Super-Sized Chicana Blog
A capirotada of thoughts, comments, and observations sometimes telenovela style.Archive for Politiks
Re-entering the atmosphere of Bloglandia
It has been quite awhile since I have blogged. I was experiencing blog block…or blog denial, blog abandonement. Then my friend Char sent me a message to write something because she was bored. hahaha.
Well…here goes. These past two months have been the most unsettling 60 days of my life. My mantra all of this time has been “1000 people want to trade places with you right now.” A man I used to date years ago told me about this saying and I should think about it when I thought I was having it very rough. Right before my birthday, I received the results of my pap smear. Unfortunately, the test was positive. I lost it because it has been a year and a half since my partial hysterectomy. Crap! Back into the hospital. I made an appointment to go back in to see my physician to get a biopsy done. I did not get in to see her until a month later which was November 2nd. I had a coloscopy done which is where the vaginal walls and the cervix are dyed with a solution of vinegar and iodine. Those two combined are unpleasant…I would compare it to having an alkaseltzer tablet dissolving up there plus itchy. OK…I kind of can joke about it now. I didn’t hear from my doctor for a week and a half and figured that no news is good news. She informed me that I am going to need surgery because the region where my vagina joins my cervix has abnormal cells. She referred me to a surgeon who is supposed to be outstanding in his field. I know one of his patients and she thinks he is awesome. The day of the appointment arrived. I have never been so nervous and miserable in my life. I took the day of from work because I decided that if I was going to have a meltdown it would be in private. It turns out that he is a nice, friendly man. His nurse put me off because when she was going to take my blood pressure she jokingly said, “I am going to check if you are happy to see us.” To which I replied, “If that is what you are going to measure, then don’t waste your time because I am not happy to see you.” She took my blood pressure and remarked, “Oh, you are not happy to see us.” Biatch. The surgeon came in and we talked about the different options that I might have for surgery. One is a simple, outpatient procedure, where a lasar is used to plane an area of the vaginal walls, another would entail a laproscopy to remove my cervix, and it this wasen’t possible, then it would be back to the horizontal incision. The first option would require me to stay home from work that afternoon, the second, I would need two weeks off, and the third it would be six weeks again. We also talked about complications that I had during my last surgery which was excessive bleeding due to the surgeon cutting an artery that she did not see. There was a fibroid attached to the artery. Also, the artery runs through my cervix. After that surgery, my surgeon came to let me know that she had some difficulties and that I had lost a lot of blood. This guy tried to joke a little bit about it saying that it can get very messy with blood all over the place but he has had this happen before and it is no big deal. However, he was a little concerned because my other surgeon is an excellent surgeon and she had a hard time. Uhhh…I didn’t think he was amusing. After this conversation, he examined me, and decided to do a biopsy of my cervix. Once again, that freaking dye, and then he scraped my cervix in order to collect some cells. I experienced some sharp cramps that made me wish I could practice a biopsy on him. I won’t know get the results of this analysis until the 18th of this month. So a bit more waiting. I just hope it is the simple procedure.
As if this were not enough. This week, an organization on the campus where I teach invited Chris Simcox, the founder of the Minutemen Civil Defense organization to come on campus to speak about imigration issues and how his group protects the borders of our country. It was very tense for the majority of the week on campus. This event upset Latino students and students who support them very much. I attended the talk. The majority of the audience was against the presence of this individual on campus. Besides the students who organized this event, very few members of the community who support this organization where present. Nevertheless, his talk managed to stir up some feelings of frustration and anger in all who attended. At first, Simcox began his talk as if he were in favor of protecting undocumented individuals and that they should be enabled to come to the United States but under a secure plan. He also went on to criticize the Bush administration for not being pro-active in addressing imigration issues. When things started to get heated up was during his closing statements where he indicated that there should be one language, one flag and that immigrants should “assimilate to the dominant culture.” For this last part, he used Theodore Roosevelt’s speech which was given in 1907 to base last comments. What got the majority of the audience going was that “one language” part. A heated question and answer period ensued that resulted in Latino students walking out. That ended the talk right there. I got up to walk to the exit where students were filing out and some man called me a “Mexican Nazi.” He had been harassing everyone of Mexican descent who walked by him, except he yelled that at me a bit too loud. I had to start laughing because I have never heard that term nor had I been called something so ridiculous. But, what affected me the most is how angry he was and that he was determined to piss me off. He managed to enfuriate a friend of mine to the point where they were about to go to blows, but a policeman told them to stop arguing. This man started to give me a history lesson on how Mexico had oppressed indigenous peoples throughout the centuries, and I told him that I agreed. That must of made him mad because he went back to arguing with my friend.
Another thing that has been bothering me about this event is that when I went into the salon where it was being held, I decided to sit in back. I had the intention of leaving early. What happened is about nine members of the community sat around me and after awhile it was very clear that they were in favor of the speaker. They started making comments amongst themselves such as ” We move from California to get away from this and look now, we are surrounded by them.” Oh hell, I was on of them. They made other ridiculous comments that are just too stupid to mention. This affected me because it has been several years since I had been exposed to racist comments such as this. I felt so uncomfortable and then so angry because I was sitting in the midst of them and I did not say something. Why? Because, truthfully, I was afraid. These individuals made these comments as if they were talking about the weather. I began to think what it would be like to be the only person of my ethnic background and have to live amongst people who held these opinions of Mexicans. I also think about how lucky I have been. When I moved to Idaho, I had been somewhat nervous about how I would be treated. I have had some problems, but mostly it was because of ignorance rather than open racism. I became very comfortable or maybe too comfortable in my environment. Damn, I feel like I did when I moved here. I am revisiting that old saying “one step forward, two steps back.” OK…there are 1000 people who want to trade places with me right now. Honestly, I know that there are people who have it worse off than I do and my heart goes out to them.
On Columbus Day
I didn’t realize that today Columbus Day is being celebrated until I read the newspaper. I thought it would be next Monday when people got time off in honor of this sin vergüenza. Although he is considered a hero to some, he is a shameless man because in his letter to Luis Santangel, the treasurer of Spain, he embellishes what he sees so he can get more money for more expeditions. In this same letter he describes how the Indians that “he found” on the island could be enslaved. Instead of Columbus Day, some Latinos celebrate “Día de la Raza” which makes waaaay more sense. Dia de la Raza in Spanish means The Day of the People.
Thinking about Columbus day, has taken me back to forty-four years ago when I was first grade. We used to celebrate Columbus Day. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” lalalalala. My grade school teachers would go on and on about how CC sailed across the Atlantic and he discovered America. Also, he met some very nice indigenous peoples. Back then, way way before the era of political correctness, the word indian was used instead of indigenous. We kids would get so happy that we were assigned to draw ugly little pictures of the three ships, la Nina, la Pinta, la Santa María. With a crayon in my fist, I would scrawl the three galeons plus a little figure who was supposed to be Columbus; He would be on the first boat because he was the very brave man who decided to take this trip. Being a first grader who loved school, it was exciting for me to learn who actually discovered America. It almost made me crazy to find out that in November we would get to learn about the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock and how they had a big big banquet with the Indians. The Pilgrims were responsible for Thanksgiving Day! I had not clue what Thanksgiving Day was about since I came from a Mexican family that didn’t celebrate this holiday. My older brother must have kept this information to himself and didn’t share it with my parents or me. Go figure, maybe he didn’t like turkey and all the trimmings. Anyway, I was incredibly happy because I would get learn more about the people who “were here first.” In my six year old way of looking at things, people who were first at something had to be some kind of badasses. That is how the Columbus and the Pilgrims were to me. There was no words spoken about Columbus almost being thrown overboard because his crew was fed up with him nor how the Pilgrims starving to death, just that they just had a very tough winter and the friendly Indians helped them.
Our teachers left out some very important information or maybe they just had no clue, or they were just teaching us the bit that they knew about CC’s landing by mistake on some little islands west of the United States.
I believed this version of history and felt kind of awkward at how I could not make a connection with this. I thought, ”I am a US citizen, but I don’t fit into this history. When I learned about how the Spaniards got to Arizona and the rest of the Southwest, this started to make a bit more sense. I go home and ask my parents if we were Spanish or Indians and my mom and dad look at each other, then turn to me and say “NO!” in unison. But you are an Indan because you were born in Arizona. Then, they would laugh as if it were some private joke between themselves. This just made me believe that I was not part of the family, but I didn’t care because I just loved to see Native Americans on television with head-dresses, wearing clothes made from buckskin, and riding on pinto horses. Little did I know then about misrepresentation of underrepresented groups in Hollywood. But, I had finally made a connection with US history. This lasted for a year, until a girlfriend who is Quechan informed me that I was not an Indian, but a Mexican. I kept believing , to myself, that I was Native American and would read all the childrens’ books about Native Americans that I could. Little Blue Cornflower which was a story about a little Pueblo girl was my favorite.
Flash forward to 1992. After my divorce, I had gone back to college and enrolled in several courses in Mexican American history. I was appalled at the one-sided version of history that had been taught to students. I remember being so angry at learning the true history of the colonization of indigenous America. The words colonial, colonies, colonizers, took a whole new violent meaning. I was so pissed off, but my anger wasn’t really directed at anyone because the men and women responsible for the upheaval of the Americas died a long time ago. I felt like I was in first grade again, but this time, I had another version of history with which to deal.
On October 12, 1992 marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus bumping into indigenous America. This would initiate the violent envangelization of the people who were first here and the beginning of the hostile takeover of lands that actually belonged to someone else. That day, students held a protest at the university I attended. I joined them and it was exciting to hear speeches and chants. I felt that in a figurative way my anger was justified and the missing piece of my identity was found. This symbolized a circle for me from being a little kid excited because Columbus landed in America to a very angry Chicana protesting CC’s arrival to a world as old as what supposedly was uncivilized according to the European perspective.
I choose to celebrate this day as Dia de la Raza. It is appropriate in the sense that symbolically this day commemorates the beginning of the blending of Indigenous and European blood and thus, initiating a new race of people. As a result, several cultures, ethnic groups, registers of Spanish, and rich traditions emerge from this blend and this is very worthy of a celebration. Columbus Day? For us whose ethnicity originates from the union of Native American and Spanish blood, let’s not celebrate this day but remember to celebrate our day, “El Día de la Raza.”
