Letter from the Editor

By Felix Alvarado

Personal contact at felix@felixalvarado.com

November 22, 2014

The drama, suspense and trivia are over.  The mid-term elections are over and the predicted winners won and the predicted losers lost.  Not a great surprise.  Texas continues to be a solid Republican state.  But the Republicans did not just win in Texas, nationwide they achieved “The Impossible Dream” taking control of the US Senate.  Texas Senator John Cornyn is now the number two man in the senate.  To the winners we say “Congratulations” or as we say in Spanish ”En Buena Hora” and to the losers we say “Hasta La Vista”.  The Democratic Party spent millions trying to change Texas from Red to Blue.  In an effort to change the color Texas was declared a “battleground state.”  Troops and money were poured into the state.  Troops and money could not do it.  Another “Dream Team” could not do it.  It is time for the Democratic Party to do some soul searching and figure out why it is politically unattractive to Texans.  What is noteworthy is that we now have a Latina First Lady of Texas. 

The President took bold action in resolving our immigration crisis.  That is good.  Someone had to do something.  The Congress and the President cannot stare at each other and hope that the problem goes away.  What is at stake are innocent people whose only sin has been to escape from poverty, political instability and lack of an economic future in their home country.  The question of a person’s country of origin was settle a long time ago.  You are a citizen of the country you are born in.  What is not settled is what about immediate members of the family that are not born in the United States.  We have millions of immigrants in that situation.  They arrived illegally, had children that were born American and cannot be deported.  The issue then is, is it morally and ethically correct for a family to be divided?  Can the father, mother and other brothers and sisters be separated from younger brothers and sisters because of an accident of birth?   We used to be a compassionate country.  When you hear politicians threaten to invade Mexico, deny education to younger children just because of where they were born, you have to wonder just how compassionate we are as a country and a state.

Of course, we Tejanos and Mexicanos know about deportation.  Even before the takeover of Texas by the Americans attempts were made to force Tejanos to go to Mexico.  Atrocities against Tejanos are well documented.  The difference between slaves and Tejanos was that Whites had no economic incentive to keep Tejanos alive.  They could not be enslaved and killing them enabled the Whites to take over the land they so wantonly desired.  Fast forward to 1930 and we find that hundreds of thousands of Americans were deported to Mexico.  Their sin, being of Mexican descent. Tejanos figured early that it was better to be White than Brown and they did that, through marriage and name change, like Blanco to White.  Fast forward to 1910 and the Mexicanos figured out early that it was better to be White than Brown.  They too did the name change.  We recall when being Mexican was a shameful experience.  We remember the “Say it in English” program, a program that drove children who could not speak English out of school.  I recall the three swats of a paddle for violating the rule.  Yes, there was punishment for violators.  In spite of every effort to drive us out of our homeland we are still here, proud Americans of Mexican Heritage.  Perhaps it was to run away from the shame associated with being a Mexican that some embraced being called Hispanic so readily.

Now that something is being done about immigration we need to go forward into issues that affect our community.  We are not satisfied with the quality of education our children are getting.  We are not satisfied with the dropout rate.  We do not like the School to Prison Pipeline.  These ae the issues that we want politicians to fight.  Stop beating up on innocent people.

We cannot go back and relive the Civil Rights Era so we can create an iconic Mexican-American to carry the banner for us.  All we have is Cesar Chavez.   It is only proper and honorable that we name a street after Cesar Chavez.  It is noteworthy to note, that in Texas maybe we Texjano/Mexicano do not have a proud voting record.  What we do have a proud record of serving our country, going back to both sides of the Civil War, and all wars after that.  We are beyond serving our country militarily we must now serve our country politically.  Our voice counts and it is just as powerful as that of all other ethnic groups in America.

In America it does not matter how many military battles you have won.  The only thing that matters are the battles in the ballot box.  We Latinos need to become involved in the political process because in a democracy power is concentrated in the political process.