​by Patricia R. Bazán

​Editors’ Note: The original Spanish version of “Silencio” appeared in the anthology Nébulas peruanas, published by Grupo Editorial Caja Negra in Lima, Peru, in October of this year.

Despite the fact that her days were all the same, the sleeping pills helped her stay in the clouds, avoiding the shock of an undesirable reality. Alfonso had no choice but to take their daughters to the United States, where he would process their paperwork required to apply for permanent resident status. Nevertheless, she sometimes wondered if leaving her behind in Lima was a punishment for failing to obtain a tourist visa. She was still relishing her farewell at the airport with masochistic bitterness. For the love of her offspring, Gracia knew her tiny body had to find enough life to endure a great sacrifice. Her husband was clear: she had to cross the border if she ever wanted to lay eyes on them again.
 
The pills gave her a truce because they lengthened her life of an automaton. “Work like a bear, do something to kill time,” she repeated to herself. She didn’t even know how she was getting home: “See you tomorrow, mates”; the Metropolitan bus; walk three blocks and enter without being seen; go straight to your room; throw yourself on the bed surrounded by stuffed animals; fall into the void; a pill to fall asleep, then another, one more, a last one before finally passing out. The unexpected call broke her reverie; she felt compelled to answer, and a hopeful smile emerged from her lips: “Don’t worry, Gracie. I already spoke with Cristian and we have arranged that I will pick you up in Colorado.” Gracia. Full of grace. The grace of God. 
 
She carefully observed the room of her future pollero, the man who would guide her throughout the journey: The Peruvian flag of monumental proportions clumsily hung on the wall, a squalid coffee table artfully decorated and holding three pre-Inca huacos with gloomy faces; a colonial-style mirror with wooden borders on the opposite wall. The old furniture fought against the plastic laminate to free itself, a decoration that pointed to a life in transit, ready to flee at any moment. Just as she was beginning to nod-off, Cristian entered, greeted her, and went straight to the point: The journey would be arduous, long, and dangerous, but with a good chance of success. The future leader of the expedition was part of a silent and efficient network of experts in the border geography between Mexico and the United States. First, she would travel alone to Nicaragua, where she would meet her contact, who in turn would pick up future walkers from Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. The rest of the trip would be made by foot, boat, or in multiple vehicles through Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, until they reached their final destination: Phoenix.
 
Cristian stressed that, with the help of Providence, everything would be done in a sacred and inviolable silence. A sigh overtook her. She had kept silent all her life, and she didn’t mind continuing to do so, as long as she could see her daughters. Her mother was forced to remarry after her father abandoned them, an experience reflected in the dullness of her graceful eyes. Yet, she never said anything. She had mastered the art of remaining quiet with her head down, and perhaps at long last her silence would serve a purpose.
 
Her suitcase was almost empty to pretend like she was used to traveling. As planned, a Nicaraguan man, one of her many connections on the trip, was waiting outside, as was Cristian, the leader of her expedition. After a courteous greeting, they asked her to step aside in order to spot two other travelers. Gracia thought it would be the beginning of a ruthless journey, a journey her battered body would have to endure. Onward.
 
She considered that, apart from the vicissitudes life had thrown at her, she had had a happy childhood. On one occasion, she was sent to summer school to retake a math class, an excuse that justified a trip to the beach. She told her mother that classes were cancelled, but a classmate gave her away. She actually remembered very few details, as this episode had become somewhat nebulous over time. All it had left was the burning sensation associated with the slap’s imprints. A severe man, her stepfather administered harsh punishments, no matter how light the offense: strappings, slaps, kicking, and being made to eat with the dog on the floor. Her mother watched in cautious terror, as any attempt to protect her daughter would bring dire consequences for her and her youngest. Such long nights were also reserved for the wife, who would face the same repertoire of atonements for having failed to properly raise her daughters, with the added variation that he would make love to her on her reddened maternal body.
 
After a long wait, all twelve left the airport and boarded a minibus, traveling inland until they reached Chinandega, a city whose colonial value they did not have the opportunity to appreciate. That is because they arrived at the most impoverished part; dilapidated wooden houses, unpaved streets, and an intense dust that would welcome all foreigners. They spent the night in a one-room den, something that would become a constant. The next day two more arrived, then three, until the group was complete. There were eighteen: eight Peruvians, five Colombians, two Bolivians, and three Ecuadorians. Sixteen men, one of them lame, and two women. The eldest was sixty years old, and the youngest eighteen. The only other woman in the group was twenty-three years of age, married and childless. She was traveling with her father and her brother; she had left her husband back home in Peru and was excited about the idea of a reunion in El Norte. The Dirty Eighteen.
 
They remained there for a month. In the morning they would wash their clothes and the women cooked for the group, and when there was fried fish, it tasted like heaven. In the afternoon they would either go to the market or to the beach, play soccer, and eat only once a day to stretch the little money they had on them, as if to keep themselves slim. At night they rested on the ground on rickety mats, covered in stained sheets that had seen better days, being careful not to be stung by snakes or scorpions. By now, everyone had mastered the art of communication without uttering a single word. The septic tank was a lair of huge flying cockroaches that would land at night on the visitors’ bodies, only to be plucked during the day from their heads, the palms of their hands, and from in-between their legs. The worst affected were always the unfortunate who slept with gaping mouths. During the time that she remained in this little town abandoned by God and immigration, Gracia could not sleep, not just because she missed her pills, but because the constant effort to protect herself from the formidable brigade of winged insects was eating at her state of mind. The kindness and smiles of the townspeople, however, inspired an inexplicable tranquility.
 
To pass the time away, they would sometimes gather and play cards, making bets on the soap. That was how Gracia came to learn about the lives of the other travelers, fictional lives they had invented to protect themselves from the unknown. Eighteen fabrications, all interwoven by silence and despair. One boasted of having been a sailor who had traveled to Japan where, according to him, he had left several girlfriends; another made up the story of having killed his wife’s lover for being unfaithful, leaving him no choice but to escape from Ecuador; Gracia recounted that her husband had taken away her two daughters for contracting AIDS in one of her many illicit love affairs, a lie that would prevent her from being raped; a certain Ángel told he had a talent for soccer and swore that one day he would be part of the El Norte national team; one named Sebastián, stocky, with straight hair, dark-skinned and who wore glasses, nicknamed El Feo, and with good reason, said that he would meet his girlfriend in Seattle and get married as soon as he arrived in order to conceive children who wouldn’t be as ugly as he. Each story was part of a transparent and sinister tapestry of eighteen intertwined pieces with a sole objective: in El Norte they would be reborn from the ashes of a merciless desert, and its ruthlessly effective police.
 
Cristian distributed the group in such a way that Sebastián would always stay close to Gracia and protect her. She had deteriorated to the point of looking scrawny, ailing, and unthreatening in appearance as a shield against the harsh and inhospitable reality that awaited her. El Feo became her guardian angel; all the others slept in the same fetal position, night after night, like mummies, with the strange premonition of having embarked on an endless journey.
 
At the end of the month, Cristian announced that they would soon leave for the port of La Unión in El Salvador, but not before demanding that they accept their invisibility from then on. They got up early, carefully folded their mats and donned their life jackets before boarding the speedboat where they traveled at a very velocity for two hours, dodging immigration boats. Suddenly, one of the Bolivians unintentionally undid the rope to which he was tied and flew away while the others witnessed his involuntary release, stunned by his unexpected wet death. Gracia would never forget Cristian’s face when the unhappy traveler disappeared; in a matter of seconds, he had lost five-thousand dollars. Once at their destination, the travelers jumped off the boat and dragged themselves to the shore with their backpacks. They did not know if the moisture on their faces was due to the sorrow of having lost a traveling partner or the freshness of the sea water. They arrived at eleven in the morning and began an endless walk. Invisible. Illegal. Silent. Now they were seventeen, doomed.
 
They walked to the border of the mountains where they moved in a single row, becoming one with the soil when the helicopters descended in search of inopportune travelers. It was difficult to distinguish if the fear came from the threatening noise of the propellers or from the supernatural mosquitoes that slipped through their clothes stealthily, without offering them the opportunity to defend themselves, daring them to remain immobile. It was six in the evening when they arrived at a cottage in an abandoned town where they would stay for forty-eight hours. Wet and sandy, the rancher smeared them with horse dung as protection against the flying monsters, holding their breath to avoid contact with the fetid smell. Life was not offering them a truce, but they were closer to El Norte.
 
Gracia had cuts and bites on her legs and feet, and her private parts were scalded from the endless journey in wet clothes. She only had ten dollars, but she was wearing a silver bracelet and earrings, a gift Alfonso had given her for their marriage. The owner asked for them in exchange for clean water and ointments for the wounds on her feet as the nearest pharmacy and well were ten hours away. She spent the night as best she could with four others in the same bed with their feet dangling. A few hours later, two vehicles arrived and they were placed, one on top of the other like a sack of potatoes, covered with a tarpaulin, so they would not arouse suspicion:

“If the women want, they can get in the front to be more comfortable…”
 
They formed a human wall, and the men in the group refused to hand Gracia and their traveling companions over to the predatory hyenas. They would rather endure the body heat and the dust than be separated from the group; the collective silence had taught them to distinguish individual breaths, one more method of protection, they thought. When they arrived at a mechanic’s workshop, they were put in two rooms filled with newspapers that served as beds. Those who had money sent for food and shared it with the others, and that’s how they spent three days in a village where even the souls had vanished. At dawn, a laconic one-armed man came and gave a simple command:
 
“Follow me.”
 
He was the driver who would transport them to the border with Mexico. They got into the truck and huddled together as usual. He dropped them off at the border and they walked all night. They crossed mountains, agricultural fields, and farms; they kneaded the cow dung and felt a merciless cold inside their veins. They were invisible, even to animals. They slept outdoors, one next to the other, with their backpacks, and the only change of clothes they had. One for all, all for one.
 
Around ten in the morning, a truck pulled up, and they proceeded to get in, one by one, where they would sit, regimented, and squashed together to make room for the next partner. They rested despite the numbness caused by the other bodies’ proximity. They did not know when they crossed the great city of Guatemala, but when they saw the small room of their seedy hotel, they knew that they had reached their next destination. They ended up three in a bed, had three meals a day and bathed in hot water. Such luxuries came at a high price: Cristian asked them to burn their passports. Now there was no longer any doubt about their invisibility. To protect the two women, the leader of the expedition took the fifteen men to different brothels and in groups of three. He woke them all up at the crack of dawn because they had to be prepared in case they were arrested. They would imitate the intonation, become familiar with a few customs, and learn a national anthem that mattered very little to them, just to pass as Guatemalan.
 
They made the journey to Mexico in a public bus, but not before hearing a recommendation from the guide: if they were captured, they would return to their country, but they would do so alone, without implicating their partners. They stopped in front of a security booth, then Gracia had a panic attack, leaving her with no other recourse than to hold on to the Mexican man next to her. Without saying a single word, the stranger understood, nodded, and took her hand. She was relieved. The seventeen passed immigration control without a problem, and when they got off, they shared a mutual smile: they were in Mexico. They would meet their driver in Chiapas once they took a good bath and had something to eat. Before leaving, Cristian gave Gracia three-thousand dollars in a paper bag to bribe the immigration agents in case they were detained, and addressed the group:
 
“From now on you will meet several polleros. No matter what, don’t accept any packages, and much less cell phones, because they may contain drugs or a trap to reveal your location. Even though we will cross several Mexican highways during off-peak hours, silence will save your life and will continue to be your best friend. As soon as I give the signal, you throw your backpack first through the barbed fence and quickly run across the road. If you don’t want to be caught, you have to be quick.”
 
They set off on the journey, and after a couple of hours, one by one began to jump out of the Ford, bouncing like beach-balls and at the risk of breaking their bones. Weak as she was, Gracia didn’t land safely, and fell into a dung-filled puddle, becoming covered with mud. Since she didn’t have another set of clothes, she moved on, having to deal with her fellow travelers’ faces of revulsion. Once on the other side of the road, they waited for the car that would pick them up after a signal. Her life was at stake, and speed was of the essence. Gracia and five others ended up in a VW Beetle; rotten in filth as she was, she sat on a fellow traveler’s lap. The trip to the outskirts of the Federal District seemed like an eternity, until they finally spotted a large house on the horizon. The pollero offered her clean clothes and allowed the women to bathe first. Their faces were calm; not so much because they were closer to El Norte, but because they couldn’t stand Gracia’s stench. To the surprise of the other seventeen, that night more than fifty other travelers joined the group. Gracia observed the new arrivals with sadness: pregnant women, some with babies in their arms, elderly, nearly blind men, orphaned children, and adolescents. For the first time in her life, the man with a limp didn’t feel out of place. Everyone was crying, everyone except Gracia. At a tender age she had learned that tears were not to be wasted and should be reserved for special occasions. They scattered the next morning.
 
Upon arriving in Mexico City, the pollero informed them that they would take the subway to Guadalajara. They ended up in the home of a woman in a wheelchair ho rented rooms on the third floor to smugglers in transit. They couldn’t go out; they cooked at the house and shared two rooms; one for the women, and one for the men. The house was large, and the widow lived with her daughter, a pretty fifteen-year-old girl quite precocious for her age, who immediately fell in love with one of the boy travelers. Desperate to escape her fate, she reserved herself for someone who wanted to take her, and she flirted with anyone who would pay attention. Noticing the concupiscent eyes of her young traveling partner, Gracia asked him to feel sorry for the conditions in which the owner of the house lived; after all, she was helping them. “If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be able to cross; no matter how much the girl insinuates herself, respect her,” she advocated. In the end, the boy chose to cross the border rather than to become involved with the girl.
 
The terror of being reported was a key factor: if the owner found out that her daughter had been touched, they would all end up in jail and one step away from deportation. When they went to sleep, Gracia discovered that the boys had jokingly entered her room. Wasting no time, she grabbed one of her trucker boots: they couldn’t yell or ask for help because they would end up at the police station:
 
“Hey asshole, what’s wrong with you?!!! I don’t like you being in my bed. Moron! Don’t you know that I have AIDS and that I can infect you?” she said while hitting him on the head.

“Don’t hit me like that, my head hurts!” said the scoundrel, as he fled to the adjacent room, where his minions were waiting for him.
 
They left them alone and apologized as soon as they got up: “That was a close shave,” Gracia murmured in relief. At dawn they began a longer stretch than the usual and crossed Guadalajara until they stopped at Villa Hermosa, a shantytown on the outskirts of the city. A seedy camp awaited them, with only one toilet, no water, where everyone defecated and left their shining fresh lumps of excrement, scenting the outdoor shower. Six boys slept on a couple of bunks, while Sebastián laid on the ground next to Gracia. They slept like this until it was time to cross. Of Cristian’s group, El Feo was the first to disappear and Gracia the first to notice his absence; she felt helpless without him. The next day six more left. The destination was Piedra Lisa in New Mexico; there, Cristian would contact some relatives to release a few, slowly but surely, once the debt was paid off. Gracia went out with eight men and the other woman in the group to take a bus. Suddenly they were stopped by an immigration officer. Cristian had warned them that all of Mexico was swarming with police officers due to pressure from the United States. They pretended to be asleep, and with deep sadness, they witnessed their own arrest. “Fifteen-thousand dollars lost,” Gracia muttered. Moving on. The wandering seventeen.
 
Once at the police station, she began to cry out of powerlessness and then remembered the three-thousand dollars Cristian had given her to bribe the immigration officers. The fear that the agents inspired in her was so great that she saw them as towering, ferocious, and ignominious. She gathered herself and thought clearly. They separated her from her companions and a female officer took her to a cold and dark room where she had to undress; The officer’s jaw dropped: Gracia’s belly was protruding, and she looked pregnant. Years later she would remember how her abdomen, the product of so many Peruvian potatoes and rice, would save her life.
 
“Do you bring something in your private parts? Are you clear? You don’t have anything? Where are you going?” the agent asked.
 
“I’m on vacation with my husband. I don’t bring much, I’ve been told that Mexico is a dangerous place so I’m travelling lightly, but I have my money. Once we visit our relatives, we return to Guatemala,” Gracia replied, imitating the Guatemalan intonation.
 
“You better. This is no place for illegals here. There are too many and we don’t want you either!” concluded the officer.
 
They released them and sent them back penniless to Villa Hermosa where they found out that some of their traveling companions had been deported. At least something good came out of Cristian’s three thousand dollars. It was at this precise moment that she understood that her silence was a gift rather than a curse. When they left, Cristian took them to a clean and safe house where they stayed until January first. They sent for a roasted turkey, and for the first time, they drank tequila, delicacies that anticipated the most dangerous part of the trip: crossing the desert on the outskirts of Phoenix, a savannah that required black clothing for camouflaging in order to become one with the desert. They left their last lodging in Mexico at night for a bus stop that would leave them at a precise point to cross the border into Arizona.
 
The trip lasted six hours in total silence, dressed in black, in the darkness. The mist was thick, and on the horizon, there was a piercing light that guided them on the abandoned road they were traveling. Suddenly, the vehicle stopped and, one by one, they began to fly off in whichever direction they could. When it was her turn, Gracia, confused, didn’t know where to run. She froze and after a few seconds she realized that truck had moved on; she was in the middle of nowhere, alone with her terror. She was left facing the gray density and unable to scream because her silence had eaten her words before leaving. At that moment, an energy transformed into matter invaded her, seized her hand vigorously, and forced her to follow it. She was frightened to death: convinced that she had penetrated the unknown, she resigned herself. In the midst of this nebulous episode, she remembered Alfonso’s premonitory words: “Gracie, honey; I don’t want to scare you, but if there comes a time when they are going to rape you, leave it alone, cooperate, the more you resist, the more damage they will do to you.” She let herself be swept away by the guiding hand, felt a wooden bridge under her feet, scrambled over huge boulders, thinking she was going to an inescapable end. She continued. Once the mist cleared, Gracia realized that she was safe: the hand released hers and left. She noticed a field with many stones, typical desert stones. Her loneliness was immeasurable.
 
Little by little she began to distinguish a myriad of men, women, adolescents, children, and elderly people sprouting from the stones. Human rocks. She leaned back on something hard and immediately felt a warmth: the rock took off its mask, revealing a familiar smile. Both the man with a limp and Gracia greeted the dawn with pouring rain, and it was then that they understood the reason for the term mojado, a word invented by the rain itself as a symbol of solidarity with those who cross the desert. She felt calmer and settled in with the group, hugging the black garbage bag that Cristian had given to each of them before leaving. The sixteen pilgrims became forty-six; they were Indians, Brazilians, Europeans, Africans, and Chinese: they had crossed the border. Gracia felt an unknown tear invading her face, only this time it was not caused by a humiliating slap on the face, but by the joy of being alive. Upon resuming the trip, Gracia faced the immensity of the desert, knowing that she would remain stagnant since her aching body would not cooperate. She was stumping through mud, stumbling, physically and emotionally exhausted. She gave up twice because the cramps had taken hold of her legs until she heard the pronouncement of the main pollero:
 
“If this woman can’t keep up with us, we have to leave her behind.”
 
Her partners refused: “She is going to continue walking.” The water ran out due to the number of travelers; they resisted until the last moment to carefully drink it and savor it to the last molecule. At nightfall they threw themselves into the arms of the vast sheet of arid land and Gracia felt sick again. She had chills, a headache, and her wet blankets did not provide her any relief. She still had a long way to go, and six specialized smugglers had arrived to cross the desert as the group had grown. They had to move. In a curt and insensitive way, one of the polleros stated:


“We have to continue to the other side of those mountains. We walk during the day and sleep at night in the desert.”
 
Cristian and two other polleros led the group while the remaining four carried huge backpacks containing thick blankets, pallets, telephones, and” supplies, and withdrawing from the group at night. The polleros slept comfortably and the mojados with their garbage bags. The women had the option of sleeping in their camp, but the men begged them to stay. They protected themselves in silence. When the smugglers sensed the flight of a helicopter or a small plane, they immediately shouted: “Pretend to be a ball and don’t move.” In the distance they looked like stones, and the darkness protected them. They were stones day and night. They walked like this for three days, sensing that the desert was their magnanimous mother. Gracia began to vomit and between the pain she became delirious, “I want to continue. Give me a drug or something, give it to me because I want to continue, I have to see my daughters.” Someone gave her a Coca-Cola and her traveling partners donated their ration of bread to force it onto her, thus giving her energy. Her bleeding feet were about to burst from the blisters, but her will was stronger. Through Cristian, Gracia found out that Sebastián had been captured on an interstate in Phoenix and was going back to Mexico; she had no one. She was completely sickly and when he saw her, the lame man was the first to offer to carry her on his back: “No, you are not going to stay here!” and so they moved on; everyone took turns carrying her, and at the end of the day they would put her on a blanket to rest. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the last hill and Gracia gave up; they decided to leave her.
 
Cristian asked that they take him and Gracia to the first ranch they found, “I don’t want this woman’s death on me here,” he said. Six carried her, making sure they were not seen when the house’s sixty-two guard dogs came out to greet them, and they all fled to hide behind a broken truck. Once the mojados left, Cristian cried for help: they gave themselves up. An hour later, a blonde, blue-eyed agent came in a truck; he examined her, she had a fever and was crying, “Please I need to see a doctor.” Cristian declared: “I am her friend, and I could not leave her alone.” In flawless Spanish, the immigration officer asked if she was pregnant. “I need to take a shower,” she replied as she removed the blood-soaked washcloth. He took her information and brought them to the border near Nuevo Laredo so she could see a doctor. They went to a nearby pharmacy where they gave her medicine for pneumonia. “Don’t try to cross the border into the United States, please,” the blonde officer advised them and politely said goodbye.
 
They arrived at a hotel, she bathed, took her medicines, and slept like a log. “I’m not going to last, I can’t walk. I’m going back to Peru, Cristian. Thanks for everything.”
 
“Your husband is willing to pay, I can’t keep losing any more money. Besides, I like you,” the guide answered while he dialed a number. They went to a house where she slept on the floor: there she found Sebastián, now recovering from a heat stroke. Through his contacts, Cristian obtained false documents to enter the United States and taught him a little Mexican Spanish. Two days later, he introduced her to a pollera who had three young daughters and made Gracia their aunt. “So long as they don’t ask you, don’t say anything,” the mother advised. They got into the Mercedes Benz and Gracia caressed the girls as if they were her own. Arriving at the checkpoint, the woman explained in perfect English: “I am going to McDonald’s with my family.” The sounds of the English language sounded like a heavenly hymn to Gracia. They passed and, after eating, the woman left her at a young couple’s home. The next day, she was sent to Colorado, where Alfonso was waiting for her.
 
Gracia never saw Sebastián again, but she found out from Cristian that he, the lame man, the self-confident man who threw himself into her bed, and the Peruvian woman who was traveling with her brother and father had crossed with thirty-six other travelers. They were now gringos and they paid true homage to the phoenix: they had been reborn. It was the last trip that Cristian carried out before retiring and marrying Lauren, his girlfriend of ten years. Later on, Gracia read in the newspapers that two of the polleros ended up in Mexican jails, one for raping and the other for using illegal immigrants as mules. The travelers opted for oblivion and the experience died with them, aware of having been marked for life.
 
Thirty years after that inconceivable test, Gracia still remembered the protagonists of the nébula that had defined her existence forever. From the window of her house in Forest Hills, and before taking a sip of tea, she whispered: “Thank you, Silencio.”

Patricia R. Bazan was born in Lima, Peru. She arrived in the United States at the age of twenty-one and has been residing there for over forty years. She is a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, specializing in Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as multicultural, interdisciplinary, and Latino studies.
 
Despite having a successful academic career, her true vocation lies in writing. For the past few years, Bazan has been writing semi-autobiographical fiction. With this purpose in mind, she published Cinco nébulas de obsesión. Estelas de vida y muerte (2019) and Lazarillo en Londres (2022).
 
In the fall of this year, Nébulas peruanas, Bazan’s second collection of short stories, will be released. The themes of reincarnation, the Spanish conquest, social inequality in Latin America, the presence of the United States in Peru, and tales of the undocumented permeate the entire narrative.

PREFACE
 
A major problem facing marginalized communities, and in our case the Hispanic community, is that since childhood we have been taught to see and interpret reality through the eyes of the dominant culture. For those within the community who pursue scholastic endeavors, the success that is to be rewarded with a doctorate is determined by mastery of the predominant Eurocentric academic canon. Hispanic contributions to the discourse are usually dismissed as nonessential in demonstrating academic excellence. This is evidenced by the numerous scholars in the U.S. who have little or no knowledge of the scholarship taking place among Latino/as.
 
The triumph of the colonizing process is best demonstrated when scholars of color define themselves and their disenfranchised communities through academic paradigms that contribute to their marginalization. Latina/o ethicists are forced to exhibit academic rigor through the use of ethical models that more often than not are incapable of liberating oppressed communities. These scholars are forced, in a sense, to pour liberative wine into the old Eurocentric ethics skins.
 
To do so, as Jesus points out, causes the skins to burst and the liberative message to be lost. We Hispanics must pour our own liberative wine into our own ethical paradigms so that both can be preserved together and used by our community, which thirsts to drink this Good News. As José Martí, who needs no introduction among Latina/os, reminds us: “Nuestro vino de plátano, y si es agrio, es nuestro vino.”
 
The view of the ethical landscape from the pedestal of privilege is radically different than the view from the depths of disenfranchisement. This book challenges the prevailing assumption within the discipline of Christian ethics that the present scholarly landscape, rooted in Eurocentric thought, is the pinnacle of academic excellence.
 
According to that assumption, held by Eurocentric ethicists, the particularity of scholarship emanating from non-Eurocentric communities, as in the case of Latina/o-rooted ethical paradigms, threatens to weaken the prevailing so-called academic rigor. Voices from the Hispanic community may be needed to show diversity and political correctness, but they must be kept at bay lest they actually influence the discourse. The old wineskins of Eurocentric ethics are based on the presupposition that religion as a discipline is rooted in a nineteenth-century European definition of what education of religion should be. Even though our postmodern conversations may have persuaded the academy to reject such metanarratives, they are still enforced, determining who is “in” (academically rigorous) and who is “out” (has an interesting perspective but lacks academic excellence).
 
Excellence, that is, continues to mean Eurocentrism. Eurocentric thought, unconscious of how the discipline of religion has been racialized, claims to exemplify a color-blind excellence in scholarship for all of humanity. By its very nature, Eurocentric ethical theory maintains that universal moral norms can be achieved independent of place, time, or people group. Such ethical norms created by Euroamerican ethicists are accepted as both universal and objective, and thus applicable to the Latino/a milieu.
 
To speak from any Eurocentric perspective is to speak about and for all of humanity, including Hispanics. For this reason, Euroamerican scholars can become experts in the particularity of the cultures of Other, that is, those communities that are deemed “less than white.” Ironically, scholars of color have the particularity of their analysis reduced to subjectivity—to interesting perspectives that fall short of rigor, regardless of how meticulous their scholarship may actually be.
 
Because whiteness is understood and defined as universal, the insights of scholars of color are often institutionally relegated to a realm lacking any universal gravitas. Nevertheless, marginalized communities of color have long recognized that no ethical perspective is value free. The subjectivity of Eurocentric ethical thought can be lifted by the academy to universal objectivity because the academy retains the power to define a reality that secures and protects their scholastic privilege. Reduced to a phenotype-based expertise, scholars of color are expected to dwell exclusively in the areas of study bordered by their race or ethnicity. Experts in the particular, they are neither expected nor encouraged to speak with authority about Eurocentric thought.
 
Reduced to and trapped within their race or ethnicity, scholars of color are geared to the particular, where they are continually forced to speak to the center, always attempting to justify their right to exist and the importance of contributions they can make to the overall discourse. And if a Hispanic ethicist were to become an authority on Euroamerican ethicists like Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, or Stanley Hauerwas, she or he would be viewed as an oddity if not aping, for after all, shouldn’t all Latina/os just study Hispanic religiosity?
 
Hispanic scholars who dare to assess critically the works of formative Euroamerican ethicists face having their critique dismissed. The Latina/o scholar will either be accused of conducting a “thin” reading of the primary texts or be caricatured as angry. As tempting as it may be to level such a critique against Hispanic scholars who challenge the Eurocentric canon, it is important to refrain. Even though the Hispanic ethicist may be portrayed as lacking intelligence or simply hostile, he or she does provide a “double-consciousness” that is capable of revealing what those blinded by their privileged status miss.
 
As a corrective measure, this book will attempt to create new skins for our liberative wine by using the tools and materials indigenous to our “Latinoness.” But before we are able to use our own Hispanic ethic skins, we must explain why the Eurocentric ethic skins are inadequate—why they will burst. To that end, we will read Euroamerican ethicists “with Hispanic eyes,” seeing, maybe for the first time, how dominant groups have historically constructed ethics to suit their needs and protect their privilege.
 
The first half of the book will attempt to deconstruct Eurocentric ethical paradigms to demonstrate why they are both detrimental to and irreconcilable with the Hispanic social location. When such paradigms bring suffering, oppression, and death (literally and figuratively) to the Hispanic community, they must be rejected. Nevertheless, the best of mestizaje, our cultural mixture, recognizes the European part of our identity and the ambiguity and irony this creates when we deal with Eurocentric ethical paradigms. Hispanics recognize that even what we should reject in our identity is part of who we are as a people. The challenge is how to delineate and reject those parts of Eurocentric ethics with which there can be no compromise or reconciliation (e.g., complicity with the U.S. Empire) and move beyond those segments of Eurocentric analysis with which we can converse.
 
The second half of this book will attempt to construct a new Hispanic-centered ethical paradigm rooted in our community way of being. The hope is not only to articulate aspects of how we historically have conducted ethics, but also to examine possible future directions. We search for a dynamic ethics that is not only living, but also lived. This is a Latina/o ethics based on praxis that pursues social justice, here understood as creating harmony within social structures by countering and correcting the undue power and privilege held by the few at the expense of the many.

​Miguel A. De La Torre is Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. His academic focus is on social ethics within contemporary U.S. thought, specifically how religion affects race, class, and gender oppression. He served as the 2012 President of the Society of Christian Ethics and earned the 2020 AAR Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2021 Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award. Recently, he wrote the screenplay to a documentary on immigration (http://www.trailsofhopeandterrorthemovie.com/) and has written an autofiction magical realism novel. His website is: http://drmigueldelatorre.com/.

A una anciana

Venga, madre— 
         su rebozo arrastra telaraña negra
         y sus enaguas le enredan los tobillos;
apoya el peso de sus años
en trémulo bastón y sus manos temblorosas
empujan sobre el mostrador centavos sudados.
¿Aún todavía ve, viejecita,
la jara de su aguja arrastrando colores?
         Las flores que borda
         con hilazas de a tres-por-diez
no se marchitan tan pronto como las hojas del tiempo.
         ¿Qué cosas recuerda?
Su boca parece constantemente saborear
los restos de años rellenos de miel.
         ¿Dónde están los hijos que parió?
¿Hablan ahora solamente inglés
y dicen que son hispanos?
         Sé que un día no vendrá
         a pedirme que le que escoja
         los matices que ya no puede ver.
Sé que esperaré en vano
         su bendición desdentada.
Miraré hacia la calle polvorienta
refrescada por alas de paloma
hasta que un chiquillo mugroso me jale de la manga
y me pregunte:
                                    — Señor, jau mach is dis? --

To an Old Woman

Come, mother— 
         your rebozo trails a black web
         and your hem catches on your heels,
you lean the burden of your years
on shaky cane, and palsied hand pushes
sweat-grimed pennies on the counter.
Can you still see, old woman,
the darting color-trailed needle of your trade?
         The flowers you embroider
         with three-for-a-dime threads
cannot fade as quickly as the leaves of time.
         What things do you remember?
Your mouth seems to be forever tasting
the residue of nectar hearted years.
Where are the sons you bore?
         Do they speak only English now
         and say they’re Spanish?
One day I know you will not come
and ask for me to pick
the colors you can no longer see.
         I know I’ll wait in vain
for your toothless benediction.
         I’ll look into the dusty street
         made cool by pigeons’ wings
until a dirty kid will nudge me and say:
                  “Señor, how mach ees thees?”
 
 — RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ
© 2022 BY RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ

Nací y me creé en El Paso, Texas con familia a través del Río Bravo en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua y la identidad se convertía cada vez más en un problema. El español era mi primera lengua y hasta los mediados de los 1960s cuando me convertí en chicano, era simplemente mexicano aunque sabía que era ciudadano de los Estados Unidos de América. Aun hoy en día cuando se me pregunta, “¿Qué eres?” mi respuesta inmediata es “mexicano” aunque cuando estoy más alerta digo, “Chicano.” Aunque cuando se me pregunta, “Cual es tu ciudadanía” no titubeo en absoluto.
 
No aprendí inglés hasta los siete en la escuela pública Lamar y a principio no fue fácil. Ya leía y escribía básicamente en español y el sonido impredecible de las mismas letras en inglés me confundía. Estuve en la oscuridad la mayor parte del tiempo. Un día mi madre con mi hermanito me acompañó a la escuela y se fueron a casa de mis abuelos a unas cuadras de distancia. Me encontré en un patio de recreo totalmente vacío, las puertas de la escuela cerradas. Estuve aterrorizado. Caminé de regreso a una casa vacía. Me senté en el portal confundido, asustado, sólo hasta que mi madre y abuela vinieron con mi hermanito y me cubrieron de abrazos y besos. La maestra había anunciado un día de fiesta pero yo no había entendido.
 
No ayudaba que fuéramos castigados si se nos escuchaba hablar español en la aula, los corredores o el patio de recreo. Si le preguntábamos a un compañero de clase, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” se nos hacía pararnos en un rincón o nos mantenían después de clase. Tengo la distinción de haber reprobado el primer grado. Sobresalía en dibujo y pintura y recuerdo a una amable maestra, la Sra. Hall en cuarto grado, que me elogió y animó. Pero el director recomendó que mis padres nos llevaran a mí y a mi hermano Arturo (dos años menor que yo) a la Escuela Bailey para niños “retrasados.”
 
Mi padre lo hizo y el director de la Escuela Bailey que no pudo habernos tenido allí más de treinta minutos, le dijo a mi padre que no pertenecíamos allí y recomendó que nos cambiara de escuela. Mis padres se endeudaron y compraron su primera y única casa para que pudiéramos cambiar de distritos e ir a la escuela pública Morehead donde nuestros problemas desaparecieron. (Dos maestras se destacan: la Sra. Patricia Robinson, maestra de arte que hablaba excelente español e invitaba a algunos estudiantes a su casa para dibujar y pintar. Y la Srta. Mary Hignett, maestra de inglés, con quien hice amigos en mis años universitarios hasta su muerte.)

Para entonces en 1950 me había ajustado, aculturado si quiere; no fui asimilado (lo que para mí tiene la connotación de ser masticado, tragado y digerido). Para mí, el lenguaje ha sido una piedra de toque de asimilación. El indio mexicano yo había sido asimilado hacía mucho tiempo; mi abuelo materno Papanito, don Diego González Sosa a excepción por su color y facciones y su decir que éramos indio no hablaba lengua indígena para indicarlo sino solo un castellano formal. El mexicano mestizo yo, no así. Fui bendecido con padres, Jesús Fidel González de Coahuila y Carmen González Prieto de Durango, (traídos a los EE.UU. a los 13 y 12 años respetivamente) quienes siempre insistieron en que habláramos y escribiéramos tanto en español como en inglés. Tomé cursos en español durante la escuela secundaria y me gradué de la universidad con un bachillerato en literatura inglesa con suficientes horas en literatura española para una doble especialización. En una ironía del destino, he pasado la mayor parte de mi vida como profesor de inglés en universidades y colegios.
 
Resistir la asimilación es una lucha, especialmente en un imperio que impone su hegemonía (militar, económica, política, lingüística, cultural) en el mundo. Toda mi vida he tenido que defender aun mi nombre. Personas que deberían saber más insisten en escribir Rafael, Raphael (la ph no existe en español), omitir los acentos en Jesús y González y escribir González con S. Y algunos han tenido el descaro de dirigirse a mí como Ralph, entre ellos S. I. Hayakawa, un lingüista japonés-canadiense, firme oponente a la educación bilingüe y fundador del movimiento “Solo Inglés” para hacer el inglés el idioma oficial de los Estados Unidos.
 
Por supuesto que la asimilación implica mucho más que el nombre y la lengua materna de uno. Las presiones para asimilarse son grandes en los EE.UU. y se logra grado a grado por lo que sea que uno emprenda: educación, profesión, activismo político, participación social. Pero, como con la conquista de las Américas, se debe resistir. La pregunta es, ¿en que medida? Para mí una línea de identidad que se debe respetar es mi nombre y mi lengua materna aunque reconozco que algunos de mis compatriotas chicanos que más se resisten a la asimilación se les dieron nombres en inglés al nacer y se les enseñó sólo inglés por padres ansiosos por asimilarse para tratar de salvar a sus hijos de la discriminación virulenta, el racismo, endémico de los EE.UU.
 
Dos razones principales por las que vine a la Bahía de San Francisco fueron su sistema de colegios comunitarios. En el Colegio Laney, Oakland donde enseñe durante treinta años, muchos de mis estudiantes hablaban español, ebonics (dialecto africano-estadounidense), cantonés, japonés, tagalo, pachuco, náhuatl, quechua, un idioma maya y otras lenguas demasiadas para listar. En mis clases siempre enfaticé que enseñaría inglés estándar, no como un sustituto del idioma o idiomas que ya conocían sino simplemente como uno más para agregar. En muchos lugares y situaciones, como en su hogar, barrios, iglesia, su lengua materna serviría excelentemente bien. Al mismo tiempo, en otros lugares como la academia, el trabajo, la política, el banco, el inglés estándar sería un instrumento para abrir puertas que de otro modo estarían cerradas para ell@s. Cuídense y eviten los falso dilemas, les decía a mis alumn@s. Cuando se me pregunta si quiero helado de vainilla o de chocolate, respondo que sí, por favor, tomaré de los dos.
 
La resistencia terca, a veces vehemente, a la educación bilingüe en los EE.UU. solía desconcertarme. Cada idioma es un mundo en una Tierra compartida, una forma particular de formar una realidad, una aventura de la consciencia humana. ¿Por qué negar a l@s niñ@s un segundo idioma a una edad en la que pueden aprenderlo tan fácilmente? ¿Por qué insistir en la ignorancia?
 
Ahora me desconcierta menos. El excepcionalismo, como el narcisismo, es una identidad frágil que no tolera la variedad, las comparaciones. Prefiere un mundo en su imagen, su propia marca de realidad, su hegemonía. El excepcionalismo insiste en la “pureza” de raza, de política, de religión, de cultura, de idioma, etc. Celoso de sus propias fronteras, el excepcionalismo no vacila en violar las de los demás. Insiste en la asimilación, o si no . . . Se podría decir que el idioma es el aspecto más importante de la identidad, no solo de la nación, sino a menudo de la clase social. El objetivo de impartir clases sólo en inglés estándar en las escuelas públicas es, por supuesto, la estandarización, la homogeneización y la asimilación que son requisitos del estado nación en el que el angloamericano se considera el estándar étnico.
 
No soy partidario del estado nación; prefiero mucho más el estado multinacional, y por mucho que haya resistencia a él, históricamente violenta y genocida, los Estados Unidos es en hecho tal. No soy nacionalista. Cuando se me pregunta mi ciudadanía, lo más probable es que ahora responda, “del mundo”. O Berkeley (destinado a fronteras, la línea divisora entre la ciudad de Berkeley y la ciudad de Oakland pasa justo por el medio de mi casa así que preparo el desayuno en Berkeley y lo como en Oakland.)
 
Soy habitante de frontera; crecí sin creer en las fronteras. Me gustan las diferencias, soy tolerante con la contradicción, cómodo con la paradoja. Me gustan las distinciones pero también me gusta la mezcla, la difusión, las sombras y los matices. Entendí cuando mi cliente la viejita me pedía hilaza matizada para sus bordados.
 
En cuanto a mi escritura, negarme a sacrificar mi español no menos que mi nombre, me hace heredero de dos musas, hermanas congeniales, y no abandonaré la una por la otra. Nunca sé cual me hablará primero pero en cuanto una me da un verso, una frase, la otra inmediatamente me da su equivalente en la otra lengua, un diálogo, una discusión que afecta a cada versión tal que casi todos mis poemas son piezas únicas en dos lenguas, ninguna versión de la otra. Los editores a menudo no entienden el bilingüismo y preguntan que versión es la traducción de la otra, cual debe estar en cursiva. Parece desconcertarlos cuando digo que ni la una o la otra. Y aun más cuando insisto en que tampoco las palabras solas en el cuerpo del texto.
 
También podría notar que aunque respeto la mezcla, también me gustan las distinciones y que escribo tanto en inglés estadounidense bastante estándar como en español mexicano bastante estándar, cada uno por separado y distinto. Temo que esto no solo habla de mi identidad sino también de mi enseñanza y quizás de mi clase. Así sea el chicano que soy.
 
Pero hay que responderle a la pregunta del chiquillo en mi poema: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

by Rafael Jesús González

From my experience working there came my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” in 1959. I had formed a bond with a regular customer, a very elderly woman who often consulted me about embroidery floss to match or complement the colors of her exquisite embroidery. Beyond that, the poem is a work of my imagination. She did not trail a rebozo nor trip on her hems, nor did she pay for her purchases with “sweat-grimed pennies.” She could see well enough and our discussions of colors were purely aesthetic. I embellished her image for my own purposes as a writer and imagined a situation which might or might not have been hers to present a problem that had (has) always concerned me: assimilation.
 
I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, with family across the Río Bravo in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and identity increasingly became a problem. Spanish was my first language and, until about the mid 1960s when I became Chicano, I was simply Mexican though I knew that I was a citizen of the United States of America. Even today, when I am asked, “What are you?” my immediate response is “Mexican” though when I am more alert, I will say, “Chicano.” Though when I am asked, “What is your citizenship?” I do not hesitate at all.
 
I did not learn English until I was seven at Lamar Public School and at first it was not easy. I was already doing some basic reading and writing in Spanish and the unpredictable sound of the same letters in English confused me. I was in the dark most of the time. One day my mother with my little brother walked me to school and went on to my grandparents’ house a few blocks away. I found myself in a totally empty playground, doors of the school closed. I was terrified. I walked back home to an empty house. I sat on the porch confused, afraid, lonely until my mother and grandmother came with my little brother and covered me with abrazos and kisses. A holiday had been announced by the teacher, but I had not understood.
 
It did not help that we were punished if we were heard speaking Spanish in the classroom, the halls, or the playground. If we asked a classmate, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” we were made to stand in a corner or kept after school. I have the distinction of having failed first grade. I did excel in drawing and coloring and I recall a kind teacher Mrs. Hall in fourth grade who praised and encouraged me. But the principal recommended that my parents take me and my brother Arturo (two years younger that I) to Bailey School for “retarded” children.
 
My father did so and the principal at Bailey School who could not have kept us there more than thirty minutes or so, told my father that we did not belong there, and recommended that we change schools. My parents went into debt and bought their first and only house so that we could change districts and go to Morehead Public School where our problems vanished. (Two teachers stand out: Mrs. Patricia Robinson, art teacher, who spoke excellent Spanish and would invite a few students to her home on weekends to draw and paint. And Miss Mary Hignett, English teacher, with whom I became friends in my college years until her death.)

By then in 1950 I was adjusted, acculturated if you will; I was not assimilated (which to me has connoted being chewed, swallowed, and digested). For me, language has been a touchstone of assimilation. Mexican Indian me had long been assimilated; my maternal grandfather Papanito, don Diego González Sosa except for his color and features and his saying that we were indio spoke no indigenous language to indicate it, but only a formal castellano. Mexican mestizo me not so. I was blessed with parents, Jesús Fidel González of Coahuila and Carmen González Prieto of Durango (brought to the U.S. at 13 and 12, respectively), who always insisted that we speak and write both Spanish and English. I took Spanish courses throughout high school and graduated from college with a degree in English literature with enough hours in Spanish literature for a double major. In an irony of fate, I have spent most of my life as a professor of English in universities and colleges.
 
Resisting assimilation is a struggle, especially in an empire that imposes its hegemony (military, economic, political, linguistic, cultural) on the world. All my life I’ve had to defend even my name. Folk who should know better insist on spelling Rafael, Raphael (the ph does not exist in Spanish), leaving out the accents in Jesús and González, and spelling González with an S. And some have had the effrontery to address me as Ralph, among them S. I. Hayakawa, a Japanese-Canadian immigrant linguist, adamant opponent of bi-lingual education and founder of the English-only “U.S. English” movement to make English the official language of the United States.
 
Of course, assimilation involves much more than one’s name and one’s native tongue. The pressures to assimilate are great in the U.S. and it is accomplished by and to degrees by whatever one undertakes: schooling, profession, political activism—social involvement. But, as with the conquest of the Americas, it is to be resisted. The question is, to what degree. For me a line of identity to be respected is my name and my mother tongue though I recognize that some of my Chicanx compatriots most resisting assimilation were given English names at birth and taught only English by parents eager to assimilate to try to save their children from the virulent discrimination, racism, endemic to the U.S.
 
Two major reasons for my coming to San Francisco Bay were its community college system and the rich racial and ethnic variety of its people. At Laney College, Oakland where I taught for thirty years, many of my students spoke Spanish, Ebonics, Cantonese, Japanese, Tagalog, Pachuco, Nahuatl, Quechua, a Maya language, and other tongues too many to list. In my classes, I always emphasized that I would teach Standard English, not as a substitute for the language or languages they already knew but simply as another one to be added. In many places and situations such as in their home, ‘hoods, church, their native tongue would serve most excellently well. At the same time, in other places such as academia, work, politics, the bank, Standard English would be a tool to open doors otherwise closed to them. Beware of and avoid false dilemmas, I would say to my students. When asked if I wanted vanilla or chocolate ice-cream, I would reply, yes, please, I will have both.  
 
The mulish, sometimes vehement, resistance to bilingual education in the U.S. used to puzzle me. Each language is a world in a shared Earth, a particular way of shaping a reality, an adventure of human consciousness. Why deny children a second language at an age when they could so easily learn it? Why insist upon ignorance?
 
It now puzzles me less. Exceptionalism, like narcissism, is a fragile identity intolerant of variety, of comparisons. It prefers one world in its image, its own brand of reality, its hegemony. Exceptionalism insists on “purity” of race, politics, religion, culture, language, and so on. Jealous of its own borders, exceptionalism does not hesitate violating those of others. It insists on assimilation—or else. Language is arguably the single most important aspect of identity not only of nation but often of social class. The goal of teaching classes only in Standard English in public schools is of course standardization, homogenization, assimilation which are prerequisites of the nation state in which the Anglo-American is viewed as the ethnic standard.
 
I am not partisan of the nation state; I much prefer the multinational state, and much as there is resistance to it, historically violent and genocidal, the U.S. is in fact such. I am not a nationalist. When asked my citizenship, I would most likely now reply, “of the world.” Or Berkeley (destined to borders, the dividing line between the city of Berkeley and the city of Oakland runs right through the middle of my house so that I fix breakfast in Berkeley and eat it in Oakland).
 
I am a denizen of the border; I grew up disbelieving in borders. I like differences, am tolerant of contradiction, comfortable with paradox. I like distinctions but I also like the blending, the diffusion, shades and hues. I understood when my customer the old lady asked for hilaza matizada (variegated floss) for her embroidery.
 
As to my writing, my refusal to sacrifice my Spanish no less than my name, makes me heir to two muses, congenial sisters, and I will not forsake one for the other. I never know which will speak to me first, but as soon as one gives me a line, a phrase, a verse, the other will immediately give me its equivalent in the other tongue, a dialogue, a discussion that affects each version so that almost all of my poems are unique pieces in two tongues, neither version the translation of the other. Editors most often do not understand bilingualism and ask which version is the translation of the other, which should be set in italics. It seems to disconcert them when I say neither. And even more when I insist that neither should be individual words in the body of the text.
 
I might also note that though I respect blending, I also like distinctions and that I write in both fairly Standard U.S. English and fairly Standard Mexican Spanish, each separate and distinct. I am afraid that this not only speaks to my identity, but also to my schooling, and perhaps my class. Such be the Chicano I am.
 
But the kid in my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” must be answered his question: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

Previous publication credits:

To an Old Woman, González, Rafael Jesús. “To the Old Woman.” New Mexico Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4, 1961
 
A una Anciana, González, Rafael Jesús, New Poets of the American West; Lowell Jaeger, Ed.; 2010, Many Voices Press.
 
Riffs on the Poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, English Journal, Vol. III no. 5, May 2022, of the National Council of Teachers of English.
 
Riffs sobre el poema “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, Uncommon Ground, Seigel, Shizue, Ed.; San Francisco, Pease Press, 2022​​

Rafael Jesús González, profesor de escritura creativa y literatura enseño en varias universidades antes de establecerse en el Colegio Laney en Oakland, California, donde fundó el Departamento de Estudios Mexicanos y Latinoamericanos en 1969. Cuatro veces postulado para el Premio Pushcart, Rafael fue honrado por sus escritos por el Concilio Nacional de Docentes de Inglés en 2003. Recibió un premio por logros de toda una vida César Chávez en 2013 y uno de la ciudad de Berkeley en 2015. Rafael es el primer Poeta Laureado de Berkeley. Visite [email protected]. 

Rafael Jesús González, a professor of creative writing and literature, taught at several universities before he settled at Laney College in Oakland, California, where he founded the Department of Mexican and Latin American Studies in 1969. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Rafael was honored for his writing by NCTE in 2003. He received a César Chávez Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and one from the city of Berkeley, California, in 2015. Rafael is Berkeley’s first Poet Laureate. Visit [email protected].

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

​—​​Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones (2017)

​“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.

​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. 

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.

​Let me be clear in this paper. I am not here to discuss whether or not the shift to online instruction is being assessed and/or evaluated or whether important workload policies are being followed; we can and should take those topics up elsewhere. I am here to discuss new ways of knowing the idea of a multi-university (“thinking university-system”) predicated on the idea of a university-system as an enterprise where all things in the enterprise are linked and connected at all times in real time. With such an EA design, rapid changes like pandemics can be managed in the most appropriate manner possible with or without leadership that can see this vision.
 
Evidence of what I am pointing to and experiencing in American society today is captured in a series of reports published by The Chronicle Store, for instance:

• How Will the Pandemic Change Higher Education? Professors, administrators, and staff on what the coronavirus will leave in its wake
• The Right Mix of Academic Programs: Making decisions to add, cut, grow or shrink departments and degrees
• The Innovation Imperative: The buzz, the barriers, and what real change looks like
• The Looming Enrollment Crisis: How colleges are responding to shifting demographics and new student needs

 
University Enterprise Transformation/IT Alignment
 
In this paper I propose the development of a capability for enterprise architecture (EA) for large-scale state university systems such as Texas A&M University, Auraria Higher Education Center, CUNY, SUNY, and the University of California, to name just a few. Small private colleges/universities will also be taken into account when suggesting new designs, such as the advent of a Colegio Xicano Virtual. Enterprise architecture enables enterprises (herein: university-enterprises) to fully align administrative planning strategies with the technological infrastructures that support all of them. It facilitates a university-system’s ability to communicate with all components that make up the entire system (academic departments, curricula, faculty, staff, students, and community partners, and much more) all at once in real time. At the same time, it will strategically align with whom it interacts allowing boundary-less information flow, more effective decision support and the alignment of administrative, application, data and instructional and university-enterprise transformation, effective communication structures and practices, multimodal communications and the effective management of disruptive technologies. One definition of EA is that it is the organizing logic for all university-systems processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization and/or customized requirements of the university’s operation model, again, while remaining aligned with the university’s vision statement.
 
As a recent case in point, let’s examine a recent missed opportunity to apply EA. Last year (2019) UC San Diego turned out its first strategic plan in the history of the university; it provides a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure, operation and goals of the university. It is an excellent plan for this vibrant (relatively young) university, however, it is stagnant in the sense that it is not linked to anything. By using EA as a planning tool, the Strategic Plan could be a document connected to its university-enterprise in real time, constantly sensing, interpreting, reinterpreting, adding to and asking “What if?” scenarios of the ever changing landscape from things like budgetary and financial perspectives to perspectives on core values from the vision statement.
 
What most university administrators don’t realize is that their strategic plans are in fact changing as they are producing the document; you might say “the document is obsolete even before it is completed.” It’s important to note that the same goes for all other planning that is stagnant (not linked to real-time data). This would have been an opportune time for UC San Diego to apply EA to its strategic planning.
 
My point is that once realized, EA will change the nature of their planning. A major intent of EA is to determine how a university-system-enterprise can most effectively achieve its current and future objectives—in real-time between the relations found in this model.

EA has advanced tremendously over the years to a point where I began applying it to the rapid build out of brand new universities. The relevance of EA to universities is that: ​

​Armando Arias is a professor and founding member in the division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at CSU Monterey Bay and a frequent contributor to this magazine in his column, Chicano Confidential. He is the author of Theorizing César Chávez New Ways of Knowing STEM, published recently by Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press, Berkeley, 2020, in which he shares a critical analysis of STEM studies, portraying his views as César Chávez would have had he gone on to earn a doctorate in science. He has served as a start-up team member for more than a dozen new universities in the U.S. (mostly in Aztlán) and consulted on the founding of new universities in Japan, Mexico, Europe, and Africa.

​César Chávez always seems to be nearby, guiding my thoughts. I have after all inculcated his values and beliefs into my own; I’m keenly aware of the impact his values have on the manner in which I construct my reality in everyday life. César’s values are exuded in everything I do, especially in special projects like starting brand new colleges and universities.
 
Due to the COVID-19 virus I have been in lockdown in Salem, Oregon, just 18 miles from Mount Angel, Oregon, home of the former Colegio César Chávez as my son recently located here from inner-Portland. Because I want to save lives, I stay at home, think and rethink. There are endless reasons the lockdown has been problematic, for me, because I want to visit the physical plant of the former site of the Colegio César Chávez. I want to walk the halls, I want to touch the walls, I want to walk through the rooms where the Andrew Parodi Family lived at the Colegio in their capacity as groundskeepers. I have an affinity to this reality as my family served as the groundskeepers at Frances Parker School in San Diego where my sister and I were the only students of color and we spoke only Spanish. I want to feel César’s spirit as I know he left spiritual DNA behind on his visits to the college.
 
I feel like conducting an in-service workshop about the STEM movement (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to the Benedictine sisters who run St. Joseph’s Shelter in the building where the Colegio once operated. They are innovators in education in their own right as they have long believed that our institutions of education are failing us, so they may find my new book Theorizing César Chávez: New Ways of Knowing (2020) interesting. I am quite willing to conduct such a workshop as I feel the need to make amends with Benedictine sisters (Sister Julissa in particular) given my rocky relationship with them as a youngster.
 
I’m reminded of how they are concerned about taking care of Mother Earth and that just like César Chávez they want to see her healthy once again. Similarly, in his latest book First Lady Pope, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Victor Villaseñor, was once invited to meet with retired sisters and priests to discuss his book and like me, he was hesitant for reasons related to corporal punishment, but he went anyway and was pleasantly surprised because he learned to forgive. Victor’s message is that “modern civilization has lost its connection to nature and the understanding of our natural, loving Feminine Energy which nurtures all life.” This is precisely how César Chávez felt and the precipitating factor why I founded the Big Sur Environmental Institute in writing a vision statement while infusing his values.
 
I feel an existential pull to discover the realities behind Colegio César Chávez. It’s like the time I climbed the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán; when I made it to the top, I was rendered speechless knowing that I am related to this wonderful civilization. I thought, “What an honor.” I experienced a true sense of place, as I do amidst the concrete spikes in Chicano Park that are driven into the heart of our community. How else can I explain it?
 
I feel both César and Diosito tugging at my coat tails, I can hear César now as he is speaking to me from above as he often does and his voice and message is clear, “Go take a look, Sonny Boy, go and see what you can learn, go talk to the founders and/or the graduates of the Colegio. You know how to start universities/colleges, Sonny Boy, you’ve been doing it your entire career; there is an opportunity to serve out there, started by the pandemic, there is opportunity to help educationally underserved people of Aztlan, go and check it out and get back to me, andale!” 
 
I am more than aware of the heroic efforts of founders of the Colegio César Chávez (1973 -1983) as they were an inspiration to me and my colleagues when we founded the InterAmerican College in National City (South San Diego), California, with a Chicano ideology and vision. I observed their efforts from afar, as I found the idea of a Chicano college quite fascinating, and it has remained as a grand value in my work. ​​

​When I observed the numbers of Chicano graduates from the Colegio César Chávez, comparatively speaking, I became aware of the numbers of Chicano graduates throughout the American Southwest at state supported institutions of higher education like the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The insight at the time was that in 1978 the Colegio granted more degrees to Chicano students than the sum total by the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
 
Now just stop and think about that for a moment. Here is this small, relatively obscure institution in a rural German-American historic town outside of Salem, Oregon, and they were successful at garnering federal funds to build a campus and fund academic programs that led to full accreditation. Moreover, their statistics for graduating Chicanos/as were competitive with large state institutions; it didn’t make sense to be sure, but it did reveal the realities of this former Confederate State.
 
I can’t tell you how disappointing it was to hear that in the early 1980s the Colegio César Chávez was becoming more-and-more heavily scrutinized by the regional accreditation body to the point that even though they earned accreditation, they were simply not financially sustainable. Just prior to closing, the Chicano icon José Ángel Gutiérrez was being considered as President of the Colegio, but the timing was off.
 
Why is it that the Colegio came under such close scrutiny that they had to close their doors, compared to the scrutiny brought to bear, say, on the University of Oregon or Oregon State University or other any other state university for that matter? Let’s draw an analogy to the current state of play using the overnight adoption of online instruction in higher education. Within the impact of the current day pandemic universities/colleges across this nation (and world) transformed to online curricula literally overnight, yet their online curricula and faculty competencies were not evaluated nor assessed; they simply made the change.
 
The reality is that non-traditional institutions like the University of Phoenix, Walden University, National University, InterAmerican College and the Colegio César Chávez were and are held to a much higher standard when adopting online teaching and learning than state-supported institutions and it shouldn’t be that way; it’s simply not right! There remains in American society a stigma. In referring to small start-ups and/or Chicano-oriented schools such as the Colegio César Chávez, American society still attaches the stigma of being a “university without walls.”
 
When we earned full accreditation in the founding of the InterAmerican College (a Chicano college) much of the stigma of online learning had changed. The accreditation body was even inferring that we must incorporate online instruction, state our learning outcomes clearly, and demonstrate how we will reach them, so we hired the best leaders in online learning from the University of Phoenix.
 
I can say with confidence that the University of Phoenix has the best leaders for designing online instruction. I have spent my career researching online teaching and learning and I founded a highly successful international online consortia called BESTNET with senior engineers from ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet (I nearly created the Internet!), so I have a great deal of experience in assessing education delivery systems. Yet today, in a time of a global pandemic, thousands of public/private universities are forced to adopt online education (mostly 100%) and are not being required to meet the same standards as small private institutions and/or non-traditional institutions of higher education.
 
Moreover, just a few years ago a national campaign arose against “predatory colleges” that were seen as offering inferior online curricula and false promises like “Get in, get out, and get a job!” For instance, the 80 campuses of the Heald College system in California were defined as a “predatory college” and targeted due to a handful of complaints and subsequently forced to close its doors by the U.S. Department of Education.
 
What I directly observed in the region where I live was that for Latinos in Monterey County and the great Salinas Valley and 79 other regions where Heald had campuses, Latinos lost out. Heald was located in regions with a lot of Latinos and many attended to earn vocational and/or occupational health professions degrees.
 
Just look around and see who occupies many of the health professions positions, like medical/dental assistants, community clinic managers, hospital administrators, nurses and the like; the majority of people in these positions are Latino and trained at Heald College. To be sure, Heald’s tuition fees were higher than those at state colleges, but it’s only the case if you don’t figure in dorm life and food. Latino students at Heald were presented with student loan packages not any different than those presented to students at state colleges, so why then were they targeted as “predatory?” Couldn’t the same be said for any state university? Politically, once they started getting accredited to offer bachelor level degrees they became increasingly more and more under attack.
 
Even today, traditional institutions of higher education continue their stigmatizing attacks on non-traditional colleges/universities; Chicano-oriented efforts in higher education must still grapple with that stigma. For example, state colleges will not hire applicants for faculty positions from non-traditional universities, namely online PhD programs. There isn’t a rule, policy and/or law that keeps online degree holders out; it’s simply part of the high-brow culture found in the Academy, it’s the unspeakable truth, everybody knows but nobody will say, “We don’t hire those people.”
 
Having served on a number of hiring committees, when it comes to reviewing applicants (to include Latino applicants) from online graduate programs, I know for a fact that many highly qualified Latinos are being passed over purely out of stigma for non-traditional learning and perhaps for racist reasons as well. Yet, here we are in the middle of a pandemic that forces state institutions of higher education to teach and conduct administrative business in this modality and no one is assessing the pros and cons of online learning—that dialog has been temporarily put on hold. To be sure, we all understand the impacts of the pandemic and rapid social change, but again the unspeakable truth is that we (in the Academy) were forced to make the shift to online teaching and learning overnight, yet the stigmatizing attacks on small private start-ups continues as well as on online degree recipients.
 
The National Hispanic University (NHU) had similar beginnings as the InterAmerican College and the Colegio César Chávez. NHU became fully accredited, but regardless of a number of sizeable corporate donations from Silicon Valley funders, they could not establish long-term “hard funds” (secure ongoing perpetual funding) to underwrite the university as required by the accreditation body.
 
At the point where the accrediting agency, the Western Association of Colleges and Universities or WASC, threatened to take away their accreditation (in essence close the university), NHU sold their “accreditation medallion” to a Brazilian Corporation claiming to be “Hispanic” based in Baltimore, Maryland, in turn, stripping the Chicanismo right out of the university. This is one of the important lessons learned.
 
Conversely and to the point a number of online colleges/universities such as Walden University, Western Governors University, University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, United States University, and National University, all begun in non-traditional settings, are doing a better job at graduating Chicano/Latino students. Concurrently, the pandemic has caused and is causing a cognitive shift (perhaps even a paradigm shift) in how higher education is viewed and assessed by students and their parents in daily life. Students and parents alike are questioning the value and the content of higher education.
 
Moreover, the statistics for the number(s) of PhDs earned by people of color in aforementioned online graduate programs outweighs that of UCLA, Stanford and Harvard and all other universities for that matter. That being the case, why should Latinos continue believing and supporting traditional models, a la brava, as they are not serving us in the manner in which we support them? Financially speaking, if we were to take the case of California taxes and say take the state taxes Latinos contribute to the State’s budget and invest those funds in the non-traditional colleges/universities that are producing Latino degree holders, the meaning of a college education will radically change and this is where we could be headed.
 
I find it ironic that during a pandemic lockdown, Mt. Angel, Oregon, is calling out to me in this way, a small German-American town with a grand annual Ocktober Fest, we’ll have to add Corona, Modelo and Dos Equis beer to the festival. In 1973 Mt. Angel and the physical site of the Colegio César Chávez became the basis for an ABC television series about a town that becomes the nucleus for a post-apocalyptic community that returns to Medieval ways of technological applications.
 
I am so moved by new paths of discovery about the efforts of early pioneers that planted Chicanismo in Mt. Angel that I am taking all I know about technological applications (far beyond online teaching and learning), and in reflecting on the experiences and lessons learned from the founding of the Colegio César Chávez, and drafting a new pandemic driven paradigm for restructuring higher education.
 
The spirit of Chicanismo that once captured this obscure historic small rural setting demonstrates the power of an idea, the idea of a Chicano college, will not die; it simply provides a wretched experience to learn from. César’s favorite saying about education was a quote from Alberto Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge!” and that is certainly at work here. What you need to know is that another Chicano college is on the horizon, one whose premise is to move Chicano students from dependence to interdependence to independence as community activists based on service and service-learning.
 
Once accreditation was realized and as part of the sale of the InterAmerican College, we agreed with WASC (the accreditation body) on two points. The first point is that we would keep the Chicano vision statement intact, and the second point was that we would not start another college in the region for at least seven years. Well, the time is up. The InterAmerican College has already submitted a new application to the Bureau of Higher Education.

Armando Arias is a professor and founding member in the division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at CSU Monterey Bay and a frequent contributor to this magazine in his column, Chicano Confidential. He is the author of Theorizing César Chávez New Ways of Knowing STEM, published recently by Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press, Berkeley, 2020, in which he shares a critical analysis of STEM studies, portraying his views as César Chávez would have had he gone on to earn a doctorate in science. He has served as a start-up team member for more than a dozen new universities in the U.S. (mostly in Aztlán) and consulted on the founding of new universities in Japan, Mexico, Europe, and Africa.

​This essay is the first in a three-part series in which the author, who has consulted in the founding of universities in the U.S. (mostly in Aztlán), Japan, Mexico, Europe, and Africa, argues for higher education to re-think and re-structure the old way of teaching, learning and administrating by post-secondary institutions. He recommends the use of evolving means of instruction, made highly feasible and necessary by the onslaught of a world pandemic: evolving technology by which young people can be taught anywhere in the world and new ideas in organizing the “enterprise,” a broad term for any complexity of disparate parts whether in the building of a passenger jet or in the sharing of knowledge. The driving principle, he says, must be the student and as a child born of Chicano activist parents, he insists that Mexican American and Latino youth must be given full measure of attention and opportunity. The traditional university is on the way out and learning wherever one lives will be the new model.

​It’s curious how Chicano art causes me to experience new revelations about an endless variety of topics of social inquiry. Take this painting by a Chicana artist who early on contracted the Covid-19 virus and during lockdown painted a series of portrayals of her lungs, both capturing her illness and sick lungs in one artwork and her lungs cleared of the virus.
 
The artist continued to paint during her illness and says it helped her heal to do so. 

​When I look at the sick lungs, the B/W drawing, I see a systemic design: everything in the human body is strategically linked to the lungs for the purpose of breathing as well as sustaining life in the body. In the field of sociology that would be referred to as “structural functionalism.” Enter an unknown and unexpected integer, the C-19 virus, and the lungs become sick, the immune system starts working on overdrive and searches for solutions but to no avail, at least not for now, and the future is not looking too bright at the moment.
 
This is the analogy to higher education, much like religion as Karl Marx observed, we as a global society have come to believe in higher education to such a degree that we forgot to design an antidote, a viable solution in case anything ever went wrong. As we in the Academy search for solutions to the problematics caused by the pandemic, we must come to the realization that in order to find a solution to developing an antidote, we must first search, define, and prioritize new values and beliefs to drive the research necessary to envision viable and sustainable solutions for how henceforth higher education will “get done.” We must turn all existing beliefs about higher education on their heads–in essence, the pandemic has done this for us.
 
Currently, the veil of objectivity has provided a paradigm for looking and believing in higher education such that we do not question the values and meaning of those values. We don’t question the bench work of professors and we don’t question decisions administrators with no experience in out-of-the-box thinking make, yet this is what we (people of color) need to watch closely as we take the hand coming in out of the fog and develop new ways of knowing higher education, new ways that provide solutions centered on serving ALL people in more equitable ways.
 
Face it, just look around. We are void of leadership with the type of skills necessary to address the issues the pandemic has caused in higher education that will lead to new meanings and values in higher education. There is no real paradigm in sight, nor are there leaders in higher education on the horizon with the insight necessary to lead us into the type of change necessary. We need a present-day Jorge Klor de Alba, former president of the University of Phoenix and The Apollo Group, maybe we can pull him out of retirement and pull him out of Brazil. Or, maybe we can locate an honorary Chicano like John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix, to provide us with a new paradigm for looking for solutions to the problematics that the pandemic has created for higher education.
 
It was not that long ago when John Sperling presented a vision about the future of higher education and it moved beyond the technology from the start. He had Latinos in mind. Sperling’s vision was to level the playing field and serve ALL people….little did he know that today his non-traditional university would end up serving educationally underrepresented people in a manner much better than traditional institutions of higher education (IHE).
 
Even after the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts to close down the university due to nothing more than political pressure from traditional large-scale IHEs, today the University of Phoenix should be moved to the front of the line for their paradigm for looking at and applying teaching and learning. Let’s just say that the pandemic is shedding new light on non-traditional ways. Briefly stated, the University of Phoenix is the best at what they do, namely online education, and they should be recognized for it. Plus, they serve people of color at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in respectable ways; this is due in part to the early leadership and vision of Klor de Alba.
 
Even as large-scale traditional systems of higher education (California State University and University of California) were suddenly forced into the arena with the real experts in online education (University of Phoenix), the traditionalists afford them no credence, no kudos, nada; this has now become the unspeakable truth. This is why our societal values must change, and they must change now in giving non-traditional IHEs the recognition they deserve.
​
We can start by no longer stigmatizing people of color who earn degrees at non-traditional colleges that are fully accredited and by-and-large produce more PhDs of color than all other IHEs combined.
 
The analogy to art, the image of sick lungs, for example, represents the stark reality that we can build systems, large-scale systems of institutions of higher education and they have the appearance of truth but the reality is that these systems are in many ways “sick” in a manner similar to institutional racism, by design, you might say. The point is that as societal values change, traditional IHEs will become obsolete at a faster pace. It should be noted that this can be exacerbated by further infusion of technology by administrators not fully aware of this possibility.
 
Beyond that is simply ignorance on the part of individuals who make decisions about technology and do not understand the impact their decision-making has on people of color, for example, on such concepts as access and equity. Moreover, traditional IHEs offer slow and/or never-changing degrees that poor students pay big bucks for, yet they are not taught how to leverage their degrees and navigate through the rest of their lives, unlike well-to-do White students. The following is a case in point.
 
I once attended graduation ceremonies at UCLA’s School of Business in honor of a friend’s son earning his bachelor’s degree. At the end of the ceremony, he stood with his best friend to take pictures. When we finished my friend (a starving Chicana artist) handed her son an envelope containing a crisp one hundred-dollar bill. She was so proud. In the same moment, her son’s best friend (a White male student) was handed an envelope by his father, a highly successful businessman who had earned a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from UCLA–it contained a check for one million dollars. All at once, this caused a visceral response in me that was all too familiar: it reminded me more than ever of the GAP–the gap we are all too familiar with in American society.
 
For many Latinos, earning a degree from UCLA’s School of Business is like a miracle. More than likely, they have been first-generation college students, maybe a Dreamer, and with parents who had never set foot on a college campus and were poor, like my parents. We were so poor that we used to pile through cow dung at the “hides” where my grandfather worked, a slaughter-house meat packing plant in National City (San Diego) in search of beans. Yeah, frijoles! A cow, even with its system of stomachs can’t digest beans, so we would pick them out, boil them up and have fresh frijoles borrachos.
 
This is but one example of why Latinos within the realm of the pandemic are not freaking out. We know how to survive, but it’s this type of thinking that needs further transformation. We also need to learn how to thrive in a world made of structures designed by people who rule our society. Navigating life in a White man’s world takes skill, know-how, persistence, and fortitude, ganas, as we say. This represents a huge gap. Having a mentor, whether it be a parent, uncle or friend, places a student at a huge advantage over “mentors” who have never set foot on a college/university campus.

​Now, take the colorful painting of the lungs by artist Alejandra Oseguera. They represent good health. Healthy lungs taking in air are bright and beautiful. They have the appearance of truth because they are the Truth–la verdad. De Colores!
 
Take a closer look. These lungs are not an illusion; they are not fake; they came from the heart and soul of a sincere and trusting Chicana artist. This is a beautiful self-reflection of an immune system that overcame a terrible and horrific virus. The beauty of the lungs at the same time represents the great fear the artist endured.
 
When Latinos graduate from college, it is a beautiful experience for many, but making their way through the university experience they often do not have the type of support that is supportive of their journey. My father, for example, was supportive because he kept saying, “mi’jo, you have to go to college,” even though he did not go to college.
 
The online teaching experience causes new realities for how to support educationally underserved students and we need to focus on addressing a “pedagogy of the oppressed,” a la Pablo Freire for online teaching and learning. Again, here, too, is an institutionalized insensitivity gap, a tragic overarching gap, between the ongoing rhetoric, almost all of it repetitive in various language constructs over the last 100 years, if not more, and the reality that our society is experiencing a widening gap between rhetoric and reality in American life and politics.
 
Now, at a time when the Covid-19 virus has caused a major cognitive shift in the manner in which we construct our reality in everyday life, would be an especially good time to look around in higher education and identify a diverse group of genuine bridge builders, because the more extreme the divide, the harder it will be to construct viable bridges so needed in times of crisis. An integral factor in the widening divisions within our communities of color and American society at large lies in the world of higher education.
 
The pandemic has exposed one of the most profound gaps in higher education, that between the rhetoric and reality of our educational enterprise, the aspirations of our system versus its current results (outcomes). Even as we weave hopeful narratives about the role of higher education in the world that is unfolding, we must acknowledge and, more importantly, attempt to bridge the gulf between where we are, and where we would like to be. This is important, because I believe that for better or for worse higher education played a role in bringing us to this place, and higher education must play a role in moving us forward.
 
My question is, does all of education have what it takes in ability, character, and dedication to meet the demands of this next and crucial phase of the development of all of education, including our colleges and universities, and at the same time remain mindful of educationally under-served communities? 
 
We have reached a point where talk will no longer do. Plans and various kinds of tinkering are all good in their place, but there comes a time when performance–genuine, solid, work-produced outcomes–is required and that time is now to focus on closing these gaps. As César Chávez would say, “Si se puede!”

Alejandra Oseguera has an extensive career providing academic, personal and career counseling services in schools of higher education throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives. She holds a Masters in Counselor Education and a Pupils Personnel Services Credential from San Jose State University. 
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website: https://hijadelsolart.blogspot.com

Armando Arias is a professor and founding member in the division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at CSU Monterey Bay and a frequent contributor to this magazine in his column, Chicano Confidential. He is the author of Theorizing César Chávez New Ways of Knowing STEM, published recently by Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press, Berkeley, 2020, in which he shares a critical analysis of STEM studies, portraying his views as César Chávez would have had he gone on to earn a doctorate in science. He has served as a start-up team member for more than a dozen new universities in the U.S. (mostly in Aztlán) and consulted on the founding of new universities in Japan, Mexico, Europe, and Africa.

​On April 25, 2020, the United Nations Association of the USA, San Francisco Chapter (UNA-SF) hosted the UN75 Global Consultation with Indigenous Peoples in San Francisco to include and amplify indigenous voices as the world celebrates the ​​75th Anniversary of the United Nations (UN).

As we were preparing for this consultation, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States and Indigenous Peoples were disproportionately affected by it. We have contacted several leaders of Indigenous communities and organizations that are local to our region or have historic relationships with our chapter. Antonio Gonzales, Executive Director of the American Indian Movement-West, honored us with the statement presented below.

Timea Soos who served as Head of Reporting for this consultation prepared this statement for publication and submitted a report with key actionable recommendations to the National Office of the United Nations Association of the United States of America in Washington DC. This report will be combined with reports from other consultations and shared with the UN and members of the United States Congress.
In addition to that, the UNA-SF is using its own advocacy channels to amplify this message. In the meantime, we would very much welcome feedback, suggestions, and requests from Indigenous Peoples, especially Ohlone tribes that are native to the land where our chapter has been set to serve as a link between local communities and the UN.

It was a sun-drenched, refreshingly crisp late summer-early fall morning in 1972 that I drove my powder blue VW, with its manual-rotation sunroof and semi-automatic transmission, searching for 1031 Franquette Avenue in the Willow Glen neighborhood section of San José, California, the residence of Dr. Ernesto Galarza—whom I had never met and only spoken to briefly one time by phone. I felt both composed and uncertain as to where I was going and for what purpose. 

This emotional mixture was my characteristic approach to interacting with new surroundings, situations, or people. However, since earning my BA in August 1966 from la Universidad de las Américas in Mexico City, with an interdisciplinary major in Latin American Studies and Social Sciences, my life had been increasingly unpredictable in terms of repeated changes in geography and role. 

Rather than the fairly predictable smooth and straight path I had lived as a university student in the highly cosmopolitan context that was Mexico City, my path now resembled that of a pinball. I felt myself being propelled at different speeds, spinning, ricocheting continually against different and similar positions on a seemingly inclined surface, moving in indeterminate directions toward uncertain destinations. Controlling the speed, force, direction and goal of the pinball that was now my life did not seem to be a viable option.

I had moved to thirteen locations within Mexico, the United States, and Germany from the time I graduated from la universidad to this particular morning, a span of 6 years. Concomitantly, I had changed learning−or earning−roles 9 times, as well—and was being interviewed for my 10th change. In Mexico, I had gone from graduate student, private school teacher at various schools and a private language institute, to positions of regional manager and, later, director of sales and promotions within the private sector. In the US, as a draftee, soldado raso, beginning in May 1969, I was trained or stationed in three US Army locations and at European Headquarters, Office of the Engineer, in Heidelberg, Germany. 

Back in the USA, in early 1972, I was briefly employed as a personnel specialist at San José City Hall and, in a somewhat longer capacity as a relocation specialist at the San José Redevelopment Agency. Two extended trips to Los Gatos, California, and Fairbanks, Alaska, were sandwiched in between Mexico and the US Army, and a part-time job happily selling clothes in the Men’s Department at Macy’s before landing full-time jobs in San José, was also part of the role-shifting scenario. 

In a nutshell, the geographical and role switches were deep, numerous, and unpredictable. As is probably self-evident, travel was not conducted for the pleasure of visiting a locale, as in each case there were economic or military-related motives, including being discharged a few months early from the US Army to return to Mexico City as a graduate student. 

How had I even arrived to this Willow Glen address, to speak with a person whom I had yet to meet in person and had only briefly chatted with from a pay phone about a nebulous undertaking related to an educational project not yet on the books? My physical return to the States is easy enough to understand. I had left Mexico City, reluctantly and embarrassingly in debt to my alma mater and to my parents due to a very simple but devastatingly damaging occurrence within the Admissions Office at the University’s branch site of its MBA program. To take advantage of the GI Bill benefits related to tuition coverage and living stipend, I had dutifully completed my part of the US Veterans Administration forms and submitted them to the Admissions office so the forms could be further completed, and then signed, sealed and delivered by mail to the VA. 

I kept waiting for my checks to arrive and for my tuition to be paid, but instead, I began to receive notices from the university that my account was past due and emotionally-charged, escalating inquiries from my parents as to what I was actually doing in Mexico City with the funds they had sent me and that I had promised to repay. This economically disconcerting circumstance went on for two academic quarters. I finally reached the point where my faith suffered a total lapse that the checks would be in the mail, and in an effort to track the postal trail of the documents, I decided to ask the staff at the Admissions Office when they had actually mailed the documents. 

I will never forget how they looked at each other and then at my bemused visage as if I were daft. They told me, with a hint of amusement-cum-disdain in their voices and facial expressions, that they hadn’t had the slightest idea as to what the documents were for and had thrown them directly in the trash! Thus, simply stated, I was pushed out of “el DF”—as everyone there referred to it in Spanish at that time.