Chicanonautica: Another Cinco de Mayo in Trumptopia

By Ernest Hogan 

And suddenly, another Cinco de Mayo . . . Didn't we just do this? My timespace coordination is all screwed up again. Where am I? Is Trump still president?

Yes. He is. This last year was not a hallucination.

There’s still no Great Wall keeping out the brown, drug-dealing, raping horde. El Presidente is threatening to “close down the country” if he doesn’t get funding for it. What did politicians do before Twitter?

Meanwhile, a revolution of sorts has happened, and Phoenix is in the thick of it. The #RedForEd movement had kids and striking teachers in red t-shirts and protesting on the sidewalks.  (I’m tempted to call them “redshirts” and wondering if the current generation get the antediluvian Star Trek reference?) The schools were shut down. Traffic was eerily light, post-apocalyptic.

Then Governor Doug Ducey jumped onboard. And the Arizona state legislature approved his pay proposal. School is back in session.

To quote Ducey: “We have moved further than anybody could have ever even imagined a month ago.”

Who could have predicted this a year ago?

There has been no word from the White House about this. Is El Presidente still planning on closing down America?

How do you celebrate Cinco de Mayo in this climate?

Most Norteamericanos still don’t know what it is, even though it’s well liked. After all, it allows America to wallow in delusions while ignoring the reality, even though it’s right next door. It’s what this country does best these deranged days.

There are news articles illustrated by photos of tacos that don’t look like any I have encountered in Aztlán or Mexico.

Then there’s the controversy over sombreros being racist.

Is my moustache a politically incorrect stereotype?

I keep suggesting bringing reenactments of the Battle of Puebla north of the border, but it’s not catching on. Too bad. It could be such fun, especially with fake rifle and cannon fire, and men blackfaced, and Zacapoaxtla women in colorful peasant dresses, chewing on chicken feet and waving blunt swords.

Maybe it would inspire more interesting protests in the future.

I had to work on el Fifth. We had a pot luck. I brought some chips and salsa, mild, remembering the tastes of some of my fellow library employees. 

 

I listened to Radio Campesina on the drive over. They played a lot of the high-speed, high-energy, rambunctious, fonqui 21st century Mexican music. You could hurt yourself making your colita do a terramoto to this stuff.

There were mariachis at the library. They were non-fonqui, but then the competition is serious among mariachis in Phoenix.

Soon the second floor smelled like a Mexican restaurant, and we had tacos in the break room. Gringo tacos, but then I don’t expect these holidays to get too ethnic. Somebody did bring carnitas, which brought things close to a rasquache aesthetic.

On my way home, the music on La Campesina was less rambunctious. Los Tigres del Norte. “Somos Más Americanos.” My sentiments exactly.

Meanwhile, El Presidente sez: "And we may have to close up our country to get this straight, because we either have a country or we don't.”

Ernest Hogan’s novel Smoking Mirror Blues is out and selling as a new ebook, and his wife, Emily Devenport’s latest opus Medusa Uploaded is making on impact in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Political turmoil seems to be good for the sci-fi biz,

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 . . .”

The Beat Continues

Melinda Palacio

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Welcomes Cuba

My post for today will be short and sweet. This week I am traveling back to California in our recovered Honda Element. (In case you missed the story on La Bloga, read all about it). Considering our car insurance company was only going to give us at most four thousand dollars for our old car, we feel fortunate that our stolen car was recovered. This means we don't have to think about spending forty thousand for a new car. I always forget how challenging it is to write a post while traveling from coast to coast. Don't get me wrong, I have much to report on, such as the first week of Jazz Fest in New Orleans and the crazy people guarding the monuments. The confederate statues in New Orleans are coming down, but there are some who feel the need to leave candles and confederate flags because they don't want their history of slavery erased. Also, this year, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival celebrates Cuba with non-stop cuban music and yummy cuban food. If you go, make sure you try the ropa vieja. At jazz fest, the food is almost as important as the music. Today, you can get your Cinco de Mayo on with Mariachi Jalisco at 1pm at the Jazz and Heritage Stage or Earth, Wind, and Fire at 5pm at Congo Square, or salsa and rumba all day at the Cultural Exchange Pavilion Celebrates Cuba. Here's the complete line-up for today. Tomorrow, the day belongs to Stevie Wonder and the lucky ticket holders. I, unfortunately, will not be there for the closing weekend. I'm already setting my sights on next weekend, when I will be reading poetry with Mark Fabionar (Back Home: A Clean Purple Haze and Radical Spaces of Possibility) in Orcutt at the Core Winery, May 13, Saturday at 7:30 pm in Old Town Orcutt.

Chicanonautica: Burning Judas Beyond Cinco de Mayo

El Cinco was on Thurday, so all over Norteamerica, the tequila, guacamole, and chip&sala rituals are probably still going on. Lady Mayahuel, the Aztec Goddess of Alcohol is happy, but my mission here at Chicanonautica is to show that there is more to Mexican culture than all that. Besides, we could use more re-enactments of the Battle of Puebla, and Zacapoaxtla antics.

We also just had those fantastic crucifixion re-enactments – especially the one in Iztapalapa that does it right with sets, costumes, penitentes, and belly dancers.

Not quite sacrifices of the festival Tlacaxipehuatliztli, the Flaying of Men in Honor of Xipe Totec, but the same resurrection theme come through loud and clear.

Also for Easter, there's another interesting tradition, la Quema de Judas, or the Burning of Judas. For this, fantastic effigies are constructed, usually with horns and with the forms of imaginative demonic creatures, but sometimes with political overtones. They are also endowed with fireworks that shower sparks and explode when they are set ablaze.

What a show! I'd like to see more of this, especially on our side of the border, here in Arizona:

“It kind of looks like the Governor . . .”

“Naw, it's La Llorona.”

Technology could allow the effigies to move and speak before self-destructing. Once again the myth behind the basic monster movie plot is revealed. This could be a newfangled kind of robotic exorcism.

We could use some exorcisms in these troubled times.

Ernest Hogan is working on a story about Pancho Villa, an airship, and a death ray.