Racism in a Biblical/Theological Perspective: The Young Lords

                        Racism in a Biblical/Theological Perspective: The Young Lords


This will be the first of two essays focusing specifically on the ethnic/racial discrimination against Puerto Ricans living in mainland U.S.A.  One cannot treat the subject of discrimination without taking into account those groups or persons who fought against the oppression heaped on them by the white power structure.  There may be some that will be offended at the mere mention of ethnic/racial discrimination in ¨the land of the free and home of the brave.¨  But this writer believes in historical and intellectual honesty, stating the facts, as dismal and true that they may be.

The presence of Puerto Ricans in the U.S.A. is no historical accident. There are a series of factors leading to this reality.  People who are familiar with Caribbean and Latin American history will note that the two factors leading to our presence here are the colonization of our lands by Spain, on the one hand, and the neo-colonization of our lands by the U.S.A on the other hand.

In the case of Puerto Ricans on the mainland, it would be more appropiate to speak of ¨emigration," than to speak of ¨migration.¨  In a cultural sense, Puerto Rico is a Latin American nation which has been under U.S. colonization since 1898.  In spite of the fact that Puerto Ricans were declared United States citizens (over and above the opposition of the Puerto Rican leaders at that time), to accept that the exodus to the United States is a simple ¨internal migration" would be equivalent to accepting the claim that Puerto Rico is in integral and indissoluble part of the United States.  The concept of ¨migration¨ has been used as an ideological weapon by defenders of the colonialism under which Puerto Ricans suffer.  The validity of the concept of migration is not denied relative to such phenomena such as the movement of great multitudes of people from the rural areas to the cities.  But its validity cannot be accepted relative to the movement of Puerto Rican compatriots to the metropolis (Manuel Maldonado-Dennis, The Emigration Dialectic: Puerto Rico and the U.S.A.  New York: International Publishers, 1980. p. 24).

Who were the Young Lords and what was their role in dealing with the negative living conditions in which Puerto Ricans in the U.S.A. found themselves? The Young Lords began as a Puerto Rican turf gang in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago, Illinois in the Fall of 1960.  They eventually evolved into a civil and human rights movement on Grito de Lares (Cry of Lares) day on September 23, 1968.  During the tenure of Mayor Richard Daly (Sr.), Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park (the first hub of Puerto Ricans in Chicago), and several Mexican communities were completely evicted from areas near the Loop lakefront, Old Town, in order to increase property revenues. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and witnessed police abuses,  some Puerto Ricans became involved in the June 1966 Division Street Riots in Wicker Park and Humboldt Park (Gina M. Perez, ¨The Near Northwest Side Story: Migration, Displacement, and Puerto Rican Families. 2005).

They were unofficially reorganized from the gang into a civil and human rights movement by Jose ¨Cha Cha" Jimenez.  Jimenez was the last president of the former gang and became the founder of the new Young Lords Movement (Young Lords in Lincoln Park: Oral history collections, Grand Valley State University/ Special Collections).

The focus of the Young Lords was two-fold, i.e. self-determination of Puerto Rico relative to the political status of the island, and displacement of Puerto Ricans and poor residents from prime real estate areas for profit. Since there were few Latino students and no outspoken leadership at the time, the former street-gang  transformed themselves, training leadership, and organizing the broader community (Judson Jeffries, ¨From Gang-bangers to Urban Revolutionaries: The Young Lords of Chicago." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn 2003).

Eventually, different chapters of the organization were developed across the nation.  On July 26, 1969, the New York branch was formed. New York City became a key area to have this branch because this was where nearly 80% of Puerto Ricans on the mainland lived, and was in a sense, the center of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

In New York, the major focus was on the self-determination of Puerto Rico, and the defense of the democratic rights of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S.A.  In both cities, the Young Lords occupied churches in order to carry out their program of social activism focusing on literacy, health care, clean neighborhoods, and political empowerment.

How do colonization and democratic rights fit into a biblical/theological framework?  I have noted in previous essays that both the Scriptures and the Christian tradition denounce the inhumane and cruel treatment of people.  Colonial subjugation and political disenfranchisement relegate nations and social groups to economic alienation and misery.

How do you as member of the faith community evaluate colonization and the violation of the democratic rights of people within the land?  Please feel free to share your views relative to the issues raised in this essay.
In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Racism in a Biblical/Theological Perspective: Mexican Americans

                                                            Mexican-Americans


In this essay, I will deal with one particular segment of the Hispanic-American community, i.e. Mexican-Americans, the largest of all Hispanic groups in the U.S.A.  Many, I´m sure wonder why the continental United States is so heavily populated with people of Mexican background.  And then there are the issues of ¨immigration,¨ ¨illegal aliens,¨ cheap labor, and deportation.

The issue of border crossing is a very controversial and hotly debated one.  In our times, we hear of building borders and fences to keep ¨illegal¨ people out.  While recently it has referred to blocking people from countries who practice Islam from coming here, historically it has referred to people who come from Mexico,  and in a sense, to their children. A phrase among Tejanos (Texans of Mexican origin) is ¨We never crossed a border. The border crossed us¨ (Himilce Novas, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History. 2008: Penguin Group, p. 49).

We can begin by saying that the presence of people of Mexican background in the U.S.A. is a historical one.  This is their land which was usurped from them by the Spanish colonizers and the U.S.A. neo-colonizers. While the descendants of the colonizers, and even some descendants of the colonized, do not like to hear about this piece of history, it is the absolute sad but true historical reality.  Many will argue that we cannot ¨go back¨ and ¨reverse¨ that historical moment.  And while that may be true to a certain extent, we cannot deal fairly with the presence of numerous Mexican-Americans without taking into account how colonization and land-theft has contributed to, and in fact, generated massive immigration to this part of the country.

In 1924, U.S. immigration laws were put in place that established quotas for people entering the country from various parts of the world.  Northern Europeans were favored.  Southern Europeans could gain entry in limited numbers. Almost all Asians were excluded. However, no quotas were established for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, thus enabling Mexico, due to its geographical proximity, to become the United States´ largest supplier of cheap labor (Novas, 87).

Ever since Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, going ¨al norte,¨ (north) to the United States had been a logical step for Mexicans seeking to improve their lot, and they had entered the United States with no questions asked.  Countless Mexican farmhands, shepherds, cowboys, and miners, in search of better and highly paid work had crossed the border unimpeded.  So, too, had political refugees fleeing the many upheavals during Mexico´s formative years as a sovereign nation, especially after the Mexican Revolution of 1910.  While in 1924 the United States did not impose immigration quotas on Mexicans seeking to enter the U.S. territory, that year it did make showing proof of identity and other documentation a mandatory requirement to gain ¨legal" entry.  Many Mexicans entered the country ¨legally,¨ but others viewed the paperwork as an impediment and began dodging the border patrol.  Before long, the term ¨illegal immigrant¨ entered the American vocabulary (Novas, p. 87).

The Mexicans who fled the Mexican Revolution for the United States were accustomed to meager wages, and appalling living conditions, and they were grateful just to have a job, even one with low pay.  Mexican agricultural workers were willing to plant, tend, and harvest crops from sunup to sundown without a break, which enabled commercial farms throughout the American Southwest and California to flourish. By the 1920´s, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had emerged as the single most important source of agricultural labor in California (and they remain so to this day), replacing the Chinese and the Japanese, who had worked the fields at the turn of the century.  The early 1920´s saw the expansion of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans also went to work on the tracks.  A 1929 government report indicates that as many as 70-90 percent of all workers on the southwestern railroads were of Mexican origin. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad also heavily recruited Mexicans and Mexican-Americans ( Novas, p. 88).

In the 1960´s, 1970´s, and 1980´s, some undocumented Mexican immigrants commonly crossed the border without guides, an extremely dangerous undertaking, then roamed the Southwest and California until finding work.  Others were led or transported across the border after paying a large sum to smugglers, known as ¨coyotes,¨ who profiled in the millions in this human traffic. These practices continued in the 1990´s and are still prevalent today, but a policy of stricter law enforcement in urban areas along the U.S. border; first implemented in 1994 under Operation Gatekeeper, forced border crossers farther and farther off the beaten path, and into remote areas of eastern California and Arizona to avoid detection, making the crossing all the more perilous.  In the years 1993 to 1996, almost 1,200 persons by official counts, lost their lives in border crossing attempts due to exposure to heat and cold, dehydration, snakebites, injury, and murder. (Novas, p. 102).

Mexican border commuters or ¨dailies,¨ are Mexican citizens who live in Mexico and work in the United States, crossing the border with a green card or a border crossing card.  Border commuters holding a green card are permitted to work in the United States as long as they maintain continuous employment.  Theoretically, they are supposed to reside within the United States, but the INS has looked the other way. In contradistinction, border commuters with a border crossing card, and not a coveted green card, are barred from working in the United States, from remaining in the country for over seventy-two hours, and from traveling more than twenty-five miles from the border.  Over the decades, many commuters with border-crossing cards have ignored the restrictions and secured employment in the United States.  Until rather recently, a common practice among these commuters, once in the United States was to mail their border crossing cards to Mexico so that if INS authorities apprehended them, their cards would not be confiscated.  Commuters sent back to Mexico simply retrieved their border crossing cards and headed north again.  Nowadays it´s not so easy to execute such a swift return if they are caught (Novas, p. 103).

Some with border crossing cards have managed to remain in the United States by buying round-trip airline tickets to a destination far from the border as soon as they enter the country. Once in Chicago, Detroit, or some other place, they join friends or relatives who may have found them a job.  In the old days, when security at U.S. airports was lax, they would sell their return airline tickets, which provided enough money until the first paycheck.  The new arrivals would then lose themselves in the crowd and join the vast underground American economy---but, of course, without legal recourse, and always under the thread of discovery and deportation (Novas, p. 103).

These facts on Mexicans and Mexican-Americans raise interesting questions for us from a biblical/theological standpoint. The fundamental question would be ¨What does God think of all this?¨ Some Christians would be quick to quote Romans 13 where the Apostle Paul speaks about submitting to the ¨powers that be,¨ in order to justify preventing so-called ¨illegal¨ persons from coming here from Mexico.  They forget the historical reality that this nation is a nation of people who have immigrated,  beginning with the Anglo-American, and the Euro-American colonizers.   They will utilize the Bible, unintentionally albeit, as a tool of oppression and suppression.  Then there are other Christians who read the Bible in the light of the oppression that our Mexican-American sisters and brothers are experiencing.  The Bible in general, and the Gospel message in particular, are seen and used as mechanisms and tools of liberation.   They will refer to prophetic books in which there is reference to ill treatment of foreigners, and poor people.

You, the reader, are invited to share your thoughts on the presence and treatment of Mexican-Americans in this country.  Tell us how you think the prophetic and Gospel messages apply or don´t apply to the socio-economic and political conditions in which Mexican-Americans find themselves living in the U.S.A.  Is the United States for them ¨the land of bondage,¨ or the ¨house of abundance?¨  Your input is considered very important and very valuable.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona