Democrats, slavery, Irish, and Indians

[Greg in LA]

Oops, I meant to put this post in the wrong thread.

[ilbegone]

Got some new books and this sort of thing is what's being taught in school...

Roots of Chicano politics, 1600 - 1940 by UCLA history professor Juan Gomez - Quinones

Chicano Politics Reality and promise 1940 - 1990 by Juan Gomez - Quinones

My History, not yours by UC Berkely English professor Genaro M. Padilla

I skimmed through them and have began reading the first.

My first impressions:

Gomez Quinones is pretty slick in the way he presents his race obsession, mixing fact with a lot of cleverly written insertions which easily transmits his race obsession to the reader. It seems a given everyone who went to the northern frontier was mestizo (the endless "the border crossed us" race mantra when fact is that most ancestral "Latinos" did in fact cross the border after 1848), notwithstanding the facts of the sparse colonization of the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico and southern Colorado about 1600 with Spaniards, white Criollos, Jews and Spanish Muslims (escaping the inquisition) and Criollo and Peninsular Spaniards arriving to colonize coastal California in 1769 (Late 18th century colonization of Southern and Eastern Texas may have been somewhat different notwithstanding Spaniards and Canary Islanders who migrated to Tejas, have to check further. The later northern frontier ((located roughly about the present border)) was a little more colorblind in favor of Indian fighting ability and relative accumulated wealth. The Comanches and Apaches raided deep into Mexico and were hell on wheels from Arizona to Texas.).

What he doesn't cleverly state outright he cleverly insinuates by the wording: He states that Sor Juana (remarkable nun who had a passion for learning, 1651 - 1695) wrote poems in Nahuatl, the subliminally transmitted conclusion is that she must be must be a Mexican Indian or half breed Aztec. What he doesn't say: She was the illegitimate daughter of a Peninsular Basque and her maternal grandparents were Andalusian Spaniards, that Nahua was learned by desire (didn't grow up in it or need it to communicate), that she may have had help with composing the (only) two poems attributed to her in Nahua, and the two Nahua poems were written in a Castilian style.

In skimming through the books, I came across a reference to lynching "Mexicans" ("by hate filled Anglos"). What is not clarified: Anglos were lynched by other Anglos by about a rate of three times as "Mexicans" were lynched in Texas, and blacks across the south were lynched at about a rate of three times as whites. Google Lynching Mexico https://www.google.com/search?q=Lync...ient=firefox-a and you'll find all kinds of examples of Mexicans being lynched by other Mexicans in Mexico for just about anything you can think of, including molesting young children. Juan doesn't state all the facts.

[Look beyond wikipedia, can be a nice starting point but often way slanted - sort of like the professor who cites his own previously published work and all sorts of out of context quotes from the works of others (who've done the same with other compiled interpretations) as researched points and shill rags like Voce De Aztlan are blatant racist versions of Weekly World News. You can find all sorts of scurrilous stuff on the internet. Note how wikipedia's entry Anti Mexican Sentiment was worked to the top of the google page of links about Mexican nationals lynching each other in Mexico.

There was also something I skimmed to which sounded like everyone with a brown skin and a Spanish last name in the US during the 1930's were politically active communists. I asked about that from some of the older people from the local barrios (Older than Gomez Quinones who became a professor in 1969) - BS. One said that it sounds like the man believes everything he's told.

He even mentions my favorite brown racist, UCR Professor Armando Navarro in the second book.

[ilbegone]

I have so many feelings, some conflicting, in this post. I might ramble some - I hope my point is clear - I'm not sure how to approach it.. It has to do with that space between "Mexican American", not my experience but of what I see in so many people I know and is a badly defined and often a contradictory state of similarity and differences in being. Some of it greatly attracts me, other aspects (such as brown berets ranting about "indigenous activities" http://saveourstate.info/showthread....1809#post21809) repels me.

I think My History, not Yours is going to be much more honest than Gomez Quinones' Chicano Politics

The difference is the emphasis.

I understand about Juan Seguin, the commander of Tejanos who fought alongside Sam Houston during the Texas war of independence from Mexico. That he declared himself an American at the battle of San Jacinto, he held office in the predominantly Anglo republic, and that he fled to Mexico due to death threats and fought on the Mexican side during the Mexican American war. However, I recall reading that Seguin may have been involved in some shady deals. So, was he ran off due to racial bigotry or because he cheated someone? The eyewitnesses are long dead, and would we get an accurate recounting either way even if we could talk to them?

Then there is Antonio Maria Lugo, born Spanish, became Mexican by default, and died as an American citizen as a result of conquest and lived all his life in California. He was the first child born in the Spanish colony of Alta California and he was born white.

But the important thing is not whether he was white or mestizo, but the circumstances of of history unfolding around himself within California. However, the mode of thought Gomez Quinones (Chicano Politics) adheres to would make Lugo a mestizo for modern racial propaganda purposes. And the fact that California was a bastard stepchild generally ignored by Mexico and that a number of Californios considered becoming a part of the United states - such as Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (also born in California and lived under three flags but was mishandled by the Bear Flag revolt clowns - the acquisition would have been a slam dunk if not for bozos like Bear Flag knuckle draggers, Fremont and Stanton pissing off the populace with idiocy and arrogance - Kearny was much better but arrived too late) - would be ignored by modern movimiento revisionists and Vallejo is just another white man with a Spanish last name to be magically turned into a mestizo for victimization propaganda purposes.

There are a lot of complex issues from history which are distilled into a modern simplistic combination of racism and victimization and history we need to know to understand our present is reduced to clever half truth and brazen fiction to a racial agenda.

There is a lot churning in my head, from the knowledge that expansionist president James Polk, General Zachary Taylor, Commodore Stanton and insubordinate Fremont of the Mexican American war were all buffoons to the fact that not all Anglos in Texas wanted to separate from Mexico in 1835 and not all Americans wanted a war with Mexico in 1846. On the other hand, opportunist buffoon Santa Anna was the best that Mexico had to offer (Astonishingly hoodwinking Polk into forking over two million dollars and getting him back from exile into Mexico to pull off a coup after the war began, then Santa Anna promptly raised an army with the two mil to oppose Polk's territorial aim) and uttered the somewhat prophetic statement that it was Mexico's destiny to forever be intertwined with his own destiny (Santa Anna died broke, despised in two countries, and drooling on himself in senility - look at Mexico now). And the fact that Mexico was the first to threaten declaration of war over annexation of Texas in 1845 is generally ignored.

What does this have to do with the modern space between Mexican American?

Plenty.

It's the story of "our history", not the old cult of the Jim Bowies and revilement of Santa Anna from my childhood or the modern cult veneration of Cuauhtemoc with repudiation of Cortes and Malintzin (La Malinche) by modern revisionists and borders crossed or not by distant ancestors.

Again, it's our history. As I write this, I am listening to one side of a telephone conversation in my house. It's a mixture of Spanish and English, the space between Mexican American.

History shouldn't be twisted to agendas either way.

[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

[ilbegone]

I have to add to a concept in the previous post concerning the racist UCLA university professor's book for students:

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.

In a province with little to no money, wealth was determined by land ownership and cattle, and commerce was conducted largely by bartering cow hides and tallow to Yankee traders for goods.

The very few post Mexican liberation Californio soldiers (the original Spanish colonizing soldiery and their descendants) were unpaid by the Mexican government, wore threadbare clothing, and existed on the charity of the missions. Criminals impressed as "soldiers" from Mexico proper and sent to California as "security" for Mexican governors were unpaid as well but lived by robbing the local population - until the "natives" forced them to return to Mexico.

Out of a population of perhaps 4000 (quite a few related) just prior to the 1846 Mexican American war, maybe 300 were literate and a very few were extremely educated - such as the aforementioned Antonio Maria Osio.

Mexico didn't treat the somewhat comparable but much more hostile and violent ("Indian trouble") Texas frontier much better than bastard stepchild California, nor Rio Grande Valley New Mexico ("Indian trouble" too) either.

New Spain and Mexico didn't have the steam to sufficiently populate and economically stimulate the northern frontier and California. Generally, few came north unless forced or mislead as to the conditions (such as starving Canary Islander immigrants to Texas during the Spanish period). California was originally colonized by soldiers and priests, with land grants primarily given to retired soldiers and their descendants as well as to the missions. Life would be rough for convicts and societal outcasts exiled to California due to very little economic opportunity.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Originally Posted by ilbegone

I have to add to a concept in the previous post concerning the racist UCLA university professor's book for students:



In a province with little to no money, wealth was determined by land ownership and cattle, and commerce was conducted largely by bartering cow hides and tallow to Yankee traders for goods.

The very few post Mexican liberation Californio soldiers (the original Spanish colonizing soldiery and their descendants) were unpaid by the Mexican government, wore threadbare clothing, and existed on the charity of the missions. Criminals impressed as "soldiers" from Mexico proper and sent to California as "security" for Mexican governors were unpaid as well but lived by robbing the local population - until the "natives" forced them to return to Mexico.

Out of a population of perhaps 4000 (quite a few related) just prior to the 1846 Mexican American war, maybe 300 were literate and a very few were extremely educated - such as the aforementioned Antonio Maria Osio.

Mexico didn't treat the somewhat comparable but much more hostile and violent ("Indian trouble") Texas frontier much better than bastard stepchild California, nor Rio Grande Valley New Mexico ("Indian trouble" too) either.

New Spain and Mexico didn't have the steam to sufficiently populate and economically stimulate the northern frontier and California. Generally, few came north unless forced or mislead as to the conditions (such as starving Canary Islander immigrants to Texas during the Spanish period). California was originally colonized by soldiers and priests, with land grants primarily given to retired soldiers and their descendants as well as to the missions. Life would be rough for convicts and societal outcasts exiled to California due to very little economic opportunity.

This is exactly what California was back then. Mexicans didn't want to live here, so far from Mexico City and the land grants Mexico handed out like candy went to anyone who would come this far south, which was very, very few. Mexico couldn't protect the land because Mexicans didn't want to be here. But I'll add that even after the USA bought the land from the Mexican Government, those that produced those land grants kept their land. The USA only claimed the Mexican Government land that was paid for, all privately owned land was retained by those that could produce a Mexican land grant, which wasn't all that many because they wouldn't come here.

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

This is exactly what California was back then. Mexicans didn't want to live here, so far from Mexico City and the land grants Mexico handed out like candy went to anyone who would come this far south, which was very, very few. Mexico couldn't protect the land because Mexicans didn't want to be here. But I'll add that even after the USA bought the land from the Mexican Government, those that produced those land grants kept their land. The USA only claimed the Mexican Government land that was paid for, all privately owned land was retained by those that could produce a Mexican land grant, which wasn't all that many because they wouldn't come here.

It is true that few wanted to come to the northern frontier (roughly equivalent to the modern border, with the exception of mostly coastal California, eastern Texas, and along the Rio Grande from Southern Texas through the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico into Southern Colorado), which was further separated from central Mexico by large deserts full of hostile Indians - many raiding from the northern frontier. Prior to the 20th century to possess in the Americas was was to populate by migration from a mother cultural center or assimilation of the local natives, and neither Spain nor Mexico could sufficiently populate or assimilate the north in order to possess. It was one thing dealing with Indians who were formerly sedentary subjects of meso American Indian empire and entirely another thing dealing with nomadic north American Indians. As well, the northern frontier was more economically tied to American traders than it was to central Mexico.

However, I'm not so sure that Mexico handed out land grants like candy.

And, the majority of land grant holders did eventually lose their properties in several ways, and off the top of my head (It's been quite a while since I looked into it):

The majority of Californios were unaccustomed to handling money, particularly in dealings with Yankee money lenders who could be quite ruthless in collecting debt.

Quite a number of land grant properties, while well understood by the Californios under the Spanish system and local tradition, were ill defined by American legal standard and didn't stand up in court under the US legal system when the ownership of those properties were challenged by squatters from eastern America.

Others were victims of biased court decisions rendered on baseless suits or were litigated until they ran out of whatever money they had for legal defense.

I'm not aware that Mexican land grants in California to those of American extraction prior to the Mexican American war were lost in a similar manner. I'm not very familiar with the land grant situation of New Mexico and Texas (I'm somewhat familiar with land grants to immigrants from America in Texas), but I believe a similar result happened in those areas.

As far as "Mexicans" not wanting to come here: every country has local, regional and national identities. Criollo Californio Osio declared himself to be a proud Mexican, but I perceive that he more identified as a Californio. He stated that a desired independence from Mexico would be impossible due to the lack of population and dearth of literacy in California. He also said that the old retired soldiers from the Spanish era would rally if called on by the King of Spain, but the tone doesn't seem to be so for the cause of Mexico. Contrary to the sneering, biased, untroubled by fact tale spun by the History Channel a few years ago (Conquerors series, Fremont?), there was no functioning Mexican army in California during the Mexican American war. Resistance was put up by a relative few rancheros with lances who might have been amenable to unification with America except that the Bear Flag clowns, Commodore Stanton, and knucklehead Fremont pissed them off with arrogance and stupidity.

On the other hand the UCLA professor who wrote the book Becoming Mexican - American (George Sanchez?) let out a rare tidbit on about page 70 of the paperback edition - that during the late 19th century when Mexicans began moving into Los Angeles, the Californios moved out. These two peoples once shared nationality and had cultural ties which together weren't enough to establish a common identity.