{"id":357421,"date":"2018-04-19T04:32:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T03:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/i-am-not-your-wetback\/"},"modified":"2018-04-19T04:32:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T03:32:05","slug":"i-am-not-your-wetback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/i-am-not-your-wetback\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Not Your \u201cWetback\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_101412\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-101412\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-17-at-6.02.31-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"354\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Jonathan McIntosh | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cAnti-Mexicanism is a form of nativism practiced by colonialists and their inheritors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Dr. Juan G\u00f3mez-Qui\u00f1ones (2017)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To borrow\u2014more like steal\u2014from the great James Baldwin\u2019s writings and speeches, I declare to America\u2019s racists that I am not your \u201cwetback.\u201d I am a man. I am a proud son of Mexican immigrants\u2014the salt of the earth. I say these words from a place of privilege, having earned advanced degrees from world-class universities. This includes a Ph.D. (city &amp; regional planning) from UC Berkeley. This also includes an M.A. (urban planning) and a B.A. (history)\u2014both from UCLA. I also say these words based on my personal\/familial background plagued by abject poverty, violence and sense of hopelessness. This includes spending the first years of my life in Mexican slum (Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, Baja California) and formative years in violent American barrio (Ramona Gardens public housing project or Big Hazard projects, East Los Angeles).<\/p>\n<p>When I say that I am not your \u201cwetback,\u201d it doesn\u2019t just apply to myself. It also applies to the millions of resilient people of Mexican origin in this nation, where this racialized group\u2019s deep ties to this land precede the Yankee invaders with their bloody annexation of Mexico\u2019s territory\u2014half of it taken by 1848. That\u2019s 170 years of state violence, psychological pain, humiliation and exploitation experienced by Mexican Americans (or Chicanas\/os) and&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/04\/18\/i-am-not-your-wetback\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Jonathan McIntosh | CC BY 2.0 \u201cAnti-Mexicanism is a form of nativism practiced by colonialists and their inheritors.\u201d \u2014Dr. Juan G\u00f3mez-Qui\u00f1ones (2017) To borrow\u2014more like steal\u2014from the great James Baldwin\u2019s writings and speeches, I declare to America\u2019s racists that I am not your \u201cwetback.\u201d I am a man. I am a proud son [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-357421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}