The Sleeping Giant Reawakens:By Jorge Mariscal =04-07-2006

By Jorge Mariscal, Eastern Group Publications. Posted April 7, 2006.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Shockwaves from the massive demonstrations in support of humane immigration reform will be dramatic.

In the 1950s, when anthropologists referred to Mexican Americans as the "sleeping giant" and the media stereotype of choice was a man sleeping under a cactus, the thought that Latinos in the United States might organize to demand equal opportunity seemed far-fetched.

One noted social scientist wrote: "The masses of Mexican Americans in the large cities of the Southwest are politically inert. The very model of Mexican leadership has been the 'quiet fighter' who does not create any public difficulties."

It was not until Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and California farm workers burst into the national consciousness in 1966 that pundits began to detect a major tremor in the political landscape. In 1968 in Los Angeles, Chicano high school students demonstrated for educational reform, a movement captured in the new HBO film,"Walkout." In 1970, Chicanos and Chicanas organized major rallies against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia.

What we now call the Chicano Movement was a grassroots mobilization composed of diverse organizations and agendas. It gave a generation of Mexican Americans a new identity premised upon cultural pride, a thirst for justice, and an insistence that U.S. democracy deliver on its promises.

The recent demonstrations in support of humane immigration reform that does not exploit hard-working families dwarf the demonstrations of the Chicano Movement era--4,000 in Dallas, 5,000 in San Francisco, 20,000 in Phoenix, 50,000 in Detroit, 50,000 in Denver, 300,000 in Chicago, and more than 500,000 in Los Angeles. In Atlanta, an estimated 80,000 Latinos protested by not going to work.

On Atlanta streets, marchers carried signs that read "Nosotros también tenemos un sueño" (We too have a dream). Dr. King and Cesar Chavez would have been proud. Whereas the movement of the Vietnam War era was limited to young Mexican Americans in the Southwest, today's movement includes people of every age with a variety of connections to the immigrant experience and with origins in many different Spanish-speaking countries.

Marching side by side with the thousands of legal immigrants who arrived in the decade of the 1990s (more than any previous decade in U.S. history) were those whose parents or grandparents came to this country years ago. Newly arrived Salvadorans, fifth-generation Chicanas with family members who fought in World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq, and everyone in between said in one voice, "We will not be criminalized; we will not be intimidated."

The shockwaves of these massive demonstrations will be dramatic. Like the aftermath of California's Proposition 187 in 1994 that would have removed the social safety net for undocumented workers, we can expect that the new mobilizations will produce a huge spike in Latino voter registration. As it did in the 1960s, the "sleeping giant" has once again risen from its slumber.

Comedian Carlos Mencia finds it amusing to drop epithets like "beaner" and "wetback." In the politically correct 1990s, we might have chastised him for being too ignorant to realize what a far greater comedian named Richard Pryor learned on his first trip to Africa. "I didn't see any n*****s there," Pryor said.

This week, immigrants, their children, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants, and those with Spanish surnames who trace their roots to the Southwest before there was a United States took to the streets to demand dignity and respect. Someone tell Carlos Mencia, the Minutemen, and Senators Sensenbrenner and Frist that there was not a single beaner or wetback among them.

Jorge Mariscal is director of the Chicano/Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Blogsource: http://detodos-paratodos.blogspot.com/2006/04/sleeping-giant-reawakensby-jorge.html#links

++++++++
Comment: In Sacramento, California, on the now historic date of Sabado~ March 25, 2005, we had 5,000 + Latinos and other peoples in our Sacra Marcha that began at the ILWU Longshoremens Hall Local 17 in West Sacramento; marched up Capital Avenue into the City by the California State Capitol; and gathered at the Cesar Chavez Plaza across from City Hall.

The Plaza itself use to be known as 'wino park', but was transformed and dedicated by Sacramento' s former Mayor Joe Serna who was an 'amigo' of Cesar Chavez. Sacramento was the first city in the United States to honor Chavez with a holiday. Companero Serna died in office from illness in November of 1999. The Spirits of those who have helped lead the way before us lives on and helps light our pathways!

Beware the ides of March!

The times of the Granda Marcha in Los Angeles and other American cities were a unique rare conjunction of different significant social and historical elements that came together: the Cesar Chavez Marcha coming around.; the fascist proposed immigration legislation that would make so many so-called illegal immigrants or undocumented workers automatic criminals; the recent attacks on undocumented workers, spotlighted by the neo-Nazi Minutemen along the U.S.-Mexican Border; the perverted plan for erecting an expensive wall between the U.S. and Mexican national borders; the growing socialist-inspired movements that have brought positive democratic governments into power in Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile through legal, legitimate elections; the arrogance of power exhibited by the Amerikan Occupation of Iraq; plus, lest we forget, the fear, doubt and paranoia spawned by the Bush Rogue Regime out of the Oval Office Cabal with the haunting spreading belief that there is a growing authoritarian fascism 'in power and secure' inside the United States!

Actually, La Raza Cosmica has never been asleep. We have been busy working, sweating and struggling for our basic survival as we have for long centuries. The material abundance of modern Amerika is essentially the creation of Third World peoples.

If anyone has been asleep it has been the Old Vanguard Chicano Movement Leadership, especially those co-opted by the greedy quest for material goods, confused by passing winds of doctrine and/or distracted by various forms of Chicano cultural nationalism.

A true living culture should be a culture that creates, nurtures and develops true liberation. A culture of liberation must stay alive, thrive and be based upon the on-going creation of real social conditions that support social liberation from the misery of our poverty!

We will not win with books, blogs or poems alone and we surely cannot eat paint! Have you ever seen two or more Chicano macho- males make a pot of menudo together in harmony!? Got recovery?!?

The basics of survival forever remain the basics: good food, proper clothing, decent shelter, medical care and empowerng education!

We must all come together, settle our differences and work hard on a common agenda based upon the fight for the recognition of our basic intrinsic humane rights as human beings . Stay awake! Be liberated!

Feel free to add a Comment on De Todos Para Todos!

Share your thoughts, opinions and analyses with love, respect and intelligence. Sharing is caring!

No Human Being of Mother Earth Is An Illegal Alien!
Stop the Amerikan Occupation of Iraq!
Abolish the Bush Rogue Regime! Join the Native Resistance!

Unidos Venceremos!
Peta de Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
DDN Profile

Related Groups:
Humane-Rights-Agenda Blog

Humane-Rights-Agenda Group




c/z