I offer me.

As I recognize my life’s tank dial, move closer and seemingly faster than ever towards empty, I accept how pain and love complement themselves more than ever.  I love that I feel pain free and simultaneously respect how pain filled life has to be.  My youthful self mildly glamorized a pain filled self perception and romanticized some struggles. I romanticized my story stirring up pain, replaying thoughts of hardship. I think through the years I have learned to value the reflective strategies that help me assess my pain; translate my pain versus indulging. My Catholic faith with its many flaws, provides me with tools that help me understand when and if my pain is phantom or real. Both my romanticized manifested pain and real wounds are impactful. 

The phantom pain lead to the stirring up of anger pangs, and the real pains hurt so bad I am led to anguish reminding me they still needing healing. I also get to taste the pain, regardless of its ontology, and can better determine if the pains are necessary or in vain. The strategy I feel most essential to my encounters with pain is embracing paradox.  My capacity to scan for paradox is a tactic my Catholic faith instilled in me. It is literally a believe system of contradictions where holding a concept made of competing truths is fundamental. In  the context of pain, it is the movement to find a balance between fear and trust. I have to hold the avoidance of pain with the absolute inevitability of pain, like a person who has to breathe in while going under water, building up a panicked eagerness to breathe out.  The paradox isn’t the breathing, the paradox is the desire to be where we don’t naturally belong to get a taste the forbidden, at the risk of drowning; we find a way to have both. There are tiny opposites in every paradox creating small revolutions of meaning. At the same time there is a consequential tranquility laying down a stillness. The struggle and or the dance to seek out this idiosyncratic balance is what I call a Chicano style. Finding a personal balance between two competing intrapersonal truths and offering that awareness as a contribution to the everyday interpersonal existence, a Chicano Style. Most healthy cultures have a similar system. 

I think there is something revealing about the mestizo attitude that encourages gravitation towards pain. My pride in a Nuevomexicano (Mexican-American) heritage gives me the bedrock to let my pain filled experiences flow right into a humility that my elders prepared me for. Hard work is the place where pain goes to be planted, beads of sweat cool the tempers, releasing tears dripped from the grief, hydrating my seeds of passion. Seeds of passion that were fanatic in my childhood and adolescence. Seeds of passion that were economic and political in my early adulthood. Maybe the social justice curiosity is how I have learned to deal with my pain.  Social injustice is the way for my pain to be externalized. How I approach the externalized is how I feel I will heal the internal. If I let the greedy American infuriate me with their disregard for my heritage or perceived dignities then I cannot learn about the defenses of those material imbalances of land, water, money, laws, comforts, rights, or culture. This is where my faith guides me into paradox. The greedy American is in pain, and maybe more pain than me. Their insatiability is the strategy they’ve learned to rely on to ease their pain. I have that same insatiability in me. The paradox is seeing myself as a greedy Chicano, while also defending myself from the toxicity of the greedy American. My peace of mind has to be found through the hard fight of treating my inner insatiable and building up a harmonious internal sense of enough. Then bring this feature to existence in the form of a Chicano ofrenda to my immediate world. 

I understand that my romance with pain, gave me the emotional state to write interestingly, at least to me.  And at least it felt more interesting as I revisit it.  Now I just feel the paradox. The fire that pain once lit, is now more of an irritating burn. I have found joy in the mediocre.  I can’t write like I used to. I often feel like my thought process is analogous to a cows digestive system. I chew the same topics, swallow, digest, absorb, regurgitate, and bite a few more blades of tragedy.  It doesn’t feel as poetic and color filled as it once did, when I was closer to my pain. I think that balance is easier to choose than preference.  My emotions aren’t as contrasting, making it harder to find the momentum to write. With acceptance comes comfort. I haven’t learned to write from comfort.

I wonder if this is a type liminal space that might help with saying goodbye to this world.  Does balance fit with acceptance?  Is acceptance an illusion that is really just expressing the condition of being option-less.  I once relied so much on my grandparents.  I relied so much on mothering from, of course Mom, and fortunately my Aunts.  I felt such hurt from the lost or missed time with an attentive father. And yet I had the attention of loving people,  I found perspectives that highlighted my pain and that I nestled up to. My pain was a fuel for my movement, pain was my rhythm.

I am losing my family and friends. I think this would bring on a sadness that I think I would channel into these perceptions to propagate the same outlets.  I’m not sad in the same ways.  I am a sad that feels as if it skipped straight to acceptance.  I am curious about my comfort with solitude.  What is it about balance that allows for an apparent comfort for being alone.  My life still feels meaningful but equally it is definitely feeling less certain.  I still want to live.

Life is still teaching me.

Not Racist...rather an Ethnicist

It seems surprising that we still use Race as a categorical demographic despite the word having no truth, being fabricated, and its toxicity.  And this is not to suggest that Racism is equally fake.  It saddens me to accept that Racism is a diagnosis for a form of hatred.  Racism, is articulated elegantly by Rev. William J. Barber as, "a strategic hate that has an agenda" (Barber, W.J (2017). Public Speech at Poor Peoples Campaign, August 15, 2017) .  We all are capable of hate.  And racism is a schism between those needing to tighten down a decorated shroud of hateful fallacies that promoted their industrial economic agenda and a reality that we are an integration of evolved bio mechanisms that are uniquely identifiable through genetics, yet our foundation, anatomy, and physiology functions indistinguishably, all worthy of wellness.  It's unfortunate that we camouflage the ethnic hatred with this schism by validating a fictitious word, Race.

I want Racism to be identified by its real source, Ethnic Hate.  We validate the meaning of Race by perpetuating its usage. We still use the concept to describe and acknowledge the ignorance of people still stubborn enough to believe we are differentiated by the illusion of Race.  It seems ignorant to spend time on this schism rooted in the word "Race" when we have the real ethnic, cultural, bigoted, prejudice, economic, social, and ideological schisms stressing this adolescent American nation.   The use of Race as the root word for the concept of racism, shields the propagation of underlying malice, going undetected in our social systems because Race itself is undetectable.  There are not any indicators for someone who is racist because there are not any indicators for Race.  There are indicators for someone who is phobic, prejudice, or discriminant because their statements and policies make it indicative.

The real concept under attack from imperial ideologies is ethnicity and culture.  Ethnicity aligns more with the real human distinguishers. My study of race, my encounter with my "racism", and the unfolding of the intelligence on the subject has allowed me to differentiate between the fiction, ideology, rationality, economics, bigotry, xenophobia and atrocity.  I can also be sad for how it has continued to be used for 600 years (Smedley,  A., 1997).  I hope to share more perspective on the covert and micro absurdities of Race, the concept, still lurking and giving traction to our unfair and unbalanced social constructs.  Race might be cultural sect-ism, inspired by prosperity, more likely rapacity, and corroded by hate, but it is still illusionary.

It would help shift the narrative around our human nature, to call racism what it really is... Ethnicism.

eth ·nic ·ism

/eTH 'ni' sizem /
noun

1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different ethnicity based on the belief that one's own ethnicity is superior.
2. the belief that all members of each ethinicity possess characteristics or abilities specific to that ethnicity, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another ethnicity or ethnicities.
3. a form of neurotic hatred treatable with love, cultural immersion, and humility.

References:

Smedley,  A., (1997). Origin Of The Idea Of Race. Public Broadcasting Service. http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-09.htm

Classism, a simple beginning

This is my second trip into Guatamela.  The first was spent entirely in a group of classmates on a guided excursion.  It was a subtle introduction into the crisis, mysticism, lifestyle, and ecology of the Antigua region.  I began to have an opinion on the history being shared.  I realized that my country was involved and possibly the reason for the unrest.  This inspired me to reflect on much more than history.  It caused to accept that I must be part of the restructuring, because the culture can never be restored to an original state, far too much has changed, or been set back.

The current conditions in Guatemala seem to be a class struggle.  Those who have the most still believe this is not their problem, but a problem.  This is only my opinion because I don't have their perspective.  Their solution seems to be to put up higher walls with, greater voltages running through the barbed wire lining the fences.  Their solution seems to include their own schools, places to shop and eat, even their own churches, and in the end conceal the problems around them.

I do this myself with emotions and with actions.  When I have dishes I put them in the sink, off the counter but out of sight.  My roof has leaks in certain areas but I simply close the door hoping it won't leak too bad.  Emotionally I do similar thing to ignore overwhelming distractions.  I like to exercise, helping me exhaust my emotions into insignificance, by feeling healthy.  I occupy myself with leisure as a reward for my a perceived hard work.  I lock my doors because others will steal my valuables if I don't.  I am ultimately too irritated by the necessary work to be done because it forces me to be responsible for things that are tedious and lack entertainment.  The work needed to be done keeps me from having my fun.  But in the end that leak turns into a hole and the hole destroys more than my roof it can set me back.

I think the complications have come from the perspective of should pay, what is valued, and how much is enough.  We all understand what it feels like to be entitled.  I think there is a difference between being entitled to money and privileged to have money.  Conquering others for resources and exploiting these booties is not fair.  Feeling entitled to currency makes me curios and ignoring the dignity in privilege can lead to prejudice.  For now I have come to guess that the highest classes might be the most fearful folks there are.

Second Layer Cake

The best way for me to describe prejudice is from a personal perspective. In the cake metaphor I have never really felt like I've contributed a cake. How does welfare have such a stigma? I recently came to confirm, that in my youth welfare was a system that helped my mom and I. She had denied this for so long and I had wondered how I could remember our poverty. Was I imagining and turning them into memories. It also say a lot about the shame that comes with our communities cultures perceptions around needing help. Recently hear my mom embarrassingly confirm my childhood memories validated a mysterious part of my identity. It also reopened other hurtful experiences that I can now question and consider their validity, after suppressing and dismissing them.

I am a contributor to the cake despite having had to mooch from the cake because of irresponsible circumstances that my family created. This makes me grounded, and feeling comfortable wanting to grab Newt and telling him fuck your ignorance, fuck your entitlements, and fuck his lack of genuine desire to see people. I have forgotten and was never taught the ingredients to make my families traditional cakes. This makes it hard having to adopt an entitled cultures recipes, but welfare gave me a place to stand.

Now, I mostly think of myself as in the middle of the road socially, class-wise, and intelligently. But this has dismissed the small and few moments that have devastated me and likely others. These moments are moments of prejudice. Prejudice is for me the message of disconnection, the message of difference, the message of pity, and the message of ignorance. I have prejudice and only until now have I been able to see it so clearly. I know it is because of my ignorance and resentment, but knowing this does not help with the intense discontent, or hope for vengeance. It sucks, because I cannot describe how easy it is to move between compassion and contempt. It isn't so much a racial concern, but unfortunately that is where the dividing lines are most discrete. to be continued.....with the forgiveness of a concept where no single person can be forgiven.

How you see them contradicts how you see them

 Criminal                       Pioneer Mother

Above you can see the advantages of being of the dominant white culture.  In these images I see a contradictory perception, belief, and prejudice towards the emigrant.  I got some parking tickets and had to go downtown and pay to have a boot removed.  So as I was walking toward the payment location I saw this memorial to the "pioneer mother".  How romantic the word pioneer is, yet equally unwelcome.  This infuriated me because once again when a white soul is restless it is memorialized, honored, and even encouraged.  But when a darker featured soul shares the same passion, we are seen as a nuisance, a burden, and criminals.  The placard below this "memorial" to white emigrants read “To the pioneer mother of America, through whose courage and sacrifice the desert has blossomed, the camp became a home, the blazed trail a thoroughfare.”

I say with slight hesitancy, "Fuck that!"  It should have read, "To the struggling poor, restless, and desperate refugee, may she remind her children that her reckless survival will lead to devastating demolition of many cultures and beliefs, while her offspring will exploit and disregard the hope of others who are still emigrating from despair and distress."

If interested or by chance you are on 4th street and Lomas this statue stands facing west about 200m north of Lomas.  Likewise, you'll likely never see the other woman and her child, because they are being taught to hide, evade, and be ashamed.  For the struggles of emigrants who are seeking a meaningful life, I honor you, and hope your humanity shines its best light.

Serving Our Country

I find it interesting that close to half the people in the United States consider the government a gravy train. Yet these same folks jump at the opportunity to praise our military, firemen, police, and other duty oriented service bureaucracies. It is as if, the teacher, social worker, or environmental regulator, are something different. These folks are serving our country too. It blows me away how quickly the conservative philosophy calls for smaller government and contradicts its support of service to country. In fact they support the privatization of just about everything which, in turn, emphasizes a loyalty to the stakeholder, which in most cases desires a global audience. So I find the contradiction personal.

My dad is a teacher and my mother is a health administrator. They both serve their community using tax dollars. In a great picture they too are serving their country. The investor is the tax payer, whether it be a sales, income, or other tax. Is there inefficiencies in government run programs? Sure, but it is foolish to believe that corporations are any less susceptible to inefficiencies. It is getting irritating that with all the patriotism that exists, we are so forgetful that Wall Street is serving the largest global investment corporations in the world (brokers). So is privatization the answer, why argue? But if you are gonna honor the soldier for serving their country, please don't disrespect my parents for trying to serve theirs.

More History!

I am part of an American culture that is leaving behind a generation that once resisted civil rights. Their generation left behind a generation that resisted human rights for non white. This is what I see as enduring freedom. Now, I am part of a generation where most citizens believe that every citizen has an equal opportunity. Equal opportunity for what? That is the question.

When you look at the modernization of the colonized nations, we see the effects of technological advancement. We can see how gradually those technologies trickle down to the lowest of socioeconomic classes. I see how the European pioneers have created economies like no other, spanning the globe and even into orbit. I also see how filtered indigenous participation in Americas progress has been. Often participation is suppressed, stifled, limited, and in my view controlled. Even in saying this I feel a subconscious voice telling me,"don't play the victim role, the poor little Mexican, the poor little brown guy". I have been condition to overlook the disadvantage and the white advantage. I have been conditioned by subtle and moderated progress. A mentality that asks me to feel overly grateful for scraps from the privilege banquet table. But then I realize how God given talent and privilege only takes a person as far as the elite will allow.

I see how important it is to look a certain way, how important it is to know certain people, and how important it is to be in the right place. I think about how many generations of white Americans have a legacy of formal education in a system designed for them, indoctrination in formal business systems convenient for them, established networks of other culturally competent people using codes convenient for them, and a pedigree of enhancing privileged life as is convenient for them. What an advantage they have.

I think about how many white Americans deny their immigrant status and confuse me into generalizing them all as privileged. This makes it easy for me to forget that the Italian, Irish, German, and Jewish cultures, only to name a few, have fought the same class struggle that I feel my culture is fighting right now. Its as if the fight for acceptance is won only to make the segregationist opponent stronger.

Well I think this featured documentary by Kareem Abdul Jabbar is a great example of how the privileged white Americans have controlled and continue to control how inclusive the lower class/minority people can be. Be mindful of the mining, media, agro, and oil industries as they benefit most from keeping a lower often indigenous class.

On the Shoulders of Giants
( a documentary by Kareem Abdul Jabbar)

Be aware that most products are global and the luxury you see in your communities is often at a great expense to another community very far from yours (Guatemala, Cambodia, Philippines, Mexico, etc..).

Your tradition is confusing my tradition

I think generations of New Mexicans are inundated with trends and superficiality leading to the acceptance of inferiority and imposition of other's values and expectations. I recognize how our cultural gems are being marketed and exploited by many outsiders. I think the outsider is a threat to the integrity of our traditions, whether it is a meal, art, or ritual. I think we are learning to apply economic value to our cultural icons. The American way is to assign value in dollars, and I am struggling to accept this mindset. The economification of this culture is an aspect of modernism that I see as corrosive to the integrity of a collective identity. This is music to the individualists ears, and I like to think that the individual has lived generations disconnected and feels threatened by others connection and unity. I see it as the reason why Americans try so hard to market their American Pride. In New Mexico our pride is engrained in our behaviors, our friendships, and our understanding of God. In metropolitan life it is package, manufactured, themed, and sculpted. Many Americans shop for culture, desiring a connectedness with a past and hopes for legacy; even the individualist. It might be hard to fathom but I am both New Mexican and American; owning both the traditionalist and capitalist mentalities. Not sure why the following program inspired this note but it sucks knowing the military complex has New Mexico and its people by the balls.

No you are not right, but yes you are not wrong

In today's economic struggle we see the unfortunate consequence of materialism and a desire for sustained growth. I see it in my longing for convenience. I see it as the theory of exponential growth. Can life be entirely about constant convenience? Our business schools preach efficiency leading to profit, our politicians preach simplicity and function with complexity, and most American lifestyles are motivated by prosperity. Efficiency, simplicity, and prosperity are all qualities of convenience. We are destined to prove that we can continually improve.

I call this reaching for perfection.......Godliness. I might not be fair in saying this. It is probably more a projection of my own personal desires. I think the intellectual wants to prove God false, the scientist wants to know Gods secrets, the athlete wants to prove himself immortal, the romantic wants to prove herself all desirable, the jefe wants infinite worth, and we "all" want bliss.

Convenience is how I exploit God’s gifts of intelligence, emotion, and senses. I am now recognizing the importance of inefficiency in the paradoxical system I call nature. In destruction there is prosperity. Between two polarities there lies reality and construction and destruction....feast and famine....invention and robbery...cultivation and pruning.

Fear is in the eye of the feared!

I find that when I create animosity it thrives in me. I think maturity allows me to process animosity in my thoughts, actions, and memories. There are rappers, news organizations, and cultures that should be feared but animosity is not the remedy. I think what has helped me mature is recognizing the child in adults and understanding how being in an adult body is a lot simpler than being in an adult mind. I have had great teachers of maturity.



Common, you make a lot of sense for me, and your message is vital to the empowerment of the marginalized, rejected, and disqualified.

Keep on, keeping on.

Lessons Relearned....maybe!

When a country creates laws, it creates precedent, which often create patterns resulting in a culture of condemnation. This judging culture is susceptible to dogma that lurks in the shadows. As seen in the union disputes around the country. I am a man who is wading through a tsunami of dogma, in my faith and economic communities. We will need to relearn our laws and regulations because I have become lazy in understanding the struggle that created those unions. The convenience factor created by the exhausting efforts of people in the past has allowed me to ignore their struggle. I no longer can feel the pain of struggles past and therefore allow the tearing down of safeguards. This will be interesting because it isn't bad....yet. I think it means that those folks must once again learn the lessons that inspired regulations and laws. It will be a struggle for some, but I also see how it is tearing away at dogma.

I think with bias that pain is the source of conflict between the liberal and conservative. To the liberals detriment it has created fear. To the conservative it has done the same. I even think we fear the same crap. Except for liberals its focused around liberties and with conservatives its focused around prosperity. I can see how the teacher's unions are afraid that they won't be respected, treated with care, or valued. I have to say I think conservatives are afraid of the power educators can have. Both equally mistrust the other.

I recognize this fear in love. Having experiencing a painful divorce, I am afraid to revisit much less relearn the lessons of love. So I can see how the conservative wants to relearn the lessons of bargaining. I can see how teachers are afraid to trust that they will be valued. We don't have a consistent track record on either side. The education system knows it isn't great, and the we as a society expect the best without investing in making it happen. I am excited that change is happening. It inspires me to also risk breaking apart my laws and regulations created from being wounded and relearning the lessons that keep me tucked inside my unions.

Internal politics

Around the country I see a desire for exploiting resources, gas, oil, minerals, forest, addiction, and sickness. I see a desire for deregulation believing this will solve economic crisis. I see a desire for limited collective power and the elimination of unions. I see a desire for traditionalism and fear of moral chaos. I see admiration for self struggle. I see pride in innovation, capitalism, and free-markets. I see an upper middle class arrogantly cheer how possible it is to achieve. I see an elite group of resource hogs talk about how sensible capitalism can be. I recognize me.

I see......how wrapped up I am in my own fear of being alone, experiencing pain, and having pure freedom. I understand you, conservative. You are in me. I remember believing that all I had to do was work hard, get up early, stay late, and put in work. I remember thriving in this individual effort to get me closer to wealth, which I believed would make me, my family, and my community better. Well unfortunately, conservative, you're truths for me are incomplete.

I belong to a community of spiritual people who have instilled in me a respect for community, a commun-ism, no not the communism that makes you cringe like a little lamb, but the commun-ism that teaches me to incorporate cosmos, earth, water, enemies, sick, and foreigner. My commun-ism looks on you with pity, compassion, and empathy. I belong to a community of wise, simpleminded, and rooted people. But conservative in me, don't be afraid, I need you just as much as you despise me.

You have taught me how to push myself beyond the limits my weak body believes it can go. You have instilled a fire in me that motivates me to improve. You slap me in the ass when I am scared, tired, or frozen. You help me to clench my fists. You taught me how to function when alone. You gave the courage to embrace the darkness on my own. So conservative in me, when you have beaten me down, I will be ready once again to join back with you to seek the truth.

Si se puede!

I used to think that César Estrada Chávez was Mexican. I used to think he fought for immigrant rights. It was by economic circumstance that most people he fought for were immigrants. It was by life circumstance that he was fighting to be treated respectfully. It was by social circumstance that the voice took on the look of a Mexican. It was by spiritual circumstance that his voice was herd. I used to ignorantly hold pride in his name. I used to believe that he was a brown man fighting "The Man". My perceived ideas were angry and possibly misguided.
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me" (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Now I'd like to think I am no longer ignorant. I have since learned that he was born in Arizona. He was American with Mexican heritage. I have since learned that he fought for every worker's human rights, in the form of appropriate working conditions and fair wages. He was like Juan Galt, in that he invented a motor that propels peoples' belief in themselves. But unlike John Galt he was real, not fiction. He did not discriminate...openly. He did not seek to be treated as an oppressed, but asked that he and those like him be treated with dignity and respect. He was an advocate for fairness, justice, and dignity. He was educated, but not by schools. He served in the United States Navy. He was a boy who learned how to be man who could lead men. He is one of my American Heroes.

In Synch with Dirt

It is interesting how the Lord works. For me when I talk of the Lord, I describe a mental concept or philosophy, a formidable connection to my mortality, an understanding of my dependence on others, a strong feeling to be committed and responsible to all(people, animals, water, earth, air, and ideas), an internal guide that surprises, corrects, and steers me. To summarize this it She/He/They are the energy that fuels my mind, body, spirit.

In continuation of my Lenten tradition, I am wanting to share with you how I understand God. It feels natural to want to keep it secret because it feels really foolish to describe something that feels childish. None the less, the essence of healthy and unhealthy are alive and well in me, and rightfully so I teeter respectfully with both. I have learned that in my unhealthiness I can learn, and in my healthiness I can destroy. This lesson for me is beautifully humble.

So the synergy between my mind, body, and spirit is leading me to dirt. Like the color of my skin, I relate to dirt. I recently began planting for the first time in my life. The pilgrimage this Lenten season will be completed with a 24 mile walk to a sacred New Mexican church. There lies a pit that is believed to hold healing "Dirt".

As the political and economic debates about environmental climate change rage on, I know that for me the battle is only with my resistance to a deep connection with dirt. I recognize that business decisions are made in metal towers, using silicon tools, and are complicated by profits. The connection to earth is not discussed by boards of directors (I assume). But that's cool, they serve a different and necessary purpose. I am lucky to feel connected to something as simple as dirt. Haaaaaa haaaaaaaa! Fuck-N-A, I am proud of my journey towards simplicity and scared to get there, cause I know it is a return to the dirt.

Until I get there and God willing it be many years away, I pray to be like the hummingbird.


If your interested the clips are from a documentary, its available for free at Hulu. I highly recommend the 1hr and 1/2
Dirt! The Movie

Monsenor Oscar Romero

An advocate for Christ and the peasant, was assassinated 31 years ago on the 24th of March. He was killed for trying to make sense of the social injustices in El Salvador. His message may be 31 years buried, but it still rings in my ears today. I learned of this while researching the truth behind the right wing human rights violations and revolutionary liberal violence.
I am disappointed that I learned of this great Latino hero by chance. This is energy for me, energy to empower me, energy to believe that the people I belong to are not just efficient labor.
The complete message is in English at this link
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

Bottled Water, a sip from a different perspective!

Tapped
A critical look at some suspected affects of having a bottled water industry...and the inconvenience that comes with a collective desire for conveniently consuming water




I think what I took from this is that responsible and respectful business doesn't need advertising, branding, and exploitation, all it needs is a good product. I think reckless capitalism, excessive profits, and self gain have created an economic system that has detached me from my morals and senses. I recognize everyday how the individual (including myself) is objectively looking to better themselves, unfortunately it appears to be at expense of someone else, consciously or unconsciously. I am moving closer and closer to understanding how to contribute in a healthier way.

American Refugee

I'm not all bitter, though at times, I realize I move so furiously through my oppressed thoughts that I forget to remind myself of beautiful aspects to the human struggle and search for fulfillment. I think about the people my family has marginalized, discriminated against, or refused to have compassion for. I think about how I am judgmental, attached to materiality, impatient with ignorance, and hostile towards arrogance. I think about how easy it is to choose sides, knowing that choosing sides is my own laziness in understanding the other side, or as Jesus describes as enemy.

I long for a day when people actually value what they say and fulfill it with what they do. I guess I long for a day when I can move towards living my philosophies. I long for a day when taxes aren't needed because we no longer mistrust it as a tax but see it as charity. I also wait for day when capital gains are measure by how low our global poverty rate is. I desire a day when we give Javier the plasterer as much respect as Joe the plumber, by not calling him illegal, but collaborator. I value a day when we actually hold corporations accountable not only with dividends but by best practices, a day when their morningstar rating includes morality criteria. I wait for a day when the stereotypical Mr. Jones realizes he doesn't need to fence in 35 acres to feel like a man. I wait for a day when the stereotypical Carlos can wake up and have enough love in his heart to smile at the vato across the street versus sizing him up. This in a nutshell is me. All my judgments are small indicators for who I am, have been, and long to be.

There are American refugees who are bringing communal skills to this region as well. There are non New Mexican people who are equally longing for equality, freedom, and justice. There are a groups of American immigrants who bring life to our communities, invest in its people, need only what can be used, and profit only from connections. There are American immigrants who use as much if not less than they contribute back into the community. I am proud to know American immigrants who inspire me to live by dissipating Chicano qualities. This is proof that Chicano qualities are not native to the mestizo people of this region. The human qualities like compassion, altruism, simplicity, consideration and community are shared in every healthy community. I think the beauty about a healthy culture is that it can collaborate with other cultures, as long as there is reciprocity, as long as one culture doesn't need to win, lead, know, overpower, or control.

These American immigrants bring with them skills that are....I can only describe them as being...divine skills. These people have taught me how to feel my anger, hatred, and prejudice, without becoming it. A few are listed below:

Norbertine Community
Center for Action and Contemplation
Peace and Justice Center
Attachment Healing Center
Animas Valley Institute
New Mexico Parent & Child Resources, Inc.

As a Chicano, my grip on my history, ignorance, violence, struggle, and tradition is loosening. I see how a lot of American immigrants long for connection back to their ancestors, like true refugees.



"In this bright future you can't forget your past" -Bob Marley

What does our Country think of us?

New Mexico has a rich history of culture, simplicity, and sustainability. We have immigrant cultures who have brought education, technology, government, and an art culture that we are marginally benefitting from.

Photographer John Collier Jr.

Why was this desert region a refuge for the American immigrant. The American immigrant refuses to see themselves as a foreigner, exploitative, profiteering, and impossing. As I have learned, which may be inaccurate but willing to be corrected, many easterners came to escape the onset of Tuberculosis. Our climate was convenient for recovery and lifestyle. With them came their culture and imposed value systems.

My Grandma and Grandpa remember a couple of these families, thier names are Simms and Dietz both immigrants with plenty of wealth and education to exploit a dusty Spanish artifact. Symbolically a message of "you reap, what you sow", for a people who once exploited a wild native region of indigenous peoples. John Simms' family later went on to have sons who prospered in this state, enough to become a representative and governor. They weren't illegal by their definition, but alien by my definition. The Dietz family is also immigrant to this region. Both of these men were lucrative land owners. They contributed to the discriminatory white (not white indicating race, rather what society sees as legal) markets called government, brokering, and banking. Both my Grandparent's families worked for these families, during the depression era. My Grandparents, as humble as they are, appreciated the opportunity to work their land, nurse their children, and prepare their meals. I on the other hand, I despise their laziness to be gluttonous enough to need servants to manage their material stockpiles. They were welfare gluttons, using their intelligence to manipulate the best business strategies, buy low and produce high. I am still learning what these families did for a living, all their children attended college and am not sure if they served in the war. I know they paid my grandparents families well enough to feel grateful. I see the payment as the distraction needed for these immigrants to sink their fangs into a culture, and start the feeding process. I will seek to see the compassionate perspective just not yet.

Around the time when these families had settled in and made themselves at home, the government needed a place to experiment. They needed a wasteland, a useless testing area to blow things up. They needed a target range. Well, what better place than that barren state with those Spanish speaking Catholics. What have they got to lose. So as we have all learned and been taught to admire, the nuclear age was born here. We were the first place to have been nuclear bombed. This is reflective of what America thinks of us. This continues today, as we suck on the tit of the energy department, continuing to develop and harvest weapons of mass destruction, unwilling to recognize our real capabilities. This has resulted in defense and energy contracted corporations imposing more capitalistic movidas, under the disguise of laboratories and research facilities, called Sandia (watermelon) Laboratories and Los Alamos (cottonwood) Laboratories. For years we only entered these facilities as groundskeepers, janitors, and mules. As, we, the youth, have been educated, we have become the modern house slaves, excited that we can wear a badge and enter their gated areas.

Around the early 90's the government again needed a place to experiment. This time it was with their garbage. Not your normal everyday garbage, but the worst kind, nuclear waste. I think about where I keep my garbage, then I realize awe this is what Gringo politicians think of my region. This region is that stinky part of the city where no one will care if we leave our garbage. Again we have been taught to feel honored, as a place, respected enough to hold Americas shit. The American immigrant explains to us ignorant and powerless pendejos, "Be happy, It brings jobs!"

So my understanding of New Mexico's participation in America is understood through this lense. It is through this lense that I formulate an understanding for what immigration means. It is through this lense that I ask myself to see the benefits of this immigrant culture. It is through this lense that I wonder how our privileged educational institutions isolate themselves from the deterioration found in barrios and reservations. I am beginning to understand how these privileged institutions can have such a unique perspective on acceptance with an aptitude and a knack for success.

Roark, Kelly.(2011). Natures Sanitarium: Getting Well in New Mexico. New Mexico State Record Center and Archives

Out of the Shadows

Artist Unknown

The shadows are where I have put my qualities worth shaming. In the shadows is where I put my indigenous characteristics. In the shadows is where I have stored my embarrassments. Covered is where I keep my most vulnerable blemishes. Like Adam leaving the garden covering his genitals, I too have learned to believe I am shameful.

When I look for leaders that look like me, I recognize that they are in prisons, in the back of the stores, in the warehouse, in the servant quarters, in the kitchen, on buses, on the south side, on the other side of the tracks, and in the bars, homeless, pulled over, being arrested, being questioned, in mug shots and in the principles office. I have learned to believe that they are shameful. I am now, with a scientific method, beginning to prove to myself, that my shadowed leadership is worthy. I am finally beginning to see how to function in the shadows. I am learning how to continue to keep my internal candle lit, while not having to leave the shadows, without gentrifying someone's home in a lit place.

I speak mystically when I say keeping my internal candle lit. Let me translate this for the soulfully illiterate and the spiritually ignorant. My internal candle is the motivation to seek understanding versus being understood, giving versus receiving, serving versus being served, being an employee versus looking for them, appreciating what I have versus believing it will lead to more, loving versus looking to be loved, and feeding versus being fed. I use the term candle because it is small, manageable, and sustainable. I use lit because fire is a source of light that has transcended time as we know it, it is not synthetic energy it is raw and natural.

My culture has been conquered, exploited, and ransacked. I look at what my culture has to give up to participate in this new modern society, and I say, "Fuck That". Inclusion isn't as simple as dressing business casual and maybe a tie to the Christmas/Winter party. I look at Susanna Martinez and I recognize how I SOLD OUT to a tradition and a belief in my heritage. I see how I gave up on the lifestyle of my ancestors for the opportunity to be seen as equal. I see now that equality in this country isn't proven, it is felt. I recognize it in the Scotsman who wears his kilt on special occasions but rarely to work. I recognize the Irishman who displays his culture pridefully one day in February, but blends in all other days. I see the Indian men who mostly where the pyjama for ceremonies. We were all once indigenous. We are all slowly saying goodbye to the spirits of our ancestors. This might be part of the process or it might be a disrespect to simplicity. We'll see?

I have been asked to soldier up in this new army. That's cool. I can get on board this slave train. It isn't an American slave train, nor a industrial slave train, but rather a human self shaming train, that cannot love all its parts. This slave train leads me in the direction of many great slaves who learned the true meaning of service, and possibly the true meaning of Jesus' Gospels, Buddha's message, and Allah's vision. The great Victor Frankel got on a similar train, and it led him to his greatest possession....meaning.

Los Batallones Perdido

Artwork by David Gonzales

As I contemplate why my community of young comaradas have chosen a life committed to self hatred and animosity, brandishing itself in gangs and cage fighting, I realize the warrior spirit is aimless. We live in a country that reminds us everyday that we are visitors in our own homes. We are told that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but are shown that "the people" is a very selective term. We are taught to learn a gringo way and rarely asked to contribute the Chicano way. We have so many Chicano warriors willing to die for their beliefs, barrios, cartelas, and camaradas. This warrior spirit is aimless.

Where are our veteranos? Donde esta el buen hombre? He is hidden in the loyalty of the bad ass, also the mentality of being chingon. He is hidden in the commitment to an ideology that muerte is a consequence of working hard, as it is said on the streets, "its only business". Our wall street can be found in the gringo prisons where, markets are brokered, drug markets established, respect dividends are paid, and market leverage is assassinated. It is also the same place where you'll find our cultural supreme courts. It is in the state prisons where the judges that hold our indigenous oaths to justice, hold court. It is where death sentences are handed down from adopted judges, called mafiosos, the elite, the remenance of the Aztec and Mayan warrior spirit, confined to the shadows and dungeons left to believe he is criminal, internalizing it, forgetting that he also has the greatness of God stored deep inside his oppressed and defeated mind, body, and spirit. Our engineers are also found in prisons. We have innovative people who continue to bank roll million dollar spending accounts, while imprisoned, finding ways to use our Chicano internet, as seen in a young woman tucking drogas into her vaginal cavity later to be un-packaged, distributed, marketed, and sold for profit. This is supply chain management, no different from the gringo pharmaceuticals. The only difference is the birth canal from which the the drugs are conceived. I have witnessed 13 year old boys create lighters from a paper clip and batteries to light their marijuana cigarettes, then punished, instead of rewarded for their ingenuity, yet a man named Nobel, inspires a weapon that kills millions and they name a peace prize after him. Our warrior spirit is aimless.

We have artist, called graffiti vandals who take pride in their placa. This is the urban art warrior who can't afford a canvas, sketchbook, or more importantly needs to. Yet we allow marketers to post half naked women on our free ways in the form of advertising. We allow a man named Heffner his freedom to objectify woman, the Marlboro man to propagate the deception of smoking, we allow Captain Morgan the opportunity to convince us that all we need is a little liquid courage. Yet we call graffiti vandalism. If these young urban warriors were allowed the time to create, their work wouldn't be rushed and slapped on walls. It might me passionate, mindful, and respectable, as they would be respected. Our warrior spirit is aimless.


"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)