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permalink: http://alibi.com/blog/articles.html?desired_user=docsavage
CommentsRe: Who is Reies López Tijerina?: A reappraisal of a folk hero
Prof Correira - thank you for your prompt, reasoned & impassioned response. I actually did not know your ethnicity when commenting originally & so tried to word it so as to address white colonial governance (more specifically eastern US) in the abstract rather than any particular representative. Speaking as a white (& male) colonial myself, I merely tire of hearing Spanish colonial violence cited as a kind of historical quid pro quo for the landless desperation you speak of that persists among rural Hispanic populations even today. I don't doubt your book lays this situation out with all the 'profound complexity and contradiction' it deserves. My mistake was trying to hint at that complexity in a tiny box on a web page - a limitation no doubt similiar to that posed by the column inches of a weekly tabloid. I look forward to reading your book in expectation of finding more to agree with than to dispute....
Prof Correia - 'trapped in a legal system incapable of understanding common property' - this is perhaps the most salient point. As for the others, it is a bit disingenuous don't you think for an Anglo assessment of land grant history to weep crocodile tears over treatment of the indigenous population? This is the pot calling the kettle black. Anglo rule was always more attentive to native (albeit pueblo) domains than it ever was to Hispanic ones & you might even say it paid for its sins by becoming grudging heir both to grant properties & their attendant problems through the federal land swap system that continues to be abused by private individuals today. As for gender equality, the 50s & 60s were a bad time for women everywhere. While it would be fabulous to see some kind of public recognition of Hispanic women as the 'foot soldiers' of the land grant movement, it is no good trying to retrofit current feminist politics to a period a half century gone. On a personal note, I can remember hearing my dad (a Bureau of Reclamation drone) listening to the radio while he ate lunch at home & cursing at reports of the Tierra Amarilla raid. It was years before I understood what was at stake & why my father's grumbling was so ill advised. It may be too late for land use reform (probably is). And all folk heroes in the end show their warts, it is true. But they serve their purpose as long as they remind people of a time when civil change actually appeared possible in the United States.
How come they aren't being called Americans? Dzhokhar was a naturalized citizen & Tamerlan had an application in the works.... Re: Little Anita's
Mexican has to be the last food to be turned into a cuisine. A lot of places try but it resists. Mexican food is but not immune to cuisinification though so may I suggest those finding it suicide-worthy not aid the process but refrain from eating Mexican food altogether. That way the rest of us may get our fix as & where we may....
That would be the next logical step to any blood quantum-based argument, either: a) denying that it matters ('she doesn't claim to be Chicana'), or b) affriming it & saying it makes her a sell-out I would not attempt to argue you out of your view. When it comes to 'Lynette' people either get it or don't. And 'getting it' doesn't necessarily mean a heavy dose of racism. La Raza has a 300-odd year history of insularity in the New Mexico territory. Time was when cultural appropriation was the only alternative to isolation. Do you think that has possibly changed?
Check out the March 1-7 Alibi interview with Lauren Poole - the vata is in fact half raza which by your (overly simplified) analogy would make her a light-skinned black doing blackface as indeed some blacks did - it was the only way they could get in the theater. Not sure how this impacts your central argument but I thought you should have all the facts.... Re: Ryan’s Uterus
Like ...
Sez the US to the rest of the world ... which replies: 'Hey, whatever you say. Just take it easy, you're in control here ... '. | 
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