Latinos and the Fracturing Democratic Party Coalition

By Rodolfo F. Acuña / 21 November 2016

Protesters greet Hillary Clinton at East Los Angeles College, May 2016.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections saw old alliances and loyalties shattered by the fall of the Democratic Party and the rise of con man Donald Trump into so many pieces that they, like Humpty Dumpty, can never be put together again. Politics as we know them are beyond repair.

Although Latinos formed a vital piece of this makeup, the non-Latino American public made little effort to learn anything about them. The political pundits reduced them to numbers and stereotypes. Absent were Mexican American newscasters or political players; to the media, every brown-skinned person was an immigrant. Latinos — Hispanics in polite society — looked and thought alike.

The lack of intelligent an analysis failed to counter the fake news Trump and his supporters spread via social media and the networks. Truth be told, Latin American nationalities share colonial history but that is far as it often goes. They are racially and culturally different. Not all Latinos, for example, enjoy or eat spicy foods, and they do not all live in the same places.

The Bourgeois' Dilemma

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

The other day a colleague called it to my attention that I was wearing New Balance so in some way I was breaking a boycott. I pointed out that they were the only shoes I had. In retrospect I was becoming so gringo. I have never been for the indiscriminate application of boycotts. In 2010, the early stages of Arizona assault on immigrants and then on Mexican American Studies I questioned the call for a boycott of Arizona. I felt that it isolated Tucson and prevented friends for going there to show their support by visiting the Wall and standing in solidarity. Not all boycotts were like the Farm Worker Boycott.

Getting back to the New Balance Boycott, I will certainly not buy that brand again just like I won’t buy at Walmart. However, I believe it would be stupid for me to throw away a pair of shoes that I wear for health reasons. Having diabetes, shoes are a big deal! You’d know if you had it. New Balance is one of the few brands that have triple width shoes. In my estimation if would be a bit more strategic to pass out buttons emphasizing not to buy New Balance. While I respect the sentiments of Debra Messing and Swae Lee, they are not my teachers.

Banned Mexican American Studies improved student achievement - Study

by Roque Planas

The Mexican-American Studies curriculum in Tucson public schools banned by the conservative-dominated Arizona legislature helped boost student achievement and offers a promising approach to bridge the achievement gap between Hispanic and white students, a new study says. 

The study, published in the December edition of the American Educational Research Journal, says that students who took the Mexican-American Studies courses when compared to Tucson students who didn’t take the courses. 

To test the effect of taking the defunct classes, the researchers used administrative data from the 2008 to 2011 school years to assess the relationship between taking the courses and high school graduation rates and performance on state standardized tests. 

Students who took the courses performed better on the state tests and graduated at a higher rate, the study found. 

“The estimated relationship between MAS participation and student educational attainment was surprisingly strong,” the study says. “These results corroborate findings that ethnic studies can lead to increased student development.” 

Alejo bill moves California toward offering Ethnic Studies

by Roque Planas

A bill introduced last month by California Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salinas) would require the state's Department of Education to develop a model for implementing a standardized, statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high schools.

Although controversies over Mexican-American studies have roiled conservatives in Southwestern states, Alejo's bill could put California on the path to adopting one of the most ambitious ethnic studies program for public schools in the country.

Latinos are the largest ethnic group in California schools by far, making up 53 percent of the student body, according to the California Department of Education. They are followed by non-Hispanic whites, at 26 percent, and Asians, at 9 percent.

But though people of color make up the solid majority of California's schools, ethnic studies proponents say their history and culture remain largely absent from classrooms and textbooks.

"We have probably one of the most diverse student populations in the country," Alejo told The Huffington Post. "We recognize those unique values and history, language and literatures -- all of that should be included in California’s high school curriculum."

See the well researched article here.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/03/california-ethnic-studies_n_4892111.html

This is an important step in the direction urged by the Mexican American Digital History Project for years. 

El Día de Los Muertos

El Día de Los Muerto And Halloween

Quo Vadis?

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

                                                    

Mexicans, more than most races, seem preoccupied with death.  Since colonial times Mexican laborers have continuously been uprooted, travelling thousands of miles from the interior of Mexico forging an El Camino Real to to mining camps and plantations in northern Mexico. They arrived in places like Zacatecas where they fanned out, forging spider web corridors in form of roads.

These workers felt vulnerable. They missed home, and most knew that they would never see their homes or families again.

La Cancion Mixteca written in 1912 in Mexico City by José López Alavez, a Oaxacan composer, speaks to feelings of homesickness for Oaxaca. The song was later taken north to places such as Chicago where it became a favorite of Mexican migrants in the United States.

Acuña- Some Time You Have to Shout to be Heard

by Rodolfo F. Acuña. 

Why should Latinos support Justice for Trayvon Martin? It is not the first time that I have been asked that question about another group. Take care of the family first.

Through the years, people have questioned why I was against capital punishment and supported cases such as that of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black journalist originally sentenced to death in 1981 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

When people asked me why we were supporting a black instead of concentrating on Chicanas/os, my first reaction was flippant (porque me da la chingada gana) but after thinking my response changed and ir was similar to that that I have toward the Trayvon Martin case: “It is not only Trayvon Martin who was wronged, it was society. The law is bad and encourages this behavior toward people who look different. Look at the attacks and murders of undocumented immigrants.” In supporting Mumia or Trayvon Martin, we are insuring that this injustice will not spread.

I also reject the argument that George Zimmerman should be supported because he is Latino. Incidentally, he never identified as a Latino, and he obviously identified as white. The Huffington Post’s Gene Demby dug into his past and came up with an old MySpace page belonging to Zimmerman. In it, he made disparaging comments about Mexicans, and he bragged about a 2005 criminal case against him.

The prosecution was so afraid of the issue of race that to my knowledge it was not brought up.

In Myspace Zimmerman he discussed his hatred toward Mexicans, saying why he did not miss his former home in Manassas, Virginia:

I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!”

In that same year, he was arrested and charged after an altercation with a police officer and his fiancé at the time got a restraining order against him.

The Failure of National Latino/Mexican American Organizations

Rodolfo F. Acuña

With all of the hype around Latinos these days, how could Arizona have happened? I thought we had power. One-third of Arizona is Latino and its neighbor California is the land of milk and honey – the favorite destination of politicos of all colors. Over fifty percent of Los Angeles is Latino; its mayor is Mexican American as is the mayor of San Antonio, Texas.

Arizona’s war on Mexican Americans does not make sense, especially in the light of the growth of the Latino population that now numbers 50 million. This nightmare seems out of place.  Alabama maybe, but Arizona?

It is time that we try to find answers and admit our weaknesses. The most obvious flaw is that Arizona has exposed a weakness in Latino and Mexican American organizational infrastructure.

A partial answer as to why Latinos are so ineffective is that the Latino population is having growing pains. It has grown dramatically in the past fifty years, going from a regional to a national phenomenon. This transformation has out stripped the capacity of traditional organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American GI Forum to  deal with this change.   

Presently there are only two organizations that could be called national and they came about in 1968 with the founding of the Southwest Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.