The mouthpiece that roared

Los Angeles Community College instructor Robert Feliciano contributed far more to “conflict” in the country than anything Gustavo Arrellano wrote in the Times. At issue: USC quarterback Mark Sanchez’ “tricolor” mouthpiece that he and the USC dentist dreamed up to cause the anti-Mexican cabal to go nuts.

Feliciano’s Blowback essay falls short in many respects. First, he gives ammunition to the Mexican haters who try to claim the same things that he does in his essay.

He mentions that Joe Kapp was from New Mexico and that they don’t call themselves Mexicans or “chicanos.” Correct, but he didn’t go far enough. New Mexicans of Mexican or Spanish backgrounds call themselves Hispanos.

He suggests that the Republic of Mexico has two cultural claims, poverty and corruption. Perhaps this teacher of Public Safety can direct us to the pride of Los Angeles — the corruption in LAPD’s Rampart Division. Or he can point to my former congressman, Randy Duke Cunningham, speaking of corruption.

Or, perhaps he might remind us of school segregation in Orange County that lasted through 1946, which forced Mexican American children, Americans by birth, to attend segregated schools.

Then there is his silly statement that he corrects Americans of Mexican origin if they describe themselves as “Mexican Americans.” I have news for him — that, might roll off the tongue if one is in Fargo, or Vermont or Minneapolis. However, when one lives in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas with 100-million real Mexicans just minutes away, describing oneself as a Mexican-American is perfectly fine as the Mexican modifies the American and separates us from the real Mexicans who call themselves Mexicans.

Calling Gustavo Arrellano a “race-baiting” author is Feliciano’s biggest shortfall. Winston Churchill called Americans the “American race” in much of his written work. When Feliciano criticizes Mark Sanchez for using the word “race” in the context of Mexicans, we can critique Feliciano’s statement that “Mexican is an ethnicity not a race.”

For Feliciano’s information, the 60% of Mexicans, himself included, who have Amerindian and European blood are technically a sub-race, a combination of Caucasian and Asian bloodlines — mestizos, if you will. Thus, a general use of the word “race” is acceptable in reference to Mexicans. His take is that of the ultra-bigoted people who resist being called racists in their dealings with Mexicans. That’s why he adds fuel to anti-Mexican fervor.

He goes one step further in suggesting that some among us are “poisoning our young people with ethnicity issues that are not part of our common American Dream.”

Well, I might agree if our schools taught young people that Spanish, Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban soldiers fought victoriously against the British in the American War of Independence by clearing the British out of the Mississippi Valley, Mobile and Pensacola.

I would further agree if our schools taught us the story of Lt. Colonel Manuel Chaves and his Indian fighters “of Mexican origin” in the New Mexico Militia who discovered and destroyed the supplies and munitions of invading Confederate forces during the Civil War and sent them back to Texas barefoot and starving.

I would further agree if he admitted that the most enduring symbol of the “American Dream,” the cowboy, was a Mexican invention that was appropriated by Americans. I would say that the cowboy is a point of cultural pride among Mexicans.

It is a matter of proportionality on which Mr. Feliciano falls short. The “American dream” speaks Spanish, too. It speaks to and is spoken by people who are of brown skin. They have Indian and Spanish blood. Most happen to be citizens of this country, a country their (and my) families started building in New Mexico in 1540, in Florida in 1520 and in California in 1769 that we now call the United States of America.