Sunday readings: 27-July-2008

Mucho macho man…

“brownfemipower” on “Thinking Through Machismo” (la Chola)

I don’t necessarily have a problem with male posturing. I’m not sure if other cultures have the equivalent experience, but to me, male posturing (or machismo) stems from something very beautiful and important in the Mexican culture. Machismo was about putting on a show. About looking really fucking beautiful and representing yourself and your ‘group’ (whether it was a music group, like the mariachis above, or the dancers or bull fighters of old etc) well. It was about attracting a love interest (as in the song above) or demonstrating your bravery. It was about tapping into an ancient past that was strong enough to build a bright future. It was something you did together as a community–how do you show off if there is nobody to watch? But most importantly, machismo was something that you stopped–you took it off and put it away for special occasions. If the special is used every day, then it’s no longer special, right?

But somewhere along the way, the beauty of machismo became something that far too many mexicanos/chicanos believed was truth, something that they forgot to take off after the performance was over…

Illegal alien migrant brain surgeon!

“Today Show” MSNBC

The lab at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore we’re all gathered in belongs to Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa — “Dr. Q.” He is one of the best brain surgeons in the world, but two decades ago, his hands were picking vegetables for $22 a day. Quinones was a migrant worker, living under an old camper top in the middle of a California field.

…

Like his patients, he has had more than his share of uncertainty and tears in his life. Many nights his mother had no food for the table because his father lost the family’s gas station in Mexico. “He used to tell me, ‘If you wanna be like me for the rest of your life, don’t go to school,’ ” Quinones says.

Heeding his father’s warning, Quinones graduated college at 18. He became a teacher, but found that, like his father, he was not earning enough.

So, on his 19th birthday, he clawed to the top of a 16-foot fence and jumped — illegally — to an uncertain future here in the U.S. “All I wanted to do was come in, make a little bit of money, send it back to my parents,” he says.

I ask Quinones how he feels about illegal immigration today. Should we build walls? Should we keep illegal immigrants out of our schools?

“Can we build walls?” he asks rhetorically. “Sure, we’re gonna build walls. Can we make ’em taller? Sure, we can make ’em taller. Would that be a solution? As long as there’s poverty, and as long as people are dying of hunger in other places, it’s human nature. They will try to find better ways.”

Ironically, the brain surgeon followed his heart, not his brain: He became a U.S. citizen rather than return to Mexico a hero. He felt he owed this country for all the opportunity it had given him.

And speaking of migrant workers… or maybe, “you never know what you had until its gone…”
Dan Frosch in the 23-July-2008 New York Times on futbolista Edgar Castillo:

At 21, he is already a premier player for Santos Laguna, the reigning Mexican league champion, just as he was as a high school phenomenon in Las Cruces, N.M., where he was born and raised.

But despite his talents and his development as a player in the United States, Castillo will never play for the national team. …

Even more frustrating for United States soccer officials, Castillo said he would have liked to have played for the United States but never attracted much interest until Mexico reached out to him first.

Another guy, wanted by a couple of countries is Lucio Urtubia: “The Good Bandit” (Marie Trigona, 23-July-2008, Upside Down World):

Lucio, a 76-year old Spanish anarchist and retired bricklayer carried out bank robberies, forgeries and endless actions against capitalism. His actions helped to fund liberation movements in Europe, the US and Latin America.

Outspoken and charismatic, Lucio speaks like a true anarchist. When asked what it means to be an anarchist, Lucio refutes the misperception of the terrorist, “The anarchist is a person who is good at heart, responsible.” Yet he makes no apologies for the need to destroy the current social order, “it’s good to destroy certain things, because you build things to replace them.”

And… to tie it all together: Education, crime, manning-up, the southwestern border culture(s)… read Joseph Nevins “Death as a Way of Life” (Counterpunch):

Esequiel Hernández Jr. was only 18-years-old when Clemente Manuel Banuelos, a U.S. Marine corporal, shot and killed him in Redford, Texas in May 1998. Hernández, a high school student, was the first civilian killed by U.S. troops within national territory since the Kent State massacre of May 1970.

…

The fact that the Marines were in Redford, and that the federal government had sent them there says a lot about how important segments of the ruling class perceive the border region and its residents. As Enrique Madrid, a local historian in Redford, asserts in the film, “Presidio County is one of the poorest in the State of Texas, one of the poorest in the nation, and South County is the poorest part of that poor county. And yet they send us Marines instead of educators. They send us Border Patrolmen instead of doctors.” Seen from Washington, the border region—Redford included—is first and foremost an area of existential threats to the larger national body, an area that needs to be secured—whether it’s against “illegal” migrants crossing the boundary to “steal” jobs, or against would-be terrorists.