The bigger battle: Reflections on where we are

What follows is a copy of and editorial I just submitted to La Prensa de Minnesota. Staff and faculty from our office maintain a monthly column there to do our part to enhance the quality of public discourse by and about Latinos. It occurred to me after I wrote it that I may as well post it here as well because addressing what’s at stake in the daily battles being waged is what I wanted to share here next anyway.

As contributors to this column from the Department of Chicano Studies have noted over the last several months, our community faces numerous challenges, locally, regionally, and nationally. Be it educational success and access, economic, labor, or environmental justice issues, disparities within the criminal justice system, immigration reform, equitable access to social services, or just plain old respect from those we live, work, play or pray with (or in close proximity to), the unfortunate reality we are faced with is one that presents a perpetual challenge to the Latino community.

We are not alone.

Our struggle is a local and a national struggle. Our struggle is a continental struggle. Ours is an historic struggle of epic proportions. And, in many respects, the sheer size of it makes it a human struggle that gives it meaning beyond us; that is, it’s a universal struggle—for justice, for human and civil rights, for basic dignity and respect without which no definition of freedom, liberty, justice or equality can make sense.

All around the U.S., communities are struggling with how to respond to the continued Latinoization of the U.S. Fearful of change, threatened by cultural and linguistic difference, ignorant of how our well-being, our histories, and our destinies are intertwined, many small towns around the nation are reacting to change by trying to legislate a monocultural, monolinguistic, monochromatic, and monotonous world that targets vulnerable populations and further marginalizes them. It’s nothing more than child-like nostalgia for a simpler world of days gone by; which is to say, it’s people with privilege, power, and prejudice acting under the guise of democracy. All around the U.S., small, once homogenous communities, often built on indigenous lands and sites of former plantations, be it in Texas, New York, Illinois, California, Georgia, and the list goes on, have passed laws forbidding the employment of and rental of housing to gente sin papeles. This act of going after those who are labeled as non-American with such lust and fervor is often performed in the name of patriotism. This targeting of those who are perceived as not-American is an un-American act par excellence, because it is, in my opinion, a betrayal of what is authentically American—a continental identity that was forged in the cauldron of colonialism.

It makes me sad. But ignorance also enrages me when it is defended as self-righteousness, because it is based on a false sense of a “natural’ order. It privileges those with money and papers because these “things” are seen as the basis of power and legitimacy. It disenfranchises those whose realities have been shaped by “our” national policies of both past and present. These are policies that have systematically destroyed local economies, self-sustaining agrarian systems, the communal ownership of lands, and autonomous communities not organized around capitalism. In their place, what has been propped up are economies and powers structures that contributed to the proliferation of maquiladora economies, military regimes supported by oligarchies, systematic efforts to subvert democratically elected governments, and which support the intense repression of people organizing for political and social justice.

As an educator, I have no choice but to have hope. But I am not naïve. One does not plant seeds without believing that they can sprout something beautiful and useful.

We need to remember: We are not alone.

We have each other. A beautiful community of passionate, committed, hard-working people who have justice on our side. Real justice transcends papers of any form, documents or money. Real justice appeals to moral laws and natural rights that should be afforded to all because of our common humanity. I do not believe we are alone in our struggle, for there are others all over the world who have experienced similar historical trauma and who stand strong, not just to survive, but to pursue justice so they may thrive.

I don’t mean to or need to romanticize our community. In fact, to do so, would be to foster another kind of ignorance. We must be at our best to make change. Thus we must be vigilant in holding high expectations of each other. Not only must we be there for each other in recognizing that a wrong done to one is a wrong done to all, we must also recognize that we have many allies in this struggle. We cannot be agents of social change in whatever work we do unless we believe that the capacity exists for more people to accept the fundamental principles of fairness and equity than there are those who would deny them to others. These bridges of human understanding and common cause exist now as they always have. It is our job to become master engineers at building those bridges so that the walls of ignorance become useless, ineffective and relics of the past.