Författare: xikano_2

I have always wondered why the mexican government hasn’t really taken advantage of the bilingual population that it has alongt its 3000 kilometer long border con los gabachos. I mean it’s an increible asset right? people who actually understand bilateral communication, but no, few, like counted in the fingers of a hand, can say they actually work as they wish or could to their utmost potential for the mexican government. The fact is that ideology still permeates to the hilt the relation between the native of the Baja or for that matter entire 3000 border population and the centrist macho I am mexican at all costs burocratic employee in Los Pinos.

Such is the case as well in the US of A.

It seems as though that the English love affair with China and India has more than seeped into the anglo gene, I mean, you’d think that América Latina would stand in priority A one list over at the Washington offices, but no, last if not the very end of a reminder thought like a comets tail it is seen that América Latina is here, on our backyard or should I say home?

As far as Xican@s are concerned the matter is far more important than matters should suggest.

Ten years have now gone since The Tomás Rivera Foundation sponsored by the Stanley Foundation in collaboration with The Tomás Rivera Center gave out a little pamphlet called Latinos, Global Change, and American Foreign Policy Report of a New American Global Dialogue Conference October 7 – 9, 1994.

I have always reckoned that the ‘new’ in that sentence has always meant the introduction of Mexicans into the close-knit circles of the anglo Washingtonean spheres.

Here are some ideas that the little pamphlet highlighted for the reader:

”…to promote an exchange of ideas … about the current and future role of Latinos in US foreign relations”

”…because of this new environment, Latinos may increase their influence over the direction of American global activities.”

”…regional and group agendas have come to the forefront to displace the national perspective of the past.”

”…many Latinos are already substantially involved in the foreign relations process”

“One of the more daunting challenges for Latinos is making explicit the common interests that may unify them.”

“The chances for unification are better as Latinos understand that their domestic converns are directly linked to global issues.”

“Latinos are uniquely suited and situated to link the United States to emerging Latin American markets.

That was then, the matter is that things remain more or less the same. Latinos are still seen as nothing but canon fodder either for the war machine that Washington greases its power like a liftweighter might with steroids or as a little gimmick to the rest of the world that the US of A takes into account all of its race sectors in its now in serious doubt democratic society; in which case we are but the less for it and far away from the 15 minutes Warhol stated everyone has a right to.

I Xican@
Shall nothing to do
About losers and winners
-with
that 1848 date
long ago come to pass it has
That bloody threshold birthing
— Crieth the child hast —
that now Breathes new life
And suckles the milk and honey
Of the magic corn
From whence nurture and nourishment cometh

Strong and vital
Celebrate I do
The foremother/father
Earth Madre cactus desert thy warmth thou giveth me
From running lives like dried river beds that suddenly life gain
Across the orality of their sayings
Fillith my head
Imagination
Pass on their language/words/umbilical linguistic essence
Impregnated in their love for the land
New Mexico, Arizona, California, Tejas, The Southwest, La Frontera;
the landscape our crib is.

I see three pressing issues that the Xican@ must face soon, or in the near future.

1.- Not all Xican@s have spanish or derive pride in the ideology which infuses nationalistic hues in the mexican soul; some are very resistant to the whole concept of mexican as we know it to be, some are still fighting the spanish. For a glimpse of this check out Mixtec, a nicely articulated post done by our own Elenamary. We must simply go beyond the Aztec and Maya dichotomy

2.- Not all Xikan@s are the color of the earth. There is a substancial amount of black Xican@s outthere, for a closer detail and look plus background check out Bobby Vaughn’s The Black Mexico Homepage. I have been reading this guy’s page for over two years and there hasn’t been any substancial change to his page but the contents are bona fide research.

3.- The sexuality thang. There has just got to be a stop to this homophobia in Xican@ writing though I suspect that this issue has long range solutions. For more on this subject I redirect you to Seyd who wrote something about it not long ago Aztecs and Homosexuality

So there are dualities in Xicano bilingualism. However, I believe that what am about to divulge here covers pretty much trilinguals and quatrilinguals as well because in essence that which I have in mind is language shifting that is, adjusting one’s way of speech according to one’s environment.

So it does not matter if Xicanos, who by the way not all speak Spanish as their first language nor English, know two or three languages. In fact it could very well be that said Xicanos have an indigenous language already so that by default they are trilingual inasmuch as they not only shift between the Anglo world they must also shift languages style when they confront the Mexican Spanish world.

Ok, what I have in mind is the following and all because I was standing in one of the cafeterias at Stockholm’s University minding my own xicano business when my eyes suddenly came to a table where three young people sat and talked. Two were girls of obvious middle eastern background and a swede. What caught my xicano attention and started my cogs on the go was that they spoke what seemed to me a very Stockholm Swedish, that is, to put in equivalent xicano terms, the girls were speaking as if a xicano spoke like a white dude or dudess for that matter.

It made me reminisce about my old California days. I used to live in Redwood City, (Bay Area) were talking the old RWC with its little Michoacan town and all. However since I was so-called “illegally” in the US I had to adjust a lot so as to “pass off” as a native. Never mind that I spent quite a few years of my infancy there as well, hence the English, but that is another story for another post. At any rate this situation meant that I had to spend, according to my very young logic then, time away from the “mexicans” and so I lived and worked basically in Menlo Park, gíüero town as gíüero gets. My English changed dramatically from one that was purely Chicano to and all out assimilated English, in fact, I know this because I used to get recriminations about it every time I called my relatives and they remarked and answered as if I was a gringo.

So there is a duality in our manner of speaking which raises several interesting ideas regards the sole identity of the Xicano in Califas, Aztlán.

Am nearly certain that we are still doing this in Califas, the question is, when are we going to stop doing this and what will it mean?

…

Spanish has always been a problem in Aztlán.

Though am second guessing this problem is slowly turning a leaf in the collective concious in as much as Native Americans are more and more preferring to be addressed as that or have that as part of their lives.

Geeeeez, even my second generation mexican american cousins are teaching their children spanish.

Back in my days having someone hear you speak spanish was tantamount to labeling yourself a foreigner; one only scurried fast enough to blurb half chicano english phrases to assure the observer one was as American as burritos on a taco stand in LA. It was tough beating the “bad looks” that disfranchised one from one’s society. I still shiver in embarrassment at the thought of it.

I even remember not speaking spanish, my heady days as pocho as pocho can get.

Though it is no surprise that such societal effects have taken place in the history of the Southwest; we are one of many groups who has been questioned about our “english” purity by the white majority due to the color of our skin or our racial looks.

And little wonder is it then that second generation Xicanos/Chicanos (girls and boys) have such a schizophrenic attitude towards mexican spanish because mexicans are ill-spoken of all the time. In fact, am willing to bet a whole wad of pesos that the number one source of embarrasment for many second generation mexican americans is just that, that they are referred to as mexican, beaners, wetbacks, and all that.

This off course has a well intented purpose, one to debase the human being being labeled as that and the other to assert majority opresion and to let you know who the boss is.

So spanish betrays.

Curiosuly enough on both sides. The “english” purist camp arguing that this and that on assimilation and the spanish “purists” arguing that we don’t speak enough of a good spanish at all.

But let’s keep the spanish “purists” out because those mostly stem from one’s house criticism rather than the world out there, that is english America.

So if you are not well informed about your own self then and have half cooked notions about your surroundings, like the most of us do, then your self steem falters like a San Andrea’s fault on any day. You are vulnerable because the majority has dictated what an “American” is, no matter the past, history or your background, if you fail to pass the “American” test, that is, speak fault free General American english, your out like a bat. That is why we Xicanos speak english/spanglish one way with our close ones and another more common, out there, english which makes us sound like gringos. But mostly when we are caught speaking Chciano english we become unwanted, that is American society for you. Because we are not interested in ideals that the government sells: we are all equal under the law blah, blah, we do not take that up. Here we are just concerned about what the average Xicano experiences when he or she confronts the rest of America and what the rest of America has said about him or her and his or her background beforehand. A pre-established frame society carries around to see the rest of society with.

So spanish is seen as a foreign language, it doesn’t belong in California, never mind that half of its history is written in just spanish. Society renounces this altogether and chastises the vowels whenever it hears them out. I am sure I don’t need to remind no one about the hundreds of cases pending in courts about discrimination for speaking spanish in the job.

So, for the most part, knowing spanish in Aztlán is a detriment rather than a plus.

So yeah, that, today.

Passively scouring the media
Sifting through human remains
Am bombarded my eyes shot red

Left riddled with half-cooked notions
I trod on in ether all teared
Through the bardwired wide world web

Seeking not knowing what
Respite from the pain perhaps
Of seeing all those deadly aims

I stand idle in oceans of hate
Watching the waves of utter despair
I am but the sum of the day

Western Zilch

My awareness
One moment to another
Measured by the morning sun
Finished by the nightly stars
Skirrs like the wind that fills my lungs

I sense no motion
Only conmotion
I dread the passing of the hours
Making me feel pointless
as I awake and it’s 7 o’clock already.

crunching
metal twisting
engine sounds
that promise
clear blue skies
on a loft out there.

The clouds were in a hurry today. They moved like on a call. Giving out a radiant white look, they were cumulus on a majestic trek.

I saw the wind too shake the electric wires hanging midair between the sky and the ground.

A green covered landscape peppered my sight with pines trees and a few buildings dotted it with their recently rain soaked streets as well.

Then it suddenly came into view. A single black bird in the middle of all that, being columpiado by the swift and sudden mild-to-fresh nordic winds. He went along and permaneció, swinging.

A few sunrays later, which somehow managed to escape the hold the cumulus had on the horizon above brightned my day as I went about.

I thought about the grass how green it is now and how soon yelllow, browm, beige it will get until all whited out ….

That night spelled out so many things, like a petate strewn on the floor.

My brain lay idle awaiting answers.

I couldn’t figure A from Z to be frank, and I was. Frank’s the name. I was born in Aztlan.

And the rays of the dawn broke not only my concentration, it shattered my soul.

What was I doing there?

I listened to the morning’s dew make drops one by one and the spiders and other critters scurried for them, I thirsted for more.

I quenched too.

I sensed the beginning coming, the end far from now.

Unwillingly I stared out to the open space, my self in a cosmos star spangled and all.

I dragged the moment even more like a pillow.

My eyes wondered about.

We met, eye to eye before the bye bye.

The music of yore embraced me, I felt nearly strung out.

Until this morning everything else made sense.

When the chateu clerk came by I was dreaming; skiing on some mystic alp on the Inca empire land.