JE #2

Being forced to learn the history of a country that swindled the land from our ancestors is a preexisting horror that every Chican@ must endure under the United States education system. Going back and tapping into my memories I recall talking about White men being the heroes of this country in history class. I don’t remember ever reading anything about my people in these books; it wasn’t until I got to middle school that I was able to see representations of people that looked like me. The information written in these books almost always covered small bits of people of color, always highlighting negatives things, giving the story from the conquers perspective. Learning about events like the U.S- Mexico War was like opening a book and never finishing it, I was able to grasp some of the storyline but not enough to understand what really happened. This written History covered the achievements of the Anglos in Texas, and highlighted the coldhearted savagery of the Mexican people (who according to these books, were to blame for the death of thousands of innocent Anglos).  This one sided trickery paints a negative depiction of Mexicans while boosting Anglos credibility. It wasn’t until reading They call them Greasers that I was able to learn the second half of the story (the perspective that went missing for so long), it wasn’t until reading this book that I was exposed to the shamelessly racist speeches made by people during the U.S- Mexico war. The truth about people like Sam Houston were so carefully edited out of thee conquer’s history, a long with the details of the Battle of the Alamo and the fact that a lot of Mexican land was stolen under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

On a scale I would rank my historical amnesia at a 6.5. Due to my academic years at UCLA I have been bestowed with the privilege of truth and knowledge about my race and culture. Realizing that I could have been living on my family’s native land if it weren’t for the U.S government swindling Mexico’s territory infuriates me. I then begin to reminisce on the countless conversations I’ve had with family as far as deportation and legal citizenship, the media today continues to portray Mexicans in a negative stereotype, calling us “aliens” “foreigner” when we were the first to cultivate the land. This makes the United States a two faced, while it welcomes Mexican and Latino in, to fulfill cheap labor, it criminalizes us all because of the fear it has that Mexican people will stay and conquer their land.