Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones |
Guest
essay by Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones
“Where have you been my darling young one?” —Bob Dylan,
“A Hard Rain”
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 publicly 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.
***
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).
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