Chicanonautica: Guajolote Day in Trumptopia

by Ernest Hogan

I’ve got Thanksgiving duty this year, so feliz Día del Guajolote, all of you on LaBlogalandia! 

May your guajolote be tasty, on this day were the EE.UU. eats native meat. 

The Aztec god Chalchuihtotolin, AKA Jade Turkey or Precious Night Turkey, should be happy. He’s the god of plagues. Would that make him the god of biological warfare? We really should keep him in a good mood. . .

What would we be eating in an unconquered Aztlán? Buffalo steak with roast grasshopper tacos on the side? Or perhaps a choice cut of a prisoner of war?

Uh-oh. Is that too extreme?

Could be why someone--or something--keeps reporting La Bloga as spam to Facebook? Whatever the motive, it reeks of malice. And it's something I am not thankful for.

After all, this is Trumptopia--may it self-destruct without taking too many of us with it. Maybe another sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca is in order . . .

I keep getting this oozing-down-a-quagmire feeling that all the social progress that I’ve seen in my lifetime could be wiped out in less than a decade of stupidity, leaving us in a New Dark Age. 

It does seem to be what some people want. What some people consider utopia is dystopia to others, and vice versa. The sad truth is, most people just want something to conform to, rules to follow . . . and enforce. Never forget that.

In glorious spite of it all, I’m thankful for a lot. I’ve had a writing career--correction, have a writing career. I still get published--and rejected, but that’s part of the deal. I didn’t think that my being a Chicano would be such a problem for the publishing world as we know it. As a “minority” (I don’t like the term, I prefer to think of myself as part of this planet’s brown majority, but that idea gets a lot of resistance) writer I was supposed be satisfied with being published once or twice and fade into obscurity. I refuse to go that pitiful way. I have allies in science fiction, academia, noncorporate publishing, and other “minorities.” My long, hard guerrilla campaign will continue . . .

But that’s my everyday struggle. Today, I’m going to enjoy the guajolote, (or huexolotl, to be truer to the original Nahuatl). I suggest you do it, too. 

Tomorrow we can get back to the madness of the age.

May Chalciuhtotolin smile upon us.

Ernest Hogan is currently working on a story set in an Aztlán that has seceded from the EE.UU., and another one about Nazis in Arizona.