| FROM UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE APRIL 9, 2004
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
By Patrisia
Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez
Remembering and
The Battle Over Memory
Remember.
That's what the ad in the April 12 issue
of Time magazine says.
So powerful are these words in the
American psyche that there's no need to
add the name of the 1960 movie: "The
Alamo." (Aside from this DVD
release, there's also a 2004 version of
the movie about the battle that fueled
Texas independence.)
Remembering has a powerful function in
American history. Yet it is very
selective. Memory is critical to things
Americana, just as long as it doesn't go
too far back, nor stray too far from
promoting Anglo-American Protestant
values. (Just ask Harvard's Samuel P.
Huntington, who claims that Mexicans --
Hispanics/Latinos as a whole -- threaten
the national security of the nation
because they refuse to assimilate.)
So what precisely does the ad beckon us
to remember? The death and martyrdom of
Texans and Americans? The dastardly deeds
of Mexicans?
Whatever it is beckoning us to remember,
it's a call to war.
But why now? It can hardly be considered
a coincidence that we find ourselves as a
nation in an undeclared permanent state
of war -- without a seeming cause other
than fear. Thus, once again, we're being
called upon to remember. In this case,
it's kind of a "Back to the
Future" allusion to 9/11. The
president's delusional campaign is
dependent upon us remembering 9/11, even
though the quagmire in Iraq has nothing
to do with 9/11.
Every generation needs its remembering to
rally to war -- even if the cause usually
turns out to be as fictitious as Colin
Powell's arguments before the United
Nations last year. For example, it is
indisputable that the sinking of the
Maine -- which precipitated the
Spanish-American War -- was a fictitious
event. Yet "Remember the Maine"
became the battle cry that rallied
Americans to war in the 19th century
(that's how we got Puerto Rico).
In a similar vein, the Gulf of Tonkin
incident is what got us into the Vietnam
War. Yet it too was as fictitious as
President Bush's WMDs and had about as
much credibility as the Mexican
"attack" on U.S. troops that
triggered the 1846-1848 Mexican-American
War. And Grenada was threatening whom?
Only Pearl Harbor is the exception.
So what is it about the Alamo that we're
being called upon to remember? The John
Wayne/Hollywood version of history?
Certainly we're not being asked to
remember what became part of a larger war
of aggression for the purpose of stealing
Mexico's land. Neither are we being told
that it was mounted to expand the number
of slave-holding states, nor that it
precipitated massive land theft and the
killing of thousands upon thousands of
Mexicans/Indians.
Of course, we're not supposed to remember
that.
Perhaps the only thing we're supposed to
remember is that through the heroic
action of a few patriots, Texas became
independent, and the United States
subsequently obtained half of Mexico's
territory.
Perhaps therein lies the problem with
this selective remembering. In this
script, Mexicans were supposed to go
away. Yet, for more than 150 years, they
haven't gone away. Instead, they keep a'
coming. And with them they bring their
extended family -- millions of Central
and South Americans along with
Caribbeans.
Little wonder there appears to be a
constant need for remembering: to remind
Mexicans that they were defeated and that
they're not welcome here -- unless they
completely and thoroughly assimilate (at
which point they would cease being
Mexicans). That's the point. It conjures
up what Apache/Mexica elder Celia Perez
Booth said in Albuquerque, N.M., over the
weekend: "We were supposed to
forget. That was the plan. But we didn't.
Our presence here attests to that."
The occasion was a Tlahtokan ceremony at
the National Association of
Chicana/Chicano Scholars. In effect, the
ceremony, which brought the Peace &
Dignity staffs from throughout the
continent to the gathering, affirmed what
has been happening throughout the
continent. People are beginning to
remember. And that memory goes back many
thousands of years. (The 2004 Peace &
Dignity Run from Alaska to Chile is
scheduled to commence in several weeks.)
This must rile bigots to no end whose
insistence on assimilation or deportation
(continued anti-immigrant legislation and
offensive anti-immigrant billboards)
actually fuels this more ancient memory.
It reminds the objects of this hatred
that it's not their brown skin and their
"alien" tongue and indigenous
foods that make them
"unassimilable." Instead, it's
that which reminds them of their ancient
connectedness to this very continent.
Perhaps this kind of remembering is not
what the Huntingtons of the world had in
mind -- though it's still not clear what
it is that they fear.
COPYRIGHT
2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
For updated info re the April-June
UCLA Aztlanahuac in Mesoamerica
mapexhibit and other related events, go
to: http://www.chavez.ucla.edu/Aztlanahuac/index.htm or
call the UCLA Cesar Chavez Center
at:310-206-7695 or chavez-info@csrc.ucla.edu
or reply here.
*
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Also, contact our editor, Greg
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or 1-800-255-6734. Column of the Americas
is available at Universal's website every
Friday at: http://www.uexpress.com/columnoftheamericas/
Gonzales & Rodriguez can be reached
at 608-238-3161 or XColumn@aol.com
-- PO BOX 5093, Madison, WI 53705.
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