JE#2

When we are taught history from the perspective of our conqueror, it encourages the idea that our own history has no value. When we are stripped of our history, we are stripped of our reasons for existence. If we do not know what we as a people have been through, how can we truly know ourselves as complete spiritual beings? When we do not learn about something as crucial to our claim to this land, as the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, we are disavowing our heritage and our roots which have origins on this land that we are forced to assimilate to white culture on. I was not taught about the alamo in school. I was taught very little about Mexicans in general, besides learning very briefly about César Chávez and the zoot suit riots in high school. Something I do remember was learning about the California missions in 3rd grade. Now that I think about it, it is a very disassociating experience to learn about something as violent as the construction and imposition of missions and the culture of colonization that came with them. How did we as colonized children make sense of that in our heads? What's worse, is that it was required for us to build a small scale mission. Therefore recreating the labor of the native peoples who were made to build the missions in the first place. Therefore recreating a violent piece of our history that we have forgotten about. An example of historical amnesia. Being forced to undergo this teaching-learning practice is violence in itself.

My level of historical amnesia is 6. This has led to my own sense of forfeited destiny in the sense that the legacy of colonialism is still alive in me. In the way I act, feel, behave. Maybe my destiny is to love and be loved. I wonder a lot about whether we even know how to love. If we weren't taught to love in our homes growing up and the versions of love we see on tv aren't true, then what does genuine love look like? The legacy of colonialism has disrupted healthy cycles of love that we could have had, had we not been invaded, exploited and slaughtered.