Chicanonautica: The Wild, Wild Border

by Ernest Hogan

 

There was this TV series back in my antediluvian 1960s childhood, The Wild, Wild West. There really hasn’t been anything else like it, since. Now it’s being rediscovered as early steampunk. It provides interesting material for rethinking the western genre, and different takes on history. Yeah, it ain’t so politically correct, but this was over half a century ago.

It came out of the James Bond-inspired secret agent genre. For a few years, spies armed with gadgets that bordered on sci-fi were everywhere, movies, TV shows, sleazy paperbacks, and people ate it up.

I imagine the idea had the network seeing dollar signs: James Bond in the Old West! And back then Hollywood still had western sets, props and costumes. 

The problem is, the genre was all about the Cold War. How do they come up with Bond villains in the post-Civil War Southwest? That’s where it gets Chicanonautical. It seems that back then the Border was an issue . . .

 

I caught the first three episodes—you can watch them for free on Pluto TV—as suggested with the cartoon James West karate-chopping a bandito in the credits sequence, and they were dead on. 

The pilot goes right to heart of the matter: A renegade Mexican general is taking land and towns and is planning on taking back the former Mexican territories. Aztlán! 

If that weren’t enough, turns out the general is being financed by an opium-smoking Chinese merchant (he offers the hero some) played by Victor Buono—King Tut from the Sixties Batman, who also was a similar yellowface villain in the Dean Martin/Matt Helm film The Silencers.

But wait! Turns out he’s actually a Mexican in disguise. A Chicano identity crisis! 

There are no Mexicans, or even Latinos in the cast! All the guys with sombreros and accents are Anglos, including Ross Martin, the master of disguise/sidekick.

We go from that to another border crisis: A French man, still in Mexico after the French occupation—Emperor Maximilian, the Battle of Puebla/Cinco de Mayo, and why lots of Mexicans have French names—wants to be the Napoleon of Norteamerica, has developed a secret weapon to destroy the railroads.  A “Latin” America, ruled by Francophones would become a reality. Lots of people in the areas nabbed in the Louisiana Purchase already spoke French—this includes some Indian tribes. Imagine a non-Anglo Midwest . . . Alternate universes keep popping up.

The third menace introduces the recurring villain, Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a mad scientist from a wealthy Spanish–Hispanic rather than Latino–family who once owned most of California. He wants it back and threatens to blow up San Francisco with his new explosive. 

For some reason, the name of the city is never spoken. Did the network think it was a bad idea to suggest such a diabolical plan with all that radical dissent going on across the bay in Berkeley? 

Another thing not mentioned is the fact that Loveless was a dwarf. Maybe this wasn’t part of the script, but the serendipitous casting was of Michael Dunn.

All these threats on the Anglo-American identity of Aztlán . . . or should I say in this case, the Southwest?

The villains are all non-Anglo. Somehow, I can relate to them better than the “white” heroes.

And now that a presidential candidate is threatening to seal off the border, defend it with the military, and round up people without the right documentation in a reboot of Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback–though for some reason avoiding that politically incorrect name–these fantasies from the past can be enlightening.

Is this the way the Anglos really see us?

Ernest Hogan was born in East L.A., Aztlán. All his life his citizenship has been questioned. His latest book is Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song: 15 Gonzo Science Fiction.

Chicanonautica: Guajolote Con Man Corn

by Ernest Hogan

I’ve got the Día de los Guajolotes duty here at La Bloga again. Luckily, I've  just finished Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest  by Christy G. Turner and Jacqueline A. Turner, the classic book of cannibalism in Aztlán!

Yeah, it’s disturbing. There are those who would prefer that it be the case the Aztláni were pansexual vegetarian pacifists, but there’s way too much forensic evidence to the contrary. And it would dishonor our ancestors to misrepresent them.

Even though it's probably as politically incorrect as bullfighting, I’m proud of my cannibal heritage. My connection to the Aztecs delights me. And is there a more badass way to step out of the mindset of Western Civilization?

I’m also fascinated with cannibalism here in el Norte. After all, the border did not exist. “Mexican” and “American” tribes moved around the continent, fought and traded with each other.

Why are the Mohawks known by a name derived from mohowaog, a Narragesett word meaning “man-eater?”

How did the extinct (or should we say “exterminated?”) Karanawas manage to have their native Texas Gulf Coast known as the Cannibal Coast?

Why do conquistador accounts sound more like outtakes from European fairy tales than documented native practices?

I’ve visited a lot of the sites where the evidence of cannibalism was found. Man Corn cuts close to home.

It’s a scientific, academic study;  evidence is presented, and there is a lot of it. The bulk of the book consists of the data from forms filled out about each site. No sensationalism, just the facts, ma’am. Descriptions, numbers, dates, locations . . . It should be dull, but it’s . . . disturbing. 

All this “body processing” for consumption. Like our ritual “processing” of our Thanksgiving turkeys.

The word “disarticulated”comes up often. An interesting word.

There are a helluvalota photos of bones. Disarticulated, of course, and damaged in ways that indicate that that flesh was removed, and sometimes cooked. Most probably eaten, too. Why else would you go to the trouble to do that to a body?

Look at your turkey after the feast.

The damaged bones, arranged so they can be identified take on the aspect of abstract art. A new kind of beauty, if you can detach it from the fact that they are the remains of human beings, reduces them to pure data. There but for the grace of the gods . . .

Most of these incidents of violence and cannibalism are attributed to the Anasazi, in and around Chaco Canyon. I’ve visited a lot of the sites. The tourist information concentrates on the sophisticated architecture, and the petroglyphs that show a detailed knowledge of astronomy. Forget your stereotypes of cannibals as brutish primitives.

The victims were men, women, and children. The disarticulated bones are often found in structures that have been destroyed,  burned, roofs collapsed, abandoned . . . was it ritual sacrifice? Warfare? Mass psychosis? Cult behavior?

The possibilities of a Mexican connection/Aztec influence is suggested. Photos of Aztec-style “dental mutilation” (tooth sculpting that is really impressive when you realize they were done with stone tools) are included, but the Chaco killings were done with blows to the head, while the Aztec by heart removal.

Some mysteries can only be solved with the help of a time machine.

I’m reminded of what a character in my novel High Aztech said:  If you don’t acknowledge the cannibal inside you, he’ll come out and take control when you least expect it.

So, happy disarticulating!

Ernest Hogan recently discussed High Aztech with the students of William Nericcio’s English 220, Robotic, Erotic, Electric class at San Diego State University.

Chicanonautica: On the Lookout for Aztlán

By Ernest Hogan

Every summer, my wife (author of Medusa Uploaded) and I, and her mother take a road trip to New Mexico, and other nearby states. The Southwest. AKA, the Wild West. I like to think of it as Aztlán. I keep on the lookout for signs of the world that existed before the coming of tract housing, strip malls, and other air-conditioned delusions. It can often be found in the wide-open post-apocalyptic landscapes, with the ancient ruins, postmodern ghost towns, and roadside datura.

This year we reversed our usual routine, and shot up north through the Apache, Hopi and Navajo reservations, on our way to Utah. Indian country is always a relief after being in the heat island of Phoenix for weeks of killer summer.

I was glad to see that some of the murals on crumbling structures had been touched up--there were even some new ones. Last year they were all looking neglected, and I was afraid that another interesting cultural development was disintegrating under the current political/economic environment. I should have known, outlaw art doesn’t die easy.

Our first stop was Kanab, “Utah’s Little Hollywood,” where movie people stayed while creating their new Americano mythology. Murals romanticize the pioneers, though back in the nineteenth century, everybody called them “emigrants.” The streets bristle with tributes to celluloid cowboys and Indians, some long forgotten.

Emily’s mom asked about a “traditional Mexican restaurant,” but there weren’t any to be found. There weren’t any Mexicans to be seen. I was the closest anybody came, and the white tourists speaking Germanic or Scandinavian languages looked at me with my brown skin and bandido moustache as if I were part of the kitschy decor.

We had better luck in Parowan (a Native word meaning “evil water” . . . hmm), a town on the Old Spanish Trail, from the pre-Anglo days. Right on the Trail was La Villa, touted as a Lozano restaurant--lozano meaning sexy, romantic, hot, gorgeous, but also elegant, haughty, or arrogant. To our delight, it was an old-fashioned place with good Mexican food made by Mexicans. Emily’s mom approved.

Besides Asian tourists, the next non-Anglos we saw were Native Americans in Blanding, also home of the fabulous Dinosaur Museum. They were in and around the Edge of the Cedars Museum. One guy was crossing a street. Some worked there. One woman came in as a customer. Indians were as scarce as Mexicans in Utah. “The Utes and Paiutes are practically invisible,” Emily remarked.

In Bluff, near the Four Corners, but still in Utah, we enjoyed Navajo tacos in the Twin Rocks Cafe. It’s was founded in 1880, built on the ruins of a pueblo that archeologists estimate dates back to 650 A.D. In the Big Rez, Navajos seems to be taking over the town, which is a good thing.

Finally, we cut across Monument Valley (Hollywood’s Texas backdrop) through Arizona into New Mexico. After passing through the Navajo and Zuñi reservations, it was hard to keep up with what tribal lands we were in. And you could see the Indians. The Hispanos were everywhere, along with names in Spanish that go back to before America invaded.

"It feels good to be surrounded by people who speak my Spanish,” said Emily’s mom, who in Utah, tried to talk to the Indians in Spanish, and got only puzzled looks.

Ernest Hogan, contributor to the American Book Award winning Altermundos, took a lot of pictures and notes while vacationing in Aztlán. He will be blogging about it at Mondo Ernesto soon.

Chicanonautica: Scenes from a Manifesto

by Ernest Hogan

Like I've been saying, my Chicanonautica Manifesto was published in the Fall 2015, Volume 40, Number 2 issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Maybe you're curious as to what I say in it. Maybe you got some money instead of gifts for the Holidaze, and are wondering if you should buy the issue. Maybe you just need to be tempted.

So I've put together this series of quotes from the Manifesto, a sort of trailer, with full-color versions of my art that appears as grayscale in the journal. This includes a higher-resolution version of my “Calacanaut” logo:

Sci-fi came into the barrio through the airwaves, and I saw it as part of my natural environment, my heritage. I'm a proud recombocultural mongrel. When I got around to experimenting with writing about Chicano characters, they came to life, leapt off the page, like monsters from a mad scientist’s lab.

Chicano is a science fiction state of being. Even when I try to write mainstream, or even nonfiction, it’s seen as fantastic.

I seem to be a Chicanonaut – a Chicano who's always going out of bounds, crossing borders, new frontiers, going beyond the barrio. One small step for a Chicano . . . And of course, by my being somewhere else, I bring the barrio with me. And when I come back home from my explorations, the barrio is transformed.

Purity has turned out to be a handicap when dealing with the future, and the unknown.

In 21st century, the publishing world is being transformed by the intertwined developments of technology and society. It’s making the world more Chicano -- by the mid-century it will look like a Chicano planet.

I'm not interested in being puro Mexicano and only reaching the gente in the barrio. My roots embrace the planet, and reach out for the universe – the Intergalactic Barrio.

Okay, so buy it if you're interested. If you're offended, I feel I've still done my job. Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Ernest Hogan is the author of Cortez on Jupiter, Smoking Mirror Blues, High Aztech, and works that have appear in publications as diverse as Analog and Aztlán. He is also an artist, and a sixty year-old kid who's trying to get his shit together.

Puños de Gaza and mestizo children on our border.

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I am in Taos for the weekend, for the Fiestas de Taos, surrounded by histories of peoples going back tens of thousands of years. I'm eating well, staying in the great Casa Taos facility, anticipating sitting down with one of America's greatest writers, advocate of Chicanismo--and I should be primed to do a worthy posting today.

I'm not.

My head buzzes with bits and scenes, descriptions and words about 50,000 children attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, niños you've read and heard about for weeks. Children that certain heartless Americans don't want here, don't want to take in, not considered good enough to be taken care of, like adults are supposed to treat children. Hatred, racist epithets and the basest behavior of my species featured on headlines and newscasts, every day.

I could say or write thousands of things about that, but I can only manage a few.

Because, also buzzing in my head is the running casualty list coming out of Israel. A number that's passing 200. 200, including children, Palestinians who are being attacked by technologically superior armed forces led by Israeli generals, directed by the Israeli government and supported apparently by the majority of Israeli citizens who do have civil rights. And paid for by my taxes.

My gov't says we support "the right of the Israelis to defend themselves." [Last I heard, at least one Israeli had been killed during the time that the 200 Palestinians were slaughtered.]

The Israeli's actions remind me of a conversation I once had with a Jewish woman. She said she agreed with the Chicanos' Aztlán, the lost location of the Aztec's original homeland in the U.S. Southwest. That for Chicanos to gain their civil rights, their rightful place in this country, retaking Aztlán was an honorable goal. And that that's all the Israeli's were doing in Palestine.

If the Chicanos were to retake Aztlán like the Israeli's are disenfranchising Palestinians, like they are dismembering the Palestinian homelands, like they are dislocating families, like they are strafing kids on beaches, with missiles, then the Chicanos would be guilty of crimes against humanity, of genocide, of neo-apartheid. Yet, somehow my President says, the Israeli's "have a right to defend themselves." I agree with him no more than I agreed with that blinded Jewish woman.

What the Israelis, particularly the Zionists, have done and continue to do in Palestine is not about being Jewish. The "Jews" are not the problem; the Zionist apartheid is. I've noticed some Chicanos getting sloppy in the heat of their anger and disgust about this crisis. Don't get sloppy. All Anglos do not support the mistreatment of the border mestizos. Nor are all Jews responsible for what goes on within Israel. Many within both countries actively oppose their governments' inhumanitarian actions.

There's so much more to say, but my head's too buzzed.

I'm in no mood to review a book, post some of my fiction, share pics of my trip to Taos. Because there are children on opposite sides of the world--around the U.S. southern border and behind concrete walls and barbed wire in Gaza--children who are an embarrassment to my government, forming two humanitarian crises that the American people, as a whole, are not buzzed about.

Two humanitarian crises that make it difficult for me to enjoy myself in Taos.

I believe, that's how it should be.

Not just for me.

RudyG

Go to Border Angels if you can aid the Border children. Do what you feel you can about the children in Gaza.

Chicanonautica: Back in New Mexico with Rudolfo, Buffalo Bill, and the Gang

by Ernest Hogan

I always take books when I travel, and end up bringing more back with me.. This happened with my latest New Mexico road trip. 

David Hatcher Childress’ Lost Cities & Ancient Mysteries of the Southwest reminded me of the weirdness that wasn’t obvious. Or as he wrote: The history of North America was one of continual invasion and displacement . . . His reports of lost treasure, strange creatures, rumors of visitors from other continents and planets fit in with the state’s fantastic landscape. All the layers on incredible layers. You really need imagination to see it all.

I brought Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony along, not knowing it was about New Mexico. I felt it would be good to read a novel about Indians while I was passing through more Indian reservations than I could keep track of. Then it clicked: I kept recognizing the names of places. I was hooked into this story of Indian warriors who were brought into World War Two, then rejected by the white world as they came back to the Atomic Age. Maybe the medicine man didn't laugh all the time; maybe the dreams and voices were talking over again, as Silko put it. It was all more powerful when I was in those mountains, breathing that sky. 

Then I started finding books. I’m always on the lookout for them. And when I travel, the hunter/gatherer instincts go into overdrive.

Mary Hunter Austin’s The Land of Journeys’ Ending won me over with its first line: This being a book of prophecy, a certain appreciation of the ritualistic approach is assumed for the reader. First published in 1924, it uses and defines the word “Aztlán.” Its map shows the region without the modern borders. It revels in geology, flora & fauna, climate, and history back to the time of what Austin calls “our Ancients.” 

There’s great stuff like the story an African slave who went renegade, looking for the Seven Cities of Gold: So that is the last we see of Estevánico, going to a city of Zuñi in his fake medicine trappings, with his greyhounds and his concubines, plumes on his arms and his ankles; then confused rumor of flight and wounding. 

Austin also gets quite poetic. But in New Mexico, poetry tends to radiate out of the Earth, come raining out of the sky. You can’t help it when it starts oozing out of you.

It happened to me. I put it in my blog.

And of course, this is Rudolfo Anaya country. Cruising the highway past signs advertising curanderas had me wishing I  had packed a copy of Bless Me, Ultima. And one came to me. I can’t say how this happened, but in Ultima’s words: 

A curandera cannot give away her secrets, but if a person really wants to know, then he will listen and see and be patient. Knowledge comes slowly --

And it comes from “the Aztec, Mayas, and even those of the old, old country, the Moors.” And you find it in New Mexico. You may see the fireballs that people call UFOs these days, but Anaya described as “brujas on their way to their meeting places.” Or the mermaid, or the golden carp . . .

It all had me feeling nostalgic for the legendary Wild West that dominated pop culture in my childhood, but is now being replaced by corporate-owned superheroes. To the video game generation it’s rapidly becoming like the mythology of a lost civilization. It needs to be documented.

And Mary Austin’s description of the cibolleros -- professional buffalo-hunters, men of mixed blood and habits, heir to that mysterious aboriginal capacity for “thinking buffalo” -- and a close encounter with some real, live buffalo had me evoking Buffalo Bill.

Then I found a paperback with Buffalo Bill’s Leap for Life on the spine.  It was a reprint of the 100th issue of The Buffalo Bill Stories: A Weekly Publication Devoted to Border History. An alternate title, The White Death of Beaver Wash was given. It was packed with rip-snorting, blood ‘n’ guts action; it flirted with the supernatural and teetered on the precipice of surrealism.

And it has writing like: “There’s that Wild West wonder, Buffalo Bill, curse him!” ejaculated Brattle, with some misgiving. 

The slim volume included another novella,  The James Boys in California, by D.W. Stevens. The series presumes after their career as bank robbers, Jesse and Frank James devoted their lives to wandering the West, righting wrongs, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, or the Cisco Kid and Pancho. 

The prose gets flowery: “Draw your own, you yellow-faced, saffron-skinned alligator,” cried the young American, who was evidently in a high glee at the prospect of a “little fuss.” 

Getting back to the Atomic Age, I found William Eastlake’s The Bronc People, a tale from the 20th century, when Indians became cowboys, that acknowledges the Hollywood western in the first sentence, then proceeds to deconstruct that myth and notions about history, race, and the American Dream.

Take the fact the Indians speak more languages than they could keep track of . . . but two of these languages they spoke poorly, so they counted them as one. English and Pueblo were the two foreign languages that counted as one. 

I wonder what the English Only crowd would think of that?

Getting back to the Information Age, Juan Blea’s 2006 Butterfly Warrior, “a high tech thriller set in a Santa Fe seldom seen by tourists” mixes barrio angst with nanotechnology, with Aztec spirituality bubbling through: By taking the spirit of The Butterfly Warrior, we can live and die in peace knowing that ours is a just battle. It’s 21st century Chicanismo from the heart Aztlán.

And I'm delighted to report that literature is alive and kicking in New Mexico.

Now that I’m home, I’ll miss that crazy state, but I can visit it whenever I want through these books.

Ernest Hogan has recently been included in Chicanopedia, the Mexican-American Encyclopedia.