas, damn, has he got THE website and THE Blog.
Tags: Like Blown Away.
Writing in blogs has given me a distaste for much of what I deem cultural ideologies. For me, this means the one that says we are descendents of spaniards and aztecs. I now laugh when I hear people in my surroundings expressing admiration at this ’fact’. I generally feel repulse at what europeans have done to indigenous people of México and further more I loath the cristian faith. Get the popcorn, am a roll here.
Never mind that I was raised in Tijuana, Baja California, México, that I have two religions inculcated in me which are based on the christian faith and that for all intents and purposes there are some kind of euro genes running amok in my old bag of flesh since though not white there is a certain indelible shade of that pigment. If there a re stories about black children trying to scrub their blackness away, I tried to do away with the white with mud, el color de la tierra.
So when I write fiction, be it in spanish or english, I readily dispose of myths. My heroes are people out on a vegeance path and will exact their repressed anger. I don’t like history, it makes me sad.
The cultural ideology part is a bit trycky though. Most people are content to be called, for example, American or Mexican without given it further thought. The package, after all, is neatly envuelto, packaged. It comes with a cultural bagage with enough info to provide a decent dose of cultural pride with the occasional bad remorse of conscience for what either part of the equation has done to each another. Because, if you are from the part of the world I come from, America, inevitably you’ll end up raised believing that whites and indians made you who you are though at the expense of cruelty from both parts.
Not me. I look at my surroundings from the comfortable age that am in now and I wonder. I see who has been shoved around and worst yet, the sham that state ideologies can be.
The older I get the more I see the harm that christianity has done. The christian faith has been nothing but a destructive path for that better half that is either me or that is either a fabricated social part of me, American indians of all races. The christian faith destroys. The christian faith does not engage in salvation, it engages in whole sale destruction of civilizations and there is almost nothing on its way stopping them.
Oh, and you can’t convince me otherwise. But you can try.
I speako el inglish ese. Though judging by the nature of the media that streams from Amerikkka one be hardly pressed to see that here in Europe, ok Sweden pues. Ok, so am not an american citizen, well wait, I am, but the kind that one usually associates american with, gringo et al. blond, blue eye and california suntanned, nope. Yeah, that’s what europeans, ok, pues, swedes, think about americans, and then of course there are blacks. Nothing in between, forget he latte kind, like we.
I must confess that whenever swedes pick Americans for their english I get tummy aches all over. Hell, am a native english speaker no? They pass me over. They only see the Mexican in me. Txale. Explaining what a Xicano is to swedes requieres a year’s worth of anthropological courses. Ahhh, fighting media raised ideas about what an American is only leaves me, get a load of the violin in the background, sad.
So I grapple a lot with english. Can I really be called an english speaker and a native english speaker at that? These past months I had about two of those spams, thoughts were I ponder my english and I reflect the way it came into my life and whether english is my language or not. Argh.
Ark, bly me. You see my existencial dilemma. Although this was a problem in proper Aztlán too. However, there, english had this smoothness to it. I was using english to pretend to be an American Citizen. Heck, I was an illegal alien, I had to pass off as the legit stuff.
…
Alma Lopez has a blog! I’ll be damned homes! …
October 2, 2005
Chihuahua News
Teacher Murders Tied to Organized Crime, Politics?
It was a fateful autumn stroll. School teacher Sonia Madrid
Bojorquez and 19-year-old Maria Isabel Carrasco Vasquez
were walking along a street in the Chihuahua City
neighborhood of Nombre de Dios last Tuesday, when suddenly,
a group of men in a Grand Marquis automobile pulled up to
the two women. Shots rang out from the vehicle, striking
Madrid three times. The 39-year-old educator died on the
way to the hospital. Carrasco suffered a nervous attack but
was physically uninjured.
A local official with Mexico’s National Education Workers
Union (SNTE), Madrid was the latest in a string of
educators in Chihuahua state to fall victim to murder or
suspected foul play this year. Although no suspects have
been publicly named in the Madrid slaying, Chihuahua SNTE
leader Miguel Ramirez declared that organized crime was
sending violent messages to the union. Ramirez did not
elaborate. Union leaders called on law enforcement
authorities to capture Madrid’s murderers and clarify the
motive behind the killing.
The Madrid murder occurred within two days of planned
visits to Chihuahua state of two political rivals who are
involved in an all-out battle for control of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) : presidential
hopeful Roberto Madrazo and Elba Esther Gordillo. As the
largest teacher’s union in Latin America, the 1.5 million-
member SNTE is a vital part of the PRI’s mass base. The
longtime head of the SNTE, Gordillo recently resigned as
the PRI’s secretary general, threatening to split the party
apart on the eve of the 2006 presidential and congressional
elections.
Gordillo controls a potentially huge base of votes critical
to the PRI’s prospects in next year’s elections, especially
in a tight race between a Madrazo candidacy and front-
runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the
Democratic Revolution. Close to President Vicente Fox and
his wife Martha Sahagun, Gordillo’s flirtations with the
National Action Party have inflamed her opponents within
the PRI. Gordillo also confronts long-running opposition
from the left within her union.
Gordillo’s planned visit to Chihuahua City was cancelled
after Madrid’s murder, but Madrazo’s campaign jaunt in
Chihuahua state went on as scheduled. One of two
candidates for the PRI’s presidential nomination, Madrazo
met in Ciudad Juarez with campaign supporters headed by
businessman Federico de la Vega. Madrazo’s stop in the
border city was marked by a demonstration by pro-Gordillo
protestors from the SNTE, who charged the former Tabasco
governor with being a ”liar.”
In Ciudad Juarez last month, another teacher and SNTE
activist, Alma Delia Moreno Cadena, was abducted and
murdered along with her 21-year-old daughter, Diana Ortega
Moreno. The younger woman was also raped. Three men,
reportedly affiliated with a private security firm, were
quickly detained for the murders by Chihuahua law
enforcement authorities, but the suspects made
contradictory statements after their arrests. Moreno was
the wife of a former mayor of San Buenaventura, Chihuahua,
a town once reputed to be a recruiting ground for mafia
gunmen.
Also in Ciudad Juarez, a young teacher and SNTE member has
been missing since last May. Edith Aranda Longorio
disappeared after going to a job interview in downtown
Juarez. Fitting the profile of previous serial killer
victims, Aranda vanished in the same district where
numerous other young women and girls went missing in recent
years. Many were later found raped and murdered.
Sources: Norte, September 29 and 30, 2005. Articles by
Nicolas Juarez Caraveo and Margarita Hernandez. Diario de
Juarez, September 29, 2005. Article by Mauricio Rodriguez.
lapolaka.com, September 28 and 29, 2005.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu
El fact of the matter es que el mundo is just ripe enough para algo. Qué algo no sé. Mas el sistema que cunde por el mundo doesn’t necessarily apply to the structures that govern us. Governments try to play the ethics rule for the majority pero la minority that rules the world no juega por esas rules. That is the bare truth. So we have rich guys running about doing whatever they want on different playing grounds because they have the money to do it and government stands idle doing nothing about it because the rich obstruct real change for all. Though please notice that poor have to abide by the rules the rich dictate as decent society. God forbid that poor people start acting like rich people. What we need is democratic change and democratic change away from rich people because the real cancer lies with them. They still hold the knowledge and they don’t want to share. Democracy in a lot of so-called democracies are nothing but small dictatorships who hold the purse strings. Like having a thief hold your wallet.
Just look at the USA. The rich rule them and they send the poor to defend a system that is unsustainable. Innocent blood is spilled and they can’t even provide bullet proof vest because the ultra rich can’t even make a donation for their own.
Where is the Bush clan and their patriotism? But the generals laugh and provide intelligence and propaganda for more unwanted murder for the rich. They use their own. Red star spangled blue stripes? For whose benefit one may very well ask. The military seems nothing but the ultra rich hitman.
Los ricos, who can buy their innocence in as much as catholics could buy their soul freedom before Luther came with his thinking and casted down the system of sin washing via means of monetary ways, will die only for their only cause. That is the real catalyst for the past milenia.
Is this fair? Off course not. The moment one starts asking for better treatment of the people the rich people best vested to make change will spare no time to make the changes to change them. The rich will spare not a cent to sustain the very system that has sustained them for a milenia now. They say that no kingdom can last a thousand years but the truth is that the rich caste has governed the world for the past two milenia! They rather die than conduce themselves via the path of change. Once we start asking for equality their favorite word red will appear a pandenium epidemic on their lips.
Real thinking and real convincing methods, far beyond those that Chancellor Brown from England has managed to this day bring forth need to happen more often and on a daily basis to gain a new view for the future. A future there everyone is on an equal ground and advance humanity, not destroy it like the Bush Clan and their God and their stained hands have done to the world up to now.
Only once it stood there
a japanese wooden artifact
T’was I who saw it the most
staring at it endlessly I criedlaughter and tears of joy rolled
I stared at it on and on
sliding through its curves one by one
I relished the emotional rideI pondered the relation
the space between me and the artifact
entering my sight
taking over my mindA delectatious arrest
It overcame me with its beauty
I equated beauty with hapinness
No one else seeing it more than II loved it
Everytime governments claim innocence and fairness my nose begins to smell rotten values and the reeking stench of dead morals. My nose tickles wanting to be itched. Read this: Police chief blocked Brazilian’s death probe.
Did the government of England have to an image that they would act ruthlessly after what happened to them in June of this year? Yes. Did they need to send a message to would-be copycats about how government would react and disseminate information about police rules and the like? Yes. Is it acomplished? Yes.
Am I saying that government in UK sought a target to acomplish this? No. But the actions surrounding the death of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes and the handling of the case leaves much room to come to these kinds of conclusions.
I am so sick and tired of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that the more I hear it the more i want to puke. Blagh.
Worst yet I am sick and tired of the legion of supporters that Likud has for its ideology. You would think that all those people that see nothing but terror before their eyes speak for the lot of Israel.
But they don’t.
Likud ideology seems to be on the wane. One would certainly hope so.
Israel, as the superior power in that conflict, really ought to see more eye to eye with the palestinians, but the goons running the israeli government are not allowing any of that. Terror, and more terror, and more terror they cry while they bomb to the stoneage anything palestinian and worse yet, any young palestinian is a threat before their eyes. One can’t even breathe disent in proper palestinia because it brings on the kosher boots of the IDF.
Israel in fact, has much to gain with the current situation. They have the superior power. They can control via repression the entire population of palestinians and worse yet, their army of special interests in Washington have readily convinced the American congress that allowing for an economic flowering of the palestinian people is a dire detriment, watch this, to the jewish state. Not Israel, the jewish state. Whatever that is. There is no nifty talk here about globalization and the wonders of capitalism. There is no talk here how globalization will help the poor rise like Nazareth from the ruins it was. In fact, keeping the palestinian economy in dire straits is in Israels best interests because that way they can buy their way in to palestinia. They can divide that house too. They will pit family against family for a few Shekels. Do jews have qualms about this? Where is then their humanity. Come on, if a bloque like me can realize this am sure the very brightest minds that the people of Judea has can too relaize this. Do Israelis sleep at night well?
Having young palestinians throw stones at the army tanks of the IDF in fact legitimizes Israel possesion of territories. How else is one to explain the argument in Europe that fruits and vegetables coming from Israel must state their provenence? They exploit the ocuppied territories and whenever palestinians even dare complain Israel likudists see terror, harrasment by those that don’t want to see the Jweish state. The Jewish state has been a de facto state since 1948. Yet one would think those arguing for repression, oh, am sorry, did I say repression? I meant punishment of the palestinian people for even thinking of exterminating the Jewish state did not know this. As if the Jewish state was a weak entity that any suicide bomber can bring to its knees.
I don’t condone suicide bombers. For me they are equally as horrendous as helcopters hovering above the Gaza strip pointing their sophisticated weaponry at criminals surrounded by innocent people or the torture methods of the Mossad.
Israel is by far a weak state. In fact it seems to be a threat to world order. The main thinking around the world is that Israel has nukes and if they do have them am sure they are willing and are ready to use nukes if and when the need arises. Why else have nukes then if you are not going to use them? For decoration?
Having nukes is a threat. A threat to civilized order. It is a bargaining chip and it is a show of power. But I digress. The main point is that Israel really needs to stop being a bully and if they are so fucking smart as they fucking say perhaps they need to start showing it otherwise instead of creating more enemies in their house with the passing of every day, every generation.
The USA really needs to stop seeing the conflict in terms of religion and special interests groups. The USA needs to pressure Israel into doing the right thing. Otherwise, the carnage will continue and another generation of news readers like me will have to deal with hearing, seeing, reading every day how palestinians and jews hate their guts to death.
Luis Valdez: “Somos como extrasâ€
Los chicanos ante Hollywood
Columba Vértiz
Luis Valdez y Edward James Olmos, acaso los dos más grandes creadores del cine y el teatro en California, Estados Unidos, cuentan a Proceso la reticencia de “la Meca del cine†ante el arte chicano, hablan del desconocimiento que existe sobre el mundo latino, de la lucha por competir frente a una concepción tan dura del mercado económico, y de la necesidad de combatir los estereotipos de los hispanos como los malos o criminales. La irrupción de mexicanos en Hollywood les parece tan positiva como la de los indocumentados, pues el intercambio entre México y Estados Unidos es completamente dinámico, lo cual hoy instan a reconocer “por las buenas y por las malas a la vezâ€.
El cineasta y dramaturgo Luis Valdez señala que el cine chicano no recibe el interés directo de la industria hollywoodense:
“Nos ven como un fenómeno, un reflejo de la cultura mexicana, por lo tanto mejor tratan directamente con México, por eso hay más entradas para nuestros colegas mexicanos que para los chicanos. Nosotros ya somos como extras, como si fuéramos el pilón, pero seguimos luchando…
“No culpo de ninguna manera a nuestros colegas mexicanos, al contrario, celebro los éxitos que han tenido y sigo apoyando todos sus esfuerzos para traer imágenes, pensamientos, otras ideas y visiones de México acá, a Estados Unidos.â€
—¿Cuál sería el camino para los cineastas chicanos?
—Urge que se presten más a sus raíces, que hablen más de quiénes son.
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