California: ¿a colonial-settler entity?

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The extremely rapid demographic shift underway in the United States as
millions of Latin Americans are driven from their homes by neo-liberal
globalization I think should lead Marxists to re-examine the questions
that stem from the colonial annexation of northern Mexico.

In following the California elections, it has been really striking to me
how much of an undertone there is of colonial-settler racism in the
elections. 

There is a need to do a thorough study of the concentration of Mexican
and Central American populations in the Southwest, and think about what
the history of the region might mean for its future, especially under
certain political circumstances.

Southern Texas has long been, perhaps always been, overwhelmingly
Mexican; in California, the Anglo "majority" is now a "minority." For
the moment it is the largest one, and politically dominant (More than
3/4th of the votes cast on Tuesday will come from Anglos; perhaps one of
six will come from Hispanics, even though almost certainly Latinos are
40%+ of the population, if all the undocumented were counted).

In the past few years, starting under those racist crackers Clinton and
Gore, there has been an attempt to redefine the status of "illegals" in
the country: the driver's license issue is the most visible expression
of this, another was the Supreme Court decision in the last couple of
years that it was against "public policy" to let undocumented immigrants
sue for the wages that are due them. 

This was the Plessy v. Ferguson of the undocumented immigrants, an
undocumented immigrant has no rights a white man is bound to respect --
at least if the white man is bourgeois. 

The racist terror of vigilante bands along the border, the apartheid
wall between the two countries, the efforts to deprive immigrants of
education and health care, it is all of one piece.

This is a drive to re-enforce and re-codify the status of "illegals" as
an inferior caste, to contain the potential political power of the ten
million or more workers who are in this country without as much as a by
your leave to the Anglo government and are the most absolutely dangerous
kinds of workers: those who literally have nothing to lose but their
chains, whose tables receive no crumbs from the imperialist feat, but
rather have some of the few crumbs they have to eat stolen from them.
They are the Palestinians of this new Zion.

And, when you think about it, that is really what they are: These are
overwhelmingly the sons and daughters of the native peoples of the
Americas, driven out of their homes by colonial-settler economic and
physical violence.

I was thinking about this when I went to see last night the documentary
about the attempted media coup against Chávez. Look at his face: he is
not "white," not just by American standards, but by anybody's standards.
And most of all: he is not white politically.

And I was thinking of this looking at the polls on the drivers license
issue in California. Hispanics who are registered voters are
overwhelmingly FOR; Anglos are AGAINST. 

In Brazil, in Venezuela, in Ecuador, in Bolivia, in México the peoples
of Latin America are rising up against half a millennium of colonialism
and abuse. As this movement gathers force, it is bound to have a
tremendous political impact *in the United States* and among Latinos
here.

The Anglo Americans think of themselves almost as a people without a
history. There is no past, only a future. But their ignorance of the
history doesn't mean that it doesn't exist and that is doesn't shape the
present and what's to come.

José


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