Banned Books

I don't have a lot of info, but to believe that in this day in age we can still ban books is surprising.  I heard today that Arizona, as part of program shrinkage, has placed "Bless Me Ultima" by Rudolpho Anaya on a banned("confiscated") books list, among others.  Stupidity at its best.  Is this just?  Is this productive?  Who are these censors?  Where are they from and what roots do they have in this southwest region? How can Anglo Americans or Americans in general, still question, how ethnic peoples can feel discriminated?

This book changed my life.  I wrote about this in a previous blog, Bless Me Anaya, a few years earlier.  I feel angry about this but in a grateful way.  I feel we are making major progress as a political voice, a cultural influence, and gaining regional leverage.  I feel we are establishing some ground in the American psychology.  I think the influx of Latino peoples is creating worry in the Anglo culture.  It almost feels like we as a people are re-establishing ourselves in a land squatted, squandered, and surrendered over the last few centuries.

Why would Arizona and Texas struggle to create rules to their game that stifle brown progress.  In Texas they are diluting political leverage in Latino communities by redrawing voting districts, where nonsensical boundaries carve out neighborhoods conveniently breaking apart power in numbers.  In Arizona they are limiting the cultural awareness that leads to an increased dignity and identity critical to self-confidence and passion.  We as a Latino people are making progress.  This progress is being validated by the fear and resistance of American people who I feel rarely have to share.  Adivinen quién viene a cenar.

This land is not Latino land, but in many ways we are a legacy of adaptation, culturally designed and evolved to exist here in the desert.  If we do not establish ourselves in this region legally, we will sustain ecologically.  We know how to live without, within, and among this amazing land.  Hopefully our connection to it will grant us hospitality despite the continued migration of desperate human exploitative cultures.  Banning ideas is a strategy for oppression, it deceives and distorts understanding. 

The banned books will only slow the inevitable quest for dignity and your Anglo fear will only delay the inevitable integration and meshing of cultures.

Confiscated Books:
Critical Race Theory, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, edited by Elizabeth Martinez
Message to Aztlán, by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement, by F Arturo Rosales
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow