Thursday, December 16, 2004

Prop 200 in Arizona

A number of people are calling for Dark Mondays until Califas, California to you monolingually challenged, decides to quit being openly hostile to the immigrant community. Arnold has actively campaigned and vetoed legislation that would have enabled people without papers to get a driver’s license. It is a clear and blatant attempt to pander to the far right wing and nativist part of his party. At least Arnold never called for the mass deportation of pochos in honor of one of his progenitors namely Herbert Hoover. See: http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kenichls/2602MexRepatration.html or read Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez Decade of Betrayal.

The state of Arizona is now headed down this path with its recent adoption of Proposition 200. Not surprisingly, the Xican@ community is slowly responding to the anti-Xican@ sentiments in that piece of legislation. An article appeared in 12 December 2004 Arizona Republic dealing with this issue. See: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1212Prop200-activist.html. I hope that soon we will see Xican@s finally beginning to awaken to the idiocy and the racism that has frankly tainted life in the borderlands for los americanos y mejicanos. It takes time for los americanos to realize that the mejicano community represents the core of borderland culture. Eventually the americano newcomers assimilate, intermarry and begin to understand that they, los americanos, are the pilgrims to the region. However, that takes time and pushing back against the racism of the newcomers by the mejicanos.