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: 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.

La Raza occupies & Su Teatro journeys

Daniel Olivas will return next Monday after a brief rest.

Occupy Wall Street movement breaks borders

An unprecedented wave of protest against the international financial elite and prevailing economic policies swept the globe on October 15. And New Mexico, Mexico and the greater US-borderlands were no exceptions. Protests were chalked up in San Diego, Tijuana, Las Cruces, Ciudad Juarez and Mexico City, among many other places. In El Paso, an encampment was announced beginning Monday, October 17, in the city’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza.

In neighboring Ciudad Juarez, protesters from several groups began their action in the downtown plaza but culminated at the US Consulate, where they blasted US economic domination. The world economy, said activist Julian Contreras, was “leaving many people abandoned while privileging the banks and big businessman and not generating employment or letting the young people study.”

In Mexico City, different protests involving hundreds of young people likewise linked issues of violence related the so-called drug war to economic inequities. “We should unite all the young people, use the social networks to make a new revolution, and construct a new democracy in which there is no violence and inequalities,” said one student at a new protest encampment set up at the Revolution Monument.

Other Mexican protests were reportedly held or planned in Guadalajara, Morelia, San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca City, Cancun, and more than a dozen other cities, including Monterrey, Mexico’s violence-torn, old industrial powerhouse of the north.

Two days prior to October 15, more than 100 students rallied at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in a local manifestation of a new national student movement that’s grown out of the original New York City occupation of Zuccotti Park, now rechristened Liberty Square, on the edge of Wall Street. Other New Mexico cities witnessing October 15 weekend protests included Carlsbad, Roswell, Farmington, Taos, Santa Fe and, of course, the state’s largest city, Albuquerque.

The October 15 Duke City demonstration was a fusion of Americana, Third World iconography and working-class history. Members of the AFSCME and 1199 unions were plainly visible in a highly spirited display of pent-up outrage against the economic powers-that-be. A younger crowd of protesters marched up Central Avenue from the Occupy/Liberate Albuquerque encampment at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to hook up an older, sign-waving group already positioned in front of a Wells Fargo Bank in the Nob Hill district.

A leaflet handed out at the event and bearing a picture of a huge mother pig criticized Wells Fargo’s lending practices and contrasted the earnings between an average bank teller and 2007-2008 company Chairman Richard Kovacevich, who the authors’ claimed made more than 662 times the pay of a teller.

A visual sampling of signs quickly revealed the crowd’s political sentiments: “No One Elected the Koch Brothers, “End Plutocracy,” “Bring Back Sherman Tillman and Glass Stegall,” “My Son Deserves a Future,” “Stop the Wars..,” “Honk if you are Underpaid.”

And numerous motorists honked back, tapping their horns in such a crescendo of bleeps that it was difficult to hear at times. “We are the 99 percent,” “This is what Democracy looks like” and “People Power” chanted a crowd of hundreds made up of the old, the young and the middle-aged. A man was heard urging the return of FDR.

Covered with placards and armed with a list of websites related to a movement that is leaping across continents and rattling political establishments from north to south and from east to west, a woman who identified herself as Tami from Mountainair said October 15 was directed “against globalization and privatization that the banks are spearheading with their massive amounts of money…we bailed them out, we own them.”

Addressed to mayors and police chiefs, a printed message protested the clearing of Occupy Movement protesters in cities like Denver and reminded authorities of the existence of something called the First Amendment. “When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered these protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them…” read the statement.

A one-year resident of Albuquerque, Mirra said she also stood with teachers and other workers whose pensions were threatened. “It infuriates me that that one percent of the people like hedge fund managers and war profiteers pay 15 percent (tax),”she added.

The demonstrators’ demands as well as warnings against state repression were strikingly similar to those heard in Mexican protests that erupted after the 1994/95 economic crisis and bank bail-out, events which ushered in an era of austerity and public debt that is still being paid off years later.

Like other places, the Occupy/Liberate movements in New Mexico are not ending with October 15. A teach-in is planned for UNM this coming week, while the Albuquerque City Council is poised to issue a proclamation on Monday, October 17, in support of the protests.

Backed by City Council Vice-President Rey Garduno, the proclamation puts the contemporary movement in historical context, declaring that “Albuquerqeans know that being the 99% also means dealing with the historical legacy of occupation by foreign powers in pursuit of profit; being targeted today by polluting industries; and watching our tax dollars go to bail out wealthy corporations while young people can’t afford to go

to college."

In continuation, the proclamation declares that workers, people of color, immigrants and indigenous nations “know all too well what occupation really means,” and that the privileged one percent of the population and “their protectors in government” threaten to slash and squeeze safety nets and economically beneficial programs. The proclamation ends, “We are the 99 percent and we stand with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”

By Sunday, October 16, less than a month after the first spark was lit in New York, nearly 2,000 cities worldwide were involved in one way or another in the new movement that’s beginning to shake up global politics, according to the website occupytogether.org.

excerpted from Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

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Su Teatro's second full season in Denver art district opens with Enrique’s Journey

As Su Teatro embarks tomorrow on its second season at their new location, it is garnering even more attention with a stage production of “Enrique’s Journey,” based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sonia Nazario about a Honduran boy’s difficult journey to the U.S. to join his mother.

“Enrique’s Journey” began Oct. 13 and will run Thursdays to Saturdays, ending with a Sunday matinee Oct. 30.

For more details on this, see the Denver Post article by Matthew Rodriguez.