A call for building a U.S./Mexico cultural superhighway

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On his first day of office, President-elect Donald J. Trump vows to launch the biggest deportation scheme in U.S. history, partly by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The last time the United States government employed this law was to intern more than one hundred thousand foreign nationals of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II. Now this law is back in the spotlight. He intends to deport millions of migrants, many of whom have been in this country for years living productive lives and paying taxes. Without their backbreaking efforts in agriculture, housing and services many industries could collapse.

He is also targeting protections for almost one million legal immigrants,  ending the protections for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that has expanded under the Biden Administration to cover over 860,000 people. His potential plan is to revoke the status or let rights expire during his term. 

The federal government grants people temporary status to live and work in the country. It is granted to citizens of at least 16 countries suffering from natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary circumstances. The status is set to expire for certain countries, including El Salvador, in March 2025. Ending TPS status would end a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for decades, and reshape families and communities around the U.S. It would also harm the U.S. economy by reducing the workforce for economies and industries that rely on TPS recipients.

Why would we inflict harm on ourselves and others but for reliance on a narrative that the country’s blood is being poisoned?

A cultural superhighway

To counter this backward story, we, especially Chicanos, must build an alliance or what I call a “cultural superhighway” between the United States and Mexico.

This idea is not new or original. Indeed, some incredible Chicano poets, writers and artists are already building it. I am only suggesting that we enlarge the highways that are already being built and supercharge them to create a superhighway of culture for the enrichment of all our lives, especially Chicano lives, because we depend on it, given the onslaught of hate. This critical time is not a moment to shrink from the power and richness of Mexican and Latin American culture and art. It is a moment to express to its fullest extent. 

Those Chicano creatives I mentioned have been doing it for the last four years. They call it “El Encuentro Cultura Chicana” or “The Encounter with Chicano Cultura.” This year, like previous ones, El Encuentro was held in Mexico City from November 4th through the 9th. Chicanxs sin Fronteras, the lead organization, led by its director Alfonso Vázquez Pérez, is a collective project from Mexico City whose mission is to create interdisciplinary projects “dedicated to the dissemination of Chicano culture in its different manifestations through dialogue and community reflection around various social themes such as identity, decoloniality, transculturality, migration, border life and carnalismo.”

During a recent interview with Luis J. Rodriguez with the Chapter House Storyteller’s Blog, he mentioned that he would be in a cross-cultural exchange between Chicano poets in the U.S. and Mexican artists in Mexico City. At a time when the incoming administration vilifies Mexicans and other immigrants, threatens mass deportations and promotes building a physical wall between Mexico and the U.S., I was curious about what would happen if we did the opposite. What if we built highways of all kinds, especially superhighways of culture? To get a sense of what this future could look like I spent some time with Matt Sedillo, the literary director of the Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles (MCILA), who in that capacity has been one of the key organizers of El Encuentro for the last three years. Sedillo is responsible for inviting and coordinating a team of poets every year. MCILA’s executive director, Jose Antonio Aguirre, has also been instrumental and has brought Casa de California as a site for the Encuentro. 

Sedillo told me that events were held in such esteemed places as the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda,” México’s premier art school. There they were welcomed by Sergio Ricaño, Director ENPEyG, and various professors and administrators, including Norma Barragan, Tania Hélène Campos Thomas, Xanath Ramo, Gaba López and Sofía Guzmán. The warm greetings from these Mexican luminaries prove that there is a strong interest in Chicano literature and art. Representing these two art forms were Aguirre and Sedillo. 

Various panels were held over the six-day conference, including one entitled, “Artistic Dialogues and Activations,” where various Chicano artists such as Trini Tlazohteotl Rodriguez from Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in Sylmar, California; Professor Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, Chicano & Latino Studies Department, California State University Long Beach and Mujeres de Maíz; painter Gabriela “Does” Robles, 5 de Mayo Lowrider Fest organizer from Nezahualcoyotl, MX); MCILA’s Aguirre Jesse Fregozo of Homeboy Art Academy in Los Angeles and Mexican artist Marco Osorio spoke of the interactions of Mexican and Chicano art.

To activate the youth various workshops were held that permitted interactions between Chicano artists and the students of La Esmeralda.

There were other workshops on tattooing and its symbolism with students for the Laboratorio de Tatuajes @lab_tatuajes and artists such as Lus y Ases del 24 and Marco Osorio “Letronero Mexicano” and others on ceramics, climate change, deportations, DJing, Chicano art, poetry, Chicanas in literature and slam poetica.

The poetry workshops had such Chicanx legends as Professor Emeritus Carmen Tafolla of the University of Texas, San Antonio; Trini Tlazohteotl Rodriguez, Tía Chucha’s; Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, Viva Padilla, Re/arte Centro Literario,, Matt Sedillo, and Luis J. Rodríguez. This group of poets and educators was extraordinary, with some, such as Carmen Tofalla and Luis Rodriguez, having over 40 years of teaching and writing poetry.

The week continued at other venues such as Naucalpan-UNAM, Acatlan-UNAM, UNAM, Casa de la Universidad de California, Marabunta Cafeteria y Libreria, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco, during which Aguirre led the delegation on a tour of his mural housed there on campus, and many other places where such celebrations, among many others, occurred of a new compilation of Sedillo’s poetry in a new book, entitled, “Our Corazones Are Still Burning,” and a powerful homage to the late Armando Vazquez-Ramos. Professor Vazquez-Ramos was a pioneer in the idea of creating a superhighway of culture between the U.S. and Mexico. He established, among many other projects, including the California-Mexico Project and through Latino Political Roasts, raised scholarship funds for students to study abroad in Mexico and promote educational exchange. In 2008, Assemblymen Jose Solorio and Kevin De Leon co-sponsored Assembly Concurrent Resolution 146, to recognize the CSULB California-Mexico Project and directed the California Research Bureau to conduct the study “The California Research Bureau Report on California-Mexico Study Abroad Programs.”

Other academics and politicians who presented and spoke of the tremendous legacy that Professor Vazquez-Ramos left were Mexican Sen. Karina Isabel Ruiz Ruiz; Luz Vazquez-Ramos, President and CEO of The California-Mexico Studies Center in Long Beach;

Alfredo Sánchez-Castañeda, Coordinador del Programa de Derechos Humanos de la UNAM; Dr. Gonzalo F. Santos, California State University, Bakersfield Aguirre; and Armando Durón, Chicano art collector.

Tlatelolco

An incredibly moving moment during the El Encuentro occurred when many of the participants went to Tlatelolco. The history of this place begins in 1337, when a group of dissident Mexica people broke away from the dominant rulers of Tenochtitlan. They founded México-Tlatelolco principally to be able to continue running their market, the liveliest, and eventually the biggest in Central Mexico and America. Centuries later, on October 2, 1968, it would become the site of one of Mexico's biggest tragedies. During a student demonstration, a storm of bullets rained down from the military upon unarmed students protesting in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country and the world. Although months of nationwide student strikes that preceded October 2nd had prompted an increasingly repressive response from the Mexican President Díaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized thousands of surviving protesters and dragged them away. It is still unknown how many died and who did the killing, but it was on this site that Mexican and Chicano poets read their work and offered an opening for healing.

This act shows the power of bi-cultural exchanges between the United States and Mexico. Chicanos are uniquely positioned to build the necessary superhighway between the two countries to counter the hate that is building in the United States under a new administration that is ignorant of the tremendous value that Mexico and its culture have to share with the world.

This is not a moment to build walls, both physical and imaginary. Instead, it is a time to shine a bright light on both countries' tremendous humanity and a path forward toward common decency and respect for one another.

We cannot rely on others to express the great need for this construction of culture on the shoulders of such great thinkers as Professor Vazques-Ramos and all of the participants of El Encuentro. At a time when politicians call for raising tariffs and building barriers between the United States and Mexico, now is the time to build cultural superhighways wide enough for poetry, art, music, sculpture and literature to unite two extraordinary countries and cultures.