Gracias a La Vida!
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña

Just like when I get up in the morning and thank my parents for having made me a Mexican, I give thanks to life for having exposed me to the Chicana/o Movement. It has been a learning experience; teaching me the importance of helping Sisyphus push the boulder up the mountain.

If I could single out what I loved most about my life, it is that the opportunity to learn. I have met people who have become my teachers. They have given meaning to my life.

In the 1990s, I remember going to the home of my friends Cristina Shallcross and Ruben Guevara — great teachers of life. They knew I was not much for socializing, but they wanted me to meet their special guest Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who had recently been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Guillermo, a chilango, came to the US in 1978 and totally integrated into the Chicana/o community, exploring cross-cultural issues, immigration, and the politics of language. His works were a mixture of English and Spanish, fact and fiction, social reality, pop culture, and Chicano humor. He embraced activist politics and the theme of linguistic resistance.

He had just finished a tour of museums that included the Smithsonian, performing “The Couple in the Cage” (1992-93). His partner CoCo Fusco and he exhibited themselves in a cage, and they pretended to be from an undiscovered Amerindian tribe from an island off the Mexican coast. They performed rituals designed to befuddle patrons.

They portrayed “authentic” daily life — writing on a laptop computer, watching TV, making voodoo dolls, and pacing the cage dressed “in Converse high-tops, raffia skirts, plastic beads, and a wrestler’s mask.” The two “Amerindians” depicted a hybrid pseudo primitivism. The audience could pay for dances, stories, and polaroid photos. Some viewers were indignant and sent complaints to the humane society. They believed “that the two were real captives, true natives somehow tainted by technology and popular culture.”

Some gave them presents, offerings, and sent sympathy notes. Reactions were also violent. “In London, a group of neo-Nazi skinheads tried to shake the cage.” In Madrid, teenagers tried to burn Guillermo with cigarettes and gave him a beer bottle full of urine. They treated the Indians as if they “were monkeys—making gorilla sounds or racist ‘Indian’ hoots.”

According to Guillermo, “We understood it to be a satirical commentary both on the Quincentenary celebrations and on the history of this practice of exhibiting human beings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in Europe and the United States in zoos, theaters, and museums.” But even he was surprised– in Spain, more than half the people thought they really were Amerindians. Some were so convinced that they were real that they said they could understand their language. “One man in London stood there and translated Guillermo’s story for another visitor… Men in Spain put coins in the donation box [CoCo] to get me to dance because, as they said, they wanted to see my tits. There was a woman in Irvine who asked for a rubber glove in order to touch Guillermo and started to fondle him in a sexual manner.” The lines between ethnography and pornography were blurred.

The responses from Native Americans and Latinos were also interesting. “They tend to find fault with the hybridity of the contents of the cage, while Anglos take this as a sign of our lack of authenticity. In Washington, for example, there was a Native American elder from the Pueblo tribe of Arizona who was interviewed by a Smithsonian representative. He said that our performance was the most real thing about the Native Americans displayed in the whole museum.” A man from El Salvador pointed to the rubber heart hanging in the cage and told everybody, “That heart is my heart.”

According to Guillermo, Western anthropologists are obsessed with authenticity. The authentic Indian, the authentic Mexico, the authentic Chicano. He found Mexicans less preoccupied with the question of authenticity. Mexico was less tainted by post-modernity and perhaps more accepting of Magical Realism.

I saw Guillermo again circa 1994 when he came to the campus. He was collaborating with the son of my late colleague, Roberto Sifuentes, on the “The Crucifiction Project.” I was into my suit against the University of California Santa Barbara so I lost track of Guillermo until the other day when I noticed an article by him titled: “An anti-gentrification philosophical tantrum, 2015” in which he critiques the dangers of the ultimate “creative city,” where you become a foreigner in your own neighborhood.

Illustrated by John Criscitello, it was addressed to “Dear Ex-local artist, writer, activist, bohemian, street eccentric, and/or protector of difference…” He continues: “Imagine a city, your city [San Francisco] and your former hip’ neighborhood, being handed over by greedy politicians and re/developers to the crème de la crème of the tech industry. This includes the 7 most powerful tech companies in the world. I don’t need to list them: their names have become verbs in lingua franca; their sandbox is the city you used to call your own.”

“Imagine that during the reconstruction process, the rent – your rent – increases by two or three hundred percent overnight. The artists and the working class at large can no longer pay it. You are being forced to leave, at best to a nearby city, at worst back to your original hometown. The more intimate history you have with the old city, the more painful it is to accept this displacement. You have no choice.”

“As your community rapidly shrinks, so does your sense of belonging to a city that no longer seems to like you. You begin to feel like a foreigner and internal exile: freaky Alice in techno-Wonderlandia; the Alien Caterpillar who inhaled… You become an orphan.” Guillermo uses imagination, a sort of magic realism to paint this new order. It becomes a “Blade Runner” set in words.

The invaders are the “zombie techies who make well over $200 grand a year, but behave not unlike obnoxious teenage frat boys.” With them the nightmare unfolds: “Full of Maseratis, Ferraris, Porsches and Mercedes Benzes, the private parking lot is now protected with barbed wire fences and a digital display keypad encoded by microchips; and so are the ‘vintage bike’ racks and trash containers.”

It is “the latest American version of ethnic and cultural cleansing. It’s invisible to the newcomers, and highly visible to those of us who knew the old city. The press labels it ‘the post-gentrification era.’” He continues, “There are suspicious fires happening constantly, in apartment buildings and homes inhabited by mostly Latino and black working class families. And you cannot help but to wonder if landlords and redevelopers are setting these fires? … Is there a secret garden of violence in the heart of techno-bohemian paradise?”-Anonymous tweet.

“In this imaginary city, we no longer have citizens: we have self-involved ‘consumers’ with the latest gadgets in hand.” –Tweet.

”But dear reader/audience member, don’t take it personally, you are always an exception to the rule.’ – Tweet.”

“For the poetic record: They are mostly ‘white,’ (meaning gender or race illiterate). 70% are male and have absolutely no sense of the history of the streets they are beginning to walk on.” The description continues, “In the ‘creative city’racism, sexism, homophobia and classicism are passé…”

Gracias a la vida, a life that permits me to see reality. Tweet.

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=55&v=txaY7ZAV5ck
http://blog.art21.org/2014/02/12/guillermo-gomez-pena-linguistic-resistance/#.VbpSW_nj9O-
http://www.metafilter.com/138783/Does-telling-history-honestly-justify-resurrecting-human-zoos
http://www.elbeisman.com/article.php?action=read&id=663
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLX2Lk2tdcw
http://bombmagazine.org/article/1599/
http://pocho.com/65574/
http://www.pochanostra.com/antes/jazz_pocha2/mainpages/page1.htm
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v-nwi3b0OC0CAfHMbBpp8soGQ8M_HefUKrjz6DsyFYU/preview?pli=1&sle=true
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2015/07/anti-gentrification-tantrum.html

Can you smell the refried beans?
EXCHANGE WITH XAVIER HERMOSILLO
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña Mar 20 15

I could not help myself when I recently replied to Xavier Hermosillo’s outrageous Facebook post on Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio responding, “Arpaio is a fascist. Can’t you smell the re-fried beans?”

Xavier Hermosillo answered back:

“The BOTTOM LINE, regardless of the particular issue on the table at this moment, is that until a higher court overturns the Texas judge, the injunction has the force of law and MUST be respected.

[This order was predicated on the fact that Araipo took Obama to court because a higher court overturned a ruling against Araipio.]

[Hermosillo continued]:He’s DELIBERATELY VIOLATING a federal judge’s order, and only one man has stood up to him.

An intellectual scholar like you knows better. If a judge issued an order approving a topic you support, and some bureaucrat decided to openly violate the order, you’d be screaming to a much different tune.

We live under a system where a judge’s rule or injunction has the power of law until progressively higher levels of power and legal acumen rule differently.”

I responded to the crap:

“Your premise would be true if the majority of the Supreme Court was not corrupt and would follow the law. Citizens United is a case in point. If the Democrats had guts they would have at least brought impeachment proceedings against Scalia, Thomas, and the three other corporate stooges. Irreparable harm is being done to the courts. When I was a kid we did not like but respected the courts. Today very few people believe in justice through the courts. Also falling back on my religious training (I am not a believer) but after 14 years and a lot of reading I know Catholicism. The pedophile trials destroyed the aura enjoyed by the Church. The corruption of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats is doing the same to government and shredding the Constitution.

After the encounter I received numerous messages asking why I did not just defriend Hermosillo. Why had I accepted him as a friend in the first place? Judgments are often based on history; you can like a person even though they are full of shit. Hermosillo has always been a Rush Limbaugh wannabe. He possesses a certain charm although more often he skirts the creases between racism Chicano nationalism.

I also must admit I appreciate a catchy metaphor like in the early 1991 when the African American community was receiving deserved attention for their rebellion against acquittal of the white officers in the beating of Rodney King. At the time Pete Wilson and his cabal were gearing up for the insidious Proposition 187.

Mexican Americans were resentful with the outcome of the 1990 state redistricting plan and their lack of representation. A growing resentment festered fueled by the fact that Latinos were 40 percent of Los Angeles but only cast 8 percent of the vote. Out of 247 City Commissioners, there were only two Latino councilmembers. Less than 10 percent of the city employees were Latina/o.

At the time, many Latinos wrongheadedly measured progress by comparing it to that of African Americans who made up 13 percent of the population and 18 percent of the electorate. In the aftermath of the horrendous King beating and the rebellions that followed the city allocated cleanup funds, which touched off competition between the Brown and Black communities.

Many Black leaders advocated the jobs should go exclusively to African American touching off a response by Latinos. This brought forth many loud voices –Xavier’s voice was one of the loudest. When he was nominated to be a Fire Department commissioner black representatives and leaders spoke out against it and blocked his appointment.

On the advent of Proposition 187 (1994) Hermosillo, a Republican, spoke out in defense of the immigrant community attacking the Republican party giving way to hyperbole saying Latinos are “going to take back California house by house, block by block,” admonishing non-Latinos to “wake up and smell the refried beans.”

Hermosillo later added, “We are being used as scapegoats. The 41% of the county’s population that is Latino is not leaving. Those racists and xenophobes and even those who are genuinely frustrated about illegal immigration should not look to some Utopian removal of Latinos as the answer, but rather they should wake up and smell the refried beans, because we are here, we belong here, and we are here to stay–and they are just going to have to deal with it.”

Taken at face value, I would have agreed with Hermosillo. However, many overlooked Xavier’s other statements that were angering African American leaders. Hyperbole is the engine of rebellion, Xavier went too far, using the pejorative word mayate (the Spanish term for a black insect) to describe African Americans.

Hermosillo and his supporters took the approach that Latinos deserved it more than Black Americans. First, it was in error to make the Black community the norm. The standard should always be the majority society that despite the fact that they are the minority controls middle class priveleges. In the process Hermosillo pitted Brown against Black.

Judging from Xavier’s behavior today, he has not learned his lesson. He is back in the fold of the Republican Party and is part of a cabal of right wing kooks who have never smelled the refried beans. His wanting to be white blinds him to the dimensions of xenophobia and racism within the Republican Party and Blue Dog Democrats.

It is a mistake to measure Latino progress with Black Americans. Since 1990 the Black Community because of redlining, discrimination, and police violence has fled the city and it has lost a large part of its middle class.

The results are disastrous and they have irreparably harmed Latinos. The truth be told, many black leaders supported us: they were leading voices against police brutality and racism. Increasingly larger numbers were becoming sensitive to the Immigration Question.

At California State University the Department of Chicana/o Studies owes a great debt to African Americans. However, their numbers have fallen and today they are only 3.8 percent of the student body. We miss their energy in fighting issues such as impaction and the privatization of the university.

As a result, we are today more vulnerable to racist onslaughts. We have always had a common history with Black Americans. Unfortunately we have too many Xavier Hermosillos pretending to speak for the community and are stuck in a stage of infantile disorder that has left us alone in the struggle.

Not my hero but the Ben Franklin quote “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately” applies to our relations with other minorities and we should kind in mind “Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities.”

Stupid America!
Student Unrest
How Chicanas/os Lost Their Swagger 12 12 14
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña

I constantly hear references to winning football teams having swagger – they play with a chip on their shoulder.

In the sixties, black youth had that swagger — after years of being taught that they should stay in their place, they adopted the mantra of “black is beautiful — don’t fuck with me.” Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans displayed a similar swagger as if to say “I am someone, I demand respect.”

The Chicano Movement was serious business. It spawned a ton of characters. You delighted in their audacity and their challenging of the man. I remember Dr. Ricardo Sanchez telling anyone who would listen that he went from a GED to PhD.

Sanchez, a high school dropout and ex-convict, wrote poems about cultural justice. He received a doctorate from the Union Institute in Cincinnati and had an academic appointment at Washington State University, teaching creative writing and Chicano studies.

He would saunter into El Paso restaurants and deliver poems “reciting not from memory but from the moment.” I remember how he and Tigre captured a Tex Mex cafe in Milwaukee.

You had those who would snicker about his doctorate. But he did not give a shit – he knew he was a doctor because he willed it and his poetry established that. Ricardo did not need to attend a Princeton or a Yale to validate himself — his swagger said it all.

Another favorite was Abelardo. Like Sanchez he was from el Chuco (El Paso). A teacher, social worker, and administrator of community service organizations he declared himself a poet, producing mountains of poetry, fiction, and essays. We both taught a summer session at the University of Utah. He loved the sound of his name, my favorite poem was “Stupid America.”

stupid america, see that
chicano
with a big knife
on his steady hand
he doesn’t want to knife you
he wants to sit on a bench
and carve christ figures
but you won’t let him.
stupid america, hear that
chicano
shouting curses on the street
he is a poet
without paper and pencil
and since he cannot write
he will explode.
stupid america, remember
that chicano
flunking math and english
he is the picasso
of your western states
but he will die
with one thousand
masterpieces
hanging only from his mind.”

The truth be told, a person or country is only stupid when they make the same mistakes, over and over and deny them. For example, in August 2014, Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, a black youth. Two grand juries failed to indict the white police officer. The previous month Eric Garner was strangled by Staten Island, NY police officers. These incidents tapped the grief and grievance of centuries of injustices. Protests against the police killings of Brown and Garner turned violent and spread to campuses and cities throughout the country. .

On September 26, 2014, 43 Mexican students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. In all probability, they were assassinated and incinerated.

In the 60s, the U.S. spent millions of dollars studying the causes of urban and student rebellions — studies that were ignored. The catalyst was the 1965 Watts Rebellions that shook the nation “to its democratic foundation.” A 101-page report of December 2, 1965 titled “Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning?: A Report by the Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965” startled America and then went away.

Two years later the Kerner Commission, “The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,’ was commissioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations. It warned “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal”, adding that “Unless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue.” The report called unemployment a major cause of the unrest as well as the poor training of police.

Despite or because of the war on students, launched by the patron Saint of Greed, Governor Ronald Reagan, student activism escalated. The largest and most heated were at the University of California, Berkeley that along with San Francisco State was the flagship of student protests. .

Reagan’s (1967-1975) approach to solving student turmoil was to “get rid of undesirables. Those there to agitate and not to study might think twice before they pay tuition. They might think twice how much they want to pay to carry a picket sign.” It was a smoke screen for one of the biggest shifts in taxes from the rich to the poor, and the wedding of the Republican Party to the super rich.

Student protests came to a climax on May 4, 1970 when guardsmen shot down four student protesters students at Kent State, leading to nationwide campus protests. More than 450 violent and non-violent demonstrations broke out across the country. At New York University banners read, “They Can’t Kill Us All.”

Over 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the war and the killing of unarmed student protesters — “The city was an armed camp. The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That’s not student protest, that’s civil war,” said a Nixon adviser. The Jackson State killings occurred on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. It resulted in the killings of two students and injury of twelve.

According to the Urban Institute’s national study the Kent State shooting was the single factor in the first nationwide student strike in U.S. history, as over 4 million students protested in over 900 American colleges and universities that were closed during the student strikes.

Yet another commission, “The President’s Commission On Campus Unrest,” was chaired by William W. Scranton, the Former Governor of Pennsylvania. The report gave a sense of urgency. It exhausted the available material on the subject, concluding that “Studies of activist youth reveal that in most cases students become activists through an extended process.”

Rounding off the reports was a 1979 book by Fresno State English Department Chair Kenneth Seib — The Slow Death of Fresno State: A California Campus under Reagan and Brown. The conclusion was that Black Studies and La Raza Studies programs were intentionally killed by far right senior professors in collusion with Governor Gov. Ronald Regan and CSC Chancellor Glenn Dumke. They deliberately murdered the programs.

These studies are readily available on the internet. As I have said, it is not stupid to make a mistake but is to keep on making the same mistakes. Americans are stupid not because they are Americans but because they won’t admit their mistakes and find ways to correct them.

“Stupid America.” You lost generations of geniuses. Gone is the boasting, “From GED to PhD,” giving of gritos of liberation. As a result Chicana/o lost their swagger condemning the poorest them to staring an “Y Qué” look. Part of the swagger was hope.

President Dianne Harrison’s Annual Convocation
August 21, 2014
A Critical View of Corporate America

By
Rodolfo F. Acuña

I really don’t need controversy at this stage in my life, but I could never keep my mouth shut. If something was stupid, I called it stupid. This has happened in all phases of my life, something that has not ingratiated me. Essentially people don’t like controversy so I have gotten used to people avoiding me.

One such moment came when I listened to the CSUN Presidential Convocation address earlier this month. Generally the only ones who go to this event are those with a vested interest. The convocation reminds me of the CSUN football games that were only attended by the Greeks and administrators whose presence was commanded.

This year because my son alerted me I went on the CSUN webpage. I made the mistake last year of not knowing what she said. This was stupid because President Dianne Harrison has earned a reputation of being imperious and ruling by edicts. She has told people that she never wants to hear the word “no.” http://www.csun.edu/president/presidents-2014-convocation-and-welcome-back-address. At last year’s convocation she announced the UNAM deal as a fait accompli.

I am stupid but not a pendejo! So I wasted two hours listening to her cheerleading. I must admit Harrison was probably the head cheerleader in high school.

The event was opened by the faculty president who was trotted out to show faculty solidarity, and he was followed by the student body president. The faculty president is no John Stafford or a faculty president who shows independence; the student president appeared as if she is auditioning for a job.

I hate to say it but Harrison’s address lacked substance; she avoided controversy even in addressing the death of Armando Villa who died of heat prostration and dehydration allegedly the result of fraternity hazing.

The rest of the speech praised California State University at Northridge as the most impressive university by far and the celebrated the leadership: faculty, staff and students. According to President Harrison, she consults with students and faculty regularly – they are a team.  I have seen past presidents visit the ethnic studies departments and at least wave to students – but I have never seen Harrison visit Latino/Mexican American students in three years.

For a moment I paused and listened intently: she said she plans to increase entrepreneurship and initiate new centers. She did not offer specifics or talk about consultation with the departments – something that caused an ongoing breach between Chicana/o studies and administration last year. Unfortunately, the majority of faculty don’t seem to give a damn.

Harrison then suddenly came to life and gave it a good old CSUN college try as she said that student success depended on staff and encouraged all of us to help increase graduation rates.  Place this in context that the attendance at the event was limited. As I mentioned, only those commanded or who benefitted from a selfie attended. She asked her team to stand up as she introduced them. I only counted two Latinos — one a flunky staff member and the other a dean who has never become part of the community.

The performance hall seats 1700 but only had couple of hundred attendees.  There were few students present out of almost 40,000 registered.

Harrison announced faculty members promoted to tenure but failed to break down their race or ethnicity. She did mention a lack of diversity but apparently has no concrete plan to address the problem. The truth be told, that if you take Chicana/o studies out of the equation less than three percent of the faculty is of Mexican extraction.

Harrison sprinkled her speech with commercial bites.  This is “A YEAR OF GREAT PROMISE!” The past year was “CSUN Shine!” A power point presentation celebrated these milestones: graduation, degrees, sports, the honoring of President Brenda Wilson who was a fiasco as president. She trumpeted that Money Magazine ranked CSUN as one of bargains in higher ed not mentioning that one of the principle reasons that students do not graduate is that they cannot afford the tuition. Moreover, although students pay for the construction of the dorms –the majority cannot afford them.

Despite these contradictions Harrison boasted that CSUN broke ground for more student housing; no mention was made that this construction comes out of student fees and that students pay for most of the construction costs.  But giving it the good old school cheer, Harrison said there were signs of construction everywhere.

According to Harrison, CSUN is not a commuter school but a regional university. The nation and the world are recognizing its excellence. The power point featured images of buildings, the performing arts, library etc. It reminded me of the university web page that resembles a Republican presidential nominating Convention.

Amidst the tale of student success Harrison said that CSUN was moving toward impaction. That means that a cap will be put on registration and quotas for admission will be based on GPA, class standing, and other criteria, which Harrison lamented but she said there may be no choice. This is important.

The only somber note was that the continuation rate of CSUN that was 78 percent versus 85 percent system wide. According to her there has been progress in remediation, but that the grad rate has plummeted from 48 to 45. Again she offered no solutions other than involving alumni as leaders and providing internships. She did not say who is going to pay for them.

According to Harrison, being a global university means CSUN has to provide cultural competencies as well as leaders in cross disciplines – something Chicana/o studies has been doing for 45 years. Her solution is the creation of centers that in reality serve a small fraction of the students and are managed by white faculty.

Harrison said that entrepreneurship was not a dirty word and necessary in a competing global economy. According to Harrison, CSUN had to adopt business practices, provide mobile apps for students.  She mentioned extended learning specifically as a funding source – which of course increases the privatization of the university. Philanthropy and research, according to Harrison, is good because it supports university funding,

She praised partnerships such as the one with LA Trade Tech and cooperative ventures with five local CSU campuses. Collaboration was the magic word, and according to Harrison, people were listening to CSUN that was educating future global citizens.

Finally, Harrison mentioned the Northridge Dreamers Scholarship, which is always an easy fix for administrators who lack a plan. Recently Enrique Peña Nieto announced scholarships as if it will make us forget about his privatization of the oil and other natural resources. Harrison did not mention that students for the last year have been promised a Dreamer Center and received atole con el dedo. After over a year, Dreamers have negotiated and still do not have a center.

In talking about employee success, she said nothing about contract workers. Instead focused on a smoke free campus that was coming about, according to her, through faculty and worker collaboration.

CSUN Shine challenges, according to Harrison, faculty to reflect campus diversity and study the problem, which is an insult to all of our intelligence. We have been fighting this battle for 45 years with white faculty resisting diversity. Psychology, for example, out of 50 faculty members only has one Latina faculty member and over three-quarters of the departments do not have one Latino or Mexican America American faculty member.

Harrison again insulted our intelligence by calling for civility and an end to bullying not mentioning power relations. The truth be told, Harrison has tried to silence Chicana/o studies and cut channels of communication for it to voice its opposition to the UNAM deal. Moreover, the bullying charge is ridiculous — raised by the Dean of Social and Behavioral Science who has more grievances against her than any other administrator, according to the California Faculty Association, and a department chair that has driven four tenure track professors out of her department and abetted sexual harassment.

In all I wasted two hours. Yet, I could not afford not to listen. Not to listen puts reform in jeopardy.  The devil never sleeps so we should listen to those in power, their words have meaning, for if we want CSUN to truly shine it must also listen.