When I first wrote this post, I called it Cultural Amnesia. I grew up knowing so little about my culture, about Mexican or Mexican American history, and when I first discovered this dearth of knowledge, I thought it must have been some mistake. Clearly, this was a fault of busy or uncaring parents who couldn’t be bothered to have taught me about who I was or where I came from. I thought maybe Mexican American culture had amnesia. I thought that perhaps we had forgotten our history. Now, I see things differently.
Now, I think about it much more as gaslighting on a national level. It turns out that America is the greatest of all gaslighters. When you systematically make people forget their culture, you can control their identity.
Almost everyone knows or should know, that the Western United States was once part of Mexico. It wasn’t even that long ago. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848. To give you some scope, Lincoln was already a politician when Mexico was double its current size. He opposed the Mexican-American war by the way. The United States started this war with Mexico in order to take their land. Many say the U.S. was just retaliating for spilled blood, but since Texas was still seen as being Mexican territory by Mexico, and since the U.S. came away with half of Mexico in the end, it does seem to me that the United States was the baddie. In school, I remember learning that Henry David Thoreau spent time in jail and wrote Civil Disobedience. But I don’t remember learning that he went to jail for refusing to pay a tax because he was against the Mexican-American War and did not want his tax dollars going toward an unjust war. When you see an unjust law, it is your duty to fight against it, is Thoreau’s argument. We learn that beautiful American sentiment, but we don’t learn about the War. We don’t want those Mexicans—those aliens—getting any ideas, thinking that what was done to them wasn’t what they deserved because the U.S. had God on their side and God wanted them to have a country that reached from sea to shining sea. No, instead, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mexicans who were on the “U.S. side” were made American citizens, whether they liked it or not. In the treaty “The United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 ‘in consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States'” (see Article XII of the treaty)…Other provisions included protection of property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living within the new boundaries of the United States (see Articles VIII and IX),” (usarchives.gov). So the U.S. got half of Mexico for 15 million. Wow.
As part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the U.S. promised to protect the “property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living within the new boundaries of the United States (see Articles VIII and IX).” Ha…ha ha ha. Ha! The story of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who owned what is now the Vallejo and Petaluma area, will alone tell you how well of a job the U.S. did to protect the property and civil rights of its new well-tanned citizens. The Vallejo City website will tell you how Mariano Vallejo graciously gave up 153 acres of land to begin the city that now bears his name. But the website mentions nothing about how a group of rag-tag Americans took him prisoner and took away most of his property (Latino Americans). And basically, Americans did this to pretty much every land-holding newly naturalized Mexican American. The Mexican Americans were outnumbered and couldn’t afford the legal fees to fight land disputes and so—poof—it was just taken away. And sadly, we are a people with cultural amnesia. I grew up knowing nothing of my culture and history except that we have quinceaneras, Dia de los Muertos, loud music, and are generally seen as a people who are somehow less-than. Perhaps immigration reform is an appropriate form of reparations. You, know, at the very least, an apology for taking our land and like, for killing black and brown people for no reason and letting people get away with it like all the time. Oh, and not exploiting us economically every chance you get…is that really asking too much? Giving us a fair shot?
When you make people forget where they come from, you can tell them what they are. You can form their identity by the way you treat them. Intentionally, American culture keeps us from knowing the truth about our history because they don’t want us to see how much power and legitimacy we actually have. And they are afraid of this.
They don’t want us to see that their arguments de-legitimize us as a people; insisting they somehow deserve to be here and in charge more than we do is a crock of shit. Race relations in this country are at the worst they have been in a long time. What everyone just wants is to be treated in a way that allows them to maintain their human dignity. Honestly, what we want is just to be treated as individuals, and not to be seen as a scourge.
And it doesn’t work the other way because the people in power are the ones who get to create the narrative—they are the ones who ascribe identities to others, and so obviously they only assign good identities to themselves. This is why there is no real insulting word to call a white man. So no, we are not post-racial. No, reverse racism is rarely ever an actual thing, and it certainly is not even in the top five racial things we should even be thinking about let alone discussing and giving actual credence to (ahem Fox “News”). And so I say all of this to try to give you, the person who has experienced life differently than me and people who look like me, context as to how to start trying to understand me and people who look like me, especially, if you are trying to teach me—and teach me well.
Resources:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/guadalupe-hidalgo/
verobollwerk 