I am very pleased that Emilio Zamora's May 30, 2022 blog post titled, "Reflections on Uvalde" got published in today's Sunday edition of the Austin American-Statesman. Below are the comments that he made to his Facebook page this evening:
Today, at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, we honored the memory of the nineteen children, the two teachers and the husband of one of the teachers who lost their lives in the horrible tragedy that visited Uvalde, Texas on May 24. We prayed for their families as well as for the rest of us who have been deeply affected by the unforgivable violence and other instances of trauma-causing experiences in our individual lives. We gave special meaning to trauma by acknowledging that the majority of Mexican/Latino people from Texas have faced a history of traumatic discrimination, inequality and indignity associated with low educational attainment levels, high infant mortality rates, low wages, health disparities, high dropout rates, and such. The children and youth attending the event joined us at the podium as I read the names of the departed and reminded them of our love for them.Testimonies by local and state leaders expressed their deeply felt emotions and hopes for our future as a people and as a nation, and the Kalpulli Teocalli Teoyotl, a Danza Mexica group from Austin, led us in prayerful, ancestral ceremony. After the ceremony, two talking circles, or círculos de dar la palabra, provided opportunities to speak about healing and political action.
So proud of you, Emilio. I especially like your concept of "cultural foreigners" that turns on its head the idea that we, as Latinas/os, are foreigners despite politics that invariably treat us as perpetual immigrants, rather than as descendants of peoples original to this continent that the danza itself exemplifies.
We may be the only group in U.S. society that has a living discourse on which generation we are, e.g., "I'm second-generation, third-generation," and so on—as perpetual strangers in our own land, on our own continent.
Your concept of "cultural foreigners" points the finger in the opposite direction to the ongoing experience of settler colonialism that has involved an ongoing project of cultural erasure—and in this and so many other cases—genocidal projects.
We also got news coverage by different news media, including KXAN Thanks to National LULAC for livestreaming this morning's press conference and danza Mexica ceremony from the National LULAC website:
Thanks to Maria Unda, our Project Director at Academia Cuauhtli for livestreaming this news conference, as well.
Abundant thanks to all of our generous sponsors as follows:
Kalpulli Teocalli Teoyotl; ESB-MACC; La Raza Roundtable; Center for Mexican American Studies (UT); Joe’s Bakery, the Indigenous Cultures Institute; La Voz; Latino Arts, Culture and Education; Hispanic Advocates Business Leaders of Austin; Austin Area Association of Bilingual Educators; La Peña, Las Comadres; League of United Latin American Citizens, District VII; Texas LULAC; National LULAC.
Friends, we all made this come together in less than a week. We cannot thank everybody enough for their generosity, love, caring, and cooperation. It is on this foundation that relationships are rekindled and a movement against gun violence coalesces with absolute clarity that gun policy today IS education policy. Let's get out of our public policy silos to engage this horrific epidemic of gun violence that is a threat to our democracy, let alone our public schools and classrooms.
Many good things are already coming of this, including a mobilization of the vote. In the meantime, let's all learn a little history and consider how the Second Amendment itself has a telling racist past as covered in this NPR piece titled, "Historian Uncovers the Racist Roots of the 2nd Amendment." It refers to historian Carol Anderson's (2021) book titled, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America" where she documents Americans' treatment of gun ownership and how these are inflected by race with roots that date back to the founding of our country.
Stay tuned. More to come in the days and weeks to come.
Once more, a heartfelt thanks to everybody for what truly was a shared experience of collective solidarity and healing with and for the people of Uvalde, and for the danza that was our sacred, deeply-felt "healing-in-motion" that buoyed our spirits today.
Peace/paz,
-Angela Valenzuela
#UvaldeStrong #AcademiaCuauhtli #EmilioZamora #Uvalde
Photograph by Rene Renteria, Austin, Texas.
If you are a subscriber, you can link to this op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman here.
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