MC Quixote

Blacklisted / Whitelisted / Brownlisted Part 15

So they published this list of "illegal aliens" here in Utah, and I might add that all the names on the list were reported as being Hispanic. An anonymous source, who supposedly has anti-immigrant / maybe Minuteman ties, said they wanted the illegals on the list deported, each and every one of the mothers, children, and fathers.

I didn't see the list because it was never really made public. But I can tell you this, for a few days, a week, and then two weeks, there was this tension, this fear, a wave of terror that ran throughout the whole Latino community in Utah.

We were all watching closely to see what was going to happen next. I'd convinced myself my name was on the list, my dad's name too, and I asked myself, "Where am I living? Is this Nazi Germany? Anonymous people publishing lists of people to be rounded up? What's going on here?

I gather up my art supplies, time for a creative response to the fear tactics all "undocumented" Latinos in this town have to face. And with what's happening in Arizona, we just keep getting pushed further and further.

Just three years ago there were marches all over the U.S. in the name of immigration reform. Here in Salt Lake City, over 40,000 people marched from the City County Building, up State Street, to the State Capital. Over 40,000!

This was, and still is, the largest march / protest in Utah's history. Maybe it scared some people, maybe the fact that there are 20 million undocumented people in the U.S. scares some people.

What I see happening here in 2010 seems to be motivated by fear. If we're going to move forward people need to look beyond the fear. When you look beyond the fear you see we're all the same thing; we're all mothers, children, and fathers.

If you want to start segregating, the fact of the matter is, Latinos have been on this land longer than the Anglos. And we'd stay in Mexico if we had an economic chance down there. I actually feel free in Mexico, poor, but free. Even with the narco violence, the government corruption, the kidnappings, the killings, the missing: I've always felt freer in Mexico. And I can tell you this; I've never, ever, felt like I'd been blacklisted in Mexico.

I've never felt the kind of hate I feel when my deaf dad is trying to buy brake pads for his car and the Anglos in the parts store start to mess with him,

"Do you speak English?" "I don't understand you." "What language you speak?" And I have to step in and tell them that he's deaf, and we speak a little English.

"Well, I don't know sign language in Spanish, can you tell me what you need in Ingles?" God that pissed me off.

Maybe these haters have a sense of the rich culture, the deep history, and the sophisticated people beyond the artificial southern border of Anglolandia. The reality is that they probably have no understanding of Mexico at all. For the most part, this kind of bigotry comes from ignorance.

But there is some hope, now that two weeks have passed, it turns out that the "Illegals" Most-Wanted List was put together by two Utah state workers. Both of them have been terminated from their state jobs and are facing criminal charges.

A part of me wants to meet these two people. In fact, I'd like to give them their sentencing. The way I'd sentence them is I'd take them to the Navel of the Moon. Yes, I'd personally escort these two to Tenochtitlan, to the Temple of the Moon on the Zocalo, to the corridor where Moctezuma met Cortés. I'd give them an extensive tour of the Museum of Anthropology, have lunch with my Grandma Adela in Coyoacan, and then walk over to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's Casa Azul.

I'd have them walk through the Temple de Guadalupe to face the iconic image of the Guadalupe on the robe of Juan Diego, and we'd go out to the front of the Temple to watch the Dazones do their pre-Columbian Aztec dancing rituals that come to a climax on the Dia de Guadalupe (December 12th).