We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.
Sing along with America! The Taco Trucks Anthem was written on a taco truck napkin by POCHO amigo JIMWiCH and performed by the U.S. Marine Band and friends:
Oh beautiful for taco trucks
On every corner YES
Fresh salsa on tortilla chips
Our country God did bless
Mas…Sing along! ‘The Taco Trucks Anthem’ (official lyrics video)
My late father, Salomón Chavez Huerta, first arrived in this country as an agricultural guest worker in the mid-1900s, during the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program represented a guest worker program between the United States and Mexico. From 1942 to 1964, the Mexican government exported an estimated 4.6 million Mexicans to meet this country’s labor shortage not only in the agricultural fields during two major wars (WWII and Korean War), but also in the railroad and mining sectors.
Like many braceros of his generation from rural Mexico, my father didn’t speak too much about the horrible working / housing conditions he endured while toiling in el norte. This included low pay, overcrowded housing, terrible food, limited legal rights, lack of freedom outside of the labor camps, racism, verbal / physical abuse and price gauging from company landlords / stores.
Mas…Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D: The day my Mexican father met Cesar Chavez
Donald Trump and the GOP haters want to split this beautiful family up and send the parents back to Mexico. We can’t let that happen. The President’s DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) initiative is now stalled because the Republicans won’t vote on the Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, a judge who could potentially end the body’s 4-4 deadlocks.
After a son leaves his small, impoverished Mexican town of Francisco Villa to find a better life in Chicago, he sends money to help his family — and hometown — alive. Racist Donald Trump says he would stop these “remittances.”
New York City alternative whirlwind Xenia Rubinos makes quite an exhaustive list of things that brown people do, including Mexican Chef. Brown cleans your house, for example, and brown takes the trash, brown even wipes your granddaddy’s a$$.
PREVIOUSLY ON XENIA RUBINOS:
Exterior, day: Destitute desert town in the year 2040. Audio: Spanish newsradio tells the story — unemployment is 86%, gangs are everywhere and food and water are getting scarce.
There’s only one thing a father can do — smuggle his family across the border to the prosperous country on The Other Side.
Herr Trump can’t deport me! I’m of Scotch-Irish descent, just like President Obama. Here is my official CLAN POCHO tartan if you don’t believe me.
Locked in the back of a van, desperate migrants must cross the Mexican border into the U.S. before one of them gives birth to an illegal alien. The Birth of an Alien (El Nacimiento de un Extranjero) is from Sumiko Braun.
BORDERS is a game from Gonzalo Alvarez where players walk in the shoes of an immigrant to endure the danger of a journey across the desert. You only win if you can avoid La Migra and beat the heat by hiding under bushes and staying hydrated. Many make the journey towards the border with the promise of a better life, but only the fittest survive.
Mas…To win playing BORDERS, you need to beat La Migra (video)
“Heroic” Border Patrol Agents of Lore: Or “That’s Not the Migra I Know!” More Tales of Greedy “Mexicans,” “Savage” Native Americans, and “Heroic” Uber Gringos!
Pappy’s Golden Age of Comics Blog is at it again — posting delectable artifacts from American comic book history that are also revelatory chronicles unraveling the collusion of race, ethnicity, violence, and more in popular “entertainments.”
Mas…Savage Wild West Adventures of the Border Patrol (1951 toons)
In Dreaming in Tijuana deported mothers fight for immigration reform in the United States. The anguish of family separation has turned them into activists who promote the U.S. Latino vote from the Mexican side of the world’s “most transited” border. [Video via Univision.]
Check out this trailer for Farmworker: How Immigration Feeds America from freelance journalist Diana Prichard. She’s working on a film telling the story of how immigrants are critical to American agriculture.
And always remember who worked hard to get you that next glass of leche or bowl of hot queso.
“Could the president grant deferred removal to every unlawfully present alien in the United States right now?”
That’s how Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts referred to individuals lacking the proper documents to be in the country during a recent hearing on DAPA (Deferred Action for parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents).
“Alien” is the legal term to describe these individuals, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor also referred to them as “undocumented immigrants.” She objected to the phrase “illegal immigrants”, which she considers too harsh. Justice Sonia Sotomayor even explained that “illegal immigrants” associates them with “drug addicts, thieves, and murderers.”
Mas…Let’s get one thing straight: No human being is ‘illegal’
When I first applied to UCLA, I wrote in my personal essay that I didn’t have any positive role models in my violent neighborhood.
Having grown up in East Los Angeles’ Ramona Gardens housing project, I wrote that most of the adults represented gang members, drug dealers, thieves, tecatos (heroin addicts), alcoholics, felons and high school dropouts (or push-outs). I also wrote about my disdain for housing authority officials and government workers for behaving like prison wardens and guards toward us: project residents who depended on government aid or welfare.
Moreover, I decried the police abuse that I had witnessed and experienced, like the time when a cop pointed a gun at me. My crime: being a 15-year-old making a rolling stop while learning how to drive.
I always feel that somebody’s watching me. Could it be La Migra? [Music video by Comedy High.]
Mexican, American or both? Residents of Elkhart County, Indiana, talk to The Elkhart Truth.
And this wonderful music video from Los Cenzontles expresses the same sentiments in song:
Mas…Regular gente plus Los Cenzontles: ‘I’m a Mexican-American’ (videos)
Economists say once a person has been unemployed for six months it is highly unlikely they will reenter the workforce.
It’s been a year since I was fired from my job and I feel like a BIG GIANT LOSER.
It wasn’t anything I did in particular. I thought for sure that one time I asked Floyd Mayweather if “he likes to take his work home with him” would do me in, alas, it was far more uneventful.
“We’ve decided not to renew your contract.”
“Um, OK.”
And it’s not like I’m totally unemployed. I regularly walk a dog named Jimmy Fallon — this causes great confusion when I nonchalantly say, “Jimmy Fallon growled at me today,” (though for the most part he is quite lovely, other than eating his own poop).
Mas…By @buttronica: I ramble and maybe I’m too dark at times, but damn!
Look what we’re doing here — fixing your sidewalk so you can walk and you want to send us back to Mexico? Who’s going to do the work if we’re gone? Look at the white boy with his hands in his fucking pockets! [NSFW en Español.] (Original video apparently from @aque_tuuu_botellas on Instagram.)
