¡Ask a Mexican! - stretched vowels

Resourceful Mexicans already stretch out everything in their lives--under-the-table salaries, privacy in houses shared with seventeen other people, fake Social Security cards passed around dozens of friends--so why not vowels and consonants? (30)

¡Ask a Mexican! - language conundrum

Dear Gabacho: Thus is the linguistic conundrum of the Mexican in the United States: Speak Spanish, get accused of separatism. Speak English, get laughed at for thick accents and limited vocabularies. Many Mexicans speak English to Mexican workers out of gratitude--the fast-food counter is the only place Mexicans can feel like Americans by speaking the shared language of haggling with Mexican workers over the cost of fries. (24-25)

¡Ask a Mexican! - assimilation

The first generation of immigrants commit themselves to a lifetime of labor, not assimilation--that the job of the children. Sure, it's dangerous to entrust children with life-and-death responsibilities, and hilarity can ensure when you have an eight-year-old trying to describe a father's diabetes to a doctor, but what better way to teach Mexican kiddies that life in America is brutal but rewarding if you have immigrant parents? (23)

¡Ask a Mexican! - racism

¡Ask a Mexican! by Gustavo Arellano

Dear Gabacho: The U.S. government shares your concerns, Took For Years. Its Dillingham Commission released a forty-two-volume study on the waves of immigrants that concluded, "The new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old...Generally speaking they are actuated in coming by different ideals, for the old immigration came to be a part of the country, while the new, in a large measure, comes with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country." The Dillingham report went on to fault the new immigration for their lack of assimilation and English skills, constantly contrasting them with earlier generations of immigrants and urged clampdowns on immigration. Sounds familiar, no? That's because the Dillingham report appeared in 1911, and the inassimilable masses at the time were Eastern and Southern Europeans. The Dillingham Commission proves that the time-honored conservative anecdote that earlier generations of immigrants walked off the boats, chopped down the multisyllabic surnames, and learned English immediately is bull-pinche-shit. American racism is a corousel--and here we go round again.
-21-22

politics

Politics is a whore.

-Jalal Talabani

burning baghdad

A word of advice: never take water for granted. Every time you wash your hands in cold, clean water--say a prayer of thanks to whatever deity you revere. Every time you drink fresh, odorless water--say the same prayer. Never throw out the clean water remaining in your glass--water a plant, give it to the cat, throw it out into the garden...whatever. Never take it for granted.
-September 6, 2003 (50)


I must be sounding ungrateful, what with the $33 billion dollars being agreed upon, but hte idea of being financially indebted to America, the IMF and the World Bank somehow has the appeal of selling one's soul to the devil.
-October 25, 2003 (114).


These last few days have brought back memories of the same dates, last year. What were we doing in early March? We were preparing for the war...digging wells, taping up windows, stocking up on candles, matches, kerosene, rice, flour, bandages, and medicine...and what are we doing now? Using them.
-March 12, 2004 (224)


That was the beginning of the "liberation"...a liberation from sovereignty, a certain sort of peae, a certain measure of dignity. We've been liberated from our jobs, and our streets and the sanctity of our homes...some of us have even been liberated from the members of our family and friends.
-March 20, 2004 (227)


I had been looking forward to the shopping trip for at least 4 days which is how long it takes to get the routine familial permission these days. First, I have to make a declaration of intent; I have to tell the parents that I intend to go out and purchase something. Then, I have to specify the area where I intend to make the purchase, after which coes locating a free male relative with some extra time on his hands to join me in the adventure. The final step is setting the date and time and getting the final household authorization

For those of you wondering, YES, it annoys me beyond anything that, at my age, I have to get parental permission to leave the house.
-March 27, 2004 (229)




We have a saying in Arabic, "En kint tedri, fe tilk musseeba...in kint la tedri, fa il musseebatu a'adham" which means, "If you knew, then that was a catastrophe...and if you didn't know, then the catastrophe is greater."
-May 22, 2004 (267)

Vietnamese complaints against French

Currently doing my History reading. Good stuff mentioned by Howard Zinn.
Here are the Vietnamese complaints against the French:

"They have enforced inhuman laws.... They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots, they have drowned uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion.... They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials....
They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty...
...from the end of last year, to the beginning of this year...more than two million of our fellow-citizens died of starvation....
The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country."