Dead Citizenship and the Latino Body

Posthumous citizenship for US Latino and other subaltern troops killed in Iraq brings conflicted feelings for families


By HELEN O'NEILL

AP Special Correspondent

A young, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.

These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the U.S. military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.

Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by friendly fire in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.

In death, the young Marine was showered with honors his family could only have dreamed of in life. His sister was flown in from Guatemala for his memorial service, where a Roman Catholic cardinal presided and top military officials saluted his flag-draped coffin.

And yet, his foster mother agonized as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who oversaw Gutierrez's service, put it differently.

"There is something terribly wrong with our immigration policies if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship," Mahony wrote to President Bush in April 2003. He urged the president to grant immediate citizenship to all immigrants who sign up for military service in wartime.

"They should not have to wait until they are brought home in a casket," Mahony said.

But as the war continues, more and more immigrants are becoming citizens in death -- and more and more families are grappling with deeply conflicting feelings about exactly what the honor means.

Gutierrez's citizenship certificate -- dated to his death on March 21, 2003, -- was presented during a memorial service in Lomita, Calif., to Nora Mosquera, who took in the orphaned teen after he had trekked through Central America, hopping freight trains through Mexico before illegally sneaking into the U.S.

"On the one hand I felt that citizenship was too late for him," Mosquera said. "But I also felt grateful and very proud of him. I knew it would open doors for us as a family."

"What use is a piece of paper?" cried Fredelinda Pena after another emotional naturalization ceremony, this one in New York City where her brother's framed citizenship certificate was handed to his distraught mother. Next to her, the infant daughter he had never met dozed in his fiancée's arms.

Cpl. Juan Alcantara, 22, a native of the Dominican Republic was killed Aug. 6, 2007 by an explosive in Baqouba. He was buried by a cardinal and eulogized by a congressman but to his sister, those tributes seemed as hollow as citizenship.

"He can't take the oath from a coffin," she sobbed.

There are tens of thousands of foreign-born members in the U.S. armed forces. Many have been naturalized, but more than 20,000 are not U.S. citizens.

"Green card soldiers," they are often called, and early in the war, Bush signed an executive order making them eligible to apply for citizenship as soon as they enlist. Previously, legal residents in the military had to wait three years.

Since Bush's order, nearly 37,000 soldiers have been naturalized. And 109 who lost their lives have been granted posthumous citizenship.

They are buried with purple hearts and other decorations, and their names are engraved on tombstones in Arlington as well as in Mexico and India and Guatemala.

Among them:

- Marine Cpl. Armando Ariel Gonzalez, 25, who fled Cuba on a raft with his father and brother in 1995 and dreamed of becoming an American firefighter. He was crushed by a refueling tank in southern Iraq on April 14, 2003.

- Army Spc. Justin Onwordi, a 28-year-old Nigerian medic whose heart seemed as big as his smiling 6-foot-4 frame and who left behind a wife and baby boy. He died when his vehicle was blown up in Baghdad on Aug. 2, 2004.

- Army Pfc. Ming Sun, 20, of China who loved the U.S. military so much he planned to make a career out of it, boasting that he would rise to the rank of general. He was killed in a firefight in Ramadi on Jan. 9, 2007.

- Army Spc. Uday Singh, 21, of India, killed when his patrol was attacked in Habbaniyah on Dec.1, 2003. Singh was the first Sikh to die in battle as a U.S. soldier, and it is his headstone at Arlington that displays the Khanda.

- Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick O'Day from Scotland, buried in the California rain as bagpipes played and his 19-year-old pregnant wife told mourners how honored her 20-year-old husband had felt to fight for the country he loved.

"He left us in the most honorable way a man could," Shauna O'Day said at the March 2003 Santa Rosa service. "I'm proud to say my husband is a Marine. I'm proud to say my husband fought for our country. I'm proud to say he is a hero, my hero."

Not all surviving family members feel so sure. Some parents blame themselves for bringing their child to the U.S. in the first place. Others face confusion and resentment when they try to bury their child back home.

At Lance Cpl. Juan Lopez's July 4, 2004, funeral in the central Mexican town of San Luis de la Paz, Mexican soldiers demanded that the U.S. Marine honor guard surrender their arms, even though the rifles were ceremonial. Earlier, the Mexican Defense Department had denied the Marines' request to conduct the traditional 21-gun salute, saying foreign troops were not permitted to bear arms on Mexican soil.

And so mourners, many deeply opposed to the war, witnessed an extraordinary 45-minute standoff that disrupted the funeral even as Lopez's weeping widow was handed his posthumous citizenship by a U.S. embassy official.

The same swirl of conflicting emotions and messages often overshadows the military funerals of posthumous citizens in the U.S.

Smuggled across the Mexican border in his mother's arms when he was 2 months old, Jose Garibay was just 21 when he died in Nasiriyah. The Costa Mesa police department made him an honorary police officer, something he had hoped one day to become. America made him a citizen.

But his mother, Simona Garibay, couldn't conceal her bewilderment and pain. It seemed, she said in interviews after the funeral, that more value was being placed on her son's death than on his life.

Immigrant advocates have similar mixed feelings about military service. Non-citizens cannot become officers or serve in high-security jobs, they note, and yet the benefits of citizenship are regularly pitched by recruiters, and some recruitment programs specifically target colleges and high schools with predominantly Latino students.

"Immigrants are lured into service and then used as political pawns or cannon fodder," said Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a program of the National Lawyers Guild. "It is sad thing to see people so desperate to get status in this country that they are prepared to die for it."

Others question whether non-citizens should even be permitted to serve. Mark Krikorian of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, argues that defending America should be the job of Americans, not non-citizens whose loyalty might be suspect. In granting special benefits, including fast-track citizenship, Krikorian says, there is a danger that soldiering will eventually become yet another job that Americans won't do.

And yet, immigrants have always fought -- and died -- in America's wars.

During the Cvil War, the Union army recruited Irish and German immigrants off the boat. Alfred Rascon, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, received the Medal of Honor for acts of bravery during the Vietnam war. In the 1990s, Gen. John Shalikashvili, born in Poland after his family fled the occupied Republic of Georgia, became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After the Iraq invasion, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico fielded hundreds of requests from Mexicans offering to fight in exchange for citizenship. They mistakenly believed that Bush's order also applied to nonresidents.

The right to become an American is not automatic for those who die in combat. Families must formally apply for citizenship within two years of the soldier's death, and not all choose to do so.

"He's Italian, better to leave it like that," Saveria Romeo says of her 23-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Vincenzo Romeo who was born in Calabria, died in Iraq and is buried in New Jersey. A miniature Italian flag marks his grave, next to an American one.

"What good would it do?" she says. "It won't bring back my son."

But it would allow her to apply for citizenship for herself, a benefit only recently offered to surviving parents and spouses. Until 2003 posthumous citizenship was granted only through an act of Congress and was purely symbolic. There were no benefits for next of kin.

Romeo says she has no desire to apply. She couldn't bear to benefit in any way from her son's death, she says. And besides, she feels Italian, not American.

Fernando Suarez del Solar just feels angry -- angry at what he considers the futility of a war that claimed his only son, angry at the military recruiters he says courted young Jesus relentlessly even when the family still lived in Tijuana.

His son was just 13, Suarez del Solar said, when he was first dazzled by Marine recruiters in a California mall. For the next two years Jesus begged the family to emigrate and eventually they did, settling in Escondido, Calif., where the teen signed up for the Marines before he left high school.

Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez Del Solar was 20 when he was killed by a bomb in the first week of the war. He left behind a wife and baby and parents so bitter about his death that they eventually divorced.

Today, his 52-year-old father has become an outspoken peace activist who travels the country organizing anti-war marches, giving speeches and working with counter-recruitment groups to dissuade young Latinos from joining the U.S. military.

"There is nothing in my life now but saving these young people," he says. "It is just something I feel have to do."

But first he had to journey to Iraq. He had to see for himself the dusty stretch of wasteland where his son became an American. In tears, he planted a small wooden cross. And he prayed for his son -- and for all the other immigrants who became citizens in death.

The Latino Body in Jail

Largely obscured by the rancorous debate surrounding U.S. immigration policy is the emergence of a trend that should be a cause of concern to all Latino communities: the explosion of the number of Latinos in prison.With one-in-six Latino males born today expected to spend some time in prison during their lives, the future portends devastating consequences for Latino communities.

Too many Latino men are living in prison
RYAN S. KING and ANGELA MARIA ARBOLEDA

Racial Breakdown:
Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment

On December 31, 2005, there were 2,193,798 people in U.S. prisons and jails. The United States incarcerates a greater share of its population, 737 per 100,000 residents, than any other country on the planet. But when you break down the statistics you see that incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment.

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2006:

* Whites: 409 per 100,000
* Latinos: 1,038 per 100,000
* Blacks: 2,468 per 100,000

Gender is an important "filter" on the who goes to prison or jail, June 30, 2006:

* Females: 134 per 100,000
* Males: 1,384 per 100,000

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2006:

* White males: 736 per 100,000
* Latino males: 1,862 per 100,000
* Black males: 4,789 per 100,000

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer, June 30, 2006:

* For White males ages 25-29: 1,685 per 100,000.
* For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,912 per 100,000.
* For Black males ages 25-29: 11,695 per 100,000. (That's 11.7% of Black men in their late 20s.)

Or you can make some international comparisons:
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.

* South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
* U.S. under George Bush (2006), Black males: 4,789 per 100,000

What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?

Statistics as of June 30, 2006 from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006, Table 14. The "rates by race" statistics are calculated from the component parts of Table 14. South Africa figures from Marc Mauer, Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration. All references to Blacks and Whites are for what the Bureau of Justice Statistics and U.S. Census refer to as "non-Hispanic Blacks" and "non-Hispanic Whites".)

Vincent Cianni and the Latino Body

(left, Vincent Cianni's "Nelson," Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 1998)

The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University will house Vincent Cianni's photographic archives beginning with his impressive photographic collection of Latino youth in NYC published in We Skate Hardcore: Photographs from Brooklyn's Southside (NYU Press, 2004), as well as his more recent documentary work. The artist and cultural provocateur Slava Mogutin has called Cianni "one of the greatest living documentary photographers" in the tradition of "Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Weegee, and Bruce Davidson." I trust that one day that the abundant and transnational border-crossing work of Los Hermanos Mayo will receive their due along with Evans and his generation of documentary photographers on this side of the border.

Black and Latino Bodies Politic at War in Lynwood, Los Angeles

The long awaited LA Times article on the state of affairs between Latinos and Blacks in Los Angeles is out and it confirms what many have known all along. Racial enmity is tearing at the city’s seams. The limited distribution of resources has made the two groups fight each other while leaving structural inequalities for both intact.

Blogger coverage: “L.A. is going to blow again, and its not going to be pretty, a race riot that will make the ones of the 60s look like a day in Disneyland Park.”

Lynwood:
1990

Population: 61,945

Latino: 69%

Black: 22%

Other: 9%

--

2007

Population: 72,426

Latino: 87%

Black: 9%

Other: 4%

"El paso del norte" and the Mexicana Body

"El paso del norte": from the XIX c., to Juan Rulfo, to Ninón Sevilla in Aventurera, and on to Alicia Gaspar de Alba's Dessert Blood and our own present, the spaces between Ciudad Juárez, México, and El Paso, Texas, are more spectral and more deadly than what representation can conjure.

Life Along 'La Linea'
A portrait of the complexities of life along the U.S.-Mexico border

The Latino Bodies in Question: The LAPD and the May Day Police Riot

While most of the rallies held around the country in defense of immigrant rights were peaceful, the march in Los Angeles ended with police firing rubber bullets and using their batons against marchers. See previous post here.

From:





LAPD Chief Reassigns Two Officials Over May Day Violence
By Duke Helfand and Andrew Blankstein
Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 08 May 2007
The pair directed the violent police response in MacArthur Park. An inquiry suggests tactical errors created problems.

Two high-ranking Los Angeles Police Department commanders were reassigned Monday for their role in overseeing the violent police response to last week's MacArthur Park immigration rally.

Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter Jr., commanding officer of Operations Central Bureau, and Cmdr. Louis Gray, the No. 2 official in the bureau, were shifted from their command posts.

At the same time, a preliminary inquiry suggested that police had made a series of tactical errors in the incident, which injured at least 10 protesters and journalists, as well as seven police officers. Carter and Gray were the senior commanders in charge of policing the protest.

"We're not going to shift responsibility down the chain of command," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a City Hall news conference that included LAPD Chief William J. Bratton and Police Commission President John Mack. "Accountability begins at the top. What happened on May 1st was wrong. We're taking immediate action to address it."

The action comes as officials attempt to quell outrage over videotaped images of LAPD officers swinging batons and firing nearly 150 "less-than-lethal" rounds at reporters and largely peaceful protesters last Tuesday.

The staffing shift was announced as LAPD officials were preparing a preliminary investigation into what went wrong at MacArthur Park. Sources close to the probe, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because it was an ongoing case, said investigators had broken down the incident into three distinct phases that occurred between 5:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Investigators now believe that LAPD commanders made significant errors at all stages of the MacArthur Park action that served to inflame tensions rather than ease them.

About 5:15 p.m., LAPD officers came under attack from a relatively small group of protesters just outside the park who threw plastic bottles and other objects in their direction.

LAPD policies call on officers to isolate troublemakers and get them away from the larger crowd.

But for reasons investigators still don't understand, officers actually pushed the 30 to 40 agitators into the park, allowing them to mix with hundreds of marchers who were behaving peacefully, the sources said.

By about 6 p.m., commanders had decided to clear the park and surrounding area. The job was given to about 60 Metro Division officers, many of whom wore riot gear and were armed with shotguns that fired "less-than-lethal" rounds. Commanders directed an LAPD helicopter to issue a command in English - but not Spanish - for people to leave the area.

But investigators found major flaws in how the order was carried out. For one thing, the helicopter appeared to be hovering above the intersection of 7th and Alvarado streets at a relatively high altitude, the sources said. It was two blocks from the park, making it difficult for some in the crowd to hear the order, they said.

LAPD officials say commanders are told that crowd clearance orders should be given from the ground whenever possible - because helicopters can drown out the sounds and can confuse people on the ground. The LAPD had at least one sound truck that could have been used for such an order next to the park, the sources said. But for some reason, they said, the truck was not used.

The Metro officers then moved in a "V" formation from the southeast corner of the park. There too, errors reportedly occurred. LAPD sources said the preliminary investigation found that supervisors were too far away from the officers' "skirmish line" and lost control of the operation, with some officers wandering off on their own.

Bratton downgraded Carter to the rank of commander and placed him on home assignment. The chief said he would announce Carter's replacement at today's Police Commission meeting.

Bratton also targeted Gray, who was the second in command at MacArthur Park and, according to a source, responsible for tactical decisions made at the scene. The 39-year department veteran was reassigned to the Office of Operations, but his new job had not been determined.

Bratton described the changes as "personnel actions" rather than disciplinary in nature. His actions drew praise from Mack and at least one march organizer.

Carter did not return phone calls seeking comment. Gray declined to comment when reached at his office.

Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles called the swift reassignment of the two ranking command officers a good start but added that further reforms were needed to change the department's culture.

"These quick, concrete steps are appreciated," Salas said. "But the department also needs to look at its internal structure, its training, and how officers view and treat immigrants."

But reassigning Carter and Gray rankled some of the LAPD's 9,500 rank-and-file officers and the unions that represent them. Union officials have said that they believe that there has been a rush to judge officers before the facts are in. L.A. Police Protective League President Bob Baker questioned whether the officers involved had adequate training in the last year.

Both Villaraigosa and Mack sought to soften the blow by underscoring their support for officers on the street.

"This is not an indictment of the entire Police Department," Mack said. "The overwhelming majority of the men and women within the department are dedicated, decent public servants who are out there every day. However, sometimes some of them don't get it."

The sources said that many questions remain unanswered as the preliminary investigation moves forward. For example, investigators are still trying to determine exactly how the decision to authorize officers to fire the "less-than-lethal" rounds was made. Moreover, they are trying to figure out why the LAPD seemed to ignore many of the rules for crowd control established after the 2000 Democratic National Convention, particularly regarding creating a "safe area" where the media could operate.

As LAPD investigators work to answer those questions, civil rights groups and political leaders are stepping up pressure to rein in the LAPD.

City Council President Eric Garcetti announced Monday that he was forming a special task force to monitor the progress of the investigation and provide an extra layer of oversight.

The task force will hear reports on the investigations pursued concurrently by the Police Department and the Office of the Inspector General.

It also will provide a forum at which members of the public can express their views and concerns on the confrontation and the investigations, and it will provide policy recommendations for future encounters involving the police, protesters and news media.

Lou Dobbs on the "Infirm" Latino Body

Lou Dobbs' source on Mexican immigration issues and the politics of scientific rigor (mortis).




From Southern Poverty Law Center:

Dobbs said he stands "100 percent behind" his show's claim that there had been 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the United States over a recent three-year period, and he further suggested that an increase in leprosy was due in part to "unscreened illegal immigrants coming into this country."

Dobbs' endorsement of the claim came after CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl challenged the leprosy figure during a profile of Dobbs on "60 Minutes" this past Sunday. Stahl cited a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services document that reported 7,029 cases over the past 30 years — not three.

The dispute highlights the SPLC's concern that Dobbs and some others in the media are regularly using discredited and inaccurate information about immigrants — material that often originates with far-right ideologues and organizations dominated by white supremacists and nativists.

Dobbs and CNN reporter Christine Romans said they had gotten the information from the late Madeleine Cosman, who was described by Romans as "a respected medical lawyer" – but who, in fact, was a woman who repeatedly ranted about Latino men raping boys, girls and nuns.

Written on the Latino Body: Of Tattoos and Discrimination in the Military

The New Mexico National Guard is overwhelmingly comprised of Chicanos. After they arrived in Kuwait recently, a soldier from Wisconsin told superiors that he believed the Chicano servicemen were "gang-members." After an Army specialist was flown in to investigate and examine their bodies, they were stripped and searched for tattoos. Few tattoos were found, and none with gang-related markings.

While Gov. Bill Lopez [sic] Richardson of New Mexico praises the Minute Men gangs along that state's border with Mexico, he seems unable or unwilling to decry the racialized profiling of Mexican American National Guard soldiers in Kuwait under the Army's leadership. (See a video of the alleged "gang-members" prior to deployment above. For original source see here.)

N.M. Guard unit alleges racial discrimination

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 23, 2007

Task force says Army searched soldiers for tattoos because they’re Hispanic

ALBUQUERQUE — At a base in Kuwait last May, nearly 60 members of a New Mexico National Guard unit were told to remove their shoes, socks and shirts so that military investigators could check them for gang tattoos.

Several members of the Rio Rancho-based Task Force Cobra alleged racial discrimination, saying the unit was targeted because of its large number of Hispanics.

Army investigators, however, found that the tattoo search was lawful and not racially motivated, the Albuquerque Journal reported in a copyright story published Sunday.
“I’m embarrassed to say that’s how the Army is,” said Adjutant Gen. Kenny Montoya, who commands the Army and Air National Guard in New Mexico. “They don’t want to admit mistakes.”

Within days of the search, Montoya wrote to a senior Army officer in Kuwait, requesting an apology be made to Task Force Cobra. None was given.

Montoya was more pointed in a letter the following month to Gen. Peter Schoomaker, then-chief of staff of the Army. “Let me know how I can help our Army to end their discriminatory practices, both now and in the future,” Montoya wrote.

Schoomaker didn’t respond.

The tattoo search was based on an uncorroborated allegation made by a Wisconsin soldier that Task Force Cobra was rife with gang members.

Members of the military are prohibited from taking part in gang-related activity if the gang is an extremist organization — for example, it advocates discrimination, hate crimes or violent acts. A soldier can face disciplinary action, including discharge for having a tattoo of an extremist group.

On May 25, 2006, agent Paul McGuire with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command arrived at the Ali Al Salem base in Kuwait to conduct the tattoo check and immediately was confronted about his expertise in identifying gang tattoos.

A lieutenant with Task Force Cobra told the agent that all of his platoon sergeants had backgrounds in law enforcement and would know if gang activities were occurring.

Nevertheless, the soldiers were ordered to strip down to their athletic shorts.

Six of the 58 soldiers initially refused to be searched but complied after being threatened with arrest and charges by the investigating agent.

One New Mexico soldier complained “that he didn’t feel like an American today,” according to Army documents. Another reportedly cried, saying it reminded him of a similar incident that occurred when he was younger because he was Hispanic.
Another soldier said the “Gestapo-like” tattoo check was the lowest point of his military career.

“During the viewing, there was high tension among the troops who related they felt as though they were being picked on ... because they were Hispanic and National Guard,” McGuire later said.

Task Force Cobra is made up of nearly 190 soldiers from various National Guard units around New Mexico. It was deployed in November 2005 to provide security for military convoys in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, and returned last November.

Additional members of the group were scheduled to be searched, but unit leaders and senior Army officers blocked that plan.

Capt. Ivan Forrest Salkin, the commander of the unit who had been visiting another base, ordered that there would be no more checks until the investigating agent produced a search warrant, Army documents state.

He said he had no idea that the tattoo check was an issue with his soldiers. He also objected to his soldiers being threatened with arrest for refusing to comply.

As word of the tattoo search worked its way up the chain of command, a top Army lawyer also expressed concern.

“It is too easy for this to be viewed as a witch hunt, where all of the unit members are presumed guilty until proven innocent,” Col. Ralph M.C. Sabatino, a judge advocate, wrote in an e-mail to McGuire a day after the search.

“The fact that all of this is being done on the uncorroborated vague and nonspecific accusations of a soldier ... only exacerbates the problem,” Sabatino said.

The Mexican (American) Body

(left: Red from "Red Dead Revolver" video game, Rockstar Productions, 2006)

Reperire pax, “find peace,” is certainly a noble enough call to justice and the raison d’être of Red, the protagonist of the videogame Red Dead Revolver. But Red—pictured with this imperative call literally crowning one of his revolvers—attempts to find it through the pursuit and annihilation of Mexican General Diego and those of similar ilk who killed his family when he was a boy. Armed with his father’s revolver as a literal and metonymic emblem of forced penetrations, Red’s quest partakes of a cultural repertoire of images that have infused the American popular imagination with murderous Mexicans from the nineteenth century to the present.

But playing American in this context is about being played. From the serial western novel, to the Lone Ranger radio show of the 1940s and, later, the television show of the 1950s, and its heirs in the Hollywood and spaghetti westerns, all the way to Walker, Texas Ranger, "Red Dead Revolver" continues an investment in American national identity through a folk mythology that is neither historically factual nor ethically accountable. As an exemplar of the processes by which American cultural memory and amnesia find public expression, Red evinces the continued investment in an American national fantasy that requires continuous interrogation, resistance, and illumination. Reperire pax, indeed.

PBS and the Latino Body at War

If a Latina or Latino dies at war and there is no one around to witness it or to care, does it matter? Yes, and resoundingly so, as Latino cultural industries and agents have been proclaiming from the U.S. Mexican War (1846-48) to the present spoken word revolution. So what's taken America's professed televisual conscience so long to catch on?

From El Diario, "Latinos as sidebars in U.S. history"
EDITORIAL - 04/13/2007

Latinos welcomed the news that PBS and the Ken Burns team will include Hispanics in a documentary series on World War II. But what the quality of that inclusion will be is now the question.

On February 28, this paper ran a story and editorial about how a 14-hour documentary on the American experience of World War II failed to include Latinos.

Reflecting the Hispanic perspective is an issue of respect, not just for Latinos but for history. Accurate and complex portrayals help move audiences beyond narrow perceptions of U.S. history.

The Burns project also has implications for the fierce debate on U.S. involvement in Iraq. As El Diario regularly reports, Latino soldiers are among the mounting death count in Iraq. The voices of Latino veterans and families in the documentary would help offer a fuller version of the U.S. experience of war.

PBS has annnounced that additional content on Latinos will be incorporated and a Latino
producer will be hired. This is a step that resulted from pressure by the Defend the Honor Campaign, a Latino coalition.

What bothers us, however, is that PBS has clearly stated that the existing content will not be changed. This implies that Latino stories will be added as a footnote instead of woven into the body of the series, relegated to an “extra feature” option on a DVD menu.

Depicting Latinos as sidebars to U.S. history is unacceptable. We expect nothing less than substantive representation of Latinos in the Burns project. And as Burns has a long contract with PBS, we hope that the lesson has been learned. This episode should also be a turning point in how public television, long supported by Latino tax dollars, distributes its resources for projects.

Tex[t] Mex and the Latino Body

(left: from Anthony Nericcio's Tex[t] Mex [University of Texas Press, 2007] and amazon.com site)

Every once in a while a book or cultural artifact comes along that renders its contents and futures differently, and from that moment on it becomes a point of reference for what is to come. William Anthony Nericcio's Tex[t] Mex (University of Texas Press, 2007) is just such an artifact. The Mexican and Chicana/o bodies that populate it are imagined beyond their use value, or the pleasures taken from them, in order to lay bare how vision and the state's culture industries work hand in hand with the politics of national discrimination in the subtlest, and thereby most insidious ways. From a children's cartoon like speedy González, I mean, Gonzales, to scopophilic desires in the shape of Lupe Velez, or the Rita Hayworth we think we know, this is a special book.

We need books like these in order to understand broader cultural phenomena like, say, artist John Sonsini's appropriation of the Latino body, as his recent fascination with Mexican and Central American (im)migrants makes clear. Sonsini cruises and picks up day laborers on the street corners East L.A. Through hand gestures, movements, and the flashing of green some of them eventually "sit" for him in his studio, he paints their image, and the art world then celebrates these bait and tackle switches for the "honest" representation of "the common man." But I wonder in amazement about the Latino body, endlessly recycled, but never quite at home in this piece of earth whose borders render it "illegal" when convenient, "art" when profitable. We need more books like Nericcio's.