Our New Anahuac

Pragmatism (or being practical) is compromising part of one’s own values in order to make gains related to another part of one’s own values. 

Taking it out of the immigration or Chicano debate, one example of pragmatism is what came of Clinton’s attempt to include gays in the military.  One side wanted open enlistment for gays, while the other side wanted no gays in the military at all.  Those who acted pragmatically accepted the compromise of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and called it a victory.  I bring this example up only to illustrate a case of pragmatism.

We too in the so-called Latino community are now being called on to be “practical” and “pragmatic,” to compromise our principles to get some some gain, regardless of how big the negative consequences may be.  They tell us things like “you can’t get everything you want;” “you have to compromise;” and democracy is “about give and take.”

I agree that it is about giving and taking.  We give, and they take.  We gave this land, and they took our pacification.  We gave our labor, and took little wages.  It is always us giving and them taking.  This is how it has always been and this is how it will continue to be if we compromise and sell ourselves short for a few supposed gains.

Everytime that we give, we think that it will be better for us tomorrow.  As if our sacrifices, even our blood sacrifices at HIS WARS, have not been enough for the last 150 years.  Yet we continue to try to compromise, to negotiate, to elect, to vote, to wash away inequalities in this society, to fit ourselves into this society which was designed to keep us out.

They are masters at splitting our society into a cadre of leaders who will benefit by walking on the backs of the rest of our community.  They tried to do this with the comprehensive immigration reform, and they are trying to do this with other pending legislation.  Too often they pit allies with vested interests against each other.  The legislation is always geared to pacify those with more power and to stifle the have-nots.  They pit the democrat-union alliance against the Building Aztlan crowd (as they did with Cesar Chavez vs. La Raza Undia).  They pit the upwardly mobile against the lumpen youth and workers (as with affirmative action).  Those in the more powerful position always win out and become pacified, too often at the expense of the rest of our community.  They are masters of manipulation.

I think that compromise is more absurd when we look at who we are trying to compromise with.  Cornyn will never come around “to see the light” about immigration reform or anything else that benefits us.  Still, we are asked to call him, to write to him, to plead with him.  We were asked three months ago by organizers from Chicago to spend these three months trying to persuade Cornyn to change his mind.  CORNYN of all people?!?

I believe that those fighting for change do so with a big heart and good intentions, but I want to write about what is right for me.  I don’t claim to speak for anybody but myself.  In fact, I know that my ideas are a minority in a minority. 

In my personal political activities, I am not willing to compromise one inch.  I believe that I have already compromised by paying my taxes, by pulling over when the police flash their lights, by not promoting violence.  I have compromised this way to a system that literally stole land from my family, that killed my relatives, that took this territory by force, rape and murder, over the blood of our people.  For those who consider themslves eceonomic refugees, it is probably true that the United States caused the economic conditions in your country anyway, and you are still asked to compromise.

Though I am not a Christian, I understand a little better what Jesus meant when he said to give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s.  I’ll give Ceasar Bush what he compells me to: my taxes, my complicity to his laws, the recognition of his authority by force.  But I will never give him my heart or my mind.  So when I contribute to la causa, it is not to compromise one nickle more than what I have compromised already.

Until then, we will be building the foundation of our nation, and when I die, if we only have a quarter of the foundation built, I will be happy.  I believe that it will be a long, slow, lonely path, void of cameras and validation.  The first step is talking about it and writing about it.  Democracy would not have taken root here without people talking and talking loudly about it first.

I once heard Jose Angel Gutierrez critiquing Malcolm X because he talked alot but took no action (unlike his own hero Reis Lopez Tijerina who talked and took up arms).  By talking and not taking up arms, Malcolm was able to give to the world a foundation of profound ideas and analyses which are still relevant today.  Sometimes being a loudmouth isn’t a bad thing.

It will be hard like swimming upstream, because building a nation goes against the current and goes against the passive aggressive strategies we have been taught about “siguiendo la corriente.”  In the end, the seeds that we plant will bear the fruit of four eagles and the nopal.

Hacia una nacion