The Blueprint Papers - Update May 15, 2019
Turning Our Eyes to the Next 50 Years
Last week in San Antonio, Texas, the first gathering took place of Mexican Americans to discuss the Blueprint Paper, an essay I issued on Feb. 2, 2019, which urges us to focus on concerns that matter mostly to us and only we can address to meet our national goals and values. About 40 persons showed up, among them local activists, artists and writers, educators including early childhood teachers and current university teachers as well as retired professors.
The gathering, I believe, gave everyone there a sense of being present at a significant moment, one at which we were turning our eyes from the past half century to the next 50 years. The full title of my essay is, “Blueprint for the Next 50 Years.” The fact that although a half century has passed since the height of the Chicano Movement, basically in the mid-1970s, we are facing the same restrictions in employment, education, housing, wealth accumulation, health care, and civil rights in general.
The session went for about two and half hours, so an effort by a party of one, myself, to provide a resume of the discussion will take some time. But I can offer some highlights, in fact, keywords, to use computer jargon. They include: vision, structure, identity, mestizaje, unity amid diversity, and action.
Each of these areas, among others, deserve in-depth and long-term discussion, and essentially they reflect the basic concept underlying the Blueprint Papers: matters that concern us as Mexican Americans, which no one outside our community really cares about or would do anything to resolve, even if they could, certainly not with the prospect of taking two, five, 20 or as much as 50 years to determine if we had succeeded.
That’s perhaps another factor that I haven’t thought out, because as I’ve said and a couple other participants have noted, the Blueprint revolves around the future of our children and their children, at least to the seventh generation. What will those future young Mexican Americans think of us, or will they have a thought of their ancestors if we do nothing to preserve our traditions, our languages, our values, and our very identity?
With this question in mind, and having listened to the comments at the May 7th meeting, it has become obvious to me that we have to be disciplined in our approach to addressing the concerns in the Blueprint. A few of the persons who spoke focused on issues which are current and very important, but obviously of interest not only to themselves but to many others in the sense that social and political organizations already exist that are trying to deal with them, for example, voter education, pre-school programs, or low-income housing.
The guidelines for our conversation around the Blueprint is on matters that we alone as a people, a nation within a nation, care about and only we can address and hopefully resolve. For example, the issue of voter turnout has been raised by some persons commenting on the Blueprint. We should be calling for marches to encourage voting or launching a get out the vote campaign, etc., goes the commentary. That’s not what the Blueprint is about; rather, by clarifying our identity as a people, educating ourselves about our origins and accomplishments, reviving our history and sense of historical perspective—thinking in terms of decades and even half centuries—we may provide the incentive and foundation for more Mexican Americans to go to the polls.
Even the Anglo colonizers shortly after achieving independence from England, latched onto the idea of Manifest Destiny. Cruel and rabid as its consequences were, that ideal drove White settlers westward, speculators to rip off the lands of native peoples and the lands of Spanish and Mexican colonizers of claims blithely bestowed by the Spanish Kings, and White people to attempt and nearly succeed in genocidal attempts against all Indians and mestizos, yours and my ancestors.
Imagine we Mexican Americans embracing the vision of the Blueprint for the next 50 Years with the goal of asserting our very best values and intentions, of empowering ourselves through our youth to exercise a leadership that is desperately needed now and for the near future, and of uniting other peoples in the U.S. “to right the ship of state, as the phrase, goes for the benefit not only of America but the rest of the Americas.
In Chicano Manifesto, released in 1971, I wrote, “I see the Chicano as the prototype of the citizen of the Americas a century from now.” (Chapter 15) It turns out that we are half-way there. Shortly after I wrote that sentence, I came across a statement by Walt Whitman, a renowned U.S. poet, who had written a century before:
The seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are in my opinion but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world’s development. Character, literature, a society worth the name, are yet to be established. To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect, grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor.
Note two related factors: Whitman recognized the avaricious nature of the Anglo American, aware that only a couple decades earlier, President James Polk had invented a pretext to invade Mexico—a two-year war ensued that stole half of Mexico’s territory, a war that such notables as Abraham Lincoln and David Thoreau had condemned. Yet, he saw that the people vanquished by U.S. imperialism –he had to mean Mexican Americans– could provide the saving grace for this country. Of course, sadly, to Whitman all Mexicans were Spanish.
Next: Building a Structure Based on the Blueprint
Armando Rendón
May 15, 2019
Turning Our Eyes to the Next 50 Years
Last week in San Antonio, Texas, the first gathering took place of Mexican Americans to discuss the Blueprint Paper, an essay I issued on Feb. 2, 2019, which urges us to focus on concerns that matter mostly to us and only we can address to meet our national goals and values. About 40 persons showed up, among them local activists, artists and writers, educators including early childhood teachers and current university teachers as well as retired professors.
The gathering, I believe, gave everyone there a sense of being present at a significant moment, one at which we were turning our eyes from the past half century to the next 50 years. The full title of my essay is, “Blueprint for the Next 50 Years.” The fact that although a half century has passed since the height of the Chicano Movement, basically in the mid-1970s, we are facing the same restrictions in employment, education, housing, wealth accumulation, health care, and civil rights in general.
The session went for about two and half hours, so an effort by a party of one, myself, to provide a resume of the discussion will take some time. But I can offer some highlights, in fact, keywords, to use computer jargon. They include: vision, structure, identity, mestizaje, unity amid diversity, and action.
Each of these areas, among others, deserve in-depth and long-term discussion, and essentially they reflect the basic concept underlying the Blueprint Papers: matters that concern us as Mexican Americans, which no one outside our community really cares about or would do anything to resolve, even if they could, certainly not with the prospect of taking two, five, 20 or as much as 50 years to determine if we had succeeded.
That’s perhaps another factor that I haven’t thought out, because as I’ve said and a couple other participants have noted, the Blueprint revolves around the future of our children and their children, at least to the seventh generation. What will those future young Mexican Americans think of us, or will they have a thought of their ancestors if we do nothing to preserve our traditions, our languages, our values, and our very identity?
With this question in mind, and having listened to the comments at the May 7th meeting, it has become obvious to me that we have to be disciplined in our approach to addressing the concerns in the Blueprint. A few of the persons who spoke focused on issues which are current and very important, but obviously of interest not only to themselves but to many others in the sense that social and political organizations already exist that are trying to deal with them, for example, voter education, pre-school programs, or low-income housing.
The guidelines for our conversation around the Blueprint is on matters that we alone as a people, a nation within a nation, care about and only we can address and hopefully resolve. For example, the issue of voter turnout has been raised by some persons commenting on the Blueprint. We should be calling for marches to encourage voting or launching a get out the vote campaign, etc., goes the commentary. That’s not what the Blueprint is about; rather, by clarifying our identity as a people, educating ourselves about our origins and accomplishments, reviving our history and sense of historical perspective—thinking in terms of decades and even half centuries—we may provide the incentive and foundation for more Mexican Americans to go to the polls.
Even the Anglo colonizers shortly after achieving independence from England, latched onto the idea of Manifest Destiny. Cruel and rabid as its consequences were, that ideal drove White settlers westward, speculators to rip off the lands of native peoples and the lands of Spanish and Mexican colonizers of claims blithely bestowed by the Spanish Kings, and White people to attempt and nearly succeed in genocidal attempts against all Indians and mestizos, yours and my ancestors.
Imagine we Mexican Americans embracing the vision of the Blueprint for the next 50 Years with the goal of asserting our very best values and intentions, of empowering ourselves through our youth to exercise a leadership that is desperately needed now and for the near future, and of uniting other peoples in the U.S. “to right the ship of state, as the phrase, goes for the benefit not only of America but the rest of the Americas.
In Chicano Manifesto, released in 1971, I wrote, “I see the Chicano as the prototype of the citizen of the Americas a century from now.” (Chapter 15) It turns out that we are half-way there. Shortly after I wrote that sentence, I came across a statement by Walt Whitman, a renowned U.S. poet, who had written a century before:
The seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are in my opinion but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world’s development. Character, literature, a society worth the name, are yet to be established. To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect, grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor.
Note two related factors: Whitman recognized the avaricious nature of the Anglo American, aware that only a couple decades earlier, President James Polk had invented a pretext to invade Mexico—a two-year war ensued that stole half of Mexico’s territory, a war that such notables as Abraham Lincoln and David Thoreau had condemned. Yet, he saw that the people vanquished by U.S. imperialism –he had to mean Mexican Americans– could provide the saving grace for this country. Of course, sadly, to Whitman all Mexicans were Spanish.
Next: Building a Structure Based on the Blueprint
Armando Rendón
May 15, 2019