Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Under [the Emperor] Claudius we hear of the Lycian who had himself received Roman citizenship but who could not understand Latin, or at least could not understand the Emperor's Latin when cross-examined by him in the Senate in A.D. 43; he was one of a Lycian delegation. 'Nobody has a right to Roman citizenship who can not speak Latin,' Claudius pronounced, and canceled the man's citizenship forthwith."

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Friday, September 19, 2003

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Hold on to your chad: The ACLU appears to have won the Ninth Circuit lottery in its bid to have the federal appellate court postpone the scheduled October 7 California recall election. The 3-judge panel on the case--Harry Pregerson, Richard Paez, and Sidney Thomas--seems both a) liberal and b) willing to make trouble . Here's an excerpt from a highly informative piece by Jason Hoppin in The Recorder:

Pregerson is the ex-Marine who recently declared that he could not, "in good conscience," go along with the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence on California's Three Strikes law.

He'll be joined by judges Sidney Thomas and Richard Paez, both appointees of President Clinton. Paez's nomination languished for years after conservatives tagged him as too liberal. Thomas, a soft-spoken Montanan, proved he is just as fearless as Pregerson this week when he reversed the death sentences of more than 100 prisoners throughout the West.

Friday, September 12, 2003

Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we're young
'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Thursday, September 11, 2003

I've been arguing that the popular translation of the phrase, "Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada." which is part of one of the founding documents of MEChA, is incorrect and misleading. The popular English version is, "For the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing". My translation is more along the lines of "Through The Race, everything. Outside The Race, nothing."

The difference should be clear. The popular translation implies that the slogan declares "everything for us, nothing for them", while my version is a unity slogan as in "United We Stand..."

I have contacted several native Spanish speakers who all agree that my translation is the most likely intended meaning, even though some pointed out that the popular translation could be considered correct as a literal translation. Context, a few pointed out, is everything. The one point of agreement, however, was that even in the narrow context of the phrase itself, Por cannot mean For. If the phase were intended to mean For The Race, it would have used the word Para.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

I was once on the witness stand here in Los Angeles, in a case against a young man from across our southern border who had committed some outrage or other against the commonweal. To his credit, he confessed his crime to me (after being duly advised of his Miranda Rights, of course), and I was testifying to this effect when I was challenged by the defense attorney. He questioned me on voir dire as to my ability to speak Spanish. I testified that I had taken Spanish in both high school and college, and that I had spoken it daily for years, both as a police officer and in my former job. "Well," he said, "have you ever lived anywhere where Spanish is the primary language?"

"Yes," I said, "for a long time."

"And where was that?"

"Los Angeles," I said.

Down the Pasadena Freeway at Alhambra Park, where Latino families picnicked with carne asada and mariachi music, Xavier Flores, a loan executive in Los Angeles, said he supported the driver's license law and resented those who blamed Latinos for the state's problems with illegal immigration.

"Anytime a knucklehead says, 'Send 'em back to Mexico,' I say: 'This is Mexico!' " said Flores, a sixth-generation American of Mexican descent. His ancestors arrived in the Southwest before the United States conquered what was then Mexican territory, he said, asking, "Why doesn't anyone ever say, 'Send 'em back to Canada?' It's racist."

But both Flores and his neighbor, Gabriel Gomez, said they also supported curbs on illegal immigration. Gomez, a Los Angeles plumber and third-generation Mexican American, said his business has suffered from the cut-rate competition of illegal immigrants.

"When you get illegals doing the job at half the price, you can't compete," Gomez said, adding that if their numbers were reduced, "it would give opportunities for those of us who really deserve them."

Monday, September 08, 2003

["Por la Raza, todo. Fuera de la Raza, nada."]

"By the Race, everything. Outside the Race, nothing."

Correcting myself, then:

"Por" = "by" or "through" then and not "For" as Kaus et al (including me) have been mistating.

"Por la Raza"

"Raza" is a colloquialism (from Mexico, primarily, as first coined in the phrase "la raza cosmica" by political philosopher Jose Vasconcellos), you cannot count on a "neutral" Spanish to English translator to tell you what it means. Literally, sure, "Raza" = Race, but once you understand the history of latin america and Mexico in particular you'll understand that there is no pure blood anything (not Spaniard, Celt, or Arab) in Mexico anymore (except for large pockets of indigenous peoples), thus the concept of race is already one that is diluted by thousands of years of "mestizaje" - or a mixture. Vasconcellos co-opted the term raza, by calling the "new people" of the "new world" the "Cosmic Race" to reflect the mixture of European and indigenous bloodlines. To be truly Mexican, in fact is to be anti-racist. Vasconcellos was a bit of a racist, but only against pure-blooded indigenous peoples - he thought that they needed to be "redeemed" through mixing with European bloodlines. I could track down a citation for all of this - but that would entail me going back through my college notebooks and I can't do that from work.


So,

Through the people of the new world, everything. Outside of the people of the new world, nothing.

If you're familiar with the way people write in spanish, they love to turn clever figurative phrases - read a fricking Garcia Marquez novel in Spanish, or if you're not too intimidated, Don Quijote, please -- then you'll see.

So, "By or through this mixed up mongrel of a race, everything. Outside, or without, them, I have/am/can do, nothing."

This is the MEANING notwithstanding the translation you get from translator services. This is what I understood when I first read the Plan de Aztlan in 1990 when I became involved with MEChA at Yale. And though I grew to set aside the anti-gringo sentiment as outdated and unconstructive (even in the face of the racism I faced as a son of Mexican immigrants back home in California in 1994), it woke me up to the world as a place where I can "fight the power" as it were and could only rely on those who struggled for social justice, "through" and "by" those who would benefit through such a struggle; and I would find no help or understanding of the cause outside of them.

Of, for, and by - the people. don't you see?

"He can't even speak English well. How can he govern the state of California?" Sukhee Kang, who emigrated from South Korea in 1977, asked the crowd before Davis arrived, the Bee reported.

Friday, September 05, 2003

The buzz among the press corps before the debate is that John Kerry is finally going to go toe to toe with Dean, in an attempt to close the double-digit lead that the former Vermont governor has opened over Kerry in New Hampshire. But it's wallflower Joe Lieberman who pummels Dean instead. Rocky showed up to fight Apollo Creed, but somehow he ended up in the ring with Paulie. ...

The best thing Dean does during the debate is refuse to pander to the Albuquerque audience by spewing tortured Spanish, as Lieberman, Edwards, and especially Kucinich do.

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Tuesday, September 02, 2003