Category: Collective Memory

"Little pieces of their hearts, here and there"

3/28/2022

Migas on a Bright Sunday Morning

by Elena Dolores Solano

Recently I made migas for breakfast. I ripped the tortillas up and placed them in a cast iron pan of hot olive oil and cooked them until they were golden colored. There are a myriad of ways to make migas, a traditional Mexican dish. While the tortillas fried, I chopped onion, garlic and green pepper on an old cutting board mi mamá bought for me years ago.

After the tortillas were crispy, I added the vegetables. I sautéed them for a minute and then gently folded in the eggs and waited for them to cook, stirring the dish occasionally. The best corn tortillas are made from three ingredients, corn, lime and water, but when the lime is fried it lets off a peculiar smell of bitter tones. Eventually the smells of the green pepper and garlic catch up, and the mezcla, the mixture of flavors fills the air.

My mother taught me to cook that dish and many others. When we made migas, she handed me the bag of corn tortillas wrapped in paper and told me to rip them up. If the pieces were too big, she told me to rip them up smaller. If I cut them into pieces with a knife, she said, “No, no, no,” and shook her head. I eventually figured out what size she wanted for them. For some reason I was always determined to learn how to cook from her, so I let her tell me again and again what to do in the kitchen.

She believed in my ability to become a good cook. For her, being a “buena cocinera,” a “good cook,” as I often teased her, was important for many reasons. It meant you could take care of yourself. You could stock a pantry and fill your kitchen with homemade food.

But her cooking was also tied to being a traditional Mejicana, where culture, faith, identity and being a woman, were also a mezcla. She was renowned for her cooking in our small barrio in Detroit. She constantly offered food to anyone who walked through her doors or sat on the stoop. I recall her making me take a full plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn to a homeless man who was sitting outside on the stairs to our building. At that moment I learned, not by words but by action, to serve others, to give freely, even when you have a large brood of your own to feed.

She cooked with her comadres, making menudo to sell after mass. They sold the menudo to raise money for flowers for the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. To her, cooking was second nature. When I use her recipes, I sometimes look around the kitchen, as if she is here, waiting with a toalla, a kitchen towel, draped over her shoulder, waiting to eat. Cooking was a gift of love you gave to yourself and others.

I am eternally grateful that I learned to cook from her—and that she had the patience to put up with me. I remember being five years old, making tortillas with her. She let me roll small tortillas on her wooden board. She put them on the comal for me. I always let them burn. I loved the smell of the burnt masa. But more so, I loved her turning to me, saying, “You're fired, vayase.” I feigned resignation.

When I was in my twenties, she gave me several of her molcajetes, a tool made of smoothened volcanic stone. In English it is called a mortar and pestle, but there is so much more. It is a touchstone, a memory stone, a portal to the past. When I grind garlic, tomatoes or peppino in the heavy bowl, I feel deep calls to tradition and culture.

I feel my mamá, her comadres, my abuela and tías when I use those molcajetes. I am filled with memories that cause me to yearn for arms that are no longer here, to dial a phone number that no longer exists. I strain to hear a voice that has passed to the other side. I yearn for the smell of her comal, fire—hot, ready for tortillas.

This longing is the hardest to bear. It is the call from the deep that causes such surprise. I know it well. I have seen it in the face of friends as they talk about husbands and wives, abuelos and abuelas, and friends now gone. I have heard that yearning in the voice of my siblings.

Author's brother Gabriel

My brother Gabriel died fifteen years ago. He was bold, hilarious, and opinionated. His eyes flashed like those of a sprite. He was always up to something. One Sunday, he called repeatedly and set me up for a prank. He took a beeper and set it off every time I answered the phone. After seven pranks I yelled into the receiver. His boisterous laugh filled the line, filled the air.

He often called on weekend mornings. I drank coffee as we talked about politics and current events. We talked about our childhood, what had gone right and what had gone horribly wrong. Friends have shared with me countless stories of Gabriel helping them out by fixing their washer, or some other odd task. When I was angry or upset he encouraged me to let things go. There are days I want to hear his voice, to answer his phone calls and hear his mantra, “It’s all good, sis, it’s all good.”

When my mother was alive, we sometimes had a family tradition of reading the same books. Gabriel and I read Tecumseh: A Life, written by John Sugden several years before he passed away. We lived in Detroit, close to the river, close to historic Fort Wayne and we were lifelong parishioners of Ste. Anne de Detroit, which was also close to the river. We knew our parish and the land all along the Detroit river had once been home to the Objewe, Potawatomi and Ottawa—the Anishinaabe peoples.

We often talked about the injustices and crimes committed against Native Americans. Tecumseh gave us a much deeper insight into the history of the Native Americans of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Gabriel was much more expressive in his anger and emotions., and while I felt the injustices deeply, I was much more subdued.

When the Archdiocese of Detroit closed all of the Catholic High Schools in the city of Detroit, students and staff marched in protest from Southwest Detroit to the Archdiocese in downtown Detroit. I was the bilingual school counselor for the only Catholic School in the city that served Latina/o students and families. Gabriel walked with us that day.

I felt a deep loss at the closing of the school. I knew it meant I had to look for employment elsewhere. Gabriel saw it as an injustice against our community and he railed against its closing. I was lost in my emotions and didn’t know how to respond. I felt betrayed by the Archdiocese, but I was also afraid to admit the blow that I felt. We were a Latino/a community, we were Catholic. How could they shut us down? How could they betray us?

But Gabriel was fearless. He wanted to stand up in mass and yell down the priest, but I knew my mother, a leader in our parish, would be mortified and would never recover from the shame. I knew I would feel embarrassed. The Archdiocese was wrong for shuttering the numerous Catholic high schools in the city. It was about money and dare I say, race. But I was a good Mexican daughter, I could not allow him to stand up in mass. Somehow I talked him out of the idea.

I wish I had learned more of how to be fearless from him. I wish I had his strength and willingness to live more on the edge and take more risks. Too often, I let fear get the better of me.

When I think of Gabriel now, I think of our shared love of food and music, of reading and social justice. I picture an angel, not a white angel covered in feathers, but an angel that looks like my brother, brown and strong, with dark feathers and hair as black as coal, carrying a sword and a shield. He does not fly lightly, he flies with a force for justice, while seeking peace.

Author and her brothers

Another brother, Anthony Juan, died in 2019. He was a fierce patriarch and protector. He was rough and struggled with many demons, but he was also a storyteller. He was filled with stories about the streets and his many adventures.

Tony was 15 years my senior. But his laughter and sense of humor were quick. While many people feel hugging and kissing are no longer propio, Tony always insisted I kiss him on his cheek. It always felt like kissing a brillo pad.

He was a giant in my eyes. As a child, I prayed for him often. He gave my parents grief, but their love for him was relentless. He told me he promised himself he would no longer cause my parents sorrow when he saw my father cry over a situation he was involved in.

Tony was an incredible artist. I longed for his artwork. He did it in bits and pieces. At the end of each October at our home parish, I put up a community Ofrenda. It is large and changes every year. I think about the theme over the course of the year. I sit in front of the space it will occupy and I try to think and pray and listen to what it should be, to what it wants to say. The year that Tony passed away was also the year that numerous children from Central America and Mexico died while crossing the Rio Grande River, trying to cross over. As a family we loathed (and continue to loathe) how our people were, and are, treated by the Right and the Left.

That year I dedicated the Ofrenda to the children who had died crossing over. But I also set up a section dedicated to Tony. Pictures of the children covered the top section of the Ofrenda and on the buttomsection was Tony and his art work.

But it was so strange to me that no one brought in pictures of their loved ones that year until the month of November was almost over. Normally hundreds of photos adorn the Ofrenda by the middle of November. But it was almost as if Tony was guarding those children in the underworld. His work wasn’t finished. He was still protecting, still guarding, still doing his work.

Tony created stories wherever he went. One Christmas, he took my children aside and pulled a long blade out of his walking cane. He told them that if anyone ever touched them, that person would disappear and never be found. We knew he meant every word. He left my children with countless stories of boldness and misadventure. Tony loved astronomy. After he died, I had the distinct feeling that a new star had joined the cosmos—heaven was not quite ready for him.

I often felt smaller than my brothers. They were large, dark, strong, muscular, very popular in our Southwest Detroit community, with the high cheekbones of my mother and the dark skin of my father. Their hair was coal—black. I was just me. Mousy, bookworm, with a big heart and a thirst for knowledge. But I also sing. So I sang at their funerals. I do not relish singing at funerals, but perhaps they knew they were leaving this earth before the rest of us. They told me what songs they wanted sung at their funerals. I did what I could. But each time I saw Tony, he told me he wanted me to sing “Ave Maria”. And while I sang it at my mother’s funeral and at Gabriel’s funeral, I was recuperating from a head, facial and ear injury at the time of Tony’s funeral. I still owe him that song. Promesa.

My brothers were shadow and light, another mezcla. They danced on the edges with angels and demons and often fell, but they always got back up. They were tenacious traviesos--mischevious to a fault, but they lived unafraid. They loved running and reading, baseball and science. They both had a passion for social justice and helping others.

I have seen enough of death to know the long shadow it casts, but I have also learned of the life it can bring. I am determined to remember the living. In my mind’s eye, my mother was full, a heart and life bursting with healing and love. Her quiet faith and certitude carried her. Her eyes carried laughter and sorrow, and her body showed frailty and strength. A softness enveloped her, it was as if La Virgen de Guadalupe really did cover her.

Wasn’t that mi mamasita’s prayer each time we left her house in Detroit? That La Virgencita would cover us and protect us with her tela? I hold her rosary beads and sit in the well—worn white armchair where she welcomed her grandchildren, where she spent her last hours on earth. It is in a corner of my bedroom, in a window facing west. I watch the setting sun and remember her.

I want to remember the light in my brothers, their passion for justice, for the broken and the poor. I want to remember their loud, boisterous voices. Their houses always had stacks of magazines, newspapers and books on history, science and politics. Gabriel always challenged me to look at my other siblings from another angle, to see with a new view, without hurt or bitterness, to live without judging yourself or others.
I want to remember how safe I felt because of them. No matter where I went in Detroit, I knew they were looking out for me. After Gabriel died, I felt vulnerable. I wondered who would protect me. After Tony died, I felt it again. Who would look out for me? It took a while for me to realize my other brothers were there for me, too.

When the migas finished cooking I put them on a plate my mother gave me years ago. The smell of garlic, green pepper and lime hung in the air. In the curls of steam that rose from the plate, I saw my brothers and mother, their laughter and grief, their sorrow and healing. I remember that we are all a mezcla of the present and the past.

I look at the plate and think of her and others who have gone on to the other side—my brothers, my tias and tios, friends, and other people I have loved. They left pedazitos de sus corazónes, little pieces of their hearts, here and there, spread throughout our lives, like migas on a plate on a bright Sunday morning.

Elena Dolores Solano was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She is one of fifteen children. Her parents were migrant workers who moved north in the 1940s. She is a certified school counselor and works with Latino/a students in the public school system of Detroit. She is also a Licensed Professional Counselor. Ms. Solano has written for many years of her experience growing up in a large Mexican American family in Detroit. In her spare time Ms. Solano enjoys collecting anything old, a Solano family tradition, cooking Mexican food and spending time with her children, her family and friends.

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The teller not the tale

10/7/2021

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"Clockworks" photo by Danny E. Hooks

Memories of Juan Bobo
by Michael De Rosa

Mami did not read stories to my sister and me; she told them to us. Juan Bobo stories, Puerto Rican folktales that are now almost two centuries old. Mami learned them from her mother, born in the 19th century, she in turn from her mother — a chain of storytelling, stretching back to my great-grandmother and beyond.

Storytelling took place in a small bedroom with a single bed against the right wall, a bureau and wardrobe against the other wall, and shelves by the bed. My sister and I would lie down on the narrow bed with Mami, nestled by her sides, enveloped in her warmth. We listened in the darkened room to her narrative.

The stories were funny and silly. We would always ask for more; she would say, “Sí, mijito,” move a finger across our foreheads, and start another as if turning the pages of a book. I can remember everything about our storytime, her voice the only sound, the darkness of the room, her warmth — except the tales themselves. My sister remembers our Mami telling us stories and has no memory of what the stories were about. I asked several Puerto Rican co-workers about Juan Bobo. They remembered his name, but not any of the tales.

It was a magical time when our mother told us her tales. Part of the magic was the stories themselves. To reclaim this part of the wonder of those nights, I obtained a copy of Los Cuentos de Juan Bobo, adapted by José Ramírez Rivera from a collection by Maria Cadilla de Martinez, who collected them from storytellers. I hoped that reading them in the original Spanish might trigger a memory from those long-ago days of childhood. None of them brought back any memories of the narratives our mother told us, only the mischievous character of Juan Bobo.

One of the reasons we loved the stories was because of how ridiculous they were. The story of the “Clock Adventure” illustrates this and that Juan Bobo was not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. For a taste, I have translated this tale for modern audiences. Before starting this condensed version, I should explain that it involves some wordplay. In English, we walk, but a clock runs. Andar means to walk in Spanish, but it can be used in the sense of a clock running. I have used run in my translation.

Juan Bobo and the Clock Adventure

One day Juan Bobo’s teacher asked him to bring a clock back to school that a parent had donated. His teacher warned Juan Bobo that the clock was still in good condition and ran perfectly. “Be careful to avoid any bumps that would stop the clock from running,” the teacher told him. Juan Bobo did as he was told and picked up the large, heavy grandfather clock.

He soon tired of carrying the heavy clock. “My schoolteacher told me you could run,” Juan Bobo told the clock. “I am going to run ahead and show you the path.” “Follow me! Follow me!” When he looked back, the clock had not moved.

Becoming very annoyed that the clock had not followed him, Juan Bobo found some twine, wrapped it around the clock, and started to drag it down the path. Every time it hit a bump, another piece of the clock would fall off, destroying it by the time he got back to school. Juan Bobo’s teacher was so upset with him, punished him so severely that Juan decided not to go back to school.

But then Mami stopped telling us the stories.

Was it because she had told us all the stories she knew? I don’t remember our mother ever repeating a story. My experiences telling stories to our son followed a similar path and may hold the key to why she stopped and why we can’t remember them. Sometimes instead of reading him a story, I would relate to him a children’s story I had learned growing up. On a hike through the primeval forest of Redwoods National Park in California, our three-year-old son was restless and not enjoying our walk. To keep his attention, I told him the classic story of Hansel and Gretel as we walked along the shady forest path. The effect was dramatic. He listened with rapt attention and walked without complaint.

After this, I started telling him stories or making one up when he began to fuss at a restaurant. They had the same calming effect. At bedtime, sometimes instead of reading to my son, I would tell him one of my made-up stories. Holding him on my lap, I would act out the exciting parts of a tale about time travel, rocking and rolling his body with my knees, complete with sound effects. As he grew older, we would bring books to keep him entertained at restaurants, and he became less interested in my homemade stories. Is this what happened with Mami? Did we become less attentive, and if so, why?

Then as my sister and I grew older, English replaced Spanish, our first language. Mami would speak to us in Spanish, and we would answer in English and tell her to “speak American.” She, in turn, started to reply to us in English — this was the way our mother learned how to speak English. Did we become less attentive to Mami’s stories told in Spanish and stopped asking for more of them?

Something similar happened with music. At first, we listened to the popular Spanish language music of the day Mami loved, but as we grew older, she kept moving to a Latin beat, as my sister and I became rock-n-rollers. First-born Americans, we embraced American culture and its language. Spanish was for old people like parents. Rejecting their Spanish language and culture was the beginning of becoming independent, something all children go through as they reach adulthood.

The language used might also be why my sister and I don’t remember the stories Mami told us. We still retained the vivid emotional memories of us lying down with her in a warm, narrow bed, but not the soft Spanish words of the tales she told us in the dark. Our son told me that he remembers the storytelling much more than the actual stories. Perhaps the intimate act of a parent telling a story to a child is the most crucial part of the memory — the teller not the tale.

Michael De Rosa was born in New York City and grew up in Spanish Harlem. His mother was born in Najuabo, Puerto Rico. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the City University of New York. From 1973-1989 he taught organic chemistry (in Spanish) and did research at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela. From 1989-2020 he was a faculty member at Penn State Brandywine and retired as a professor emeritus of chemistry. This piece is from a memoir he is writing on growing up in Spanish Harlem. He recently published a short story, "The Nuptial Dance in Xs and Ys,” in Academy of the Heart And Mind.

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To Tell The Whole Truth Part 4

4/11/2021

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Click here for Part 1.
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Hidden Chapters
in U.S. History:
The Violence against Mexican Americans

Somos en escrito Magazine has begun to unfold a series of works by Mexican American writers and other voices that bear witness to the history of violence perpetrated against Mexican Americans over the past 170 years. We plan to feature writings in varied formats: essays, memoirs, poems and book excerpts.

In doing so, we declare common cause in the national outrage toward the abuse of police authority and inhumane actions under the color of law and share in the determination among Americans of all backgrounds to bring about change.

Mexican Americans have common cause with other peoples of color in the U.S.A. on many levels. The relentless assault for generations in order for white supremacy to prevail despite a society which is rapidly diversifying, people of color continue to be the brunt of mindless and premeditated oppression and violence.

In 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the U.S. war against Mexico, the Mexican American was born. Under the Treaty, former Mexican citizens who chose to remain in the U.S. beyond a year automatically became U.S. citizens. Gradually, Mexican Americans, also known today as Chicanos, have evolved into a prominent economic and political force, especially in the Southwest.

However, school textbooks, scholarly histories, and the entertainment media have casually glossed over certain chapters of Mexican Americans’ history, if not ignored or distorted it altogether. Much remains to be written to tell the whole truth about their experience, but this Special Edition of Somos en escrito Magazine will share new writings and existing escritos to reveal the story.

With the advent of phone and body cameras, more and more incidents have been caught of police officers in the act of fatal assaults on Black people. Once in a while as an aside, politicians or cable news pundits mention Latino or Brown peoples as victims as well of police brutality. Rarely does anyone add any depth to the comment. Our guess is that a reference is just an after-thought, just to make sure no color or minority is left out.

The fact is that in a society where social, economic and political presence depends heavily on access to mass media and internet driven “apps,” Chicanos have far less access to such exposure and attention. Thus, they are unable to express a narrative which is their own and which reflects the contributions that Mexican Americans have made to the U.S.A. This Special Edition is intended to help give voice to that narrative.

The features will cover more than 170 years: first the latter half of the 1800s—starting in the mid-1800s in the gold fields of California where the “forty niners” laid claim to mines by killing or driving Mexicans off their claims; then in the early 1900s the concerted destruction of Mexican Americans’ lives along the U.S.-Mexico border through brutal lynchings and shootings of Mexican Americans innocent of any crime by the Texas Rangers; and White U.S. servicemen’s attacks against barrio youth during the WWII years. Shift to today’s digital videos of Chicanos struck down by police gunfire, to the subtlety of systemic racism carried out in segregated educational systems, denial of access to adequate health care, proper nutrition and decent housing, and finally to the even more insidious attacks against culture, language, and history as a means of destroying self-esteem, group cohesion, and social relevance.

Armando Rendón
Executive Editor

CALL FOR WITNESSES
Besides the obras of established authors, we also invite memoirs from Mexican Americans who wish to add to the testigos, to bear witness in their own words, to the violence and oppression against Mexican Americans. We hope to publish recollections of family stories, letters, or writings, which may date back decades, even generations, which could help open new chapters in America’s history.

If you are a Chicana or Chicano writer interested in adding to the whole truth, contact us at [email protected].

“Joaquín died in one piece”

Descendants of Joaquín Murrieta Rebuke Rumors
of his death at hands of California Rangers

Excerpts from Joaquín Murrieta Hero of the Chicano.

Murrieta honoring countrymen. (Courtesy of almay.com).

PREFACE
From page 3

Joaquín Murrieta was a typical young man who had ridden up from Sonora, Mexico, in 1850 to join friends and family already in the Sierra foothills searching for gold in their streams and rivers. When the clamor arose because Americanos had found nuggets up near Sacramento, his life and those of other Mexicanos changed radically, in fact, the history of the west took a hard turn toward violence and greed because of the yellow metal.

Mexicano men and women, who were already experienced placer miners from their home state of Sonora, were attacked, forced off their claims, and either run off or killed. Murrieta’s wife, Carmelita, was violated and murdered by White marauders; his brother also killed. Joaquín, a peaceful man swore to avenge these deaths; further, he vowed to return control of California to Mexico -the state had also been stolen in the U.S. war against Mexico between 1846 and 1848.

Murrieta did not succeed, but he neither surrendered nor fell victim to White posses assembled by the state government to hunt him and his followers to ground. This book tells the story as his descendants have known it and passed it down through several generations. This is the story of the Murrieta as much as of Joaquín, their standard bearer.

Herein, they set out their oral history backed up by evidence from a few records that have survived and physical places that remain despite the ravages of time, which are known to Murrieta’s descendants. Together, they show that, rather than the self-serving legend promoted by newspapers and story-tellers in behalf of the people who had feared and hated him, Joaquín Murrieta died peacefully and in one piece in Cucurpe near his ancestral home in Sonora.

¡Que viva Joaquín Murrieta!
Armando Rendón, Author of Chicano Manifesto

FOREWORD
From page 4

Joaquín Murrieta is a man whose story has deeply influenced the conscience of those who are fighting for social justice. It was first told in the 1850s by a Cherokee Indian writing as John Rollins Ridge. He wrote about a Mexican immigrant miner who came to California during the gold rush only to encounter a racist violence that killed his brother and his wife.

In revenge he along with a small band of compatriots set out to punish the aggressors and in the process he became a symbol of the resistance of Mexicanos against the Anglo American takeover of their lands and the attacks on their culture. The first Chicano film in 1969 was entitled "I Am Joaquín" drawn from a poem inspired by Joaquín 's resistance movement. The Chicano movement drew from the iconic story of Joaquín to inspire young people to value their history and draw from it a spirit of resistance. Outside the U.S. revolutionary thinkers took Joaquín Murrieta as a symbol of their struggle against American imperialism. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote an epic poem about Joaquín portraying him as a countryman.

Alfredo Acosta Figueroa has written an entirely new history of Joaquín , one that draws on the memories and documents of his family and Joaquín 's descendants. This history is deeply personal. We learn details that have never before been published. Joaquín 's birthplace, family, home in Trincheras Sonora, his returns to Mexico and death from old age in his homeland are all well documented. We have proof that he passed through San Juan Capistrano in 1865 and lived in Tecate in the 1870's. Murrieta was not killed by the California Rangers as claimed in the histories. His story continued to inspire. Don Alfredo documents how Mexicanos and Chicanos have been jailed just for daring to sing the Corrido of Joaquín Murrieta. The legacy and truth of Joaquín continues through the International Association of Descendants of Joaquín Murrieta. Annually they commemorate Joaquín at events in Mexico and the U.S.

This book tells the truth about Joaquín Murrieta as recalled by his family and descendants. As such it is an important contribution to the struggles of Chicanos to be liberated from a colonial past that has been manufactured by films, novels, and textbooks. We all owe Don Alfredo a debt for having the energy and spirit to continue La Lucha.

Ricardo Griswold del Castillo , Professor Emeritus, Chicana and Chicano Studies, San Diego State University, Author of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo A Legacy of Conflict

CALIFORNIA RANGERS IN PURSUIT OF JOAQUÍN MURRIETA
From pages 19-21

The California Rangers’ main purpose was to capture Joaquín Murrieta dead or alive and offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone who would bring them his head. Joaquín Murrieta was never identified by the authorities, arrested or jailed, but he was tried in absentia, however, and sentenced to death.

Recruited to lead the California Rangers was the notorious Captain Harry Love, a veteran of the U.S.-Mexican war. His hostility toward Mexicans was well known. The respected newspaper, Alta Californian, commented that a license for mayhem had just been issued to Love’s Rangers, an opportunity to plunder into Mexico. Many people who knew Love, considered him to be nothing more than a treacherous, cruel murderer. Love’s motto was, “A good Mexican is a dead Mexican.” No Mexican was safe at the placer mine or on the lonely roads. It was open season on Mexicans. Most atrocities committed against Mexicans were done so by mobs of angry and hostile Anglo miners, escalated by the Rangers. Most of the California Rangers who were recruited were veterans of the Mexico-United States War and were regarded as adventurers and anti-Mexican. Ranger Bill Byrnes admitted that he allegedly joined a company that went hunting for Apache scalps in Chihuahua for a $50 bounty. Most Mexicans were indigenous and there was very little, if any distinction made by the Rangers.

The California Rangers ended up committing a crime spree of their own, illegally confiscating property from Mexicans and Californios, shooting them or hanging them in their pursuit. “The California Rangers were killers, and professional bounty hunters who had a history of violence.” (The Real Joaquín Murrieta Robin Hood Hero or Gold Rush Gangster? by Remi Nadeau, 1992).

After three months of pursuing Joaquín Murrieta, Harry Love and his Rangers came upon a group of Mexican vaqueros at Arroyo Cantua. By then, Love’s Rangers were getting restless and discouraged with their $150 monthly pay. They were tired, hot and frustrated because they could not find Joaquín Murrieta. Harry Love, feared that because their three- month contract was nearly up, his Rangers would quit on him, so he decided to make his move on the Mexican vaqueros at Arroyo Cantua.

Eventually, each Ranger would give his own interpretation of what really took place during the ambush at Arroyo Cantua. Harry Love and his Rangers came upon Arroyo Cantua, a wash at the base of what is called Joaquín Rocks on Joaquín Ridge, which had three boulders overlooking the vast Western San Joaquín Valley. One version is that when Love and his men came upon the Mexicans, they presumed the men belonged to Murrieta’s band, led by Jesús Feliz, Joaquín’s brother-in-law.

Love’s version is that he and his men found 70-80 Mexicans tending a herd of 700-800 horses and when they approached the group, the Mexicans made no objections. Love, seeing that he was outnumbered, did not attempt to risk their lives in pursuing his investigation. Love and his men left.

Re-enactment of Arroyo Cantua Ambush

In the San Joaquín Valley, in Northern Calfornia, the Joaquín Murrieta Cavalcade is held annually at Three Rocks and Arroyo Cantua, to remember the atrocities committed by the California Rangers led by Harry Love's ambush on the four horsemen at Arroyo Cantua on July 25, 1853; presumably one of them being Joaquín Murrieta.

According to the Stockton newspaper, the Mexicans and horses left camp overnight and when the Rangers arrived the following day, the camp had been deserted.
At the crack of dawn, approximately three miles east of Arroyo Cantua, they saw a plume of smoke. There were 6-8 Mexicans that had just arrived at the camps. Love saw he had the upper hand. Love and his men ambushed the Mexican camp. Most of the Mexicans were sleeping. A Mexican reached for his gun on his horse but was stopped by a ranger’s shotgun. They gathered the Mexicans and Bill Byrnes who was the only Ranger to have presumably known Murrieta rode up and shouted, “This is Joaquín Murrieta, boys! We got him at last.” The Mexicans threw back their sarapes and fired their revolvers, shooting as they ran. Two Mexicans fell dead and a three-fingered man was shot 9 times.

Finally, Bill Byrnes rode up and gave him the coup de grâce with a shot to his head.
During the melee, the leader of the band leaped bareback onto his horse and galloped onto the banks of Cantua Creek’s dry bed, a drop of approximately 14 or more feet. The rider was knocked down, but he leaped again onto his horse and kept going down the creek bed. According to William T. Henderson, he also jumped the bank of the creek and pursued the horseman, shooting the leg of the horse.

Another Ranger was following along the bank and was able to shoot the Mexican that was running down the creek. When the Rangers got close to the Mexican, the Mexican began to plead with them, in Spanish, “Don’t shoot me anymore.” When the other Rangers arrived at the scene, they immediately riddled his body with bullets.

It is said that after the ambush by the Rangers at Arroyo Cantua, they cut the head of whom they presumed to be Joaquín Murrieta. The Rangers also cut the hand off of the three-fingered man, called El Yaqui Tres Dedos. Again, the head was falsely identified as that of Joaquín Murrieta. Antonio Lopez and Jose Maria Ochoa were apprehended and taken prisoners to Fort Miller, northeast of Fresno. According to the newspapers who speculated about the information on Joaquín Murrieta, Antonio Lopez drowned when they were crossing a slough. The olla with El Yaqui Tres Dedos, the three-fingered hand, was thrown away because it was quickly deteriorating. The head was put in an olla of whiskey. Jose Maria Ochoa betrayed his countrymen when he identified the head as being that of Joaquín Murrieta.

After the State paid Love a $1,000 reward, he was given an additional $5,000 for his patriotic duty. After the rangers presented their trophies to the authorities, the question arose: Was it the head of Joaquín Murrieta or was it the head of a Mexican who happened to be at Arroyo Cantua? The Alta California reported a group of Mexicans in Los Angeles who claimed they were attacked by a group of “gringos,” but they had escaped.

Four were killed, one of them being Joaquín Valenzuela. His head had been cut off for a trophy. Joaquín Valenzuela was one of the five Joaquín 's active at the time. It was not the head of Joaquín Murrieta. Bill Byrnes, the Ranger that presumably knew Joaquín Murrieta, said: “One pickled head is as good as any other, if there was a scar on the face and no one knew the difference.”

The head supposedly of 'Joaquín Murrieta' was placed in a jar in alcohol, as well as the hand of “Three Fingered Jack.” This particular head of 'Joaquín' and the hand of Three-Fingered Jack were exhibited as great trophies and caused great excitement among all the gringos due to the hatred they had against all Mexicans, and especially hatred for those of Joaquín’s gavilla (band of followers). The horrendous act of decapitating a man and mutilating another because they were Mexican was used as an example to cause fear in other Mexicans.

Our research based on Manuel Rojas’ El Patrio Truthful Focuses for Chicano Movement shows that Jose Maria Ochoa was the traitor that led the rangers to Arroyo Cantua, but he never reached the State Capitol in Benicia to testify. His unfortunate fate was met with a lynching by a group of Mexicans at Martinez, near Benicia, California.

Alfredo Acosta Figueroa was born in Blythe, California, in 1934 and still lives there He represents five generations of Indigenous-Xicano heritage from the Colorado River Reservation, which encompasses the Palo Verde/Parker Valleys. At one time, his family was the only one around with origins in mining during the La Paz, Arizona-Colorado River Gold Rush in 1862. Growing up, he heard stories of his great, great grandmother, Teodosia Martinez, a cousin of Joaquín Murrieta. At family gatherings, they would play “El Corrido de Joaquín Murrieta;” Alfredo learned the song and when he took up the guitar at 12 years of age, learned to play it. In 1986, Murrieta’s descendants met in Blythe to found the International Association of Descendants of Joaquín Murrieta. On October 23, 1988, Alfredo organized the first Caravana del Recuerdo in Murrieta’s honor in Trincheras, Sonora, Joaquín’s birthplace.

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Legend of Chicano Scholarship QEPD (1940-2020)

11/21/2020

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“Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones,” oil on canvas, Salomón Huerta (2018)

In Memory of the Legendary
Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones:
Chicano Scholar, Activist and Poet

By Álvaro Huerta

“Anti-Mexicanism is a form of nativism practiced by colonialists and their inheritors.”

—Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones (2017)

Tuesday, November 11, 2020 marks one of the saddest days of my life. On this day, we—the Mexican people on both sides of la frontera and our allies—lost a legend: the one and only, Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones (JGQ).

We lost one of the greatest intellectuals not only in the Americas, but also the world. The fact that JGQ was born a Mexican in el sur (Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico) and died a proud Mexican/Chicano in el norte (Los Angeles, California) in a time when the Mexican continues to be otherized, marginalized and pejoratized serves as a grim reminder of this great loss for la raza.

For over 50 years, JGQ dedicated his life to uplift the people of the sun through his superior scholarship, dedicated mentorship, political actions and eloquent words. While his contributions are many, for the sake of space, here go a few: wrote classic books and articles on Chicana/o history, labor, politics and culture; helped establish the theoretical foundations of Chicana and Chicano studies, along with the living legend, Rodolfo “Rudy” Acuña, whom JGQ fondly admired; taught and mentored thousands of students who became leaders in their own right; supported and participated in countless political actions for social, economic and racial justice; lead co-author of El Plan de Santa Bárbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education; co-founded UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC); co-founded CSRC’s Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; NACCS (National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies) Scholar Recipient, 1990; and wrote eloquent prose—something that escapes most academics.

Did I mention that he also wrote beautiful poetry?

“My father’s land / is crossed / ribbon like / by stone fences / the wither in the sun / White stones that glisten in the sun, / Stones that ballast a sea of brown hills. / My father whip laid them, / My mother’s tribe fed them.”

—Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones, 5th and GRANDE VISTA (Poems, 1960-1973), Colección Mensaje, New York, 1973, p. 61.

One word: brilliant!

Like in the case of another brilliant Mexican in el norte, Gloria Anzaldúa, JGQ provided us with a powerful voice against a racist American system that has attempted (and failed!) to erase our history. JGQ took the ashes of our once burnt history by the European colonists (and their inheritors) and created scholarly books, peer-reviewed articles, essays and eloquent poems in elite spaces limited to the best and the brightest Western Civilization has to offer. He has done so—and continues to do so—through his publications, speeches and memories without succumbing to fear or forgetting where he came from.

Dr. Álvaro Huerta and Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones (circa 2015).

As I reflect on JGQ, there are no words that I can conjure to heal the immense pain that I’m feeling. I cried when I first heard the terrible news on Tuesday morning and have been struggling to maintain my East Los Angeles composure ever since. I think I lost my street cred! I’m sad because I won’t be getting random calls from JGQ at odd hours when he has something on his mind. I’m sad because I won’t be receiving mail packets of his latest manuscripts for me to review or help get published.

“No worries, Juan, I’ll make sure that the last two manuscripts you sent me will see the light of day!”

Given all that he has done for me, I’ve always heeded his friendly and warm requests. That’s what familia is all about.

I first met JGQ in 1985, when I started UCLA as a freshman, majoring in mathematics, from East Los Angeles—a place where JGQ also hails from. I must say that I was originally shocked to see a Chicano professor at an elite university. Since most of my K-12 teachers were White, I never knew that Chicana/o professors even existed. I was equally shocked when JGQ assigned us books written by brown scholars. Many moons later, I’m following the example of the great Chicana and Chicano authors that I read in JGQ’s classes, especially his fine works.

Speaking of historians, I’ve always wondered why history professors assign at least 5-6 books—300+ pages per book without pictures!—to read in a quarter or semester? I only read one book—John Steinbeck’s The Pearl—throughout my dysfunctional K-12 education! While JGQ practiced this norm, he made it clear to us that the study of history represents a serious subject. When he walked around North Campus at UCLA, he was always carrying several books on one hand and numerous student papers to grade on his other hand.

Constantly thinking, reading and writing, he was oblivious and impervious of his surroundings. One day, for instance, while taking a small seminar on historiography with JGQ, I, along with my classmates, waited for him to teach and lead us in discussion/dialogue for about 30 minutes after class started. We then formed a posse to rescue him from his office, where we found him in a deep state of writing.

As I’ve said before, while JGQ was stoic, like my late Mexican father, once you scratched beneath the surface, he was a sweet and caring teddy bear. That said, during my initial encounters with JGQ, I was intimidated. Over 30 years later, I can still recall knocking on his office door on the 6th floor of Bunche Hall, where he would gruffly say, “Yes!”

My response? “Hello, Mr. Quiñones…I mean, Professor Quiñones, I want to talk to you about my paper. I’ve never written a 10-page paper and don’t know how to start. Heck, I’ve only written one 2-page paper, triple spaced, in my entire life!”

Once I got to know him, I learned to announce myself. “Hello, Quiñones, this is Álvaro. I need to ask you some questions about the readings.” Often, I would go with my fellow student activists or MEChistas, where we minored in “JGQ Studies,” just to hang out and talk about politics or sports. He wasn’t fond of small talk or chisme. Also, he rarely talked about himself or how he grew up, especially as one of the first Chicanas/os to pursue higher education when he first entered the university. He never took credit for all of his accomplishments. Instead, he would always credit the collective efforts of the committed educators, youth, activists and other agents of social change throughout the Chicana/o movement and beyond.

In terms of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlán) at UCLA during the mid-1980s, whenever we organized a protest on campus or in the community, we could always count on JGQ for his unconditional support. For example, when we organized a hunger strike at UCLA—one of the first, if not the first at UCLA and at any UC campus—in defense of undocumented immigrants (November 11-19, 1987), we knew that JGQ had our back. When we didn’t show up to class, he didn’t scold or hector us. He encouraged us, teaching us a key lesson that I pass on to my students and colleagues: knowledge comes from practice!

Later, when several of us, as former UCLA students, became community activists and organized Latino gardeners against the City of Los Angeles’s draconian leaf blower ban during the mid-1990s. (City penalties for Latino gardeners caught using a leaf blower? Misdemeanor charge, $1,000 fine and up to 6 months in jail). To challenge this racist law, we sought help from JGQ to lobby Council Members—like Mark Ridley Thomas, Jackie Goldberg and others—who voted for the ban on December 3, 1996.

On a more personal level, when I got married to Antonia Montes—fellow MEChista, educator, activist—in 1992, I invited JGQ. To my surprise, he showed up. Since then, we became homeboys (and later colleagues), where he counseled me throughout my graduate studies at UCLA (M.A.) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D.). He supported me without reservations when I was on the academic job market. Whenever I experienced racial micro-aggressions or academic hazing or pinche bullying by senior faculty, I never flinched since I knew that I could count on my academic homeboy, JGQ, like in the case of the late Dr. Leo Estrada.

In short, JGQ was/is my professor, mentor, homeboy, fellow activist and colleague. He taught me/us that we, as Chicanas and Chicanos, also have history—a proud history that must be taught in K-12, higher education and our communities.

“The point of learning about Indigenous past is not to relive past practices, or to propose one essentialization over another, or to be immobilized by history. The first stone to demolish the old presidio is our own consciousness.”

—Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Indigenous Quotient/Stalking Words: American Indian History as Future, Aztlan Libre Press, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, p. 39.

Left to Right: Adrián Álvarez, Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Antonia Montes, Álvaro Huerta, Ruben Lizardo and Leonor Lizardo; wedding of Antonia and Álvaro (March 28, 1992)

Despite our generational divide, we shared many similarities: Mexican roots; native sons of East Los Angeles; doctorates from the University of California; veteran activists; practitioners of respect and confianza (something absent in the academy); lovers of music (e.g., oldies), art (e.g., Mexican/Chicana/o art), food (anything Mexican), drink (e.g., mezcal), culture (our own) and sports (e.g., boxing); readers of poetry; educators and mentors; and, our defense of los de abajo, where he paved the road for me and countless others to emulate…

“Human issues can be resolved with humanistic solutions. Immigrants are not strangers; they are family.”

--Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones (Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate Towards a Humanistic Paradigm 2013, foreword, p. 14)

Moving forward, while I’ll humbly do my part to maintain and expand his shining legacy through my lectures, writings and musings, I only wish that I was able to tell him in person four magic words before his passing: “I love you, Juan!”

¡Viva JGQ!

Dr. Álvaro Huerta is an Associate Professor in Urban & Regional Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies at California State Polytechnic University. Among other scholarly publications, he’s the author of Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm and Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. He holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in urban planning and a B.A. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles.

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The Origins of Nostalgia and Desire

7/10/2019

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A Book Review of Cabañuelas, a novel by Norma Elia Cantú

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

Dr. Norma E. Cantu describes her fiction as “creative autobiographic ethnography.” Judging from the blurbs on the cover of Cabañuelas and other commentary about her earlier book, Canícula, the post-modern aspects of the novel will be analyzed in full detail: it’s fusion of various genres, including the scholarly and biography; it’s use of photography as a narrative tool; it’s a deeply personal portrayal of family and hearth; the descriptions of Spain’s festivals; and finally, its use of narrative as political discourse.

But Cabañuelas is more than that. More than a romance; more than an ethnographic journey; more than one Chicana’s search for the ancient roots of her Mexican-Tejana culture. In this novel, the word “cabañuelas” alludes to a rediscovery of the most ancient knowledge of human passions and aspirations. Technically, the cabañuelas are a system of weather prediction, a lost art, a knowledge discarded by the science of meteorology and dismissed as superstition.

But what we have discovered in our post-modern era is that beneath the surface of these so-called folk practices and superstitions are a kernel of the authentic human landscape of passion and experience, a form of knowledge found only in the language of dreams. Thus, the cabañuelas are a metaphor for the existential journey of the protagonist, Nena. Once she makes the decision to search for the ancient origins of her culture’s festivals in Spain, her spiritual calendar has been marked, and a destiny gets set in motion. The journey transcends from ethnography to the phenomenological discovery of the secret self, the self that is not a creature of human constructs but of nature and God.

Even before Nena Cantu departs for Madrid on a Fulbright Fellowship, she longingly reflects on her family, her homeland, and its rituals. Thus, nostalgia commences her spiritual cabañuela. Her nostalgia for the origins of these rituals is what inspires her research. Her arrival in Spain is reminiscent of every Hispanic’s first experience: Spain is simultaneously foreign but familial.

You are not a Spaniard, but idioms aside, you speak the same language and are shaped by the sensibility of that language. You are a continuation of a mestizaje that began in antiquity when the Romans conquered the Iberian Celts, and continued with the subsequent conquests of Germanic tribes, and finally the Moors. It isn’t long before Nena decides that to find the true origins of the festivals, she must not merely study them in the ancient texts but go and experience them first hand throughout Spain.

It is in these journeys that she crosses over from the world we perceive to the world as it really is. That other world, exiled to the margins by our constructs of reason and morality, where there is also truth and beauty, and perhaps the nexus to a spiritual world. The festivals are the relics of the ancient dramas of collective awareness of an invisible universe.

It is in that landscape of festivals and timelessness that Nena finds a love that cannot be explained, only experienced. Love before Logos, reason, history, and politics. It is the descent into the body of another who is not only meant for us, but has authored the secrets of our psyche. Someone only you can recognize because you understand in that other language that he is the door to your secret self, to your other self behind the mask of the face that meets the faces that you meet, as T.S. Eliot said.

“That’s him?” One of Nena’s friends asks incredulously years after she returns to Madrid. When a Chicana polemicist reminds Nena that he is a member of the conquering race, Nena thinks, but he is human. And that is it: The greater truth. Before we were all else, we were an animal like the rest until we discovered a world beyond. The birth of higher consciousness set us on a separate destiny: the spiritual, and the discovery that the passion of the flesh with one other human would unite us with the spiritual.

Passion and spirituality are the same, Sor Juana de la Cruz said. Not the mere sexual release and innate drive to reproduce encoded by evolution; not the patriarchal version of marriage, where women’s aspiration are oppressed in the name of societal good. Something so old we cannot not quantify it but know it is real because we feel it; the knowledge of the flesh and the semiotic language of dreams and intuition. “Before God was love,” said D.H. Lawrence.

Nena’s cabañuelas creates her destiny, and Paco is part of that destiny. But so is return. The destiny was set in motion by the nostalgia for the origins of her cultural self. It must be, then, that she’d return although the love she found was profound, magical in the pre-modern definition of magical. That love could have only been discovered in a temporal space. It is a hard thing to realize that a powerful human connection such as hers and Paco’s does not mean it translates to a life together, to “live happily ever after” although that is also a possibility depending on the couple.

Paco expects her to sacrifice her homeland for him, but does not offer to do the same. She would have to give up the very thing that started her journey in the first place. Regardless, despite her returning to Texas, the love never ends. It is untouched by time and never replaced by other lovers. My grandfather José used to love a song that was already old when he was born. Un Viejo amor, ni se olvida ni se deja. Never were wiser words spoken.

Ultimately, despite the fusion of various genres, its ethnographic contribution, this novel is also about a woman’s existential search where she repeats the ancient, archetypical journey. She sets out to find her cultural identity and finds her ancient human identity. If there is a succinct image for that, it is her self-portrait, the artist, half-hidden behind the camera lens, at once concealed and revealed.

Read an excerpt from Cabañuelas: A Novel by Norma Elia Cantú (University of New Mexico Press, 2019) on Somos en escrito under the title, “The women take over the town for a day” (https://somosenescrito.weebly.com/fiction-ficcioacuten). The book is available through the University of New Mexico Press (https://unmpress.com/books/cabanuelas/9780826360618 ) and on Amazon. .

Norma Elia Cantú, author of Cabañuelas: A Novel, is the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. Her recent works include Transcendental Train Yard: A Collaborative Suite of Serigraphs, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, Updated Edition (UNM Press), and the coedited anthology Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art.

Rosa Martha Villarreal, a Chicana novelist and essayist, is a descendant of the 16th century Spanish and Tlaxcatecan settlers of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. She drew upon her family history in her critically acclaimed novels Doctor Magdalena, Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico,and The Stillness of Love and Exile, the latter a recipient of the Josephine Miles PEN Literary Award and a Silver Medalist in the Independent Publishers Book Award (2008). She writes a column, “Tertullian’s Corner,” for Somos en escrito Magazine.

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The struggle to remember and to preserve our collective historical memory

3/14/2018

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Cover art, "Nopal and Colibre," by Sergio Hernandez

BEWARE! The “concerted act of forgetting”

Excerpt from Assault on Mexican American CollectiveMemory, 2010–2015

By Rodolfo Acuña

Certain members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) at its January 2018 meeting ignored expert testimony on an agenda item proposing a standardized curriculum and statewide academic standards for the teaching of Mexican American Studies (MAS) in Texas’ public schools. Instead, those SBOE members suggested the Board consider “Latino Studies,” an entirely different basis for a vote at the board’s next meeting on April 11. MAS is taught across the state, but no statewide standards exist, thus guidance is vital for both the significant number of MAS courses and for publishers to write textbooks according to these standards. In other words, the Texas SBOE could be voting on a measure that would effectively undercut MAS as an expanding field of study dating back 50 years. This is prologue to the excerpt below by a preeminent Chicano scholar, which addresses this very idea of erasing memory by renaming existing knowledge and undermining the educational development of millions of Mexican American students.
—Editor’s note

By Rodolfo Acuña

Preface

In her book Captive Women: Oblivion and Memory in Argentina, Susana Rotker writes that her lack of memory left her without a sense of history. Memory, according to Rotker, represents the identity of individuals, social groups, and nations and that to “forget and to remember are not opposites; they are the very weave of representation.”1 She continues, “I have no memory of my childhood because no story was ever told of it.” Her forgetting includes Argentina’s colonial past, when genocidal wars were waged against Indians and in which Africans were used as cannon fodder.
The act of erasing history is not in the distant past. During the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976–1983, about thirty thousand people were detained or disappeared—thousands more were executed by so-called security forces.2 It is not surprising that many of the Argentine plutocrats want to forget; similarly Germans denied the horror of the Holocaust. The “concerted act of forgetting” is ongoing throughout the Americas. Americans, Chileans, Guatemalans, and Mexicans all want to forget their genocides. 3 Fortunately, there are those who want to remember and search for the truth, as in the case of Guatemala and Argentina. Native Americans today are resurrecting this collective memory at Standing Rock in North Dakota. 4 Every day the erased memory of African genocides are becoming part of our consciousness. 5
Assault on Mexican American Collective Memory, 2010–2015 is about ongoing efforts to erase the memory of Mexican Americans in Arizona and California and the endeavors of Mexicans to preserve their identity. It is a struggle that is intensifying with the growing Mexican/Latino population as they attempt to construct a counter-narrative. 6 The scapegoats are Mexican American programs in Arizona, Texas, and even liberal California. 7 It is no accident that these programs and the immigrants themselves are seen as threats.
Representative of the dominant narrative is the documentary Waiting for Superman premiered in 2010. Pushed by the nation’s plutocrats, it is an example of propaganda posing as fact; the documentary is reminiscent of World War II movies that demonized the enemy.8 University of Wisconsin professors Katy Swalwell and Michael W. Apple posit that “[d]ominant groups listen carefully to the language and issues that come from below,” and they then “creatively appropriate the language and issues” to fit their interests. They define the problems and the solutions interpreting the social world and designate the solution of “our” problems and who can fix them.9

Superman are the charter schools and the plutocrats that are pushing them; the villains are the unions and the teachers. In Arizona the good guys are white politicos, the snowbirds, and the Tea Party; the bad guys are the Mexicans—the aliens, that is, body snatchers. This infantile reductionism is possible because of the absence of a free and critical press that does not report or search for the truth. The rise of Donald Trump was possible because of a lack of critical commentary and a counter-narrative. The failure of critical thinking thus prevents an intelligent discussion.10 [In November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. He nominated Betsy DeVos, a Republican mega-donor to lead the Education Department. DeVos, fifty-eight, chaired the American Federation for Children that aggressively pushed charter schools and school voucher programs.11]
I began posting on Facebook in 2012 at the age of eighty to find a counter-narrative to test neoliberal assumptions that spewed all levels of contemporary society. I wanted to distinguish fact from fantasy by finding and exposing counter points of views. A thin line exists between what is true and what is imagined. I wanted to expand my base of knowledge, and Facebook in most cases represents oppositional viewpoints. Admittedly I also wanted to push a political agenda as well as support the Tucson Unified School District Save Ethnic Studies movement. While I definitely found the other side, I also found a lot of fake news that had to be corrected.12
The book’s first three chapters concentrate on Arizona; they are a refresher course on racism. Coming from California, I had not heard the words spic or greaser for some time. This exploration led me to ask why people want to forget and why they don’t want others to remember. One of the threads is Arizona’s sun, which can only be appreciated if you’ve spent a snowy winter on the east coast, in the Midwest, or in Western Europe. Arizona is a favorite refuge for elderly white retirees, popularly known as snowbirds. It is estimated that as many as four hundred thousand snowbirds live or visit Arizona permanently or seasonally. Drawn to the sunshine, they compete for space with large and small convention facilities across the state. Low-cost airfares also contribute to the in-migration.13 The snowbirds spend on medical care; most have health insurance and/or Medicare. Being old means they have more money than the younger Mexican population, and politicos ferry them to the polls on election days. Snowbirds vote and have money—that gives them power.14
A 2003–2004 Arizona State University study reported that during the visitor season, the snowbird population spent $1 billion; for a small state, that is considerable.15 The report also states that from January through March 2008, the peak winter-visiting season, the refugees spent $6 billion. 16 According to ex-Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, “Over the next 15 years, the average age of Arizona’s population will steadily rise. In fact, by 2020, one in four Arizonans will be over the age of 60.”17 In 2015, the population of Arizona was estimated at 6,828,065 persons, which is less than the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Blacks or African Americans were 4.8 percent; American Indian and Alaska Native, 5.3 percent; Asian, 3.4 percent; and Hispanic or Latino, 30.7 percent. The rumbling was already noticeable among the snowbirds who feared that they were losing their state to the Mexicans.18
Its size and historical presence shone a spotlight on the Mexican population, and whites panicked that they were taking over. A March 2014 study reported that the median age for whites was forty-five compared with twenty-five for Latinos, and that increased numbers of Latino voters were altering the shape of state politics.19 Whites were growing older and by 2010 the xenophobia became irrational.20 America’s Voice wrote, “Hispanic voters in Arizona have absorbed the brunt of the harsh political environment state Republicans crafted around immigration and Latino identity issues (e.g., language policy, ethnic studies, and voting rights).21
White news commentators said the anti-Mexican climate was “perfectly reasonable.” There was very little criticism of the new Supermen like the despotic Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the gun-toting beer-bellied white males who strut through the streets. Just like vampire movies scared viewers, the Mexican threat was propagated to scare the snowbirds into voting and contributing to the Republican Party. They felt that the Supermen would protect the snowbirds, who felt safe seeing white men strutting around with holstered pistols. Meanwhile, the xenophobes exaggerated the impact of immigration, and they worked to erase the community’s historical memory.
The first three chapters of the book are about the struggle to remember and to preserve the community’s collective historical memory. 22 With age, the importance of a collective historical memory becomes more pressing. Memory is very personal and you remember what others have told you about history and find yourself referencing the present with what you learned about the past.23 As a historian, for instance, I remember the 1921 and 1930s’ repatriations of Mexicans and the assaults on the foreign-born in the 1960s and 1980s and reference them to today. This memory is further enhanced by talking to friends and relatives. Walks through communities give a sense of place and bring back memories.24 Remembering is important, and the value of history is the creation of a collective historical memory. 25
The purpose of the culture wars is to erase memory: “Collective memory is a product of ideological construction that can be used as a key element in the elaboration of collective identity.”26 An interactive process gives political and social significance to events. It is linked to an awareness of a collective past. In the absence of a written history, memory is preserved by the members of the community through various methods.27
The struggles of the past five or six years show how the dominant society benefits from the control or erasure of minorities’ collective historical memory. National and local ruling elites use misconceptions and misunderstandings as part of the erasure process. The erasure keeps the dominant structure intact and allows the socialization of individuals within the minority community.28 Simone de Beauvoir in The Ethics of Ambiguity writes, “[T]he oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed themselves; mystification is one of the forms of oppression.”29 Arizona and California are no different and are riddled with collaborators of all definitions. The disaffected seek legitimacy through an unconscious and even open collaboration.
This book is not written for academics; it is for students and community folk. Meta-language is great, but you may not be connecting with your intended reader. A street dude may get a lot more from graffiti images than from an elaborately constructed word puzzle. Historical photos make memories vivid; they invite the reader to break down his or her thoughts. Language is a weapon; it is used to maintain social control thus it is essential to take back a narrative closer to the truth. White radicals during the 1960s were being beaten up by gang kids in the housing projects because they believed party members were talking down to them by using terms such as “historical materialism.” If people do not understand you, it is your fault. As Rotker put it, “The mode of representing reality is usually much more important than reality itself.”30
The first chapter deals with 2010. It had been formed by the aftershocks of the George W. Bush years and the widening income inequality that further marginalized Mexican Americans and Latinas/os. America changed and for many it became a nation of lost dreams. The only ones who seemed to believe in America and its fictional dream were the immigrants who wanted in on the seduction of the American Dream and the super patriots. 31 Two themes recur: the struggle to save ethnic studies and the privatization of Arizona and higher education.
The year 2006 in terms immigration was historic; like California’s Proposition 187 (1994), it produced a generation of activists. By then it was clear that the immigrant community lost fear and like other oppressed people were fighting back by mounting massive protests in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, with smaller protests throughout the nation. 32 On April 10, 2006, millions of Latinos, many of whom were immigrants, took to the streets of 140 U.S. cities. It was one of a series of marches demonstrating that immigrants were tired of being afraid, tired of being intimidated by ICE and extralegal groups such as the Tea Party and minutemen. 33 After 2006, they could not, would not, be ignored. Immigrants had formed a collective memory or consciousness—they had no choice. The immigrant, like so many repressed minorities, came out of the closet. Within the immigrant community were the Dreamers who had been raised in the United States and found it natural to make human rights demands. Moreover, the Dreamers were a high tech generation using the Internet to communicate, and they were for the most part bilingual. 2008 was a presidential election year with U.S.-born Mexicans/Latinos making up 60 percent of the Latino population growth between 2000 and 2010.34
Assault on Mexican American Collective Memory, 2010–2015 is subtitled Swimming with Sharks to underscore the viciousness of the Republican and corporate establishment that infested the political waters with sharks, 35 which muffle and confuse calls for help. These sharks are a different breed from everyday street sharks. The sharks control memory to confuse the swimmers. In order to swim with the sharks, it is vital to preserve the collective memory of those trying to survive and not to let them forget how to swim, to keep the collective memory of others who have survived alive, and to expose the myth that they can individually swim with the sharks.
The author has spent three-quarters of his life in the Chicana/o movement and Chicana/o studies. His footprints resuscitate the collective memory that a community needs to defend itself from the sharks. This survival is important to me because they are the memories of my parents and their parents. I do not believe in a hereafter, so I know that I will be part of this world for as long as I am remembered. Death is being forgotten.
The rich and famous preserve their memories for as long as they can remain part of the community of sharks. They carve their names and their causes into buildings. The famous and the infamous write books to embellish their images, to make them appear to be Supermen. In order for them to be the protagonists, it is essential to wipe out the memories of the poor and the viciousness of the sharks. They destroy communities to control these memories, memories that warn people about the sharks, and the lives of the poor are blown away without a trace, like dust in the desert. Within a couple of generations, it is as if they never existed. Meanwhile, the rich appear as benefactors who give endowments, have buildings named after them, and have their portraits painted. The rich thus live forever. 36
In writing about Chicanas/os I benefited by coming from a stable home; life gives me the opportunity to chisel my footprints into stone. Publications mark my journey and record my memories. Admittedly these footprints meander. When was young and idealistic, I believed that Chicana/o studies would shift public discourse through the creation of Chicano thought. I believed that I could swim alone with the sharks. In 1969, however, I realized that few paid attention to or cared about U.S. Mexicans. Consider that Mesoamerican religions are among the few major world religions that have not been preserved.
The history of the Mexican American is transnational. Just like people it has no borders. Thus Mexico is always with us. The events of 2014 shook our illusions of México Lindo and it awakened us from illusions that we had a foot on each side of the border. The reality was that Mexico is a graveyard. The disappearance of the forty-three Ayotzinapa normalistas (normal school students) killed any moral authority that the Mexican state had. It also exposed American complicity in the moral decay of the Mexican state and civil society, and it highlighted the reality that México Lindo exists only in Mexican Americans’ minds. The reality is that the political process is an illusion created by political parties that “excite people” and give them hope that they can win peacefully without a revolution.
Mexican Americans are the oldest and most numerous of the Latino groups. This is partially because they have had more time to evolve within the system. Moreover, they share a two-thousand-mile border with the United States. Mexico is also the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in Latin America with a population of 127 million people. Democrats and Republicans delude them into thinking that they are political players and that their population will give them a share of economic and political bounties. 37 Our historical memory is being co-opted and warped by the media that sees history through the eyes of the so-called Hispanic leaders. Without any historical reflection, they erase the terms Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicana/o and substitute non-people words such as Hispanic and Latino. Meanwhile, many Chicana/o leaders have become cheerleaders for “Hispanic Power,” chanting, “We’re Number 1.”
Communities are trenches and firewalls that shield minorities from the sharks’ attempts to erase their collective memories and recollections of past struggles.38 When Mexican Americans and Latinos talk about a community, they generally refer to their barrio, their colonia. It can also refer to their nationality—their people, their paisanos/as. “To be part of a community, you have to be bonded with it and care about it. Love begins and ends with responsibility. The people in a community remember common struggles, they share memories, they remember past losses and victories, and rejoice and anguish with what went right and wrong.”39
Devon Peña often quotes Jacques Derrida: “Memory is a moral obligation, all the time.”40 Historical memory, specifically collective memory, is the subject of much of this book.41 The canons of most disciplines are similar. They center on sincerity, truthfulness, and accuracy. The problem is that professionals are human beings and many often bring their biases and their ambitions to their work. They are not impartial, they do not always tell the truth, and they do not differentiate between fact and opinion.

Rodolfo F. Acuña, a janitor and then a teacher in the Los Angeles City Schools from 1956–1965, earned a doctorate from the University of Southern California in Latin American Studies. In 1969, Acuña was the founding chair of Chicano Studies at San Fernando Valley State (today California State University Northridge), where he is now Professor Emeritus of Chicano Studies. His seminal work on Chicano history,Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, is in its 8th edition (Longman, 2015). He has also written three children’s books and, a prolific historian, always has another book in the works. Lexington Books (2017) is publisher of Assault on Mexican American Collective Memory, 2010–2015.

Footnotes follow after the break…

NOTES

1.    Susana Rotker, Captive Women: Oblivion and Memory inArgentina (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,2002), p. 2.
2.   El Proyecto Desaparecidos, Por la Memoria, la Verdad y la Justicia, http:// desaparecidos.org/arg/.
3. University of Minnesota Press, Captive Women: Oblivion and Memory in Argentina by Susan Rotker, University of Minnesota Press, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/ books/captive-women.
4.    Kevin Kemper, “Tribal Sovereignty Means Competition,Broadband Access, and Economic Development for IndianCountry: A Law and Economics Analysis of the Efficiency of the FCC’s Standing Rock Sioux Case,” Journal of Information Policy 3 (2013): 442–463. Harrison Berry,“Those Who Stand with Standing Rock in Idaho,” Boise Weekly, October 13, 2016,http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/those-who-stand-with-standing-rock-in-idaho/Content?oid=3910119. W. GeorgeLovell, “The Archive That Never Was: State Terror andHistorical Memory in Guatemala,” Geographical Review 103(2013): 199.
5. Kgomotso Masemola, “Synecdoche and Allegory in the Filmic Record of the Memory of African Genocide in John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener,” Journal of Literary Studies 30, no. 3 (2014): 67–77.
6. Allison Daniel Anders, “Circuits of Dominance in Education and Poverty: Control Logic and Counter Narrative,” The Urban Review 43, no. 4 (2011): 528–546.
7.    Allison Daniel Anders. 2011. “Circuits of Dominance inEducation and Poverty: Control Logic and Counter Narrative,” The Urban Review 43, no. 4: 528–546.
8. James Trier, “Challenging ‘Waiting for Superman’ through Detournement,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41,no. 2 (2013): 68–77. Allen Greenberg, “Commentary: Don’t Wait, Go Now to See ‘Waiting for Superman,’” Colorado Springs Business Journal, 2010 (CO).
9. Katy Swalwell and Michael Apple, Reviewing Policy:Starting the Wrong Conversations—The Public School Crisis and ‘Waiting for Superman.’” Educational Policy 25,no. 2 (2011): 368. Diane Ravitch, “How Billionaires Are Successfully Fooling Us into Destroying Public Education and Why Privatization Is a Terrible Idea,” Alternet, July 21,2016, http:// www.alternet.org/how-billionaires-are-successfully-fooling-us-destroying-public-education- and-why-privatization.
10. The Trump campaign in reality represents a return to the 1850s and the Know Nothing Party. It is a nativist party thatis anti-immigrant and American—as they define it.
11. Caitlin Emma and Michael Stratford, “Trump Selects DeVos as Education Secretary,” Politico, November 23,2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/betsy-devos-education- secretary-trump-231804.
12.  Bogdan Lepădatu, “The Age of Ghost-Modernism? The Neo-liberal Globalization Project vs. the Anti-GlobalizationCounter-Narrative: A Dialogic Inquiry,” Sfera Politicii (2010): 66–79. Peter Cohan, “Does Facebook Generate over HalfIts Ad Revenue from Fake News?” Forbes, November 25,2016,http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2016/11/25/does-facebook-generate-over-half-its-revenue-from-fake-news/?partner=yahootix#5ee1f6bb2f33.
13.  Mary Horton, “Arizona: Snowbirds Flock to Valley of the Sun,” Successful Meetings
37.5 (1988): 135. “The Rising Cost of Real Estate Hasn’t Kept Snowbirds from Making Their Annual Trek South; Many Are Investing in Affordable ‘Park Model’ Cottages, Which Are Being Set Up in Campgrounds and RV Resorts Across the Sunbelt; More Than 50,000 Snowbirds Will Spend the Winter of 2007 in Park Model Vacation Cottages, with Most Residing in Florida, Texas and Arizona, According to the Recreational Park Trailer Industry Association.” PRNewswire (2007): n/a. Doreen Daily, “Snowbirds’ Mecca:Yuma, Arizona, Is So Popular with RVers, Some Call It Home Year-Round,” Motorhome 38, no. 2 (2001): 36.
14.  Kenneth KH Chui, Steven A Cohen, and Elena N Naumova, “Snowbirds and Infection—New Phenomena in Pneumonia and Influenza Hospitalizations from Winter Migration of Older Adults: A Spatiotemporal Analysis.” BMC Public Health 11 (2011): 444. Doreen Daily, “Snowbirds’Mecca: Yuma, Arizona, Is So Popular with RVers.”
15.  Chris Coppola, “Tracking Snowbirds’ Financial Impact in Valley Tricky,” The Republic, January 20, 2015,http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2015/01/20/phoenix- area-snowbirds-easily-seen-tracking-financial-impact/22034575/.
16.  Coppola, “Tracking Snowbirds.”
17.  Janet Napolitano, “Aging 2020 Arizona’s Plan for an Aging Population,” Office of the Governor, State of Arizona,August 2005.
18.  “QuickFacts: Arizona,” U.S. Census,http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/ PST045215/04.
19.  America’s Voice, “Arizona Report: Latino Decisions,”March 2014, p. 3, http://www.latinodecisions.com/files/2413/9387/3160/Arizona_AV_Report.pdf.
20.  America’s Voice, “Arizona Report,” p. 10.
21.  America’s Voice, “Arizona Report,” p. 12.
22.  Martin Kusch, “Reflexivity, Relativism, Microhistory: ThreeDesiderata for Historical Epistemologies,” Erkenntnis 75, no.3 (2011): 483–494.
23.  Felipe Muller and Federico Bermejo, “The Historical and Lived Sources of Collective Memory,” Revista De Psicología31, no. 2 (2013): 247–264.
24.  Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History,” 2nd ed. (Cambridge: TheMIT Press, 1997).
25.  Ron W. Wilhelm, “Remembering Together: Reflectionson the Value of Collective Historical Memory,” Curriculumand Teaching Dialogue 11, no. 1–2 (2009): 23.
26.  Ines Gabel, “Historical Memory and Collective Identity:West Bank Settlers Reconstruct the Past,” Media CultureSociety 35 no. 2 (March 2013): 250–259.
27.  Felipe Muller and William Hirst, “Resistance to the Influences of Others: Limits to the Formation of a CollectiveMemory through Conversational Remembering,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, no. 5 (July 2010): 608–625.
28. Albert Doja, “Claude Lévi-Strauss at His Centennia:Toward a Future Anthropology,” Theory, Culture & Society25, no. 7–8 (2008): 321–340. William Mishler and Richard Rose, “Trust, Distrust and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations of Civil and Political Institutions in Post Communist Societies,” The Journal of Politics 59, no. 2 (May 1997):418–451.
29.  Simone de Beauvoir III, “The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity” in The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. BernardFrechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), e-book,https:// www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch03.htm.
30.  Rotker, Captive Women, p. 6.
31.  Rodolfo F. Acuña, “Losing Fear: Decade of Struggle and Hope,” in Occupied America, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson,2014).
32.  Rodolfo F. Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2015), chapter 16.
33.  Acuña, Occupied America, chapter 16.
34.  “The Mexican-American Boom: Births Overtake Immigration,” Pew Research Center, July 14, 2011,http://www.pewhispanic.org/2011/07/14/the-mexican-american-boom-brbirths- overtake-immigration/. JensManuel Krogstad and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Hispanic Nativity Shift,” Pew Research Center, April 29, 2014,http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/04/29/ hispanic-nativity-shift/. Kevin R. Johnson, and Bill Ong Hing, “The ImmigrantRights Marches of 2006 and the Prospects for a New Civil Rights Movement,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties LawReview 42, no. 1 (2007): 99–138.
35.  Peter H. Stone, “Watch Out, Dems: Sheldon Adelson andthe Koch Brothers Are Closer Than Ever,” Huffington Post,June 14, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/14/sheldon-adelson-koch-brothers_n_7563866.html.
36.  Witness the conservative think tanks and foundationendowed by the rich who get tan exemptions.
37.  Rodolfo F. Acuña, “Studying History in Translation,”mexmigration [blog], May 14, 2013,     http://mexmigration.blogspot.com/2013/05/acuna-on-writing-history.html.
38.  Rodolfo F. Acuña, “Dying Communities: ForgottenMemories,” LA Progressive, January 30, 2015,https://www.laprogressive.com/dying-communities/.
39.  Acuña, “Dying Communities, Forgotten Memories.”
40.  Jacques Derrida, “Deconstruction, Stanford PresidentialLectures in the Humanities and Arts,” Standford PresidentialLectures in the Humanities and Arts,http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/deconstruction.html.

41.  Rodolfo F. Acuña, “The Inconvenient Truth Erasure ofMemory,” Ethnos_Boriquen [blog], July 21, 2013,http://ethnosboriquen.blogspot.com/2013/07/style-definitions-table.html.

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