A letter to Birmingham...

Column of the Americas

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.



Sincerely

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez





Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or http://drcintli.blogspot.com/




Column of the Americas
PO BOX 3812
Tucson, AZ 85722


ARCHIVED COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
http://web.me.com/columnoftheamericas

In Arizona: After 519 years, Indigenous Knowledge on Trial

Column of the Americas

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

TUSD Stands 100% behind Raza Studies

The above was handed out in front of TUSD headquarters to the media and to the public on the day after Gov. Brewer signed HB 2281. On the basis of what study did any of these board members, or Superintendent Pedicone (who was hired after this) change their minds? We all know that the independent Cambium study affirmed MAS.

What study is Huppenthal (below at work) relying on? Whatever it is, it's a guarantee that it is not independent.

Website for National Conference Combating Hate, Censorship & Forbidden Curricula I & II

This is the website for the National Conference Combating Hate, Censorship & Forbidden Curricula: http://combatinghate.com/Combatting_Hate/Enter.html

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: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

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,

August 6th 2011, Pascua Yaqui Pueblo, Arizona

Sat. July 23: In Defense of Indigenous/Raza/Ethnic Studies Run

Saturday July 23 6am
Tucson, Arizona
Meet at A Mountain Volcano
(off of Mission, behind Mexican Pottery Store)

In conjunction with the 13th Annual Transformative Education (Raza Studies) conference, Calpolli Texicalli will lead a run from A Mountain in Tucson to Luz Academy (About 5 miles).

There will be simultaneous runs in L.A. and San Bernardino and possibly other cities, including one in Colorado.

Mexican American Studies in Tucson is under attack. Running is one powerful way to fight back. While the battle has been going on since 2006, the running portion is traced back to the summer of 2009 when as a community, we ran from Tucson to Phoenix to defeat one of the bills that sought to eliminate Raza Studies.

Last year, hb 2281 did pass and the battle is on. Read other posts on this website re this battle this battle: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/

The struggle to defend Indigenous/Raza/Ethnic Studies includes a legal and political strategy. This run is for ourselves. It is to strengthen us physically and spiritually. Please join us.

For more info:

Chucho Calpolli Teoxicalli
520-551-5229
teoxicalli@yahoo.com
or visit fb page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=225865004119745

For L.A info, contact Mixpe: https://www.facebook.com/profi​le.php?id=604847387

For San Bernardino, Lupe Yarrito: https://www.facebook.com/yarrito1

For Info re Raza Studies Conf: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121079481314590

Bad Subjects: #81 Arizona Biopower

This is a special issue of Bad Subjects, focusing on Arizona. All the Arizona Biopower chapters can be accessed at the website below.

Arizona Biopower: http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2011/81

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.

81: Arizona Biopower Ya Basta! with State Sponsored Racial Thuggery
Arturo J. Aldama, Peter J. Garcia
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2011/81/aldama-garcia.htm

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.

81: Arizona Biopower:
Outlaw Arizona: State Seceding from the United States and Humanity
by Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2011/81/rodriguez.htm

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.

81: Arizona Biopower The Search for Reason
Roldolfo F. Acuña
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2011/81/acuna.htm

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.