LA LEYENDA NEGRA/THE BLACK LEGENDHISTORICAL DISTORTION, DEFAMATION, SLANDER, LIBEL, AND STEREOTYPING OF HISPANICSFrom Somos Primos: A Website Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issue, First Series 2008-09; Second Series 2011-12

By Felipe de Ortego y GascaScholar in Residence/Chair, Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University; Professor Emeritus, Texas State University System—Sul Ross

[An Overview and Introduction to the Demonization of Hispanics--Number 1 in the First Series on La Leyenda Negra, July 2008]

was having dinner, not too long ago, with a group of librarians at an ALA conference in Philadelphia when the conversation turned to Hispanics apropos some new titles just published about the Spaniards in North America when one of the librarians remarked off-handedly that the Spaniards didn’t really do much with North America

other than to desecrate it in their search for gold. And how did she know that, I asked. Whereupon she responded that it was well documented. Well-documented indeed!

IHispanics in general, and American Hispanics (U.S. Hispanics) in particular, have been the butt of historical dis-

tortion, defamation, slander, libel, and stereotyping in an unbroken string of public perceptions since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Queen Elizabeth lost no time in turning the inglorious Spanish defeat into a major public re -lations campaign against the Spaniards. The result has been a 420 year assault on the Hispanic character. Never mind that it was the weather that defeated the Spanish Armada of the most powerful nation at the time, not the English navy.

Some 36 years earlier in 1552, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapas, had penned a blistering account of the Spanish treatment of the indigenous people the Spanish crown claimed possession of entitled A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. As a tribute to his work de las Casas has been called Champion of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, and his work has been considered an anti-imperialist tract against the Spanish enterprise in the Ameri -cas.

Using de las Casas’ work as fodder, the English crown spun a yarn about the Spaniards that persists to our day. Spaniards were characterized as “inherently barbaric, corrupt, and intolerant; lovers of cruelties and bloodshed.” Ac-cording to one source, “painting the Spanish as cruel and avaricious became an integral portion of the patriotic duties of pamphleteers of London, Frankfort, and France.” Thus emerged The Black Legend, equating Spaniards as “black-hearted,” in league with the prince of darkness himself. Protestant Europe seized this opportunity to paint Spaniards as repressive, inhuman, and barbaric.

Unfortunately, the origin of the Black Legend is attributed to de las Casas. Over the next century, 42 editions of A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies appeared in Holland, England, France, and Germany. In actuality, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, did not accuse the Spanish monarch of genocide (as has been imputed) but sought to instruct the King about better governance in the crown’s colonial enterprise. This is not to dismiss the colonial intolerances of imperialism. The English enterprise in the Americas was not any better or beneficent than the Spanish enterprise in the Americas. They were both imperial powers. The Spaniards were not any more cruel than the English.

Abetting inculcation of The Black Legend in the consciousness of Protestant Europe were references to the expul -sion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 as proof of Spanish iniquity and degeneracy, laying aside the historical facts that in 1290 England expelled its Jews and in 1306 France expelled its Jews. Anti-Jewish sentiment was rife throughout Europe. Another charge leveled against Spain to buttress The Black Legend was the “Inquisition” and the burning of

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hundreds of thousands of Protestant heretics, assertions that have no basis in historical fact. The Inquisition was real in Spain; as real as it was in England and France.

Demonization of Spaniards transmogrified into demonization of Hispanics in general. Maria de Guzmán calls this “Spain’s long shadow.”

[The Columbian Exchange--Number 2 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, September 2008]

y the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Spain held firm control of its empire in the Americas, a control that, despite its loss in attempting to gain a foothold in England by force of arms, continued for another 30 years until 1620 with establishment of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts by the English. Emboldened by

the disaster of the Spanish Armada, which was actually a Luso-Hispanic collaboration, the English intensified their slanderous characterization of the Spaniards over those 30 years. Propagandists vilified Spaniards as “corrupt and cruel people who subjugated and exploited the New World Indians, stole their gold and silver, infected them with disease, and killed them in numbers without precedent” (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article).

BThere is no dispute that the Columbian contact with the Americas impacted the indigenous peoples of the Ameri-

cas and the Spaniards and ineluctably altered the course of history. Within a century that contact devastated the Indian population within those zones of contact to one-tenth of their original size. That devastation was engendered princi -pally by smallpox, influenza, and measles, diseases for which the Indians had no immunity. This is not to diminish Spanish excesses against the Indians, excesses such as forced labor, starvation, and corporal brutality practiced by all the other imperial powers around the globe. However, it was the Spanish excesses that “provided powerful ideological sanction for English involvement in the New World” (Digital History, Ibid.).

The heat of the Black Legend revealed the “true” nature of the conflict: Protestant England versus Catholic Spain. Some historians point to this conflict as the root cause of slavery in the Americas, singling out Bartolomé de las Casas as the architect of that trade by his suggestion in his Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) to augment the indigenous workforce of the Americas with African slaves. But this view of non-whites as human commodities was part of the paradigm of ethnic-specific supremacy espoused by imperialism around the world then. Nothing in de las Casas’ work indicts it as the blueprint for the Black Legend or slavery.

In the years following establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Protestant English settlers (essentially Puritans, though hailed as Pilgrims) regarded themselves as the vanguard in America against the Papist Spanish Catholics. The Puritan English settlers believed it was their destiny to rescue the Indians from their Spanish oppres -sors; but the Puritans also saw slavery as authorized by the Bible and a natural part of society.

The most ardent of those rescuers was Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the most prodigious writer of Puritan America. In his zeal to free the Indians under Spanish rule from the yoke of Catholicism, he translated the King James Bible into a rough but tolerable Spanish for publication and distribution to the Indians of New Spain. Perhaps this contributed to the very common practice of intermarriage between Spanish colonists and the Indians of New Spain encouraged by Catholic priests.

By the end of the 17th century the most virulent reference of the Black Legend which made Spain less than Euro-pean was propagation of the concept that Spain’s greedy thirst for gold could be attributed to Spain’s racial corruption after 800 years of Moorish occupation mixed with Visigothic and Jewish remnants. That reference has become so his-torically ingrained in the collective consciousness of the world that even today the Spanish past in the Americas is characterized as a search for gold, nothing else. Never mind that Spanish settlers established communities, built human networks, and practiced agriculture, ranching and mining whose techniques are still with us in the Americas.

The polemics of the Black Legend has so demonized Spain and its progeny that efforts to repair the character of Spain and its progeny seem almost insuperable. Every day, manifestations of the Black Legend surface across the face

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of the nation, from outright murder to discrimination in housing, unemployment, and public accommodations. The polemics of the Black Legend has changed to hate rhetoric in its most vicious forms. In the public debate over immi -gration, the rhetoric of hate seems to know no bounds. Talk show hosts, commentators, and guests, speak without re-straint about Hispanics slanderously, libelously, defamatorily, stereotypically, and distortedly whether or not their comments are accurate or true.

The nearest analogy to this rhetoric or hate about Hispanics is the historical rhetoric about Jews who were anathe-matized for being Jews.

[Cultures in Conflict--Number 3 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, October 2008]

he success of the Spanish enterprise in the Americas was stunning, and as exploits of that success circulated throughout Europe and the rest of the world during the 16th century, resentment toward Spain hardened into virulent propaganda. By the end of the 16th century, Spain’s dominion in the New World and the riches it

amassed therefrom made it one of the world’s most singular powers. It was the first global empire of the 16 th century and would remain a superpower for the next 150 years. Fierce competition with Spain over the spoils of the New World fueled the pitch and stridency of The Black Legend emanating from England, Holland, and France. With Eng -lish, Dutch, and French toeholds in North America in the 17 th century, the prejudices of The Black Legend in Europe took root in Colonial America. The clash of cultures was inevitable.

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Surprisingly, in 17th century America Catholic France was the most vocal in its diatribes against Spain, thinking that Spain was the abyss of darkness. In the 20th century, a French minister harrumphed that Spain had no literature. This illustrates how The black Legend befouled Spain’s reputation for centuries. However, the most virulent denigra-tions of Spain came from the English. According to some historians, “The Black legend derived in part from the Span -ish themselves who wrote about their experience in the New World with a naïve egotism that was easily turned by Eu -ropean translators into the dark deeds of evil and cruel colonial slavers and tyrants” (http://www.library. unlv.edu/mil-lionth/ decade8.html). In other words, if the Spaniards were characterized as malevolently as they were, they brought it

on themselves. Moreover, “Protestants, particularly Calvinists, were at the forefront of industrial creativity and development when compared to Catholics, Jews, and Muslims” (Donna J. Guy, “The Morality of Economic His-tory and the Immorality of Imperialism,” The American Historical Review, October 1999). Again, the emphasis on Protestant superiority and the moral high-ground.

This bitter war of words has become more pronounced in the 21 st century in the form of “hate speech” anent the topic of undocumented Hispanics in the United States. American English-only efforts are a direct outgrowth of The Black Legend. As are the “distorted images that still prevail in American history textbooks, school curricula, radio pro -grams, and political circles nowadays” (Miguel Perez, “The Black Legend Returns,” Creators Syndicate, March 25, 2008). The impediment to getting the historical recognition American Hispanics deserve is “an inconvenient truth”—denial of the Hispanic heritage of the United States, a denial “rooted in age-old stereotypes” (Tony Horwitz, “Immigra-tion—and the Curse of the Black Legend,” The New York Times, July 9, 2006). According to Tony Horwitz, “most Americans associate the early Spanish in this hemisphere with Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. But Spaniards pi -oneered the present-day United States, too” (Ibid.).This historical amnesia is the crux of the problem today for Ameri-can Hispanics. To justify the westward expansion of the United States and the seizure of Spanish land, Americans pounced on Manifest Destiny and The Black Legend.

Gendered perceptions of American Hispanics, especially of Mexican origin, in 18 th century America saw Mexican males as degenerate and cruel but found Mexican women by and large as exotic, winsome, and sensual. These percep-tions were greatly exaggerated in the 19th century, especially after the Texas War for Independence and the Battle of

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the Alamo. More historians today regard the U.S. War against Mexico (1846-1848) as precipitated by The Black Leg-end, though these conclusions are quickly disclaimed despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

[The Bad Seed--Number 4 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, November 2008]

y the 19th century there was no getting around it—thanks to the Black Legend, the global image of Spain (but especially in the Americas) was as “the bad seed.” Sherwood Anderson’s dramatization of William March’s novel The Bad Seed finds root in the 19th century imagination of Anglo-America about the Spaniards and their

progeny in the Americas—especially in the United States—due to the persistent defamation of the Spanish character by Anglo American animosity. Spanish seed was bad, bad, bad! Unredeemingly bad.

BHistorian David J. Weber has it right when he assesses the persistence of the Black Legend as furthering Anglo-

American aspirations in North America which saw Spain and its progeny as “obstacles to their ambitions” of manifest destiny (The Spanish Frontier in North America, 1994). While this Hispanophobia has deep religious roots in Europe, its wellspring in the United States was fed by economic competition with Spain and its American colonies. Instead of greeting Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 with jubilation, Anglo Americans like the Historian and Unitarian minister Jared Sparks (later president of Harvard) opined instead that Mexican independence would not succeed be-cause the Mexicans lacked “the materials and elements of a good national character” which the Spaniards never planted in them.

The Black Legend fostered anti-Hispanic jingoism and the aspirations of manifest destiny in the United States of the early 19th century. This wave of Hispanophobia made it easier for Anglo Americans to provoke unrest in Mexican Texas, despite adjurations to the contrary by Anglo colonists in Texas who were granted land settlements by Mexico in the 1820s. In the space of a dozen years, those Anglo colonists, abetted by notable Mexicans who saw more favorable fortunes in an American Texas than a Mexican Texas, were successful in establishing the Republic of Texas as an in -dependent nation for a decade until annexed by the United States in 1845, the act that precipitated the U.S. War against Mexico 1846-1848. From 1819 to 1848, the United States increased its area by a third at Spanish and Mexican expense, justified by the Black Legend as an open fatwah to take from the Spaniards and their progeny whatever they chose.

Disparaging images of Mexicans in the period between 1819 ant 1848 were reinforced by such American writers as Richard Henry Dana who in Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, described the Mexicans of San Fran-cisco as “an idle, thriftless people who could make nothing for themselves” (1959, 59).

In 1852, Colonel John Monroe, commander of the Ninth Military Department of the United States (which included New Mexico), reported to Washington that “the New Mexicans are thoroughly debased and totally incapable of self-government, and there is no latent quality about them that can ever make then respectable. They have more Indian blood than Spanish, and in some respects are below the Pueblo Indians, for they are not as honest or as industrious” (Congressional Globe, 32nd Congress, 2nd Session, January 10, 1853, Appendix, p. 104).

Four years later, W.W.H. Davis, United States Attorney for the Territory of New Mexico, wrote a propos of his ex-periences with Mexican Americans that “they possess the cunning and deceit of the Indian, the politeness and the spirit of revenge of the Spaniard, and the imaginative temperament and fiery impulses of the Moor.” He describes them as smart and quick but lacking the “stability and character and soundness of intellect that give such vast superiority to the Anglo-Saxon race over every other people.” He ascribed to them the “cruelty, bigotry, and superstition” of the Spaniard, a marked characteristic from earliest times. Moreover, he saw these traits as “constitutional and innate in the race.” In a moment of kindness, Davis suggested that the fault lay no doubt on their “spiritual teachers,” the Spaniards, who never taught them “that beautiful doctrine which teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves” ( New Mexico and her People, 1857, 85-86).

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These were the images of American Hispanics that 19 th century Anglo Americans left for their progeny of the 20 th

and 21st centuries, images which continue to fuel anti-Hispanic sentiments in the United States as part of the legacy of the Black Legend. How much longer these denigrations of the Black Legend will endure is uncertain.

[Hic et Ubique/Here and There--Number 5 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, December 2008]

t the start of the 20th century, the United States had acquired Hispanic citizens who came with the Louisiana Purchase (1803)—principally in New Orleans , the Florida Cession (1819), the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848), and the Spanish American War (1898)—Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines from the latter,

wresting the last vestiges of the Spanish empire in North America. By this time, also, a national amnesia began to cloud the derring-do of 19th century American imperialism fueled by Manifest Destiny. While ostensibly paying homage to the Spanish enterprise in North America, the World’s Fair of 1892 in Chicago drew attention to the Columbian Exchange mostly as an Italian initiative since by then Italian Americans had appropriated Columbus as an Italian icon.

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But hic et ubique across the continent there were mordant pockets of anti-Hispanic sentiment fueled by xenopho-bia and the Black Legend. What better way to blot out the achievements of the Spanish enterprise in North America than by omitting them from the national narrative or else by presenting them as stereotypic caricatures. For example, Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, an outright anti-Hispano, led the fight against statehood for Arizona and New Mexico on the grounds that Mexican Americans were unaspiring, easily influenced, and totally ignorant of American ways and mores; that despite the passage of fifty years since the Mexican American War, Mexican Americans were still aliens in the United States, most of them having made no effort to learn English. According to Beveridge, such lin-guistic resistance was treasonous (Charles Edgar Maddox, The Statehood Policy of Albert J. Bevaeridge, 1901-1911 Master’s Thesis, University of New Mexico, 1938, 42). Never mind that over 600 Mexican Americans, more than half the complement of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, served in Cuba with distinction during the U.S. War with Spain in 1898. Both Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to statehood in 1912 by which time the majority population of both states was white.

Twentieth century America looked to Mexico for cheap labor. The American motto was “When we want you, we’ll call you, when we don’t –git” (Ernesto Galarza, “Without Benefit of Lobby,” Survey Graphic, May 1, 1931, 135). The increasing presence of “Mexicans” in the United States fueled anti-Hispanic sentiments further. In govern-ment reports and public news stories, “Mexicans” were characterized as “lacking ambition” and were inclined “to form colonies and live in a clannish manner” (Samuel Bryan, “Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” The Survey, Sep-tember 7, 1912, 726).

In a 1917 piece for The Survey (“My Mexican Neighbors,” March, 3, 624), Edith Shatlo King wrote in nuce: “When there is no occasion for personal loyalty, the Mexican is bitter in hatred. He is supersensitive to insults and slights, quick tempered, proud and high spirited. He lacks a habit of sustained industry and a practical sense which Americans cannot accept. And his mañana or faculty of putting off until tomorrow, and his slowness of movement are constant irritants. So, too, in American eyes, the looseness of their marriage ties is an obstacle to their development”

Avarice and prejudice saw “Mexicans” (including Mexican Americans) from different perspectives. Avarice saw them as cheap, exploitable and therefore necessary; prejudice saw them as alien, unnatural and therefore unwanted. Both won, for “Mexicans” were discriminated against as much as they were exploited. In 1928 (August), Erna Fergu-son wrote that “the Mexican frankly hates work and refuses to be bullied into believing that he loves it” (“New Mex-ico’s Mexicans,” The Century Magazine, 438). In that same piece she explained “Mexicans love to hold office. A title, even the title of Sheriff, fills a whole family with pride. An office that involves a sword or gold braid is so much the better. Spanish pride seems to rest on ancestry, on offices or titles more than on the individual’s achievement. Strug -

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gling for years to win wealth or power appeals to the Mexican not at all. This may be a social quality founded in a deep fatalism” (440).

So completely had the spurious profiles of Mexicans and Mexican Americans gained acceptance in the United States by the end of the 1920s that even Mexican Americans themselves had come to reiterate dysphorically their as -signed characteristics as articles of faith. In a piece entitled “Pachita” (The Family, April 1927, 44), Emilie Baca sug-gests that Pachita’s problems of promiscuity and immorality had something to do with the fact that she was Mexican: “Embued [sic] with the futile philosophy of the peon, she yields to whatever emotion is uppermost in her mind, taking her sorrows without much complaint as she takes her pleasures without comment—her outlook on life utterly apa-thetic.”

These were the popular images of Mexicans and Mexican Americans pandered by the American public media, though some historians contend that by this time the Black Legend had begun to fade. Not true! It was as virulent as ever. World War I did not lessen that virulence. Neither did World War II. “For a century after the 1840s, Mexican Americans were subject to laws, norms and practices akin to the Jim Crow apartheid system that discriminated against blacks after the Civil War” (Ruben G. Rumbaut, “Pigments of Our Imagination: On the Racialization and Racial Iden -tities of ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos’” in How the U.S. Racializes Latinos: White Hegemony and its Consequences, edited by José A. Cobas, Jorge Duany and Joe R. Feagin, Paradigm, 2008, 4)

In the 20th century, the Mexican Civil War of 1910-1921 spurred a mass exodus of Mexicans to the United States. Estimates of that exodus place the number at more than a million and a half Mexicans who came north from Mexico, fleeing the destabilization of the country by a military coup. The population of this exodus swelled the number of “Mexicans” in the United States to a significant population size which along with the population of the conquest gener-ation made up the foundation population of Mexican Americans today. In part, this ingress of Mexicans in American society kept the cauldron of anti-Hispanic sentiment hot.

Interestingly, the term “La Leyenda Negra” (the Black Legend) was not coined until 1914 by Julian Juderia in his book La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica (The Black Legend and Historical Truth). Until 1914, the smear campaign of the Black Legend was carried out without label. However, the work which provided a broader view of the Black Legend was Historia de la Leyenda Negra hispanoamericana (History of the Hispanoamerican Black Legend), by Ró-mulo D. Carbia (1943).[The Lamp and the Golden Door--Number 6 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, January 2009]

n a tablet within the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands is engraved the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus written in 1883 . Most Americans don’t know the entire poem but are familiar with the stirring lines that end the poem: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe

free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp be -side the golden door!”

OTo commemorate the centennial of the United States and to cement the friendship between France and the United

States, a group of leading French admirers of American liberty commissioned Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a success-ful, 31-year-old French sculptor to construct a lasting monument to Franco-American friendship. On October 28, 1886 the 305 foot statue was raised in New York harbor. And in 1903, cast as part of the bronze tablet fastened to an interior wall of the pedestal was the poem by Emma Lazarus that has become the credo for thousands of immigrants to Amer -ica (Wikipedia).

Arguably the most impressive global monument to the freedom of immigration, the Statue of Liberty and her po-etic message have become tarnished by American xenophobia directed mostly at non-white supplicants of American freedom. An incident that stirred the tentacles of The Black Legend occurred in 1915 in San Diego, Texas, where one

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Basilio Ramos and others were arrested for fomenting a revolution to free the dismembered territory of the Mexican Cession from American control and organizing it as an independent republic.

During the hysteria of the Plan de San Diego, more than 300 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were killed in re -taliatory actions by hyped-up Anglo Americans (including the Texas Rangers) who saw the plotters of the Plan de San Diego as terrorists and German infiltrators penetrating the soft under-belly of the United States during the bellicose times of World War I (1914-1918) in Europe (The Handbook of Texas Online, Plan of San Diego). According to Ar-turo Rosales, “Anglo retaliation to the Texas-based Plan de San Diego in 1915 is unparalleled in its degree of anti-Mexican violence by Anglos” (History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, 30-31)

To defend themselves from the hysterical wrath of El Plan of San Diego, Mexican Americans redoubled their ef -forts to create organizations which would protect their civil rights. In 1929 the efforts of a decade long struggle culmi-nated with the formation in Corpus Christi, Texas, of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the oldest surviving Mexican American civil rights groups.

Of the million and a half Mexicans who came to the United States between 1910 and 1930 in pursuit of the Ameri -can dream, more than 500,000 of them were repatriated during the years 1930-1939. Like today’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids, immigration authorities in the 1930 rounded up “Mexicans” in major American cities and told them to “git” escorting them to the border regardless of their citizenship. Consequently, according to one source, “60% of the people deported were children born in the U.S. and others who, while of Mexican descent, were legal citizens” (http://en.wikipedia. org/ wiki/Mexican Repatriation).

Another account of the repatriation reports that the campaign “resulted in widespread violation of civil and human rights, including illegally imprisoning immigrants, deporting United States-born children, not permitting returnees to dispose of their property or to collect their wages, deporting many not legally subject to deportation because of their length of . . . residence, separating families, and deporting the infirm” (“Mexican Repatriation in 1930 is Little Known Story” http://www. epcc.edu/nwlibrary/ borderlands/24/mex%20repat.htm). Alfonso Lara born in the United States tells the story that when his father died in 1932 when he was 7, immigration officials came to his house and told his mother to go back to Mexico since there was nothing for her to do in the United States. Years later after growing up in Mexico he learned during a sojourn in the United States as a bracero that he was an American citizen. All this seems like preamble to the roundup of Japanese Americans in the early days of World War II.

Indeed, immigration officials made no distinctions in rounding up “Mexicans” during the repatriation raids of the 1930s—a Mexican was a Mexican. There were no raids of these sorts along the U.S.—Canadian border. There are, of course, exigencies to bear in mind when one considers the impetus for the raids. The Great Depression of the 1930s created uncertainty and anxieties for the millions of Americans affected by hard times. Unemployment was at an all-time high, financial institutions were in wreckage, inflation was amok, and, in general, the United States was in sham-bles. Consequently making scapegoats of “Mexicans” helped assuage the public temper which fanned the flames of the Black Legend.

Since 2005, however, public expressions of guilt over the forced repatriation of American citizens during the 1930s has spurred a clamor from Mexican Americans for public apologies for those actions, apologies much like the ones expressed publicly over slavery and the roundup of Japanese Americans during World War II. California Senate Bill 670 in 2005 signed by Governor Schwarzenegger was among the first of those public apologies.

The 1930s were not the most propitious times for Mexican Americans. However, in April of 1939 American His-panics convened El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española, a national civil rights assembly. Most of the delegates were from California and the Southwest but many were from Montana, Illinois, New York, and Florida. The outcome was a manifesto that “called for an end to segregation in public facilities, housing, education, employment and en -

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dorsed the rights of immigrants to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation” (Vicki L. Ruiz, “Nuestra América: Latino History as United States History,” The Journal of American History, December 2006).

While the vocabulary of America incorporated Spanish words as part of its geography (Nevada) and ranching lexi -con (lariat) urban streetscapes (Mesa) and into its architecture as “Taco Deco” and “Mariachi Modern” (David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, Yale, 1994, 353), the Black Legend continued to churn out its propaganda like the little salt machine that spilled into the ocean.

[In America’s Defense--Number 7 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, February 2009]

iven the circumstances in Europe, by the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 2nd term in 1936 Ameri-cans were pretty sure the country was headed for war. By 1940 the repatriation of Mexicans in the United States had eased up. From 1936 to 1940 vital stakeholders in the economy of the country saw the necessity

for a larger workforce especially for jobs of last resort. Part of that larger workforce would include Mexicans, so much so that in 1942 the United States and Mexico signed a workforce agreement that brought Mexican workers to the United States under the label of the “Bracero Program”—the Helping Hand Program which ran from August 1942 to 1964 employing 4 million Mexican workers in the United States. Braceros worked essentially as farm workers though they worked in a number of other areas due to the labor shortage engendered by the war. Despite the aura of good will this program emanated, the presence of these braceros in the United States fomented increased antipathies toward Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

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With so many Americans involved in the war effort (troops and manufacturing) the harvests of America were in the hands of Mexicans. In 1942 Mexico declared war on Germany and by war’s end had aerial and ground forces in the Pacific. Counting the number of Mexican Braceros who stayed in the United States after the end of the Bracero Pro -gram and the number of Mexicans who managed to stay in the United States despite the repatriation efforts of the fed -eral government during the 30s to return them to Mexico added to the original population of the Conquest Generation, laying thus the foundation population of Mexican Americans today.

From 1940 to 1945 American Hispanics played a crucial role in America’s defense, especially Mexican Ameri -cans. Of the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, almost a million of them were Hispanics, mostly Mexican Americans. As a group, Hispanic members of the armed forces won more medals of honor during World War II than any other group. Hispanics served in the Army, the Army Air Corps, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine. They were pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gunners. On the home front they were Air Raid Wardens, led War Bond Drives, served at USO’s, handed out donuts and coffee to American GI’s at train stations and military bases, scores of Hispanic mothers placed Gold Stars on their windows, and dutifully cov -ered their windows at night in compliance with “blackout” instructions.

Across the country, American Hispanics played crucial roles in the victory of World War II by working in defense plants building planes, tanks, jeeps, and other military equipment. In Pittsburgh, Mexican American women from the Ohio Valley communities of Mexican Americans built gliders in the Heinz plant which converted its ketchup machines to the war effort. From the founding of the nation, American Hispanics have served in the American armed forces and have responded to American crises in overwhelming numbers. More than half the complement of the Rough Riders with Teddy Roosevelt were Mexican Americans. The first draftee of World War II was Aguilar Despart, a Mexican American from Los Angeles. Among the first casualties of World War II after Pearl Harbor was Private Jose P. Mar-tinez killed at the battle of Attu in the Aleutians, an action for which he received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Despite this outpouring of patriotism, in June of 1943 Mexican Americans were fleeing for their lives in Los An-geles in what came to be known nationally as the Zoot-Suit Riots. American sailors and marines began beating up Mexican Americans who were dressed in zoot suits, a sartorial style popular with Mexican Americans (called Pachu-

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cos) during World War II. Rationalizations to the contrary, the riots were sparked by the roots of the Black Legend. In -stead of commenting on the race-based reasons for the riots, Lt Ayres of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department commented on the uses of knives by Mexican Americans by asserting that “the Caucasian, especially the Anglo-Saxon, when engaged in fighting, particularly among youths, resorts to fisticuffs and may at times kick each other, which is considered unsportive, but this Mexican element considers all that to be a sign of weakness and all he knows and feels is a desire to use a knife or some lethal weapon. In other words, his desire is to kill, or at least let blood” (Ralph Guz -man, “The Function of Ideology in the Process of Political Socialization: An example in Terms of the Mexican Ameri-can People Living in the Southwest,” Unpublished manuscript, 1966, 35).

Incredibly, Ayres’ report was duly endorsed “as an intelligent statement of the psychology of the Mexican people, particularly the youths” (36). His report to the Grand Jury stressed that Mexican youths are motivated to crime by cer -tain biological or “racial” characteristics.

Just as racism was responsible for the mass detention of Japanese Americans in 1942, racism bred by the Black Legend was responsible for the outbreak of Anglo hostilities toward Mexican Americans during World War II. In 1942 Mexican American youngsters in Los Angeles were convicted on fabricated evidence in the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, serving almost 2 years in San Quentin before their convictions were reversed by the California District Court of Appeals. Carey McWilliams who served as Chairman of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee described the pro-ceedings as “more of a ceremonial lynching than a trial in a court of justice” (North From Mexico, 1948, 231).

During World War II in the Hispanic Southwest—in Texas particularly—Mexican Americans were forced to sit in theater sections reserved for “Mexicans”—it didn’t matter if the “Mexicans” were in American uniforms (George I. Sanchez, “Pachucos in the Making,” Common Ground, Autumn 1943). Anglos sat in the middle, “Mexicans” on the sides, and African Americans in the balcony. In Texas a Mexican American G.I. tells the following story: We went to a restaurant to eat, we sat down and the whole thing you know, and started ordering. The waitress asked me if I was Ital -ian. I said, "No, no I'm not, I'm Mexican." And she said, "Well I'm sorry, sir, we don't serve Mexicans" (David López, “Saving Private Atzlan: Preserving the History of Latino Service in Wartime,” Diálogo Magazine, Center for Latino Research, Fall, 2005:9).

In September of 1945, Private Benigno Aguirre, in uniform, was brutally beaten by “white rednecks” in San An-gelo, Texas, and left for dead. When Mexican Americans sought help for Private Aguirre from the San Angelo com -munity the response was “Aguirre is Mexican. Ask Mexicans for help” (David Montejano, “The Beating of Private Aguirre” in Mexican Americans in World War II edited by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, 2005, 41). Fifty years later Be-nigno Aguirre could only say, “estaba carajo en esos dias” (58).

Despite their inordinate numbers in the military, Mexican Americans encountered difficulty in finding employ-ment during the war. Anglos were placed ahead of them in jobs for which they were qualified. Some state employment agencies considered certain jobs “out of bounds” for Mexican Americans (125). Community recreation centers with swimming pools were closed to Mexican Americans. Not until 1948 were the public swimming pools of Fort Stockton, Texas, open for Mexican Americans.

It’s relatively easy to dismiss out of hand these incidents as part of the racial heritage of the United States, but given the historical context of the Black Legend, one discerns the grip of the Black Legend in the pattern of these inci -dents. At the end of World War II in 1945, Gonzalo Mendez sued Orange Grove school districts over school bound-aries that created de facto segregation. In 1946, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, and in 1947 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the California decision, making Mendez v. Westminster a precedent for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the trial testimony, the defending Superintendent character -ized Mexican American children as inferior in “personal hygiene”, “scholastic ability”, and “economic outlook”

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( Vicki L. Ruiz, Nuestra America: Latino History as United States History, Journal of American History, December 2006, 669).It has taken years of litigation for Hispanics to chip away at the vestiges of the black legend in America. Workforce eq-uity and equality is still in the offing. Hispanic unemployment has remained high despite the willingness of Hispanics to work. Unfortunately, they have been consigned to certain kinds of work, mostly agriculture No matter the obstruc -tions, Hispanics continue to serve in America’s defense.

[Searching for America--Number 8 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, March 2009]

n 1968 on the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) at its national convention in Chicago approved a resolution by the membership to establish a Task Force on Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English as a memorial to the slain civil rights leader. I was fortunate to have been one of the

founding members of the Task Force which included the NCTE Black caucus, the Chicano caucus, the Asian caucus, and the Native American caucus. Ernece Kelley was Chair of the Task Force. Our charge was to survey high school and college anthologies and readers (collections) of American literature for their content–to ascertain how inclusive they were vis-a-vis the minorities represented by the participating caucuses. Needless to say that inclusiveness was practically nil. The scathing Report of the Task Force published in 1972 entitled Searching for America gave all the anthologies F’s for inclusiveness. That was 1972.

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In the years from 1945–the end of World War II–to 1972, American minorities, including American Hispanics, went searching for America only to discover that in almost three decades the United States had paid little heed to its growing minority populations. The anthologies of American literature–the texts most likely to exert the most influence on Americans in the educational system–had relegated American minorities to invisibility. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the public domain of American society seemed determined to keep its minority groups secret, notwithstanding the turmoil in the streets during the 60's.

What emerged most evident in Searching for America was that there were really two Americas: White America and the “Other America”–the “non-white” America. In their search for America, American Hispanics ran straight into the discrimination most of them thought they had exorcized from the body politic of the United States by their loyalty and sacrifices to the nation during its time of peril.

In 1948, the authorities of Three Rivers, Texas, refused to handle the funeral services for Felix Longoria (a native of the town) and to bury him in the municipal cemetery. During the war, Longoria had been killed in the Philippines and interred in a temporary ossuary there until the body could be transported to the United States. When that came to pass three years later, Longoria’s wife never imagined that her hero husband would not be buried with honors in the town’s cemetery.

Despite the intervention of Dr. Hector P. Garcia, a physician from nearby Corpus Christi and founder of the Amer-ican G.I. Forum–a Mexican American veteran’s organization–the community of Three Rivers was adamant in its re -fusal to bury Longoria in the town’s cemetery. Dr. Garcia turned to Senator Lyndon Johnson for help who immediately arranged for Longoria to be buried in Arlington Memorial Cemetery with full military honors.

The Jim Crow laws south of the Mason-Dixon Line were as obdurate south of the Mexican-Dixon Line as they were south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Miscegenation laws singled out Mexican Americans as much as they singled out African Americans. The exclusionary practices of pre-war America in the Hispanic southwest remained as rigid in post-war America as they had been in the years leading up to and including the war years.

At the end of World War II, American Hispanics returned to what they thought would be a grateful nation, particu-larly since as a group they had won more medals of honor than any other group and had distinguished themselves not only in battle but by their numbers in the armed forces. In 1945 estimates for the American Hispanic population vary

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from 3 to about 4 percent of the American population of 132 million. Of the 16 million Americans in uniform during World War II, the 1 million American Hispanics in the armed services constitute about 1/16th of the total. For a group comprising only 4 percent of the American population that’s a significant constituency. American Hispanics responded to the call of the nation as patriotic Americans.

American Hispanics came home from the war, hung up their uniforms with their plastrons of medals, and went about looking for America and their place in it. Many of them went back to work at their old jobs in factories and mills, many went on to college under the G.I. Bill, and many strode to the horizon of American opportunity ready for the challenges of the future. Despite the largesse of the G.I. Bill, many Mexican American war veterans were discrimi -nated against by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs by denying them medical services for combat wounds after they were discharged.

What they were not prepared for was the status quo of discrimination engendered in large part by the Black Leg-end. To counter this discrimination American hispanics turned to the formation of Hispanic organizations. Perhaps what best characterized American Hispanic thought in the period from the end of World War II to the close of the 1950’s is that American Hispanics were divided about the promise of America, for a significant number of them lived under conditions that had changed little in almost a century. In fact, for many Mexican Americans conditions had grown worse in their transition from an agrarian people to an urban people. By 1960 statistics bore out that almost 80 percent of Mexican Americans lived in urban environments and were burdened with the additional problems of the ur -ban crisis—principally poverty.

The mere fact of desegregation in 1954 did not eliminate the myriad educational problems confronting Mexican Americans. The truth of the matter is that just as the educational system of the United States failed to accomplish its objectives with Anglo American children, it failed miserably to reach Mexican American children (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, “The Education of Mexican Americans,” New Mexico Review, Part I, September 1969; Part II, October 1969).

The fault of American education a propos Mexican American children was its thoroughly lexocentric attitude to -ward instruction in any language but English. Thus, Spanish-speaking Mexican American children were further disad-vantaged by their inability to deal effectively with the language of instruction (see Carl L. Rosen and Philip D. Ortego (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca), Issues in Language and Reading Instruction of Spanish-speaking Children, International Reading Association, 1969, Problems and Strategies in Teaching the Language Arts to Spanish Speaking Mexican American Children, U.S. Office of Education, 1969, “Language and Reading Problems of Spanish Speaking Children in the Southwest,” Journal of Reading Behavior, Winter 1969).

In December of 1959 the editorial of Alianza Magazine asked: “Where do we go from here?” There was no ques-tion that Mexican Americans saw change as necessary for their amelioration, but the nature of that change was still dim and barely apprehended, although some Mexican Americans were observing closely the tactics of the Black Power Movement. Change was definitely in the air, for Mexican Americans had gone looking for America and had not found it. Perhaps what “did it” for Alianza Magazine was the Denver incident in 1957 in which Charlotte C. Rush, Patriotic Education Chairman of the Denver Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, decided that only “Ameri-can boys” would carry the flag at the State Industrial School for Boys, saying “I wouldn’t want a Mexican to carry Old Glory, would you? (“Daughter of the American Revolution Slurs Mexicans,” Alianza, March 1957: 11). None of these obstacles has deterred Hispanics in their search for America.

By 1960 Mexican Americans had taken up the gauntlet and were ready to challenge the spurious venom of the Black Legend by direct action in the form of organizations to confront that venom head on. The search for America would be difficult and arduous despite marshalling their efforts organizationally. In 1968 Mexican Americans estab -lished the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), with Mario Obledo as its first president. Established initially as a legal venue, MALDEF spearheaded political redistricting which successfully challenged

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gerry-mandering, thus giving voice to the political exclusion of Mexican Americans. Organized that year also was the National Council of La Raza, a constituency-based organization for community development.[The Historian and the Lion--Number 9 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, April 2009]

n old African proverb avers that the history of the hunt will always favor the hunter until lions have their own historians. What gave impetus to the necessity for American Hispanics to have their own historians was the emergence of the Chicano Movement in 1960, sparked by the solicitation of their votes by the election cam-

paign of John F. Kennedy. This was the year Bert Corona, the legendary California activist, and others founded the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA). In 1961, the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organiza-tions (PASSO) was formed in Texas. The first fruits of Chicano politics in California elected Edward Roybal from Los Angeles to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962. That same year, Cesar Chavez organized the National Farm-workers Association in California.

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The following year (1963) Mexican Americans achieved a singular success in Crystal City, Texas, when they cap-tured the city government. And in New Mexico, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes was founded by Reies Lopez Tije -rina, a firebrand who sparked a rise in Mexican American militancy advocating for restitution of land grants in New Mexico. By 1964 Mexican American activists like Jose Angel Gutierrez, Corky Gonzalez, and Willie Velasquez were laying the groundwork for La Raza Unida political party which in 1972 fielded candidates with astonishing success throughout the Hispanic Southwest. From 1962 to 1966 Command Central for raza activism in South Texas was Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, where Jose Angel Gutierrez and Carlos Guerra were undergraduate students. Their efforts were all directed toward counteracting the effects of the Black Legend and the discrimination it had spawned.

The flashpoint of Mexican American militancy came in 1965 when Cesar Chavez called for a strike against the Delano, California, grape growers with the cry of “Ya Basta!—Enough is Enough!” By 1966 Mexican American ac-tivists had become Chicanos—transmogrifying a pejorative term into a self-identifying term of pride. In 1967 Presi -dent Johnson convened a Mexican American Summit in El Paso, Texas, to take up the concerns of Mexican Americans (see Philip D. Ortego (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca), “The Minority on the Border: Cabinet Meeting in El Paso,” The Na-tion, December 11, 1967).

In 1969 in response to a directive by the U.S. Department of Justice to desegregate its schools, the Dallas Indepen-dent School District re-labeled Mexican American students as white (removing them from the “other” category they had been historically counted as) and mixed them with African American students in a ploy of compliance. The Justice Department rebuked the school district’s actions. The Census count of 1970 revealed little progress in the education of Mexican Americans. In 1960 Mexican Americans had attained an average of 3.5 years of schooling; in 1970 that aver-age had increased to 4.8 years (see Philip D. Ortego (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, “Montezuma’s Children,” The Center Magazine, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, November/December 1970).

In 1967 there occurred an event of extraordinary magnitude: El Grito: Journal of Mexican American Thought was published by a cohort of Mexican Americans at Berkeley, California, almost all of them students with the exception of Octavio Romano who was a professor of anthropology and who was listed simply as an associate editor for the first two issues though the project was his brainchild. In concert, Romano and the students formed Quinto Sol Publications Inc. in a tiny office above a candy story in Berkeley with barely enough money to get the venture off the ground (“Quinto Sol Publications: Magazines Give La Raza New Voice,” The Denver Post, May 1971). The vision of the Quinto Sol founders was articulated in an editorial of the first issue of El Grito establishing the tone and direction of the Chicano Renaissance.

I was fortunate to have been part of that first wave of Quinto Sol writers with a number of works in the first and subsequent volumes of El Grito. Though the editorial is a bit long, it bears examination in its entirety.

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Contrary to the general pattern of ethnic minorities in the history of the United States, Mexican Americans have retained their distinct identity and have refused to disappear in The Great American Melting Pot. Not having the good graces to quietly disappear, we have then compounded our guilt in America’s eyes by committing the addi -tional sin of being glaringly poor in the midst of this affluent, abundant, and over-developed society.

In response to this embarrassing situation, American ingenuity has risen to the occasion and produced an ideo-logical rhetoric that serves to neatly explain away both the oppressive and exploitative factors maintaining Mexi -can Americans in their economically impoverished condition, and Mexican Americans’ refusal to enthusiastically embrace The American Way of Life with its various trappings. Although recitations of this rhetoric vary in em-phasis and degree of sophistication, the essential message is the same: Mexican-Americans are simple-minded but loveable and colorful children who because of their rustic naiveté, limited mentality, and inferior backward “tradi-tional culture,” choose poverty and isolation instead of assimilating into the American mainstream and accepting its material riches and superior culture.

Formulated and propagated by those intellectual mercenaries of our age, the social scientists, this rhetoric has been professionally certified and institutionally sanctified to the point where today it holds wide public accep -tance, and serves as the ideological premise of every black, white, and brown missionary’s concept f and policy towards Mexican Americans. Yet this great rhetorical structure is a grand hoax, a blatant lie—a lie that must be stripped of its esoteric and sanctified verbal garb and have its intellectually spurious and vicious character ex-posed to full view.

Only Mexican Americans themselves can accomplish the collapse of this and other such rhetorical structures by the exposure of their fallacious nature and the development of intellectual alternatives. El Grito has been founded for just this purpose—to provide a forum for Mexican American self definition and expression on this and other issue of relevance to Mexican Americans in American society today.

This editorial was the manifesto of the “The Chicano Renaissance”—to tear down the spurious defamations, distor-tions, slanders, libels and stereotypes of American Hispanics by providing American Hispanics with alternatives like El Grito where they could read the truths about themselves. Surfeited with the plethora of writings about them, writ-ings which depicted them in a variety of literary contexts resorting to the most blatant stereotypes and racial clichés, publication of El Grito sparked a wave of Hispanic publications determined to confront and offset the effects of the Black Legend. These publications gave voice to the realities of Hispanic life and culture.

Because the images of Hispanics in American life were hard to put aside, Hispanic writers who sought in print to break the long-standing and readily accepted stereotypes about American Hispanics found little or no favor with maga-zine editors (See Cecil Robinson, With the Ears of Strangers: The Mexican in American Literature, University of Ari-zona Press, 1963). El Grito became to the Chicano Renaissance what Partisan Review, for example, became to the New Criticism. As the lion in the old African proverb, Chicanos now had their own historians. This has not, unfortu -nately, ended the spurious defamations, distortions, slanders, libels, and stereotypes of American Hispanics engendered by the Black Legend.

During the 60’s some Hispanic writers managed to find literary outlets, but at the expense of their art as Hispanics. Like the market for black literary works, the market for Hispanic literary works was limited to those who wrote what most editors expected; and what most editors of mainstreet presses expected was the image of Hispanics (especially Mexican Americans) as indolent, passive, and humble who lived for fiestas and mañana. In 1968 an editor of a high school multi-ethnic text approached me for a story about Mexican Americans. I sent him “Chicago Blues,” a story about a Mexican American musician in Chicago. The story had won a European competition judged by Richard Wright. He rejected the story directing me to a ninth-grade reader in which J. Frank Dobie’s popular story “The Squaw Man” appeared, explaining that would provide me with an idea of the kind of material he was seeking for the multi-

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ethnic text. He was, of course, looking for the “queer,” the “curious,” and the “quaint” kind of “folksy” story most edi -tors then had come to expect about Mexican Americans (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca/Philip D. Ortego, Background of Mexican American Literature, University of New Mexico 1971, 206).

In 1970 I sent a piece on “Chicano Poetry: Roots and Writers” to Richard Ohman, editor of College English, who sent it back to me with a note that he didn’t think the readers of College English would be much interested in the piece. The essay was later published in New Voices in American Literature edited by Edward Simmen (Pan American Uni-versity, 1971) and reprinted in Southwestern American Literature (Spring 1972). These were the obstacles many His-panic scholars encountered in those days (see Felipe de Ortego y Gasca/Philip D. Ortego, “Huevos con Chorizo: A Letter to Richard Ohman,” personal correspondence, Felipe de Ortego y Gasca archives, Benson Latin American Col-lection, University of Texas at Austin).

Owing to the Black Legend, it is still difficult for mainstream America to accept American Hispanics as Ameri -cans and that American Hispanics are a bilingual, bicultural, and binational people. The vibrant language of American Hispanics is ridiculed as “Spanglish” (poor Spanish and poor English), of little worth, reflecting the “mongrel” roots of their origins. Today’s Hispanic Renaissance is but the manifestation of a people’s coming of age which has been long overdue. Like Milton’s unsightly root, in another country it bore a bright and golden flower.

[The Towers and the Wall--Number 10 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, May 2009]

s a consequence of the catastrophic events of 9/11, American Hispanics have come into the firing line of Na-tivist suspicions and aspersions that have equated Mexican narco-trafficking with terrorism and by extension have created a web that has ensnared Mexican Americans. The upshot has been that Mexican Americans

specifically have fallen into the orbit of racial profiling along the U.S.—Mexico border. That the planes that demol -ished the twin towers of New York on 9/11 were all piloted by Saudi Arabians has been transmogrified into “Mexi -cans” including Mexican Americans.

AThis nativist animosity towards Hispanics in the Southwest has resulted in the construction of an 1800 mile-long

wall between Mexico and the United States justified in the name of national security when no such wall is being con-structed between Canada and the United States (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, “Bridges Not Walls: The ‘Great Wall of China’ in the United States,” The National Hispanic Forum, July 14, 2007). The growing number of Hispanics in the Southwest has raised the anxiety levels of nativists to the point of slanderous defamations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the continuing fashion of the Black Legend.

In a piece on “Fences and Neighbors,” Rick Toone characterized the U.S.—Mexico wall as “a shining symbol of American economic and environmental arrogance.” And in a washingtonpost.com article (Sunday, May 27, 2007; B01), Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist, quotes the Mexican consul in Tucson calling the U.S.—Mexico wall “the politics of stupidity.” In the National Geographic (May 2007), Charles Bowden concludes that “Fences may make good neighbors, but the barriers dividing U.S. and Mexico are proving much more complicated.” One wonders: Why a wall between the United States and Mexico?

In his poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost was not advocating that “Good fences make good neighbors.” The ref-erence is to a statement by his neighbor who believes in keeping the fence between his property and the persona in the poem in good repair. We assume the persona in the poem is Robert Frost whose opinion is: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

In the current flap over building a wall between Mexico and the United States, it would be well to keep in mind Robert Frost’s injunction “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” That “something” is that a wall is a barrier. Frost says:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

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He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines . . . .

While Mexican apple trees will never get across the border to eat the cones under American pines, a wall between the United States and Mexico is intended to keep Mongol hordes of Mexicans at bay, a consummation devoutly to be wished by Xenophobic Americans as Hamlet would have put it.

In the case of a “wall” between the United States and Mexico, a wall is a manifestation of conflict, just as the Berlin Wall was a manifestation of conflict. Essentially, conflict is an interactive process or behavior. That’s why the Berlin Wall escalated the Cold War. And why a wall between the United States and Mexico will only escalate the enmity between the two countries.

Ronald Reagan’s plea to Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”—referring to the Berlin Wall—is not what brought down the wall. On the contrary, it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s response that brought down the wall. Instead of escalating the cycle of conflict, the Soviet leader chose to ignore the rhetoric of conflict and for whatever reasons take the first step in repairing U.S.—Soviet relations. There is no doubt that the U.S.—Soviet conflict had developed mutually de-structive patterns of interactive behavior, the consequences of which heralded Armageddon.

When asked about the U.S.—Mexico wall in a 2006 visit to the United States, Mikhail Gorbachev responded that the United States seemed to be building the Great Wall of China between itself and Mexico (Midland Reporter-Tele-gram, 10/18/2006).

In the current American rhetoric about controlling the nation’s borders the question looms large: Why on the one hand did the U.S. want the Berlin Wall torn down and on the other hand does it want to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico? There is no evading the possibility of racism and selective amnesia about the history of walls emanating from the Black Legend.

The history and philosophy of walls takes us back to antiquity. Between the 8 th and 5th centuries BC, the northern states of China began to build a wall along their northern border with Mongolia in an effort to stave off Mongol pene -tration. Over centuries and dynasties, “the great wall of China” came into being as a 4,000 mile fortification in defense of Chinese borders. In places, the wall was 25 feet high and 30 feet wide.

In 122 AD the Roman emperor Hadrian built a wall across Britain to keep Romans safe from the hostile Picts. The wall stretched from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, 80 Roman miles long, 10 feet wide and 15 feet high. The wall is still there (N.S. Gill, Your Guide to Ancient/Classical History).

In like fashion, in the 20th century the French built the “Maginot Line” as a walled fortification against German in-cursions. With the use of aeroplanes, the Germans simply flew over the Maginot Line. General George Patton called the Maginot Line a monument to man’s stupidity. Even the Berlin Wall was not impenetrable.

While the Berlin Wall did function as the perimeter of a "prison" state, its principal objective was to keep out ex-tra-territorial influences that were anathema to the state dictum of the Soviet Union. A U.S. wall on its border with Mexico has the same objectives--to keep out extra-territorial influences (the uninvited, the unwelcome, and the un -wanted--Mexicans) that are deemed anathema to the apodictic values of the United States.

Will a wall between the United States and Mexico help the United States in controlling its border with Mexico? The Harvard philosopher George Santayana put it well when he opined that those who do not learn the lessons of his-tory are condemned to repeat it. What is that lesson here? That walls are no substitute for diplomacy.

Those barriers are indeed complicated despite the facile rhetoric of Lou Dobbs and Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, “CNN and Lou Dobbs: Journalism or Jingoism,” posted on The Latino American Experience, Greenwood Press, January 18, 2008). Those barriers have their genesis in the historical conflict

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between Spain and England giving rise to the Black Legend, venomous defamation of the Spaniards by the English, perpetuated by the venomous defamation of Mexicans by Anglo Americans.

American manifest destiny was fueled in part by the Black Legend. The vision of a United States from sea to shin-ing sea was at the expense of Spain and its Hispanic progeny in the Hispanic Southwest. Manifestations of the Black Legend abound.

A little known manifestation of the Black Legend occurred in the 1920’s in El Paso, Texas, where Zyklon-B (hy-drocyanic acid used later in Hitler’s gas chambers) was used regularly as a vermin-control delousing agent on hun-dreds of thousands of “dirty, lousy people coming into this country from Mexico” (David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893-1923, pp 240-243,Cinco Puntos Press, 2005). Eight decades later, the toll of that episode is still immeasurable.

[From Real to Reel: Hispanics and their Eiconic Image in Film--Number 11 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, June 2009]

n The Image (1967), Kenneth Boulding coined the term “eiconic” referring to a “chronologically fixed image”–a sort of frozen snapshot we have in our minds of people. That eiconic image keeps us from seeing people as devel-opmental entities. That’s why we still see in our mind’s eye the American Indian, for example, with a war bon-

net, robed in animal furs, and wearing moccasins even though American Indians do not dress that way today. I

That 18th century snapshot of the American Indian is a visceral stereotype. Via these visceral stereotypes, the Black Legend fixes in the mind an eiconic image of Hispanics frozen in time as part of an “infra-reality,” that is, an interior reality inconsistent with external reality.

That eiconic image was at work in 1967 when a Texas publisher asked me to contribute a story for an anthology of Texas stories. I submitted the short story “Chicago Blues” about a Chicano musician in the early post-World War II years. The story had won a major European award juried by Richard Wright. The publisher sent the story back to me explaining that he was expecting a story along the lines of J. Frank Dobie’s “The Straw Man”–a piece that caricatured Tejanos (Mexican Texans) as simple peasants dressed in poplin and wearing huaraches.

Until the advent of motion pictures (film) in the early 20 th century, the primacy of print to diffuse information and eiconic images was paramount. In its diffusion of celluloid images and sub-textual public values, film surpassed the power of print to reach mass audiences. Omar Khayam, the Persian poet wrote: The moving finger having writ moves on / and all your piety and wit / cannot cancel half a line of it. Today, the power of the motion picture camera (now video camera also) to convey a visual reality–however true or false–has become the dominant medium in shaping pub-lic values. The motion picture captures eiconic images of people frozen in frames. And all our piety and wit cannot cancel half a line of it.

Unfortunately, in the case of American Hispanics the public values transmitted by film and video are as laden with stereotypes as their print cohorts. From the begining of silent films to the first “talkies” in 1927 (The Jazz Singer) the images of Hispanics in American films simply perpetuated the perniciously eiconic stereotypes extant in American so-ciety engendered by the Black Legend. Non-Hispanic film audiences could now see on “the silver screen” the stereo-typed images of Hispanics they could theretofore only imagine from the printed page. They could now see Hispanics in poverty-strewn villages, lazing in the sun, uncivilized, half-naked or else see them as mustachioed bandits sur -rounded by hot-blooded señoritas of easy virtue and loose morals (Luis Reyes and Peter Rubie, Hispanics in Holly-wood: A Celebration of 100 Years in Film and Television, 2000, 3).

According to Reyes and Rubie, “Bandits and sleepy Mexican towns” were standard features in silent Westerns in which the vicious greaser image came into being. Bronco Billy and the Greaser and The Greaser’s Revenge (both 1914), for example, confirmed “the Mexican as an evil and sinister villain” (6). Reyes and Rubie contend that the prob-

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lem of Hollywood movies with Latino subjects or characters has been the ignorance of film makers about Latinos and their history and culture (18). For example, “the battle of the Alamo in 1836 . . . left deep seated prejudices between Anglo Americans and Mexicans that are still reflected over 100 years later in such movies as Man of Conquest (1939), The Last Command (1955) and John Wayne’s The Alamo (1960)” ( 5). Films reflected the low esteem in which His-panics were held by the non-Hispanic public. With few exceptions, Hispanics were rigidly typecast in films as garden -ers or gangsters, as maids or madames. In the main, “Hispanic women have usually been relegated to some version of the stout mamacita, the sexy spitfire, and the suffering mother or girlfriend” (313)

Like films, television was no better. “Although Hispanics have been featured on various series since television be-gan, there have been few Hispanic star or character-driven vehicles” (Reyes and Rubie, 312). Though the George Lopez Show is an exception, its characterizations of Hispanics are stereotyped with buffoonery and antics for comedic effect at the expense of Hispanics. To counter this trend, Hispanic actors organized Nosotros, to improve the images of Hispanics in American films and television.

While it’s true that people should be able to laugh at themselves in comic situations, Reyes and Rubie conclude that “accepting unchallenged stereotyped portrayals in the movies is a form of passive racism.” That Hollywood’s bot-tom-dollar mentality “masks” that passive racism; that “the insidiousness of racism is not so much the overt acts of [fascism], but the moral cowardice of those who avoid speaking out against off-the-cuff offensive remarks.” For Reyes and Rubie there is “a fine line between the artistic tyranny of ‘political correctness’ and being sensitive to perpetuating a stereotype” (2).

The most notable television shows that parlayed Hispanic stereotypes to success were The Cisco Kid and the Zorro series. Both employed unabashed stereotypes of Hispanics, not to mention that few Hispanics played the lead role. Af -ter a 38 year hiatus, Luis Valdez directed the 1994 version of The Cisco Kid with Jimmy Smits and Cheech Marin without the gratuitous stereotypes. While this was a formidable leap forward for Hispanics in films and television, the eiconic images of Hispanics in these media still abound.

The pervasive casting of non-Hispanics as Hispanics has lessened today, providing Hispanic actors more opportu-nities for non-typecast roles. Until the civil rights era many Hispanic characters in film had been played by non-His -panics. In Viva Zapata, for example, Marlon Brando played the key role of Zapata while Anthony Quinn played the role of the brother. In Villa Rides, Yul Brynner played the part of Pancho Villa. In The Milagro Beanfield War a num-ber of Hispanics appeared in supporting roles, but the only American Hispanic (U.S.) actor was Freddy Fender. In a number of television shows there are references to (phantom) Hispanics with Hispanic surnames who do not appear on screen. And non-Mexican Hispanic actors are cast as Mexicans or Mexican Americans. In the TV series Empire (1962-64), Charles Bronson played Paul Moreno, a Mexican American ranch hand.

Combating the effects of the Black Legend has been a steep incline for Hispanics in the United States. What is most evident about that struggle is that progress for Hispanics is not a matter of largesse oblige but of nous même oblige, collective efforts to overcome the obstacles in the wake of the Black Legend.

[Full Circle--Number 12 in a series on La Leyenda Negra, July 2009]

t seems fitting by way of giving closure to this series on The Black Legend to go back to the beginning, back to the event that gave it impetus. Why? Because the question of the Spanish Armada is still inter secting our lives in ways that are germane to the historical events of our time. That may seem strange since 421 years separate us

from the event of the Spanish Armada which King Philip II (Felipe el Segundo) of Spain sent to reinstate England into the Catholic fold.

IUnder Papal cover, King Philip firmly believed that it was God’s will that he liberate England from its Protestant

heresy. More personally, though, Philip felt entitled to the throne of England since 34 years earlier in 1554 he had mar-

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ried Mary Tudor, the Catholic Queen of England, known historically as Bloody Mary for her persecution of English Protestants. That marriage was orchestrated by the Emperor Charles V (Philip’s father) “to form an alliance of Eng -land, Spain and the Netherlands against the power of France” (David Howarth, The Voyage of the Armada, Lyons Press, 1981, 33). The Emperor’s motive was for Philip to produce an heir “who would keep England safely within the [Catholic] Church when Mary died” (Ibid.).

Despite the vicissitudes of arranged marriages and a tumor mistaken for an heir, Mary died of ovarian cancer and Philip became King of Spain on the death of his father. Feeling bound by the ambitions of his father, Philip sought to marry Mary’s sister Elizabeth as a boon to England thereby fulfilling his father’s ambitions to bring England back to the true faith. Rejected, Philip turned his attention to Mary, Queen of Scots, determined to cement the nexus between Spain and England. Circumstances botched everything, including England’s brazen attacks on Spanish settlements in the Caribbean and in 1584 Philip began assembling the ships that were to become the Spanish Armada. He was deter -mined by hook or crook to “save” or to “have” England.

Philip was so determined that he ignored the runes against the plan to invade England. At the time, Spain was en -sconced firmly as the world’s super power. It controlled the Americas, the Philippines, the Netherlands, a part of Italy. What more could England add to the Spanish holdings other than more real estate? The Supreme Leader of all that was Spain and its empire was ready to plunge his people into the dark hole of power. The Armada, “the largest fleet in all the history of the sea” (Howarth, 17), sailed from Spain in May of 1588 with more than 30,000 men. Four months later it lay in tatters, Spanish soldiers and sailors strewn on land and sea from the Netherlands to Scotland and Ireland. From today’s perspective such a plan would seem to belie reason. But in the 20th century and into the 21st, national leaders have plunged their people into equally dark holes of power and equally belied reason. But the point is not the plan but the unexpected consequences of the plan–namely, the Black Legend.

In 1588 Spain was not only at the height of empire but at the height of a golden age of letters, paralleling the golden age of Greece. Spanish theaters were burgeoned by audiences hungry for the works of Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Ruiz de Alarcón, and Lope de Vega who sailed with the Spanish Armada and survived its infelicitous end (John A. Crow, Spain: The Root and the Flower, Harper & Row, 1963, 200). Given this cultural zenith, what would compel King Philip to undertake such a problematic venture as the conquest of England? Most historians sug-gest megalomania. It seems to me, however, that a part of the answer is supplied in the current film Frost/Nixon and may be further adduced in works still to be written about the reasons for the American invasion of Iraq. We should bear in mind, however, that the plan for the Spanish Armada went awry not because of its execution but because terres-trial circumstances interfered with its execution. The Spanish Armada ran into a perfect force 10 storm that demolished not only half the Spanish fleet but also two-thirds of its contingent troops (soldiers and sailors). The adventure and the failure of the Spanish Armada affected all of Spain from its inception to its end. However, “by 1603, Spain had not lost to the English a single overseas outpost” Garrett Mattingly, The Armada, 1959, 397). Such was the success of the puta-tive defeat of the Spanish Armanda by the English giving rise to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Given Philip’s punctilious organization, his plan should have included better weather intelligence. In retrospect that goes without saying. The winds and gales of the English Channel and the North Atlantic defeated the Spanish Ar -mada. While describing the task of the Armada as impossible, Howarth indicates that “the faults of the armada were technical, not human” (244) despite the human element of decisions. Everyone was blamed for the failure of the Ar -mada except King Philip who to the end of his life expressed no remorse for the loss of life nor for assembling and sending the armada to its untimely end, saying only “I sent them to fight against men, not storms” (Howarth, 246).

A storm defeated the Spanish Armada, not the English navy, though English accounts say otherwise. Drake and the other English maritime leaders feared the reassembly and return of the Spanish Armada, unaware of its demise. In

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the bravado of the aftermath, an English communiqué of the time boasted that the queen’s “rotten ships” staved off the “sound ships” of the Spaniards. This was followed by a broadsheet goading Spanish pride that English valor beat and shuffled the Spanish Armada from its shores, noting that Flavit Jehovah et dissipati sunt– God sighed and they all van-ished. For the English the legend of the defeat of the Spanish Armada became more important than the event itself (Mattingly, 402). Thus began the Black Legend.

Both the English and the Spaniards attributed the outcome of the matter to God. The English believed they de -feated the Spaniards because God was on their side; the Spaniards believed it was God’s will that they did not defeat the English. For us who know the aftermath of the story, we should heed Santayana’s dictum that those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it. The Black Legend has endured long enough. It’s time to lay it to rest.

[Shamelessly UT El Paso Cancels Chicano Icon Holiday. Number 13 Second Series on La Leyenda Negra, Feb-ruary 2011]

ong before it became the University of Texas at El Paso, Texas Western College (established in 1914 as the Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy) held the Mexican American community of El Paso at arm’s length despite the demographic reality that El Paso was essentially a Mexican American community. Disdain-

fully, Texas Western College and after it became the University of Texas at El Paso continued to preserve its educa-tional goals of service to the Anglo community dismissing its responsibilities as a state-supported public institution of education to the Mexican American community.

LThat disdain is still evident today in a number of overt and covert ways despite the fact that almost 80 percent of

its student body is Hispanic comparable to the demographics of the city. For example, in its 97 year history, no His -panic (certainly no Mexican American) has served as president of the institution. For the most part, its principal admin-istrators have been mostly Anglos.

The University has been touted as the most successful Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the graduation of His-panic students. That’s why it came as a surprise to the Mexican American community of El Paso that the University had cancelled César Chávez Day as a holiday for the next four years. What makes that decision so galling is that César Chávez is the only Hispanic/Latino memorialized by eight states with a holiday, including Texas. Chávez has become not only a Chicano icon but a Latino icon for his advocacy of farmworkers and the impoverished.

The University’s explanation for its decision to cancel César Chávez Day as an institutional holiday is that the state limits institutional choices to only 12 holidays. As reported by Adriana Gómez Licón in the El Paso Times, Vice President Richard Adauto added “We just cannot take every holiday.”But César Chávez Day isn’t just any holiday. It’s the only state holiday (albeit optional) that honors a Mexican American. Why not choose one of the other optional hol -idays like Good Friday, Rosh Hoshanah, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day? Maybe the state ought to eliminate Confeder-ate Heroes Day or make it optional. What about San Jacinto Day? Why not let El Pasoans decide? Or eliminate apotheosic holidays altogether?

What is troubling about the UTEP decision is that it surfaces amid such virulent anti-Mexican sentiment and rhetoric as manifested in Arizona. Ramon Renteria has it right: cancelling César Chávez Day is a sign of disrespect, and having the university operational on that day with classes and all is really pretty “hollow.”

What this brouhaha boils down to is an institutional failure of leadership and vision. Hispanic El Pasoans need uni-versity leaders and change they can believe in, not the pabulum of rhetoric that promises everything but delivers noth-ing. The decision to cancel Cesar Chavez Day was made unilaterally by the university without prior consultation with the Mexican American community, not that the Mexican American community would have endorsed that cancel-lation That situation points to the low regard the university has for the Mexican American community.

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[Segundo de Febrero. Number 14 Second Series on La Leyenda negra, March 2011]

El Segundo de Febrero (the second of February) is a significant date in Mexican American history: it’s the day in 1848 when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, the Treaty that dismembered Mexico and more than half its terri-tory (550,000 square miles, larger than Spain, France, and Italy combined) annexed by the United States. The Treaty also incorporated the Mexican population of the annexed territory into the American polity. That’s the beginning of Mexican American history.

To commemorate the beginning of that history, a group of Mexican Americans met in San Antonio, Texas, to or -ganize what has become El Segundo de Febrero. When I was drawn into that circle, El Segundo de Febrero as a title for that commemoration had already taken hold as opposed to the more proper Spanish description “El dos de febrero,” attuned to the Spanish propensity for the cardinal form of numbers in these matters over the ordinal form.

The annexed territory of northern Mexico now includes the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Contrary to the propaganda of the time, the dismembered territory was not void of population. The territory included the thriving cities of San Antonia, El Paso, Santa Fe, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, San \

Francisco, and hundreds of smaller settlements dotting the landscape. A large population center of Mexicans stretched north along the San Luis Valley from Tierra Amarilla in New Mexico to what is now Colorado Springs.

There are no accurate records to tell us how large a population occupied the ceded Mexican territory, but estimates range from a low of 75,000 (Carey McWilliams, North From Mexico) to a high of 3,000,000 (Rudolfo Acuña, Occu-pied America). The esteemed Tejano historian, Arnoldo DeLeon suggests a population size somewhere between these two figures. The point is, as DeLeon contends, that the annexed territory was not despoblado as the proponents of man-ifest destiny have claimed.

The Mexicans who came with the dismembered territory (including españoles, criollos, mestizos andindios) have been designated by Chicano scholars as the “conquest generation”—the generation that prevailed during the period of transition from 1848 to 1912, the year that New Mexico and Arizona became states, completing the “forty and eight.” This conquest generation became the primary mass of Mexicans whose progeny are today’s Mexican Americans and Chicanos.

El segundo de febrero is not a day of celebration. It’s a day of remembrance much the way Hanukah is a day of re -membrance for Jews. El segundo de febrero marks the beginning of the Mexican diaspora in the United States —meji-canos separated politically, culturally, and linguistically from their homeland, struggling to find their place in the American ethos. This forking path of history would create a group of mejicanos who until the 1960s would struggle for self-identity and full participation in the American enterprise. Even today, Americans seem not to understand that Mexican Americans are mejicanos with a lower case “m” and Americans with a capital “A.”

Not all Mexican Americans nor Chicanos participate in commemorating el segundo de febrero, but like Kwanza, the African American commemoration, the date is being commemorated by more Mexican Americans with each pass -ing year and growing in importance as Mexican Americans learn more about their history. Unfortunately that history has been occulted by mainstream history. But Mexican American and Chicano historians like Rudolfo Acuña and Arnoldo DeLeon are bringing that history to the forefront of American history.

The segundo de febrero helps to raise the consciousness of Americans about Mexican Americans and their histori-cal relationship to the United States. It points out that, in the main, Mexican Americans are not immigrants in the United States—per the conquest generation, they are of the United States. Mexicans currently crossing into the United States represent “a return of the native”—so to speak—analogous currently to the return of diasporic Palestinians to the Palestine controlled by Israel. The passing of control of the area from the British to the newly formed state of Is-rael was a mandate from the United Nations. 

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[American Hispanics and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Chicano Experience. Number 15 Second Series on La Leyenda Negra, April 2011]

popular American misconception is that the Civil Rights Struggle of the 60's was essentially an African American endeavor. While the focus of visibility rightly centered on African Americans in that struggle, the aggregate strength of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's came from the myriad groups that formed that

movement which included Mexican Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, LGBT Americans, and the host of other disenfranchised Americans.

AThe Mexican American struggle for civil rights began almost as soon as they became Americans by conquest and

by fiat as part of the spoils of the U.S. War against Mexico (1846-1848). Once Mexicans, now Americans, but always mejicanos, Mexican Americans quickly became painfully aware of their diasporic condition and the limitations that standing entailed–principally their legal status. Despite the “safeguards” of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), Mexican Americans were brutally subjected to the harsh apodictic codes governing a conquered people.

Fully aware of their new status, Mexican Americans were nevertheless perplexed by the paradox of place: though now Americans, they were still in the same place they were when they were Mexicans. No longer Mexico now—but the United States—how were they to refer to their “new homeland”? And what would become of them as Mexicans now that they were Americans? These were critical questions for Mexican Americans as they grappled with the reali -ties of readjusting their lives to a new political and linguistic order.

These questions framed the Mexican American agenda for the next century and a half, during which the succeed -ing generations of Mexican Americans labored to define the boundaries of their “homeland” while mainstream Amer-ica sought to diminish their presence on the American scene by subjecting them to the same public code applied to African Americans and all other peoples of color in the nation.

An ungrateful nation never thanked them for their sacrifices to the country during military conflicts even though during World War II more than 500,000 Mexican Americans were in uniform, dying in Europe and the Pacific for a nation that would discriminate against them until well into the 1970's and beyond, into the 21st century.

Important to bear in mind is that Mexican Americans did not go gently into that good night of American occupa-tion after 1848. Insurgency politics dominated the “conquest generation” for most of the transition period from 1848 to 1912. Even during the period of Americanization from 1912 to 1960 when Mexican Americans sought to become what the nation wanted them to become, they were considered and treated as second-class citizens, reviled as the stereotypes that demonized them, disenfranchised, working at jobs of last resort, their children thrown into English-language schools to sink or swim. The period of the Chicano Movement from 1960 and after sparked the rise of confrontational militancy among Mexican Americans now becoming Chicanos. They had reached the end of “patience”.

In 1948 George I. Sanchez commented that instead of helping Mexican Americans to lift themselves up by their bootstraps the American government took away their boots (Forgotten People). Bootless, with the advent of the Chi-cano Movement, Mexican Americans forged their manifesto of liberation and found succor in identifying where they lived as Aztlan–the mythic homeland of the Aztecs, the people of their indigenous roots in the Americas. All of the Mexican Cession, including Texas, became Aztlan–an emblematic homeland. As Chicanos now, Mexican Americans were home.

One of the jobs of last resort for Mexican Americans was picking crops in the fields that supplied the nation’s food and supported its produce structure. Mexican Americans became migrant farm workers at seasonal employment wher-ever there were crops to pick across the nation. One season would find them picking beets in Minnesota; another sea -son would take them to the apple orchards of the Yakima Valley in the state of Washington. Oftentimes they picked

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cotton in America’s southland. Mostly, though, the migrant trail was confined to the harvest crescent of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

Given the significance of farm work to Mexican American existence, it was only logical that the early efforts of the Chicano Movement would emerge among Mexican American migrant workers. Indeed, Mexican Americans worked across the spectrum of Labor activities in the United States, but they were aggregated principally in the work of the fields. Nevertheless, their labor helped to build the United States for they also worked in the steel mills, the railroads, the restaurants, all kinds of odd jobs in pursuit of the American dream.

The early stage of the Chicano Movement (circa the 1960’s) was not only about the struggle in the fields. It was about the struggle everywhere. Nevertheless, it was the struggle in the fields that caught the attention of the American public, starting with the Delano strike against California grape-growers, principally Schenley farms, in 1965 led by Ce-sar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

Almost from the beginning of their colonization in 1848, Mexican Americans organized various groups for their well-being and protection. In 1883 Mexican American vaqueros organized a strike against cattle companies for better wages. In the 1880's, Mexican Americans organized the Caballeros of Labor to ward off Anglo land-grabbing schemes. By the end of the 19th century, they organized in Arizona for better mining conditions. In 1903, Mexican Americans or-ganized a sugar beet strike in Ventura, California. And in 1913, they organized a strike against the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, California for better housing conditions.

Organizing sustained efforts to improve agricultural conditions for Mexican Americans proved difficult despite successes like the El Monte berry strike of 1933 and the San Joaquin Valley strike of that same year. A succession of farmworker groups gained prominence throughout the 30's, 40's, and 50's, but none prevailed, owing largely to the re -pressive retaliatory measures of growers who saw only subversion in Mexican American efforts to organize farmwork-ers. The most disastrous effort at organizing Mexican American farmworkers occurred in 1947 with the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation and Richard Nixon’s duplicitous participation in the affair. Yet, Mexican Americans persisted, be-coming part of the American labor movement in the United States.

Success with the struggle in the fields came with the charismatic organizers Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who organized the Farm Workers Association which later became the National Farm Workers Association. That success has been credited to Chavez’ philosophy of non-violent confrontation which had to surmount attitudes like those of W. H. Knox of the Arizona Cotton Growers Association who in his refusal to deal with Chavez and the farmworkers union said: “Have you ever heard, in the history of the United States, or in the history of the human race, of the white race be-ing overrun by a class of people of the mentality of the Mexicans?” History acknowledges Chavez’ achievement in the fields with his red flag and black eagle.

In a real sense, during the Civil Rights Struggle, Mexican Americans did not take back the schools. American schools are still an educational gulag for Mexican Americans despite their ostensible academic gains. Though Enron-like shenanigans manipulate school data, the actual drop-out rate for Mexican Americans is still, at 50%, distressingly high. American schools have not only failed Mexican Americans but they have failed the nation as well, for it’s an ed-ucated citizenry that betokens the well-being of the State.

In a landmark work of investigative reporting, “Montezuma’s Children” (Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, The Center Magazine, November/December 1970), the statistics about the education of Mexican American children in the South-west were appalling. The educational level of Mexican Americans was slightly better than 4.8 years of schooling, with most Mexican Americans dropping out of school by the 6th grade. In Texas 39% of the Mexican Americans had less than a 5th grade education. Only a third of Mexican American children were enrolled in school. Almost half of the Mexican Americans in Texas were considered functional illiterates. In their aggregate, their dropout rate was more than twice the national average.

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According to government studies of the time, 80% of Mexican Americans were falling two grades behind their An-glo cohorts by the time they got to the 5th grade. Until the late 40's, throughout the Hispanic Southwest, Mexican Americans attended segregated schools. Until the advent of Bilingual Education in 1968, Mexican American children with limited English or no English skills began their education in English-language immersion classes with mono-lingual English teachers who had no training in language theory or second-language instruct-ion. Rules prohibiting Spanish in the public schools and their campuses (except in Spanish classes), brought harsh punishment for infractions.

Mexican American children were frequently relegated to classes for the mentally retarded simply because many teachers equated linguistic ability with intellectual ability. In the Hispanic Southwest, Mexican American students ac-counted for more than 40% of the so-called “mentally retarded.” Massive protest and walkouts seemed to be the only remedy for Mexican Americans in their efforts to reform the schools.

Since 1935 when Herschel T. Manuel pointed out the deficiencies of the Stanford-Binet test in assessing the abili-ties of Spanish-speaking Mexican American children, efforts to reform “standardized testing” vis-a-vis Mexican Amer-icans has met with limited success owing to hard-core insistence that doing so is a diminution of standards.

The end result of the educational gauntlet Mexican American children were historically forced to undergo severely limited the outcome of Mexican American college graduates, Their numbers in col lege and university populations then (and even now) did not and do not reflect their numbers in the American population, even though, here and there, the large presence of Mexican American students in Hispanic-serving colleges and universities suggest otherwise. The fun-damental question here is: To whom do the schools belong? Since Mexican American taxes support the schools as well (lower and higher education), excluding them from or restricting their access to those schools is tantamount to “taxa-tion without representation.”

The apothegm “Everything is political” may best characterize the Mexican American struggle for political power in the United States. While formation of La Raza Unida Party in 1971 may epitomize to many the apogee of Mexican American politics, the truth is that Mexican Americans have been “political” since day one, and glistening here and there in their historical presence in the United States are any number of spikes comparable to the apogee they achieved in forming La Raza Unida Party.

From the beginning of their colonization starting in 1848, the “conquest generation” of Mexican Americans orga-nized all manner of organizations for their survival, some of them political, most of them fraternal and beneficial soci -eties intended to help them keep a cohesive sense of community and to withstand the brutal bombardment their pres-ence in American society engendered against them. The American legal system was slow in responding to the legal and political grievances of Mexican Americans. That situation would not change until the advent of the Chicano Movement and its focus on the structural experiences of Mexican Americans.

Growing consciousness of their plight and rising expectations to improve their situation, Mexican Americans orga-nized for social change and embraced their aspirations for social justice in an ideology of self-determination, indepen -dent of the social system that had held them at arm’s-length for so long. Community identity and community control emerged as key objectives in the renaissance empowered by the Chicano Movement.

Historical organizations like the Alianza Hispano-Americana, League of United Latin American Citizens, and the American G.I. Forum played important roles in advancing the political agenda of Mexican Americans, but that agenda gained more immediacy after 1960 with formation of Mexican American political groups like the Mexican American Political Association, the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations, Mexican American Youth Organi-zation, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Southwest Voter Registration Project, the Crusade for Justice, La Raza Unida Party, United Farm Workers Union, National Council of La Raza, National Association of Latino and Elected Officials, and others.

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Important to bear in mind is that today Mexican Americans are essentially a native-born population despite the public perception that they are recent immigrants. More than a million of them have served in the American armed forces since the Civil War to the present conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Over the last 163 years they have had a modicum of success in electing Mexican Americans to Congress, state legislatures, and municipal posts. They are still not represented in the professions in terms of their numbers in the American population. They still lag in edu -cational achievement; and poverty is still a specter in their daily lives. Their growing numbers in the population, espe-cially in Texas and California, augur significant political changes in those states.

While not absent from the Mexican American political agenda, Chicano nationalism has given way to new realities of pragmatism in order to offset meretricious perceptions of them as “lazy rather than hard-working . . . living off wel-fare rather than being self-supporting” (Tom Smith, “Ethnic Survey,” GSS Topical Report, Number 19. National Opin-ion Research Center, University of Chicago, 1990).

In the first decade of the 21st century, Mexican Americans are still facing the ominous threats of the Black Legend [see the series on the Black Legend in Somos Primos] in states like Arizona and Texas whose new legislations seek to severely limit their rights of citizenship. What the future augurs for Mexican Americans is dimly apprehended through a glass darkly. What is evident, though, is that—whatever that future—Mexican Americans today, like their forebears of yesterday, have rolled up their sleeves to face it with hopeful determination and without fear, secure with their his -torical legacy of fighting for their civil rights.

The path to social justice and equality in the United States is still fraught with conflict in the United States for American Hispanics, but they are better prepared now than they were decades ago.

[Still at it--Number 16, Second Series on La Leyenda Negra, May 2011]

n the last number (12) of the first series on La Leyenda Negra I closed with the comment “The Black Legend has endured long enough. It’s time to lay it to rest.” As Hamlet would put it: ‘T is a consummation devountly to be wished. I’m persuaded that no matter how much we might wish the interment of the Black Legend, it’s not going

to go gently into that good night. In fact, the specter of the Black Legend has grown more menacing more virulent than ever. Hard to believe that in the 21st century, after the bitter and violent civil rights struggle of African Americans and Latino Americans during the 60’s and 70’s, the malevolence of hatred and discrimination has reared its ugly head once more in public discourse, this time with a rancor unabated in American civic discourse, directed point blank toward Latino Americans, under cover of “immigration reform.”

I

In 2009, the Black Legend came to a head in the home invasion of Raul Flores in Arivaca, Arizona, some 10 miles from the Mexican border. On the night of May 30, posing as U.S. Marshals the marauders led by Shawna Forde, head of Minutemen American Defense (MAD), and two of her white-supremacist vigilante cohorts, Jason Bush and Albert Gaxiola, shot and killed Raul Flores and his 9 year old daughter Brisenia, wounding Flores’ wife after busting into the Flores home. The story is that as a known drug dealer, Flores was fair game for robbery. The Forde gang is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. All are represented by the Pima County public defender’s office. Ignoring the racist motivation of the home invasion, a spokesman for the Pima County Sher-iff’s Office attributes the raid to “cash” and drugs.

At trial for the murders of Raul Flores and his 9 year-old daughter Brisenia, Shawna Forde was found Guilty of first-degree murder on two counts and sentenced to death. Jason Bush, Forde’s accomplice was also found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. The trial of Albert Gaxiola is scheduled for June of 2011. He’s expected to be found guilty as well with a comparable sentence. Despite the findings of guilt and the death sentences in the murders of Raul Flores and his 9 year-old daughter Brisenia and the ostensible merit of the American justice system, the extra-legal as-

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sault on Latino Americans is not assuaged by the punishment meted out by the American courts. Latino Americans hope that such verdicts can be deterrents in the seemingly relentless vigilante pursuits of Latino Americans by white extremists.

In a 2009 report, the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) warned precisely about anti-immigrant extremism, linking the “vitriolic rhetoric to the growing number of hate crimes against Latinos and perceived immi -grants” (Shakir, et al, June 19, 2009). From 2004 to 2007 hate crimes against Latinos rose by more than 40 percent. In 2008 the number of hate crimes against Latinos rose from 426 to 595 incidents. Shawna Forde was reported to have declared “We will not stop until we get the results that we need to have,” meaning the deaths of more Latino immi -grants.

Can the rhetoric of hate motivated by the Black Legend prompt murder? “Of course!” Unequivocally. The murders of Raul Flores and his 9 year-old daughter Brisenia were prompted by the rhetoric of hate. Jason Bush may have pulled the trigger but the rhetoric of hate gave him 007 license to kill Raul and Brisenia Flores. How is that? Because the rhetoric of hate “fatwalizes” the victims, putting them beyond the pale of judicial protection. This was the case in the murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant in Long Island, New York, on November 8, 2008, by white teenagers hunting for beaners (Mexicans).

In Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of free speech that no one has the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater knowing there is no fire, just as today no one is free to make bomb jokes aloud in an airborne plane knowing there is no bomb aboard the plane. The First Amendment protects a wide range of expres-sion. In its 1942 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court ruled that certain offensive words — called “fighting words” — can be prohibited.

It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circum -stances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and pun-ishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words —those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well ob-served that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. “Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense commu-nication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.”

Surely the rhetoric of hate falls under the banner of fighting words, “words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” However, given the tendency of the Supreme Court since 1942 to rule loosely on First Amendment rights, protection from the rhetoric of hate for Latinos seems a long shot. The only hope is that the rhetoric of hate poses a “true threat” of violence. In the murders of Marcelo Lucero, Raul and Brisenia Flores, the rhetoric of hate may have reached a threshold—murder as an emanation of hate rhetoric seems certainly to be a “true threat” of violence encouraged by the Black Legend.

American xenophobia has come to a head with Arizona’s passage of SB 1070 cited as “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” although it can best be described as “Round ‘em up (meaning Mexicans), Brand ‘em, then Kick ‘em Out” signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. For Latinos in the United States this Act is a wake-up call to the holocaust that this Act presages; for Latinos in Arizona (principally Mexicans and Mexican Ameri-

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cans) SB 1070 heralds concerted harassment presaging ethnic cleansing of Mexicans of any stripe (including Mexican Americans) and Latinos.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Mexican Americans in Arizona have every reason to fear SB 1070 and its specter of “ethnic cleansing” more so since “the Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school dis-tricts that teachers whose spoken English [is] deemed to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes.”

So now, it’s not just looking like a Mexican, it’s sounding like one. Like the pogroms of old against the Jews, over the years this aspect of xenophobia has surfaced many times against Mexicans in the United States including special English classes to eradicate the accents of Mexican American students. It’s okay for Za Za Gabor to have an accent.

This is, however, the first time that kind of xenophobia has appeared so menacing. Particularly followed up by the Arizona legislature passing a Bill (HB 2281) and signed by Governor Jan Brewer banning Ethnic Studies Programs (which includes Chicano Studies) on the grounds that these Programs advocate ethnic separatism and encourages Lati -nos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States. Perhaps those Xenophobes need a history lesson on how the Hispanic Southwest came into the American fold. They also need to look at school textbooks to see how under-represented Asian Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans are in those textbooks. Which is why we need Asian American Studies, African American Studies, and Mexican American Studies. What are white Arizonans really afraid of? HB 2281 has come to attention of the United Nations which condemns the Bill, citing Arizona’s rage against immigration and ethnic minorities as “a disturbing pattern of hostile legislative ac -tivity.”

Make no mistake about it—this dark force of American providentialism, this dark force of American fascism is crafting the “Final Solution” to rid the country of Mexicans and Latinos. What makes this augury so foreboding is that the list of cities and states taking up Arizona’s lead is growing. The moral dilemma is: how to confront this dark force? We must all speak up or suffer the consequences as Pastor Niemollor warned:

"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."

[Buscando Moros con tranchetes/Looking for Shadows [Moors] Carrying Spears--Number 17 Second series on La Leyenda Negra, June 2011]

n Spanish there’s an expression: “buscando moros con tranchetes,” loosely meaning “looking for Moors carrying spears” or “looking for shadows armed with spears.” In other words, “on guard for trouble because there’s always trouble everywhere.” This is the posture of the dominant American mainstream: Where there are Latinos there’s

going to be trouble. So, let’s get them before they get us. In Brick, New Jersey, on October 20, 1010, Vincent Johnson sent a series of threatening emails to employees of five civil right organizations that challenge discrimination against Latinos in the United States and work to improve opportunities for them. At his sentencing, Johnson admitted that his threats were motivated by race and national origin, with language like: “I’m giving you fair warning, if you don’t de -sist in your help to Latinos you are dead meat.” And “there can be absolutely no argument against the fact that Mexi-cans are scum as all they know is how to [expletive] and kill.” Johnson was sentenced to 50 months in prison and 3 years supervised release, tantamount to a slap on the wrist, at best, despite Johnson’s acts being described by the U.S. Attorney General’s office as a “hate-fueled campaign of fear to intimidate and terrorize the victims.” In Arizona, the hullabaloo over Senate Bill 1070 (immigration control) has spilled over into efforts to curtail instruction of Mexi-

I

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can American history and literature by eliminating the Mexican American Studies Program at the Tucson Unified School District on grounds that the program is subversive and teaches hatred of the United States. At a meeting of the school board at the Tucson Unified School District on May 4, 2011, the conference room walls were lined with Tucson police, armed and with riot gear, and a wall of police (5 deep) between the audience and the board members. Police were in the lobby and outside barricading the building. To get inside the conference room, entrants had to go through a full pat down and metal detectors. From the sky, helicopters patrolled the grounds of the building. In his report of the event, Rudy Acuña concluded that the police were not there to protect the Mexican American community but to arrest the Mexican American community. In fact, John Pedicone, Superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District or -dered the arrest of Lupe Castillo, an elderly and disabled woman on two crutches, for reading a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. She was wrestled to the ground by police. In the heat of anti-Mexican sentiment in Arizona, Pedicone, Vice President of the Southern Arizona Leadership Conference, a right-wing organization, won the superintendence of the Tucson Unified School District with the help of the Southern Arizona Leadership Conference and Raytheon money. According to Acuña, Pedicone considered the Mexican Americans attending the school board meeting as “a bunch of thugs that need a hundred cops with guns and riot gear because there is nothing more dangerous than educating Lati-nos to the current power structure, which includes the conservative and rich businessmen of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.” Moreover, Mark Stegeman, a University of Arizona Economics Professor and TUSD board pres-ident has proposed a resolution to strip Mexican-American History courses of their graduation credit because it does not fulfill an American history credit whereas a European History course does. Protesting Dr. Stegeman’s proposal in solidarity with the TUSD Mexican American high school students, a group of University of Arizona Mexican Ameri-can students staged a walkout of Stegeman’s Economics lecture class at the U of A. Mexican American educators think that though wrong in defying federal law, Stegeman is stubborn in his opposition to Mexican American Studies at TUSD, characteristic that will bring him down. This stubborn characteristic is the hallmark of rightwing antagonism toward American Latinos especially Mexican Americans.

In Arizona we see the legacy of the Black Legend at its most virulent. Latino students fill nearly half the classroom seats in Arizona's public schools, but HB 2281 signed by Governor Jan Brewer makes it illegal for these students to learn about their Mexican American heritage in the schools. HB 2281 prohibits “schools from offering courses at any grade level that advocate ethnic solidarity, promote overthrow of the US government, or cater to specific ethnic groups.” Per the Acosta et. al. lawsuit, a Judge will rule this summer on the constitutionality of HB2281; the first issue the judge is asked to rule on is a challenge to the vagueness of the statue, specifically that it does not pass the standard required by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. HB 2281 was passed because of State Superinten-dent of Public Instruction Tom Horne's personal distaste for the TUSC’s Chicano studies program, in which 3 percent of the district's 55,000 students participate. “He has been hell-bent on squashing the program ever since learning sev -eral years ago that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told Tucson High School students that Republicans hate Latinos" (Jessica Calefati, Mother Jones, May 12, 2010).

Given the vitriol against Latinos present in the public arena these days by Republicans, more and more signs are emerging that lend credence to the conclusion: “That Republicans hate Latinos.” In one recent town-hall meeting which Congressman Paul Ryan held in Wisconsin, he told his audience that “anchor babies cost money” which was likened by one Latin@ to saying that while children born to non-Latin@ U.S. citizens cost money it’s worse when they’re Latino children. Then, commenting on border security, Ryan asserted that the past philosophy of “catch and re-lease” by the border patrol didn’t work, he was challenged by a woman in the audience asking him if he was talking about people or fish, a description she considered racist, to which Ryan responded that it was “free speech.” Sara Inés

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Calderón put that encounter into perspective by explaining that “when people with prejudice want to talk it’s called ‘free speech’ but when DREAMers want to [talk], they’re arrested or escorted out by police” (Twitter @SaraChicaD).

The Georgia legislature has just passed House Bill 87 which Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed the law which David Zirin described as “shredding the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population” (Newsletter of the William C. Velasquez Institute May 17, 2011). Latinos in Georgia are concerned that the law will raise the level of anti-Latino sentiment in the state. News Taco: the Latino Daily reports a rise in racially profiling Latinos in Georgia. Jerry Gonza-lez, Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), asserts that “there’s open discrimination all over the place” in Georgia, adding that “It’s an extremely hostile environment for . . . Latinos in Georgia” (News Taco.com 5-17-11). The battle cry for law enforcement officers in Georgia is: “Let’s go Hispanic hunting,” all of this driven principally by Republicans in Georgia.

In Arizona, Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter (52nd District) and member of the House Armed Services Committee lashed out against the Navy’ initiative to name a U.S. cargo ship after Cesar Chavez (U.S. farmworker leader who was a World War II Navy veteran). Despite Cesar Chavez’ national standing, according to Hunter, Cesar Chavez is “unworthy as an American to have a U.S. ship named after him.” Gus Chavez, co-founder of the Latino De -fend the Honor initiative and a Navy veteran, decries Duncan Hunter’s diatribe against Cesar Chavez, calling for all Latinos to defend the honor.

In equally lamentable fashion, Santana was booed at the Civil Rights baseball game in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sun-day, May 15, when he took the microphone ostensibly to accept a civil rights honor, chastising instead Georgians for the anti-Latino bill signed into law by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal. Santana started by saying that he was represent -ing all immigrants, continuing with “The people of Arizona and the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.” Cheers turned to boos! Later, in impromptu comments in the Press Box, Santana continued: “Who’s going to change sheets and clean toilets? I invite all Latinos to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy. Who cleans the sheets? Who cleans the toilets? Who babysits? I am here to give voice to the invisible” Dave Zirin, the sports commentator, described Santana’s courage as “one hell of an object lesson.” For U.S. Latinos the object lesson is that all Latinos must have the courage to speak up in the face of racism and discrimination.

[A Consummation devoutly to be Wished. Number 18 Second Series on La Leyenda Negra, July 2011]

n Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, he ponders “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural

shocks That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.” [see Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, The Stamp of One Defect: A Study of Hamlet, 1966)

IHamlet is not here contemplating his own demise. He is, rather, weighing the options about which ac-

tion best suits the way to end the dilemma he has encountered. His uncle Claudius has killed his brother Hamlet [Sr], Hamlet’s father and married Gertrude, his mother, his father’s wife. “Bo be or not to be” does not ask the question about life or death; it posits weighing what to do on the one hand or on the other hand. In other words, if he does one thing these are the consequences; if he does the other thing, here are the conse-quences.

Hispanics today are faced with a comparable situation: Should they suffer the slings and arrows of outra -geous distortion, defamation, slander, libel and stereotyping? That is, put up with it, letting it all slide off their backs like rainwater. Or should they oppose the onslaught of distortion, defamation, slander, libel, and stereotyping? The latter choice poses the consequences of a dire end but it will all be over. That would take

28

care of it all. “Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Yes, that would sure be the end of it. Or would it?

Unlike Hamlet, however, American Hispanics are not temporizing in their decision to combat distortion, defamation, slander, libel and stereotyping of American Hispanics. The distortion, defamation, slander, libel, and stereotyping has gone on far too long. In 1967, Domingo Nick Reyes, Armando Rendon, Polly Baca, and others organized the Mexican American Anti-Defamation League. Unfortunately it ran into trademark diffi-culties with the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League. Nevertheless, tweaking the title of the organization to the Mexican American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Nick Reyes donned his armor and went forth to slay the hydra-headed Leyenda Negra. He was not the first, of course, to undertake that task. There were others before him. The problem has been—as the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League has found out—no sooner does one cut off one of its heads when that hydra-headed beast grows it back almost immediately.

From the beginning, from that very first moment when the Mexicans of the Mexican Cession remained with the land of their ancestors and became part of the American fold by fiat, they did not go gently into that good night. They were, after all, the spoils of war; they were the “conquest generation” as Maria Garcia has called them. They may have been conquered but they were not defeated. They stood their ground against American occupation of their land and resisted tooth and nail American efforts to seize their property. They understood what was expected of them as new wards of the United States; however they expected to be treated with civility and respect como gente decente.

The popular image of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, though distorted, has been one of men as love-able but rascally rogues or cruel and untrustworthy and the women as hot-blooded señoritas or silently obedi-ent suffering women. These images have been reinforced time and again by the American popular media. Bad enough to suffer the slings and arrows hurled at them by the popular media, Mexican Americans had to endure the incivilities hurled at them as a conquered people in their own land.

Throughout the dismembered Mexican territory (now part of the United States) there were cabals of mean-spirited Americans who were determined by hook or crook to teach the Mexicans cum Americans how to stay in their place. These attitudes toward Mexicans were hardened by European Reformation anti-catholic forces that took root in the United States. These attitudes were also hardened by the Black Legend now ram-pant everywhere. Anything Spanish was manifestly impure. Josiah Gregg of Santa Fe Trail fame observed that the Mexican Americans “appear to have inherited much of the cruelty and intolerance of their ancestors and no small portion of their bigotry and fanaticism” (Raymond A. Paredes, “The Origins of Anti-Mexican Sentiments in the United States” in Race and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Ages of Territorial and Market Ex-pansion Edited by Michael L. Krenn 1998:80). There is a recrudescence of that Hispanophobia today over the issue of “illegal” Hispanic immigration perceived as emanating principally from Mexico. However, no American Latino is safe from the prongs of the Black Legend.

During this last legislative session in Texas, the state legislature passed some of the most anti-His-panic bills of record, characterized by Representative Lon Burnam as “the most racist session of the Texas Legislature in a quarter of a century” (“The White-Power Legislature” by Bob Moser, The Texas Observer, May 16, 2011) Moser calls it “white supremacy masquerading as economic conservatism.”

In May of 2011, a Pima County, Arizona, SWAT team killed José Guereña, in a mistaken address raid ostensibly ferreting out marijuana. Guereña was a former Marine who served 2 tours in Iraq. Attempting to cover up the botched raid, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office smeared Guereña guilty by implication (Radley Balko, “Jose Guerena Killed: Arizona Cops Shoot Former Marine in Botched Pot Raid,” Huffingtron Post, May 25, 2011)

The outcomes of the Texas state legislature and the Pima County Sheriff’s SWAT team are linked directly to the rabid anti-Hispanic hysteria sweeping not only the Hispanic Southwest but the entire country. At the moment, it appears that much of that anti-Hispanic hysteria is linked to immigration issues, but that hysteria

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is rooted much deeper in the American psyche as the First Series and now the Second Series on La Leyenda Negra/the lack Legend has sought to disclose. And still the anti-Hispanic beat goes on, notwithstanding the projection by the U.S. Census Bureau, as reported by John Garrido, that “by the year 2097 50% of the entire population of the United States will be Hispanic, 30% will be black, 13% will be Asian, and only 5% will be white” (Blue Dogs of the Democratic Party, September 5, 2007). One can only ask how historical memory will play out then?

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LA LEYENDA NEGRA / THE BLACK LEGEND

BIBLIOGRPHY

Hakluyt, Richard. The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts. 2 Vols. Edited by E.G.R. Taylor. London: Hakluyt Society, 1935.

Las Casas, Bartolomé de. The Spanish Colonie, or a Briefe Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniardes. Lon-don: 1583.

——. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Edited by Anthony Pagden. Translated by Nigel Griffin. Lon-don: Penguin Books, 1992.

Loyseleur, Pierre. An Apology or Defense of My Lord the Prince of Orange . . . Against the Proclamation and Edict Published by the King of Spaine. Delft: 1580.

Martyr, Peter. The Decades of the newe worlde or west india, etc. In The First Three English books on America. Edited by Edward Arber. Translated by Richard Eden. Birmingham: 1885.

Smith, John. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Edited by Karen Ordahl Kupperman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

——. "The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles." In The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631). Edited by Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

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Elliott, J. H. The Old World and the New, 1492-1650. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Gibson, Charles. The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1971.

Griffin, Eric. "Un-sainting James: Othello and the 'Spanish Spirits' of Shakespeare's Globe," Representations 62 (1998): 58-100.

——. "'But wherefore blot I Bel-Imperia's name?': Ethos, Empire, and the Valiant Acts of Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy." English Literary Renaissance 31 (2001).

Hadfield, Andrew. Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Juderías, Julián. La Leyenda Negra: Estudios Acerca del Concepto de España en el Extranjero. Barcelona: Casa Edito-rial Araluce, 1929.

Maltby, William. The Black Legend in England: The Development of Anti-Spanish Sentiment, 1558-1660. Durham: Duke University Press, 1971.

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Pagden, Anthony. European Encounters in the New World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Parmellee, Lisa Ferraro. 'Good Newes from Fraunce': French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1996.

Powell, Philip Wayne. Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudice Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

Retamar, Roberto Fernández. "Against the Black Legend." In Caliban and Other Essays. Translated by Edward Baker. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Sanchez, Joseph P. The Spanish Black Legend/La Leyenda Negra Española: Origins of Anti- Hispanic Stereotypes/Orígenes de los estereotipos antihispánicos. Albuquerque: National Park Service, 1990.

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

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Select Bibliography of Felipe de Ortego y Gasca’s Works/Lectures on

Mexican Americans / Chicanas/Chicanos / Hispanics / Latinos 1967-2011[Complete bibliography includes hundreds of works in various genres—prose, poetry, fiction, drama, song, reviews—as well as numerous critical pieces on major British and American literary figures like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Browning, Melville, Faulkner, Steinbeck. From 1972 to 1982 Dr. Ortego was Associate Publisher of La Luz Magazine (Denver); and from 1983 to 1992 he was Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The National Hispanic Reporter (Washington, DC).]

“The Minority on the Border,” The Nation, December 11, 1967. “Soledad” (short story), recipient of 1967 NEA-Reader’s Digest Award for fiction, Puerto del Sol, New

Mexico State University, Winter 1968.“Mexican American Writers,” New York Free Press, March 14, 1968.“The Green Card Dilemma,” The Texas Observer, March 15, 1968.“The Coming of Zamora” (short story), El Grito: Journal of Mexican American Thought, Spring 1968.“People of Sanchez,” The Nation, April 8, 1968.“The Mexican-Dixon Line,” El Grito: Journal of Mexican American Thought, Summer 1968.Issues and Challenges in Mexican American Education, El Paso: Chicano Research Institute, 1968.Issues in Language and Reading Instruction of Spanish Speaking Children (with Carl L. Rosen), Newark:

International Reading Association, 1969. ERIC Report ED 075804.“Perspectives in Language, Culture, and Behavior,” International Language Reporter, 2nd Quarter, 1969.“Language and Reading Problems of Spanish-speaking Children in the Southwest” (with Carl L. Rosen),

Journal of Reading Behavior, Winter 1969. ERIC Report ED 007382.Problems and Strategies in Teaching the Language Arts to Spanish Speaking Mexican American

Children (with Carl L. Rosen), Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Education, 1969.“Mexican American Literature,” The Nation, September 15, 1969.“The Education of Mexican Americans,” New Mexico Review, Part I, September 1969; Part II, October

1969.“Chicano Education,” New Mexico Lobo, University of New Mexico, November 3, 1969.

Review of Poesia: 1935-1968 by Efrain Huerta, Books Abroad, Winter 1970. The Linguistic Imperative in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Washington, DC: Center

for Applied Linguistics 1970.

“Chicano Odyssey,” review of North From Mexico by Carey McWilliams, Trans-Action, April 1970. [Name of magazine changed to Society, 1972]

“The Dwarf of San Miguel” (short story), The New England Review, April-May 1970.“Some Cultural Implications of a Mexican American Border Dialect of American English,” Studies in

Linguistics, October 1970.

“Chicano Odyssey” (reprint from Trans-Action), Regeneración, 8: 1970.“El Teatro Campesino Depicts Realities of Chicano Life,” El Paso Herald Post, September 29,

1970.“Breaking the Language Barrier,” Upper Valley Courier, October 19, 1970.“Montezuma’s Children” (Cover Story), The Center Magazine, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, California, November-December 1970. Entered by Senator Ralph

Yarbrough into The Congressional Record, 116 No. 189 (November 25, 1970), S18961-S18965. Recommended for a Pulitzer.

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Review of Los Chicanos: An Awakening People by John Haddox, Nova (publication of the UT El Paso), February-April 1971. “Which Southwestern Literature and Culture in the English Classroom?” Arizona English Bulletin, April 1971.“Schools for Mexican Americans: Between Two Cultures,” (Cover Feature) The Saturday Review, April

17, 1971. ERIC Report ED034647.“The Chicano Renaissance,” Journal of Social Casework, May 1971.Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (diss), University of New Mexico, 1971.“English-Oriented Schools Cause Chicano Educational Failure,” AAUW Journal (Journal of the American

Association of University Women), August 1971.“Resources: Teaching Spanish-Speaking Children” (with Carl L. Rosen), The Reading Teacher, October

1971. ERIC Report EJ 044760.“Mexican Americans and the Schools,” Idea, Bureau of Higher Education: U.S. Office of Education,

Winter 1971-1972.Selective Mexican American Bibliography, El Paso: Border Regional Library Association, 1972.“Chicano Poetry: Roots and Writers,” Southwestern American Literature, Spring 1972.“Sociopolitical Implications of Bilingual Education,” Educational Resources and Techniques, Summer

1972. ERIC Report EJ 078233.“Sociolinguistics and Language Attitudinal Change” in Sociolinguistics in the Southwest, Bates Hoffer,

editor, San Antonio: Trinity University 1972.“The Medium and the Message: Early Childhood Bilingual Bicultural Education” in Proceedings of the

National Conference on Early Childhood Education and the Chicano, Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona, 1972.

“Chicanos Extend the Boycott,” The Nation, November 20, 1972.“Preparation in the Art of Teaching English,” Improving College and University Teaching, Spring 1973.We Are Chicanos: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature, editor, New York: Washington Square

Press / Simon & Schuster, 1973.“English Teaching: Some Humanistic Goals and a Personal Credo” in Goal Making for English Teaching,

Henry B. Maloney, editor, Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1973. ERIC ED 082193.

A Medio Grito: Chicanos and American Education (with Marta Sotomayor), Washington, DC: National Council of La Raza and the Ford Foundation, 1974..

Chicanos and Concepts of Culture (monograph with Marta Sotomayor), San Jose, California: Marfel Publications, 1974. ERIC Report ED 178246.Chicanos and Concepts of Language (monograph with Marta Sotomayor), San Jose, California: Marfel

Publications, 1974.Chicanos, Language, Culture, and Behavior (monograph with Marta Sotomayor), San Jose, California:

Marfel Publications, 1974. “Chicano Education: Status Quo” Reform” Revolution?” in Ghosts in the Barrio: Issues in Bilingual

Education, Ralph Poblano, editor, San Rafael, California: Lasing Press, 1974.Chicano Content and Social Work Education, editor with Marta Sotomayor, (Best Book Award from

Trabajadores de la Raza) New York: Council on Social Work Education, 1975. ERIC ED 113999.The Chicano Literary World—1974 (editor with David Coned), Albuquerque: National Education Task

Force de la Raza, 1975.“El Renacimiento Chicano” (translation of “The Chicano Renaissance” from the Journal of Social

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Casework) in Aztlan: Historia Contemporaneous del Pueblo Chicano, Mexico: Secretaria de Educación Publica, 1976.

Community Attitudes Toward Bilingual Education: A Research Report of the Chicano Institute for Social Policy Analysis (with Rebecca Daniel), San Antonio: Caravel Press, 1977.

“Minorities and the Quest for Human Dignity,” La Luz, March 1978. ERIC ED 175970.The Tejano Yearbook 1519-1979: A Selective Chronicle of the Hispanic Presence in Texas (with Arnoldo

De Leon), San Antonio: Caravel Press, 1978. “An Infinity of Mirrors: Chicanos and American Education,” ERIC Report ED 178245. Presentation at

East Texas State University, Commerce, Texas, May 1979..“The Hispanic in American Literature: A Humanistic Assessment of a Public Policy Issue” in The

Hispanic: Missing Link in Public Policy—A Conference Report, Miguel A Teran, editor, Des Moines: Spanish Speaking Peoples Commission of Iowa, 1979. Produced in microfilm (ED 199346) by the Iowa Network for Obtaining Resource Material for Schools, October 1979.

“An Introduction to Chicano Poetry” in Modern Chicano Writers: Twentieth Century Views, New York: Prentice Hall, 1979.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Old Spanish Missions of San Antonio, editor, San Antonio: Our Lady of the Lake University, 1979. Presidio La Bahia Award for best book on Spanish Colonial Texas from the Kathryn Stoner O’Connor Foundation and the Sons of the Republic of Texas, 1980.

“Toward an Hispanic Philosophy of Education for the 80’s,” El Cuaderno (Journal of the Texas Association for Chicanos in Higher Education), Spring 1980.

“Life and Literature of the Mexican American Southwest: The Beginnings and the 19th Century, The Borderlands Journal, Fall 1981.

“A Bilingual Childhood,” The American Scholar, Summer 1981.“The Quetzal and the Phoenix,” Denver Quarterly, Fall 1981.Bilingual Education: Questions and Answers (Booklet with Gloria Zamora), Houston: Texas Association

for Bilingual Education, 1981.“Lions, Tigers, and Leopards: An Assessment of Hispanics and Civil Rights” (invited contribution to the

25th Anniversary Issue), Civil Rights Quarterly, Summer 1982.Milestones in Chicano Literature—Guide and Reading List, Austin: Texas Council for the Humanities,

1982.“Are There U.S. Hispanics Writers?” Nosotros Magazine, April 1983.The Arts and the Humanities in American Society: An American Hispanic View (monograph), San

Antonio: Caravel Press, 1984.New Americans in Transition: Preparing for Amnesty—the Educational Imperative (with Alicia Cuaron),

Career Training Foundation: Washington, DC, 1984.Report of the Commission on the Status of Hispanics in the Department of Defense, National Association

of Hispanic Government Employees: Washington, DC, 1984.“Segundo de Febrero,” National Hispanic Reporter, February 2, 1984.“Chicano Literature: From 1942 to the Present” in Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide, Westport,

Conn: Greenwood Press, 1985.“American Hispanic Literature: A Brief Commentary,” ViAztlan: International Journal of Chicano Arts

and Letters, Part I, January-February 1985; Part II, March 1985; Part III, May 1985.“Towards a Cultural Interpretation of Literature,” ViAztlan: International Journal of Chicano Arts and

Letters, April-May 1986.35

Chicano Writes and the Art of the Novel (monograph), Austin: Caravel Press, 1987.“The Impetuous Present and the Reluctant Past—A Commentary on the 5005h Anniversary of the

Hispanic Presence in the Americas,” Encounters; Quincentenary Review, Washington, DC., Winter 1991.

“Hispanics in Higher Education: The Media Connection in Recruitment and Retention” in Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on Minority Recruitment and Retention, Austin: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 1991.

“Hispanics and the American Heritage—What if Hispanics had Never Existed: What a Wonderful Life would that Be? “ The National Hispanic Reporter, September 1991.

Reflections on Bilingual Education (monograph), Denton: Caravel Press, 1992.“Myth America: Velleities and Realities of the American Ethos,” Journal of Big Bend Studies, Sul Ross

State University, January 1994.“Chicano Literature and Censorship,” REFORMA Newsletter (publication of the National Association for

Library Services to Hispanics), March 1995.“Hispanics: What’s in a Name?” (Reprint / Posting) Community Connections on-line Forum, Julian

Samora Research Institute, June 8, 1998.“Chicanos, Community, and Change” (with Miguel Montiel) in Community Organization in a Diverse

Society (3rd edition) edited by F. Rivera and J. Erlich, Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1998.“Mexican American Recruitment and Retention: A Persistence Study” (with Adrian Tan and Eleazar

Cano) in Proceedings of 1998 National Conference on The Minority Student Today, October 1998.“Literacy and Literature in South Texas Ranching Country 1836-1910,” Journal of South Texas, Spring 2000.“The Minotaur and the Labyrinth: Chicano Literature and Critical Theory,” Aztlan: Journal of Chicano Studies (publication of the Chicano Studies Center, UCLA), Spring 2001.“Brands, Bandits, and Ballads: Eiconic Images of Tejanos in the Literature of the Borderlands,” Journal

of South Texas, Fall 2002.“A Place to Stand: James Baldwin, Richard Wright and the Harlem Renaissance in my Quest for Aztlan

and Chicano Consciousness,” Pluma Fronteriza: Newsletter of Latino/Chicano(a) Writers of the El Paso/Cd. Juárez/Border Region, published Fall 2002, Spring 2003, Summer 2003.

“Dreaming in English: Something About Harvard,” Hispanic Vista Digest, March 14, 2004.Chicano Literature: Development and Criticism (the Sabal Palms Lectures), Caravel Press, Austin, 2004“Mexican American Writers on Violence Against La Raza in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: the

Pursuit for Social Justice, National Hispanic Forum, January 28, 2005.“Hispanic Heritage Month” in the Oxford Dictionary of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Oxford

University Press, 2005.“Mexicans and Mexican Americans: Prolegomenon to a Literary Identity,” The Journal of South Texas,

Spring 2005.“Terms of Identity: What’s in a Name?” Latino Suave Magazine, December 2005 / January 2006.“Chicano Poetry” in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, Greenwood Press 2006.“Lies Like Truth: Discourse Issues in language,” Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism,

Fabriction, and Falsification, University of Michigan (peer-reviewed on-line journal), June 26, 2006. ISSN 1559-3096.

“Mexican American Literature: Reflections and a Critical Guide” in Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis (3rd Edition), edited by Dennis J. Bixler-Marquez, et al., Kendall/Hunt, 2007.

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“On War and Remembrance: Hispanics and World War II,” Cover Story of La Prensa de San Antonio, Tejas, October 7, 2007.

“Reflexiones Milenarias sobre el Renacimiento Chicano,” Puentes: Revista mexico-Chicana de litertura, cultura y arte (publication of Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi), Numero 5, Otoño 2007.

“CNN and Lou Dobbs: Journalism or Jingoism,” The Latino American Experience, Greenwood Press (Blog), January 1`8, 2008

“The Great Wall of the United States,” Hispanic Link, March 6, 2008, distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, March 7, 2008.

“Spanglish,” Newspaper Tree, April 11, 2008.

“Why Chicano Studies?” Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, October 6, 2008. “Millennial Reflections on the Chicano Renaissance,” Voices: San Antonio College Multicultural

Journal, Volume IV, 2008. “Latino American Literature” in Books and Beyond: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New

American Reading,” 2008.La Leyenda Negra / The Black Legend: Historical Distortion, Defamation, Slander, Libel, and Stereoty-

ping of Hispanics—a monthly series. Somos Primos: A Website Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues, series originally published in 104th-116th Issue; posted on LatinoStories.com, June 8, 2009.

July 2008 Number 1: “Overview and Introduction.” September 2008 Number 2: “The Columbian Exchange.” October 2008 Number 3: “Cultures in Conflict.”November 2008 Number 4: “The Bad Seed”December 2008 Number 5: “Hic et Ubique”January 2009 Number 6: “The Lamp/the Golden Door”February 2009 Number 7: “In America’s Defense”March 2009 Number 8: “Searching for America”April 2009 Number 9: “The Historian and the Lion”May 2009 Number 10: “The Towers and the Wall”June 2009 Number 11: “From Real to Reel”August 2009 Number 12: “Full Circle”February 2011 Number 13: “Shamelessly UT El Paso Cancels Chicano Icon Holiday”March 2011 Number 14: “Segundo de Febrero”April 2011 Number 15: “American Hispanics & the Civil Rights Struggle: The Chicano

Experience” May 2011 Number 16: “Still at it”

June 2011 Number 17: “Buscando Moros con Tranchetes/Looking for Shadows Carrying Spears” July 2011 Number 18: “A Consummation Devoutly to be Wished”

“Langston Hughes and Hispanic Letters” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine, November 2, 2009.

“Chicano Writers and the Art of the Novel,” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine, November 20, 2009.

“Remembering Don Luis Leal,” The National Catholic Reporter, February 2, 2010

“Chicano Literature and Critical Theory: Forging a Literature of Opposition,” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine, February 11, 2010.

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“Librarians at the Barricades: The Continuing Struggle for Intellectual Freedom,” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine, April 1, 2010.

“Commentary” on “McCain Exposes Manchurian-Mexican Plan to Over throw America,” Huffington Post, April 6, 2010.

“Round ‘em Up, Brand ‘em, Then Kick ‘em Out: American Latinos and the Rhetoric of Hate,” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary On-line Magazine, May 5, 2010; posted on Facebook Poets Against Arizona SB 1070, May 6, 2010; posted on Aztlan Libre Press, May 6, 2010.

“Rolvaag, St. Olaf, and Chicano Literature,” Somos en Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine, May 27, 2010.

“Arizona Goes Bonkers: Its God Complex Wants to Make and Remake All Americans in its Own Image,” Heritage of America Foundation, June 3, 2010.

“Juan Bruce Novoa: A Memorial Essay,” Historia Chicana, June 16, 2010; posted on Somos en escrito: Latino Literary Online Magazine, June 17, 2010; also on Pluma Fronteriza: Newsletter of Chicano(a)/Latino(a) Writers of the El Paso and Cd. Juárez, June 17, 2010; posted on Xican@ Poetry Daily, June 20 1010; the YouTube video based on this essay was screened by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Por -tuguese, Southern California chapter meeting at Occidental College on October 30, 2010 and streamed on Univi-sion.com/videos, November 5, 2010.

“Future of the Book,” Inside Higher Ed, posted September 17, 2010. Posted originally on Hispanic Vista, October 20, 2005.

“The View from Parnassus: Forty Years in the Vineyards of the Muses,” Pluma Fronteriza, November 4, 2010.

“Challenging our Dreams: Antonio Machado, the Road, and the Dream,” Pluma Fronteriza, November 18, 2010.

“Thanksgiving in America,” The Deming Headlight, posted November 25, 2010. From the National Hispanic Reporter, November 1991.

“The Magic of Words: Curanderismo in Bless Me, Ultima, Posted on Somos en Escrito: Latino Literary on-line Magazine, November 30, 2010.

“Segundo de Febrero,” Somos Primos, March 2011. Previously published in The National Hispanic Reporter, February 2, 1984.

“Shamelessly UT El Paso Cancels Chicano Icon Holiday,” Somos Primos, February 2011.“Graduating At-Risk Students: Cortisol vs. Dopamine,” Somos Primos, March 2011.“American Hispanics and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Chicano Experience,” Somos Primos,

April 2011.

SELECT MEDIA AND PRINT WORKS:

North From Mexico: Exploration and Heritage (documentary film based on the work by Carey McWilliams), consultant and narrator, Columbia University Center for Mass Communications, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971.

“The Chicano Experience” (audiocassette) in the series Why People Hate: The Origins of Discrimination (with Margaret Meade, Roy Wilkins, Thomas Pettigrew, et al. Sumner Glimscher, producer, New York/ Harper & Row, 1973.

Special Issue on Chicano Literature, English in Texas (editor), Summer 1976. ERIC ED 134986.Contemporary Chicano Literature (12 hour videocassette series) produced by the University of Houston,

1976.

“Making it Happen” (audiocassette) in the series American Libraries and Hispanics, American Library

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Association, 1989.“Remembering Juan Bruce Novoa” (video, You Tube, October 14, 2010, directed by Matt Lara, filmed at

Western New Mexico University, screened at Occidental College for the Spring meeting of the American Associa-tion of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese meeting, October 30, 2010.

39