Now, I don’t mean to fuel any animosity between African Americans and Mexicans, whites and anyone else. God knows there are enough attacks against one another for superficial and ridiculous reasons (and attacking anyone for their so-called race or ethnicity is silly). What we often forget is that idiots come in all colors–if I have any prejudice it’s against people who don’t know what they’re talking about, who don’t know their own history, let alone that of others.

So instead of going off myself, I’m going to make this a “teaching moment” (I know, this is dumb cliché, but you get the point). Why react in kind to Mr. Williams in an already negative environment; this issue is bigger than one bad night at the comedy club (a small message to Mr. Williams: There is always going to be bad nights at the club, get over it).

Mexicans did fight for California. In fact, the one major battle they had with Anglo forces invading California they won, with horses and lances, just outside of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the decision to turn the state over to the United States was made in Washington D.C. without the input of the people involved.

In fact, there was a whole war that Mexicans fought to stop the illegal invasion, which, lest Mr. Williams forget, was being pushed by the slave-owning interests in the United States. It was Southern slaveholders who ignited the war to rip Texas away from Mexico when Anglos refused to accept Mexico’s laws against slavery.

Mexico had abolished slavery in the early 1800s, way before the Emancipation Proclamation; Mexico even had at least two African-Mexicans as presidents some two hundreds years before Barack Obama was elected president in this country.

The main catalyst for the Mexican war was the refusal of Mexico to return black slaves–believed to be more than 10,000–who had taken the southern-route of the “underground railroad,” crossing the border to a free Mexico. In Mexico’s governing assembly heavy debates on the issue ended up with the majority supporting these slaves, allowing them to own land, to farm, to become part of the Mexican social fabric.

Mexicans were willing to die so blacks could be free.

–Luis J. Rodriguez, “Why We Need a Deeper Dialogue on Black-and-Brown Relations”

Image credit: VOYAJ

Sometimes there’s love in laughter. And the cast and crew bringing the new web series East Willy B have a lot of love for the real-life neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and (most) of the fictional characters.

The series’ heart is Willie Reyes, Jr. (Flaco Navaja) the 30-something Puerto Rican-proud bar owner who inherited the business from his dad, including the barfly crushing on him, Giselle (Caridad “La Bruja” de la Cruz). Wille is trying to keep his bar, which has served as the nabe’s hangout and nerve center, from closing down due gentrification in the form of his ex-girlfriend Maggie (April Hernandez) and her new white beau (and Willie’s longtime rival), Albert (Danny Hoch), and the incoming white hipsters looking for cheap(er) rent.

Transcript of the premiere episode after the jump.

(Music plays in the background. Willy and Gisele laugh. )

Willie: What do you need, Gisele?

Gisele: What I need or what I want? ‘Cause, if you ask me what I want, I’ll tell you.

Willie: OK, what do you want?

Gisele: I want me…a little bit of what you got going on right down there.

Willie: You’re crazy! You want another one?

Gisele: You asked me what I need? (Laughs)

Willie: (under his breath) Jesus!

Gisele: (Grabs for Willy) Oooo-hooo—

Willie: Hey hey heeeey! I’m working here!

(Gisele laughs)

Maggie: …yeah. (Laughs.) Si, mi amor. I’ll talk to you later. ‘Bye. (Blows kiss. Sighs.) I saw you, Willie.

Willie: Maa-ggiiiie!

Maggie: We need to talk.

Willie: Yeah, I’m sure we do.

Maggie: So. I was thinking: I have some ideas on bringing this bar alive.

Willie: Yeah, where’d you get ‘em? From your mom?

Maggie: Funny. OK? You know I’ve been taking classes—

Willie: Where at? Nuyorican College? That shit ain’t school.

(Maggie sighs)

Willie: That’s like ghetto babysitting or something.

Maggie: (exasperated) OK, anyway. Listen: I’m thinking…we can make this bar? More. Emo.

Willie: What the fuck is “emo”?!

Maggie: “Emotional!” You know: slightly depressive dive. We can have some 80s video games, some confederate flags. You also need to start selling $6 malt liquors. Those rich white hipsters love that shit!

Willie: This is still a Latin bar, aiight? I don’t know why everybody’s trippin’.

Maggie: Because no one cares, Willy. OK? You need to let go.

Ceci: Oh hell no! The dog run is around the corner.

Maggie: Whatever, Ceci.

Ceci: Por favor, Willie. You’re not still sweating this bougie-ass bitch, are you? She dumped your ass! Really?

(To Maggie) Looook, whatever it is you’re selling? We ain’t buying it.

Maggie: Shouldn’t you be chasing dudes with tattoos and bulldogs?

Ceci: Are you going to kick her out or do I gotta to do everything around here?

Maggie: Look! Mama? I own half this bar, and I’ll come here whenever I want.

(To Willie) This is what I’m talking about. If you want more people, get rid of these hoodrats.

Gisele: You bitch! (Screams)

Maggie: You know what? I don’t need this ghetto shit anymore! As a matter of fact, I’m gonna sue your ass.

Willie: For what?!?

Maggie: I am going to get controlling interest in this bar.

Willie: Like hell you are!

Maggie: Yeah? OK. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

Willie: Fine! All right? ‘Cause I got your Colby and Meyers, and they got TV commercials and all that. So bring it!!

Ceci: Yeah? When you gonna grow your balls back?

Gisele: Don’chu worry, Willie. I’ma get her next time!

I’ll admit it: it took me a minute to get into East Willy B. Part of it is simply being an ethnic outsider: I’m not Latina and felt odd laughing with—and sometimes at—the jokes. Then I had to check myself: like I couldn’t recognize That Alcoholic Lecherous Auntie in Giselle (don’t lie: I know some of y’all Racializens have a Giselle in your fam and y’all love her antics at the family gathering); got-your-back (and sometimes gotta-be-in-your-face) Ceci (played by EWB co-creator Julia Ahumada Grob) ; or even soft-hearted-though-over-his-head Willie. And like I couldn’t recognize laughing in the face of New York City’s ongoing gentrification.

What I think East Willy B does best is put a biting laugh on the class politics aggravated by gentrification, ongoing colorism and “authenticity”, and ethnic pride (which comes out sometimes as ethnic chauvinism). Yes, there’s the leitmotif of the white hipsters seen as invading Bushwick, but for the most part, they are a joke in absentia. (And we can argue about the presence of hipsters and other gentrifiers of color.  However, it’s also real that the face of this demographics shift is white for quite a few communities. This definitely holds true for Bushwick.)  And Albert, the “token white guy,” isn’t viewed as “white” (the website describes him as “browner-than-thou,” complete with Latina girlfriend). White gentrification, says East Willy B, is aided and abetted by people from within the community who may see the financial and social upsides of it but may get caught up in some form of false consciousness due to getting some post-high school education (Maggie) or just overall sleaze (John the Realtor). (It’s also that awkward relationship with education that’s my biggest critique of East Willy B.)

And what I love about East Willy B is that it’s a complete online experience, reflecting Internet use among Latin@s. Yes, there’s the show and a vid of the on-camera and off-camera crews, but there are spot-on commercial spoofs and an emerging web series about the real Bushwick, with local activists speaking about the changes. (I like what Jesus says in the vid: “We’d love to have more people come by and see us, but don’t replace us.” I think the same holds true for enjoying East Willy B.) More importantly, the viewer is invited to be a part of East Willy B, both online and offline: the creators asks us to get the word out about the new web series (they have more episodes lined up for the summer) by hosting viewing parties and attending upcoming East Willy B-related events during the summer.

If the events (and the viewing parties) are anything like the series, then I think you’ll have a great time.

Photo Credit: John Walder

If you’re going out tonight, be careful and be wary – Cinco De Mayo is amateur hour when it comes to frosty adult beverages. The drinks will probably be cheaper, but the rowdies will probably be taking advantage of that. So watch out for anybody in a cheap “sombrero,” especially on the road.

In the meantime, please check out this little bit of perspective on today’s “holiday,” originally published at The R two years ago today. And let’s all stay safe out there.

Nothing good can come of a new Speedy Gonzales film. No matter what the intentions, or the updates George Lopez’s wife, Ann, is promising:

“We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s – the racist Speedy. Speedy’s going to be a misunderstood boy who comes from a family that works in a very meticulous setting, and he’s a little too fast for what they do. He makes a mess of that. So he has to go out in the world to find what he’s good at.”

So Mrs. Lopez, who will produce this project, says the couple can refashion a cartoon like this into A Mexican-American Tail:

The thing is, it’s not just about Speedy, but about the universe he inhabited. If this new film strays from the original Andale! Andale! schtick, critics will decry that the character was neutered by “the PC Patrol.” If it doesn’t, the couple has resurrected a very problematic cartoon character (two, if Slowpoke Rodriguez is also brought back.) What would be the next step – the return of Heckle & Jeckle? Is bringing back an “established brand” like this really a better option than creating an original character and building something positive from the ground up?

Lopez’s choice to bring Speedy back to life follows a career that alternates commendable success with questionable content. Though his talk show, Lopez Tonight, has emerged as a steady performer for TBS, it features a segment called Chola Makeover, which is, at best, exploitative; his stand-up concerts are undeniably successful, but his material lapses into White People do (x), Mexicans do (y) territory (full disclosure: I laugh at his stuff because I can relate to some of it, but I understand where it raises uncomfortable questions). And his sitcom, George Lopez, gave us the refreshing sight of an all-Latino TV family – the primary cast itself was all-Latino in the show’s final season – where nobody was a) a boxer or b) a mechanic, but come on, “Low Rider” for the theme song?

Like I said before, nothing good can come of this – except, perhaps, for whichever fast-food chain snaps up the sponsorship deal first.

For a review of Part 1, click here

No way around it: Latino In America was a failure.

At the very least, Thursday’s conclusion, “Chasing The Dream,” seemed equal parts melodrama and bait-and-switch, with the broadcast component weakened by a lack of questions that undercut even its’ more compelling segments.

For instance, in the report on the murder of Luis Mendoza, we got an overview of events in Shenandoah, Penn., leading up to the crime, and of the area’s history with several immigrant populations, but when one individual reported he felt he was being intimidated because of his speaking to CNN, we got no follow-up with local authorities. When it was mentioned that one of the four defendants – who were acquitted of hate-crime accusations – testified the cops told them to get their stories straight, we got no follow-up.

In another major mis-step, the incident was not placed in any sort of context – at least on-air. You had to venture to the series’ website (or look it up yourself) to get this kind of information:

FBI statistics show that anti-Latino crimes are on the rise. There were 595 anti-Latino crimes in 2007, up almost 40 percent from the 426 crimes in 2003; the Latino population in America grew only 14 percent during that time.
In December, Ecuadorean Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhañay died after he was beaten with a baseball bat in Brooklyn, New York.
One month earlier, a group of seven teenagers with a history of harassing Latinos went out looking for “Mexicans to f— up” and fatally stabbed Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue, New York.
FBI figures from 2007 show that anti-Latino attacks account for about 8 percent of all hate crimes. About 35 percent of hate crimes were directed at blacks, 16 percent at homosexuals and 13 percent at Jews.
But experts say hate crimes in general are underreported. States are not required to report those figures to the FBI.

Surely including at least some of this information would have been a better use of our viewing time than Soledad O’Brien amiably chatting up the guy starting up his own “Save Shenandoah” group.

A similar lack of layering plagued the story of “Marta,” the undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. To find her mother, only to find herself having to accuse her mom of neglect in order to stay in America. Marta’s story is woven with that of the Cuban “Pedro Pans,” which include Sen. Mel Martínez (R-FL). Never mind that Marta (pictured above) isn’t even Cuban. But, again, you had to go to the website to get more relevant information:

[Marta's] case is typical of the 7,211 children known to have entered the United States illegally in 2008 by themselves, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which runs the shelters where the children are detained. Children come searching for family members or a way out of poverty with little understanding of the legal ramifications they face.

And how does Martínez feel about a system that forces children to seek their own legal representation in these matters? Well, you had to watch Anderson Cooper to figure it out, I guess, because O’Brien seemingly never asked.

Other segments just seemed disjointed: the segment on Pico Rivera veered from covering its’ evolution into a “Latino Mayberry” (a rather condescending term) to a law enforcement crackdown against gang and tagging activity to the city’s Scared Straight-esque P.R.I.D.E program to following yet another at-risk teen trying to navigate through it. And in the middle of all this, seemingly staple-gunned onto the narrative, was a visit with a local car club. And all this was before we learned that the city’s otherwise sympathetic mayor, Gracie Gallegos, had to resign for allegedly cashing bad checks. What, exactly, was the lesson to be learned from this? There wasn’t even an online companion to this story to look to for an overall point.

The series’ final segment seemed to focus on the financial disadvantage of a naturalized immigrant who doesn’t speak English; not only would his story have fit in more tightly among those featured in “The Garcías,” but it was shoe-horned against an Anglo baseball instructor who successfully boosts his camp’s enrollments by hiring and recruiting Latino staff and students; and a very successful immigrant couple. In the end we learn that the guy’s girlfriend is pregnant and he failed his Sheriff Department entrance exam again.

And that’s where the series wraps up. Is this how the network wants to attract more Latino viewership? Based on these utterly depressing four hours, I can just imagine the slogan: CNN: ¡No se puede!

Soledad O’Brien says she wants Latino In America to “start a conversation.” Unfortunately for viewers, the series’ message seems to be, what? Woe is us? Abandon ship? What did Brown ever do to you?

Grounded in depressing case studies and missed questions, the series’ first installment was less “Latinos In America” and more like “Latinos For Lou Dobbs’ Audience.” Most of the people featured were not “changing” their communities – they were being victimized in or by them. They were pregnant, suicidal (or pregnant and suicidal), caught in an immigration raid, losing their cultural roots, facing an uphill job struggle or isolated in their churches. The premiere’s first profile, of Univision TV chef Lorena García, was the only one that focused on somebody doing something positive – in her case, building her own brand in spite of skepticism over her “accent.”

Most of the rest of the Garcías profiled – a disparate group “united” by having the 8th most popular surname in the U.S.; take that, Velazcos! – were, to put it mildly, in very bad places in their lives. And more damning from a journalistic perspective, we never got to see O’Brien ask crucial follow-up questions: how responsible does Cindy García’s mother feel for her inability/unwillingness to learn English obstructing Cindy’s studies? How did Cindy (pictured above) figure unprotected sex was a sensible idea in the face of a 70% failure-to-graduate rate and a sister who was also a teen mother? And what in the blue hell was her boyfriend thinking having sex without a condom?

Similar questions came to mind in the feature on Araceli Torres, the young woman facing impending deportation despite living here more than two decades. Was there something preventing her from seeking citizenship once she turned 18 years old, or was her story nothing more than an excuse for CNN to hype the grand-standing Anderson Cooper, who saw fit to follow the show by giving a platform to anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The feature on Latinos in Hollywood was also clumsy: sure, it’s sad to see Lupe Ontiveros still doing the (NSFW) Hollywood Shuffle after 30 years, but Eva Longoria-Parker’s blithe dismissal of the issue (Latinos need to get behind the camera? Thanks, CNN, for the breaking news) didn’t help the segment as much as, say, asking Screen Actors’ Guild president Ken Howard how he feels about his POC members working in an industry bent on excluding them would have.

O’Brien’s best moment came during the feature on the St. Louis church struggling to integrate an increasingly Spanish-speaking membership into its’ ranks, when she got both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking factions to admit neither will hang out with the other. That acknowledgement boosted the segment’s finale, with members from each community awkwardly attempting to communicate at a church fundraiser – and made the earlier omissions all the more glaring.

In fact, the most compelling discussion of the “Latino condition” of the evening wasn’t even part of the documentary: on Campbell Brown, John Leguizamo told L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigoza that visiting Los Angeles felt “like traveling into South Africa,” leading to this exchange:

Villarigoza: We have the biggest Latino middle class in America. We have the biggest Black middle class in America.
Leguizamo: Where are they?

Unfortunately, their face-off was cut short. Part 2 of Latino airs tonight, and as it moves to cover the murder of Luis Ramírez, you have to wonder: will it acknowledge not just anti-Latino and anti-immigrant sentiment on American airwaves, but on its’ own network?

Recommended: Brown Is The New Green

The Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday that a local Hispanic contractors’ organization had removed a video from its website and given apologies after a local television station received complaints that it contained demeaning portrayals of gays (“Hispanic contractors’ group pulls video called demeaning to gays“).

The U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association had recently been in the news for leading a successful protest against a morning talk radio show on KLBJ-AM in which a co-host had repeatedly referred to Latino immigrants as “wetbacks”. On Monday, the parent owner of the radio station announced that the show would be canceled. That same day, though, KVUE TV broadcast the news report highlighting that the same organization that led the fight against the anti-immigrant slur had the questionable video on its website.

What’s exactly in the video and is it truly offensive to gays? You be the judge. The American-Statesman says that it consists of outtakes from a promotional ad for the Association featuring Mexican-born comedian Paul Rodriguez which were never used in the ad that actually aired. The paper described it as “Rodriguez dressed as a construction worker walking in an effeminate manner”.

The Association has taken the link to the video off their site but I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy and have posted it above. The clip in question begins at the :30 second mark and lasts 35 seconds. In it, Rodriguez seems to be ad-libbing his way through the shoot and starts riffing on the gay community in Austin, speaking both in English and Spanish. Here is the transcript with translation of Spanish-language phrases:

Paul Rodriguez: Doesn’t Austin have like a gay… a big gay population?
Contractor in blue: Si, esta rogado por locas ["Yes, nellies always ask him out"]
Paul Rodriguez: So you go, you go [prances] ‘and specially for you…’ [walks and simulates grabbing contractor's butt, contractors laugh, Rodriguez goes back and simulates holding contractor's testicles]
Paul Rodriguez: Cough! [contractors laugh]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances again] Estas bien nalgón ["You're cute, big butt guy"]
Paul Rodriguez: Let’s go, let’s go…
Off-camera: [Unintelligible]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances some more] dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena ["Give your body happiness, Macarena", a quote from the song Macarena by Los Del Rio]. Here we go…

At 1:57 there’s another bit in which Rodriguez addresses the two contractors as women and hands them over what he describes as invitations for them to join Jenny Craig and lose some weight.

After removing the link from the Association’s site, spokesperson Paul Saldaña, speaking to the American-Statesman, said “The video was in poor taste, and we certainly need to be held accountable to the community’s expectations.”

Frank Fuentes, the organization’s chairman, told the paper “We shouldn’t have had it up there. I personally don’t think it equates to what happened on the radio station, but I can understand why people would think that.”

Both Saldaña and Fuentes said that Rodriguez had initiated the banter and that it was never part of a script. They said they had contacted local LGBT organizations and advocates and requested a meeting with them to apologize for the incident. The meeting, they said, is scheduled for later this week.

Their immediate action to remove the link and willingness to be the ones to actively seek a meeting with local LGBT leaders speaks well for the Association despite having posted the video in the first place. I also find it suspicious that people started to complain to media only after the Association’s successful actions in shutting down a xenophobic radio show. Something tells me that fans of the show combed through the Association’s website to find anything they could pin on them and show them in a bad light.

As for the video’s content, does it offend? I guess it depends on your sensibility. To me it comes across as puerile, stereotypical, and – yes – a tad homophobic. But hey! It’s Paul Rodriguez! Does it absolutely rile me up and make me want to boycott Austin, Texas? Oh, please, there are bigger fish to fry. At least, once on notice, the organization acted swiftly and properly.

The media reform movement is an offshoot and part of the civil rights movement. It was born in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ initiated a lawsuit against white-owned TV stations in the South for consistently portraying African Americans in a racist manner, while refusing to show any coverage of the civil rights movement.

Because of their pressure, the FCC shut down a Mississippi TV station, stating that the power and influence that media companies have gives them the responsibility to operate with the broader public interest at heart – with special consideration given to oppressed minorities.

Since then, political pressure has been brought to bear against the FCC and Congress on a wide variety of issues: female and minority ownership of stations and publications, the dangers of consolidation of the media, the need to build public communications infrastructure like cable access stations or city-owned Internet networks, and the need for everyone to have broadband access.

The percentage of our time that the American public spends with media has been steadily climbing for 40 years, and with that, its influence over our lives. The media is our environment, and the battle I am engaged in is over the nature of this environment: whether it is an environment in which ordinary people have a voice – or whether we are to passively absorb content controlled by a small number of people and corporations. Whether the media is democratic, and reflects a variety of voices.

Why is this important? I will take an extreme example of the media’s power, when it is used by one group over another. In 1994, radio stations played a significant role in the Rwandan genocide, broadcasting hate-filled rants and giving directions to how to kill Tutsis, resulting in a genocide that killed approximately 500,000 Tutsis in 100 days.

I use this example because it is similar to a battle we are fighting now: hate speech online. Researchers at UCLA have just completed a study that shows a recent rise in hate speech online and in broadcast media, particularly against Latinos, while the number of hate crimes against Latinos has been rising. The report is pretty harrowing – a short summary is posted here.

I’m just gonna put in one quote, from neo-Nazi radio host Hal Turner, who wrote on his website in March 2006:

“We’re going to have to start killing these people. I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places where to position yourself, and then do what has to be done.”

This is illegal, and the FCC currently does nothing about this.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition is asking the FCC to open a docket to take comments on hate speech in order to determine what action, if any, needs to be taken. As an organization of writers and producers, the NHMC itself is very concerned about upholding freedom of speech; but NHMC and many of its partner organizations think that the FCC has a moral obligation to enforce current law, and find other ways to turn down the volume of hate speech that reinforces racist hatred and keeps many people from even participating online.

I’d like to make an appeal to you folks especially to write a note to the FCC, or through NHMC, or blog about it, in order to open a docket. They won’t do this unless they hear from the community – and site managers are the best people for them to hear from. The FCC has not studied hate speech seriously in 15 years – since before the popularization of the Internet!

Here is how to get in touch with Inez Gonzalez, of the NHMC: igonzalez@nhmc.org.

We are working on a lot of stuff right now, and I will be sure to highlight things as they come up. What you are doing, by presenting platforms by which people can freely communicate, is a democratic act in and of itself; my job is to make sure that the system is set up so that you can continue doing that.

Hannah Miller is the National Field Director for the Media and Democracy Coalition.

Continuing a semi-yearly tradition of mine since my days working at my college paper, just a few notes about today:

1. This is not Mexican Independence Day
Nope, that’s September 16th. 5/5 commemorates an unlikely Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The battle delayed, but did not stop, an eventual French occupation of the country, which lasted three years before it was toppled.

2. This is not that big of a deal back home
Don’t let the beer ads fool you; 5/5 is a regional holiday, usually celebrated at the site of the battle. But, it’s nowhere near as big a deal as it is in El Otro Lado. Now, is that because of immigrant pride, or American corporate opportunism? That, I leave for you to decide. During my time working in local Spanish-language radio, the biggest sponsors for our Cinco de Mayo concerts were — you guessed it — beer companies. Banners everywhere, beer girls hawking their wares on the stage, booze selling like hot cakes in the fenced-off drinking area. I don’t doubt that at least some of the people who attended the events had their hearts in the right place, but the commercial aspect definitely got on my nerves when I thought about it.

3. ‘Celebration’ does not equal acceptance
Sure, people around the country will don their fakest sombreros and sing Ricky Martin at karaoke bars — because all Latinos are from Mexico, right? — but the furor over the H1N1 virus revealed examples of how we’re still Others here, no matter the method of emigration. Check out these comments by Boston radio host Jay Severin regarding Mexicans:

“When we are the magnet for primitives around the world – and it’s not the primitives’ fault by the way, I’m not blaming them for being primitives – I’m merely observing they’re primitive.”

“It’s millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America.”

“We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here.

And in Pennsylvania, two white teens were acquitted in the beating and killing of an immigrant. From the story:

“Isn’t it a little late for you guys to be out?” the boys said, according to court documents. “Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here.”

… Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. “They yelled, ‘You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you’re gonna be laying effin next to him,’ ” she said.

On the more anecdotal side, have you ever noticed that, in some discussions about the increase in Spanish-language radio stations in this country over the past few years, that there’s almost always one person in the talk who gets indignant about it? That complains about “fucking Mexican music” as if it were clogging up his or her airwaves, depriving them of valuable time that could be spent listening to Sublime for the 80 millionth time? The guy who fancies himself a new Zapata today might be parroting Lou Dobbs tomorrow. Just something to listen for, if you’re joining the party at your local watering hole tonight. Myself, I’m probably gonna sit it out, think about home, and have a drink.

Not tequila, for the record.

This photo shows my mother on her wedding day. That’s her, in the middle. Her sister “Sis” is on the left, her sister Janis on the right.

Notice how the sisters exchange a strange look across my nervous, uncertain mom (who was 24 at the time). Knowing my aunts, and the family narrative, I have a feeling I know what that smirk was about. It was a smirk of superiority, for my mother had chosen to marry a short Cuban man who spoke little English – while the sisters themselves had both already married conservative white men.

At holiday gatherings, my mother’s family – which self-identified as “anglo” – often made derogatory comments about “Mexicans,” that being the only group they could readily find to lump my father (and his children) into.

When I was in my teens, my mother’s paternal aunt Gladys researched the Conant family tree (my mother’s maiden name is Conant) and discovered, among other things, that my mom’s father’s grandmother’s maiden name was Marquez, and that she hailed from Anton Chico, New Mexico. Her family, Gladys assured us all, could trace its roots directly to Spain in the 1500s, with a land-grant from the King. She was, in other words, royalty. “She was from the Northern part of Spain,” I often heard my grandmother (who married into the Conant family) say, following up with “they’re blonde-headed up that way.”

Well, this week I began researching our family tree myself, for a memoir I’m working on. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Barbarita Marquez (listed as “Marcus” on her death certificate in California, ha!) was not exactly as Spanish as the Conants have wanted us all to believe.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet (and the amazing site ancestry.com) I have indeed traced her family to Spain, to a wealthy young man who came to Santa Fe and married a woman from the San Ildefonso (San Yldefonso on the marriage license) pueblo. That means his wife was Native American. From that point forward, the family tree merges many times with families from Mexico City, Chiapas, and Zacatecas, as well as with “Spanish” families from Northern New Mexico. In other words, my mother’s father was Mexican, whether he liked it or not. To my great delight, I’ve learned this week that I am descended from the best-known “Spanish” clans in New Mexico; I am a Baca, a Duran, a Roybal, an Aragon, a Griego and a Gallego.

I always knew that grandpa Conant grew up speaking Spanish, and I watched him many a summer afternoon as he interacted with the patrons of his small trading post, entirely in Spanish. The family always joked that this was so that he could “protect himself against the Mexicans,” and they often griped that back in the old days the public school teachers in Valencia County only spoke Spanish, so any child wishing for an education had to do likewise. The family often joked about grandpa’s brother Ken who, they said, “was so dark he could pass for Mexican,” and who, as an adult, worked as a CIA operative in Mexico because “he spoke Spanish like a Mexican.”

I now know that it was more than that. My grandfather and his brother were Mexican. It’s just that we live in a patriarchal society, and so their grandfather’s English last name (Conant) is the one they got – enabling the entire future Conant family to deny they had ever been Mexican. Sad, but true.

I, for one, am delighted by this news. It means that I can finally say with confidence that I am Mexican-American. I have always felt that I was, given the family traditions I was raised with on my mom’s side (her “anglo” family ate red chile and biscochitos at Christmas and attended “fiestas” at the local Catholic church, where the services were often given in Spanish, and there were many words my fair-skinned, blue-eyed mother only knew in Spanish.)

Whenever I’d give talks or readings around the country, people would ask me about my Hispanic heritage, and I always felt obligated only to mention my Cuban father, because everyone (including the US census) thought of my mother as “white, non-Hispanic,” but now I know the truth. She is every bit as Hispanic as my dad. She physically resembles her Irish mother more than her darker Mexican-Anglo dad, but her sisters are quite dark. I always though my aunts resembled the Hispanic women in New Mexico much more than the “anglos,” but God forbid you tell them so. Now I know the truth.

I believe that the Conants did what many “anglo” families have done in the Southwest, erasing the Mexicans. (Many Hispanic families in New Mexico do this, too, by the way.)

While my original memoir was going to be about my relationship with my troubled mother when I was a teenager, I am shifting focus now. I think I’d rather write about how the Conants erased their Mexican heritage, and link this to a general pattern of families doing this in the Southwest. It is crucial, given the drumbeat of hatred against Mexicans in the US at this time, to remind Americans that most of us with roots in the West are Mexican, whether we admit it or not.

I liken the Conant erasure of our Mexican ancestors to the tendency in white Southern families to erase their African and Native American ancestors.

I’ve submitted a proposal to do an in-depth magazine piece about the Conant’s Mexican line for Albuquerque magazine. I will then submit that as a book proposal for “Erasing the Mexicans.”

How about it, guys? Do any of you have similar stories?

Proudly Chicana (and a whole mess of other things) at last,

Alisa

Reader Kheng sent in this video, currently being aired in California. Kheng writes:

I am watching TV and I come across this commercial. It made me sick to my stomach. I don’t know if you want to feature it on the blog, but I found it quite offensive and I am surprised it even aired.

After checking out the video, I can see what she means:

Text:

Californians are a compassionate people.

Our sanctuary cities defy state laws, so we can protect illegal aliens – even though they are named in 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in L.A.

Even though they are wanted in up to two-thirds of fugitive felony arrest warrants. Illegal alien gang members get back on the street because our cops can’t ask immigration status.

Have sanctuary cities taken our compassion too far?

Share your opinion at Capsweb.org.

Paid for by Californians for Population Stabilization.

I know y’all loved the standard issue Latino gang member (complete with red bandanna and mustache) and promises of property crime. They even made sure to show they were not being racist – they used a picture of a black cop! (But, on second glance, that cop looks kind of blatino…maybe the LAPD is on the side of the illegals!)

Okay, all joking aside, I’ve been seeing this “illegals are murders” meme popping up a few different places now. So let’s focus on the statistics that are cited in the video. Are the numbers cited true?

There has been a lot of discussion about the cost of undocumented im/migrants in California. The governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, broke with his state party interests earlier this year when he condemned scapegoating California’s budget woes on undocumented workers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called it a “big mistake” Wednesday to blame illegal immigrants for the state’s looming $8 billion budget gap, just as Republican lawmakers have proposed a rollback of benefits for illegal immigrants to save money.

The Republican governor was pitching his long-term budget solution in San Luis Obispo when Diane Blakeslee, mother of GOP Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, asked Schwarzenegger how the state should handle financial burdens created by illegal immigrants.

“There is, you know, always a time like this where you start pointing the finger at various different elements of what creates the budget mess, and, you know, some may point the finger at illegal immigrants,” Schwarzenegger said. “I can guarantee you, I have been now four years in office in Sacramento, I don’t think that illegal immigration has created the mess that we are in.”

Assembly Republicans this week promoted nearly two dozen bills they said would reduce the “negative impact” that illegal immigrants have on the state budget and border security.

The financial cost of illegal immigration has been a hotly debated topic, particularly in California, which receives some of the highest rates of entrance in the country. There are some estimates on how much illegal immigration costs California each year, but these numbers are often debated because the calculations are based on a few different assumptions, as it is difficult to supply hard census data.

The Public Policy Institute of California published a “Just the Facts” paper on immigration with the following note:

Note: No representative national or state surveys provide an accurate direct count of undocumented immigrants and their characteristics. The most credible estimates use a residual technique in which undocumented immigrant populations are estimated based on subtracting estimates of legal immigrants from estimates of all immigrants

So, the population of undocumented migrants is difficult to pinpoint. And yet, somehow, the CAPS video was able to definitively state that undocumented immigrants compose “95% of outstanding homicide warrants” in L.A.

Unsurprisingly, I was unable to find any information to back up this claim. However, I did start investigating homicide rates in California. The most recent data from the Office of the Attorney General, California Department of Justice indicates some sobering statistics:

From 1997 to 2006, the largest percentage of homicide arrestees and victims were Hispanic.

Hey wait, what’s that? Homicide arrestees and victims? Interesting.

The report goes on to mention:

* Of homicide arrest rates, 41.7% of males arrested were Hispanic (820/1732) and 4.6% of women arrested were Hispanic (90/235). (p.8)

And another note of interest:

Comparing 1997 to 2006:

* The male homicide rate decreased 9.0 percent and the female homicide rate decreased 21.4 percent.
* The white homicide rate decreased 12.9 percent, the Hispanic homicide rate decreased 25.2 percent, and the black homicide rate was the same (p. 12)

So, just from the limited data available, I am finding it hard to see where that 95% number would be accurate by any stretch of the imagination.

I logged on to the CAPS website to try to get a data source. Nada. I was able to see tiny print during the video that mentions the 95% figure which looks something like “2008 Congressional…” Does anyone have any idea about where this report could have come from? A Washingtonian myself, I tend to be skeptical of Congressional Reports, as half are written by the people/lobbyists/corporations trying to influence policy in their favor.

Thoughts?

A friend of mine from college recently sent me a link to an AfterEllen.com article about the movie Bitch Slap coming out in December 2008. She asked me for my thoughts and here they are…

I think I might be the wrong person to ask.

Reason being I love gratuitous sex and violence in movies, within reason of course. I loved Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse movies. A woman with a gun for a leg killing military created zombies – count me in! Sexy ladies exacting revenge on a psychopathic-misogynistic-vehicular-homicide-loving Kurt Russell – more please! I loved these films so much that after returning them to Netflix I promptly ran out and purchased them, and then made all my friends watch the films with me repeatedly.

I know what you’re thinking that I’m a horrible queer feminist of color, right? Well, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. And here’s why…

While I hate the way that closet racist and annoying hipster elitist try to use satire to reinforce their supposed superiority and avoid being called bigoted while doing it, I think satire when it’s done right, or at least when it’s read in a critical way, can be extremely subversive. Smart satire can often effectively challenge concepts of power, race, sex, and gender among other things.

There’s a famous example of effective satire that is brought up in Charles Ramirez Berg’s Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance, known as “stereotypical reversal.” Stereotypical reversal occurs when a movie plays on and invalidates a well-known stereotype by making the viewer confront their own prejudice and bias. The example that Ramirez Berg uses is from the film Flying Down to Rio, when Roger and Belinha are stranded on an island and a bare-chested black man emerges from the surrounding bushes and confronts the couple. Audiences are trained to expect a danger scenario given the location and the fact that the man is black, the viewer might wonder if this “native” is going to kidnap them or harm them in some other way. When the man steps away from the bush it becomes visible that the man is wearing golf slack and shoes, carrying a set of clubs, and when he opens his mouth has a British accent. Turns out they landed in Haiti right next to a country club and the gentleman was looking for a lost ball in the brush when they stumbled upon him. Everyone is made aware of their ignorance and as a result the stereotype is deconstructed.

Satire by its very nature is something that disarms you, most often through comedy or ridicule, and makes you take a hard look at yourself and your fears and biases. The ultimate purpose of satire is to bring about improvement by bringing ones flaws to the surface. So how do B-movies and neo-exploitation films bring about improvement? Well, often they don’t, or at least they don’t at first glance. We’re trained to be passive viewers, but if you’re willing to do the work as a viewer and think critically you’ll see that even the most seemly inane of movies like Death Proof are a comment on systems of power and hierarchy in American culture.

I think a really good recent example is Harold and Kumar. Although on the surface it’s your basic stoner buddy comedy, if you scratch below the surface its actually a very intelligent commentary on masculinity, race, sexuality, and leisure time in American culture. That is not to say that the film doesn’t have its problems, but I think there are moments in the film that are very smart and valuable

While, I can’t conclusively say whether Bitch Slap is a clever neo-exploitation or just stupid and offensive since it hasn’t come out yet, I’ll leave you with what the Co-writers and directors Eric Gruendemann and Rick Jacobson to say. They call Bitch Slap a “feminist, thinking-man’s” exploitation film with a mysterious female narrator who “comments periodically on the folly of humanity, the plight of the human condition and the vagaries of life and love through quoting the likes of Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, Sun Tzu and even Buddha.”

Sounds promising.

Check out the trailer and AfterEllen.com article for yourself and let me know what you think.