American History, Towards Today’s Deportation Frenzy ( distilled my my 1994 Latin American History notebook, and updated). The Paleolithic land bridge was not for everyone. Yet they came, seeking new opportunities for warmth, grass, and meat. Fast-forward ten thousand years or so. Entradas by the dozen, troubles by the score. The Team had beat back the Muslims (an abiding concern, as it turns out), and having done so, took a breath to fill the billows of its sails westward. Land ho! and the glory of the crown. Cortez, 1519, the end of a new beginning, and the beginning of the end. Another three hundred years brought the caste system, a re-created chain of being, with the last link belonging to a chain of slaves. Criollos over Indiĝenas, Mestizos, Blacks. Folks in assorted flavors of un-freedom. The conquest of South America and the West Indies The rise of Colonial North America: continuation of indigenous genocide. American Revolution: the replacement of one set of elites by another. Quickly, the expansion of territory, first by the Louisiana Purchase (1808) , then by the conquest of Mexican land. All enriched by the blood of conquered Indians and enslaved Blacks. The ‘Texas Revolution’ (1836), a battle to steal land from the young Mexican republic. The Alamo. Good-by Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed the expansion of American territory to include New Mexico, Texas, and California. A short period of independence for Mexico, and then the puppet theater begins. Enter Diaz tough yankee-loving dictator, seven terms the president, finally cooked in the cauldron of the Mexican Revolution. The major strikes of the forties: Mexican workers seized by the winds of change that swept the planet as imperialism chewed on its own bones. The Bracero Program, Public Law 78, muscled in temporary provisions for the erstwhile evicted. Needing to maintain order, enter the war against the Zoot Suit. The rise of LULAC, UFWU Chicano Consciousness, Brown Berets. Reagan and his race-hating agenda: Simpson-Mazzoli. The permanence of the immigration ‘debate’. Proposition 187/ NAFTA. California leads in the sanctioning of immigrants. Trade agreements: the ‘green years of prosperity’: union-busting, ecocide, coups a-aplenty. Zapatistas! Storm surge from the South. Barrio riots. The unsettled despised. And the beat goes on. The Fence, and Obama for The Defense. Two million deportations.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 13:07:47 +0000
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