Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and filmmaker. His book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fist Fight in Heaven,” was on the banned curriculum of the Mexican American Studies Program.

(via chicanainchoos)

“Allá voy NBA”, garabateó Gustavo Ayón en la hoja de un cuaderno un día cualquiera en el que su anhelo de ser estrella del basquetbol acaparaba su atención.

María Aguirre, su madre, aún conserva esa libreta que encontró cuando no alcanzaba a descifrar los sueños de su hijo. Nada sabía ella de la liga de baloncesto más importante del mundo, tan sólo que su muchacho no se miraba al espejo sin un balón en las manos.

Casi nueve años después de aquel decreto, los Hornets de Nueva Orleáns, uno de los 30 equipos que integran la NBA, contrataron a Gustavo Ayón por tres temporadas a cambio de 5 millones de dólares. Se convirtió así en el tercer mexicano que llega a la liga estadunidense, detrás de Horacio Llamas y Eduardo Nájera.

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Media bound by fear and complacency, responsible for the collapse of rights and justice in Arizona

The media is responsible for the collapse of human rights and banning of books in Arizona, along with the racist Arizona legislators, state school head and corrupt politicians. The media has become frozen in fear, too timid to bang on the doors and find out why the Tucson schools banned the award winning books of Chicano and Native American authors this week.

Read More at Censored News

Photo: Campus Progress

A recent article in the New York Times titled ”In New York, Mexicans Lag in Education” was a wake-up call for many in the Mexican community, informed its author Kirk Semple.

“It created a reaction, like, ‘I got to do something now,’ ” said Angelo Cabrera, founder of MASA-MexEd, a Bronx-based non-profit promoting higher education in the Mexican community of New York City.

Mr. Cabrera received calls from Mexican American professionals from across the United States interested in supporting his cause. Lawyers, bankers, students, teachers, and a freelance marketing specialist were among a few of those that have reached out to help, reported the New York Times.

The fact that this article spurred so many into offering support to the organizations already working with Mexican students in the New York City area is great; however, it missed a big point crucial to understanding why so many Mexican students were not graduating High School or attending college.

“Unfortunately, despite an already large and strong Latino infrastructure in NYC (among Puerto Ricans and Dominicans), Mexicans have still found themselves to be outsiders, calling into question the whole idea of Latinidad,” commented a reader on Think Mexican’s Facebook page.

The Mexican community in the New York City area is almost entirely from an Indigenous region of Mexico called “La Mixteca.” For some families, English is a third language. As the Facebook reader pointed out, it’s very likely New York’s public school system is failing to meet the needs of Mexican students by applying an educational model designed for Puerto Rican and Dominican students.

It is precisely this type of misclassification that too often shapes the discussion on the Mexican community in the United States. In New York City, its effects are simply more visible.

Also worthy of mention is the author’s liberal use of the dehumanizing “illegal immigrant,” at times, used almost interchangeably with Mexican. (Read Informate’s blog post on this article and its comments.) The pervasive use of such language in the United States gives many the excuse to espouse racist and bigoted comments, which leads to some Mexican students choosing to leave school and insulate themselves amongst family and friends.

The Mexican community of New York City is a source of pride for many of us. Supporting the organizations serving our youth and helping to turn around our community’s lagging numbers in education should go without question.

Here’s a list of the organizations tutoring and mentoring Mexican students in New York City. For those outside of the area, please consider making a charitable donation before the end of the year. 

Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders

Arts & culture organization offering classes in Ballet Folklorico and Nahuatl

http://www.manoamano.us/en/index.html

Asociación Tepeyac

Offers tutoring for students and English classes for parents

http://www.tepeyac.org

New York State Youth Leadership Council (NYSYLC)

Mentoring program for undocumented youth

http://www.nysylc.org

Mixteca

Offers an after-school tutoring program in Brooklyn

http://mixteca.org/mix/

Mexican American Student Alliance (Mex-Ed)

Offers an after-school tutoring program in Manhattan and the Bronx

http://masany.org/new/

Photo: Brian Harkin/NYT

Before he came to Southern California in 2002, Fidel Bernabe played trumpet in a small town in Mexico and believed himself to be very talented.

Los Angeles had many bandas — Mexican brass bands that play dance music at parties and nightclubs — that worked year-round. Surely there must be a band that could use his gifts, he thought.

But once here, he found competition intense. Bernabe rarely found two nights of trumpeting work and had to take a day job in a sewing factory.

“You come to get out of the hole,” he said. “You think you’re going to grab money in piles. You get here and you realize it’s not as easy as you imagined.”

Then, by accident, Bernabe found the tuba. He saw a deal for one in L.A. and bought it for his brother, a tuba player in Chicago. When his brother couldn’t pay, Bernabe kept the instrument and decided to learn it on his own. For more than a year, he practiced for hours after his sewing job.

Tubas were in growing demand. By 2007, he was playing five gigs a week — sometimes two a night. He found all that he’d imagined in America. He quit his job, got married, had three kids and supported them with his tuba.

“The tuba has radically changed my life,” he said.

Bernabe is part of what he and other banda musicians are calling Southern California’s “tuba revolution.” The mania for the instrument arrived from Mexico several years ago and is fueled by the large number of house parties that occur here every weekend. Immigrants who once were too poor to hold such parties in their homeland now view a tuba-equipped banda as a sign of having arrived.

Tuba players say partygoers now throw wadded dollar bills into their instruments — sometimes so many that they clog the pipes.

“We have millions of people in Southern California of Mexican origin,” said Jesse Tucker, a banda tuba player in Pomona. “They all throw parties. They all have quinceaneras; they all get married. And every group can use a tuba.”

Read more at the LA Times

Listen to LA Times reporter Sam Quiñones discuss this article at KPCC

Related: Tamborazo in the USA

Image: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

 

It’s a warm evening at Tia Chucha’s Bookstore in Sylmar, in California’s San Fernando Valley, not far from the neighborhood where Ritchie Valens created a rock ‘n’ roll version of the most famous son jarocho tune “La Bamba.” Tonight, Aaron Castellanos is one of eight students in a music class held at the store. He’s learning to play the eight-string jarana, the main instrument in the musical style of son jarocho.

“I like the way that the jarana sounds,” he says. “I like how son jarocho invokes so much energy into the playing and into the singing.”

Son jarocho comes from Veracruz, a state in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico, where three different cultures — Spanish, indigenous and African — came together more than 500 years ago. Castellanos is actually learning the “mosquito,” one of the smallest jaranas, which has a noticeably high pitch.

“This is the first instrument that I’ve ever learned, so I want to keep playing,” Castellanos says. “I want to buy my own jarana and just continue practicing.”

Castellanos’ teacher is Cesar Castro, a key figure at the center of the Son Jarocho explosion in Los Angeles. Castro says that, since he moved to L.A. from Veracruz eight years ago, the number of son jarocho musicians has been growing, and the quality of the music has been improving.

“When we had the first fandangos here in Los Angeles, the music was not that good. But the energy, the will to do these fandangos, it was very strong,” Castro says. “The music is getting better, still in a very respectful traditional format.”

Read and listen to more at NPR

Members of San Ana California’s Son del Centro perform at this year’s Encuentro de Jaraneros in Corral Nuevo, Veracruz:

Photo: Que Siga El Fandango