So-called Latino Series

August 9 2020

The so-called “Latino”: A Pawn in U.S. Politics

Nidia So-called Latino Series politics, power, so-called latino 0

Whether it was a democrat or a republican in office- my people got screwed.

Treaties have gone broken and not honored. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had articles protecting the existing property rights of Mexican citizens living in the states that were virtually robbed. Land was stolen, people were murdered, and American imperialism continued on one-sided christian values.

As conspiracies and portrayals of Trump propagate and divide this nation- the so-called Latino is being swayed to betray their own. Seeing our own degrading us for being undocumented is a nudge to spread truth and history. During the great depression- up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent were rounded up in unlawful raids and deported to ease the fear that was fed to the nation to excuse the robbery by the banks: deport the brown people to reserve jobs for whites. Point the finger at the melanated person so the majority don’t realize that they are being oppressed, just not as much as the brown and black people. This has been the rhetoric since the founding of this country.

Did you know in the 1930’s, the Los Angeles Welfare department deported hospital patients of Mexican descent- no matter their legal status? People with tuberculosis, paralysis, mental illness or problems related to old age- none were immune to this inhuman treatment. Then informal, unlawful raids were done- racial profiling targeting even kids and the elderly. Our people died, lost hope, and suffered unimaginable treatment. Being put in camps before the transportation to unfamiliar territory- abuse and neglect was undocumented.

Modern economists have found that this unlawful “repatriation” did not boost local economies. Some argue that it may have further increased their level of unemployment and depressed wages- given that many laborers and farm workers were in demand. These raids continued until WWII when the U.S. started recruiting temporary Mexican workers for wartime labor.

What type of reparation did we get, you may ask? CA state passed the Apology Act for the 1930’s Mexican Repatriation Program in 2005 which led to a commemorative plaque near the site of a 1931 La Placita Park raid. I have to laugh to not cry at the nerve. Plaques, streets, paint- none of it abolishes poverty or injustice.

After the Trump election- there was undoubtedly a rise in hate crimes against so-called Latinos in this country. While too many of our people are praising this man, the rhetoric he spews is affecting us all. I encourage you all to hop over to splcenter to read the list of “Hate Crimes Against Latinos Rising Nationwide.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2007/hate-crimes-against-latinos-rising-nationwide

Here’s an exerpt:

“DEC. 29, 2004
Redlands, Calif.
Two Latino men and a Latina woman are beaten and kicked in the parking lot of a strip club by a “gang of about 10 skinheads,” as later reported by the San Bernardino County Sun. The neo-Nazi skinheads yell racial slurs at their victims, prompting the Redlands police chief to declare that hate crime charges will be pursued if and when the perpetrators are caught.

JULY 12, 2005
Patchogue, N.Y.
A 61-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant is badly beaten by three white men as he pushes a shopping cart through the streets collecting cans. Before the attack, the man was asked if he had a green card. “Then they started pummeling him,” Suffolk County Hate Crimes Det. Robert Reecks tells reporters. The man, whose name is not made public, suffers a broken eye socket and facial bruises.

OCT. 16, 2005
Sacramento, Calif.
Six people are injured by three white men who crash a private party with the intent of “beating up Mexicans,” according to police. One of the assailants uses brass knuckles after shouting racial epithets and “white pride.”

MARCH 30, 2006
North Bergen, N.J.

After a series of pro-immigrant marches and demonstrations bring out hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters in cities across the country, an acerbic neo-Nazi radio host makes an appeal for people to carry out the mass murder of any “illegal aliens” sighted.

“All of you who think there’s a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We’re going to have to start killing these people,” Hal Turner writes on his website. “I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done.”

APRIL 3, 2006
Tucson, Ariz. Laine Lawless

One of the founding members of the Minuteman movement, Laine Lawless, exhorts the leadership of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) to launch a campaign of violence and intimidation against Latino immigrants. “Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place. … Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school,” Lawless writes in a private E-mail to Mark Martin, “SS commander” of the NSM”s western Ohio chapter. “Be creative. … Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border.”

The goal?

“Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status.”

APRIL 22, 2006
Houston, Texas
David Ritcheson

David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. David Henry Tuck breaks Ritcheson’s jaw, knocking him unconscious, while screaming, “White power!” and calling Ritcheson a “s—” and “w——.” Keith Robert Turner joins in, and the two attackers burn Ritcheson with cigarettes, kick him with steel-toed boots, attempt to carve a swastika into his chest, pour bleach on him and finally violently sodomize him with a patio umbrella pole. It takes 30 surgeries before Ritcheson, confined to a wheelchair and wearing a colostomy bag, is able to return to school.

Tuck is later sentenced to life in prison. Turner gets 90 years.

A year after the attack, Ritcheson, who up to that point has not been identified in press accounts by name, goes public and speaks out to the U.S. House of Representative’s Judiciary Committee. In wrenching testimony, the boy recalls the horrific experience for lawmakers deliberating over strengthening federal hate crime laws. “With my humiliation and emotional and physical scars came the ambition and strong sense of determination that brought out the natural fighter in me,” Ritcheson testifies. “I am glad to tell you today that my best days still lay ahead of me.”

Less than three months later, the teenager commits suicide, jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.”

—

Too many don’t even know about the history of this country lynching Mexicans. The only documented woman to be lynched in California was a Mexican American women that the media named “Juanita” in its tradition of creating caricatures of melanated people. A white man made an advancement toward her and she whipped out a knife from her garter in what seemed like seconds. Jock’s friends pulled him away, but later that night he tore her door down and there was a scuffle at her home. He was stabbed and bled to death. An angry mob demanded that Juanita and her partner were taken into custody and a miner’a trial began. During trial she testified that there were many such interactions like these, which is why she slept with a knife under her pillow. Some Mexican boys in town had also let her know they overheard Jock and his friends plan to break into her home to rape her many times. The jury found her guilty at trial and sentenced her to be hanged that day. “While Juanita dressed for her hanging, a makeshift gallows was prepared for her on the bridge. When the time came, they say she walked proudly in her finest red hoop skirt, and a Panama hat, which she tossed to her beau before placing the noose around her own neck. When asked if she had anything to say, she responded, “I would do the same thing again if I were treated as I have been.”

This is how Juanita died, hanging from the bridge at Downieville that day, July 5, 1851, the first, last, and only woman to be lynched in California.”

So, what’s the solution? How do we remember who we are, build community, and protect ourselves and our own from the hands of those depraved beings that judge us by the color of our skin and our heritage? I can’t pretend I have the answer- but, what I do know is that we all have gifts specifically designed for our collective rise. Whether it is activist in nature or in the creative space- it is our duty to fight for our justice.

Educate, mobilize, and change YOUR world. I know too many that hated school but love to learn; connect with those like-minds. Learn from people that look like you, talk like you. Let’s elevate the vision- cement our mission- and stand firm on our values.

To get different you gotta do different. We become so cemented in our routine- we let our subconscious operate on a set program. Try one or a few of these suggestions:

-Wake up at 4-5 am and take a cold shower. Then, all day, keep that fortitude present to accomplish things that have been on your to-do list. You didn’t take a cold shower to go to sleep with unfinished business.

-Take a different car route to work, or back from work.

-Do 10 pushups as soon as you wake up, meditate for 2 minutes, make your bed, read 1 page, smile, and say thank you.

-Brush your teeth with the opposite hand.

-Listen to positive audios first thing in the morning and any time throughout the day that you have a negative thought- challenge yourself to make lemonade from the lemon handed to you.

These suggestions aren’t miracle workers- the only miracle worker is yourself operating from your higher/supreme self. These are suggestions that will get you operating outside the program. Doing things you have to actually use your brain for, first thing in the morning, strengthens neural activity and neural connections in your brain. If you want to get to the next level, you have to grow.

Peace.

August 3 2020

The plight and flight of the indigenous descendants – a fight for/from their roots. By: Nidia Tapia

Nidia So-called Latino Series indigenous 0

We are not Hispanic, we are not Latino- we are Pre-Hispanic and so much more.
I am no academic or even think I know 1% of what I should know; but, I have heart and eyes that see.

I want to preface this by saying I in no way feel like an authority on anything- I only speak from heart and from a sense of duty to put my grain of sand into the pools of change, justice, and liberty. I believe in decentralized leadership- we must all do our part and be the head of our own revolution. Many times when people feel like authority figures- it comes from an ego drive and a thirst for other’s subservience. It is each of our duty to empower and reflect the principles we believe in.

So few understand how we could be a diaspora on our own homeland. So many of our own would be quick to want to assimilate as white- basking in their ties to the spanish, saying things like “can you believe that’s my Tio/Mom/Abuela/primo/etc, esta tan BLANCO.” Or “we’re not just Spanish, we have Aleman in our family tree too.” You hear this and you instantly cringe at their self-hate. They dye their hair blonde, contour with a foundation a few shades too light, hide from the sun, etc. You want to say, “You are beautiful in your earth color, your nopal is nothing to be ashamed of, your lineage has a more mighty history than you can imagine.” But instead, you decide to not entertain the antics. How do we come together as a people when we’re too exhausted to educate and this corporatocracy has conditioned us to attack instead of love/understand our people?

How did this come to be? How come people outside our ethnicity think we are one race in control of our nations and nobody acknowledges the oppression and colonization still taking place today? How the white Spaniards and outsiders are in control of our media portrayal. How they wanted to beat the melanin out of us? How they fund campaigns to convince, even the most brown of us, that we are a mestizo race that should check “white” on the census? How our black ancestry has been hidden and black so-called Latinos have been othered? How could we be anything separate from indigenous when the settlers raped our ancestors and attempted to destroy our culture?

As complex as it is- it is important to acknowledge and propagate the facts. As difficult as it is to summarize- it is our duty to educate our own and those around us who weave into our story.

Cristobal Colon has been anglicisized for the nation-state building purpose. He landed in what is now DR in 1492 and never set foot on the so-called US. He was an Italian hired by the Spanish Catholic crown when he was discovered by the Taínos of the Dominican Republic. When these Europeans first saw the indigenous they were amazed at their hygiene and sewage system; but of course, referred to it as a “savage practice”. On the other hand rather than bathing, early colonists believed that other practices, like regularly changing their undergarments, qualified as good hygiene. Biological warfare (no resistance to the uncleanliness of disease, smallpox, etc) and spiritual warfare (the indigenous people were a more spiritually advanced society- having no need for guns) led to what is referred to as the conquest of the indigenous population.

So for 528 years the indigenous have been fighting this colonization and resource-hungry machine that won’t stop until it has stripped the land of all it’s minerals. The settlers enslaved as many of the tribes as they could, raped, pillaged. Destroying and burning as many cultural artifacts as the colonizers could- there are only 4 Mayan books, called codices, left (that are known). It is believed our culture and artifacts have survived in elite families- being passed down as a family inheritance and entering the black market every so often. Ultimately: the mathematics, written language, and history was nearly destroyed or white-washed.

Fear based propaganda has existed since then- stripping us of our humanity for profit and power. For example- on May 22, 1520, Pedro De Alvarado massacred spiritual leaders of the so-called Aztec empire. The Spanish version of the incident claims the conquistadors intervened to prevent a ritual of human sacrifice in the Templo Mayor; the Aztec version says the Spaniards were enticed into action by the gold the Aztecs were wearing. While differing so on Alvarado’s specific motive, both accounts are in basic agreement that the celebrants were unarmed and that the massacre was without warning and unprovoked. This stark contrast is reminiscent of the way those in power can distort the truth to appeal to human fear- so that their lies can justify their inhuman behavior.

When Cristobal Colon took enslaved natives to Spain as slaves- he was chastised and at odds with the Queen of Spain- which likely led to a documented history of dehumanization of the indigenous people- lying about customs and spreading propaganda that would put fear in people’s hearts- enough fear for them to continue to enslave our ancestors and propel towards a mighty empire. This is reminiscent of today- as covid-19 was unaccomadating Americans- many were protesting the governments overstep of their power; yet, when the media painted all BLM protestors as “rioters” those same white Americans began calling for more government control- they were programmed to fear the movement and call for military intervention. This played into their now innate bias and racism.

Back to history: Spain then treated the Indigenous peoples of the Americas with extreme violence, death, torture, mutilation, rape, and enslavement.

The Aztec education system was abolished and replaced by a very limited church education. Even some foods associated with Mesoamerican religious practice, such as amaranth, were forbidden.

During the Conquest, Spaniards legally enslaved large numbers of natives – men, women and children – as booty of warfare, branding each individual on the cheek.

The Spanish conquerors in Mexico during the early colonial era lived off the labor of the indigenous peoples. The other discovery that perpetuated this system of indigenous forced labor were the extensive silver mines discovered at Potosi, in Higher Peru (now Bolivia) and other places in the Spanish empire in the New World that were worked for hundreds of years by forced native labor and contributed most of the wealth that flowed to Spain.

Lesser known is that New England colonies routinely shipped Native Americans as slaves to Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, the Azores, Spain and Tangier in North Africa.

In 1518 the Spanish king allowed the importation of slaves directly from Africa (previously they had been Spanish-born Africans), and the Atlantic slave trade to the western hemisphere began in earnest, finally ending over three centuries later with the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888.

Rape was rampant, and natives were intentionally starved, tortured, and whipped, were set upon by dogs, disemboweled by swords, burned at stakes, trampled by horses—atrocities “to which no chronicle could ever do justice.”

The casta system in latinoamerica amidst the genocide- led to the European beauty standards we see today. While at the time- marrying white was seen as survival- today we see it played out as a part of supremacy. The media in latinoamerica is predominately white and fair skinned- while a few roles are given to the majority brown skinned people as “service” or ignorant/comedic roles.

What we see today is a tip of the iceberg- our history has been romanticized and mostly hidden. Our vast fallen empires, culture, science, and mathematics have been destroyed or white-washed. Our children are threatened by oppression, low self-esteem, and loss of knowledge of self.

Our history is our future- to know ourselves we must do the work of claiming our history, bringing clarity to the lies that have been told by scholars, clergymen, and conquistadors in the name of expansion and power. You have to dig deep to find the documentation of the horrors done to our ancestors- but their fake science and history will have many sources on pre-Hispanic slavery and human sacrifice- the accomplishments and advancements of our people are hard to come by. Like egyptologists- there are people out there who’s sole purpose is to vilify and white-wash our past. They knew what they were doing when they burned books, artifacts, and destroyed our buildings- attempt at genocide of a whole continent. There are affluent people out there with our artifacts in their homes- being passed down and sealed from the world and US. We must form alliances to bring our truth to the light and in so doing- helping mama earth restore. We are the gate-keepers and must return to our POSTS– we are the light missing from the world and must return order/balance.

Learn yourself and then teach your brother. Listen to your sister and honor her dissertation.

We are the ancestors- I am your ancestor.

Peace.