File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 69


Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 11:19:11 -0700
Subject: Article from Rodolfo Acuna
From: Matthew <matthew-AT-heydaybooks.com>


Me voy de soldado raso . . .
Rodolfo Acu~na

   For the past two weeks, I have been attempting to avoid the
controversy around the events of September 11, realizing that navigating a
mine field covered with flags is never easy. However, there are already
voices in the Latino community who are hammering out the tired rhetoric that
Mexicans have always rallied to the flag--and by implication, that is why we
deserve to be called Americans.

   My worst fear is that we won't ask the questions we should ask today
until after the body bags begin coming home. As a citizen, I want specific
questions answered before we commit ourselves, or our children to another
war. I do not believe that debating the reasons for a war and the
consequences of our actions rationally is unpatriotic. As a father of a
teenage daughter and three grandsons sprinting toward draft age, I don't
want to find myself in the position of Robert McNamarra and his gaggle of
hawks who orchestrated the Viet Nam War and later said that they had been
mistaken. Sometimes it is too late to say, "I am sorry!" Unlike so many of
today's pro-war voices, I volunteered for the Korean War. I was old enough
(and yet young enough) to remember and identify with the words of the
"Soldado Raso" sung by my uncles, cousins and family friends as they went
off to World War II:
   les probare que mi raza
   sabe morir donde quiera.
   Ma~nana salgo temprano
   al despertar nuevo dia
   y aqui va otro mexicano
   que va a jugarse la vida,
   que se despide cantando:
   que viva la patria mia.
   que va a jugarse la vida,
   que viva la patria mia.

   (I will prove that my race
   knows how to die anywhere
   I leave early tomorrow
   as the light of day shines
   here goes another Mexican
   who knows how to gamble his life,
   that gives his farewell singing:
   long live my country.)

     With age and education, I began to reflect on the haunting words of the
song, and concluded that you do not have to "gamble" your life to be an
American. That the true patriot is the person who raises questions, and
avoids mistakes--not having to say, "I am sorry!" The true hero is the
person who speaks up against injustice wherever it is. I envy those in
Germany who spoke up against the holocaust and those here who spoke up
against the internment of the Japanese. The American heros for me are the
Quakers who spoke up against the genocide of the Native American, slavery,
the Mexican War and defended peace.

   On September 11th, a tragic thing happened. Only the most callous or
unthinking person would applaud the indiscriminate killing of innocent
people. It is the kind of extremism that I condemned in my own government
when it bombed Bagdad, and for which I criticize Israel for in its brutal
suppression of Palestinians. In the 1980s I raised similar concerns about
Osama bin Laden and his ilk when the United States was arming them on the
sole criterion that they were anticommunist. The waving of the flag
justified everyone of those instances.

   I naively entered academe because I believed that through reason I
could find truth, and that through defining truth solutions could be
found to our problems. Truth for me was not the waving the flag, and
accepting the prevailing paradigm. The truth for me could only be found
through the questioning or testing of assumptions. In examining whether or
not the US should blow up Afghanistan, reason tells me that we better be
pretty sure that the people who we are retaliating against are at fault.
Just like I would not want to be blamed for every extreme act perpetrated by
a Mexican American, I don't want to blame every Moslem for the extremist
among them.

   I am no fan of the Taliban regime but asking for the evidence against bin
Laden before handing him over seems reasonable. We are not above
international law, and for us to bully any country to extradite one of its
residents without any sort of documentation places us above the law.  This
kind of John Wayne posturing may be good politics but it is not justice.

   Reason also tells me that we have worked very hard to ensure public
space for domestic programs to correct inequities. There are plenty of
people of all colors living below the poverty line. President Dwight
Eisenhower in the late 1950s warned about the growth of the military-
industrial complex. However, the hysteria of the moment is tipping the
balance even further out of kilter. Surely many domestic programs will
suffer the consequences of shifting large portions of our budget to the
military. Asking how a blank check to George W. will affect domestic
programs is not unpatriotic. If Americans believe that they can afford a
massive war and increased military spending along with maintaining our
domestic infrastructure, let's talk about it and cross the "t's" and dot the
"I's." To do otherwise is irresponsible.

   Being a citizen of any country and belonging to a world community
takes intelligence. It means that problems have to be intellectually thought
out. It is the extremist who believes that waving a flag or blowing up
people or bullying them can solve our problems. It is this kind of extremism
and the public's acceptance of it that has led to police states. I for one
would rather stand on the side of reason than be bullied or stampeded.
Democracy requires debate, not the waving of the flag.

Rodolfo Acuna
author of Occupied America-The Chicano's Struggle Toward Liberation




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