When the United States of North America annexed a third of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican War, nearly 77,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens. For generations, these citizens were to be plagued by a prejudicial attitude which would result in overt acts of discrimination and segregation which in turn brought about the curtailment of many of their civil rights, privileges, and opportunities. The sign, “No Mexicans Allowed” was found everywhere.

In Texas, prejudicial attitude and discrimination acts had reached such extreme proportions that Mexican Americans started organizations as defensive measures against such anti-American practices. Outstanding among these were three organizations: The Order of the Sons of America with councils in Sommerset, Pearsall, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio; The Knights of America in San Antonio; and The League of Latin American Citizens with councils in Harlingen, Brownsville, Laredo, Penitas, La Grulla, McAllen, and Gulf.

There were serious doubts as to merger because of personal reasons and ill feelings that existed between the leaders of The League of Latin American Citizens and the President General of The Order of the Sons of America from San Antonio. With this in mind, The Order of the Sons of America and The Knights of America made an agreement to unite themselves even if The League of Latin American Citizens did not. For a year, Council #4 of The Order of the Sons of America and The Knights of America waited for the proposed merger. In the meantime, Alonso S. Perales was in constant contact with Ben Garza to bring about the merger. The fact that the long awaited unification convention was never called by the President General of The Order of the Sons of America resulted in the withdrawal of Council #4 from The Order of the Sons of America at a meeting held February 7, 1929. Also, at this meeting in which Alonso S. Perales was present, it was voted to have a uniting convention on February 17, 1929, at the Obreros Hall, on the corner of Lipan and Carrizo streets in Corpus Christi.

LULAC is not only the oldest, but their rich history of activism in advancing the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, health and civil rights, but also makes them the most successful Latino civil rights organization in the country.

LULAC’s name and its membership policy deliberately emphasized the importance of citizenship – only American citizens could be full members of LULAC. The founders of LULAC believed this gave the group added leverage in seeking to reform American society to accept Mexican-Americans as full and equal citizens. Furthermore, it also put forward a particular identity for the new organization, one its leaders hoped that would change common assumptions about Mexican-Americans in American society at large.

Legacy
The philosophy and tactics LULAC in its first decade believed in a practice of negotiation with local leaders to bring change. If negotiation failed, they encouraged communities to pressure, investigated and documented charges brought by parents, brought evidence to the attention of higher authorities, and publicized the differences between facilities for Mexicans and those for Whites.

LULAC has played a role in the formation of several important related organizations. They created La Liga Pro-Defensa Escolar (the School Improvement League) in San Antonio, and formed a veterans’ committee to address the rights of G.I.’s before LULAC member Hector P. García organized the American G.I. Forum. LULAC members established Little School of the 400, the model for the federal educational program Head Start.

Ironically, LULAC’s early view of oppression parallels with conservative’s reason for dismantling affirmative action. LULAC believed Mexican Americans were not victims of oppression but by a lack of initiative to take advantage of the opportunities they had and to make themselves into citizens that the rest of society would have to respect. In all, LULAC equated Americanism with middle-class success and believed that true leadership could emanate only from the middle class – speak English, dress well, encourage education, and be polite in race relations.

Post-WWII: Change in Vision
LULAC’s vision for Mexican-Americans was forced to change during the postwar years. Renewed immigration from Mexico changed the socio-cultural context and turned America’s attention to the Southwest and immigration issues.

One of the most misunderstood and oversimplified views was LULAC’s position on immigration. It is true groups like LULAC opposed immigration, more specifically temporary workers to America. Their argument arose out of concern they would force Mexican-Americans to find work elsewhere while temporary workers would be used as a captive labor force to lower wages; employers rarely treated Braceros according to the protections included in their contracts. LULAC leaders had the foresight to see the dangers of importing labors.

Before the passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 was passed, the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization held a hearing, Temporary Admission of Illiterate Mexican Laborers, to address the labor shortage in the beat-sugar industry. The farmers argued importing Mexican laborers would be the best solution to address the labor shortage because they were considered disposable labor. Speaking in their behalf, TX Rep. John Garner explained the farmers would be able to save three times the amount of work a “negro and white man would do” because Mexican laborers are considered “peon labor,” people “who knows nothing about the question of money other than to get enough to live on.”

In 1942, facing labor shortages caused by World War II, the United States initiated a series of agreements with Mexico to recruit Mexican men to work on U.S. farms and railroads. These agreements became known as the bracero program. LULAC leaders felt the discrimination towards the foreign workers would threaten their desire for an educated Mexican-American population because the presence of cheap foreign labor would force Mexican-American families to move in search of work. In a letter to President Truman written by LULAC national president Raul Cortez, Gus C. Garcia, and George I. Sanchez expressed that thousands of resident families would be consigned “to live in slums, in extreme ill-health, in ignorance, and in a squalor that is spiritual as well as physical … . What does this promise to the coming generations, to the citizens of tomorrow, to the assimilation of a rapidly increasing number of “Mexicans,’ to the Four Freedoms, to the American Way?”

Once Bracero Program was established, it brought brought millions of temporary, contract laborers to the United States from 1942 until its termination in 1964. The use of Mexican immigrants as cheap manual labor on the great Southwestern farms is not a recent occurrence. It is a thoroughly entrenched system, a systematic exploitation of an underprivileged class of humanity as cheap labor. Crossing the border was a major hurdle in the journey north. Braceros were often subjected to humiliating exams and bureaucratic procedures. If they did not pass the medical exams, they were sent back to Mexico. Those who did make it across, found out their bracero contracts did not always deliver on their promises.

Poor housing conditions, disputes over pay, discrimination, inadequate health care, and a lack of worker representation were some of the braceros’ common grievances. There living condition usually consisted of a shacks or they were sometimes housed in converted barns and makeshift tents with limited water, heat, and sanitary facilities. They were often transported in unsafe and poorly operated vehicles. Although the work was grueling and housing substandard, many braceros endured these conditions, hoping to make more money than they would at home. Health and social services are non-existent. The diseases bred by such conditions are spread by rapid migration. As a result the braceros suffer a disease-death rate much higher than that of the native populations.

Click here to view the embedded video.

They realized that continued immigration would make complete assimilation. The increase in immigration forced LULAC to rethink their view and the approach the as a policy problem. The late 1940s through the 1950s LULAC had reach new heights with their activism. LULAC councils were established throughout the Southwest, and no other group could match LULAC in size of membership or influence.

Same Phenomenon, Different Era
Today, once again, we are confronted by a rising tide of anti-migrant sentiment. The arguments are the same, the view in the USis that “illegal immigrants” are violating of US immigration law; therefore Congress seeks to address this problem through anti-crime legislation. While the view in Mexico is that Mexican migrants are filling jobs Americans don’t want. What is intriguing, the need for temporary labor can be found over several decades in congressional testimony yet the solution has always been the same.

Latinos are now the largest minority in the US, but Latino community is no longer homogenous as in the past. It is now made up from many different countries with very different cultural backgrounds. However, like previous generations of immigrants and minority groups, anti-immigrant views have not changed. Once again, the Latino community will to look to LULAC and the National Council of La Raza to be their voice. Hopefully, they will not ignore the lessons of the past and not prove George Santayana, the Spanish-American poet and philosopher, correct; those of who do not know our history, are condemned to repeat it.

In my 29-year career as a police officer and detective with the Madison Police Department, in Madison, Wisconsin, I have witnessed and experienced many instances of hatred, violence and racism. In most cases, those negative things were not initiated by law enforcement; sometimes, unfortunately, they were. The 95% of us who sincerely strive to “serve and protect” are tarnished by the 5% of us who intentionally “disserve and destroy.” Nowhere is this more apparent in current American law enforcement than in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has taken the law into his own hands, at the expense of the Constitution, professional ethics, and proper police conduct. Earlier this year, the mayor of Phoenix wrote a letter to the U.S. attorney general’s office, asking the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate Arpaio’s aggressive illegal immigration crackdowns. Mayor Phil Brown wrote that Arpaio’s sweeps show “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

Using local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration laws, as Sheriff Arpaio is doing, weakens the very community links local police and sheriffs’ departments work so hard daily to maintain and build upon. Having community members who are afraid of local police should not be the goal of a department; instead, a far more wide-reaching and positive effect is gained by police-community trust, interaction and collaboration. This might sound too much like social work to Sheriff Arpaio, whose top-down, dictatorial methods favor humiliation, degradation, prisoner abuse, racial profiling, terrorizing Latino residents, and cavorting with local neo-Nazi groups. And according to a 2008 policy report on effective law enforcement by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian-leaning watchdog group based in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio’s department “falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission.” The report found that Maricopa County has “diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration.”

Continue article at Imagine 2050

National Council of La Raza – America’s Immigrant Legacy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chávez stood for equality, justice, and dignity for everybody. The people to whom Chávez dedicated his life did the work that almost no one else wanted to do. The situation is similar today: it is primarily immigrants from Mexico and Central America who do the dirty work in the hidden world of slaughterhouses that produces the neat packages of beef or bacon, which we buy in sanitized supermarkets. However, there are forces out there who want to tarnish Chávez’s record. One of those groups happen to be the immigration foes. Some claim Chávez was opposed to “illegal immigrants,” however, I and others would disagree. In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chávez and wrote an article about him for The New Yorker. Matthiessen noted that “half of the members of Chavez’s union are not United States citizens.”

Like many people whose dedication to a cause is total, Matthiessen noted, Chávez could be intolerant of those whose commitment was less than his. Yet for the most part, his dedication seemed ferociously selfless. Chávez could be “single-minded to the point of ruthlessness,” as some who worked with him confessed. Matthiessen noted that Chávez’s lieutenants neglected to tell him about some of their tactics that might make Chávez look like a hypocrite.

Regardless what some may think about this man, Chavez is still hailed as one of the country’s greatest civil rights leaders. Happy Cesar Chavez Day!

“We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice. But if you give yourself totally to the non-violence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone. And in giving of yourself you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” – Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez’s Commonwealth Club Address (Click to hear his speech)

[Text version of the speech]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lee, Mrs. Black, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty-one years ago, this last September, on a lonely stretch of railroad track paralleling U.S. Highway 101 near Salinas, 32 Bracero farm workers lost their lives in a tragic accident. The Braceros had been imported from Mexico to work on California farms. They died when their bus, which was converted from a flatbed truck, drove in front of a freight train. Conversion of the bus had not been approved by any government agency. The driver had tunnel vision. Most of the bodies laid unidentified for days. No one, including the grower who employed the workers, even knew their names. Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions, beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement near tomato fields in San Diego County; tomato fields, which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw at them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices and they carry in water from irrigation ditches.

Child labor is still common in many farm areas. As much as 30 percent of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are underaged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in states, conducted union elections, since they qualified as workers. Some 800,000 underaged children work with their families harvesting crops across America. Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population. Malnutrition among migrant workers’ children is 10 times higher than the national rate. Farm workers’ average life expectancy is still 49 years, compared to 73 years for the average American.

All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded. That dream was born in my youth, it was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked.

I’m not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn’t understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.

Later in the 50s, I experienced a different kind of exploitation. In San Jose, in Los Angeles and in other urban communities, we, the Mexican-American people, were dominated by a majority that was Anglo. I began to realize what other minority people had discovered; that the only answer, the only hope was in organizing. More of us had to become citizens, we had to register to vote, and people like me had to develop the skills it would take to organize, to educate, to help empower the Chicano people.

I spent many years before we founded the union learning how to work with people. We experienced some successes in voter registration, in politics, in battling racial discrimination — successes in an era where Black Americans were just beginning to assert their civil rights and when political awareness among Hispanics was almost non-existent. But deep in my heart, I knew I could never be happy unless I tried organizing the farm workers. I didn’t know if I would succeed, but I had to try.

All Hispanics, urban and rural, young and old, are connected to the farm workers’ experience. We had all lived through the fields, or our parents had. We shared that common humiliation. How could we progress as a people even if we lived in the cities, while the farm workers, men and women of our color, were condemned to a life without pride? How could we progress as a people while the farm workers, who symbolized our history in this land, were denied self-respect? How could our people believe that their children could become lawyers and doctors and judges and business people while this shame, this injustice, was permitted to continue?

Those who attack our union often say it’s not really a union. It’s something else, a social movement, a civil rights movement — it’s something dangerous. They’re half right. The United Farm Workers is first and foremost a union, a union like any other, a union that either produces for its members on the bread-and-butter issues or doesn’t survive. But the UFW has always been something more than a union, although it’s never been dangerous, if you believe in the Bill of Rights. The UFW was the beginning. We attacked that historical source of shame and infamy that our people in this country lived with. We attacked that injustice, not by complaining, not by seeking handouts, not by becoming soldiers in the war on poverty; we organized.

Farm workers acknowledge we had allowed ourselves to become victims in a democratic society, a society where majority rules and collective bargaining are supposed to be more than academic theories and political rhetoric. And by addressing this historical problem, we created confidence and pride and hope in an entire people’s ability to create the future. The UFW survival, its existence, were not in doubt in my mind when the time began to come.

After the union became visible, when Chicanos started entering college in greater numbers, when Hispanics began running for public office in greater numbers, when our people started asserting their rights on a broad range of issues and in many communities across this land. The union survival, its very existence, sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us, the poorest among us. The message was clear. If it could happen in the fields, it could happen anywhere: in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, but the coming of our union signaled the start of great changes among Hispanics that are only now beginning to be seen.

I’ve traveled through every part of this nation. I have met and spoken with thousands of Hispanics from every walk of life, from every social and economic class. And one thing I hear most often from Hispanics, regardless of age or position, and from many non-Hispanics as well, is that the farm workers gave them the hope that they could succeed and the inspiration to work for change.

From time to time, you will hear our opponents declare that the union is weak, that the union has no support, that the union has not grown fast enough. Our obituary has been written many times. How ironic it is that the same forces that argue so passionately that the union is not influential are the same forces that continue to fight us so hard.

The union’s power in agriculture has nothing to do with the number of farm workers on the union contract. It has nothing to do with the farm workers’ ability to contribute to democratic politicians. It doesn’t even have much to do with our ability to conduct successful boycotts. The very fact of our existence forces an entire industry, unionized and non-unionized, to spend millions of dollars year after year on increased wages, on improved working conditions, and on benefits for workers. If we were so weak and unsuccessful, why do the growers continue to fight us with such passion? Because as long as we continue to exist, farm workers will benefit from our existence, even if they don’t work under union contract. It doesn’t really matter whether we have 100,000 or 500,000 members. In truth, hundreds of thousands of farm workers in California and in other states are better off today because of our work. And Hispanics across California and the nation who don’t work in agriculture are better off today because of what the farm workers taught people about organization, about pride and strength, about seizing control over their own lives.

Tens of thousands of children and grandchildren of farm workers and the children and grandchildren of poor Hispanics are moving out of the fields and out of the barrios and into the professions and into business and into politics, and that movement cannot be reversed. Our union will forever exist as an empowering force among Chicanos in the Southwest. That means our power and our influence will grow and not diminish.

Two major trends give us hope and encouragement. First, our union has returned to a tried and tested weapon in the farm workers non-violent arsenal: the boycott. After the Agricultural Labor Relations Act became law in California in 1975, we dismantled our boycott to work with the law. During the early and mid ’70s millions of Americans supported our boycotts. After 1975, we redirected our efforts from the boycott to organizing and winning elections under the law. That law helped farm workers make progress in overcoming poverty and injustice.

At companies where farm workers are protected by union contracts, we have made progress in overcoming child labor, in overcoming miserable wages and working conditions, in overcoming sexual harassment of women workers, in overcoming discrimination in employment, in overcoming dangerous pesticides, which poison our people and poison the food we all eat. Where we have organized these injustices soon passed in history, but under Republican Governor George Deukmejian, the law that guarantees our right to organize no longer protects farm workers; it doesn’t work anymore.

In 1982, corporate growers gave Deukmejian one million dollars to run for governor of California. Since he took office, Deukmejian has paid back his debt to the growers with the blood and sweat of California farm workers. Instead of enforcing the law as it was written against those who break it, Deukmejian invites growers who break the law to seek relief from governor’s appointees. What does all this mean for farm workers? It means that the right to vote in free elections is a sham. It means the right to talk freely about the union among your fellow workers on the job is a cruel hoax. It means that the right to be free from threats and intimidation by growers is an empty promise. It means that the right to sit down and negotiate with your employer as equals across the bargaining table and not as peons in the fields is a fraud. It means that thousands of farm workers, who are owed millions of dollars in back pay because their employers broke the law, are still waiting for their checks. It means that 36,000 farm workers, who voted to be represented by the United Farm Workers in free elections, are still waiting for contracts from growers who refuse to bargain in good faith. It means that for farm workers child labor will continue. It means that infant mortality will continue. It means that — It means that malnutrition among children will continue. It means the short life expectancy and the inhuman living and working conditions will continue.

Are these make-believe threats? Are they exaggerations? Ask the farm workers who are waiting for the money they lost because the — the growers broke the law. Ask the farm workers who are still waiting for growers to bargain in good faith and sign contracts. Ask the farm workers who have been fired from their jobs because they spoke out for the union. Ask the farm workers who have been threatened with physical violence because they support the UFW, and ask the family of Rene Lopez, the young farm worker from Fresno who was shot to death last year because he supported the union as he came out of a voting booth. Ask the farm workers who watch their children go hungry in this land of wealth and promise. Ask the farm workers who see their lives eaten away by poverty and suffering.

These tragic events force farm workers to declare an international — a new international boycott of California grapes, except the three percent of grapes produced under union contract. That is why we — That is why we are asking Americans, once again, to join the farm workers by boycotting California grapes. The newest Harris Poll revealed that 17 million Americans boycotted grapes. We are convinced that those people and that goodwill have not disappeared. That segment of the population which makes the boycotts work are the Hispanics, the Blacks, the other minorities, our friends in labor and the Church. But it — But it is also an entire generation of young Americans who matured politically and socially in the ’60s and the ’70s, millions of people from — for whom boycotting grapes and other products became a socially accepted pattern of behavior. If you were young, Anglo and/or near campers during the late ’60s and early ’70s, chances are you supported farm workers.

For 15 — 15 years later, the men and women of that generation are alive and well. They are in their mid 30s and 40s. They are pursuing professional careers, their disposable incomes are relatively high, but they are still inclined to respond to an appeal from farm workers. The union’s mission still has meaning for them. Only today, we must translate the importance of a union for farm workers into the language of the 1980s. Instead of — Instead of talking about the right to organize, we must talk about protection against sexual harassment in the fields. We must speak about the right to quality food and food that is safe to eat. I can tell you the new language is working, the 17 million are still there. They are responding not to picket lines and leafleting alone, but to the high-tech boycott of today, a boycott that uses computers and direct mail and advertising techniques, which has made — which has revolutionized business and politics in recent years. We have achieved more success with a boycott in the first 11 months of 1984 than we achieved in the last 14 years, since 1970.

The other trend that gives us hope is the monumental growth of Hispanic influence in this country. And what that means in [is] increased population, increased social and economic clout and increased political influence. South of the Sacramento River, Hispanics now make up now more than 25 percent of the population. That figure will top 30 percent by the year 2000. There are now 1.1 million Spanish-surnamed registered voters in California. In 1975, there were 200 Hispanic elected officials at all levels of government. In 1984, there are over 400 elected judges, city council members, mayors, and legislators. In light of these trends, it’s absurd to believe or to suggest that we are going to go back in time as a union or as a people.

The growers often try to blame the union for their problems, to lay their sins off on us, sins for which they only have themselves to blame. The growers only have themselves to blame as they begin to reap the harvest of decades of environmental damage they have brought upon the land: the pesticides, the herbicides, the soil fumigants, the fertilizers, the salt deposits from thoughtless irrigation, the ravages of years of unrestrained poisoning of our soil and water. Thousands of acres of land in California have already been irrevocably damaged by this wanton abuse of nature. Thousands more will be lost unless growers understand that dumping more and more poison from the soil won’t solve their problems on the short or on the long term.

Health authorities in many San Joaquin Valley towns already warn young children and pregnant mothers not to drink the water, because of nitrates from fertilizers which has poisoned the ground water. The growers have only themselves to blame for an increasing demand by consumers for higher-quality food, food that isn’t tainted by toxics, food that doesn’t result from plant mutations or chemicals that produce red luscious-looking tomatoes that taste like alfalfa. The growers are making the same mistake American automakers made in the ’60s and ’70s when they refused to produce small economical cars and opened up the door to increased foreign competition.

Growers only have themselves to blame for increasing attacks on the publicly financed handouts and government welfare: water subsidies, mechanization research, huge subsidies for not growing crops. These special privileges came into being before the Supreme Court’s “one person, one vote” decision, at a time when rural lawmakers dominated the legislature and the Congress. Soon, those handouts could be in jeopardy as government searches for more revenue and as urban taxpayers take a closer look at front programs and who they really benefit. The growers only have themselves to blame for the humiliation they have brought upon succeeding waves of immigrant groups that have sweated and sacrificed for a hundred years to make this industry rich.

For generations, they have subjugated entire races of dark-skinned farm workers. These are the sins of growers, not the farm workers. We didn’t poison the land. We didn’t open the door to imported produce. We didn’t covet billions of dollars in government handouts. We didn’t abuse and exploit the people who work the land. Today the growers are like a punch-drunk old boxer who doesn’t know he’s past his prime. The times are changing; the political and social environment has changed. The chickens are coming home to roost, and the time to account for past sins is approaching.

I am told these days farm workers should be discouraged and pessimistic. The Republicans control the governor’s office and the White House. There is a conservative trend in the nation. Yet, we are filled with hope and encouragement. We have looked into the future and the future is ours. History and inevitability are on our side. The farm workers and their children and the Hispanics and their children are the future in California, and corporate growers are the past. Those politicians who ally themselves with the corporate growers and against farm workers and the Hispanics are in for a big surprise. They want to make their careers in politics; they want to hold power 20 and 30 years from now. But 20 and 30 years from now, in Modesto, in Salinas, in Fresno, in Bakersfield, in the Imperial Valley and in many of the great cities of California, those communities will be dominated by farm workers and not by growers, by the children and grandchildren of farm workers and not by the children and grandchildren of growers.

These trends are part of the forces of history which cannot be stopped. No person and no organization can resist them for very long; they are inevitable. Once social change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. Our opponents must understand that it’s not just the union we have built — unions like other institutions can come and go — but we’re more than institutions. For nearly 20 years, our union has been on the cutting edge of a people’s cause, and you cannot do away with an entire people and you cannot stamp out a people’s cause. Regardless of what the future holds for the union, regardless of what the future holds for farm workers, our accomplishments cannot be undone. La causa, our cause, doesn’t have to be experienced twice. The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm.

Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards, which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade, but it will come someday. And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament: “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed, and that fulfillment shall enrich us all. Thank you very much.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Aztlan North [John Derbyshire]

Incidentally, while hobnobbing with those Midwesterners at Storm Lake, Iowa — their surnames mostly taken from the Stockholm, Oslo, and Berlin phone books — I heard a couple of times the remark that in this little corner of rural Iowa, the student body in the schools is half Hispanic. The remark was passed in a polite, diffident and non-condemnatory way — of course! this is Iowa — and when I tried to probe, people just retreated into niceness (“These Mexican restaurants are really great!”)

Still, I found it hard to believe, surrounded as I was by Lundqvists and Muellers. In an idle moment, however, I looked up the stats on GreatSchools.net. Sure enough, the “Student Stats” on GreatSchools for Storm Lake show percentages Hispanic as:

• High school: 32
• Middle School: 43
• Elementary schools: 53, 66, 63, 53.

Say what you like, that is truly an invasion. Why on earth are we letting this happen?

In order to understand the concept of Aztlán, it is important to understand the historical experience of Chicanas/os, an experience that has been rendered invisible by institutional discourses in the US. Stereotype, of Mexican Americans as “dirty, lazy, drunken, cruel, violent, treacherous, fanatical, priest-ridden, ignorant, and superstitious,” which were formed in early interactions between Anglos and Mexicans helped to foster exploitative practices which continue today.

The concept of Aztlán was originated by the poet Alurista in the year 1969 at the conference organized by Corky Gonzales in Denver. In an interview, Alurista said:

“People call California, Arizona, Nueva Mexico and Colorado Aztlán, but really, Aztlán is wherever we are. We don’t recognize borders. It’s more a matter of cultural/political identity. When I say this is our land, I don’t mean that we own it. Who owns anything?”

Aztlán was a spiritual concept which was meant to unite all Xican@s. Derbyshire’s post is nothing more but a racist appeal from the far right.

The current state of the immigration debate in the US has affected the we handle immigrant families. Unfortunately, understandable concerns over national security have resulted in increasingly restrictive immigration policies that have led to an increase in immigration detention like the Gómezs. According to Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, on any given day, the government has the capacity to detain more than 600 men, women and children picked up along the border and in major cities. These stricter migration controls are now forcing migrant families to live in tiny cells, like the Hutto Residential facilities. Within each cell contains either a single twin bed or a twin bunk bed with a porcelain or stainless steel sink and toilet. There is no divider separating the sleeping area from the toilet area, leaving families exposed for their family and the world to see.

Even though Ocdalis was happy to be reunited, she also was sadden by the horrors that are occurring within the walls of the Hutto concentration camp.

“I am extremely happy, of course,” she told reporters gathered at MIA. “But I also feel sadness.”

She paused for several seconds and then burst into tears. “Some people qualify for bond and release, but because they don’t have money for bond they are deported with their children,” Ocdalis said, sobbing as she spoke. “It’s very hard being there.”

She said detention officials did not provide adequate medical care for her son. She said he had a persistent cough and he only got cough syrup. Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, said he “will look into the matter.” She said her daughter got better care when she had an asthma attack.

I highly doubt Rusnok will look into the matter because medical care is not ICE’s responsibility. Health care is provided by the Division of Immigration Health Service (DIHS), an agency within the US Public Health Service (PHS). DHIS is the agency in charge of providing health care for all ICE detainees. However, direct services are only provided to ICE run detention centers, for non-ICE run detention centers, they are required to go through DHIS’ Managed Care Services Unit, which manages the medical care and costs of detainees housed in non-service processing centers (non-SPCs). All health related procedures are required to obtain preauthorization before a detainee is able to get care.

The Service Provider (a state, local, Federal government agency or private provider) shall obtain pre-approval from the Managed Care Coordinator (MCC) by submitting a Treatment Authorization Request (TAR) for all non-routine and emergent medical care. … The Service Provider shall ensure that all invoices associated with detainee offsite and/or onsite medical services are submitted to DIHS.

In an emergency, the Service Provider shall obtain the medical treatment required to preserve the detainee’s health. The Service Provider’s Health Authority shall notify the MCC on the next business day following any emergency care to obtain authorization.

What happen to Gómez’s children should not have occurred because under US law, Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans and their immediate family members – even if they are not Cuban – are automatically given permanent residence. ICE’s operation of the Hutto facility violates the settlement terms of Flores v. Meese. Under Flores, DHS generally is required to release minors in federal immigration custody to family members or unrelated custodians. This is currently taken place, International Educational Services are taking the children from these concentration camps and sending them to foster homes, where they will live until they can be united.

The reunification of Gómez’s family is a joyous occasion, however, to the nativists of this country, as one blogger, Malcontent of The Two Malcontents blog, put it, they rather “toss these lying breeding illegal aliens back over the border and shoot to kill if they attempt to enter again.”

Note: I refuse to provide links to hate mongers who are advocating the death of another human being. I you are truly interesting in finding the site where this was said, all you have to do is a simple internet search on The Two Malcontents.

Tuesday’s arrest stems from the 2004 election.

Meyer ran for – and won – a seat for Adelanto City Council where she served for 10 weeks before resigning after a family member raised questions regarding her legal status.

While it is not illegal for an illegal immigrant to register to vote — it is if they actually do vote.

Meyer has long contended that she was unaware of her illegal citizenship status.

“This whole process is not my fault. They ask, ‘How can you not know you’re not a citizen?’ But if you’re parents don’t tell you this, you don’t know,” she said. “It’s like kids who don’t find out until they’re adults that they were adopted. We believe what we are told.”

She and her husband, Kenneth, have four children: Peter, 5; Kennedy, 6; Waylon, 12; and Meaghan, 16.
…
“This is my home. This is where my family is. This is where I have built my life. How can you pick me out of a crowd and tell me you’re taking it all from me,” she asked.

Here is the real messed up thing about Meyer, it wasn’t like the Gestapo was looking for her, it was one her in-laws who reported her to la Migra. I kid you not. When she was elected to city council, “a member of her husband’s family who dislikes Meyer contacted officials and told them she was born in Cuba.” Now that is some fucked up shit, there. Not only do you have to watch your back, but you have to watch your front too because even nativist family members will turn your ass in, in a heart beat.

The only thing that Gestapo can say about this case is that even though “the case is unusual … immigration officials were just doing their job” Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told reporters.

“People are arrested on immigration charges from all walks of life,” she said. “She can plead her case before an immigration judge, if she feels that she has reason to seek release for removal. … Everybody has due process when they’re arrested.”

Yeah, right! I just cannot say it any better than how Meyer put it -

“I see people writing ‘This is my country.’ It really isn’t. It belongs to the government and they decide who stays and who goes. You think you’re free; you’re really not.”

Widely discussed throughout the media and the blogs is how the current immigration reform bill being debated in the Senate would create a permanent underclass of indentured slave labor by allowing multinational corporations and independent contractors to hire thousands of “guest” workers a year outside the US. However, what is not often discussed or reported is how one of the provisions tucked inside the bill would also benefit the military.

This provision is called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act or DREAM Act, which would legitimize in-state tuition programs and “provide a pathway to obtain permanent residency” to immigrant children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children. In other words, the DREAM Act would allow undocumented immigrant to qualify for in-state tuition and automatically qualify them for state-funded student financial aid. As things stand, many undocumented students have not benefited from the financial aid aspect, because students are required to submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application to be considered. However, FAFSA is a federal form and undocumented students are not eligible to receive federal student aid.

A couple of days ago, Kyle from Immigration Orange informed of an of an article that was written in the Boston Globe. Bryan Bender reports how the military will benefit from this provision.

While the DREAM Act may facilitate access to college for a small percentage of these undocumented students, in many cases other factors will militate against the college option. This is where the military comes in, tucked away in the current immigration bill is a provision that will help boost military recruiting.

A little-noticed provision in the proposed immigration bill would grant instant legal status and ultimately full citizenship to illegal immigrants if they enlist in the US military, an idea the Pentagon and military analysts say would boost the Pentagon’s flagging efforts to find and recruit qualified soldiers.

The reality is that military recruitment is down significantly and there are reports that the Pentagon is wanting to impose a “limited military draft” in order to maintain “its present force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan” according to The First Post. If the bill were to become law, the provision is expected to improve military recruitment numbers by allowing undocumented immigrants to enlist as a means to obtain citizenship. It is evident that current recruitment programs are ineffective. Recently the Department of Defense announced that the recruitment goals fell short in May and this probably would explain why the military urgently wants to have Congress pass the current immigration reform bill or just the DREAM Act portion of the bill. The Army fell short in May by 7%, short of its goal of 5,500, while the Army National Guard fell 12% short of its goal and the Air National Guard was well below its target by 23%.

When the immigration bill failed to go through Congress earlier this month, Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, told a veterans’ group that he would like to see Congress fast track the DREAM Act so the military could start recruiting undocumented immigrants right away.

“In other words, if you had come across (the border) with your parents, yet you were a minor child and have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist,” he said. “And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen.”

Currently, between 40,000 and 47,000 non-citizens are serving in the military. According to Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 40,000 non-citizens are already serving in the military. Another source, Defense Manpower Data Center, reports there are 35,000 non-citizens are currently serving on active duty in the US Armed Forces, with another 12,000 serving in the Guard and reserves.

Only legal residents and green card holders were qualified to serve because the executive order President Bush signed 2002 only applied to them. If the current bill were to pass, the Defense Department is hoping to see a major boost because the expansion of the recruiting pool would now include at least 750,000 youths of military age that could immediately enter the path to citizenship in exchange for at least two years of service in the armed forces.

However, not everybody can qualify. According to the Globe, only high school graduates who are “honor roll students, star athletes, talented artists, aspiring teachers, and doctors” would qualify for military service. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, told the Globe only some of them – roughly 280,000 illegal immigrants between 18 and 24 – would qualify for the program. However, this is not true. The Globe most likely cited a summary of a previous bill because neither of the current bills that have been introduced in the Senate Bill 774 (as the “DREAM Act”), H.R.1275 (as the “American Dream Act”), the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348) or S. 1639 say anything about making such exclusions.

Why would the Globe and Deputy Undersecretary Carr state a provision that is not there or cannot be found in any of those three bills? One does have to wonder why they would make such a statement, could it be so that the nativists will not be claiming this to be another example of another amnesty program.

I previously wrote that Council on Foreign Relations neo-conservative senior fellow Max Boot had proposed that the military enlist and actively recruit foreigners from other countries.

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities – U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. (Emphases mine)

The truth is the US is running out of troops because the war in Iraq has tied down roughly 150,000 US troops continuously for almost four years. Now that the Bush is sending another 30,000 troops to Iraq this only makes the troop shortage worse. Recruitment is so bad, it was reported that the Army sent its recruiters to Panama City, FL during Spring Break hoping to entice some young drunk white co-ed into signing their life away to the Army.

Given the difficulty, undocumented youth have in affording college tuition, the pressure on them to make financial contributions to extended families, and the tendency to adopt uncritical forms of patriotism based on “gratitude,” military recruiters will be the ones who benefit the most. As I stated before, the US Military has a long history of targeting people who happen to come from working class families and areas with a large number of minorities, both urban and rural – otherwise known as a “poverty draft.” Many people assume that joining the military is a way out of poverty. Some veterans do say that their experience in the military or the college benefits that they were able to get, was helpful to them. However, the reality for most veterans is far different. According to the Army Times, reports that over 50,000 unemployed veterans are on the waiting list for the military’s “retraining” program. The Veterans’ Administration estimates that 1/3 of homeless people are vets.

The Pentagon has already spent millions to gather information on how to target recruit Latinos into the military. Each year, employees from JAMRS – the “official Department of Defense program for joint marketing communications and market research and studies” – gathered for their annual direct-marketing conference. JAMRS claims the role of the marketing communications programs is to “help broaden people’s understanding of Military Service as a career option.” However, it also engages in all sorts of not-for-public-consumption studies that are meant to “help bolster the effectiveness of all the Services’ recruiting and retention efforts.” In 2005, in their annual conference, paid New York marketing consultant Michael Saray made a presentation – “Marketing to Hispanics” – to JAMRS on how the Latino community is “wired” differently and how Hispanics tend to be “emotional” and “right-brained.”

According to Jorge Mariscal, Saray’s presentation indicated that Hispanics are supposedly “emotional, intuitive, creative, Big Picture, and visionary.”

Simply put, JAMRS trainees were taught “the Spanish language has not favored intellect over emotion. It’s [sic] bias or thought process has not favored the left brain over the right brain. This is a real cultural difference.” Therefore, the Saray group’s advice to Pentagon ad men devising Hispanic campaigns for military recruitment is to “avoid blatant overuse of numbers. You want to reach the heart, not the left brain.” To sum up, “the traditions of Hispanic culture are not necessarily in-synch with the concept of ‘mainstream society’ or the ‘American Dream.’ In general, Hispanics are right brain thinkers. The marketer must ‘acculturate’ or risk losing relevancy by continued reliance on left brain thinking.” (Emphases mine)

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. The role of a marketer is to convince us to want things we don’t really need because their goal personal goal is to promote or exchange goods or services for money. They will develop techniques to that will trigger a person’s emotions that also meet their wants and/or needs. Their employment, like any marketing company, exist with the sole purpose to convince people that consuming resources is a way toward greater happiness. But the question is at who’s expense?

With few prospects of gaining US citizenship through the usual channels, and with little hope of employment, decent housing and education, risking ones life for a glimmer of a chance for a better future clearly holds some attraction. But it does comes with a price. The sad reality, the promises made by the Government frequently fail to materialize. Just ask Yaderlin Jiminez, wife of missing servicemen Alex Jimenez, who is now facing deportation. One of the greatest challenges for many immigrants is the experience of immigration itself, but to the Bush War Machine, this is not a concern to them. For them, all they see is cannon fodder for their war effort, while at the same time they arrogantly tell military families they should “learn how to laugh” if they fell stressed out from hear news about the war. To the military people expendable while families are morning over the fresh graves that are being dug daily! Maybe the Bush cabal can see the humor in sending thousands of people in harms way, however, I doubt the children do as they see their moms or dads being shipping off to a war that is illegal, immoral and unjust. Or the the parents who are losing their sons and daughters. Or the spouses who are losing their husbands and wifes.

Ironically, nativist and xenophobic groups are demanding the deportation of the Brown, yet, you never hear them complain when it is not unusual to hear a Spanish surname on the roll call of dead or missing. Among the first US solider killed at the beginning of the Iraq War was Jose Antonio Gutierrez from Guatemala according to Casualties.org’s database.

For some immigrants, the DREAM Act will help them access to college in the US; for others, the barriers will continue to be insurmountable. One thing is certain – if the immigration bill passes, the quest to access higher education and achieve the American Dream will be nothing but a pipe dream as these new residents will be at the frontlines of next imperial misadventures.

The three Guardsmen are assigned to border duties along the Texas-Mexico border as part of Operation Jump Start, President Bush’s initiative to place 6,000 Guard troops at the border to help local and federal authorities with immigration enforcement.

According to the criminal complaint, the arrests followed after a routine stop last Wednesday evening at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Cotulla in La Salle County, TX. National Guardsman Jose Rodrigo Torres was driving a white Ford passenger van when agents stopped the vehicle for an inspection. As the approached the van they found 24 illegal aliens hiding in the back of the van. Torres was wearing his military uniform when agents found him driving the immigrants. Once Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents arrived, Torres told ICE agents that he had been recruited by National Guardsman Sgt. Julio Cesar Pacheco to transport the immigrants. Torres also stated that he had already transported undocumented immigrants about seven times before that night, and Pacheco would pay him $1,000 to $3,500 per trip. Three of the passengers in Torres’ van identified him as the driver, according to the criminal complaint. They also said that they paid $1,500 to $2,000 to be smuggled into the United States, according to the complaint.

The complaint states that Torres was able avoid immigration inspection at the checkpoint with the assistance of a third National guardsman, Sgt. Clarence Hodge. According to Torres, Hodge would approach the “van to make it appear that they were doing National Guardsmen business.”

The criminal complaint also stated that Torres told agents that the three guardsmen would communicate via text messaging to coordinate the smuggling. ICE agents found a text message conversation between Pacheco and Torres. The message was instructing Torres that the trip was a go and that he would be paid $3,500 for the delivery.

… Pacheco to Torres on Wednesday reading, “ok it sounds pretty good but we need to take 24 people to make that happen and you will get 3500 does that sound good (sic).”

Torres responded via a text message on the same day reading, “24 will b tuff 2 fit but ill try (sic).”

Hours before Torres was detained by Border Patrol, a message from Hodge to Torres asked if he wanted to make a transport on June 8, … Torres wrote, “Tell them ill only do 1 @ no more than 20 people @ $150 a person and I want 2 leave at 1930 hrs and ill go 2 San Antonio if they want (sic).”

Families of the guardsmen are said to be in shock of the arrest according the Houston Chronicle. According to Pacheco’s family, Pacheco, served in Germany, Kosovo and Iraq over four years in the Army. Pacheco was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries he suffered in Iraq in 2004.

However, this is not the first time troops from Operation Jump Start are accused of illegal activity. Back in September, three other soldiers were arrested on charges that they opened fire in a district near Eagle Pass. According to local police, the guardsmen claimed that boredom was at the heart of a joyride with two cases of beer and a loaded 9 mm pistol.

The fact that there are US agents who are willing to smuggle either undocumented immigrants or drugs across the border for profit or some other illicit motive is not new. What bothers me; two of the guardsmen are Latino and given the anti-Brown sentiment that is running rapid in the US, what they just did was adding more fuel to the reconquista fable.

This type of nativism has slowly infected the US like a cancer. It has pitted Americans against one another. And why not, this is not new, this type of baiting has worked in the past, and therefore, is being used again.

America has a long history when it comes to mass deportation. In fact, American capitalism has used Mexican workers as a reserve army of labor since the conquest of the Southwest.

History has shown the Mexican labor pool is heavily utilized during times of economic boom and repatriation during economic downturns. To American capitalist the border does not exist when it comes to exploitation.

Latinos are not the only group. Yet, this nation continues its tradition to bury almost four centuries worth of historical truths. History continues to point out this country is full of contradictions that resonate in America – the tension between freedom and authority, between public purpose and private initiative. It also has shown there has always been hostility felt towards African Americans, Latinos, and practically all Asians – which included South Asia from Arabia to Indochina, including India, Burma, Siam, the Malay states, the East Indian islands, Asiatic Russia, the Polynesian islands, and parts of Arabia and Afghanistan. And until this day, we all have been persecuted by American nativist.

Make no mistake; the present anti-immigration group will proceed in their race-baiting tactics to divide the country. They will criminalize the undocumented by calling them illegal; they dehumanize them by calling them aliens. They play on the fears of white narcissistic Americans. Their violent diatribes fed off their greed, by providing an illusion that the “WE” have our hand in their pockets and stealing the food from their child’s mouth. Their racist and fascist attacks against the “Mexicans” demonstrate their bloodthirsty capitalist essence. They don’t care about the millions of impoverished masses while they can meet the bottom line, the big house, the latest gadget, the big car – all to keep up with the American “Jones.”

The problem is that society has no moral dimension. If a deer shit in the forest, no one looks at the pile of droppings and thinks bad deer. However if you come across a pile of beer bottles in the forest, you think asshole. Our leaders already know NAFTA and neo-liberalism ideology do not work which is playing a role in fueling the mass exodus to the United States and yet keep on pushing it, in fact, Congress approved CAFTA. That makes every supporter, and our leaders, morally and politically culpable, as if we had passed a Constitutional Amendment allowing segregation based on race to exist. We have yet to learn how to live within our means because we are deeply devoted to the idea that we should do what we want to do. We have abandoned a sense of common purpose for a sense of hyperindividualism, which is caused and reinforced by two social evils in our country – capitalism and imperialism.

Could it possibly be that THEY can’t stand to see those who THEY strongly think THEY have “conquered” make a life for OURSELVES? Do THEY really expect US to be at THEIR beck and call? To cut THEIR grass, mop THEIR floors, cook THEIR tacos, take care of THEIR children, and just say “Si, senor” every time? Why do THEY get paranoid when THEY hear Spanish? Are THEY afraid that the “conquered” are plotting against their oppressors? Could it be in their delusional thinking, if they forced US to stop speaking Spanish, THEY will be able to hear exactly what the details of OUR revolutionary plans?

May Day is our day to celebrate our history, our struggle and our power. WE will reject our colonizer; their day has come when it is the colonized who is speaking up. The Movement is too strong and now gringo nativist will stop at nothing to cause a DIVIDE between the African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. Who are they trying to fool? They have, seem to have forgotten their past crimes against humanity – slavery, whippings, lynching, black-white water fountains, burning crosses and so on. They will try to poison the mind of the few to make this us vs them – native vs foreign.

Follow me, as I shine the light in our time of darkness. I am neither pontificator nor a soothsayer; I am just a person who is willing to bring a little fire in this cold world of ours. I understand the pain of not knowing what tomorrow will bring. I have seen behind the FACADE, the pretty flowers, the manicured lawns, and the massive wealth. My eyes are opened to the truth to the ills of this country – the corruption, the hatred, the violence, the racism, the ignorance, and the greed BEHIND this pretty facade. I am on to THEIR trick on how I should be GRATEFUL to live here, or how GOOD I should feel about licking the masters’ boots as the chalice of independence is being held before me, while at the same time it was just out of reach. I have seen THEM roll up into neighborhoods with their tricked-up Hummers forcing “Our” people to fight in THEIR murderous wars of exploitation and profit; killing people they don’t even know just to steal THEIR land and their resources!

I refuse to give in to the propaganda and I will raise my fist and stand up for my roots con MUCHO CORAZON.

On May Day, this Nation will once again witness the unstopable movement, no matter how much they will try to strike fear to the voiceless. Like last year, I will live blog through out the day on the events that took place on May 1, 2007. It is time we say:

No to anti-immigrant legislation, and the criminalization of the immigrant communities.

No to militarization of the border.

No to the immigrant detention and deportation.

No to the guest worker program.

No to employer sanction and “no match” letters.

The choice is YOURS on May 1 – Wear White T-Shirt and support the cause.

The choice is YOURS on May 1 – to take a stand on unfair attacks by gringo nativists – blinded by their ignorance, hate, bigotry and racism.

The choice is YOURS on May 1- to send a message to every jackbooted neo-nazi nativists – WE ARE STRONG … UNITED … ORGANIZED!

Nosotros vamos a permannecer Unidos Contra el Racismo y la Injusticia Siempre!

Locations of May 1st Immigration Rallies can be found at Migra Matters.