Connecting Worlds: Inside Latino America

By Dr. Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.

October 2010

Speech given at Spanish Club celebration gathering at Sul Ross State University

Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.

We thank you for coming to celebrate with us -not only Mexican Independence day- but the independence of the countries of Central America and Chile in South America. These countries celebrate their independence this month, September. September 15 through October 15 has been declared Hispanic Heritage month here in the United States.

Let me tell you that I’ve been lucky; in my life I have seen two bicentennial commemorations: the bicentennial of the Independence of the United States in 1976 and now the bicentennial of the Independence of Mexico this year of 2010.  The United States fought for independence against England; Mexico against Spain. México began its war of Independence in the evening of September 15 of 1810.

There are many reasons for us to celebrate this historic event. For one, Mexico is our next door neighbor and we want to be a concerned neighbor and many of us are proudly descendants or immigrants of Mexico. More important for us here in Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, is that all of these states were part of Mexico when Mexico became an independent republic in 1821. The new government was generous toward the American settlers; they were given permission to continue living and working the land they had been granted previously.

The war of independence of Mexico began when Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, our founding father, rang the bell of the church in Dolores Guanajuato, in central Mexico, for armed insurrection against the Spanish colonial government. Since its beginning it was not just a war of independence: it was a social revolution.  The leadership was made up of criollos -the sons of Spaniards born and raised in Mexico, all whites. Some of them just wanted to take the power from the Spaniards and were scared that Indians, mulattos, and other poor people would change the social order. 

At the end the popular sectors did not win entirely but the war of independence allowed a popular and racial participation which in the past had been excluded. After Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was executed, a mestizo – an individual of mixed race upbringing- José María Morelos y Pavón, took the leadership. And after Morelos was executed Don Vicente Guerrero, a mulatto, took the leadership. Don Vicente Guerrero, a mulatto, who was never accepted by the upper classes, became the second president of Mexico. Let me just give you another example of a change that brought about the Independence of Mexico; in the 1860′s Mexico had a full-blood Indian as president: Don Benito Juarez- something which has not been repeated in Latin America until very recently. Currently Bolivia has the second Indian president ever in Latin America: Evo Morales.

Allow me to finish by saying that the independence of Mexico had -and accomplished- great ideals: one of them is that it abolished slavery. An ideal that has been hard to accomplish -and that it is at the root of all present problems in Mexico- is social justice, for example equality, that is a few extremely wealthy individuals who own everything and most of the people in misery. Also it has been hard for Mexico to become truly independent since – as many third world countries – it has been made dependent by the wealthy industrialized countries.

No matter the tremendous problems that Mexico is currently going through, we have hope that it will change and that it will create a more just society. I say that because there are good people fighting at this very moment for these changes to occur. 

¡Viva México! 

¡Viva la Independencia!

About Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.:  Dr. Zamora was born in México, immigrated to the United States in the late seventies and worked in the agricultural fields of Arizona, California and Oregon.  He received an High School Equivalency Diploma in Oregon.  He was accepted at San Diego State University in San Diego, California where he completed his BA, and MA in Spanish. He remained in San Diego and enrolled at the University of California, San Diego where he completed his Ph.D.  He has worked at community colleges and four year colleges in California, Arizona, and Vermont and now serves as Assistant Professor of Spanish at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. 

Contact Information:

Email:  Filemon@CWRMagOnline.com

Blog:   CWRLatinaAmerica.WordPress.com

Connecting Worlds:  Inside Latin America

By Dr. Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.

September 2010

Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.

 What I am about to tell you happened in the early eighties and had a profound impression on me.  I had gotten a job at the San Diego Public Library in San Diego California through a Summer program for unemployed youth and after the end of the program the city had hired me part-time as library aide. For me it was a big success, imagine working in the library with so many books at the reach of your hand! At that time I had big dreams of being someone and I had no doubt I was on the right track.

That Summer I didn’t want to go back home in the Yuma Valley -about 200 miles of distance in the desert- to work in the agricultural fields with my parents. I had been doing that since I began college in San Diego in every chance I had and I was tired of the three digit temperature in the Summer and the freezing temperature in the winter. Most important of all was that I needed to be exposed to English since I was failing in college and experiencing cultural maladjustment due to language problems (when I asked a professor to allow me in his class he had told me bluntly: ” I don’t take students whose native language is not English”). I felt that the experience of working the fields did not help me at all since the language spoken there was a 100% Spanish.  Also when one of my bosses found out I was in college he was bitter and would ridicule me, for example he would say (in Spanish) “Give me that, you don’t even know how to handle that shovel! Don’t they you that in college?”

In any case, no matter how modest my job was at the library, I felt a winner. There I was practicing English, I was reading a lot and learning about “high culture”, for example in the department of arts and music I was exposed to Beethoven, Mozart and other great composers.

San Diego, California is a city that resembles paradise on earth. When I first arrived to San Diego I approached it from the North. I was traveling in a Greyhound bus and it drove through beautiful beaches where I saw beautiful girls in bikinis. I thought I was going to enjoy living there, instead I had to work hard to survive and came to know not the best but the worst parts of San Diego: the Mexican and the African-American neighborhoods. I realized that for Mexicans and African-Americans enjoying the best of San Diego was far away. When I heard that the city was going to hire an African-American as the city manager I couldn’t believe it; I was happy because I considered African-Americans to be in the same situation as Mexicans.  The man that was about to take the job as city manager symbolized my dream of being someone coming from the bottom going all the way to the top.

Even though San Diego had been part of Mexico until 1848 and had had a Spanish speaking population since it became part of the U.S. through war(actually the true owners are the native Americans who had been living there before any other group)there has never been a Mexican-American mayor or City manager. The only Mexican-American that had served in the city council -Ubaldo Martinez-had been removed from office because he had been using city funds to eat in good restaurants.  (I may have done the same thing since seldom I have enjoyed good restaurants!)

The public library was a microcosm of the power structure of San Diego. There has never been a minority city librarian. There was only one African-American and a Mexican-American librarian in the system and they were working in their respective ethnic communities.

I was glad when we were told the new city manager was going to visit the library and to meet its personnel. I was especially glad the person in charge of giving him the tour was a lady who I suspected had racist tendencies ([she had to put up with a minority above her][I want to clarify that with only a couple of exceptions I never perceived any racism against me working at the library]). I was working in Social Sciences when this lady arrived with the new city manager.  When she introduced him to us I immediately when to him to shake his hand.

He took position of his job and I was glad, but shortly something happened.  In Miami, Florida the African-American community had rioted as a result of police brutality and our new city manager had been asked his opinion on this matter and then the unthinkable. He had said (something to the effect):  “sure I know how it is growing up as a young man in Miami and being exposed to police brutality that’s why now that I am city manager and I am the Police Department’s boss it feels like having an orgasm.”  This was the end of Sylvester Murray as the city manager of San Diego. San Diego is a very conservative city. Sure I understand his resentment, but until now U.S. society does not want to hear past injustices: it spoils the pie they’ve been enjoying.

About Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.: Dr. Zamora was born in México, immigrated to the United States in the late seventies and worked in the agricultural fields of Arizona, California and Oregon.  He received an High School Equivalency Diploma in Oregon.  He was accepted at San Diego State University in San Diego, California where he completed his BA, and MA in Spanish. He remained in San Diego and enrolled at the University of California, San Diego where he completed his Ph.D.  He has worked at community colleges and four year colleges in California, Arizona, and Vermont and now serves as Assistant Professor of Spanish at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.    

Contact Information:

Email:  Filemon@CWRMagOnline.com

Blog:   CWRLatinaAmerica.WordPress.com

Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.

One of the features of Arizona’s controversial law SB 1070 – detaining an individual based on “reasonable” suspiciousness of being an illegal alien – is not something new. That – being detained for looking “Mexican” -has happened to me all my life in the United States since I immigrated in 1973. 

            The first disagreeable experience I had with the Border Patrol was a few months after I immigrated to the United States.  I was working with another Mexican worker (100% of agricultural workers, especially doing low skills jobs in the Southwest are Mexican and the language spoken is Spanish). We were irrigating a cotton field when a vehicle of the Border Patrol approached us. There was only one officer.  He proceeded to ask us about our legal residency status. We showed our documents and for some reason – I never knew why – he suspected my “green card’ -resident alien card – was fake and he put me on the back of his vehicle (a portable jail) and took me all the way to the headquarters of the Border Patrol in Blythe, California – we were in Palo Verde, about 30 miles from there.  I was away for several hours.  Imagine how my father felt when he was told I was taken away by the Border Patrol (I was not eighteen years old yet and we were away from home in México, – incidentally I was working for John Norton Farms; I found out years later when I took a sociology class in college that the owner – John Norton – had been U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; of course he had “illegal aliens” working for him). The most outrageous of these experiences is that the Border Patrol treats you as if you were not a human being. He brought me back without an apology. 

            When I moved to San Diego, California I used to work downtown and every time they saw me walking in the streets I knew for sure they were going to ask me about my legal status. Often they would call me over from their vehicle using their finger to approach them.  Sometimes I would be walking in the street when someone would tap my shoulder and I would turn back with a smile to find out that my greeting would be answered with “Federal agent, what’s your citizenship?” 

            My entire experience living in California, Arizona, Oregon and now in Texas has been to remind me that I am exposed to being questioned for looking “Mexican”; you see the problem is the skin.  One time when I was driving to L.A. I was surprised the problem was not the skin. That day the Border Patrol check point in San Clemente was closed, so my friend and I followed the flow of vehicles, but in a few minutes we were detained by the Border Patrol. It occurred to me to ask the officer why us.  He did not say because we looked Mexican; rather he said “we saw you looked scared”. Maybe he was right.  I’ve been traumatized for so many years by the Border Patrol that now in every check point there’s an expression of terror in my face. 

               Going back to the law SB 1070 of Arizona, supposedly the only thing new about it, is that now not only the Border Patrol can stop you but the police and other state enforcement law agencies if reasonable doubts exist of someone being illegal in the U.S. Actually this has been going on for some time already but now it will be made official.  

Editor’s Note:  On Wednesday, July 28,2010, U. S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked key portions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, including a provision requiring a police officer to determine the immigration status of a person detained or arrested if the officer believed the person was not in the country legally.  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she will file an appeal to reinstate the blocked provisions.