tucson

Twin Tragedies in AZ: Hispanic Heritage Month, Banned Books

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arizonawebtoonIt’s Octember! Or is it Septober? It’s the time of the year when the weather starts getting cooler, politic shenanigans get ignored and eyes begin to glaze over from lethal injections of sports, beer and chicken wings.

‘Merica.

Septober is also the pseudo-month that we deal in tragedies of two kinds: “Hispanic Heritage” and banned books. Interestingly enough, both tragedies cross paths in Tucson, AZ, ground zero for censorship in the 21st century.

The ballad of Tucson is a long and sad corrido. It will make you laugh and it will also make you cry. If all the world is a stage then Tucson definitely has its players; many of them clowns but most of them sad, voiceless puppets manipulated by a system hell-bent on pushing an agenda of whitewashed ambivalence.

Mas…Twin Tragedies in AZ: Hispanic Heritage Month, Banned Books

MAS Whitewashing: Tucson OKs textbook list with NO Chicano authors

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tusdlogo640Let me tell you a joke. Ready? The Tucson Unified School District. Get it?

No? Allow me to me explain.

On Tuesday night the TUSD approved a textbook list for their now defunct Mexican-American Studies program, which they have dubbed “Culturally Relevant US History and US Government.” The list, which consists of 25 books, has absolutely ZERO Chicana/o authors on it.

Go ahead and read that again.

If you have been following the divine comedy in Tucson at all then you already know that they not only destroyed their wildly successful Mexican-American Studies program but that they also banned a laundry list of books by Chicana/o authors, closed barrio schools and fired MAS teachers.

Mas…MAS Whitewashing: Tucson OKs textbook list with NO Chicano authors

Xican@ Space Odyssey: Lance Liberty reports for 101.3 Honest Radio

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It is sometime in the near future.

Laws have been set in motion to protect the American Homeland. Your freedom and sanity are at stake. Oh, and your jobs.

I forgot about your jobs. And your beautifully domesticated wives and children. You pay your taxes, yet you feel one-upped. Lied to. I know. I have a mortgage and a timeshare I haven’t paid in months. Meanwhile our lazy neighbors to the south consume our resources. But there’s no need to fear. No longer do we have to sit in Victoria’s Secret as our wives are gawked at by gang-banging border hoppers. No. Victoria is just beyond the horizon. And one man risks it all in his comfy radio studio located somewhere in the Arizona desert.

That man is Lance Liberty for 101.3 Honest Radio. Take it away, Lance…

Mas…Xican@ Space Odyssey: Lance Liberty reports for 101.3 Honest Radio

PochoCast #5: Alcaraz y Madrigal on face-chewing and boobs (NSFW)

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POCHO primos Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz and Migrant Editor Al Madrigal chop, channel and lower the ñews:

  • Miami munchies and Canadian cannibals
  • Salma Hayek’s boob optimization
  • POCHO web traffic
  • Wisconsin recall
  • Organized labor
  • Lalo’s copyright trouble on Facebook
  • These kids today

— Produced by Jefe de Creative Marcelo Ziperovich. (NSFW language.)

Food safety cops spot mysterious (Mexican?) CACA ‘intruder virus’

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Two modifications were found in chile DNA — are they a clue to the ‘intruder virus’ creator?

(PNS reporting from WASHINGTON) The anti-import National Food Safety Workshop (NFSW) here claims a dangerous foreign food virus is infecting Caucasian-American digestive systems nationwide.

The comida cops say the virus is spread by manipulating the DNA of four foods native to Mexico — chiles, avocado, corn and agave.

“We’re calling it the CACA Virus,” says NFSW chief researcher Dr. Creflo Smith-Buster. “It’s something we had hoped we’d never see – a genetically-modified steaming turd of an illegal alien scientific conundrum on the pristine white floor of an American lab.”

Mas…Food safety cops spot mysterious (Mexican?) CACA ‘intruder virus’

Mexican garden statues get up, stand up and go on tour (photos)

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(PNS reporting from the HATE STATE OF ARIZONA) The “Sleeping Mexican” statues of Tucson we featured last week snooze no more. Buoyed by the online support they received after POCHO publicized their plight, these hombres woke up, stood up, dressed up and went on tour across Los United Estates to tell their story.

From their early untold history — hanging out backstage with Frank Sinatra — to their recent appearances at the Academy Awards, the Mexican garden gnome hombres (AKA gnombres) are on the move, getting out the word and straight up representing! Look for them in a garden near you, or in the photos below.

Mas…Mexican garden statues get up, stand up and go on tour (photos)

Kids, lowrider bikes, culture and history in Tucson 1996: ‘Low y Cool’

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When a French filmmaker shoots Chicano Tucson, the result is fascinating and maybe a little bit foreign — in a good way. Low y Cool documents the lives of the Camaradas Lowrider Bike Club in South Tucson, AZ in 1996. The 52-minute video was directed by Tucson resident and transplanted Frenchie Marianne Dissard with funding from French TV channel Planête Cable. The film has been seen regularly since 1997 on Planête.

Ñewsweek: Tucson school board’s exercise in ignorance and hate

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'Hearsay evidence is all you need'

POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal (he commutes coast-to-coast so he can work nights as Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show) went to Tucson AZ to find out why students there aren’t allowed to take classes in Mexican-American history.

Cameras running, Al interviewed a school board official who was apparently high on ignorance, stupidity and hate.

These are the POCHO stories that broke the ñews this week:

Mas…Ñewsweek: Tucson school board’s exercise in ignorance and hate

Tucson schools ban the A-B-C’s – are the 1-2-3’s next?

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Undercover lapel-cam photo: Is this John Huppenthal (arrow) waving to supporters at book burning rally?

(PNS reporting from TUCSON) Even as John Huppenthal takes a breather now that teaching the alphabet is banned in Tucson schools, his Taliban-style campaign of education purification continues in the hands of allies.

“We won’t stop with just readin’ and writin’,” they say, “so ‘rithmetic is next!”

Superintendent of Public Instruction Huppenthal told PNS why he is terrified by brown-skinned children who read books and ask preguntas:

Mas…Tucson schools ban the A-B-C’s – are the 1-2-3’s next?

Year after shooting, modest Giffords aide still says he is not a hero

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Daniel Hernandez Jr., the Congressional intern who saved Rep. Gabby Gifford’s life on Jan. 8 last year, still declines to call himself a hero.

A mentally-ill man fired on Giffords and her constituents, killing six people and and wounding 13, including the popular liberal Democratic representative.

Only on the job five days, Hernandez, a student intern who had accompanied the congressmember to the Tucson shopping center for a voter registration event, rushed to her side when he heard gunshots and held her bleeding head and comforted her until paramedics took over her care.

In a TV interview, Hernandez still declines the “hero” label. Presidential candidate wannabe AK Half-Governor Sarah Palin was also singled out for scrutiny at the time because of an ad on her website that put gunsite cross hairs on Gifford’s congressional district.

Hernandez was just elected to the Tucson school board.

Palin has never been elected to anything since.