Emma Tenayuca, addressing a gathering of Mexican Americans protesting unfair wages and job discrimination in 1936 on steps of San Antonio City Hall. Banners of community self-help groups serve as a backdrop.
Blueprint:
Consequences of looking into the future
Armando Rendón
Committing to the concept of a blueprint that envisions the next 50 years has its consequences. Notably, it forces each of us who adopt this vision to broaden our scope beyond everday issues, whether they touch us personally, such as losing a job when the mortgage is due, or learning of a whole town having to evacuate their homes because they’re in the way of a forest fire linked to climate warming.
Let’s take the question of developing our own voice. For decades, perhaps since the crucial days of the Chicano Movement, considered to have had its zenith in the early 1970s, no voice has been raised among Mexican Americans at a national level. Even Cesar, Reies, Corky, each from his vantage point, spoke from a narrow focus, one because of the plight of farmworkers, the other championing the descendants of the land grants in New Mexico, with Corky of the three most focused on a broad ideological message.
Of that period, Jose Angel Gutierrez continues to serve as a chief protagonist of perhaps the most viable pursuit in regard to the intriguing notion of a third political party. Perhaps the demographics are coming into play now to make that goal a reality at least within certain states. Given the present situation, the realistic option is to coalesce an electorate that can oust the present administration for a return to a rational and democratic government where the needs of the people come first.
In order for us Mexican Americans to be able to coalesce as an ethnic people, still distinct and viable after generations of genocidal attacks and, let’s say, institutional racism (a whole other topic), we must be able to speak with a single voice about a number of concerns that we face, drawing upon a common history, traditions which have withered but can be revived, and common goals we can adopt.
It’s true, from just my own experience because I don’t know of specific research in this area, but from the time that we came to be as a social entity with the implementation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it’s been evident that we were not to be and have not become a monolith, that is, all of us thinking and taking the same actions. The very Mexicans who were captured behind the lines, so to speak, at the end of the U.S. invasion of Mejico, had become rebels themselves, opposed to control from the Capital. They threw in their lot in Texas with Anglo settlers and pay-for-slay Indian bounty hunters in order to throw off the yoke of that control leading to one of the least understood battles for freedom in the history of liberation movements.
California, New Mexico and Arizona had distinct populations by 1848 along with Texas—this is the legacy we inherited, fragmented, independistas to the max, challenged by varied onslaughts of tyranny by the U.S. government, speculators, crooked lawyers and judges, backed by greedy legislators and yellow journalists of the day. Of course, because of difficulty in travel and communications, there was little chance of creating a united front, let alone a single voice.
That legacy, I would say, persists to this day. The Chicano Movement was a multi-faceted array of visions and goals colored in many ways by that long history of suffering deprivation and discrimination. Still, I believe that for most of the intervening generations from the virtual suppression of Mexican Americans which was complete certainly by the 19th century, the framework was laid for what became known as the Mexican American people. We did endure the same trials from an oppressive government and white supremacist codes throughout the Southwest and into the Midwest; we struggled to maintain a sense of community—the discrimination was a common bond.
Again, the values and traditions which I believe enabled the early Mexican settlers to survive carried forward into the early 20th century. I learned of the beneficiencia societies as a child but didn’t realize their values until much later: these were barrio groups who contributed pennies, nickels, their time, to enable neighbors to get by in bad times, to fund a burial, to get medicine or medical treatment, those little things that could have overwhelmed a family. Consider the early unionizing efforts among farmworkers, railroaders, pecan pickers: I learned that Emma Tenayucca, the famous young woman who led pecan shellers strikes in San Antonio in 1937 had also led a march of various workers’ groups against the City in 1936. In an iconic photograph she stands on the steps of City Hall, numbering the abuses against the Mexican workers; a young woman stands next to her holding a banner of one of those beneficencia societies. History comes to a nexus in that photo.
In the same way, history calls us now to draw upon that legacy, revive the very values that are deeply rooted in events and ideas harking back at least a couple hundred years, recall the sacrifices that were made in the barrios, in the labors camps, harvesting, building railroads, carving out mines, and on battlefields, notably the blood that was shed and lives sacrificed overseas to a country which has shown little appreciation.
The approach we have dedicated ourselves to follow, that is, of building a forward-looking evolution of ideas and actions through a think-tank model, is beginning to take shape. We are raising questions which have been around for decades, but I believe we have a rationale for organizing the efforts, the Blueprint for the next 50 years. Through a concerted effort built on a solid framework of discussion, study and sharing of these findings, we can provide the words, the meaning, and the context for engaging and drawing together a Mexican American nation.
The challenge of finding our own voice is significant. It will evolve along a certain track of questions, which I’m sure will mesh with the other key concerns we’ve identified. We will have to determine how the Mexican American community has evolved along differing social and political lines, what common experiences can most easily create lines of communication, so to speak, and what values can we emphasize to draw the community together. My sense is that one of the most important values to assess and share is what I would call a commonalty of purpose.
Here I relate back to the notion that we face, whether we like it or not, a commonality of challenges and risks, opportunities and demands, if for no other reason than due our changing role in this country. We can’t face the next 50 years without reflecting on our history and our potential.
The stakes are extremely high. As I’ve said before, and not for the last time, the next 50 years is in our hands so we can pass it on to our children.
Armando Rendón
September 20, 2019
Let’s take the question of developing our own voice. For decades, perhaps since the crucial days of the Chicano Movement, considered to have had its zenith in the early 1970s, no voice has been raised among Mexican Americans at a national level. Even Cesar, Reies, Corky, each from his vantage point, spoke from a narrow focus, one because of the plight of farmworkers, the other championing the descendants of the land grants in New Mexico, with Corky of the three most focused on a broad ideological message.
Of that period, Jose Angel Gutierrez continues to serve as a chief protagonist of perhaps the most viable pursuit in regard to the intriguing notion of a third political party. Perhaps the demographics are coming into play now to make that goal a reality at least within certain states. Given the present situation, the realistic option is to coalesce an electorate that can oust the present administration for a return to a rational and democratic government where the needs of the people come first.
In order for us Mexican Americans to be able to coalesce as an ethnic people, still distinct and viable after generations of genocidal attacks and, let’s say, institutional racism (a whole other topic), we must be able to speak with a single voice about a number of concerns that we face, drawing upon a common history, traditions which have withered but can be revived, and common goals we can adopt.
It’s true, from just my own experience because I don’t know of specific research in this area, but from the time that we came to be as a social entity with the implementation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it’s been evident that we were not to be and have not become a monolith, that is, all of us thinking and taking the same actions. The very Mexicans who were captured behind the lines, so to speak, at the end of the U.S. invasion of Mejico, had become rebels themselves, opposed to control from the Capital. They threw in their lot in Texas with Anglo settlers and pay-for-slay Indian bounty hunters in order to throw off the yoke of that control leading to one of the least understood battles for freedom in the history of liberation movements.
California, New Mexico and Arizona had distinct populations by 1848 along with Texas—this is the legacy we inherited, fragmented, independistas to the max, challenged by varied onslaughts of tyranny by the U.S. government, speculators, crooked lawyers and judges, backed by greedy legislators and yellow journalists of the day. Of course, because of difficulty in travel and communications, there was little chance of creating a united front, let alone a single voice.
That legacy, I would say, persists to this day. The Chicano Movement was a multi-faceted array of visions and goals colored in many ways by that long history of suffering deprivation and discrimination. Still, I believe that for most of the intervening generations from the virtual suppression of Mexican Americans which was complete certainly by the 19th century, the framework was laid for what became known as the Mexican American people. We did endure the same trials from an oppressive government and white supremacist codes throughout the Southwest and into the Midwest; we struggled to maintain a sense of community—the discrimination was a common bond.
Again, the values and traditions which I believe enabled the early Mexican settlers to survive carried forward into the early 20th century. I learned of the beneficiencia societies as a child but didn’t realize their values until much later: these were barrio groups who contributed pennies, nickels, their time, to enable neighbors to get by in bad times, to fund a burial, to get medicine or medical treatment, those little things that could have overwhelmed a family. Consider the early unionizing efforts among farmworkers, railroaders, pecan pickers: I learned that Emma Tenayucca, the famous young woman who led pecan shellers strikes in San Antonio in 1937 had also led a march of various workers’ groups against the City in 1936. In an iconic photograph she stands on the steps of City Hall, numbering the abuses against the Mexican workers; a young woman stands next to her holding a banner of one of those beneficencia societies. History comes to a nexus in that photo.
In the same way, history calls us now to draw upon that legacy, revive the very values that are deeply rooted in events and ideas harking back at least a couple hundred years, recall the sacrifices that were made in the barrios, in the labors camps, harvesting, building railroads, carving out mines, and on battlefields, notably the blood that was shed and lives sacrificed overseas to a country which has shown little appreciation.
The approach we have dedicated ourselves to follow, that is, of building a forward-looking evolution of ideas and actions through a think-tank model, is beginning to take shape. We are raising questions which have been around for decades, but I believe we have a rationale for organizing the efforts, the Blueprint for the next 50 years. Through a concerted effort built on a solid framework of discussion, study and sharing of these findings, we can provide the words, the meaning, and the context for engaging and drawing together a Mexican American nation.
The challenge of finding our own voice is significant. It will evolve along a certain track of questions, which I’m sure will mesh with the other key concerns we’ve identified. We will have to determine how the Mexican American community has evolved along differing social and political lines, what common experiences can most easily create lines of communication, so to speak, and what values can we emphasize to draw the community together. My sense is that one of the most important values to assess and share is what I would call a commonalty of purpose.
Here I relate back to the notion that we face, whether we like it or not, a commonality of challenges and risks, opportunities and demands, if for no other reason than due our changing role in this country. We can’t face the next 50 years without reflecting on our history and our potential.
The stakes are extremely high. As I’ve said before, and not for the last time, the next 50 years is in our hands so we can pass it on to our children.
Armando Rendón
September 20, 2019