Dr. Rudy Acuña autor de muchos libros sobre los latinos en los Estados Unidos revela los ataques contra los estudios étnicos contra el departamento mas grande de Estudios Chicanos en los EUA.
Los Muertos de Hambre
The War on Chicana/o Studies
Unmasking the Illusion of
Inclusion
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña
Muertos de hambre is a derogatory phrase often used by Mexicans to refer to people who
are predators, i.e., human vultures, vendidos. They are so starved for
attention or recognition that they pounce on scraps of garbage discarded by
their colonial masters.
The history of Chicana/o Studies is replete with examples of myths such
as that they are failing because of a lack of enrollment. The truth is that
they fail because they are denied a place on the Monopoly Board (General
Education, electives and the like) that runs the university and rewards
departments.
The CSUN Chicana/o Studies Department has a unique problem, it has been
too successful. It offers 175 plus sections per semester, and campus wide
departments are salivating at the prospect of picking off pieces of the
program. The sad thing is that without the Mexican student population the
university would be half its size.
The university is a plantation that is run by white overseers that are
getting increasingly defensive about their illegitimacy. Take the College of
Social and Behavioral Science. Like most colleges, it has avoided diversifying
its faculty. Although there are approximately 12,000 Latinos on campus, out of
11 tenure track professors, Anthropology has 0 Mexican Americans; Geography
(12-0); History (19-0); Pan African Studies (13-1); Political Science (17-2);
Psychology (29-1); Social Work (16-0); Sociology 23-1); and Urban Studies &
Planning (7-0).
Chicana/o Studies has challenged this inequity. It has confronted that
there are few courses on the Mexican experience. In 1969, San Fernando State
offered one course on Mexico that was taught by Dr. Julian Nava.
The professors, the overseers of the plantation, are nervous because
the City of Los Angeles has changed, and over 50 percent are Latinos, 80
percent of whom are of Mexican extraction.
The white colonists are getting increasingly defensive about their
privilege. Recently one of the departments discussed its hiring priorities. A
Mexican American professor raised the racial disparity between the number of
Mexican American students and its faculty. This evoked angry responses.
Faculty members said they were uncomfortable talking about race; that
the department should not hire “unqualified” applicants; that they do not see
color; that race has no bearing. Studies show that the race and class
backgrounds of the professors determine the questions that students ask and
research outcome.
Mexicans north from Mexico have always been under the illusion that the
Mexican government and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) care
about them and would protect their interests. They naively believed that they
were part of the Mexican family.
This illusion was recently shattered by UNAM’s lack of respect for
Mexican Americans at CSUN. It entered into an agreement to house a research
center there. The project was clandestine.
Over the past year, David Maciel who has abandoned more programs than
any academician I know started to bring in speakers from UNAM. Recently
dismissed from UCLA, it was his way to wangle a part time position.
Maciel and the CSUN administration slapped CHS in the face, and did not
inform it about the center until it was a done deal. The slight was outrageous.
Chicana/o Studies has 90 percent of the Mexicanists and Latin Americanists on
campus. For over 40 years, it has had premier cultural groups, and championed
Mexican immigrants with or without papers.
A meeting was held on November 12th involving UNAM’s criollo
elite administrators and the CSUN faculty. Basically, they told us that we
could join or not join –take it or leave it. They avoided the question as to
why they showed disrespect for Mexicans on campus. Their attitude was one of porque nos da la chingada gana. Clearly
it is a matter of class, they consider the Mexican population of 36 million as
pochos, and prefer catering to gringos. They avoid contact with Mexicans who
are not of their social class.
As for the white faculty present, it was pathetic. Not one has been
involved with Mexican immigrants. One said that he was interested in Mexico
because his wife had taken a class at UNAM. A Central American professor whose
specialty is literature (a post-modernist) said she was a Mexicanist because
Central Americans passed through Mexico en route to the U.S.
It is evident that these muertos
de hambre saw only the color green. Frantz Fanon makes it clear that
colonization is possible only with the complicity of members of the colonized.
In this case, it was two Central American Studies professors -- Douglas
Carranza and Beatriz Cortez who are angry because I mentioned the role students
and professors in the founding of CAS.
However, the colonizers and their collaborators have an obsession to
rewrite history and mask their privilege. For the record, the CAS founders
included Alberto García, a half dozen Central American women students, and
Roberto Lovato who along with CAUSA and Dr. Carlos Cordova of San Francisco
State developed the curriculum.
Additionally, Lovato and the students pressed the California
legislature for funding to establish a Central American Studies Center. Cortez
and Carranza came in well after the fact. Again part of being collaborators is
the rewriting of history, and to create a counter narrative to establish
legitimacy.
Los muertos de hambre are delusional, and somehow they have come to believe that CHS is
taking courses from them. They also want to divert attention away from the fact
that after a dozen years it still has only two professors, having bullied every
Central American candidate out of the department.
These muertos de hambre have
invented their own reality, wanting to erase the fact that CHS gave them four
positions to start CAS.
We are also at odds with the Provost who says that we are
obstructionists for not joining the process, which invitation came only after
it was a done deal. His attitude is much that of the UNAM representatives.
If you allow someone to take your dignity from you, you are reduced to
a serf. Thus, you cannot allow the colonizers to distort reality and erase you.
As for the collaborators they must change history so as not to be seen as
collaborators and opportunists.
As our Latino student population mushrooms, the resistance to Mexican
American hires will increase. Life for los
muertos de hambre will become more profitable as white professors will
enter into alliances with them to limit the number of minority faculty. The
subversion of Chicana/o Studies will be possible only with the support of
collaborators.
I have always respected and considered Central Americans to be family.
However, I realize like Mexicans they also have muertos de hambre among them.
As political people we must respect the tensions within our countries
of origin, i.e., teacher strikes, Zapatista-like movements, Mexico’s violation
of Article 27 of the Constitution, and the giving away of Mexico’s land and
resources.
What hurts is that my illusions of jointly building a unity of
progressives of the two Middle Americas have been shattered, although hope
remains.
The fact is the Mexican government and UNAM have never had an interest
in our community. They have not cared about Mexican immigrants whose rights
Chicana/o organizations championed.
Los muertos de hambre only see us as a piggy bank. Even with the bad economy we send $22
billion annually to the homeland.
Dr, Ernesto Galarza in Spiders in
the House and Workers in the Field (1970) wrote that it was in error to
assume Mexicans did not organize – they did but they were subverted by the
spiders in the house and los muertos de hambre.
Addendum: The
College of Humanities is held up as the ideal in affirmative action by the
administration. These stats are for tenure track appointments.
Asian American
Studies Department, 7 fulltime 0 Mexican Americans
Chicana/o
Studies Department 23 21
Mexican Americans
English
Department 35 3 Mexican Americans
Gender and
Women’s Studies Department 6 1 Mexican Americans (Joint)
Linguistics
Department
3 0 Mexican Americans
Modern and
Classical Languages and
Literatures
Department (Spanish Section) 11 1 Mexican American
Philosophy
Department 12 0 Mexican Americans
Religious
Studies Department 9 0 Mexican Americans
Illustrations:
Google images are becoming like an archive of links to
digital photos
Peanuts and Oranges: Support Scholarship Fund
For those who have an extra $5 a month for scholarship, the
For Chicana/o Studies Foundation was started with money awarded to Rudy Acuña
as a result of his successful lawsuit against the University of California at
Santa Barbara. The Foundation has given over $60,000 to plaintiffs filing
discrimination suits against other universities. However, in the last half
dozen years it has shifted its focus, and it has awarded 7-10 scholarships for
$750 per award on an annual basis to Chicana/o and Latina/o students at
California State University-Northridge (CSUN). The For Chicana/o Studies
Foundation is a 501(c) (3) Foundation and all donations are deductible. Although
many of its board members are associated with Chicana/o Studies, it is not part
of the department. All monies generated go to fund these scholarships.
We know that times are hard. Lump sum donations can be sent
to For Chicana Chicano Studies Foundation, 11222 Canby Ave., Northridge, Ca.
91326 or through PayPal below. You can reach us at forchs@earthlink.net.
Click on to http://forchicanachicanostudies.wikispaces.com/ and make a donation. You may also elect to
send $5.00, $10.00 or $25.00 monthly. For your convenience and privacy you may
donate via PayPal. The important thing is not the donation, but your continued
involvement
