JE #2

There is an inherent bias in constructing history through one perspective. When history is constructed without the narratives of both the conquered and conqueror there is a skewed perception of history. Additionally, It delegitimizes the perspective of the conquered.

Not learning my history through perspective of the conquered sways my entire narrative to the mercy of the conqueror.

My educational experience has continually legitimized the current paradigm that is oppressive to people of color. The institution claims that my “fore fathers founded this nation”. In reality My real fore fathers were killed and my fore mothers were completely delegitimized, instead we are forcibly orphaned people who are force fed lies.

Our destiny ties to the legacy of my ancestors and so long as i am rooted on the colonizer pot I will grow deformed, shaped by their boundaries.

After reading De Leon’s book about the Battle of the Alamo and the U.S.-Mexico war and how physical and psychological violence was carried out on people of Mexican descent (as well as other people of color), I realized why hegemony left out this perspective..

The mainstream educational system made me feel as if Mexicans did not exist, as if I did not exist or am less than whites. Any information I felt that was relevant to me was either minimal or non-existent. I then concluded that I was not important. I remember hearing about U.S.- Mexico War, the Alamo, and NAFTA all of which did not contextualize how if affected people of color. I was taught that manifest destiny and NAFTA were great things, things I should be proud of. They excluded the narrative of people of color, of people of Mexican descent. The exclusion of the conquered perspective enforces the historical amnesia. The exclusion forfeits my existence, the existence of the conquered; their story is not told thus they are symbolically made extinct. So, I naturally forfeited a destiny is an unconceivable notion because most of what I have been taught were lies.

Comparing my level of historical amnesia (1 being completely clueless of my past) between my childhood and presently, I would be a 3 in the past and possibly an 8 now. Initially, for the major part of my life, the colonizers perspective has constructed my past. My educational experience was an imposition of hegemony; force-feeding me a series of lies that conflicted with my family’s immediate history and phenotype. Luckily, I am privileged enough to be in this class and space to reconstruct my roots. Presently, I am in the process of constructing my memory with the help of my parents and family, but still have to detangle between colonizers words and truth.