Chicanonautica: A Post-Cinco de Mayo Report from Trumptopia

by Ernest Hogan

The day before, I found myself reposting my Mondo Ernesto piece “The Gun-Toting, Blackfaced Transvestites of Cinco de Mayo” on Facebook in another vain attempt to remind people of the true meaning of the holiday. I fully realize that it probably wouldn't do any good. People would get drunk anyway, and Cinco is on Friday, so it could go on all weekend. 

It might as well be St. Patrick's Day.

And I had funny feelings about this year, 2017, just after Trump did his first 100 days and claiming that he's accomplished things that didn't happen. Where is that wall? And the deportation force? Does he even know how to create a fascist state?

And his fans don't seem to care. They would probably be slurping Margaritas and cerveza while wearing sombreros, sarapes, and fake mustaches, listening to flamenco while thinking it's mariachi music. What do they care? They have their delusions to keep them warm.

I still can't see why reenacting la Batalla de Puebla never caught on on this side of the Border. Colorful costumes, French troops against Zacapoaxtlas, facing off with fake muskets and swords. Get some exercise before drinking.

Meanwhile, after hearing rumblings about people wanting to flee the country, in my neighborhood in Glendale, Arizona, just across the railroad tracks from Phoenix, in the infamous West side of the valley where many Anglos fear to tread, not much has changed. Roosters still crow at all hours of the day. Most of the neighbors speak Spanish. My wife and I hear a lot of Norteño when we take our evening walk. Yeah, we get helicopters hovering over us, but there's a new generation of brown kids inputting the data that's keeping businesses running, and making the future.

A future that will be in direct conflict with Trumptopia.

I brace myself; sometimes having an overdeveloped, overactive imagination can be a problem.

Then I found out that Trump would not be celebrating Cinco de Mayo at the White House, ending a sixteen-year tradition. Pence is to do an event at at an undetermined location. Maybe Trump didn't want to look like a hypocrite, but that never stopped him before.

Could it be that he really does have a problem with Mexico/Mexicans/Chicanos/Hispanics/Latinos? That's an awful lot of people. Most of the folks in this hemisphere, actually. Las Américas, love us or leave us.

There were reports of people being afraid of going to events. Maybe those deportation forces are there after all. And this was all before the day . . .

On the actual Cinco, it was bright, sunny, hot, and a rooster crowed all morning. Pence did his Cinco thing in the White House, did some coached, awkward españolizing, and blah-blahed about the wonderful contributions people who can trace their roots back to Mexico have made to this soon-to-be great again country, and announced the not-yet here Age of Trumpcare. There were news stories about Latinos being nervous about raids on celebrations, Trump piñatas being big sellers, great deals on Margaritas, and one fatal stabbing that may or may not have been politically motivated.

Luckily, there was cerveza in my refrigerator.

Ernest Hogan's High Aztech has been reviewed by Strange Horizons, saying it displays “a real knack on Hogan’s part for packaging progressive politics in imaginatively lively and entertaining ways . . .”