“Every 40 or 50 years, Democracy has to reboot. This time the duty has fallen on the broad backs and broader imaginations of Mexican Americans. But we were born for this. Everything we once used to survive will now help us thrive in a multicultural, multimedia era. That’s why the Republican Party is scared. So what do they do? They run to retro-racism. There is one Republican’s campaign ad that says: ‘Stop the Invasion. Secure the border.’ Why would they hate on Canadians like that? That brings the US back to the 1940s, a time when migrant workers in the Bracero program were doused with kerosene to ‘kill the diseases’ rumor said they brought. Oh, by the way, the same Republican campaign accuses immigrants of bringing diseases like TB into the country. Oh, by the way, turns out that same Republican candidate used to hire undocumented labor when he owned a sports bar back in the ‘80s. As Alanis Morissette would say, ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ There is a legacy of responses to this. So when Arizona banned Mexican-American history, we organized the Librotraficante Caravan to smuggle the banned books back to Tucson. We opened underground libraries along the way. Sound familiar? Only art can save us.” — Tony Diaz
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:28:50 +0000
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