Maylin Reyes hangs a Mexican flag at a makeshift memorial on Monday, Aug. 5, 2019, in El Paso, Texas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Despite his statements to the contrary, made not of his own volition but under massive public pressure, President Trump’s actions and policies truly reflect his racism, xenophobia and misogyny.
Beginning with his own statements and slogans, we have a President who in his initial campaign railed against Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” He is intent on building a wall to keep out the “invasion” of Mexican and Central American immigrants and continues to separate Latino families, caging their children and adults in concentration camps. He relentlessly attacks immigrant communities, raiding them to deport fathers, mothers, and close relatives who’ve been here for decades as hard-working residents with no criminal record.
With a President like that, where do you think the white supremacists get the idea that they are serving the nation by massacring innocent Latino immigrants and Mexican nationals?
If nothing else, the El Paso Massacre —just like other racially motivated acts of mass violence— has forced elected officials to confront the realities of white supremacy as well as the incredible facility with which anyone, regardless of their age, intent, or mental state, could obtain a portable weapon of mass destruction. The problem of automatic military weaponry in the hands of the public compels elected officials to enact and enforce laws, statues, and guarantees that ban these weapons and even provide incentives for their return and destruction. Given the influence of the NRA, this may be a difficult though urgent political task.
However, the cancer of white supremacy will require a much more complex and multifaceted cure. As useful and legitimate as are harsh punishments against hate crimes, legislation alone cannot heal the profound disease of racism that still infects our American psyche. Racism is so deeply entrenched in the society, culture, media, education and worldview of white Americans, that it finds a wide range of expressions from more subtle assumptions of Eurocentric superiority to the obviously bigoted chants of “send her back” to the massacre of innocent children.
The unapologetic murderer of El Paso expressed no regret or remorse for his evil actions, relying on the twisted ideological defense of his manifesto. Once all the immediate media flurry has begun to fade, his statements need to be analyzed, deconstructed and delegitimized in the face of truth and reason. We cannot permit these myths and manifestos to go unchallenged. White supremacy must be resisted not only by the force of law but also in the marketplace of ideas.
Even without responding to all the myths, errors, and fallacies expressed in the manifesto, it is interesting to note a few statements that reflect some of the most fundamental beliefs of racism that undergird white supremacy going back to the justifications for the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Native Americans and the dispossession of Mexican American citizens.
It is ironic that the mass murderer should refer to the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas, a state with centuries of history under six flags, the first two being those of Spain and Mexico long before the Anglos arrived.
In reality, it wasn’t the Hispanics, but the Anglos who invaded Texas, a well-known historical fact, beginning early in the 1800s, with waves of mostly southern confederates coming to the Mexican state of Tejas. It was Tejanos who founded the cities of El Paso, San Antonio, and Laredo, so often mentioned in Western song and legend. It was Mexicans who brought from Northern Mexico the entire ranching tradition bequeathed to the Great American Cowboy as documented in the language of corral, rancho, rodeo, lasso, mustang and palomino in the semi-arid land of arroyos, mesas and canyons.
All these Spanish words, as well as cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe, not only contradict the fallacy that Spanish is a foreign language in our nation, but also confirm that it was Hispanics who established the very foundation of what evolved into today´s Western ranching lifestyle and architecture with verandas, patios and plazas. It was Hispanics who established schools, courts, churches and printing presses in these cities as well as the first orchards and vineyards in the verdant valleys of California.
The original Spanish conquistadors were indeed cruel towards the indigenous populations they dominated and the Africans they enslaved, yet their descendants, unlike the majority of the Anglo invaders, actually combined their cultures and their very genes through racial mixing thus creating the multicultural mestizo and mulatto populations of Mexico, Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America.
It is precisely this very racial mixing that is roundly condemned in the murderer´s manifesto and even criminalized by U.S. federal law until Loving vs. Virginia just over a half-century ago. Keeping genetic purity is a common racist motive going back to the Nazis, the KKK and evidently still among the white supremacists of today.
Nevertheless, Americans of all colors and creeds are meeting, mixing, falling in love and finding their common humanity in schools, churches, sport teams, and work places. For decades, I have marched together with people of all races and faiths to end the scourge of rage, racism, and ignorance that generate vile acts of hatred and violence.
We can overcome the evil troika of guns, racism, and misogyny only if we come together to pressure our elected officials, demand an end to accessible automatic weapons, and confront all forms of hatred based on race, gender, religion and nationality regardless if it comes from a brain-washed bigot or from our very President.
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Dr. Julio Noboa Polanco is a writer and retired Social Studies Professor. He served for six years as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. His research interests focused on multiculturalism, curriculum studies and critical pedagogy. He is living now in Santa Ana, Costa Rica. Contact him at jnoboa@earthlink.net.
Spanish conquistadors, exclusively, conquered all of the aboriginal people all along the west coast, Florida and Cuba, and throughout Central and South America in a desperate search for gold. Greed alone was the motivation for the torture and the deaths of millions of aboriginal Americans at the hands of the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic church.
Most Hispanics are now of mixed race, but most early Mexican building designs and names of local places came directly from Spain, since most aboriginals of the time of the conquering were either nomadic or they lived in semi-nomadic, rural-cities centered around temple structures (which served as convenient head-chopping locations for sacrificial ceremonies designed to get the Gods to give them more … everything). Balboa was one of the most notorious conquistadors as he is documented to have fed large groups of gay aboriginals alive to his dogs. Only because these men were gay, which had been a common and accepted thing to be among the aboriginals, Balboa felt they deserved a torturous death. That was the way the Spanish commonly thought about things, mainly due to Catholicism.
Hispanics definitely owned and farmed a lot of land throughout the central, western and north-western regions of the US, and many continued to do so even after the Great Expansion. Land-grabbing and colonization were common activities among prosperous nations of that period, Spain being the most well-known conquering nation of the time. Just as the eastern US was stolen by Anglo-Europeans who were carrying out their “Manifest Destiny”, murdering millions of Native American Indians with influenza and unprovoked “wars”, so too were the central and western regions claimed in the name of this same theory, the God-ordained right to steal, according to the politicians and the US sheeple of that time. The Spanish, French and English stole it from the aboriginals and the USA fought for it and later stole it from the English, French and Spanish and the same thing happened later with the Mexicans. Mexico was paid well by the USA for the lands they lost in the Mexican-American war. That was the way the common US leadership thought about things, mainly due to a warped and twisted form of Christianity, and greed (they were still looking for gold … and THEY FINALLY FOUND IT AT SUTTER’S MILL, just a few days before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo … WHAT A COINCIDENCE…NOT!!!).
This mentality is the same brainwashing that currently has US troops occupying much of the Middle East, with many US voters supporting these military activities, even though there never was, is not now, and never will be a credible justification, other than what should have been the capture and interrogation of Bin Laden, certainly not an outright murder of him solely due to him being a suspect in the 9/11 events. After 9/11, Bush and somehow many US politicians, brainwashed millions of US citizens to believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and so an invasion of Iraq gained popular support. And somehow trillions of tax dollars have gone to “stopping terrorism” in Afghanistan and Iraq (there had been no terrorists in Iraq, but now there are many due to these ongoing US military actions), who feel they are simply patriots protecting their country, just as the US would have patriots fighting against what they felt was an invasion, should some military force overwhelm and invade the US for whatever reason.
This government-oriented and politician-anchored brainwashing is very powerful and pervasive throughout the world. What can anyone do against the threat of being put to death simply for opposing a popular point of view? But those are the stakes and the people responsible for popularizing the current anti-Mexican/Hispanic/Latinx sentiment know exactly what they’re doing. THEY ARE INCITING PEOPLE TO THREATEN OTHER CITIZENS, TO BULLY THEM PSYCHOLOGICALLY AND PHYSICALLY, TO GET THEM TO AGREE WITH OPEN AND OBVIOUS LIES. Best to stay quiet and alive. The alternative is to go against hundreds of years of brainwashing tradition at the hands of the wealthy and greedy corporation owners and their executive lap dogs, who subsequently control the military. It would require people to think, accept the truth and speak out, knowing that the truth is more important than owning some particular thing that is better than the previously-owned thing and hopefully this some-thing is also better than most other people’s things, which really is the sole motivation for all this torture and bloodshed … gold.
The greed of wealthy corporation owners and executives is why people are forced to suffer. Everything else is being used as distractions.