The other Mexico that we have created here is what always has been national territory. It is the [collective] effort of all of our brothers and Latin Americans who have known how to move forward. ! —The Tigers of the North*

Aztecs from the North

*Los Tigres del Norte (English: The Tigers of the North) is a norteño-band ensemble based out of San Jose, California, with origins in Rosa Morada, a sindicatura in Mocorito, Sinaloa, Mexico. They are still active recording and performing artists today. !!Norteño, also musìca norteña, is a genre of Mexican music. The accordion and the bajo sexto are norteño's most characteristic instruments. The genre is popular in both Mexico and the United States, especially among the Mexican and Mexican-American community, and it has become popular in many Latin American countries as far as Chile and Colombia. Though originating from rural areas, norteño is popular in urban as well as rural areas.

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I watch the sea bombard the fence in Border Field State Park with its bursts of water

I hear the cry of the sea, the breath of the air

dividing a people, a culture or, dividing a town, a culture

It is breaking me, it is breaking me (splitting) (splitting) (ripping) (ripping) (cutting) (cutting)

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I am a stretched bridge from the Yankee world to that of the wetback, the past stretches me backwards and the present stretches me forward. May the Virgin Mary care for me Ay ay ay, I am a Mexican from this side.

The U.S.-Mexican border is an open wound where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.

**los atravesados: the ones who are caught in the in-between, [the border-dwellers]

Yemanja (Yemayá) is an orisha, originally of the Yoruba religion, who has become prominent in many Afro-American religions. Yoruba people, from what is now called Yorubaland, brought Yemaya/Yemoja and a host of other deities/energy forces in nature with them when they were brought to the shores of the Americas as captives. She is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a fierce protector of children.!!The Yorùbá religion comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practices of the Yorùbá people. Its homeland is in Southwestern Nigeria and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, a region that has come to be known as Yorùbáland. !!An Orisha (also spelled Orisa or Orixa) is a spirit or deity that reflects one of the manifestations of God in the Yoruba spiritual or religious system.

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“**la migra”: slang—Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Often used to denote an Immigration raid.

My aunt saying, “No corran, don’t run. They’ll think you’re from the other side. In the confusion, Pedro ran, terrified of being caught. He couldn’t speak English, couldn’t tell them he was fifth generation American. Without papers—he did not carry his birth certificate to work in the fields . La migra took him away while we watched. They took him. He tried to smile when he looked back at us to raise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his head down, I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his shoulders. they deported him to Guadalajara by plane. The furthest he’d ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small border town opposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from McAllen. Pedro walked all the way to the Valley. They took him—and he was without a penny. He arrived on foot from Guadalajara.

**Tihueque: Nahúatl word—“let us go” **Vámonos”:Spanish—“let us go” “Un pájaro cantó”: Spanish—A bird sang.

Nahuatl, known informally as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom

live in Central Mexico. All Nahuan languages are indigenous to

Mesoamerica.!

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With their eight tribes they emerged from the “cave of origin.” the aztecs followed [their] god Huitzilopochtlí.

In 1521 a new race was born, el meztizo, the mexicano

**conquistador: conqueror—Spanish Explorer

**mestizaje: mixed race

And so the blood runs the indian does not know what to do they are going to take [his/her/their] land, and [they/he/she] must defend it, the indian falls, dead, and the outsider stands. rise, Manquilef. !Arauco has a sorrow blacker than his trousers it’s not the Spaniards that make him cry, today it is the chileans those that take his bread. Rise, Pailahuan. !—Violeta Parra, “Arauco has a sorrow”

Half of the land was already sold to the traitor Santa Anna, with which he made the American nation very rich. !What cannot be settled by the gold in the mines? You, so elegant and here, we are in ruins. ! —from the Mexican corrido, “The Danger of the Intervention”

Arauco is a city and commune (Spanish: comuna) in Chile, located in Arauco Province in the Biobio Region. The meaning of Arauco means Chalky Water in Mapudungun. The region was a Moluche aillarehue. (a confederation of rehues— familiar clans—that dominated a region or province).The Spanish settlements founded here during the Conquest of Chile were destroyed on numerous occasions by the Mapuche during the Arauco War.!!The Mapuche language, Mapudungun (from mapu 'earth, land' and dungun 'speak, speech') is a language isolate spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people (from mapu 'earth' and che 'people'). It is also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu, and was formerly known as Araucanian. The latter was the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards. Today the Mapuche avoid this name as a remnant of Spanish colonialism, and it is considered offensive.!!Moluche or Nguluche is a dialect of the Mapuche language Mapudungun that is also the ethnic description of the Mapuche peoples speaking that language.

Son of lonko Trekamañ Manquilef and Chilean captive Trinidad González , Manuel Manquilef was born in Maquehua Manquilef (a soldering province) in 1887. At age 15 he was sent to a primary school, then entered the Lyceum of Temuco. Between 1902 and 1906 he studied at the Ecole Normale de Chillán , where he worked as a teacher and collaborative writer. Los Comentarios del Pueblo Araucano (The Comments Araucanian people), published in 1911 and 1914 in two parts, are bilingual texts which Manquilef makes a detailed description of the daily activities in a Mapuche region, including social, economic and sporting aspects.!

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**”los norteamericanos: the North-Americans

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “Drought hit South Texas,” my mother tells me. “The land became very dry and the animals started dying of thirst. My father died of a heart attack, leaving mamá pregnant and with eight children, with eight kids and one on the way. I was the oldest, I was ten. The next year the drought continued and the herd got hoof and mouth [disease]. They fell in droves in the pastures and the brushland, white bellies ballooning to the skies. The following year still no rain. My poor widowed mother lost two-thirds of her herd. A smart Yankee lawyer took the land, mamá had not paid taxes. She didn’t speak English, she didn’t know how to ask for time to raise the money. My father’s mother, Mama Locha, also lost her land. For a while we got $12.50 a year for the “mineral rights” of six acres of cemetery, all that was left of the ancestral lands. Mama Locha had asked that we bury her there beside her husband. The cemetery was nearby. But there was a fence around the cemetery, chained and padlocked by the rancho owners of the surrounding land. We couldn’t even get in to visit the graves, much less bury her there. Today, it is still padlocked. The sign reads: “Keep out. Trespassers will be shot.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “Now I finally have a grave to cry over”, says Conchita,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!**“No hay trabajo”: There is no work.

“The crossing.” For many mexicanos from the other side, the choice is to stay in Mexico and starve or move north and live. They say that every Mexican always dreams of the conquest in the arms of four white blondes, the conquest of the powerful Northern country, the United States. In every Chicano and Mexican lives the myth of the treasure—the treasure that is the lost land. North Americans call this return to the homeland the silent invasion. ! “They will arrive at the cave” —The Puma in the song “Amalia”

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**”Qué dicen muchachos a echársela de mojado?” What do they say in order to get across the border?

Today we are witnessing the migration of the Mexican people, the return odyssey to the historical/mythological Aztlán.

The return to the promised land first began with the Indians from the interior of Mexico and the mestizos that came with the conquistadores in the 1500s.

Holding onto the grass, they pull themselves along the banks with a prayer to Virgen de Guadalupe on their lips: Ay precious Brown [or dark, brunette, sun-kissed] virgin, my dear mother, give me your blessing.

Isolated and worried about her family back home, afraid of getting caught and deported, living with as many as fifteen people in one room, the mexicana suffers serious health problems. The worry and anxiety makes her ill, the high blood pressure makes her ill

The female wetback, the undocumented woman, is doubly threatened in this country.

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“I want you to speak English. In order to find good work, you have to speak English well. What is all of your education worth if you still speak English with an ‘accent’, my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.

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Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment. The Anglo, with a face full of innocence, cuts our tongue out.

It shows a lack of respect to talk back to one’s mother or father.

Drowned, we spit out darkness. Fighting with our own shadow the silence buries us.

Even our own people, other Spanish speakers want us to put padlocks on our mouths. They would hold us back with their bag of academic rules.

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Hear its bark: the language of the border (Listen to its howl): [S]He who has a tongue is also mistaken. ! —rough translation of a Mexican saying

But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed naturally. Change, evolution, the enrichment of new words by invention or adoption have created variants of Chicano Spanish, a new language. A language that corresponds to a mode of living. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language.

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From the recently arrived, Mexican immigrants, and braceros [A Mexican laborer allowed to work in the US for a limited, seasonal amount of time], I learned the North American dialect.

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They brought their slang, their dialects, and their regionalisms.

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Unlanguaged. We are those of a deficient Spanish. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestizaje, the subject of your ridicule. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically we are orphans—we speak an orphan tongue.

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Movies, corridos, and food: My Native Tongue

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If you ask my mom, “What are you?”

**”Nosotros”: We

We distinguish between Mexicans from the other side and Mexicans from this side.

If you ask my mom, “What are you?” She will tell you, “I am Mexican [female gendered].” My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer “I am Mexican [female gendered]”, and at other times I will say “I am a Chicana” or, “I am a tejana.” But I identified as “Raza” before I ever identified as “mexicana” or “Chicana".

I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. Sometimes I am nothing and no one. But until I am not that, I am that. OR But until I am nothing, I am something.

In the meantime, we have to fight the good fight. Who is protecting my people’s ranches? Who is trying to close the fissure between la india and the white [man] in our blood? The Chicano, yes, the Chicano that walks like a thief in his own house.

…we count the eons until white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they’ve created, lie bleached. Humble yet proud, quiet yet wild, we the Mexican-Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business.