CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported on this story for In America. Her report is here.
By Roberto Rodriguez, Special to CNN
(CNN) – Look at the image above. For people who live outside of Tucson, Arizona, it evokes shock and even horror. For most of us here, it was but another day in Arizona.
On March 13, the day I took this photo, students from Tucson High School showed up to the Tucson Unified School District board meeting, to once again air their support for the now dismantled Mexican-American studies department.
On May 3, 2011, I witnessed dozens of riot-equipped law enforcement officers treat Mexican-American studies supporters inside and outside of Tucson Unified School District headquarters as though they were potential terrorists. To get into the meeting, everyone had to pass through metal detectors. That evening, seven women, including two senior citizens, were arrested for attempting to speak before the school board.
All this happened because the week before, on April 26, nine students, tired of being given the run-around, chained themselves to the school board chairs in an effort to prevent the dismantling of the Mexican-American Studies department. All this was triggered by an unconstitutional 2010 state measure, HB 2281, which in effect, bans the teaching of ethnic studies.
Why would a community gather at 5a.m., walk across the city of Tucson, then run 120 miles to Phoenix in 115 degree heat? We ran in 2009 because the assault against Ethnic Studies was the final straw.
In Arizona, the assault against democracy, against equality and against education is etched into this backward state’s motto. And yet, no one is targeted more than the red-brown peoples of this state, who are treated simply as being part of an inconvenient past and in the way. Here, thousands of migrants have been found dead in the desert due to intentional governmental policies and racial profiling is business as usual. Here, Operation Streamline sees some 70 migrants daily in Federal Court, where they are charged, tried, convicted and sentenced in one hour…and then shipped to private prisons.
Problem is, most peoples of Mexican descent in this state cannot be deported and thus, the assault on the culture, history, identity, language and education.
When we ran in 2009, the highly successful Raza Studies program was targeted for elimination. On that exhilarating 120-mile run, we ran to defeat a bill [successfully] that would have criminalized the teaching of Ethnic Studies. Though we won that day. The following year, Gov. Jan Brewer signed the now infamous HB 2281 on May 12, 2011, a bill right out of the Inquisition.
After numerous battles and legal struggles, and the outright banning of Mexican American Studies earlier this year, we again prepare to once again run through the desert. But this time, it will be 165 miles.
We know that HB 2281, which we will never recognize as a law (as well as the racial profiling SB 1070), is unconstitutional. What we want to tell the world is that both measures also violate at least 9 international human rights treaties & conventions, particularly, the 2007 UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Since that first run, our community has been assaulted non-stop. TUSD recently suspended Mexican American Studies, banned the curriculum, banned the books (some are being stored in the book depository)… but most importantly, TUSD and the state have banned a worldview. In effect, that view originates with maiz – with the teaching of In Lak Ech (Tue res mi otro Yo-You are my other Me) and Panche Be (Buscar la Raiz de la Verdad-To seek the root of the Truth). This has been deemed to be un-American. Our community begs to differ. We will run not to ask for rights, but to assert them, as guaranteed, by both the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.
If you cannot join us for at least part of the run, at least help support us. We fight, not for the rights of a few thousands of students in Tucson, but for the rights of all of humanity. That they can ban a peoples’ history means they can ban anyone else’s history.
Here’s the schedule and directions on how you can join us and support us. You can also use same contact info for information.
Continuing to XINACHTLI @ TUSD 1010 Offices 1010 E. 10th St. @ 10:30 am
Continuing to Joaquin Murrieta Park 1400 N. Silverbell Rd. for lunch @ 12:30 pm
Continuing to Yoem Pueblo in Marana for Indigenous Peoples Studies Session, dinner and lodging (arriving around 6:30pm, 7pm)
Thursday, March 15, 2012 (77 miles)
Sunrise from Marana continuing to Chantlalli Izkalotecah (Maricopa, AZ) for XINACHTLI, food, and lodging (arriving around 6:30pm, 7pm)
Friday, March 16, 2012 (50 miles)
Sunrise from Chantlalli Izkalotecah to Arizona Department of Education 1535 West Jefferson Phoenix, AZ
Expecting to arrive at 3pm and close at 6 pm
*All times approximate
PURPOSE OF RUNNING/WALKING:
Submission to the United Nations
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
May 7-18, 2012 UN Headquarters New York
Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery
“Colonization and Cognition,
Human Rights and Education”
A Pilgrimage of Purpose and Self Determination
SUPPORT
Transportation will be provided for supporters to join Caminata on Thursday and Friday. Support for Friday in Phoenix is critical. If you believe you can commit to one, two or three of the days, contact the following number. If you are on spring break, please give it some deep thought. It will be historic akin to when we ran to Phoenix in 2009. For info or questions, please contact Calpolli Teoxicalli 520.551.5229 or write: teoxicalli@yahoo.com
Ariz. bill advances; teachers would be fired quickly, districts penalized
'Partisan doctrine' in classes targeted
Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services | Posted: Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:00 am
PHOENIX - Teachers who promote "partisan doctrine" in the classroom would be automatically fired, and districts that allow it would lose state funding, under a proposed law approved Wednesday by a Senate panel.
Arizona is bleeding - Arizona is under full-scale assault
In this God-forsaken state, Ethnic Cleansing (SB 1070 and related measures) is the order of the day. Cultural genocide (HB 2281) is also under way. For an update on what has been occurring here lately, go to: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/
This letter, in particular is about a very special community in Tucson: Calpolli Teoxicalli.
They have been at every protest, at every march, rally and every vigil over the past several years. They have been there when our community has been arrested and assaulted. More than participate and more than being present, they have gone beyond responding, as that is but one small part of their work.
The Calpolli, while relatively young, has taken the responsibility of providing the cultural and traditional foundation for this community. Most people don’t know this, but it is students who have led the movement to defend Mexican American Studies since 2006. And it is the students who have time and again, turned to the Calpolli. A large part of the effort has involved ceremonial running to strengthen our community in struggle.
In June 2009, when all seemed lost, students and our community turned to Calpolli Texicalli to lead us in a run from Tucson to Phoenix in 115-degree heat. That run was for ourselves, to give us internal strength. That run resulted both in victory (the bill was dropped that same day that we arrived to the capitol), but more importantly, it is when we began to understand our own [spiritual] power.
Ever since then, the barrio runs have continued in support not just of Mexican American Studies or Indigenous Studies, but also in support of the overall health of the community. We have had runs to promote health (combating obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer… including also against domestic violence).
In the process of all this, two vans have been used for this work. One van, has been used at every run without ever compensating the driver for gas or use (or broken windshields). The other vehicle has involved the family vehicle(s) of Chucho Ruiz and Maria Molina. Their van recently broke down.
This letter is to see if our larger community can help the Calpolli (our local community has been bled dry by all our battles). We know that others might instead want to donate to Save Ethnic Studies, and people should and are welcome to do so, but it is important that the Calpolli also be supported as they carry out invaluable work in this community (I am not a member of the Calpolli, but I do run with them). Please consider supporting the Calpolli.
Sinceramente
Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Prof. University of Arizona
If you would like to assist you can make a donation through one of the following:
1. Donate Using PayPal
If link not active, copy and paste: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=y78qPoykDqbB07LcXGpH5cRwvaoq8gt7kOurpqXV2PXFBH9xkk33CYzlAg4&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8db2b24f7b84f1819343fd6c338b1d9d60
2. Get your car washed on Saturday, November 5th starting at 9am at Pepboys on 6th Ave and 23rd St Tucson
3. Or contact Norma Gonzalez- xikanadeaztlan@yahoo.com
A letter to Birmingham: From the anti-Mexican State of Arizona
Dear Birmingham…
I write this to you from Tucson, Arizona, from a state synonymous with dehumanization and racial profiling, from a land of fear and hate. Birmingham, I think you know what I speak of. But don’t think I am alluding to your past; also today.
HB 56, the bill that your state legislature recently passed and that your governor signed, is being touted as the toughest anti-immigrant bill in the country, one that was affirmed by a U.S. District judge this September. This measure requires school officials to act as immigration agents and permits police officers to detain people without bail, based merely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. That it has fomented hate and caused panic and fear was the point, wasn’t it?
You might be wondering why someone from Arizona would be writing to a Southern city? The answer is simple; Birmingham represents memory; it is etched into the psyche of the nation. It is also seared into Tucson’s memory, not just because many of us from the U.S. Southwest also lived through the civil rights era, but also because on May 3 of this year, one of our elders in our community was arrested for attempting to read the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King Jr. This occurred during a school board meeting, this in the midst of a hostile anti-Mexican, anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant atmosphere in this state.
Here we have our own Bull Conner; Sheriff Joe Arpaio – the same Sheriff who unapologetically proclaimed on CNN that it was an honor to be compared with the KKK (11/12/07). Here, we also have Tom Horne, former state schools superintendent, who has long invoked the memory of MLK Jr., in his six-year effort to eliminate Ethnic Studies. He claims that doing so would constitute the fulfillment of MLK’s Dream. His successor, John Huppenthal, campaigned on the promise to “Stop ‘La Raza’. ” That is his dream. Against all evidence, he is conducting a modern-day Inquisition into Tucson’s Mexican American Studies K-12 department, attempting to prove its maize-based curriculum is anti-American.
In Tucson, our struggle is not simply about the right of our students to learn Mexican American history, language and culture, but even more so, our struggle here is about the right of everyone to be treated as full human beings. Indeed, this is something that you, Birmingham, know all too well. Last month signaled your grand return to the world stage of dehumanization; it’s as if you had been waiting some 50 years to breathe uninhibited, able once again to exhale the fumes of racial supremacy. This is something you haven’t been able to do since the courts and the civil rights movement forced you to cease your legalized discrimination against African Americans. But your fight is not really with brown people; it’s just about enforcing the law, right?
Please note that in Arizona, we don’t refer to dehumanizing measures that violate the rights of human beings as laws. Yet, this is beyond how we characterize this new bigotry; we are conscious that Mexicans in many parts of the country are viewed and treated as less than human. The following quote by Otto Santa Ana, in Brown Tide Rising, explains this bias: “Only humans have human rights.” I am certain that African Americans in the South understand this well.
Here, we have heard your governor, Robert Bentley, brag about the toughness of HB 56. Truthfully, there’s a bit of racial nostalgia and wistfulness communicated in his voice, projecting the sublime and whispered wish: “If we could only also apply these laws to our Black population too.” Am I mistaken, or is he not the same governor who in January proclaimed that only people who believe in Jesus Christ are his brothers and sisters.
As such, I don’t have to wonder what he thinks of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews. But forgive me if this causes me to question whether he considers African Americans, American Indians, Arab Americans and Mexicans as his true brothers and sisters too. As long as they are “legal”?
Birmingham, is this how you wish to be known and remembered? As a place that in the 21st century openly and legally dehumanizes its brown populations?
Birmingham, do you think the world actually believes you when you say you have nothing against brown people, Mexicans or immigrants – that your only beef is with “illegal aliens?” Do you think your ability to discern is credible? Isn’t that like dehumanizing African Americans, but hiding behind “states rights.” Wasn’t slavery and segregation legal in your state, in this country?
So Birmingham, yes, please lecture us on “the rule of law.” And keep listening to your governor, because we here in Arizona are certainly paying close attention. Here are his words in reaction to the judge’s ruling: “…this fight is just beginning… I will continue to fight at every turn to defend this law against any and all challenges.”
Don’t know what you hear, but eerily, we hear echoes of George Wallace: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Birmingham, your state legislature and your governor have once again brought “disgrace upon your state.” We know the objective is to take HB 56 to the Supreme Court. And let’s not mince words; we know that ethnic cleansing is not an unintended consequence. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Here, we thank your civil and human rights organizations and your religious community. Please continue to fight. Our memory is long. Yes, we remember the 1950s and 1960s… but we also remember the Trail of Tears. Please do not permit a new one on your soil. After all, the brown men, women and children subject to this new draconian measure… they are our brothers and sisters… as they are yours.
In Arizona: After 519 years, Indigenous Knowledge on Trial
By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Special Length-column
Justice. That’s a word not normally associated with Arizona. With Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his military tank still on the loose, this will not be changing anytime soon. In Arizona, Arpaio is colorful, but he is actually the least of them.
Just recently, Sen. John McCain decided to blame “illegal aliens” for the state’s forest fire outbreaks. Aided and abetted by the media, the senator’s irresponsible accusations, after touring the 500,000-acre Wallow fire, set off a contagion of wind-aided hate and fear. This month, two cousins were arrested for setting that fire. They were not aliens of any kind. The senator has issued no retractions.
This is the climate we live in. But it is actually worse. The borderlands are killing fields. That is not accidental or hyperbole, but U.S. policy since the 1990s. It is a policy that has resulted in thousands of deaths; migrants are intentionally funneled to the most dangerous deserts, mountains and rivers. Not just in Arizona, but the full expanse of the border.
So too brutality against detained migrants. It is widespread and not an aberration. The human rights organization, No More Deaths, is releasing a shocking study that won’t so much surprise, but simply confirm these widespread practices [thousands of abuses] at the hands of immigration agents. Here, the “migra” act as hunter battalions, always chasing down people the color of the earth.
The government refers to the funneling as policies of deterrence. Politicians in Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico and Washington have advocated even more direct forms of deterrence: shooting migrants or blowing them up as they cross the border.
Operation Streamline is also one of these deterrence policies. Every day, seventy brown men (and a few women) are herded into the 2nd floor of the federal court building in Tucson. They are all shackled to their wrists, waists and ankles, charged with illegal entry. If the judge spends more than a minute on each detainee, that might be an overestimation as the entire operation generally lasts but an hour. By the time this kangaroo court is done with, the judge will have criminalized them and ritualistically sentenced these men and women to private profit-making detention centers (Corrections Corporation of America).
What else can you call them but human sacrifices. The operation is designed not to mete out justice, but to enrich and to send a message (propaganda]. Prior to 9-11-2001, no one would have associated such an operation with the United States. Perhaps apartheid South Africa, but not the U.S.A. It is fitting that it operates in Arizona. It is also no coincidence that several of the governor’s closest advisers are implicated in this profit-making scheme.
The same day I go to witness this operation, I watch a movie, The Postville Raid: I shake my head. This can’t be happening in the land of freedom. The movie is about the infamous Postville, Iowa immigration raid of 2008. It is about the herding of 389 men women and children – mostly from Guatemala – into a cattle facility where they are processed, deported or forced to wear dehumanizing electronic ankle monitors. For 3 days, it’s their version of Operation Streamline. For us in Arizona, it’s 24/7/365.25.
The next day, a friend is visiting and wants to go to the border. As we cross from Nogales, Arizona into Nogales Mexico, we come upon a man from Central America. His eyes reveal not post-traumatic stress disorder, but rather, eyes of terror. He has been out in the summer desert, unsuccessfully trying to cross for a week.
Every time I am anywhere near the militarized border, my stomach turns. There is no justice there. Just scars, like the unnatural wall separating the two Nogaleses. It is the most visible sign of dehumanization.
Amidst all this, state senate president, Russell Pearce, who associates with known racial supremacists and who has been recalled and is facing election in November, is convinced that he can legislate the state back into the 19th century.
But none of this could have prepared anyone for the Tucson Unified School District’s appeal hearing in Phoenix. Despite the independently commissioned Cambium Study, which gave two thumbs up to the district’s Mexican American Studies program, State Schools’ superintendent John Huppenthal still found the district out of compliance with HB 2281 – the state’s anti-Ethnic Studies law. The district is appealing his ruling and the hearings are reminiscent of the 1500s-era Inquisition. At this surreal hearing, it is knowledge, a discipline and [brown] people that are on trial. Not surprisingly, even the student organization MEChA or Movimiento Estudiantli Chicana/Chicano de Aztlan is also under attack.
This six-year war against MAS is about what is permissible knowledge vs. banned knowledge. It is about banned books and about banned curricula. In this instance, it is a war against Indigenous Knowledge, this in a state that is also engaged in Ethnic Cleansing.
The supposition here is that individualism is next to godliness… that to teach [Indigenous] culture is to somehow not to treat students as individuals and that do so is to be both, anti-American and anti-Western Civilization (Great Zeus!)
Today, this hearing is about Mexican American Studies and its maiz-based curriculum. But the state law itself actually covers all of Ethnic Studies. And yet, a closer inspection reveals that it is a war over education itself. The state here wants to make Swiss cheese out of what can be taught/learned, wants to be able to censor, and still be able to call it education. Short and simple, this is not simply a war against ethnic studies, but a civilizational war on the very idea of education.
What is bothersome is not so much the Inquisitorial questions or answers, but by the very fact that this hearing (a modern day Auto de Fe) is taking place at all. I check the calendar; it is 2011, not 1511. I check the map… and not so sure where Arizona belongs. The last hearing is scheduled for Oct. 17, though we are not sure what the point of the charades are because as Huppenthal has already shown, regardless of the evidence, he does whatever he feels like.
By the way, the tremendous anti-Mexican rhetoric that has resulted from this conflict has also produced death threats against the students – threats that law enforcement has deemed “a joke.” Not coincidentally, I too have received a series of death threats. Normally, death threats seem to be ignored, but in this case, the person issuing the threats against me will be arraigned at the end of September. Stay tuned.
Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com
The second annual conference has been tentatively approved and will be sponsored by the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Scholars for Nov 18-20 in Arizona. Announcements and details forthcoming at above website:http://combatinghate.com/Combatting_Hate/Enter.html
The focus will be defending Indigenous/Raza/Ethnic Studies and combatting SB 1070 and HB 2281 legislation... and related legislation nationally.
* If you would like to see a hip-hop rendition to the button above: From Manifest Destiny to Manifest Insanity by TOLTEKA, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiG8p1MUXxA
Proclamation of Indigenous Peoples and Nations
gathered at Pascua Yaqui Pueblo, Arizona August 6th, 2011
for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
We, representatives of Indigenous Tribal Nation Governments, Peoples, organizations and communities from Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora Mexico, Australia and California, gathered on the lands of the Pascua Yaqui Nation of Arizona on August 6th in honor of this year’s International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples, August 9th 2011.
We discussed strategies for the full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other International Human Rights standards. We also shared examples of the ongoing violations of our human rights in Arizona, throughout the US, in Mexico and around the world. Nearly 8 months after the United States became the last country in the world to express its support for the UN Declaration, we continue to experience violations of our Treaty rights, cultural and spiritual rights, rights to our traditional lands, water, food sovereignty and traditional economies, contamination of our environment through mining and the export of banned pesticides from the US to Mexico and other countries, disproportionate rates of incarceration and denial of freedom of religion for Indigenous prisoners, destruction of our sacred sites and the imposition of colonial borders and racist immigration policies that target Indigenous Peoples in Arizona and throughout this continent.
We affirm article 43 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which states that “the rights recognized herein constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world.” We recognize that all of the human rights violations and threats that we continue to confront are also violations of the rights affirmed in the Declaration, which is now universally supported, but not implemented, by the States (countries) of the world. We agree that full and unqualified implementation by the US and all other States is the challenge and the goal. We will continue to hold them to their commitments and obligations in this regard.
On the 11th commemoration of the Day of the Worlds Indigenous Peoples we make the following affirmations and recommendations:
1) We call upon the United States, Mexico, Australia and all other States and Nations to fully implement the UNDRIP and to abandon any attempts to qualify the inherent rights it recognizes, including but not limited to the rights to free, prior and informed consent and self-determination.
2) We affirm that UN Declaration does not distinguish between “recognized” and “unrecognized” Indigenous Peoples, or give the discretion to States to discriminate in the implementation of the rights it contains based on this or any other form of legal status; in fact it affirms non-discrimination as a core right and principle in a number of its provisions.
3) We call upon and encourage Tribal Nation governments to endorse the UN Declaration and call upon all Indigenous Peoples, Nations, Tribes and organizations to use it, cite it, assert it, and insist on full compliance and implementation in all of our interactions with federal governments and all of their subsidiaries (states/provinces and local governments as well as corporations licensed under the laws of these governments).
4) We call for the establishment of just and effective mechanisms and processes in the US and other States to ensure oversight and implementation of their human rights obligations, including the Nation-to-Nation Treaties and Agreements they concluded with Indigenous Peoples, and that these mechanisms and processes be created and implemented in full partnership with Indigenous Peoples.
5) We affirm that we are Indigenous Peoples without borders. We strongly condemn current State border and immigration policies which violate the rights affirmed in Article 36 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other international standards, and we call for a study by the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a focused investigation by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to address these violations. We also reaffirm our adamant rejection of AZ SB1070, HB 2281 and all other measures that promote racial profiling and cultural genocide.
6) We support the call for regional hearings on the impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery to be held before the 11th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
7) We endorse the work of the North-South Indigenous Network against Pesticides and call for a halt to all forms of toxic contamination impacting the health of Indigenous Peoples and the full implementation of Article 29 of the UNDRIP. We call upon the US to immediately halt production and export of pesticides that have been banned for use in the US.
8) We call for, and insist upon as essential to our collective survival, the protection of our sacred sites, areas and places, as well as our traditional cultural knowledge in accordance with Articles 14, 25, 26, 31 and others in the UN Declaration; we express in particular our support for the Indigenous Nations working for the protection of the sacred of sites and areas presented at this gathering. In addition we fully support Indigenous Peoples’ work to reclaim, restore and heal the sacred places which have been jeopardized by unwanted development, laws and policies, and the restoration and repatriation of our sacred objects and ancestral remains.
9) We look forward to presenting the issues and concerns we have discussed during this gathering to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples during his upcoming US Country visit and Consultation on the Implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United States. We offer our full support to his work in this regard.
10) We thank the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona for their generous hospitality, the Yoemem Tekia Foundation for the traditional meal they provided, and the International Indian Treaty Council and the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders for their coordination of this important gathering.
11) Finally, we express our continued solidarity and firm support for each other’s struggles and achievements. As Indigenous Peoples, we commit to stand together, and to continue coalition-building between our Peoples, organizations and Nations.
We affirm our sacred inherent rights to live as who we are. For our ancestors, our Nations and our future generations, our sacred Mother Earth and for all members of the human family we make this proclamation by consensus,
This issue of Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (http://bad.eserver.org/) provides insight into the acts of state-sponsored biopower in the Arizona-México borderlands.
We find that when Arizona is brought up many scholars, educational and immigration rights activists across the U.S. just shrug and say “Arizona is crazy” or ”that is Arizona for you”. However we strongly believe that Arizona is a bas-relief to a matrix of racialized biopower that seeks to criminalize and denigrate subjects based on fear-driven paranoia about indigenous and mestiza/o peoples.
Over the past several years, Arizona has unquestionably become synonymous with reactionary politics and reactionary anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous legislation. Arizona’s image has been further tarnished during the past few years by being home to Operation Streamline in Tucson.
Last week I revisited Tucson, where my mother was raised and where at the age of five, when arriving by Greyhound, we stayed in an adobe house in nearby downtown.
81: Arizona Biopower No Somos Criminales: A Decolonial Response to Nativist Racism in the US
Arturo Aldama
For all those perceived as illegal, even if their ancestry predates by several generations the arrival of European immigrants, how do we read their harassment, deportation, assumption of illegality? Is this also a predictable outcome of the processes of nativism? Your racialized construction trumps claims to indigenous identity and ancestry?
81: Arizona Biopower On Arizona’s Failed Democracy: Where is Chicana and Chicano Studies?
Peter J. Garcia
The neoconservative backlash against civil rights and social justice is attempting to criminalize Mexican immigrants and is threatened by any form of decolonial activism or liberation movements that might have prevented the social implosion occurring in Arizona.
81: Arizona Biopower The Veils of the State: Contextualizing Political Affiliation, Acts of Violence and Illogical Justifications of the Rhetoric of Patriotism.
Doreen Martinez
When it came to light that Mr. Loughner failed to have any formal political memberships, a shift away from the deeper connection he embodied occurred and one veil of the borderlands was achieved. Therein is a critical failure to understand Jared’s racial and gender entitlements e.g., his context or what we could refer to as his borderland status.
81: Arizona Biopower Arizona: From Jim Crow to Juan Cuervo
Alberto “Beto” Gutierrez
Unfortunately, the paradigm of race has been historically framed as a Black and White relation, overlooking more subtle forms of anti-Mexican, anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, and anti-Native American local and national legislation and public policy.
81: Arizona Biopower Resisting a Mechanized Consciousness
Christopher Gonzalez
As cool as it may sound, no one in America should want to be a machine. To be a machine means you are expendable and exploitable. It means that you are just a number and that there are a hundred more behind you who are ready, willing, and able to do the kind of work you do. It means having a devalued sense of self-worth and adopted fatalism that speaks to your contribution to the world as being transient. We need to conceive of strategies that limit this sort of thinking in the Chicano/a community which aspires to move thinking beyond the attributes of labor.
81: Arizona Biopower Que Me Toquen un Corrido Pesado!!!: An Analysis of the Narcocorrido and Its Rise to Popularity in the United States
Jesus Acosta
The narcocorrido is a drug ballad, yet there is a great deal of multiplicity within these songs.
81: Arizona Biopower Danny Trejo's Body: Immigrant Males, the Border, and Citizenship in the American Imagination
Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, Tia K. Butler
In this article, we discuss the symbolic and material forms this war against immigrants manifests itself in the United States. Using the films of Danny Trejo and most importantly what happens to his body in these films, we posit that it is possible to read the multiple forms anti-immigrant sentiments are performed and enacted in American popular culture since the late 80s.
81: Arizona Biopower Last Stand
Harry Gamboa Jr.
A man and woman are standing on soapboxes with their heads covered by black hoods while their wrists are bound behind them. A hangman’s noose is placed around each of their necks.
81: Arizona Biopower From This Side: Images on Immigration from the United States
George Rivera
The issue of immigration is evident in many parts of the world. It is part of the human condition. We must intervene on this reality. Artists must do their part too.
81: Arizona Biopower Allegory and Alterity: Regulating Labor, Immigration, and the Ruinous Emblems of Hate in Michigan
Mike Mosher
Michigan is the site for draconian laws from a Republican Governor and Arizona-copying cowboy legislators, yet perhaps the undead symbol of white supremacy should be legislated most of all.
81: Arizona Biopower “We Have Found New Homes for the Rich": The Underclass Won’t Wait to Join Obama’s "Everybody”
Joe Natoli
A “capitalist environment” has socially engineered us as demonstrably as whatever tradition centered gold earrings in the middle of one young Class Warrior’s ear lobes.
81: Arizona Biopower Arizona Inspired Artwork
Jake Prendez
Three works that comment on what's going on.
81: Arizona Biopower Normalizing Noncompliance: Militarization and Resistance in Southern Arizona
Geoffrey Boyce and Sarah Launius
Laws like SB 1070 are meant to divide people from one another by reifying fear, distrust and violent the exclusion of some. The We Reject Racism campaign worked to directly confront this process through cross-sector organizing that undermined pre-existing divisions in our communities and worked to mitigate the impacts of the law.
John McCain said there was 'substantial evidence' linking wildfires in Arizona to illegal immigrants. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Does it surprise anyone that Arizona Senator John McCain has blamed undocumented immigrants for the wildfires in his state?
Hard economic times drives desperate people to do desperate things. Throw in the subject of immigration and a little bit of xenophobia … and shazzam! You have the recipe for a political ideology: blame the Mexicans! Send that recipe into Arizona and you have the perfect storm:
• Uneducated and unable to find a [high-paying] job? Blame the Mexicans.
• Social security and Medicare going broke? Yup, it's the Mexicans.
• Terrorism in the Middle East has you up at night? Blame the Mexicans for your insomnia, send troops and wall the US-Mexico border.
• Crime, drug usage and communicable diseases on the rise? You know the answer.
Blaming Mexicans, or "illegal aliens", is a tradition here; and in Georgia and Alabama, too … the whole country, really. Last year, McCain claimed that "illegal aliens" were intentionally causing accidents on freeways.
McCain's charges read like comedy but here in Arizona, immigration is serious business – and so is scapegoating. It is [Sheriff Joe] Arpaio country, where racial profiling is American as apple pie. It is this state that gave us SB 1070 – based in large part on the unproven allegation that Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was killed by "illegal aliens". Amazingly, another whopper was conjured up one week after SB 1070 was signed – that a Pinal County sheriff's deputy had been shot by Mexican drug smugglers (the incident was self-inflicted). And two weeks before SB 1070 was set to go into effect, Governor Jan Brewer began to warn people about finding headless bodies in the Arizona desert. But the fantastical tales don't end there: in this state, it's not even that Mexican migrants are falsely blamed for real problems; they are also blamed for invented problems. Dana Milbank from the Washington Post writes about this:
"Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong."
Per the FBI, we know that the border region is safer than it was a decade ago, and that many of the safest US cities are along the US-Mexico border. But when it comes to fueling xenophobia in this country, facts never get in the way.
For example, Tucson's highly successful Mexican American Studies programme is on the verge of being eliminated because our current attorney general, Tom Horne, has long maintained that the classes foment revolution ("Viva Che!"). A recent independent audit found all the charges against the programme to be false.
The dictionary definition of insanity should be changed to spell A-R-I-Z-O-N-A and its state capitol building should be designated as a home for the criminally insane. But lest we kid ourselves, this Arizona insanity has now spread nationwide. Let’s take a tour of the [police] state.
On the educational front, Tucson Unified School Superintendent, John Pedicone, has managed to militarize school board meetings. He has done this because several weeks ago, the high school group UNIDOS, tired of having their Mexican American Studies program targeted for elimination, chained themselves to the school board members chairs, prompting the board to cancel its meeting. For this, the students and others have received death threats. At the subsequent May 3rd meeting, officially, some 100 police officers were deployed to the TUSD headquarters. However, on top of TUSD security guards, including those staffing metal detectors, along with bomb squad officers, helicopters, plus riot squad officers deployed inside and around the building and neighborhood, it is likely that the officers totaled closer to 200.
At this meeting, seven people were arrested for the criminal act of attempting to speak to the board. One elderly and disabled professor, Lupe Castillo, 69, was arrested by some 20 helmeted and shielded officers for attempting to read ”A Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. The others arrestees were [secretly] sent to two jails before they were booked and released. In the action inside, dozens of riot squad police physically threw other people out the building, including elders, this while hundreds of MAS supporters outside stood their ground. Then later, the violence, caught on videotape, started behind the building. Police officers in full riot gear began throwing young students, parents and other community members around like rag dolls. Officially, the officers did a great job, commended by the chief of police.
All this is the calm before the storm, precipitated by a 2010 law (HB 2281), purportedly inspired by Martin Luther King Jr, that has declared the teaching of Ethnic Studies illegal. This week, an audit ordered by the state schools superintendent, John Huppenthal, who ran on the campaign to “eliminate La Raza” (the Mexican people) – is scheduled to be released, with expected pre-ordained findings that will declare Tucson’s highly successful MAS program to be out of compliance.
That’s from the sane part of the state. Now, from the insane sector:
This past week, the governor signed SB 1404, a law that attempts to wall the state from the rest of society. Not satisfied with the federal walls that line the U.S./Mexico border, Arizona will soon be embarking upon creating its own wall along the Arizona/Sonora border, financed through online donations and built by prison labor. Being that imprisoning migrants is a growing multi-billion dollar industry, look for the state to employ incarcerated migrants to attempt to build it.
Beyond the state’s 2010 (SB 1070) racial profiling law, this year, state legislators attempted to pass nearly two dozen even more stringent laws, including one that would overturn birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Legislators also attempted to pass two other laws that can only be construed as attempts to secede from humanity; SB 1443 and SCR 1010 were attempts to exempt the state from federal and international laws, respectively.
Most of this legislation is designed to incarcerate migrants and to enrich the private prison industry. The mastermind of most of this legislation is state senate president, Russell Pearce, who in addition to facing a recall, is also embroiled in the Fiesta Bowl “gift” scandal that threatens to bring down he and many of his associates.
And then there’s Maricopa County’s unindicted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who continues to thumb his nose at the feds with his ongoing racially motivated mass dragnet raids. Recent investigations have found that in eight years, his department has misspent close to $100 million, and that his top commanders targeted “enemies,” confirming he is the most corrupt Sheriff in America. Federal investigations into his activities continue.
Outside of the state, the governor of Georgia recently signed HB 87, joining Arizona, Utah and Indiana in implementing anti-immigrant racial profiling laws. Twenty other states are pursuing a similar return to the 19th century. The good news is that Utah’s HB 497 anti-immigrant law, was recently blocked by a Utah judge, and the DREAM ACT has again been introduced in Congress.
Given recent dramatic events on the international front, it is generally thought that the president can now restore sanity and actually bring about actual immigration reform. Regarding Ethnic Studies, not sure he can do anything about those intent on “eliminating La Raza.”
Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com
For the moment, Arizona has regained its sanity. Five draconian anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant bills were recently defeated by the state senate. However, this bout of sanity in this insane state may only be temporary; this action only dealt with five 2011 bills. More bills remain and the author of most of these bills, Russell Pearce, remains Senate president.
The defeat of these bills simply returns us to the unsustainable status quo, a hostile state climate, including the continued militarization of the border, plus the 2010 bills: the racial profiling SB1070 and the Anti-Ethnic Studies HB 2281.
A careful reading of these two bills has convinced many of us that the state has for years been out of compliance or in violation of virtually all international human rights laws. These laws were designed to protect the rights of peoples from physical and cultural extermination and persecution and from discriminatory treatment and forced assimilation. Virtually all these laws protect people’s rights to education, history, language, identity and culture.
In comprehending Arizona, it is useful to understand the UN definition of Human Rights: they are inherent, inalienable and universal. In April of 2010, five UN special rapporteurs denounced both SB 1070, and HB 2281, as measures that would most likely lead to the mass violation of human rights.
About HB 2281, they specifically wrote: “Such law and attitude are at odds with the State’s responsibility to respect the right of everyone to have access to his or her own cultural and linguistic heritage and to participate in cultural life. Everyone has the right to seek and develop cultural knowledge and to know and understand his or her own culture and that of others through education and information.”
Seven months later, then state superintendent, Tom Horne (now state attorney general) declared Mexican American Studies-Tucson Unified School District as out-of-compliance. The only form of compliance per HB 2281 is elimination. Eleven MAS educators promptly filed a lawsuit, proclaiming that they will not comply with an unconstitutional law that has given TUSD several months to dismantle the program.
Currently, HB 2281 appears first and foremost to also be in violation of the:
1948: UN Declaration of Human Rights
1948: American Declaration of the Rights of Man
1960: Convention against Discrimination in Education
1966 & 1976: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
1969 American Convention on Human Rights (Organization of American States)
1989: The UN Convention on Rights of the Child
1990: The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families
1994: The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
2007: UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
SB 1070 also violates virtually every one of these human rights laws that are designed to prevent larger hostile governments from forcefully, politically or culturally eliminating or swallowing up smaller nations, peoples and cultures.
The root of the conflict re HB 2281 involves the insistence by Tom Horne that the highly successful MAS program preaches un-American values and that it does not emphasize the Greco-Roman roots of Western Civilization. In that sense, he is half-correct. The philosophical foundation for MAS-TUSD is rooted in maiz. Maiz culture is part of a 7,000-year culture that is completely Indigenous to the Americas. In effect, continues to call for a modern-day version of the colonial policy of “reducciones” or forced conversions. This latter-day policy is an attempt to exterminate that which is Indigenous among Mexican Americans and “reduce” them to the status of individual “Americans” – minus their roots, history and culture. American Indians will recognize “reducciones” as a predecessor to Indian Boarding school policies.
Most MAS supporters do not view this as a Mexican American or Ethnic Studies issue per se, but an issue that attacks the very precept of education. To be sure, it is not a K-12 issue either as John Huppenthal, the current superintendent of schools, actively campaigned against “La Raza,” and also vowed to eliminate Ethnic Studies at the University level. The minute governments begin to legislate what is acceptable knowledge means a degradation of the very idea of education. That is what is at stake in Arizona. Akin to SB 1070, there are many forces that would love to export HB 2281 nationwide.
Conversely, what should be exported is MAS’s proven curriculum. Expanding and adopting such an ethnic studies model in communities nationwide – which celebrates a student’s culture – would unquestionably see a dramatic rise in graduation rates and an increase in college-going rates. It might even contribute to a little more mutual respect and sanity in this conflictive world we live in.
* Precious Knowledge, which documents the heroic struggle to defend Ethnic Studies will screen in Tucson March 24.
Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com
IN RESPONSE TO ARIZONA HATE: ARIZONA STATE LEG. SEEKS TO NULLIFY INTERNATIONAL LAWS By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Last week I wrote that after the cameras left Tucson, the Arizona hate that is focused on Mexicans/migrants – on brown peoples, which is about 95% of all the hate in Arizona – will be back to normal. I was wrong. The massacre helped to obfuscate that hate; the cameras have not yet left Arizona and already we are being treated to a feel-good national narrative, predicated on denial, this while this war against brown peoples continues unabated.
The latest salvo is an attempt by the legislature to nullify international laws in the outlaw state of Arizona. Yes. You read this correctly.
This past week, the national narrative has been crafted as a story about heroism and healing. And it is a true and uplifting story. Yet, Arizona’s actual hate has generally been off the radar. And again, this hate isn’t necessarily about right-left, Republican vs. Democrats, conservatives (Tea Partiers) vs. Liberals. Instead, most of the hate – as manifested in the state legislature and in the public discourse – is about Mexicans/migrants and the border. And it is ugly.
Perhaps an argument can be made that this massacre is not the appropriate time to address this hate. So the question then is: when is the right time? Since 2000, thousands of migrants have died along the border. And since 2,000, the anti-Mexican legislation has steamrolled through the state legislature. And since 2000 (actually, 2001), the hate rhetoric against them has ratcheted up to unprecedented levels -- equating Mexican/Central American migrants with terrorism, and now, with drug cartels. Most of the world knows about the 2010 racial profiling sb 1070. Less known is the 2010 anti-Ethnic Studies hb 2281 – an attempt to impose upon Arizona schools – a Eurocentric Master Narrative of History. On Jan. 3, Mexican American Studies-TUSD was declared illegal by the outgoing state schools superintendent. The only remedy is its elimination. This year, at least two more outrageous measures are being added to this list; one would nullify the 14th Amendment and the other will require children to turn in their parents [immigration status] to school authorities.
Maria Brummer, Mexican American Studies-TUSD , Tucson High school teacher
Worse, last week, members of Arizona’s state legislature wasted no time or did not let the tragedy get in their way of addressing Arizona’s actual hate… in their own peculiar way. Just a mere 4 days after the Jan. 8 massacre – and on the same day that the president was attempting to heal the nation – a 2012 proposal (SCR 1010) to nullify and exempt Arizona from International Law was introduced. It is not certain whether the legislators are engineering Arizona’s secession from the United States, from the community of nations or from humanity.
It was introduced by: Senators Gray, Allen, Antenori, Gould, Griffin, Nelson, Pearce R, Pierce
S, Reagan, Smith; Representatives Burges, Weiers J: Senators Barto, Biggs, Bundgaard, Crandall, Klein, Melvin, Murphy, Shooter, Yarbrough. Here is the full text of SCR 1010:
Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Arizona, the House of
Representatives concurring:
Article VI, section 1, Constitution of Arizona, is proposed to be
amended as follows if approved by the voters and on proclamation of the
Governor:
1. Judicial power; courts
Section 1. A. The judicial power shall be vested in an
integrated judicial department consisting of a supreme court,
such intermediate appellate courts as may be provided by law, a
superior court, such courts inferior to the superior court as
may be provided by law, and justice courts.
B. IN MAKING JUDICIAL DECISIONS, THE COURTS PROVIDED FOR
IN SUBSECTION A, WHEN EXERCISING THEIR JUDICIAL AUTHORITY, SHALL
UPHOLD AND ADHERE TO THE LAW AS PROVIDED IN THE UNITED STATES
CONSTITUTION, THE CONSTITUTION OF THIS STATE, THE UNITED STATES
CODE, FEDERAL REGULATIONS ADOPTED PURSUANT TO THE UNITED STATES
CODE, ESTABLISHED COMMON LAW, THE LAWS OF THIS STATE AND RULES
ADOPTED PURSUANT TO THE LAWS OF THIS STATE AND, IF NECESSARY,
THE LAWS OF ANOTHER STATE OF THE UNITED STATES PROVIDED THE LAW
OF THE OTHER STATE DOES NOT INCLUDE INTERNATIONAL LAW. THE
COURTS SHALL NOT LOOK TO THE LEGAL PRECEPTS OF OTHER NATIONS OR
CULTURES. THE COURTS SHALL NOT CONSIDER INTERNATIONAL LAW.
2. The Secretary of State shall submit this proposition to the voters
at the next general election as provided by article XXI, Constitution of
Arizona.
One feature of extreme conservative philosophy is its innate disdain not simply of the federal government, but their demonization of the United Nations and international laws. A question to ask; why would a state propose that the state courts “not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures.” Because they are conscious of, and have examined, their own rogue legislation? It very much appears to be the same tactic of the W. Bush administration, in the prelude to the Iraqi invasion, which attempted to exempt itself from the International Criminal Court.
Again, why this preemptive move, and why the attempt to wash its hands and pass the blame on to the citizens of this state? Perhaps because the legislators have little doubts about the mood and passion of the electorate?
A cursory examination of international laws, treaties and conventions that focus on human rights should convince the average person that Arizona’s laws this past decade, directed against Mexicans/migrants, are absolutely outside not simply of international law, but also outside of the U.S. Constitution (see: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/2011/01/updated-hornes-law-or-hornes-great.html). Virtually all international human rights laws are designed to prevent bigger nations, peoples and cultures from eliminating, dis-empowering or swallowing up smaller nations, peoples and cultures. Perhaps Arizona’s legislators are preemptively reading their own tealeaves? The recent Arizona pieces of legislation clearly appear to be aimed at forcibly removing [brown] populations [ethnic cleansing] and at forced assimilation.
In May, five UN rapporteurs issued a report warning that Arizona's laws would lead to discrimination. Human Rights Watch has also stated that sb1070 violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the United States ratified in 1994. Amnesty International has similarly weighed in.
For the international and national media that is still here in Arizona, please take heed: In this state, a reinstatement of slavery would probably stand a good chance of passing; maybe not if directed at African Americans, but at brown peoples, probably.
Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com
As a journalist/columnist of nearly 40 years, I can tell you what will happen in Tucson in a few days. Better yet, I will tell you what the media will do in the next few days; the cameras will leave.
It’s called parachute journalism.
The whole country is exposed to or gets a glimpse of Arizona, and then it’s off to the next rampage. Blood and gore sells, but it only has a shelf life until the next crisis.
What will the country have learned from the saturated and instantaneous coverage (much of it unverified, expectedly wrong or exaggerated)? They will have learned that there’s a lot of hate in Arizona... that the inflammatory and incendiary political rhetoric – with subliminal and even blatant calls to violence – from the right and left have to be toned down… that we all need to be civil and we all need to be positive…
Nice try. But that is not a description of Arizona, nor the nation. With very few exceptions, only the right wing engages in this constant talk of targeting and taking out their opponents and of 2nd Amendment solutions.
The rampage is/was the rampage. It was carried out by what appears to be a right-wing lunatic. He may have had a co-conspirator. His target appears to have been first, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords… and secondarily, with his weapon of choice, anyone else who was in the vicinity. Giffords, a conservative democrat, was literally in the crosshairs of the Tea Party and the Sarah Palin wing of the conservative movement. Everyone knows that.
Yet in Arizona, most of the hate here is directed specifically at Mexicans/immigrants. That cannot be left unsaid by all those who have discovered Arizona overnight. All the hate that Arizona is famous for emanates not simply from right wing hate radio but from the state capitol itself. Here, Mexicans/immigrants and Indigenous peoples are fair game for the loudmouth talk show hosts and their cult followings, but also from the highest officials in state government. Here, Mexicans/immigrants are daily demonized. The viciousness and dehumanization here has become normalized. There’s a consensus that everyone is conscious that we need to be civil… that we need to respect each other’s rights… except when talking about “illegal aliens.” Racial profiling (read Indigenous) is a way of life here in Arizona… and truthfully, when it comes to brown peoples, it has been normalized across the country. That’s what sb 1070 is about. But it’s also about hb 2281 – the effort to kill ethnic studies.
There is no leftwing equivalent to the Rush Limbaughs and Glen Beck’s of the world… and there’s plenty local ones in Arizona who revel perversely every time their names are mentioned. They preach unadulterated hate because “illegal aliens” are not human to them. It is not uncommon to hear people talk on the radio about killing Mexicans along the border… as if they were speaking of flies or cockroaches.
The hate here is deafening. We have been sending signals for years now and the hate continues. It is relentless, whether from minutemen, hate-radio loudmouths or from state legislators.
To the parachute journalists and all those that have discovered Arizona overnight… don’t forget that. Long after you leave, long after this massacre has ceased to be headline news, we will continue to have to contend with the normalized bigotry and hate against brown peoples that continually comes out of the state capitol and that is nowadays prevalent throughout the state. Please remember this and look at your own communities to see if all this hate is already festering there. I can almost guarantee you that it is. Bring it to light before the next massacre. Perhaps you will prevent the next massacre. For in-depth look at Arizona hate, go to the column below: "Horne's Law."
In March of 2010, I announced the end of Column of the Americas; that would have marked the end of 16 years of writing a deadline-based nationally syndicated column, first with Chronicle Features in 1994, then Universal Press Syndicate, and finally, independently with several national publications and syndications, including New America Media.
And then came Arizona’s notorious racial profiling SB 1070… then the anti-ethnic studies HB 2281. (In Arizona, we don’t refer to them as laws. At best, they are anti-laws). Of course, more are on their way – nullification of birthright citizenship – and they are being exported and as welcomed as a cold arctic blast from hell.
Well, I didn’t change my mind about Column of the Americas. But I was supposed to write less, not more. Someone forgot to tell Russell Pearce (president of the state senate), Joe “pink underwear” Arpaio, Jan (Gov.) Brewer, Tom Horne (state schools superintendent and soon to be attorney general), and now, John Huppenthal (Horne’s successor). Honestly, can someone who knows these cats write to them and tell them that they need to move on to other issues so I can retire from column writing? I need to move on.
Seriously, Arizona legislators need to move on. In an irony of history, they are proof that: In Arizona,Darwin was wrong. Apparently, somebody (a legislator, no doubt) has nullified evolution in Arizona. I think they’ve also nullified intelligence and thinking. Elected officials here also disprove another famous adage that: the march of history is always forward.
But back to my story… or would you rather that I continue digressing about the regressive, repressive and reactionary insane asylum we call Arizona? … OK, but when do I get to finish my____ story?!@#!!!
Truth is, there is no mystery about Arizona. It’s a ruse. Even a subterfuge. While we fight what appear to be illiterate political troglodytes on the issue of the browning of this nation, this nation continues to devolve into the United States of War. The Tea Party rails against deficit spending but is all thumbs up on permanent war – which not only permits the U.S. military to take lives without the benefit of trials by the thousands anywhere in the world, but it is also the chief cause of our deficit. The Republican Party (Tea Partiers in suits) demands that we cut spending on everything, except for all things military and law enforcement… in other words, to hell with human needs and the needs of the planet and let our permanent wars continue unabated (Hey this a digression upon another digression).
The point is, this war against brown people in Arizona and in this country is actually related to this notion of permanent worldwide war. But we’re not supposed to look at the big picture. We’re only supposed to be able to point out the narrow-mindedness of Arizona legislators and their effort to nullify the 20th century, etc, etc. The idea that more than two dozen states are set to follow Arizona’s lead regarding dealing with “illegal alien invaders” (This new dehumanizing term comes compliments of Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican Pennsylvania state rep.) is actually a mis-analysis. Arizona is not the leader in these politics nor does it constitute an aberration; it actually typifies the history of this country and continent. If you are not certain about this, please read Decade of Betrayal (Rodriguez and Balderrama), Brown Tide Rising (Santa Ana) and Open Veins of Latin America (Galeano).
And yet, while Arizona cannot be ignored, it should be contextualized in relationship between resistance and creation, here in the desert. What is developing in Arizona is a resistance/creation culture. It is awesome and I happen to have front row seats. Resistance by any other name is still reaction. Creation is what is developing, when people act from an axis mundi that does not point to hate, fear or ignorance as its center. The resistance/creation culture that is developing in Arizona is youth-led, the result of having to battle over their/our very humanity and our very existence, but also as a result of an understanding that their/our knowledge and essence is not dependent upon what Western or modern culture permits or outlaws.
In the recent December conference we held at the University of Arizona that examined hate, censorship and forbidden curriculums, many of us witnessed pre-K-12 students and college and university students stand up and speak for themselves. Amidst massive dehumanizing assaults on who they are, they are courageous, determined and resilient. They are clear-headed and tienen Coraje! They are awesome and the continual battles here are producing them on a daily basis.
And thus, it’s time for us to listen to their stories, their experiences, their organizing efforts and their visions. And many indeed are great writers and great story-tellers. Its time to give them the mic.
Now I’ll finish my story: Under intense pressure, I’ve been instructed to publish academically or else? So I have a book I just finished and another one on the way… plus I will be writing a few journal articles (about 11 people will read them) about this dehumanizing experience we’ve all been living here in Arizona. So I’ll reiterate, I won’t stop writing the column, it just won’t be deadline-based nor on a regular schedule. It will be written when the need arises (again, someone call Pearce, Horne and company to slow down). But I will also do my best to continue to keep you posted on the continuing war here in Arizona. Question is, can I still run?
Photo L.M. Hernandez Dec 4 Ceremonial Run in Defense of Raza/Indigenous/Ethnic Studies
(60-80 runners ran from Tucson's A Mountain to El Rio Neighborhood Ctr)
