Ya se que soy la blogera mas reluctant pero aqui estoy de nuevo! So lately I have been metido en fighting esos cabrones de Secured Communities, los polimigra. Lo que pasa es que ellos tienen programas en que local chota (law enforcement) is cooperating with migra (ICE) to catch raza and deport us! Pongase trucha raza! They are arresting gente after minor traffic stops and calling ICE to get them deported. Fix your pinche tail lights, las luzes de tus placas, no manejan recio - nada! Yo digo que they are disappearing people like the gulag! (read about other types of oppressive governments). So say you get arrested on some stupid shit and they have you locked up, your familia posts la fianza on the criminal case and you think, "Chale! I am outta here!" pero wait a minute homegirl! ICE is waiting to pick you up before you can get out cuz the jail cooperates with them and tells them you are getting out cuz ICE has put an immigration detainer (ICE hold) on your ass! The jails are only supposed to hold you for ICE to pick you up for 48 hours and not a minute longer!!! Then they have to release you even if ICE doesn't pick you up or they are violating your rights and commiting a crime they own damn selves! Anyway, what happens is that ICE picks people up and then when they have their next hearing they FTA (fail to appear) and noone knows where they are so the judge just issues a bench warrant for their ass even though they are sitting in pinche ICE custody or got deported already! Its all messed up! Whats really messed up is that ICE is using this system like a dragnet just catching all kinds of people. They put ICE holds on U.S citizens sometimes or try to deport raza who have their micas even if legally they aren't deportable! Obama's administration says that they are only deporting the most dangerous criminales y que they don't want to separate familias but its not true! They are deporting our viejitos, madrecitas, abues y hasta chamaquillos! Seriously raza, pongase trucha! Watch your back! Tambien, you can fight the injusticia by getting involved with local immigrants' rights organizations in your area. Write letters to your congress representatives! Make those fools work for us for once! Ask for immigration reform and the DREAM Act! Orale raza! And if you got nothin' but time pues ponte a escribir cartas a los pinches politicos y a todo el mundo! Tell Obama to end Secured Communities and to stop separating our families by stopping deportations and passing immigration reform! Organize cuz shit aint right yall! Juntos podemos!
c/s La Chula
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Sunday, November 7, 2010
context
First, lets acknowledge that light skinned people do receive privilege whether they want it or not. That privilege translates to cultural and material capital. There are levels of attitudinal racism that we are not subjected to - that means we are not always subjected to the same levels of violence, aggression discrimination that our darker sisters and brothers may be subjected to. Many of us get this and have been told our whole lives by family members and other folks that "you don't know" or "you have it easy." We have to acknowledge that we don't.
Now, something else should be acknowledged. We (guera/os) are mestizos from the same socio-historical and class backgrounds as the darker members of our families. We do not suddenly gain generations of white privilege and all the power and capital and social connections that come with that. For example, my daughter is guera. She has "ojos chinos" and other physical attributes from her indigenous heritage and very curly hair from the African in our mix but she is very blonde and is easily confused for white.
Yet that doesn't change the fact that her dad is a mestizo who grew up working in the fields as a child farmworker and was never able to finish high school. He was a poor migrant worker who labored en el campo his whole life. Her dad doesn't read or write much and had difficulty reading to his children. He was also a cholo from the Imperial Valley where children of migrant farmworkers had few opportunities for educational advancement or social mobility. His parents were also poor mestizos from central Mexico. Their language was a very Mexican spanish - mixed with many words in nahuatl. He grew up in a mixed status family and our daughters to a certain extent have inherited his experience.
The experience that my daughter inherits from me is very mixed. I too am a mestiza. My mother is a mestiza from Mexico. She came here without legal authorization. I guess that would make me an "anchor baby" to some people. Myself and my daughters have lived la pesadilla - nightmare - terror and trauma of worrying about losing family mambers to deportation.
My father had a very white and "American" identity even though he was darker than my mother and he was proud to be Cherokee. My dad's people were Cherokees, whites and melungeons from the Carolinas & Tennessee who moved west around removal time. I believe that as they moved west they also re-invented themselves and whitened up as they intermarried more whites - particularly in Texas. Although my dad only claims white and Cherokee, I did discover that we are also part african. His family had a mix of native and african peoples who were persecuted through removal and slavery as well as the whites who enslaved.
My mom's Mexican family was also a mix of indigenous Mexican heritage with european. Some of those ancestors were poor and some were revolutionaries. We are even related to Jorge Negrete (the famous Mexican singer/actor). I guess I am his niece since he was first cousins with my grandfather.
Anyway, I think there are many chicanos who in the process of reclaiming their indigenous identity, will deny the truth of their mixed race mixed class heritage that has afforded them privilege. If you have relatives in Mexico, like we do, or if you ever travel to Mexico, you will know that being indigenous as a mestizo from the U.S. is very different than being an indigenous Mexican from an indigenous community in Mexico. I think chicanos should be very careful about co-opting indigenous identity and need to be aware that many indigenous peoples in Mexico and the SW U.S. do not see us as indigenous peoples and see mestizos as having been complicit with the oppression of indigenous peoples in Mexico and the SW.
Living in New Mexico, I have learned that many tribal peoples in the SW, particularly Pueblo peoples do not see Chicanos/Mexicanos as Native or indigenous peoples. I have heard a lot of criticism from Native peoples here, who see Chicanos who do Aztec dance or danza as acting out stereotypes of native peoples and do not believe that these Chicanos are native or indigenous or Indian like them. While I think there are times that we are all susceptible to acting out stereotypes of ourselves when we internalize what the dominant culture has taught us to believe about ourselves, I also believe in a wide spectrum of indigenous identity that goes beyond being enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. That spectrum includes Chicanos and other mestizos. But we also have to recognize our dual nature and the fact that mestizos were complicit in the oppression of other native peoples - like when Mexico participated in the colonization of the SW. I don't think it is fair to indigenous peoples from indigenous communities in Mexico or Pueblo peoples to deny those differences or that complicity and privilege of the mestizo.
That said, I still believe that we do have a right to reclaim our indigeneity and that it is not completely our fault that we have lost connections to our past tribal identities (otomies, nahua, mixtecos, huichol etc...) The way that indigenous tribal identities were deconstructed in Mexico was very different than the process in the United States or Canada. The relationships between those different governments and their policies towards native peoples whether indigenissmo in Mexico or assimilation & termination in the U.S., left us with different outcomes and differently shaped identities. That combined with migration, loss of land, a revolution that created an "Azteca" Mestizo nation, and other political and social dynamics - including racism in the U.S., took a lot away from us in terms of our identity, language and culture. I absolutely believe that we have a right to reclaim our identities and to resist letting the dominant culture define us in relation to their white colonial identity. I also believe that we should de-colonize and check our internal colonialism. Some of us begin to police identity as we start to reclaim our identities. We become the indigeneity police. That is a lot like adopting the white man's rules of blood quantum and the one-drop rule - defining indigenous peoples according to colonial rules that were created to destroy tribal identities and native peoples just doesn't make sense. Why would we define ourselves and each other under those same rules? Tribal sovereignty and self-determination call for indigenous peoples to define tribal identity and membership according to our own customs and traditions. So, why would you use the casta system to define each other or yourself? Why would you buy into blood quantum rules and the one-drop rule? Under the blood quantum rules my daughter may not be native in some tribes, native in others and she is black under the one-drop rule. Those racist colonial systems created to destroy and enslave us do not work and part of our own liberation and de-colonization process needs to include serious interrogation of our own compliance, adoption and acceptance of these ideas.
THAT is why I have problems with the discussions that have come out of the responses to the Ask a Chola bronca. Don't misunderstand me - I agree - I am pissed that the white woman played a chola. THAT is not what I am responding to. I am bringing forward a different voice. One that I heard from another guera chicana. So, I decided to finally assert this voice and to stop shunning my lighter sister in favor of my darker sisters - for fear that she makes me look white - and to aguantar the messy and hurtful response that this conversation may bring out so that we can work it out and understand each other - but mostly so my daughter and someone else's daughter won't have to aguantarlo tanto.
En Lak Ech
Now, something else should be acknowledged. We (guera/os) are mestizos from the same socio-historical and class backgrounds as the darker members of our families. We do not suddenly gain generations of white privilege and all the power and capital and social connections that come with that. For example, my daughter is guera. She has "ojos chinos" and other physical attributes from her indigenous heritage and very curly hair from the African in our mix but she is very blonde and is easily confused for white.
Yet that doesn't change the fact that her dad is a mestizo who grew up working in the fields as a child farmworker and was never able to finish high school. He was a poor migrant worker who labored en el campo his whole life. Her dad doesn't read or write much and had difficulty reading to his children. He was also a cholo from the Imperial Valley where children of migrant farmworkers had few opportunities for educational advancement or social mobility. His parents were also poor mestizos from central Mexico. Their language was a very Mexican spanish - mixed with many words in nahuatl. He grew up in a mixed status family and our daughters to a certain extent have inherited his experience.
The experience that my daughter inherits from me is very mixed. I too am a mestiza. My mother is a mestiza from Mexico. She came here without legal authorization. I guess that would make me an "anchor baby" to some people. Myself and my daughters have lived la pesadilla - nightmare - terror and trauma of worrying about losing family mambers to deportation.
My father had a very white and "American" identity even though he was darker than my mother and he was proud to be Cherokee. My dad's people were Cherokees, whites and melungeons from the Carolinas & Tennessee who moved west around removal time. I believe that as they moved west they also re-invented themselves and whitened up as they intermarried more whites - particularly in Texas. Although my dad only claims white and Cherokee, I did discover that we are also part african. His family had a mix of native and african peoples who were persecuted through removal and slavery as well as the whites who enslaved.
My mom's Mexican family was also a mix of indigenous Mexican heritage with european. Some of those ancestors were poor and some were revolutionaries. We are even related to Jorge Negrete (the famous Mexican singer/actor). I guess I am his niece since he was first cousins with my grandfather.
Anyway, I think there are many chicanos who in the process of reclaiming their indigenous identity, will deny the truth of their mixed race mixed class heritage that has afforded them privilege. If you have relatives in Mexico, like we do, or if you ever travel to Mexico, you will know that being indigenous as a mestizo from the U.S. is very different than being an indigenous Mexican from an indigenous community in Mexico. I think chicanos should be very careful about co-opting indigenous identity and need to be aware that many indigenous peoples in Mexico and the SW U.S. do not see us as indigenous peoples and see mestizos as having been complicit with the oppression of indigenous peoples in Mexico and the SW.
Living in New Mexico, I have learned that many tribal peoples in the SW, particularly Pueblo peoples do not see Chicanos/Mexicanos as Native or indigenous peoples. I have heard a lot of criticism from Native peoples here, who see Chicanos who do Aztec dance or danza as acting out stereotypes of native peoples and do not believe that these Chicanos are native or indigenous or Indian like them. While I think there are times that we are all susceptible to acting out stereotypes of ourselves when we internalize what the dominant culture has taught us to believe about ourselves, I also believe in a wide spectrum of indigenous identity that goes beyond being enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. That spectrum includes Chicanos and other mestizos. But we also have to recognize our dual nature and the fact that mestizos were complicit in the oppression of other native peoples - like when Mexico participated in the colonization of the SW. I don't think it is fair to indigenous peoples from indigenous communities in Mexico or Pueblo peoples to deny those differences or that complicity and privilege of the mestizo.
That said, I still believe that we do have a right to reclaim our indigeneity and that it is not completely our fault that we have lost connections to our past tribal identities (otomies, nahua, mixtecos, huichol etc...) The way that indigenous tribal identities were deconstructed in Mexico was very different than the process in the United States or Canada. The relationships between those different governments and their policies towards native peoples whether indigenissmo in Mexico or assimilation & termination in the U.S., left us with different outcomes and differently shaped identities. That combined with migration, loss of land, a revolution that created an "Azteca" Mestizo nation, and other political and social dynamics - including racism in the U.S., took a lot away from us in terms of our identity, language and culture. I absolutely believe that we have a right to reclaim our identities and to resist letting the dominant culture define us in relation to their white colonial identity. I also believe that we should de-colonize and check our internal colonialism. Some of us begin to police identity as we start to reclaim our identities. We become the indigeneity police. That is a lot like adopting the white man's rules of blood quantum and the one-drop rule - defining indigenous peoples according to colonial rules that were created to destroy tribal identities and native peoples just doesn't make sense. Why would we define ourselves and each other under those same rules? Tribal sovereignty and self-determination call for indigenous peoples to define tribal identity and membership according to our own customs and traditions. So, why would you use the casta system to define each other or yourself? Why would you buy into blood quantum rules and the one-drop rule? Under the blood quantum rules my daughter may not be native in some tribes, native in others and she is black under the one-drop rule. Those racist colonial systems created to destroy and enslave us do not work and part of our own liberation and de-colonization process needs to include serious interrogation of our own compliance, adoption and acceptance of these ideas.
THAT is why I have problems with the discussions that have come out of the responses to the Ask a Chola bronca. Don't misunderstand me - I agree - I am pissed that the white woman played a chola. THAT is not what I am responding to. I am bringing forward a different voice. One that I heard from another guera chicana. So, I decided to finally assert this voice and to stop shunning my lighter sister in favor of my darker sisters - for fear that she makes me look white - and to aguantar the messy and hurtful response that this conversation may bring out so that we can work it out and understand each other - but mostly so my daughter and someone else's daughter won't have to aguantarlo tanto.
En Lak Ech
Broncas - Identity y Cholissma
So, I am still reluctant to do this bloga and especially after there was drama over using chola identity on the net. Lo que pasa es que una gringa tonta was playing race by playing a chola - you might have seen her as la chola de Ask a Chola. I definitely agree that it is problematic to have a white woman "putting on brown face"", playing race, pretending to represent a woman she is not. The conversations in response to the uncovering of her identity brought up skin color among chicana/os. One chicana talked about how some of the responses were hurtful to her as a liminal type person, or light-skinned chicana.
Her response motivated me to talk about being "la guera" or a liminal chicana. I am thinking that this bloga might be a better place to explore la voz de la guera.
I have had many thoughts about my experiences being guera, guerita, guereja, guerota, la guera chula etc... but I have not felt that I could talk about them without sounding like someone with privilege whining - or like one of those whiny white girls who doesn't get it. So, lo aguante - I sucked it up and kept it to myself. However, I am deciding to come out and share my experience. I will take the chance of being messed up and needing to be put in check and at the same time make room for this voice. I think it is important for us as Chcanos/Mexicanos/Mestiza/os to flush this out and I don't want my daughter to get stuck agauantandolo.
So, while I wanted to do a fun blog as LAw CHOLA that would drop some legal knowledge to help keep our people from being deported and criminalized, I am gonna switch it up and talk about my experience being esa pinche guera.
Her response motivated me to talk about being "la guera" or a liminal chicana. I am thinking that this bloga might be a better place to explore la voz de la guera.
I have had many thoughts about my experiences being guera, guerita, guereja, guerota, la guera chula etc... but I have not felt that I could talk about them without sounding like someone with privilege whining - or like one of those whiny white girls who doesn't get it. So, lo aguante - I sucked it up and kept it to myself. However, I am deciding to come out and share my experience. I will take the chance of being messed up and needing to be put in check and at the same time make room for this voice. I think it is important for us as Chcanos/Mexicanos/Mestiza/os to flush this out and I don't want my daughter to get stuck agauantandolo.
So, while I wanted to do a fun blog as LAw CHOLA that would drop some legal knowledge to help keep our people from being deported and criminalized, I am gonna switch it up and talk about my experience being esa pinche guera.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Why you should ALWAYS plead NOT GUILTY
okay gente - basic criminal defense lesson #1 - PLEAD NOT GUILTY
Every day I see people who plead no contest cuz they think it means the same as "no contestar" like I don't want to answer or I don't want to say guilty or not guilty cuz I really don't know what is going on here. What they don't realize is that NO CONTEST is like you are accepting the charges against you - it is almost the same thing as GUILTY. It IS like pleading guilty and the next step will be to sentence you to jail or probation. Pleading GUILTY or NO CONTEST just lets them convict you without the cops and prosecutors even having to properly investigate your case. They may not even have a case or enuf evidence against you! It is better to start by pleading NOT GUILTY and then when your attorney looks at the evidence or lack of evidence against you - then you can look at plea offers or maybe you can even get a dismissal. You can always enter a plea of guilty LATER when you have been fully advised of the consequences by an attorney. Pleading guilty early on does not necessarily help you "to get it all over with" more quickly. There will be consequences to a guilty/no contest plea that you may not be able to foresee.
*** TRUCHA!!!!
THIS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS!!!! If you are a LEGAL PERMANENT RESIDENT (que tienes la mica) or are present on some other type of visa or do not have lawful presence (sin papeles - que no tienes la mica pues) then YOU COULD BE REMOVED/DEPORTED if you have plead guilty or no contest to certain crimes - si anuque tienes muchos anos con la mica te pueden deportar en todos modos! TRUCHA!!! Get a good criminal defense attorney that knows about immigration consequences of criminal convictions and guilty pleas or get both a criminal defense attorney and an immigration attorney.
If your public defender is not taking your immigration concerns seriously then remind her/him that they have to advise you of immigration consequences under a Supreme Court case - diles el caso de Padilla los manda a advisarle exactamente como te puede afectar una declaracion de culpable o de ser condenado del crimen que te estan accusando... que no se te duerme el gallo!!!
Every day I see people who plead no contest cuz they think it means the same as "no contestar" like I don't want to answer or I don't want to say guilty or not guilty cuz I really don't know what is going on here. What they don't realize is that NO CONTEST is like you are accepting the charges against you - it is almost the same thing as GUILTY. It IS like pleading guilty and the next step will be to sentence you to jail or probation. Pleading GUILTY or NO CONTEST just lets them convict you without the cops and prosecutors even having to properly investigate your case. They may not even have a case or enuf evidence against you! It is better to start by pleading NOT GUILTY and then when your attorney looks at the evidence or lack of evidence against you - then you can look at plea offers or maybe you can even get a dismissal. You can always enter a plea of guilty LATER when you have been fully advised of the consequences by an attorney. Pleading guilty early on does not necessarily help you "to get it all over with" more quickly. There will be consequences to a guilty/no contest plea that you may not be able to foresee.
*** TRUCHA!!!!
THIS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS!!!! If you are a LEGAL PERMANENT RESIDENT (que tienes la mica) or are present on some other type of visa or do not have lawful presence (sin papeles - que no tienes la mica pues) then YOU COULD BE REMOVED/DEPORTED if you have plead guilty or no contest to certain crimes - si anuque tienes muchos anos con la mica te pueden deportar en todos modos! TRUCHA!!! Get a good criminal defense attorney that knows about immigration consequences of criminal convictions and guilty pleas or get both a criminal defense attorney and an immigration attorney.
If your public defender is not taking your immigration concerns seriously then remind her/him that they have to advise you of immigration consequences under a Supreme Court case - diles el caso de Padilla los manda a advisarle exactamente como te puede afectar una declaracion de culpable o de ser condenado del crimen que te estan accusando... que no se te duerme el gallo!!!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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