When the United States appropriated the Southwest and California, 80,000 Mexicans lived in the region. That fact explains another obvious fact. Hundreds of towns and cities in this nation have Spanish names: San Antonio, El Paso, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Franciso, San Jose, Sacramento and so on. Spanish-speakers who settled those places quite naturally gave them names.
It is also a fact that many millions of indigenous people were settled in the America thousands of years ago. Mexicans fought them and soon blended with them, creating racial hybrids called mestizos.
Thanks to these mestizos, European American newcomers learned how to be cowboys. The words cowboy, lasso, lariat, bronco and rodeo are Spanish language derivations.
Still, we Mexicans have been cast as dangerous invaders, unsavory interlopers, not folks who have been here for 200 years. Dishonest loud mouths like Trump unfortunately done a good job of fueling this demonization.
“The illegal aliens hold millions of jobs, draw on social services ranging from schools to welfare, drain funds from the nation’s troubled economy by sending away large amounts of money and mock our system of legal immigration. ” Who said that? Trump? Vance?
No, those are the words of then-Attorney General William Saxbe uttered in 1974. Saxbe called for the deportation of one million undocumented migrants in one year.
Here we are 50 years later and once again there’s yammering about giving us the boot. I’m shaking in my boots!
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 