[ilbegone]

THIS IS WHAT'S BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOL WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS

Out of curiosity I obtained a very cheap used paperback copy ($6.00 including shipping) of UCLA professor Juan Gomez Quinones' book Roots of Chicano Politics 1600 - 1940. It is a race obsessed, historically twisted and somewhat outrageous (particularly if you have an understanding of the history) tome.

Gomez Quinones is obsessed with the word mestizo: mestizo here or there, mestizo doing this or that, mestizo hero of the paragraph, it's almost as if he were to describe the Spanish conquest of central Mexico that he would conflate and confuse Motecuzoma, Cuauhtemoc, Cortes, Malintzin, and Pedro de Alvarado as all being mestizo.

Except that Gomez Quinones would need some evil whites in his racially propagandistic story so he would have to decide which among the lot is to be white and who is to be mestizo, with the proviso that white and Indian children were raised together with whites becoming oppressors of mestizos upon reaching the age of majority (He touches on this notion concerning Californios and California Indians on page 57 - "Mexican (national) children were raised with Indian children and mestizo adults socialized with Indian adults". As I read Californio eyewitness Antonio Maria Osio, Indians were essentially slaves on the missions with adolescent Indian girls sent out to be servants for Californio households. Besides, the Hispanic cultural notion of a gentleman was that he owned land and did no work - to do work is what Indians anywhere in the new world were for).

He contradicts himself by saying that most who went to California were mestizo (mixed Indian and white) but that most of the pobladores (town people) in California were mixed black and Indian. The primarily white Californios may have had ranches away from town, but most would have resided in town.

On page 60 Gomez Quinones talks about Mestizo soldiers recruited in 1818 in Mazatlan and San Blas to serve in California, but this is a doubtful statement due to the upheaval in central Mexico due to the ongoing war of liberation. I do know that there was a three hundred man "security battalion" unit which came much later with Mexican governor Mitcheltorena - these were convicts taken out of prison and given to a professional commander to make into soldiers, but they constantly raped, robbed, and murdered in California and were forcibly put on the boat by Californios and sent back to Mexico along with governor Mitcheltorena. I haven't got to it yet, but I don't think he would mention the true nature of the Mexican "soldiers".

Another thing that Gomez Quinones would sidestep is the fact that there were convicts and societal outcasts exiled from Mexico to California. He may have already done so in the first 70 pages with the statement that most came to California for economic opportunity.

Gomez Quinones likes tossing in Spanish words, such as frontera for frontier and Nuevo Mexico for New Mexico.

What I see as his "high point" so far as I have read is the allegation on page 66 that US Army officer Zebulon Pike, who was ordered in 1806 to explore the southern part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, was a racist. Without a shred of supporting evidence, he describes Pike (and by extension, all whites) as "a confirmed mestizo hater". I have read the part of Pike's book Account of an Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi and through the Western Parts of Louisiana... and a Tour through the Interior Parts of New Spain which describes his capture by Spanish soldiers and being held prisoner in New Spain under the suspicion of being a spy. I didn't find any sentiment of Pike being "a confirmed mestizo hater" in his writing.

Maybe race baiting UCLA professor Juan Gomez Quinones doesn't think anyone who reads his book will research for themselves what the facts are.

In any case the book has 540 pages. I haven't got to page 75 and my thought is what a load of pure, unadulterated bovine efluvia. The book is racist, inventive of "fact", and I'm already sick of the professor's racist drum beating. If I finish reading this steaming twisted pile of university crap it's because I will have forced myself.

Take note:

THIS IS WHAT'S BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOL WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS