by Rodolfo F. Acuña
Truth be told, Mexican Americans
are the only ethnic/racial group in the United States who are at this moment
being ordered to forget their history. No one has passed a law ordering the
English, the Irish, or the Jews to forget their history and culture; it was
only demanded of the Germans during the American cultural and political panic
after World War I.
I went to Catholic Schools that
for all intents and purposes nurtured Irish nationalism. St. Patrick’s was a
holiday and we learned the latest score of and prayed for the Fighting Irish
football team.
American historical ignorance is a
disgrace. Students have a D.W. Griffith “The Birth of a Nation” vision of
slavery and even at the university level most students do not know that the
Southwest once belonged to Mexico.
In 1968 I was denied employment in
the History Department at San Fernando Valley State because, according to the
chair, I could not be objective in teaching Latin American history because my
parents were Mexican. He forgot that every U.S. History class was taught by a
white American.
“Occupied America” was attacked by
academic reviewers at the University of California Santa Barbara because,
according to them, I lied when I wrote that the United States invaded Mexico.
The study of history is the search
for the truth and you cannot learn the truth unless history is vetted and
discussed.
Moreover, if we live in a
democratic society we better ask simple questions like why Italian-Americans
and Jews can have Columbus Day Parades and carry the flags of their countries
of origin. Their patriotism is not questioned. However, the patriotism of
Mexican Americans is questioned for marching with and waving the Mexican flag.
Historically and as human beings
we lost a great deal when the Spaniards destroyed the indigenous codices.
Whether we want to admit it or not these works held a key to the past. Of all
the great religions of time, Native Americans religions of the Americas are the
only great religions almost totally erased; others are studied at august
institutions.
This ignorance is one reason why
learning the past is so vital. We cannot afford to have our children grow up to
be like today’s Arizona xenophobes.
Most educated people in other
countries know history while we are forced to live in ignorance. The U.S. could
probably get away with imposing its narrative if it were at the height of its
power. However, fewer nations now go along with the U.S. and it needs friends
both internally and externally.
Its moral authority has been badly
damaged by lies. It is to its best its interest to find friends which it won’t
get trying to impose its narrative of history.
We have to ask, what happens to a
narrative when the most fundamental assumptions turn out to be lies?
Did the lie that our reason for
invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction hurt our
moral authority?
What happens to the narrative that
we are in the land of the free and education is a leveling force when we
realize that one group has been singled out to censor and deny what every other
American has?
In order to
break this down, every semester I show Robert Wuhl’s HBO special “Assume the
Position 101.” Wuhl proposes that U.S. history is Pop Culture and he discusses
different events in American history and its American take.
The first myth that Wuhl explores is that of the
Founding Fathers. If they were as smart as American exceptionalists say why,
Wuhl asks, does the first sentence of the U.S. Constitution read?
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and e
stablish this Constitution for the
United States of America.”
Wuhl roars, “more perfect!?” How can something be more
perfect? It is or it isn’t. According to Wuhl, it is a "grammatical
fuck-up."
He goes on to show how American history is
constructed from myths. Wuhl says that when the truth contradicts the legend,
the truth has to go. Wuhl gives the example of the film “The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance.” When the Jimmy Stewart character tries to explain to the
local newspaper editor that he did not shoot Liberty Valance, the editor won’t
hear it, packs up to leave and says “…when the legend becomes fact, print the
legend.”
This is true about most aspects of American
history: Columbus discovered America. Thanksgiving Day showed the
friendship between the colonists and the Indians. The colonists fought against
the tyranny of the British, and even as a child I learned the story of George
Washington cutting down the cherry tree that was treated as the truth.
How many people still believe the myth that the
United States won World War II by itself? Americans forget that Russian
suffered around 26 million casualties versus just over 400,000 for the United
States.
Americans consider themselves a generous people and
look at the criticism of rest of the world as ungrateful. They cite the
Marshall Plan as an example of this generosity. According Americans, it saved
post war Europe from economic disaster, forgetting the financial benefits
reaped by American capital.
Many Africans and Latin Americans take issue with
the myth of American generosity.
From 1890 to the present there have been at least
sixty U.S. military interventions into Latin America and this does not include
the Indian Wars, the annexation of Florida in 1819, the Texas War 1836 and the
Mexican American War of 1845-48. http://www.yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.htmlhttp://www.yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.html
Americans are surprised to learn that these
narratives are part of Latin America’s popular culture. Even the great
Nicaraguan poet, Ruben Dario, who was hardly a revolutionary bitterly
complained about the actions of Theodore Roosevelt:
****
“You are the United States,
future invader of our naive America
with its Indian blood, an America
that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish.
****
You think that life is a fire,
that progress is an eruption,
that the future is wherever
your bullet strikes.
No.
The United States is grand and powerful.
Whenever it trembles, a
profound shudder
runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes.
If it shouts,
the sound is like the roar of a lion.
****
But our own America, which has had poets
since the ancient times of Nezahualcóyolt;
which preserved the footprint of great Bacchus,
and learned the Panic alphabet once,
and consulted the stars; which also knew Atlantic
(whose name comes ringing down to us in Plato)
and has lived, since the earliest moments of its life,
in light, in fire, in fragrance, and in love--…
God! O men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls,
our America lives. And
dreams. And loves.
And it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful.
Long live
Spanish America!
A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free.
Roosevelt,
you must become, by God's own will,
the deadly Rifleman and the dreadful
Hunter
before you can clutch us in your iron claws.
And though you have
everything, you are lacking one thing:
God!
So you see, Fidel Castro did not invent anti-Americanism
which is a product of history rather than jealousy or communist propaganda.
Anti-Americanism was forged by history and if we went back in time and
eliminated Castro, these feelings would not be erased. Only in knowing the
causes can we corrected them.
It is like when my wife gets angry with me and I ask
why and she answers, “Whatever.”
Latin Americans have always been enamored with
history. Castro should be studied if for no other reason than to learn the
answer for “whatever.” During his failed coup in 1953, Castro based his defense
on Cuban history, summing up by saying: “I know that imprisonment will be
harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats
and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the
miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does
not matter. History will absolve me.”
Upon achieving victory in 1959, Castro again turned
to history:
“PEOPLE OF SANTIAGO, COMPATRIOTS OF ALL CUBA…
Our Revolution … will not be like 1895 when the Americans came and took
over, intervening at the last moment, and afterwards did not even allow Calixto
Garcia to assume leadership, although he had fought at Santiago de Cuba for 30
years.
Nor will it be like 1933, when the people began to believe that the
revolution was going to triumph, and Mr. Batista came in to betray the
revolution, take over power, and establish an 11-year-long dictatorship.
Nor will it be like 1944, when the people took courage, believing that
they had finally reached a position where they could take over the power, while
those who did assume power proved to be thieves. We will have no thievery, no
treason, no intervention. This time it is truly the revolution, even though some
might not desire it.…
The Republic was not freed in 1895, and the dream was frustrated at the
last minute. The Revolution did not take place in 1933 and was frustrated by
its enemies. …in the four centuries since our country was founded, this will be
the first time that we are entirely free …”
Can we say that because we do not agree with Castro
that the events did not happen? I don’t think so.
This ignorance is one reason why learning the past
is so vital. We cannot afford to have our children grow up to be like today’s
Arizona xenophobes.
Most educated people in other countries know history
while we are forced to live in ignorance. The U.S. could probably get away with
imposing its narrative if it were at the height of its power. However, fewer
nations now go along with the U.S. and it needs friends both internally and
externally.
Its moral authority has been badly damaged by lies.
It is to its best its interest to find friends which it won’t get trying to
impose its narrative of history.
We have to ask, what happens to a narrative when the
most fundamental assumptions turn out to be lies?
Did the lie that our reason for invading Iraq was
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction hurt our moral authority?
What happens to the narrative that we are in the
land of the free and education is a leveling force when we realize that one
group has been singled out to censor and deny what every other American has?
Fight Back! Please click on to the links
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