Neither Or

No Allegiance but to ...

The use of my identities within community are frequently overlapping, competing, and contradicting.  This makes who I am to others unmanageably variable, despite the importance being accurately identified is for being understood.  In this context identity is how I want and need others to acknowledge me.  I use several identities to navigate community.  I am a counselor, a programmer, and an artist.  I am also in pain.  The list goes on.  I have studied the nature of healing for years now.  I have studied the roots of civil wellness.  I have taken the time to research what it takes to be a healthy citizen.  I transcended the barriers to paradoxical beliefs.  My spiritual exercises have taught me to minimize my dualistic mindset, allowing me to see how most significant concepts are rarely black or white.  This affords me the opportunities and potentials to benefit from perceptions and choices that can be informed with a complex both and view.  I learned this from my earliest days, Christ is both and, God and human, here and crucified.  I wonder like most people who are invested in some human growth, what about the opposite.  What about the neither or?

If "both and" is seeing paradox then I need to also find a way to see God in the "neither or".  There are a good amount of New Mexicans who hang on to the Spanish identity.   My guess is that it might be a hope for being seen as civilized, prestigious, or proper.  There was, likely is, a prejudice for Mexicanos in my New Mexican communities, despite sharing origins.  These same dividing and distinguishing peoples have grown or transferred their loyalty to the new American empire.  It surprises me when I think how the Anglo often lumps, us, the descendants from a collapsed Spanish colonization, into one Hispanic bucket, often excluding us from having to own our ancestral brutality.  Or maybe the brutality is continued in the space or safe haven found in aligning with the next winning, conquering, team.

I find this desperate attachment to a historical identity crisis, riddled with dysfunction, futile.  This clinging to historic grandiosity is a distraction from the fact that in the moment we are "Neither Or". This helps me see that the divisions between people doesn't end with heritage, ethnicity, or locality, it seems to permeate in the imperialism or fanaticism of being on the winning side, convenient side, comfortable side, popular side, or the right side.  So for me it helps my confusion to consider that "neither or" is useful when believing there is a complicated side, a paradoxical side, a responsible side, or defeated side.  I am not Spanish, New Mexican, American or any other identity, for the first time in my existence I see how futile it is to identify, and still this divides me. 

In the moment I am best described as a burst of organized energy that is simply expending a strategic amount of energy to grow and survive.  I am in a mindset of electronegativity versus cultural allegiance.  I pay more attention to how I am impulsively coerced by my fears to promote self serving thoughts and actions.  I am learning to recognize how I am drawn to convenience and comfort.   I am disappointed by how freely I donate my resources to allegiances by defaults like ethnicity, locale, or stereotype.  Allegiances I can only see as toxic remnants from a pedagogy of purposeless competition.  I have been inveigled into being on some team.  The people that surround me in the Albuquerque community invite me to be on their Burque team,  patriotic people guilt me into being on an American team, and the orthodox people entice me into dogmatic loyalty usually to promote their agenda.  So this is why I find it important to be "Neither Or" at times, and while also being "Both And".

Learning to re-dream

As a result of failed dreaming, I might have developed a radical patience, but Dr. King, I'm still practicing.  Carrying the torch for peaceful change might be a way of honoring Dr King's vision.  As for now, I can only say that I am discovering how to be a dreamer again, after being worn down by the strain of clashing with so many obstructing realities.  I've accepted that my dreams and reality no longer mirror Martin Luther King Jr.'s.  The principles are equal, but the circumstances and dramatics are not.  My dream needs to evolve, because different times call for different dreams.  Racism, prejudice, discrimination and hate got sophisticated over the decades.

These human hateful traits can no longer be on public display as they once walked arrogantly down main street polished, ironed, and primped.  The new and illusive racism, prejudice, or hatred doesn't wear the same uniforms.  The uniform is a quantum garment that resembles an attitude.  A micro garment with the durability that can withstand most acts of social activism.  It looks like a hatred that no longer propagates itself through formal decrees, but oozes through dysfunctional moral creeds.  Dr King's dream, really a struggle, a veces mi lucha, and now transcending into a radical patience, has helped me to consider that prejudice folk had dreams too.

Even In a suit!

Racism went under ground, stopped revealing itself in blatant laws, now permeating smells of gorilla tactics, and their revolution learned to dream radical dreams too, surviving alongside mine.  The bigot has gone rebel too.

I was introduced to my social and lifestyle disparity in this newly adapted gorilla prejudice.  A prejudice once gloating under the banner of racism, best iconified by a confederate flag.  The tactical and stealth prejudice that insists it doesn't exist, like Delta Force, is reaping havoc in the territories still addicted to the idealized Christian prosperity, liberty, and happiness.  A force that no longer fights under an American flag, but several axis of force, like capitalism, patriotism, conservatism, elitism, and ethnocentrism.  I had to learn about Dr. King's dream, by recognizing how my dream drifted further into a misty misery of suspect authorities that create limitations calling them precautions, stereotypes, slippery ladders leading to cinder blocked class systems, and moving targets of success.  While pale skinned authorities preached to me how accessible prosperity should be.

So I dreamed and pursued being qualified, capable, or accredited.  What was camouflaged was how their paths of assisted progress and lessened resistance provided an advantage I could never understand, and they could always deny.  I went into my adulthood courageous and hopeful, now humbled and insightful, I can visualize their malleable and manipulate-able frameworks they put in place over the centuries, ensuring their position of power. These frameworks allow for traits that remove obstacles for a select and deserving elite, like the fraternity, inheritance, endowment, the represented, and supreme, have put on camouflage.  The obstacles to prosperity of the active duty prejudice are different than mine.

I thought I needed to get a degree, but then I realized this webbing of accreditation, seems added to our culture to delay the participation of the undesirable.  Yes this is cynical to think.   I reflect how education allowed for their establishment to keep authority without revealing their prejudice.   License and accreditation became a way of titrating people into their adaptive, creative, resilient, and prosperity filled lifestyles.  Titrating at rate that allowed them to keep pace of maintaining their stronghold of authority.

Well I no longer dream like King, it's more like a hopeful patience.

Enchanted Changes

Sitting across a cholo, not the cholo you find in LA's east side, the Albuquerque cholo. Let me be clear, not the stereotypical cholo. Not the hair net, flannel wearing kind. Not the decorated uniform wearing kind, also known as of the urban retail store bought kind, sponsored by Dickies. The archetypal cholo, that is rebeliously angry at something dear to his heart and was never given the words or actions that were acceptable to express. A body hiding the innocence of a boy, draped in a man's beige maturing skin, a body still ready to throw jodasos, sits eagerly and excited about his newly found mindset.

 The New Mexican cholo, the burqueno that struggles with some romantic version of a warrior like street mentality rooted in love filled village heritage. The hardship of being loved by a grandmother unconditionally while being tangled up in a mother's love, always being a reminder of a father gone or invisible. Burque, slang for Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city misspelled and mispronounced, because the gringo couldn't say Albur-quer-que. We sit sharing heartfelt consciousness like the men in our lives might have never been given an opportunity to do. We sit using words that were rarely used so freely in our barrios like care, love, and worry. I have been waiting to meet this man in the mirror.

 I use the cliche"man in the mirror" because the boy in a man's body sharing his new found manhood is sitting in front of me squeezing his testimony out like I feel I once did. Desperate to feel normal, because this thoughtful condition is unfamiliar. I say this about the courageous man growing a friendship in front of me. On a night unexpectedly reserved for shooting the shit, has now formed connection, and built commonality that leads to more transcendence from a dogmatic Latin rebellion. Two young men with like-minded barrio beliefs, sitting as maturing fathers, reflecting on how their lives had to be so challenging, and now have the wherewithal to provide a love to their children that is finally resembling the love we needed.

He is sharing his clarity for his recently used vulnerability. The vulnerability untrusted in a city known for gobbling up weak attitudes. Jonny Tapia didn't become a warrior by accident in these barrios. This once insecure graffiti artist, shares his developing depth for understanding love in a way so powerful he can only describe it as being pierced by Jesus Christ. I am able to share in the birth of a sophisticated brown mind, unknowing of his own capability. Possibly, always the boy told to shape up, stop breaking the rules, and behave. He found the pathway to his worth. He found principles, rooted in humanity for ages, in the desires a dad worries about for his son, and a consuming fear only having a daughter can create. He talks about passion as if it is a virtue, coming from a heritage where passion is often perverted.

 In early December, the wonder about past Christmases and bountiful bonuses gone, because Counselors don't get return on investments like other caregivers. And I got a Christmas bonus. And this camarada wasn't even a client. This is a Christmas bonus, the capital gains that my Chicano heritage promised me, for growing into an elder. A direct deposit routed into the heart's registry, where my karma keeps a double entry system. I like to believe another angel is invited to serve.

The power of progress

Progress' Paradox

Progress is required for movement, physical, mindful, spiritual, or systematic.  And progress is also voluntary for existence.  The human has progressed rapidly in evolutionary terms as compared to other species that have not.  Humans have rapidly enhanced our species over thousands of years, where other species have delayed major evolution for millions of years.  It made me consider our current dilemma surrounding improving, expediting, and enhancing.  There seems to have been some organisms that either did not require change or volunteered not to change, and for the sake of staying qualitative, there are those that were somewhere between.  Every cell, regardless of species, appears to have some form of perception for its needs and resources.  Maybe this means that each cell has its own personality, character, and agenda.  I enjoy this paradox because it helps me understand the power of perception as a function to progress.

Is culture a form of evolution, a technology, a group enhancement, that is a catalyst for progress or a stubborn force for replication of vetted traits.  When I think of the human cultures it brings to mind traditions.  Traditions seem to be the DNA for group think.  Cultures look like they could be the genes of communities.  I am deeply excited by the utility of tradition, and find myself having to adjust my culture and its traditions to survive for the sake of keeping up with technology.  I ask the question, does tradition become compromised by technology?  I know there are those who would suggest that technology can empower culture.  What perceptions do I have of changing versus not changing?  How does my need for technology correlate to my volunteered interest in it?  These questions invite such a different insight for me, leaving me more curious about my attachments to fear and worry.  I have grown beyond my Chicano borders and understand that being Chicano is more a reference point than an identity.  It also leads me to consider that culture might be a technology.

Culture has all the characteristics of a technology.  Some cultural characteristics include a way of reproducing the knowledge of a people.  Culture brings people together for a common interest.  Culture lowers the barrier to survival.  Culture serves a social purpose.  Culture is promoted by teaching, learning, and reflection.  These appear to share many of the same qualities.  Culture leads me to believe that it is indeed a technology.  Therefore it is a tool for progress' paradox.

Advocacy is nutritious cynicism

When I use my judgmental mind I find myself in the narrow mindset that cynicism is toxic.  Science and the introduction to chemistry teaches me that nothing is completely toxic, only passing from state to state, reaction to reaction, and condition to condition.  I'm today describing how cynicism is what I chose to let it serve in my psychology.  What purpose, what amount, and what concentration or potency will I experiment with?  

I gravitated to the belief that cynicism is negative and painful.  But cynicism inspires my radical thoughts leading me to potent sources of my sadness.  When I get cynical I tend to get curious.  I tend to become doubtful and reactive.  Reactive refers to my impulsivity and impatience.  This is what I understand to be worrisome about cynicism.  I was rarely able to benefit from the cynicism and it contaminated my passion and good nature.  

What I am better capable of today is knowing what the unwanted side effects of cynicism can feel like.  I can also slow the reactions down.  I have built up a contraction for my unleashed adrenaline, not to say I have control of what stings me, but to say I have some governance over my mindset.  I have established a healthier perspective on what is mine to confront, tolerate, and accept.  

Social harmony is a dream I have.  Balance is a core aspect for what motivates me.  Cynicism is a variable in this mix.  In small doses cynicism helps by fueling my curiosity and bitterness in ways that result in productive attitudes.  I have observed how my open mindedness buffers my ability to handle my cynicism and the cynicism from others.  Functioning for self-interest when done in harmony can mean that it is also group-interest, and by inheritance if harmony is behind self-interest than it is likely going to benefit all.  This looks a lot like advocacy.  Cynicism isn't as toxic when in optimal dosages.  It can even be nutritious.

I'm a gift from my family to you, slowly being opened.

My maternal grandparents are a large influence on who I am becoming. It seems funny to think I'm still "becoming". I come from privilege and scarcity. Along with so many more positions of operation that can be conflicting .  This means that I'm limited and liberated, simultaneously.   It's become an interesting dilemma to contemplate on how so much of my early adulthood was centered in an oppressed mentality.  Now I'm challenged by the encounter with genuine creative possibility.  It seems embarrassing that so much of my self, social, and cultural doubt has grown from variations of culturally imposed limitations, including the defiant pachuco.  The Chicano psychology promotes the need for being a radical, counter Anglo culture, or maybe just defiant.  It surely instilled an underdog mentality.

My grandparents didn't and don't seem to struggle with identity.  If they do they do it subconsciously, passively, and for sure not openly.  They label others, but for whatever social and personal influences they don't clearly label themselves.  Their generation doesn't have the identity rebellion that mine does.  They want to declare how American they are.  They have a blind spot for the injustice and limitation that slowly smothered them, possibly through the patriotic propaganda during WWII.  They seemed to have one validating system, family.  They were raised in a generation that inspired the need for a Chicano mentality, but at the same time were falling in love with an idea of being accepted as American.

My grandparents were taught under a regime of catholic laws and the radical authorities that enforced a catholic tradition of shame and guilt.  The penitent facade of Christianity.  The religious attitude that paints with broad strokes, rules that seem to stifle the liberated, creative, and revolutionary mentalities.  A faith rooted in hesitancy, fear, and obedience.  My grandparents are still obedient Catholics, and my culture has exchanged southwestern tradition for new and improved evangelical ways of accessing God.  We have yet to grow in the area of awareness.
Then the 60's happened.  The Vietnam war happened.  Communism happened.  The regularity of T.V. happened.  The birth of inflamed capitalism.  The precipice of the modern age, crawling out of industrial times.  America needed an army to train, a population to sacrifice for the capturing of resources.  America needed pawns to ensure the war strategy of the wealthy.  This was what sculpted my mother and father.

I'm branded American, with a Chicano tattoo, driving a human body

Identity has become a psychological luxury, mainly for my ego, like a safety blanket for my self concept.  I have slowly learned to consider myself human.  This sounds silly.  But I say this to express the complexity for how I diversify my identity.  I have a suspicion that I collect identities, mainly to feel more valuable and wanted.  I am building identities and tearing them down as I am challenged by fear and pleasure, among other motivators.  I am at a point where I identify as being human, expressing through a Chicano lens.  What is a Chicano lens?

There isn't an answer to that question.  I claim it like a country claims its borders, it's there but it's not.  It's a luxury.  Latinos, especially oppressed Latinos found a way to unite under one psychological banner.  Chicano has been an illusive concept to describe.  Even having a Latino heritage I could easily find some other Latino to argue its meaning.  It is a culture, an identity, a symbol, a political statement, a movement, a people, and a burden.

I learned how to call myself Chicano before I knew what it meant and how complex it was.  I come from Spanish speaking grandparents.  They were Spanish speaking before Mexican descendants re-rooted in the Southwest.  They didn't unite under a Chicano banner.  They surely never seemed to consider themselves as being Mexicano.  They identified as American.  I reflect and with bitterness describe to them the politics and cultural climate of their early adulthood, trying to paint for them how they were likely manipulated into becoming resources for the American country.  They never thought how a significant and powerful part of America might hate them, use them, and marginalize them.  They were eager to be valued too.  They were happy with the life they were handed, and they would say it was what God needed of them.

My grandparents studied sustainable living before it was an up and coming remedy to climate change.  It was a lifestyle of survival, empirically effective because they survived.  A lifestyle that endured an economic depression, so much that it never registered for my grandparents as depressing.  The Great Depression wasn't a hiccup in their comfort, because they were already accustomed to living in scarcity, maybe more like living within necessity.  Likely a curriculum in sustainability the way Maria Montessori might describe in her Montessori methodology.


I recognize how Anglos, legal immigrants,  have taken this culture that nurtured my grandparents, marketed it, and now call it New Mexico True capitalizing from a history of struggle.  A entrepreneurial vision promoting, something more deeply valuable, deeper than allure, deeper than a scheme to draw tourist dollars and no Culture Tax to benefit the generations left competing to continue to feel valued in America.

The lifestyle I was nurtured in, has become entertainment.  I see how legal immigrants develop business plans that promote enchiladas for $15 to $30, using the term New Mexican style restaurant.  This price is enough to make a whole platter of enchiladas with carne, likely feeding a entire family of eight.  They were wrapping tamales for winter, not so much for Christmas or the Special of the day, but because it was tradition and an efficient way to survive a New Mexican winter.  They had matanzas for survival not for the peda (drunkenness), or more kindly to celebrate.  Our traditions have grown to be a commodity.  My elders never thought to turn their traditions into profits, like Kendrick Lamar beautifully explains, it is like "pimping a butterfly".  Selling culture is the American way, maybe a colonial way, an imperial way, and it may also be, unfortunately, the civilized way.  I am reminded that it is not the Chicano way.  A reminder that my identity can be different.

Richard and Margaret Garcia as well as Abe and Josie Estrada have a heritage and history I cling to, the luxurious identity I see as Chicano.  I use the identity of Chicano to remind me that I am not of the American dream but a human reality.  I was not raised in a culture of entrepreneurial philosophies.  I am rooted in thoughtful and humble traditions.  When I become jealous and itchy for luxury, I remind myself of the beauty my grandparents survived in, never feeling poor and never needing status.  They do although, live needing to be loved, forgiven, respected, and considered.  This is what I like to think Chicano means, a Latin, Southwestern American, New Mexican, and Burqueno way to express being human.

-- Ron Valerio Estrada