Responding to the Cultural Attacks against Mexican Americans
Mexican Americans face an existential threat to our nature, our culture, and our future from the continuous and mounting attacks on our community through the kind of rhetoric which chooses to malign and denigrate our history, traditions, and our very identity as an indigenous-hispanic people, a nation within a nation. This is a concern which should be added, perhaps made a priority, for discussion of a Blueprint for the Next 50 Years.
This is a situation which demands a “rhetorical” response from us, a positive message to arouse action among Mexican Americans and a sense of unity. But how do we respond? What do we say? What is our truth? Can that alone persuade the forces that call us rapists, murderers, invaders for no other reason than their need for scapegoats to cover their evil schemes and purposes to back off?
How do we get that rhetorical message out? Who is going to tell it? One person won’t be heard, not above the din of social media tweets and beeps. How can we craft the message to persuade not only the general public but those among our community who have become complacent, ground down, even persuaded by the very purveyors of lies and prejudice that we are what they say we are. Our origins clearly make us one with this land. Because of our indigenous ancestors we are clearly native to this country, so how is it that invaders from other parts of the world dare call us illegal, immigrant, alien?
The Mexican American population in the U.S. is at least 40 million, untold millions more perhaps plus another 20 million or so indigenous-hispanic people originally from the other countries of Latin America. How do we reach these millions of people? What is our plan? How do we develop a plan? Do we have the resources internally to carry out such a massive action?
The response to the situation we face as a people has an as-yet untapped power source, the leverage we can exert because of numbers, the demographic shift going on before our eyes. That leverage must be expressed in a formidable way that can confront the false rhetorical narrative that the U.S. is being fed about us, but also make it serve as a unifying message to all Mexican Americans.
This is a situation which demands a “rhetorical” response from us, a positive message to arouse action among Mexican Americans and a sense of unity. But how do we respond? What do we say? What is our truth? Can that alone persuade the forces that call us rapists, murderers, invaders for no other reason than their need for scapegoats to cover their evil schemes and purposes to back off?
How do we get that rhetorical message out? Who is going to tell it? One person won’t be heard, not above the din of social media tweets and beeps. How can we craft the message to persuade not only the general public but those among our community who have become complacent, ground down, even persuaded by the very purveyors of lies and prejudice that we are what they say we are. Our origins clearly make us one with this land. Because of our indigenous ancestors we are clearly native to this country, so how is it that invaders from other parts of the world dare call us illegal, immigrant, alien?
The Mexican American population in the U.S. is at least 40 million, untold millions more perhaps plus another 20 million or so indigenous-hispanic people originally from the other countries of Latin America. How do we reach these millions of people? What is our plan? How do we develop a plan? Do we have the resources internally to carry out such a massive action?
The response to the situation we face as a people has an as-yet untapped power source, the leverage we can exert because of numbers, the demographic shift going on before our eyes. That leverage must be expressed in a formidable way that can confront the false rhetorical narrative that the U.S. is being fed about us, but also make it serve as a unifying message to all Mexican Americans.