Villaraigosa's victory in
Ponder that notion for a moment. . . . "reclaiming their homeland." It's a powerful and unifying concept, when you think about it, and it will take more than a few government jobs, some set-aside contracts, and more than few mansions and yachts to quell the momentum.
I think back to my undergraduate years at Stanford . . . and think about some of the Mexican-American students, (that's basically, who we're talking about here) and what they were about. They possessed "groundedness" that comes from being "home." Action not talk. More about substance, than image. Sure Casa Zapata had its share of loudmouth “militants” and poseurs, but by and large most of them carried themselves with a sense of mission. I'm not talking about any grand schemes or designs either, just simply taking care of business. That's essentially the underlying sentiment of El Presidente Fox's comments last week, huh?
But I digress. . . .
The progeny of Velasquez recognized that in order for Latino (Mexican) empowerment to occur, they needed to address the conundrum that is immigration. For Blacks in American, the cross to bear is slavery; for Mexicans it’s "the Border" . . . and immigration. (Check out John Sayles' movie "Lone Star" sometime for some thought-provoking entertainment and commentary on the issue.) People have been traveling back and forth across the border for years, since . . . oh, the 1840s. And people really didn't give its much thought because the "wetbacks" never really settled that far 50-100 miles into the
Now fast-forward to the mid-20th Century with the Braceros program, when "Big Agriculture" needed workers to tend their super farms. Since slavery was abolished with about 70 years earlier, this country's historic pool of low-cost labor no longer existed. So they went down to
People really didn't notice until the late 1970s, when huge Mexican enclaves began springing up in places like
While working in the “wonderful world of philanthropy,” the thing that impressed me about the Latino activists that I dealt with was their technical and tactical sophistication. I recall back in 1991 or 1992 while attending a workshop on redistricting sponsored by the Lawyer's Committee on Civil Rights in New Orleans, hanging out in the lobby of the Fairmont hotel waiting in the lobby for my line-brother Will to pick me up, and marveling at the contrasting MO’s of the Latino and black activists? . . . Well put simply, the brothers from the NAACP, Urban League, etc. were simply there for the party. Most of them didn't give me the time of day until they found out I was from a foundation. It was like some of them were simply there on a scouting trip for the Essence Music Festival. No substance whatsoever. Meanwhile, the reps from the Latino groups (MALDEF, SWVREP, etc.) were all about the business -- communicating a vision, articulating a strategy, and working to set a gameplan in motion. Unlike "our people," they had a sense of mission, and their agenda in order, and had their eye on the prize. . . . Villaraigosa becoming mayor is but an intermediate step to that objective.
"La Reconquista" is in full effect, bruh!