Ruben Salazar Remembered

On April 22, 2008, the U.S. Postal System unveiled a new addition to those remembered in a U.S. postage stamp.



Ruben Salazar, also known as "La Voz de la Raza," was a groundbreaking Chicano journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He was killed at the age of 42 during a Chicano anti-war protest by an East Los Angeles sheriff's deputy.

Salazar is remembered by nuestra gente for devoting all of his work to demand equal rights for Mexicanos and Chicanos alike.

For more information about the stamp, click here.

For more about Ruben Salazar, click here.



Photos Courtesy of the U.S. Postal System and the "Remembering Ruben Salazar" photo gallery featured by the Los Angeles Times

Bracero Project & Bracero Memorias

Between 1942 and 1964, more than two million Mexicanos were allowed entry into the United States to fill the shortage of labor created by World War II. Mexican men were employed to work in farms, railroads and ranches across California, Texas, Idaho, Illinois and Oregon. This particular program, called the “Bracero Program,” changed the life of many Mexicano men, as well as the economies of two neighboring nations.

At the University of Texas at El Paso, the Institute of Oral History created and presented an exhibit this past semester that featured both photographs and excerpts from compelling testimonies from braceros as to their experiences of working in the United States.



I was fortunate to the attend the exhibit and was floored at the powerful experiences that these brave men endured in order to survive, in order to feed their familias, and to continue their spirit of being hard workers with dignity. The exhibit featured the actual words of some of the testimonies while several portraits were displayed in-between the quotes. The testimonies told the amount of strength it took to endure the injury of prejudice, discrimination, and racism. The testimonies also told the excitement of having the opportunity to work in the U.S. while others described the experience of being in a different place/space and within inhumane working conditions. The exhibit was beyond powerful; the exhibit was arresting.

While at the exhibit, I kept remembering the significance of the working class in all our histories. Chicano/a history is all about the working class. We can never forget this as a fact.

I only hope that more obreras and obreros who have contributed to U.S. capitalism are willing to tell their (his)storias so we can continue adding to our nuestro pasado/our pasts.

Remembering Sin Fronteras/Without Borders

Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua are two rhetors whose rhetorical works will receive much attention in my dissertation on memory.

To date, Andrea Lunsford has provided scholars within our field an illuminating interview with Anzaldua wheareas Patricia Bizzell has written articles about the works of Frederick Douglass, as well as writing an introduction to the rhetorical works by Douglass and Anzaldua in The Rhetorical Tradition with Bruce Herzberg.

In talking about and remembering Gloria Anzaldua, I'm always searching for the ways in which scholars, activists, and writers remember her presence in their lives and the impression her work made on up and coming scholars in various fields/disciplines.

Shortly after the death of Anzaldua, Chicana historian Yolanda Chavez Leyva wrote a memorial tribute to Anzaldua as a way to remember someone who inspired Chavez Leyva to become an activist. Here, "activist" refers to the commitment to giving back to one's community instead of only thinking of the self in isolation.

There can be no doubt that this article further reinforced the argument that Anzaldua remains a critical figure in the Mexicana/Chicana rhetorical tradition, which has been eloquently advocated by rhetoric scholar Jessica Enoch in her article "Para La Mujer: Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century".

In remembering Anzaldua, Chavez Leyva writes:

"She loved words. She loved learning. She loved teaching. She became an avid reader as a child and a prolific writer as an adult. She worked with migrant farm worker children in the 1960s and university students from then on." (21)

There can be no doubt that Anzaldua gave back and, to date, continues to exemplify the term "activist" for the rest of us engaged in writing/escritura.

The aspects of Anzaldua's writing that I wish to explore at this point is how she used new age concepts and brought them to the act of writing. I am also interested in learning how she fused the spiritual with the act of using words in writing. I'm also drawn to the way that Anzaldua blended the spiritual and the political. All of these interests are driving my research and is the basis of a new collection of essays I am collecting on the impression that her work has had on my thinking as a citizen of El Mundo Zurdo.

(article above courtesy of "The Progressive")

Memorias de los Braceros/Bracero Memories

On Saturday, I hope to visit "Memorias de los Braceros/Bracero Memories," an exhibit that is currently being sponsored by The Centennial Museum and The Institute of Oral History at UTEP. I want to investigate as to whether this exhibit might be made into a book. The photo caption in the above flyer features a a group of proud and brave braceros from Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico to El Paso, Texas. This exhibit is so important for our communidad given that much of the history of Mexican and Mexican American laborers in the U.S. is not given enough attention it deserves.

The exhibit runs between January 24 and April 12, 2008.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. -- 4:30 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday

R.I.P. -- Raul Salinas (1935-2008)

After devoting all of his life to writing and fighting for human rights, activist and "Pinto Poet" Raul Salinas entered the spiritual world at age 73. In addition to writing "East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo" and "Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excusions," he fought with all his corazon and mind in the American Indian Movement and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Moreover, he founded La Resistencia Bookstore.

Please read literary historian Louis Mendoza's article about Salinas titled "The Re-education of a Xicanindio: Raul Salinas and the Poetics of Pinto Transformation," which appeared in MELUS in 2003.

You can read more about Salinas' significant works in the following articles:

"Teacher, poet activist Raul Salinas Dies" by Michael Lithgow in Art Threat

"Poetry as Activism" by Phil West in The Austin Chronicle

"Out of the Ashes, the Pínto Poet Arises" by Raymond R. Beltran

Xicana Escritora Talks to KVIA-Channel 7

"Home is where your books are." Ana Castillo, 2007

KVIA-Channel 7--a channel I rarely watch (heck, I rarely watch TV)--has impressed by featuring an interview with escritora extraordinaire Ana Castillo, who just released a nueva novela titled "The Guardians."

Check out the interview and Ana's website.