Playing Mexicans and Indians

[ilbegone]

An interesting comment concerning story headlined

Kris Kobach Slammed By Native American Rep. Ponka-We Victors: ‘When You Mention Illegal Immigrant, I Think Of All Of You'

The very first comment on the story:

The truth about American Indians and Mexicans is something you are all totally ignorant about.

I am American Indian. I am from a federally recognized tribe where I am an enrolled member.

Mexican people were the most horrible people to Indians historically. What happened in the 50's and 60's between them was pure racism on the mexicans part. I have a whole reservation of elders who can testify to that.

They claimed Indians were savages and wanted no part of them until casinos came along.

My mother worked for BIA in the Tribal Enrollment Dept. Her daily calls consisted of "I WANT MY INDIAN MONEY!" in broken English. People will change their skin color, religion for a few measly bucks.

If mexican people want to play it that way the Spanish were the ones who committed atrocities against my people. You are no better than the white people who did this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

To be culturally Indian in Mexico is to be a nobody in culturally mestizo Mexico, Mexican Indians are sea bed level in Mexican society. Once or twice I have heard a Mexican angrily use the insult "pinche Indio" on another Mexican (work place setting, boss to minion), which has about the same meaning as "fucking nigger".

[wetibbe]

When I lived in Venezuela there was more white Venezuelan prejudice against the Tans and Bronzes than in the USA.

I really didn't see prejudice in Mexico during many visits but I'm sure my host's were extremely careful.

When the Mexican reconqista's shout "Go back to Europe", How's that again? In the Borough of Queens New York there are 135 different nationalities.

Back prior to 1847 the Mexicans invaded native American tribal lands and colonized it, enslaving native Americans, and establishing haciendas and churches. They LOST the war. But they "don't get it" because they want feeble excuses for justifying illegal aliens.

At the time the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620 some native tribes were at war with each other, raiding, killing, kidnaping women. There was no civilization, no written language, no courts, immigration or ordered land ownership. Humans, Homo Sapiens, were one step this side of the other primates, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutan's. Fighting for territory and holding it by force.

At the time that the first Pilgrim's sailed into Cape Cod bay they sent a scouting party out to Cape Cod to reconnoiter. There was NO contact with natives. When they established at Plymouth Rock it was three months before they made contact with native Americans. There was no customs and immigration office, no passports, no one who could even read.

Lest the Indians and Mexicans forget, the Dutch, Swedish, English, French, Spanish and Russians all came to North America and grabbed a chunk of real-estate. All left by one means or another.

Lest the Indians and Mexicans forget, it was Native Born North Americans who fought for and liberated the country.

[ilbegone]

I really didn't see prejudice in Mexico during many visits but I'm sure my host's were extremely careful.

Sometime refer to an Apache as being Mexican and watch for the reaction. I have read accounts of Mexican brutality concerning Mexican Indians, not the least with the attempted extermination of the Yaquis. There was once a Mexican bounty for Indian scalps from northern Mexican and border Indians, from which the scalps turned in often were obtained from female Mexican villagers rather than Indians (easier "take"). I read a dated account about Mexican teens way laying Indians taking their wares to market, with sadistic pleasure in beating on them, taking their goods, and driving them off.

The key word now is "cultural" rather than "racial" in Mexico. There was once something like 38 words to describe degrees of racial mixture in Mexico with a dominating society obsessed with racial purity, but Mestizos have been the majority since the late 1800's.

Benito Juarez became president of Mexico precisely because he ceased being Zapotec Indian by being educated by Spanish priests in his teens. I don't think he even spoke Spanish by the time he was 13 but learned fast enough to study law in Mexico City. In fact, during some of the early turmoil of his political career he had fled Mexico City to Guanajuato whereupon there was a dispatch from Guanajuato to Mexico city about "we have a crazy Indian here who claims to be (important political post, I believe it was President)".

The racist essay The Cosmic Race by Mexican intellectual Jose Vasconcelos (who had a hand in shaping post 1910 Mexican Revolution public education) essentially stated that it would be Mexican racial mixture which would overcome the United States (which he seemed to resentfully admire in the essay, but was sympathetic of Nazi Germany during WWII - bizarre contradictions in his thinking possibly explained by his experiences as a child being schooled in Eagle Pass Texas and his resentment of the Mexican American war).

As I remember, the towering Octavio Paz wrote concerning racial attitudes in Mexico that people who were mostly brown would stress Spanish ancestry, mostly whites would look to the Indian past, while the Indians themselves didn't care. He went on to state that The Mexican (I take it that it is in the cultural Mexican mestizo sense) denied his dual ancestry, The Mexican didn't want to be descended from either one, that his history began with himself.

Enrique Krauze, a close associate of the late Octavio Pass wrote that the first Mexican was Martin Cortes, the son of Hernan Cortez and Malintzin - Martin was the first Mestizo and Mexican culture is derived from both Indian and Spanish culture but belongs to neither one.

It is my observation that Mexican culture demands cultural assimilation, that the children of foreigners in Mexico have intense pressure to become culturally Mexican. Few Mexicans would state that "Mexican Americans" are Mexican unless there some angle being played (think Mexican Government or an advantage to be gained).

The (Late 60's - early 70's) film El Pocho staring Lalo Gonzalez showed his Mexican ancestry pulling him to Mexico while Mexico rejected him for his Americanization (represented by the scene with Lucha Villa - if I remember right there was first American music being played and danced to, then Lucha Villa sang Mariachi after telling Gonzalez that he was a Pocho [perjoratve calling him "white"], the scene further describing Gonzalez' duality). America rejected him for his Mexican-ness, while his Americanization pulled him towards America (both points shown in the last scene with his Mexican friend pushing him south and his American girlfriend pulling him north - last shot was of him laying down in a concrete ditch representing the border and saying "this is where I was born, right in between").

Unless you have money and in spite of all the lip service to the contrary, to be culturally Indian in Mexico is to be a nobody. The only Indians Mexico has any use for have been dead for 500 years.