Give the land back.

Cinco de Mayo: How a Mexican holiday became a party in the USA

The May 5 holiday honors Mexico’s victory in an 1862 battle—so how did it come to rival St. Patrick’s Day as a day of revelry in the United States?

“Shower the people you love with love.
Show them the way that you feel.
Make it rain
love.”

– James Taylor

January 30, 2023

Todos somos calaveras

November 2, 2022

This has been an eye-opening period for many in this city. To those of us that have grown up here, the biggest part of this mess has been how shocked people are that these things are real and they happen here under beautiful blue California skies and golden sunshine.

How quickly people forget that the country just suffered through 4 years of turmoil under the leadership of a wannabe fascist? That episode rocked our democracy. And the fight is long from being over. The wife of a Supreme Court justice has proudly admitted to being deeply involved in the failed coup. Neo-Fascists and Neo-Nazis in this country are more emboldened than ever, even here in Los Angeles. The looming threat of fascism is alive and well, we just don’t see it, as a lot of us didn’t see the fury boiling under the surface here in this wonderful city at the edge of the beautiful Pacific, it got lost in the sun.

Ms. Martinez’ remarks were supposedly made in private behind closed doors, they were illegally and secretly taped without consent. By their nature, the comments, technically are not a crime, while the secret recordings are. The irony in all of this is deceit plays a very big role in the intermixed history of politics and colonialism in the United States. This great city has a long history of foul play behind a dark curtain. Yes, her comments hurt us all and will leave a long-lasting mark. There is much truth in what she has to say. Much of what has been exposed on both sides of the curtain is ugly.

And still another part of what I hear is pain. Pain inflicted by over 5oo years of oppression at the hands of white Europeans, who colonized this land, from sea to shining sea. These foreigners from our past inflicted internal wounds on all of us - the people that were disparaged by Ms. Martinez” remarks, including Indigenous, European immigrants, Middle Easterners, and Americans of African descent, all people that have historically been targets of oppression and division, including her own people, Mexicans. Yes, as many discovered, Oaxaqueños are Mexicans.

It was the Europeans who came to America, a name given to this land (named after a white European), despite the name the natives knew it by. They forged lasting wedges between the natives in their pursuit and exploitation of the riches of this new world. They aligned people against people as a prime strategy of their imperialist wars. The divisions between us have never been addressed, maybe now is the time and place.

It was also white Europeans that enslaved people of other lands and brought them to this land in chains to replace the native populations they had systematically reduced due to genocide by way of warfare, slavery, and diseases brought from Europe. They brought black skin natives by the boatloads, because they knew many would perish under the harsh treatment they routinely administered to human beings they deemed inferior. White European conquerors offset their losses with greater numbers. They had done similar things previously to the indigenous of the Americas, by which time their populations had been greatly diminished. White Europeans divided and slew Native Americans of the Western hemisphere from the Artic to the Antarctic. To the commanders carrying out their imperial duties it was all just business, brutal capitalism, nothing personal.

The Sistema Casta - created by Spain - was a system of hierarchy, with roots in Medieval Europe, as evidenced by the current state of the city council, is still in place today, was created to ensure white Europeans and their descendants holding power in the “New World” remained superior to the natives. It was a system designed to ensure racial purity.

With origins in the Inquisition, La Sistema determined a person’s rights and social standing. Naturally, the white Español was at the top of the order with intermixed races in declining order. At the bottom of the list and least desirable were Indio and Negro.

The Sistema Casta was unilaterally employed during their reign of colonization and forced upon people of all the lands they subjugated around the globe. The British, Portuguese, Dutch all employed very similar systems of classification throughout their colonies around the world. The system has been in place here on our soils since the 1500s, long before it was outed in a one year-old tape hidden in the darkest recesses of our city until now. The wounds are still as fresh today as when they were first inflicted over 500 years ago on the dark skins of natives.

Is there a person of color or a woman who has lived in this city, country, that hasn’t felt the cold breath of one form or another of La Sistema? I experienced it growing up and have always felt it’s ever-presence. The caste system was ingrained in the culture of the United States and throughout the Americas and spread across the globe as an integral part of democracy. It is written into the Constitution and further expanded upon in the laws that govern every state in the union.

For centuries black people were lynched in the South as a routine part of everyday life, it’s called law and order. Out here in the West, Mexicans were hung, decapitated, shot, vigilante justice handed out to bandidos and desperados. In reality, these were ordinary men and women who stood up to defend their families and communities when their lands and property were forcibly taken from them by mob rule. Brown skin women were often labeled as prostitutes attempting to take advantage of Anglo citizens, not victims of assault. In the lawless West, bounties were paid for dark- haired Indian scalps, many dark-haired Mexican scalps found their way into the tallies. Not much of that history is mentioned in how the west was won. Sundown towns are part of California’s history. Mexicans have been erased.

The Declaration of Independence stated “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Where were their “certain unalienable Rights? Their self-evident truths endowed by their Creator? What happened to their “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?”

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 allowed uncivilized Indian savages to be slaughtered, their food sources driven to extinction simply to deprive them of food. Wars waged on Native Americans subjected them to starvation, disease, slavery, and violent death. Native Americans were removed.

The Chinese and Asian people who were imported for labor in the gold mines and to build the country’s railroads were denied the right to bring their families to this country. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed to ease concerns regarding the economic decline blamed on Chinese immigration to the West coast, it was essentially about maintaining white superiority and racial purity. America didn’t need Asian families, Philippinos, Japanese, or Chinese, just cheap Asian labor. Especially not here in California!

The same has been true for migrant farm workers, predominately indigenous, they are not viewed as whole people with families, just cheap labor. Over the years, entire communities have been burned, businesses and lives destroyed all on unfounded fears of dark skin people. These atrocities have for the most part been whitewashed in the building of this country where only on paper, “all men are created equal.”

The ugly inequities and segregation in housing, education, employment, and health care created by colonialism has corrupted our country to the core, leading impoverished people of color to blindly battle one another in pursuit of the unachievable American dream, which was never meant for them.

No, Nury Martinez is not excused. This was not a rant before her husband in the privacy of her own home, who hasn’t done that at some point in their life. She was a public servant entrusted with exercising immense power over one of the great cities in the world, a potential example to young girls, as she stated in her lightweight apology. She was out in the open speaking with other powerful politicians at a public facility, regardless of whether it was a private meeting or not. Because of that she is now just another statistic. A victim of an anonymous hit and run recording. Another woman and person of brown skin that dared to defy her given standing in society – because she certainly isn’t white! Nury Martinez was canceled.

She failed to see the gravity of her immediate situation - a lack of situational awareness is what a coach says in trying to explain a shocking team breakdown leading to a debilitating defeat – she lacked situational awareness. That day three other powerful Mexican Americans also lacked situational awareness.

How is it that the evidence of an event of this magnitude that is shaking the country, and the world, the recorded tapes, lay in the dark for over a year? Who recorded them and what was the purpose of secret recordings of a private meeting? Who arranged for them? Who stands to benefit from the turmoil in the Los Angeles city government just before a crucial election at an equally crucial time in the history of this country?

These are thoughts everyone in this city should now entertain, in addition to the nuanced meaning of the recorded ramblings. What is the truth that resides in those biting words? The answers may point to the power hidden behind the curtain. Los Angeles is the great city of today due to the hidden negotiations behind its water rights. People of color have always been left to fight turf wars of a system that functions exactly as it was designed.

How do we as a city move forward with, as they say, transparency? Transparency, a colorful theme that has lost all meaning that it’s part of the smoke and mirrors.

To me, it’s clear what has taken place. I’ve grown up here, with people of all colors, I’m accustomed to the sunshine and the blue skies. I prefer the word clarity.

October 14, 2022

“One day they came and they took the communists, and I said nothing because I was not a communist.

Then one day they came and they took the people of the Jewish faith, and I said nothing because I was not a Jew

Then one day they came and took the unionists, and I said nothing because I was not a unionist.

They burned the Catholic churches one day, and I said nothing because I was a Protestant.

One day they came and they took me, and I could say nothing because I was as guilty as they were, for not speaking out and saying that all people have a right to freedom. I was as guilty of genocide as those that killed the 18 million people along with me, destroying the rights of any man to live.”

Charles Mingus
1965

“Todos comemos del mismo plato.”

July 22, 2022

I read an article last week in the National Geographic Magazine online edition. The article was about the origin of Europeans. What is the origin of Europeans, what many in this country believe is the white race? The science-based answer will come as a shock to many considering how many people live in a fictional alternative reality devoid of scientific truth.

For centuries one group of people or another has forced wars, or horrendously embarked on a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing to protect their racial purity or claims to their ancestral homelands. The United States is presently deeply engaged in multi-level cultural wars, with tragic outcomes, which involve beliefs of superiority of one group over all others, including a war on the sovereignty of women.

The article on the origins of Europeans is, by circumstance, applicable to people who call themselves “native born Americans”. Modern Europeans are not a pure white race, not according to genome research on ancient human remains and artifacts. Far from even being indigenous to Europe, Europeans are descendants from a mix of people from Africa, the Middle East, and Russia.

Immigrants!

Immigrants that followed the ice thaw and food sources from places in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to the European continent. Immigrants who brought their arts, agriculture, cultural customs and languages.

The scientific evidence shows that the world as a whole is a world of immigrants. Scientific facts have for decades traced the origins of man to Africa. Even European Neanderthals are not indigenous, they migrated to Europe from Africa approximately 50-60,000 years ago. DNA results have provided large amounts of data, along with ancient cave art. Ancient trade routes provide additional information on the evolution of Europeans.

With the exception of indigenous Native Americans, Americans are descendants of immigrants to America. In the real world with all of the scientific data available today, do anti-immigrant, racial purity and supremacy arguments hold any water? No.

We are one.

May 20, 2022

On May 5, 1862, an inexperienced, poorly supplied, outmanned Mexican army defeated the elite army of the Second French Empire at the Battle of Puebla. The battle itself did not decide the war—the French invasion continued to capture Puebla and then Mexico City in 1863. Mexico finally defeated the army of Napoleon III to drive the French out of Mexico in 1867.

Over time, the Battle of Puebla has grown in significance. The victory strengthened the morale of Mexico, then a very young country, and became the rallying cry of resistance to foreign domination. For Mexicans, as well as Mexican-Americans, it has become a symbol of Mexican culture, resilience, and character.

Cinco de Mayo is not about eating tacos, donning fake mustaches and straw hats to engage in mass consumption of alcohol. No, it is not a ‘holiday’ created for drunken fraternity and spring break parties. This misappropriation and the accompanying racist representation of my culture is equivalent to holding a blackface party – unfortunately this has also been done. The socially accepted characterizations of Mexican culture that have been created around Cinco de Mayo are deeply ingrained in our culture. In this day and age there could not be a clearer example of institutionalized racism.

Cinco de Mayo, 2022

“Remember what was given to you before you were born.”

– Carlos Santana

Slava Ukraini!

March 8, 2022

“The notes that you don’t hear – the silence – are just as important as the ones you play.”
Miles Davis

February 23, 2022

One year ago, the United States survived the gravest threat in history to its democracy. This country, despite all its flaws, remains the greatest experiment in government in the world. In principle we have a written guarantee of freedom and human rights for all. Many of this country’s founding principals were learned from the natives of the Americas, a legacy that should be cherished by all Americans.

Yet today indigenous America remains invisible and banished from its ancestral lands. The year 2021 saw mass graves uncovered at numerous sites of North American Indian schools. Graves filled with the bodies of indigenous children. Children that were forcibly removed from their parents for patriation utilizing powers within treaties. Stories of abuses that occurred at Indian schools abound, the extent of which are just coming to light.

In Chiapas, Mesoamerica, the Coca Cola Company drains underground water from the land of the Maya. To supplement the exploitation of precious, clean drinking water Coca Cola provides an abundant supply of its sugary drink exacerbating the epidemic of diabetes among the indigenous population. This amounts to nothing more than poisoning the Maya, a continuation of the indigenous holocaust that has been systematically carried on since Europeans arrived in 1492.

Up North, in Minnesota, a global conglomerate, supported by the oil industry, continues forward with its pipeline carrying shale oils through native lands and waterways. The “Black Snake” leaks poison into ancestral waters, carrying death to the land, wildlife, and the Objibwe way of life. Indigenous people are arrested for protecting their native waters by law enforcement agents paid by the oil company.

The intrusions into all native lands of America from north to south, east to west have brought disease, war, violence, enslavement, dispossession, and a devastation to a way of life that existed on these lands for centuries. The tragedy was not restricted to the contiguous continents, it spread to all corners of American hemisphere including Alaska and Hawaii. In the continental United States alone, the number of native people that have been killed as a result of indigenous holocaust is estimated to be approximately 20 million. That estimated number soars to a staggering 100 million indigenous lives lost taking into account the estimates for the entire hemisphere.

This difficult past year of Covid saw the U.S. life expectancy drop significantly. Not surprising, for Mexican Americans the drop in life expectancy was twice as high, for indigenous people those numbers are close to 3 times the drop of life expectancy as Americans of European descent. Already at a disadvantage, brown and red people of America continue to feel the increased burden of a lack of human capital investment and housing, food insecurity, diminishing educational opportunities, job training and mental health services.

Currently there are new voting laws in Texas, Arizona, and an additional 17 predominantly Republican controlled states that have been passed and/or upheld by partisan Supreme Court rulings and state legislatures. This is all part of a current movement in this country, some 300 similar laws are at some point in the legislative process at the present time. Their supporters claim they are in place to prevent the phantom fraud that “stole the election” from the very person that instigated the failed coup last January 6. Not surprising, the laws are written to place voting restrictions on predominately Mexican American, Native American, and Black voters.

This systemic pattern of decimation did not start with the supporters of the big lie. The history of the United States is filled with “solutions in search of a problem”. In modern America all native people remain bound by the shackles forged in 1492. We will all be free when all are free.

January 17, 2022

Around the country there is a sense that we are emerging out from behind this science fiction reality that has cast a shadow on the world. Mankind is closing in on a tie with the virus, which has taken millions of lives. We may draw even but there will be no victory.

As this tragedy has continued to unfold there was a point when most knew this didn’t have to take the course that it did, and yet driven by blindness the nation dove in headfirst. The struggle to overcome the virus exposed humanity, all of the best, and all of the worst. 

Before this plague, there was sickness all around in a pre-pandemic time. The United States has been weary and consumed by immense pain since Europeans first set foot on the continent. America’s brown skin inhabitants were infected, hunted and slaughtered, the remaining populations have been herded to desolate unforgiving lands. As the native populations were neutralized, people of dark skin were captured on their native lands and shipped to ‘the land of the free’, in bondage, and exploited as slaves. This is not an isolated American problem, it is a global human rights atrocity. To this day there are still those who guard fences with a firm grip on chains.

There is hope. The way forward is in the direction of the light and out of the darkness. But for far too many, even in times of hope, there is very little light. Great sickness prevails, there is darkness of the soul, darkness that perpetuates darkness.

Man’s inhumanity to man is as it has always been for centuries. No amount of scientific discoveries, advancements in technology, or widespread dissemination of information have changed the essence of humankind.  The unfortunate fact is that what was once material for fiction is mostly reality now in one form or another, the good and the bad.

Years ago, I created a series of art works as a commentary on the ills which faced our nation during that time. It focused predominantly on the roots of violence, which inevitably extract a disproportionate toll on the young, especially those of color. This country is still in the grips of a hallucinating fever, an illness as old as civilization itself for which there is no vaccine. It’s a sobering reality that my work from decades ago is as relevant today as it was when I first created it. The underlying issues have only become increasingly more layered. Our country’s problems are a complex web and mounting, the solutions more so, given the complexities arising from a culture founded on violence.

The term “lost year” has become a common refrain to create distance from the depths of our experience. Certainly, there has been a great cost, in lives, livelihoods, as well as indescribable global suffering. It has been far from a lost year. It is a period of profound reckoning which should shape our collective consciousness, inspire reflection, move us to become a more thoughtful and caring society, open to the evolving possibilities of life.

April 15, 2021

IMPEACHED

January 13, 2021

“Todos somos calaveras.”

October 26, 2020

Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Topanga, CA

October 12, 2020

September 28, 2020

Ignorance is the night of the mind. Night without moon and stars.

Confucious

I was born the color of the earth.

America is one whole continent, everyone who is born here is American.
El color podra ser diferente
Mas como hijos de Dios somos hermanos.

De America, yo soy.

Los Tigres del Norte
1986

“Do not let them take away your power.
Do not let them take away your democracy.”

– Barack Obama
August 19, 2020

___________________________________________________

July 22, 2020

In The state of California, Latinos, predominantly Mexican Americans, make up close to 40% of the population, yet suffer 50% of Covid-19 infections. This disproportionate share of infections out of the state population is due to the large number of “essential workers” of Mexican descent that comprise the work forces in agriculture, meat processing, urban service sectors, including in the hospitality and medical fields, and the garment industry. Mexican Americans provide most of the unskilled yet essential labor in the nation’s most populous state and pay billions in state and federal taxes.

In the meat processing industry alone, over 1,400 workers in California have been infected, as a result of the President’s April 2020 executive order meant to “solve the liability problems” for big business, which was issued during the previous height of the pandemic in California. One Los Angeles garment manufacturer has had over 300 positive cases in one factory.

When forced to face the issue by the media, federal government agencies have said “they are taking steps to address unsafe workplaces.” The Republican majority in the Senate has presented another liability clause to benefit business to be included into the next government financial relief package, along with reduced unemployment benefits, and a reduction in Food Stamp benefits for families that rely on the SNAP program. The needs of immigrants have been deliberately excluded from any relief aid.

Recent attacks by the president take aim at an accurate constitutional count in the census along with attacks on the voting rights of all minorities, not just Mexican Americans.

Human Rights are not negotiable.

Essential workers should be treated as essential for producing fresh produce for the country, processing the meat for the country’s tables and restaurants, preparing food for the nation’s restaurants, sewing clothing and PPE, cleaning and disinfecting hospitals, restaurants, hotels, delivering goods, and providing maintenance for vehicles, homes, and businesses.

Forcing vulnerable “essential” workers to choose, either to continue to work in unsafe and unsanitary conditions for below minimum wage or lose their livelihoods during this pandemic amounts to profiteering from the indentured servitude of brown indigenous people of America, a systemic practice that dates to the arrival of the first white Europeans to the Americas, it is no less than 21st century slavery.

Juan Rojas Aguilar
Descendant of Mexihcah

This is a somber moment in the history of our country, one that must result in meaning and change. A man’s last breath was violently taken from him in front of the world. At this time entire nations of America’s native people are threatened with extinction. In some desolate part of the country, children of the indigenous Americas are incarcerated behind concrete and steel, away from their parents. Recently, weapons of war were brandished in an attempt to silence the voice of the people.

Black Americans, Mexican Americans, the descendants of the Americas, Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, all people of color, have been subjected to systematic human rights violations since the first Europeans set foot and began a ruthless subjugation of this land.

With the United States of America mired on a rudderless course and recoiling from the yet another in a long list of racial crimes, we must seize the moment to reset on a steady course. A course based on principal. A government that boasts of human rights violations against its people is not great, it is a sign of decline and darkness.

A government of the people, by the people, for the people dictates that black lives matter, brown lives matter, all lives matter.

As the world openly rebels in response to the history of atrocities committed against black people, and all people of color, in this country, we need to focus the light of truth on those with authoritarian aspirations, presently in this government, that propose to wield absolute unchecked power.

Where are the thousands of children? Who protects the unalienable rights of indigenous nations? In this country founded on enslavement and genocide against people of dark skin, it is time to address the abuse of power and the countless systematic crimes committed in the name of freedom. What else is hidden in America’s darkness?

Use your voice. VOTE.

Juan Rojas Aguilar
June 6, 2020

Untitled (wheat)
Hunger in the age of information. Hunger for sustenance, the infinite, truth.

2012-2019

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said in the same speech. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” 
2015

“I will build a great, great wall on our Southern border.”
2015

“So we’re going to build a wall and it will be a great wall.”
2016

“With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL.”
2017

“You can’t come in, our country is full.”
2019

“Many of these illegal aliens are living far better now (in camps) than where they came from. If they are unhappy, just tell them not to come to this country.”
2019

“They hate our country. If you hate our country you can leave.
Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
2019

I have consistently tried to keep my self involved in the important issues that shape our lives. By doing so I add an important voice to the public discourse.

Of course, I have and continue to be opposed to the use of social media, since its inception, on the principal that while it offers social connectivity to billions of its users, I have had questions as to its prudent use. Social media connects users across all boundaries. It also allows users to cross all moral boundaries. 

The revelations that have surfaced widely since 2016 about its misuse have only added to my initial suspicions of these open forms of mass communication that function by placing so much power in the hands of a few, with no oversight or accountability. Free of responsibility, the media has been subjugated as a tool for spreading fear, ignorance, hatred, fraud, and profiteering. This is the United States of America.

My art is about the experience, about touching the real world. I still spin records, shoot film, read books, garden, split firewood. I drive a capable used vehicle. I chose to remain very analog and connected to the earth, I don’t facebook, instagram, or twitter.

I have worked on this particular project for the past couple of years. From a research phase, to experimentation with material, to location scouting, to the photography, and the photograph itself; through each phase, it has taken on greater significance as I look back at my parents’ path, which is the same as all American citizens, and work to shape the future of the world for my kids and grandkids. 

Since its founding, this country has stood as a light shinning in the darkness of human rights violations. The image of the Unites States of America was crafted as a Roman goddess, a champion and defender of the oppressed. 

A burnished gleaming monument, bathed in rich patina, standing at the seaside gate through which millions of refugees have entered this land seeking freedom. The gilded image has stood in all of its glory and pomp, lauded with grand proclamations. The truth is, for centuries this country has been built on a foundation of violence and crimes against humanity.

That reality has never been more apparent than today. “The greatest celebration this country has ever seen” comes with the greatest of prices, in the lives of innocent children seeking asylum from that grand lady, waiting, torch held high lighting the way to freedom.

We are all migrants, every American should take the time to reflect on their lives, histories, and the legacy they will leave behind.

Therein lies the greatness.

Juan Rojas Aguilar July 20

I like to look at everything in the natural sunlight.