BorderlandsLa Frontera

Borderlands/La Frontera So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my lan­ guage. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.

I felt like we really existed as a people. In 1971, when I started teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach “American” and English literature. At the risk of being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and sUpped in Chicano short stories, poems, a play.

—> My experience at Westlake

Discussion

vivek:       “Forging”       her ideas are not inflicted in the reader.       cohabiting with the reader

Fernanda Marin [Gonzalez]

Don’t call me gringo, you fuckin beaner Stay on your side of the goddamn river Don’t call me gringo you beaner.

Lyrics of a song in my room here, in Austin, Texas. This place, a place a few years back never thought would be mine. I never knew how hot in got in Texas. A place were I sit and think of how much I want to go back to those days. The days in which I didn’t know how the world was. Back to the beginning. Back to the times closer to my creation and the creation of all people and the world,because everyday I live it gets a day farther from Day One. Aztec myths talk about the making and remaking of the human race, because all of the times we have failed to be grateful and to conserve the good heart that was given to us. In the beginning. I wonder when our human kind, all brothers and sisters, will be remade. I think it’s time.

In the beginning there were no contradictions. God, Ometeotl the orinin of all life, was both man and woman. Why can’t it be like the beginning? Why is God always perceived as a white male? Why can’t it be like in the begining. No color was more beautiful than any other, science was no more intelligent than art. Why is woman weaker than man? Why is white better then black, brown, and yellow? What happen to the real beauty of the world? Why is it so hot in Texas? A world like the huge Aztec empire where no one had the knowledge that there was a difference between races and that there was a better and a worse skin to be trapped in, before Cortez got there. A race that didn’t have a knowledge that injustice existe. People didn’t ever think about committing an injustice act to another human because of the color God painted them with. 

The smell of Abuelitas house is safety and comfort. Kind of the way you feel when your scared, but you know across the hall mom and dad are there. At my grandmas house my lungs fill up with a delicious sense food, no one can cook better than her.Soap and wood. The strongest memories of my childhood at my grandmas house I’m sitting in the couch and i can smell that smell of our pillows when we rest our heads to sleep.No Texas heat.Sitting by the TV, so loud I can’t understand what they’re saying but grandpa needs to hear it. Waiting for her to bring me some of her soup, she always had soup and jello no matter what.The temperature in the room is just perfect and it feels so real. No air condition, windows and a fan is all we really need, it doesn’t get Texas hot there.  At night i could always hear a train far off in the distance that used to scare me when I was little and I used to wonder where it was going every night, and I was sure that i would hear it the next night,it was always there,always. Now when I hear trains off in the distance I don’t get scared, I don’t care where its going and I don’t care if I ever hear it again.I was happy, worry free and innocent.  

Innocense-generally viewed as a positive term, connoting an optimistic view of the world, in particular one where the lack of knowledge stems from a lack of wrongdoing, whereas greater knowledge comes from doing wrong.

I think there’s just one kind of folks.  Folks

Before, when I used to wonder where the trains I heard at night where going, I knew my right from wrong and but i didn’t know what reality and the real world felt like.I didn’t know much about people doing wrong to people.I knew that there was racism, but I didn’t care much about it, since I was with my race and my root,I was at home and there was nothing to worry about,I hadn’t felt the heat on Texas. You never understand what the crude reality of racism is until you see it and feel it on your back. I didn’t understand how cruel people were, and the amount of ignorance I had been living around. I had no idea that just a couple of decades ago a black man had no chance against a white man in a court.That’s why I had hope, because I just didn’t know.It still mattered where that train at night went.It was beautiful.

I remember the first time I crossed the line between Mexico and United States,  which dives us, that metal bridge over “the river.” Thinking that the grass would be greener as soon as I stepped into the United States, something I now find humorous. The grass didn’t get any greener and I felt for the first time Texas hot, I wish that I would have known what I know today.Because I don’t understand how a line, a sing with some letters on it, a river, mountain or a piece of metal fence can divide families, races, countries,when we all live in the same world.How any immigrant can be looked down upon for trying to better themselves and their families lives, that takes more courage then to point fingers and sit at home watching TV asking for welfare while their houses melt under this Texas heat.

Can you imagine yourself As a Mexican crossing the border Thinking of your family while you cross Leaving all you know behind What if you had to dodge bullets Of some gringo ranchers Would you keep saying “good for nothing wetback?” If you had to start from scratch? Now why don’t you look down to  Where your feet is planted That U.S. soil that makes you take shit for granted If not for Santa Ana, just to let you know That where your feed are planted would be Mexico

Gloria Anzaldua writes of an Aztec legend. Aztlan was the place from which the Mexica Aztecas came, known as the place of emergence, in some codices identified as the “seven-cave place”.The concept of home land for chicanos. “We are Bronze People with a Bronze Culture.Before the world before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada.” This is a mythological place for people that are proud of their roots and do not ever forget who they are and where they come from.The way it should be.A place where it matters where that train is going.  We who are proud of our blood are living among brothers and sisters who are not. Ignorant people that try to hide and want to forget but this is only because of the ignorance of others and the discrimination that we have received for years, these people don’t want to deal with it anymore but the truth is, if you can’t accept who you are and you pretend to be something you are not, you end up being nothing because you are neither white nor proud Chicano. Who would want to forget about Abuelitas soup?

Now I wish I had a dime for every single time I’ve gotten stared down for being in the wrong side of town And a rich man I’d be if I had that kind of chips Lately I wanna smack the mouths of these racists

What is the culture of white people? Culture is something that white people don’t like to think much of, because when they are asked what their culture is, a minute of silence and no answer is what happens. I’ll tell you what the culture of this country is, people from all over the world trying to change their lives, leaving all they know behind them, family, childhood, memories and a river full of mixed feelings. People coming together in one place to start over. Something you don’t think about, who does the work that needs to be done, that no one wants to do?Whats the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons? The country that held on to slavery for so many years? The country that is so hungry for power that doesn’t think about people individually? The country that hasn’t thought it’s citizens how to live selfless life.Is this the so called American dream?

And though there’s some respect and we don’t interfere We never inflate currency making war on other countries We pay you our debt with oil and interests But we don’t know who winds up with the change Although we are famous for being the sellers of the drugs we grow, you all are the consumers

Today I know how hot it gets in Texas. What its like to be touched with the sharp blade of racism and some days I wish I had my innocence back.To the moment were I could belive my dad when he said that everything would be okay and that the world would learn to treat each other with respect again, one day. But I know that there is a reason why he taught me that every individual is equal, because he, like many of us, doesn’t know when that day will come.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t forget it- whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.  

I now know that can’t ever happen  unless person by person is reminded of what’s important and a change is made around the world. Perhaps humans don’t have the capacity to respect each other as a whole. But I remind myself every morning where I come from and try to hold on to whats right and wrong. Never forgetting that to the eyes of many others I am different as they are to me but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t all equal.How could you forget about Abuelitas soup?

I now know that can’t ever happen unless person by person is reminded of what’s important and a change is made around the world.Perhapshumansdon’t have the capacity to respecteach other as a whole.But I remind myself every morning where I come from and try to hold on to whats right and wrong. Never forgetting that to the eyes of many others I am different as they are to me but that doesn’t mean that wearen’t all equal. How could you forget about Abuelitas soup?

I think there’s just one kind of folks.  Folks  

I’m sick and tired of them putting this hat on me Listen now when I tell you – don’t call me beaner  and i wont call you gringo 

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.