Reyes Cardenas’ “I Was Never A Militant Chicano”
A very cool performance of the classic poem found HERE.
Ode to the Chancla
Michael Quintanilla waxes poetic about the Chicano flip flop.
“For decades chanclas have been the perfect union of rubber and relief, reprimand and revolt. And totally utilitarian. Who hasn’t crushed a cockroach with one? Or swatted a fly? I’ve kicked a flat tire with one, which I wouldn’t recommend…”
Read Quintanilla’s piece HERE
To Split like a Seed and Become a New
IF THE LEFT DON’T GET YA, THEN THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Or…maybe they both grab you up at once!
Before I knew the words duality, dichotomy, or mestizaje, I was at home there. Right here in the nowhere. In the there of the everywhere in the bothlands on the borderline in the neitherworld at the same time. Thus the inbetween, the transition. It is my truth, nothing fancy. I don’t know, when I think about it, how we ever became convinced otherwise. Ideas about self, time and the ethereal land on which we meet. Trying to summon impressions of stone under our feet.
That is the illusion, isn’t it? Always? That we bang into? The one that hurts, the one that only lives to die, that only arises to be broken. Over and over and over. I can’t count how many times I’ve felt I had arrived. In one way or another. Remembering that even when I do arrive it is only a plateau in relation to where I had just been standing is a personal challenge and imperative. Which is why, of course, I always come back to that truth. Remembering that the bestowing of symbols upon events and times is purposeful and important. Ritual and recognition and reverence and reification. Important. But again, the conversation about Symbol and Essence.
I love how the Aztec and Mayan calendars are round. Symbols change. Essence repeats. Beginning meets the end in the middle. Time passing as a line marching left is both a tired tradition and modern riddle.
In all the ways I can forget this, there is an abundance of shame and pain and foolishness to be had. And the pain arises, again, from clinging to that illusion of a frozen moment, to the mask, to the rotted husk. To cramp within the seed and not to split the husk in two is to die into that feeling of security, stinking, small, cemented and with a dullness that will spread through the flesh and the veins and the fingernails and the teeth until nothing stirs but flake and ash.
Change is pain.
I was born on the sixth of March, which is the day that begins the Aztec month of Tlacaxipeualiztli. Tlacaxipeualiztli is a Náhuatl word that some sources claim describe the act of wearing skins, others as the act of flaying men. Tlacaxipeualiztli was a 20 day period of festivities and rituals and sacrifice that were meant to see the change of seasons throuvgh, from dry to rainy. It was believed that the old season—the dry, spent season—had to be peeled away like a husk, like a dead skin, to reveal the new…
Tex[t]-Mex on “Mexican” sartorial pleasures…
Don’t Leave the House this Halloween Without Outing Your Inner “Mexican”
Arriba, arriba!
“Don’t let a little thing like a stereotype get in the way of your “Mexican” sartorial pleasures!”
View Original Article
See Ya Pendejos
Guanabee.com lists the 20 Most Outdated Stereotypes In Film And Television HERE, including:
Gold Hat, The Dirty Mexican
Little, Brown, Mexican Rodent
The Greasy, Immigrant, Latino Drug Lord
(and everyone’s favorite) The Hot, Latin Maid Who Barely Speaks English
Check out #6. Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie (1980) – Cheech, The Drugged-Out Cholo With The Ridiculous Accent
“We saw an interview once with Cheech Marin where he said he was literally coaxed into being more and more cholo with this character to sell it better. Today Cheech has a serious career as a Mexican sidekick (sigh), but he will never be as beloved as when he played the unemployable pothead from L.A.”
The chupacabra psychological war against migrants
This is the same psychological device that continues to permit segregation and discrimination…
Read the rest of Roberto Rodriguez’s essay at Column of the Americas
Featured Exhibit: A Declaration of Immigration (Chicago)
Alejandro Diaz performs “Enchiladas at the Plaza.”
“A Declaration of Immigration,” an exhibit about immigration now at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, includes several works by San Antonio artists, most from the collection of South Texas businessman Joe Diaz…
A Belated Birthday: Emiliano Zapata
Aug 8, 1879 - April 10, 1919
El Corrido de Emiliano Zapata
En Cuautla, Morelos hubo
un hombre muy singular,
justo es ya que se los diga:
hablándoles, pues en plata,
era Emiliano Zapata
muy querido por allá.
Todo es un mismo partido,
ya no hay con quién pelear;
compañeros, ya no hay guerra,
vámonos a trabajar.
Ya se dieron garantías
a todo el género humano,
lo mismo que al propietario
como para el artesano.
¡Unión! que es la fuerza santa
de todito el mundo entero,
Paz, Justicia y Libertad
y gobierno del obrero.
Así como los soldados
han servido pa’ la guerra,
que den fruto a la nación
y que trabajen la tierra.
¡Quién no se siente dichoso
cuando comienza a llover!
Es señal muy evidente
que tendremos qué comer.
Si los campos reverdecen
con la ayuda del tractor,
es el premio del trabajo
que nos da nuestro sudor.
El oro, no vale nada
si no hay alimentación:
es la cuerda del reloj
de nuestra generación.
Quisiera ser hombre sabio
de muchas sabidurías;
pero más quiero tener
que comer todos los días.
Dan la una, dan las dos,
y el rico siempre pensando
cómo le hará a su dinero
para que vaya doblando.
Dan las siete de la noche
y el pobre está recostado,
duerme un sueño muy tranquilo
porque se encuentra cansado.
¡Dichoso el árbol que da
frutos, pero muy maduros:
Si señores, vale más
que todos los pesos duros!
No quiere ya relumbrones
ni palabras sin sentido,
quiere sólo garantías
para su hogar tan querido.
Es el mejor bienestar
que el mexicano desea:
que lo dejen trabajar,
para que feliz se vea.
