February 12, 2019

Latest for Sojourners: This is the Face of the Reconquista

February 12, 2019

I’ve had the opportunity to write for Sojourners lately. I’ll be posting the articles I’ve written for them over the next weeks.

Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway.
– Samuel P. Huntington

The first cast in the ochre light of the dawning sun is a morning prayer, filled with hope and faith that ceremonies sought in earnest will feed the soul. I reel dutifully, waiting for a faint tap on the end of my line. My father stands at the front of the boat, scanning for ripples on the water in the low light. “Wachale!” he exclaims in joking Spanglish as he reels in the first largemouth of the day. Two Mexican-Americans bass fishing in Texas. This is the face of the Reconquista.

December 12, 2018

Latest for Latino Rebels: Birthright Citizenship and the Trump Administration’s Manufacturing of a White Majority

December 12, 2018

Donald Trump has announced that he plans to rescind birthright citizenship through an executive order.

While possibly a ploy to encourage support among his white nationalist base in the upcoming midterm elections, this new proposal fits into the Trump administrations larger policy project: making America white again. While they cannot change the demographic reality of the nation, they will make the nation whiter by fiat.

May 3, 2018

My Latest For Latino Rebels: The Real Health Cost of Living in a Deportation State

May 3, 2018

Public health researchers and sociologists are showing that living in a deportation state has a real health cost that is being disproportionately paid by citizen children. According to these experts, immigration is no longer just a policy issue; it is a national public health concern. Deportation-centered policies affect American families. Of those deported in the United States, nearly one in four deportees are parents of U.S. citizens. The impact on U.S.-born children becomes clear when considering that within the Latino community—one in four children are born into families where at least one parent is undocumented, or a mixed status family. The issue becomes even larger when considering that across the nation, where one in eight children born in the U.S. are born into mixed status families.

April 18, 2017

Eugenics in the Trump Era

April 18, 2017

On Friday April 14, 2017, Iowa representative Steve King was a guest on Iowa Press, an Iowa public television political show. The interviewer, Kay Henderson, pressed King on criticisms that he was a racist. In response, King defended earlier statements he made with a lengthy discussion on declining fertility rates in the Netherlands and the United States. He clarified that Western nations and the U.S. were no longer meeting their replacement levels (according to him 2.15 children per mother). This was to their detriment. “If you believe in Western Civilization and you believe in the American dream and the American civilization, then we ought to care enough to reproduce ourselves,” he explained.

Henderson did not press King on his notion that civilization—a compendium of institutions, social customs, laws, economic systems, and cultural productions—could be passed on only through sexual reproduction and birth. King was asserting that civilization was genetically inherited, not learned or shared. That is, King believes that white American babies are born with a biologically determined knowledge of the English language and capitalism.

November 15, 2016

Our Democracy After the Election

November 15, 2016

My mother cried on election night. In her years here, she has witnessed every American election since 1972. Never once did she cry. That should say something about this election.

She visited the weekend before the election to see her grandchildren and after they went to bed she asked me gravely, “mijo, do you really think he can win?”

April 1, 2016

The Rise and Fall of Marco Rubio: How Republicans Failed to Woo Latinos

April 1, 2016

On March 15, 2016 after a devastating primary loss in his home state of Florida, Marco Rubio suspended his campaign. He won only one county, Miami-Dade. He was utterly bested by Donald Trump. His loss could very well mark the end of his career. He will lose his seat in the senate and the Florida primary revealed his limited electability at the state level. His defeat and subsequent retreat doesn’t mean he should be forgotten. Rubio, more than any other figure in the Republican Party, explains how the GOP understands the Latino community. Rubio was not a happenstance shooting-star, the wish of a wayward party come to life. His rise was certainly meteoric but this meant that he was destined for a crash-course and an eventual burn-out. His rise was always connected to his fall. Rubio’s place in the Republican Party was predicated on the fundamental misunderstandings of the Latino community by the party itself.

September 23, 2015

Hillary’s Stand With Latinos

September 23, 2015

Hillary stands with Latinos, apparently. She wrote an op-ed declaring her solidarity with Latinas/os and she tweets in Spanish.

But, there is still a problem with Hillary’s message. Her historicity is unmoored which allows for the creation of a happier, rosier, kinder story of the nation. Instead of delving into the complicated, controversial American past, she provides an exceptionalist vision of America that is misremembered to explain why America has been great, why America is great, and why America will be great in the future. She writes:

Will we continue to be a country that is proud of our immigrant heritage? That continues to welcome the struggling, the striving, and the successful to our shores? That continues to offer unparalleled opportunities and freedoms to all? Or will we make among the biggest mistakes we could by turning our backs on the world and allowing hatred to turn into policy?

September 18, 2015

México Emigrado y México Esclavo

September 18, 2015

Mexico celebrated its 205^th year of independence with the traditional grito. Yet, on the 16 of September 2015, some wonder whether Mexico has anything to celebrate, whether the people of the nation are independent or free. Under the current president, Ernesto Peña Nieto, politically-expedient disappearances have increased in the nation. In the case of the forty-three disappeared school teachers, multiple mass grave sites were found—none of which held the bodies of the teachers and instead brought to light the murder of so many unknown and unnamed people. Drug violence continues, political corruption is endemic, and popular political disaffection continues to spread. Political disenchantment on Independence Day is common, a day that begs for introspection and remembrance. On the same day in 1918 a Mexican journalist, suffering from the same disillusionment wrote, “the 16th of September… will be a day of pain; for the inhabitants of the biggest cities of Mexico it will be a day of desecration.” He continued, “This is not the time to sing, nor the time to give in to vain laments. We must prepare to return to our land; we will restore profaned altars; we will recover our country.”

Interestingly, the author of the article was not writing from Mexico City, or the industrial cities of the North. He was writing from San Antonio, Texas. He was part of an elite exile class living in the United States, displaced by the radicalism and violence of the Mexican Revolution. Of course, journalists and rich businessmen were not the only ones who fled to the U.S., both then and now. Millions of Mexicans made their way northward and between 1920 and 1930 the ethnic Mexican population in the U.S. grew over 100 percent.

September 14, 2015

Of Immigrants and Anchor Babies

September 14, 2015

Despite dire warnings from the Republican National Committee, a slew of Republican presidential hopefuls have veered to the right and have alienated Latino voters. In an attempt to win an aging, isolated constituency that is increasingly afraid of technological, economic, social, and demographic change, the candidates have become enamored with the idea of overturning birthright citizenship in this country.

The lesser candidates have followed front-runner Donald Trump’s nativist and xenophobic rhetoric while Floridians Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have shown moderation, which is not surprising given their family histories. Rubio is the son of Cuban exiles and Bush’s wife was a Mexican national, which would in a very real way make Rubio and Bush’s children—including George P. Bush, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office—anchor babies themselves. Interestingly, Jeb Bush used the term anchor baby and in a testy exchange with reporters refused to concede that the term was offensive. He pushed the media to develop a better term but ultimately concluded that “I think that people born in this country ought to be American citizens.” Rubio answered Bush’s urging to develop a better term by calling them “human beings with stories” and not just statistics.

August 19, 2015

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Assimilation?

August 19, 2015

On July 22, 2015 Republican presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal posted a petition demanding that Obama fire the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services, Leon Rodriguez. At the top of this petition was a quote from Jindal explaining why, as a son of an immigrant, he was angry that the Obama administration would alter the oath of allegiance that would not require naturalizing citizens to militarily defend the nation:

Becoming a United States citizen is not a right, it is a privilege. Immigration without assimilation is not immigration, it is invasion. Legal immigration by people who vow to defend the United States of America can make us stronger, and my own family is evidence of this.

Then, two weeks later Jindal repeated the same phrase. He added:

We must insist on assimilation. Immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here come here legally. Learn English, adopt our values, roll up your sleeves and get to work. I’m tired of the hyphenated Americans and the division. I’ve got the backbone, I’ve got the band width, I’ve got the experience to get us through this.

Jindal is deftly but also deafly conflating a myriad of matters meant to strike key issues important to the aging Republican base. At its opening, the statement is a condemnation of “illegal immigrants,” who in his estimation fail to respect the authority and appreciate the magnanimity of the U.S. Then he makes the key connections for a constituency anxious about their position in a changing economy and demographically different U.S. Immigration is supposed to be about assimilation for Republicans. If an immigrant does not “become American” then that person is infiltrating not only the nation but the culture—immigrants are invaders. Since many of these voters have a racialized understanding of immigrants, all Latinas/os are seen as immigrants, regardless if they were born in the U.S. or not. By the very presence of Latinos, Jindal’s constituency believes that they are under a verifiable invasion. Because of the invasion, the borders need to be secured. A secure border requires militarization. Militarization of the border is a defense of this nation and underlines the need to serve in the military. In his statement, Jindal wraps up a series of bumper-sticker slogans—“support our troops,” “secure the border,” “America love it or leave”—and legitimizes them through his own immigrant past.

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