The Hubris of Anglo Racial Thought by Emilio Zamora, Ph.D.

I am happy to share this blog post by past-President of the Texas State Historical Association and University of Texas Historian, Dr. Emilio Zamora. You can learn more about him here. It provides a cogent example of historians' craft, examining text, subtext, and context in the assessment of early 1900s, Anglo racial thought in Texas and its relevance to us both in its time, as well as today in the current battle over history curriculum—masquerading as opposing Critical Race Theory—in the Texas State Legislature.

I don't know about you, but I think he needs to keep blogging. 

Enjoy!

-Angela Valenzuela

The Hubris of Anglo Racial Thought

by

Emilio Zamora, Ph.D.

Blog Contributor

Department of History, University of Texas at Austin

Ultra-conservatives like the Republican members of the Texas State Legislature continue to condemn the history of race thinking, racial discrimination, and racial inequality as a regular subject of study and learning in our classrooms, and they do it descaradamente (with a shameless, consummate “hubris”).  

Their reluctance to consider this history and its continuing relevance is understandable.  Why would they turn to history if it proves that race explains major parts of our recorded experience, including slavery, Jim Crow, differences in employment, education, and political representation, health disparities, voter suppression, injuries to a sense of worth, and racialized identities among Anglos, Mexicans, and Blacks? According to a growing number of accounts by the press, ultra-conservatives instead prefer to falsely accuse teachers of advancing a theory of race that blames Anglos and their children for the evils of race. They continue to make such accusations without evidence while also advancing the notion that race is not necessary in the classroom.  

Texas Republicans seem to believe that they do not have to explain anything since they are in power, meaning that they can do as they please without fearing any repercussions at the polls.  They are mistaken.  In a Democracy, those in power are obligated to advance the principle of shared governance that minimally requires a fair, honest, and open process of dialogue and law-making in cooperation with the opposition.  The citizenry also rightfully expects comportment of the highest order and deserves the greatest and highest good that their representatives can provide.  Their monumental failing at this moment of the debate on the teaching of race, however, is that they do not ground their views on history. 

To demonstrate this, I offer a racialized text from Mexican American history to argue that sensible and verifiable observations of race in our state’s history offer important lessons not solely for our youth, but also for those whose job in government is to serve and represent the people of Texas well:

"When first discovered, Texas consisted of mostly cosmic junk, including cactus, rattlesnakes, horned toads, tarantulas and four kinds of climate.  Later, the greaser, a species of human invented by the Spaniards moved in and the rattlesnakes moved north in search of a better society.  In the past seventy years, however, great improvement have been made."  (Zamora, 1993, p. 49)

Adopted as a resolution offered by the delegates from El Paso to the annual meeting of the Texas State Federation of Labor held in San Antonio in 1912, the statement clearly broadcasts widespread racial animus against Mexicans, expressed in a language of comical derision intended to foster public approval.

The clearest meaning in the text is that the ostensibly superior Anglos have a demonstrated ability to develop Texas, whereas Mexicans do not, reducing them to such a lowly, sub-human species that even rattlesnakes hold them in contempt. Aside from being deeply offensive, the resolution exaggerates the role of Anglos in Texas history that is nevertheless emblematic of their baseless, racialized resentment—other than for the shameful purpose of reinforcing unequal relations. The lesson is less about Mexicans than it is about the narcissistic and intolerant posture of Anglo supremacist culture.

An underlying theme, or subtext, in the resolution is that an evolutionary interpretation of history based on the Darwinian model of the “fittest” supports its conclusion of socially superior Anglos and socially inferior Mexicans.  Implicit in this theme is the rejection of the lesser known evolutionary view of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck who underscored that micro and macro organisms had an equal capacity to adjust to life’s difficulties and to evolve.  At its core, the resolution denies Mexicans their natural, “God-given” worth and potential, while heralding the appearance of a savior-like people imbued with a hubris to demonstrate their self-professed biological and cultural superiority, an unending political project.

The historical context adds meaning to the resolution and underscores the importance of using race as a tool for understanding our past.  The first contextual point that is worth noting is that the delegates from El Paso proposed the resolution and that the labor meeting occurred in San Antonio. This suggests that the large concentrations of Mexicans in the two cities did not deter the assembly from openly stating their racialized views.  They may have thought it necessary to adopt the resolution to psychologically prepare the Anglo and possibly Black population for the unsavory plans by local, state, and federal authorities to deport and repatriate to Mexico hundreds of thousands of Mexican Nationals and Mexicans Americans in the 1920s and 1930s.  Organized labor and nativist organizations (made up mostly of Anglos) were complicit in thought and deed when they supported the expulsions because of the unfounded fear that employers would replace them with Mexican workers, depress their wages, and destroy the unions.  

The context of an increasingly bloated labor market and the fears of labor competition also offers evidence of a robust organizational life in Mexican communities that, according to several labor histories, included large numbers of independent workers’ organizations and mutual aid societies.  In other words, Mexican workers were demonstrating a capacity to self-organize and their leadership from places like El Paso and San Antonio had begun to question the failure by Anglo organized labor to incorporate them, calling out their exclusion as a callous form of racial discrimination.  The resolution by organized labor, in other words, may have been more than an expression of racial thinking that disregarded fellow Mexican unionists, derailing any possibility of inter-ethnic solidarity. The segregationist Anglo unionists were acting like a labor cartel in response to a perceived racialized threat.

 An examination of a single act in history like a resolution, even if accompanied by sensible observations of text, subtext, and context, may seem to some like a limited exercise in the historical interpretation of the significance of race. The study of race in the history of the United States, however, inescapably consists of such focused observations, underscoring their indisputable, thematic importance in our classrooms.

Texas historians have also developed a rich historiography on race and ethnic relations since the early 1970s that allows us to see the 1912 resolution as a representative record of racism that we must heed, especially at a moment like this when ultra-conservative Republicans seek to deny a vast, illuminating body of knowledge of our country’s racial past and present.

In Lak Ech

Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993). To Purchase the book: https://www.amazon.com/Mexican-Worker-Centennial-Association-Students/dp/0890966788

La Realidad: The Realities of Anti-Mexicanism — A Paradigm by Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones

UCLA History Professor and dear friend and colleague, Dr. Juan Gomez-Quiñones, addresses the evolution of anti-Mexicanism that at it base 

"is a result of the domination of Indians and enslavement of Blacks." This includes the North American invasion by English whites in their perennial quest for wealth, status and power at the expense of others. A multi-faceted white supremacism arises as the rationalization to secure these wants."

This is excellent and well argued. We must work collectively in unity to turn false ideologies and discriminatory practices around—and not solely among Anglos, but among ourselves who are racialized minorities.

Thank you Juan, for yet again, summoning us to rise up to the challenge for which I do think we are not only well prepared, but more prepared than we have ever been historically. Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

La Realidad: The Realities of Anti-Mexicanism — A Paradigm

01/21/2017 12:59 am ET Updated Jan 25, 2017

By Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones

“Where Have You Been My Darling Young One?”

— Bob Dylan (1963)

La Realidad: The Realities of Anti-Mexicanism — A Paradigm 

 

U.S. anti-Mexicanism is a race premised set of historical and contemporary ascriptions, convictions and discriminatory practices inflicted on persons of Mexican descent, longstanding and pervasive in the United States. This essay conceptualizes, historicizes, and analyzes anti-Mexicanism, past and present, concurrent with some references to sources. Here, the emphasis is conceptual, not historiographical. Anti-Mexicanism is a form of nativism practiced by colonialists and their inheritors. Mexicans, being natives, became targets of aggressive practices inclusive of the violence directed at Indigenous and African peoples. The words “Mexican” and “Mexico” speak to Indigenous heritages. The origins of the thought and meaning of “Mexican and “Mexico” speak to historical native roots. White supremacist ideologues have understood this. When anti-Mexican rhetoric is used by white supremacists, those who proclaim rights to rulership, the public resonating response — violence and micro-aggressions — indicates the presence of this phenomenon.

This anti-Mexicanism practice is beyond crude prejudice or uncivil, ethnocentric chauvinism. To be sure, for some articulators, anti-Mexican words are such expressions. When anti-Mexicanism is articulated as a publically broadcasted set of negative evaluations that target Mexicans, recommends actions, and used as a means to a set of political goals, it is an ideology. Through broadcast, this ideology is validated as such by a collectivity of endorsers and enactors. This broadcasting does not parse its targeting — it is inclusive — women and men, gay and straight, disabled and able bodied — all of Mexican origin are encompassed. To be sure, the deep concern in this analysis is about the future, not the past. It aims to free the children of future generations from deeply hurtful practices and a set of imagined, negative denominators impacting their self-consciousness and personal freedom.

The large majority of people during the evolution to what became Mexicans and Mexico were and are Indigenous and of indigenous descent. Antipathy toward Native Americans is incremental upon English-speaking colonialists arrival. Their actions generate the initial steps leading to racists and white supremacy practiced in what came to be the United States. Disrespecting Indians politically is a step toward white supremacism and the eventual subordinating of Mexicans.

The hostility of European, English-speaking whites to Native Americans begins with the European arrival in what is now New England, Groton Connecticut. In 1637, over seven hundred Pequot men, women and children were attacked by white “colonists,” as the Pequot celebrated their annual Green Corn Dance. Those who were not shot were burned alive in their ceremonial space. The next day, the Governor of Massachusetts declared a day of “Thanksgiving.” This real episode is documented in the Holland Documents and the 13th volume of Colonial Documentary History. It’s also found in the private papers of Sir William Johnson, Royal British Agent of the Colony [of New York], circa 1640s. The core of this and other contentions is land possession or territorial dominance.

Under European, Spanish-speaking colonialism — primarily of indigenous origin, with African, and European intersections — a hybrid demographic becoming a “Spanish speaking” group in Mesoamerica was an evolution toward Mexicanos, the social, and Mexicanidad, the identity. Let it be understood, this social evolution is complicated with contradictions aplenty, initially related to its multiple ethnic decendencies and its diverse social-economic circumstances. Even as a partial contestatory response to the colonial experience, the social evolution entails the germs and evidences, the pathologies of the colonial — including racisms, authoritarianisms, and elitisms.

In the anglophone sphere, among the literate, perception of Natives is affected by the so-called colonialistic “Black Legend,” whereby Spanish colonialism is decried and English colonialism, by contrast, is upheld. This “legend” is a prejudiced and concocted propaganda. This dialogue deteriorates into an “Anglo-Hispanic” exchange of negatives — Protestantism versus Catholicism; Shakespeare versus Shakespeare. The “legend” could be judged a colonialist distraction promoted by elite serving intellectuals of both England and Spain who, watchful of another’s colonialist methods, ignores the racist and supremacist consequences of their own colonialism over Natives and Africans and their treatment of the descendants of both groups. Thus, racism is reduced as a mere by­product of inevitable colonial technologies, when in fact the racialization of Native Americans is a central premise of European colonialism and one corollary to the subordination of Africans.

More specifically, the deep historical record of anti-Mexicanism at its basis is a result of the domination of Indians and enslavement of Blacks. This includes the North American invasion by English whites in their perennial quest for wealth, status and power at the expense of others. A multi-faceted white supremacism arises as the rationalization to secure these wants. One can start with whites arriving in Massachusetts and Blacks in Virginia, and early persecutions of Native Americans anywhere. Overtime, Indio, Africans, Afro-Mestizos and Indio-Mestizo Spanish-speakers joined the ranks of those subordinated by English colonialists. Indians and Africans are the human resources for the empowerment of white colonialists, according to 17th and 19th century conditions and terms, empowering the colonialists’ maintenance of power over territories and localities.

The historical record of U.S.-Mexico relations is a narrative of subordination justified on racist and supremacist bases. To be sure, these are multifaceted and changing and not necessarily representationally inclusive of all whites. However, in fact, the record indicates U.S. citizens as the aggressors in the relation, not Mexicans. U.S. citizens are the perpetrators of negative views, invidious-distinctions and the domineering actions, according with these views. In contrast to U.S. negativity, Mexico — as a state and economy — has been useful to U.S. ambitions, where Mexican people have been serviceable to U.S. needs. Rather than respect, there are argued explicit reasons by U.S. whites from early and later negative characterizations of Indio-Mulatto-Mestizos related to whites’ quest for wealth, status, and power within the aegis of their culture and values. In sum, specifically, they take from Mexico’s land, resources and labor by whatever means are viable. The social views and territorial ambitions of President Thomas Jefferson, a Southern slaver, are early expressions of these wants which for long were related to benefits first derived from slaves and later racialized disempowered laborers summed in the observation: “the desire for possession is a disease with them.” There is a historical and ideological context to this quest.

In many studies, “race” applies when ethnicity is judged unchangeable and so is the assigning of place in the hierarchical order of a general society co-inhabited by supra-ordinates and subordinates. These judgments or claims are academic myths. Racism is more complex, more fluid and perennial. For Mexicans in the United States, their mixed heritages of Native American concurrent with those heritages from Africa or Asia and some occasional European descendancy, intertwine the ethnic and racial. Among and between these of formative importance are Native American and Mexican American relations. These all encounter the age-old racial perceptions of Euro-Americans and their racialized practices. For Mexicans, thus, the social science truism applies — race is not real, but racism is — and the pressing concern is white supremacism.

Hierarchy and even ethnicity are indeed subject to change. A happenstance is that some, or many, of the oppressor and oppressed hold (and held) “racialist” notions of themselves, as well as the “other,” whether near or across the globe. Their worldviews are racialized and this should change sometime in the future, hopefully through concerted actions. White supremacism is a further question. Supremacism can be changed through counter empowerment actions as the micro and macro elements of the paradigm of white supremacism pinpoint. Yet, supremacism remains.

The practice of a particular social consciousness can be quite mobile and practical in the pursuits of chosen ends. Analysis of white supremacy requires interpretive elasticity and decisively diverse counter measures to encourage progressive change. One hindrance to this end, a major obstacle, is that whites have been saturated with false history(ies) of themselves; a history which supposedly has been made possible through the practices of white supremacism. Moreover, it’s the fact that this false history and avowed utilitarianist, white supremacism are but two heads of a multi-head monster — a living, breathing real Hydra, an overarching hegemonic, and structured system that requires integral changes.

The U.S. Mexican “ethnic” is visualized as being socially within a historical collectivity descended from a common set of mainly native ancestors. Consciousness of these living legacies is formatively important, as one source of inner strength to counter anti-Mexicanism. True, the perception of outsiders bearing on this is important, but the struggle is also formidably internal. Particularly important is the extent that these influence the self-consciousness of young and adolescent Mexicans. Indeed, the consciousness of Mexicans needs change. In any case, Mexicans evolve socially, as does their consciousness.

Most U.S. Mexicans understand social change intuitively and counter instructively. Mexicans are likely to have some awareness of family social changes in relation to family culture and descendancy, more so than Euro-Americans who resist change — even though, as stated in any case — they also undergo changes. A revised, enriched, shared, Mexican political critical awareness can be an asset in thinking and actions to bring about positive changes. The positive and the negative need to and can be sorted out. Consciousness is an important step to counter oppression. However much complicated, the literature, concepts, and application of the terms race, racism and racialism, the cutting blade is that these are empowered through and by white supremacism beliefs and practices.

Mexican Americans are a bottom ethnic group and unless there are changes, Mexicans will remain so, even in a multi-ethnic and pluralist society, including below white Latinas/os. This may be the case even if the United States becomes a significantly demographically non-white society. This is a consequence, in part, to the diffusion of anti-Mexicanism to all sectors of U.S. society. It is not only taught to whites. Tragically, Mexicans also consume anti-Mexican propaganda and, in turn, produce and diffuse it consciously or unconsciously.

Thus, anti-Mexicanism must be challenged for the sake of the future, not the past. It must be challenged for a society in which children will be safe from past crimes.

―-

Author: Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones is a professor of history at UCLA, specializing in the fields of political, labor, intellectual, and cultural history. As a prolific scholar, key figure in the Chicana/o movement and mentor to countless academics, he has a long trajectory in higher education, civic / political engagement, the arts, poetry, and related activities. Born in Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, he was raised in Boyle Heights (East Los Angeles).

Notes: An extended version of this abridged essay — edited and circulated by Dr. Alvaro Huerta (also raised in Boyle Heights) — will soon be published with references, footnotes, sources, etc. Dr. Huerta aims to publish/circulate this exceptional essay/paradigm in as many outlets possible.

 

Giffords and the Latino Victory Project to Tour Texas to draw attention Hate-Fueled Gun Violence

Hello, 

The shooting in El Paso, Texas and it’s direct targeting of the Latino community shocked the nation. In a concerted effort to push back against incidents of terror like it, Giffords is joining with Latino Victory Project and other local partners to tour Texas and draw attention to the harm hate-fueled gun violence causes.

Below is the press release for the tour, and we will continue to release details about the stops in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio as they become available.

If you have questions or are interested in speaking with Giffords about the tour, please reach out.

Thanks,

Jason Phelps 

jphelps@Giffords.org

  

       

Giffords and Latino Victory Project Announce ¡YA BASTA! Latinos Rise Against Gun Violence and Hate -- a Multi-Stop Texas Tour

Washington D.C. -- Today, Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence and the Latino Victory Project launched ¡YA BASTA! Latinos Rise Against Gun Violence and Hate -- a tour with stops in El Paso, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio -- to raise awareness in the Latino community about the growing threats of gun violence and the white supremacist-based anti-Latino movement. 

The new partnership and tour come in response to the deadliest white-supremacy motivated terrorist attack against Latinos in recent American history. The El Paso town hall will be streamed live via NoticiasTelemundo.com and Noticias Telemundo’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages as part of its recently-launched campaign #LatinoStrong, Unidos Contra el Odio.

Gun violence survivor and founder of Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, alongside Latino Victory Project Executive Director Mayra Macías, will kick off the tour with a town hall in El Paso, Texas, on August 22. Speakers participating in the town hall will also include: Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Texas State Representative Cesar J. Blanco, Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence Executive Director Peter Ambler and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Executive Vice President of Field and Member Services Vanessa Gonzalez. 

"Easy gun access and hate are fueling deadly violence against Latinos in America," said Peter Ambler, Giffords Executive Director. "Texas is vibrant because of communities like El Paso, places of optimism, hope, and people from all different backgrounds united in working toward a stronger country. We are proud to partner in this effort to stand up against the forces of fanaticism and terror. This is a moment for us to come together, share our stories, and stand united in our call for leaders to enact laws that will protect us from hate and gun violence."   

“Our nation just witnessed the largest act of terror against the Latino community in modern American history, where a white supremacist took the lives of 22 innocent people in El Paso, Texas,” said Mayra Macías, Latino Victory Executive Director. “Now more than ever, we need to have an honest and transparent conversation about two of the most pressing issues affecting our country: the gun violence epidemic and the rise of the white-supremacy and anti-Latino movements. We are grateful to partner with Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence as we embark on the “¡YA BASTA! Latinos Rise Against Gun Violence and Hate”.  We thank Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for her tenacity and commitment to make every community in America safe and for joining us in saying: ¡ya basta!” 

“White supremacy kills. It is killing our Latinx community members, our immigrants, our religious minorities, and other marginalized groups. We have seen throughout our country’s history what a system built on white supremacy does, from slavery to Japanese internment camps. Trump’s hateful rhetoric and policies, combined with the absence of common-sense gun safety laws has contributed to the rise in hate-based killings. That is fact, not speculation. Now, more than ever, we must remain united together in the fight to end white supremacy in all its forms,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Executive Vice President. The LCCR Education Fund’s Communities Against Hate initiative is a ¡YA BASTA! Latinos Rise Against Gun Violence and Hate partner.

Additional details about events in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, during the last week of August, are forthcoming.  

###

Giffords, PO Box 51196, Washington, DC 20091 United States

A history of anti-Hispanic bigotry in the United States by Marie Arana

Excellent piece in the Washington Post on a legacy of anti-Latino racism and bigotry.  Peruvian author, Marie Arana, gets to the heart of the matter with respect to the systemic blind spots and ignorance that help account for a long history of vexed U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Latin American relations together with the massive spillover effects in terms of the anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant violence that we are seeing in the  U.S. today,  including:

"...a stubborn unwillingness to understand a population whose ancestors were here by the millions — long before the first pilgrim set foot on Plymouth Rock."

This is a kind of piece that could work well in the newly state-approved high school course in Mexican American Studies.  Although MAS classes can and should incorporate Latin American history and perspectives given the clear overlap, this piece further suggests a need in our state curriculum for the specific study and teaching of Latin American history, geography, art, literature, and  politics.

Thanks to Dr. Tony Baez for sharing.  Read on. 

-Angela Valenzuela

A history of anti-Hispanic bigotry in the United States

This animus bubbles up frequently, with devastating results.

Migrants return to Mexico last week as 15 other migrants line up on their way to request asylum in the United Sates, at the foot of the Puerta Mexico bridge that crosses into Brownsville, Texas, from Matamoros, Mexico. (Emilio Espejel/AP)

By Marie Arana | Washington Post | August 9

Marie Arana, a native of Peru, is the former editor of The Post’s Book World and the author of the forthcoming “Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story.”

Never before have things seemed so hard for Hispanics. The signals are stark and dire: A drowned father, cradling a dead daughter. A lone mother, defending herself against an armed Border Patrol agent, with a terrified toddler at her side. A diatribe hectoring whites to purge the country of a rising brown tide. A Walmart in El Paso, strewn with the dead. Caravans of the hopeful willing to suffer indignities, splinter their families, cower in cages, risk life itself for a distant dream. And looming over it all: a president who shrugs when a voice in the crowd shouts , “Shoot them! ” and who tells Hispanics with roots in this country to go back to the cesspools where they belong. The ground seems to have shifted in this land of the huddled masses.

It has not. These are long-held resentments. For centuries they have been fed by ignorance, racism and a stubborn unwillingness to understand a population whose ancestors were here by the millions — long before the first pilgrim set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Now and then, the animus bubbles up. But bigotry against Hispanics has been an American constant since the Founding Fathers. Not 10 years after drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson smugly suggested that these United States might want to snatch Latin America “piece by piece.” John Adams held that a revolution in South America “would be agreeable,” but he wanted little to do with “a people more ignorant, more bigoted, more superstitious, more implicitly credulous in the sanctity of royalty, more blindly devoted to their priests . . . than any people in Europe, even in Spain” — managing to demonize a religion and dismiss a whole human order in one tweet-able and peevish rhetorical flourish.  

[I became an asylum officer to help people. Now I put them back in harm’s way.]

The hatred was not reserved for Latin America alone but also for its overlords, the Spanish — a hatred inherited from the English, who had warred against Spain for centuries, raiding its shipments of silver and gold to Europe and Asia and profiting from Spain’s woefully mismanaged riches. More rabidly, it extended to the long-suffering indigenous population that predated the European arrivistes. The rationale was not much different from the arguments that had gripped Europe shortly after the conquest: Were the indigenous really human? Wasn’t it more likely that they were beasts of burden? Whoever they were, they were hardly of much importance. They were meant to work the soil, the mines, the bricks; and bear the conquistadors’ children. The law agreed.

By the mid-19th century, when the United States barged past its borders and pushed its dominion into the formerly Mexican lands that are now Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California, that indigenous population had become a mestizo or mixed-race people. Still, the rancor continued. Presidents John Tyler and James Polk seized territory after territory in a fevered campaign to expand America’s Manifest Destiny: in other words, to spread the virtues of American superiority. A grand project of expansion followed, all the way to the wilds of the Rio Grande. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which marked the end of the Mexican-American War, handed 55 percent of Mexico’s territory to the United States. But that victory came with hostages: the Mexican American people. That grudging population was not easy to exterminate; not by war, nor by verdict. There were too many to be herded down trails of tears or consigned to faraway exile, and they were useful, if vexatious. They knew the land, worked the land and could be put to work for white overlords.

Eventually, President William Taft crowed, “the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.” Taft went on to steel the hand of Porfirio Díaz in the infamous dictator’s murderous reign over the Mexican people, to care about nothing so much as protecting American business interests and to order the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua.

But the hand extended to Mexico did not extend to Mexican Americans in Taft’s own country. Lynchings of Hispanics became legion from California to Wyoming during those years, and they went ignored, tracked only by outraged Mexican diplomats who had little power to control the carnage. As the early 20th century progressed, the volatile politics of our southern neighbor spurred even more Mexican emigration to the United States, delighting American businessmen who needed cheap labor to build railroad tracks, erect towns, toil on ranches and stoop over agricultural fields. Mexican Americans were wanted for their sweat, their military service, their taxes, but not for their children or their company.

[In Trump’s vision of a white America, immigrants should be grateful and servile]

Resentment against a growing Hispanic presence in cities and schools found voice in English-only edicts, emboldening white Americans to treat Latinos as an unwelcome foreign underclass. In the small Texas town of Three Rivers, a Hispanic soldier returning from World War II in a coffin was denied a proper funeral. Farther west, in California, political cartoonists and crime novelists were characterizing a rising tide of young Mexican American males as a menace. In Los Angeles, thousands of soldiers and civilians descended on Hispanic youths in 1943 in a virulent attack known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Brown Americans were pushed into segregated communities, forbidden from serving on juries, their children made to attend “Mexican” schools. In southern Arizona, migrant farmworkers were kidnapped, robbed, tortured — their feet seared over fire — and told to go home.

Within our own lifetimes, things have often looked grim. “Latin America doesn’t matter,” said Richard Nixon, even as he was issuing directives to throttle Chile’s economy and bring an inconvenient socialist government to its knees. “People don’t give a s---” about the place. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger concurred: What happens down there “has no importance,” he said. And so Americans have not been very curious about the region that is feeding our burgeoning Hispanic population. We’ll do anything for Latin America, except read about it, James Reston, a former executive editor of the New York Times, once quipped. “You’d be surprised!” Ronald Reagan told the American people, after his first official trip to Central America. “They’re all individual countries!”

So it should surprise nobody that a generation later, in 2006, Hal Turner, a prominent radio talk-show host in New Jersey whose show is broadcast across the country, would revel in the idea of Latin America as the sinister, dark continent. “These filthy, disease-ridden, two-legged bags of human debris are too stupid to believe,” he said on the air. “Just think, America, if we bring enough of them here, they can do for America exactly what they did for Mexico! Turn our whole country into a crime-ridden, drug-infested slum. . . . These people are subhuman. I would love it if folks who do have such weapons used them on the crowds. . . . I advocate machine-gunning these invaders to death at their rallies!”

It’s not a big leap from those words, uttered on American radio waves a dozen years ago, to the rhetoric in the statement linked to the El Paso shooting suspect (“If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable”). And it’s not a far cry from labels like “subhuman” to the tweets of a president: from words like “stupid,” “filthy,” “human debris” to words like “rapists,” “criminals,” “invasion.” These slurs against Latinos, in one form or another, have been in the American parlance for a very long time. The pity, of course, is that like the starving Irish fleeing the famine, or the Russians eluding the life-or-death dangers of the pale, or the Germans shucking the very real hazards of religious oppression, Latin American immigrants risk the flight north to escape concrete, life-threatening conditions: crime, drugs, poverty. Of the 50 most violent cities in the world, 43 are in Latin America. Of the 25 countries with the highest murder rates, nearly half are south of the Rio Grande. To understand why this is so, we need to understand a half-millennium of history, the cruel legacy of a brutal colonial structure and the rampant corruption of the white-brown caste system it has engendered. We need to understand the region’s greatest affliction: its dire inequality.

It’s not a big leap from those words, uttered on American radio waves a dozen years ago, to the rhetoric in the statement linked to the El Paso shooting suspect (“If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable”). And it’s not a far cry from labels like “subhuman” to the tweets of a president: from words like “stupid,” “filthy,” “human debris” to words like “rapists,” “criminals,” “invasion.” These slurs against Latinos, in one form or another, have been in the American parlance for a very long time.

The pity, of course, is that like the starving Irish fleeing the famine, or the Russians eluding the life-or-death dangers of the pale, or the Germans shucking the very real hazards of religious oppression, Latin American immigrants risk the flight north to escape concrete, life-threatening conditions: crime, drugs, poverty. Of the 50 most violent cities in the world, 43 are in Latin America. Of the 25 countries with the highest murder rates, nearly half are south of the Rio Grande. To understand why this is so, we need to understand a half-millennium of history, the cruel legacy of a brutal colonial structure and the rampant corruption of the white-brown caste system it has engendered. We need to understand the region’s greatest affliction: its dire inequality.

Latin America is the most unequal region on Earth precisely because it has never ceased to be colonized — by exploiters, conquerors, proselytizers, and, for the past two centuries, by multinational corporations and its own tiny elite. As economists have long argued, extractive societies such as Latin America’s are built on social injustice. They are designed and maintained by a ruling class whose primary goal is to enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. They thrive when absolute privilege reigns over absolute poverty. But extractive nations are also programmed to fail. The damage caused by their endless raid on natural resources is all too enduring. It is violence, resentment, poverty, environmental damage, crime. Fear is the engine that drives Latin Americans north.

[Trump’s new asylum rule will guarantee more separated families]

The irony is that so many are here because they were always here; as Mexican Americans like to say: They didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them. Or they are here because the lure to emulate Hispanic Americans who are living better lives is irresistible. Never before has a wave of immigrants joined such a large minority. Latinos in the United States now number 56.5 million, a full 18 percent of the population. According to the Pew Research Center, that’s a whopping 40 percent increase over 40 years. Almost two-thirds are native-born. By 2050, Hispanics will account for a third of this country’s residents.

Which is to say that whatever Jefferson and Adams and Nixon thought is obviously wrong. Latin America does matter to the United States, and it always has. The long, complicated history that has convulsed nations and propelled Hispanics to our shores should be of utmost importance to us. Latin America’s history is not remotely like U.S. history. Its colonies were more exploited, its revolutions more extreme. It is a region unlike any other, where theories or doctrines fashioned elsewhere seldom have purchase. We would do well to study it. It’s about time we understood what Latin Americans bring with them when they come. And it’s about time we understood the deeply held racism that has always met them.

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Mass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Explained

Beginning with Amy Goodman's reporting in this video from Democracy Now!, here are a few reports that raise a lot of concerns about the systematic dehumanization of immigrant workers and their families in Mississippi's chicken processing plants.   Relatedly, please do recall earlier reporting on the extremely consequential cruelty and resulting trauma already getting inflicted on children at the U.S.-Mexico border who as a  consequence of forced separation from their parents will pay an extremely high psychological price as follows:

This kind of trauma can permanently affect the brains of these children, and potentially their long-term development, explained Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, on Thursday at the Spotlight Health Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. Excerpted from Olga Khazan's June 22, 2018 piece in The Atlantic titled, Separating Kids From Their Families Can Permanently Damage Their Brains

As if to relish in the cruelty, this ICE raid in Mississippi also happened on the exact same day that Trump was in El Paso, ostensibly expressing concern for the victims of an anti-Mexican hate crime that slaughtered 22 people, injuring 26.  

The story told on Democracy Now! about Mississippi is that this was an act of retaliation against the plants that  had been unionized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union because these corporations do not support unions.

CSUF Professor of Social Work
Dr. Michelle Martin

Finally, do read this analysis of companies raided this week by Dr. Michelle Martin Assistant Professor of Social Work at California State University, Fullerton that she posted recently on Facebook:

Koch Foods CEO Joseph C. Grendy

“I’ve been doing a bit of research on the companies that were raided this past week in MS. All six chicken processing companies have wealthy white owners, none of who have (yet) been charged criminally for knowingly hiring undocumented workers (and they did know, because all participate in the E-Verify program).

Here's some information about the largest company and the worst offender: Koch Foods, Inc. (no relation to the Koch brothers).  The CEO and president is Joseph C. Grendys, a 58 year old white man worth $3.3B.

Koch processes more than 50 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken per week, slaughtering 12 million chickens per week. Koch Foods, Inc. processes Wal-Mart's "Great Value" buffalo wings, chicken strips, chicken tenders and popcorn chicken, Burger King's chicken nuggets and other private-label brands at grocery stores, such as Kroger and Aldi (Archer Farms). https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-confidential-chicken-bi…

Koch Foods, Inc. was raided under the Bush administration in 2007 for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and they had to pay a fine of $536K in 2010: https://www.reuters.com/…/us-immigration-koch-idUSN28258450…

Apparently that fine wasn't enough of a deterrent for them, because they continued to hire undocumented workers. Why? Grendys' comment in the above-linked Chicago Tribune article explains the practice: maintaining a good labor force is very difficult and employee turnover is high.

They have also been targets of numerous allegations of egregious workplace conditions where Hispanic workers, particularly those without documentation were subjected to hostile and unsafe work conditions. Some of the proven allegations include denying workers bathroom breaks, sexually harassing and assaulting the female Hispanic workers, and harassing employees who attempted to unionize, including firing them and/or threatening them with ICE referrals.

One worker complained: "What I didn't like is they would yell at us and tell us we're good for nothing and we didn't know how to work, and sometimes they wouldn't even let us leave to go home when we were sick,"

https://www.nytimes.com/…/union-organizers-at-poultry-plant…

The work is grueling enough, but Koch Foods supervisors required workers to "chop" the chickens at a rate of 42-chickens-a-minute. "That pace means that many workers make 18,000 cuts during their eight-hour shifts as they prepare breasts, wings, tenders and cutlets for restaurants and consumers. If they couldn't keep up, or got injured, they were fired."

Also, the EEOC found on several occasions that the workplace conditions were dangerous and violated numerous safety laws. This resulted in injuries such as amputations and even death.

https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/…/koch-foods-cited-fo…http://src.bna.com/vWr

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region4/01252018

Koch Foods, Inc. even had to pay one employee $1.9M for unsafe working conditions that led to the amputation of several fingers: https://www.wattagnet.com/…/32273-jury-rules-against-koch-f…

Here's one of the most egregious things Koch Foods, Inc. did. They not only knowingly hired undocumented workers (recruiting many from Texas border towns), they used their undocumented status to control and exploit them. A federal criminal investigation found that supervisors would often falsely tell undocumented workers that they'd received a "no-match" letter indicating a problem with their social security number, and for $700 the company could get them a new SSN.

And yet, it's not the company that gets charged criminally, it's the poor and vulnerable (and recruited!) undocumented workers: https://www.journal-news.com/…/sher…/aGsNHxQCJQVJmnK522l0iL/#

These workers made about $7.80 an hour, but if they worked in a darkened room where thousands of live chickens poured down a chute where workers grabbed them and killed them, and then hung them on a hook (about 40 per minute), they got $1 more per hour. If they worked in the "chopping" room, they got 50 cents more per hour.

Now, here's the suspicious part. In 2015 workers started organizing a union and Koch Foods, Inc. did everything they could (including outright harassment and firing organizing employees) to stop the action: http://ufcw75.org/…/illegally-fired-workers-win-settlement…/

And in 2016, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Koch for paying all Hispanic females significantly less than males, while giving them more work, and then firing them for complaining: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/9-30-19c.cfm

But in 2018, Koch lost a huge EEOC case for the overt sexual harassment of Hispanic female workers (mostly undocumented). This amounted to sexual harassment and assault as male supervisors felt free to grope and verbally harass the most vulnerable workers in the plant: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/8-1-18b.cfm

Are you suspicious that the targeted raid was planned apparently right after they lost this large EEOC complaint? Me too.

Also, in case you're wondering, Koch Foods, Inc. doesn't just discriminate against Hispanic workers, the company discriminates against black farmers as well: https://www.propublica.org/…/how-a-top-chicken-company-cut-…#

They abuse the chickens too: https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-mercy-for-animals-chick…

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/…/animal-rights-group-claims-…/

And these seven companies aren't the only ones engaged in the practice of recruiting undocumented workers (because they are an easily manipulated and stable workforce). In 2001 Tyson Chicken executives were charged for recruiting undocumented workers from Mexico, and then providing them with fake identification (the workers thought their IDs were real, and were later charged criminally for having false identification papers.)

Despite clear-cut evidence, the case was dismissed in 2003, and no company has been criminally charged since (apparently it's bad for U.S. business).

https://www.nytimes.com/…/tyson-foods-indicted-in-plan-to-s…

It was later discovered Tyson executives paid bribes to government officials, prior to the charges being dropped. In response to the bribery the DOJ fined the company $5.2 million, but did not bring criminal charges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/11tyson.html

Apparently Tyson execs didn't learn their lesson either, because they were back at it in 2010!:

https://www.justice.gov/…/2013/05/06/02-10-11tyson_foods_dp…

This is nothing more than slavery. The more vulnerable and desperate the worker, the better. Recruit undocumented workers, give them fake identification, work them to the point of grave injury or death, and then cry "America First!" and fire them if they complain. Then INS/ICE can come in screaming "we're a land of laws!" and charge the undocumented workers with violating U.S. immigration laws, while letting the companies slide (better for the economy, right?). The companies can then start all over with a new crop of scared and vulnerable workers, and the problem of unionization and demands for better workplace conditions is gone..

But hey, I hope everyone (especially the anti-immigration folks out there) enjoys their cheap chicken wings...

https://truthout.org/…/mississippi-ice-raids-targeted-work…/ “

***

In short, these reports help expose the state-sponsored terrorism that the Department of Homeland Security and this administration, are heaping on very vulnerable immigrant children and families who as workers, perform highly-dangerous jobs at very low pay in Mississippi’s chicken processing plants.  

And, as Dr. Martin correctly points out, this IS nothing more than slavery—and fascism, too, I might add, with our government working hand-in-hand with corporations to mete out monstrous cruelty against Latino immigrant families and children.

We must call this out, my friends.  These are not the good  people of Mississippi behind these atrocities.  The so-called "freedom" that Trump and the corporations want is to impoverish, enslave, and exploit hard-working, self-sacrificing people who are not in our country to do harm to others, but rather to work at great personal expense to them.  Sadly and tragically, THEY pay the price and NOT their greedy, heartless employers.

-Angela Valenzuela