In the last segment we saw a couple of the tactics of imperialism; mainly the defeat of local government and the implementation of puppet governors to rule the conquered. We also went through the journey of how the Latin language became disseminated across Europe and eventually into the Iberian Peninsula.

But now we move on and approach the definition of Latino as westerners use it today. Now we will deal with how this mess of Latinization came to us and how it is currently destroying and suppressing our true identity and our right to self realization.

Now before we begin let me say that his essay will be short and sweet and straight to the point. I also want it to be known that the ones most immediately responsible for promoting the "Latino" are the popular media, gang mentalities, and socialist organizations such as Chicanos and MECHA and the Colsul de la Raza. Their success is attributed to the ignorance of the masses. In order to counter attack we must inform our people and educate them.

                                              The Curse of the West

First let me clear up and define my terms. The "West" is a term that is used in application to the cultures, languages and economies of the western part the continent of European. When you see the term "The West" being applied it should be understood to generally mean "Europe."

We are Mexicans, we are not Latinos and we are not Hispanics. As I explained in the previous essay the term Latino is not indigenous to the American continents, it was imported from Europe by it’s invading hordes of conquistadores. But before we can discuss the origin of "Latino" we need to see it’s older cousin "Hispanic." This term was coined when the Spanish occupation renamed our land, which the Mexica had dubbed "Anáhuac," (Encyclopedia Britannica 1911) into "Nueva España;" New Spain. During the colonial period the colonizers would refer to themselves as Novohispanos or Iberoamericanos which literally means "new Spaniard" (Lira & Muro 307-360). And it is for this reason that we as Mexicans must reject the term "Hispanic," as well the term Latino because both of these terms carry the implication and assumption that we are Spanish when in fact we are the descendants of the natives of this land. The term Hispanic was used consistently and deliberately by the Spanish colonizer to distinguish his regime in Mexico from that of the natives such as the Aztec, Maya, Tlaxcala or Teotihuacano empires and city states. But we as a Mexican people today do not recognize the rule of the Spaniards nor do we identify with them. In fact, it is common knowledge in Mexico that we hold in a much higher esteem our indigenous ancestors than the Spanish invaders. We celebrate and honor Cuauhtemoc and the Aztec victory against the Spaniards in "La Noche Triste."

The term "Latin America" came out of an imperialistic ideology invented by Napoleon III, in his words: Amérique Latine. This came together with the phrase Indochine or Indochina because these two vast territories were sought after in his imperialistic goals. The french dubbed particularly ‘Latin’ America in order to create some justification for their goal of conquest which never came to be.

                                                         Contradicting Histories

In the United States it is taught in schools that the English came to America to colonize it and after a time they rebelled against their fatherland and established their own independent democratic state on this land. And for this their lessons begin with, and within, Europe by learning of the causes and the conditions which lead them to migrate into the Americas. The Anglo-Americans them proceeded to fight against the Native Americans in order to push them off their land to make way for the white settlers. Typically, U.S. children begin their history lesson of the United States in A.D. 1776 with usually a few other lessons in English history and European heritage such as Greek and Roman history.

Now in Mexico the history lesson begins not in A.D. 1810 nor in 1531, not even in 1492. Our History begins here, in this very continent, at a time around 25,000 B.C. with the first migrations through the Bearing Straight in Alaska. In Mexico children learn that our people came from Asia across the bearing straight as hunter and gatherer societies chasing their game across Beringia. Our history then proceeds to our first domestication of corn, our staple crop, and the civilizations that were preliminary for the domestication of crops and agrarian cultures. Them our ancestry begins to take shape with the coming of the Olmecs at approximately 1,200 B.C. which is our oldest civilization that we know of in North America. From here you can guess the next indigenous civilizations that come along such as the Toltec, Teotihuacan, the Aztec and the Maya. And then our history takes a dark turn with the arrival of the Spaniards. We see Europe as the invaders and not as our own people the way the U.S. see the English and western culture.

From this you can all begin to get a more clear perspective that Mexicans are not Spanish either in culture, integrity or in ethnicity. So let me say it again with a fervent voice, We are NOT Spanish!

A major contradiction worth mentioning is how the U.S. defines us as opposed to how we, as a Mexican people, define ourselves. It is not surprising that among westerners they would rather want to see their own image reflected on everything they see instead of anything strange or foreign to them. They seek what is similar to them and shun the unfamiliar. The European only recognizes that which is European so it comes as no wonder why the U.S., which is western country, only recognizes the ‘Spanish’ in Mexico and not the authentic Mexican himself. It was the United States who are most immediately responsible for the phrase Latino to become common after they adopted the term in the early twentieth century after Napoleon III had already invented it. Before that the U.S. has called everything south of the border "Spanish America." Thus when United Statians speak of Mexicans they think of us in terms of Spaniards, Hispanics, Latinos; as if we were decedents of Europeans like they are and not an ancient indigenous people which they nearly extinguished. When I read the work of Howard F. Cline, in The United States and Mexico, I am very disgusted at the Eurocentric tone of his literature in describing our people and our nation. The intended audience of this book are English speaking Americans in none other than Harvard University. So is this how the ‘scholars’ of the Unites States see Mexicans? They see us as Spaniards they way they see themselves as Anglo-Saxons? This should serve you now to see the reality of this culture war. We are fighting to define ourselves under our terms not theirs. We are what we are and not what they want us to be.

                                                Linguistic and Racial Distortions

And now lets us debunk the Latino label which has suppressed and distorted our true heritage for nearly 500 years. The term Latino is applied under two pretexts: the linguistic and the racial.

Let’s first deal with the racial aspect since it’s the aspect that is the most stupid and absurd. Let it be know now that Latino is NOT a race, it is not an ethnicity and it is not a skin color. Some contemporary circles of pseudo-scholars follow in a half baked ideology that was promoted by the first generation Mexican, of Portuguese parents, Jose Vasconcelos. Although I respect the man as a scholar I have no respect for his racial ideology. This ideology is summed up in his work called "La Raza Cosmica" in where he held the general idea that by race mixing we would ultimately get rid of all prejudices and forms of discrimination. He viewed race and culture mixing as inevitable and natural when most today can validly argue that it is neither. But his fundamental flaw, as with most first generation Mexicans with no Mexican heritage, is that he still held the Eurocentric notion that European culture would be the guiding light. Sure we would be a mixed race but would nonetheless be subjugated to European culture and be ruled in their image. Those today that promote the Latino label use the pretext of race mixing in order that people of various mixed ethnicity would constitute as their own group set apart from the rest and be defined as "Latinos" while still holding on to racial ideologies which spawned from seventeenth century Europe. Not to mention that the only ones promoting the Latino label are South Americans, including Cubans, Puerto Ricans and all those people who have completely lost touch with their mother culture, and who most likely are living in the U.S. suffering some fort of identity crisis and find comfort in this racial ideology.

Latino is NOT a race nor is it what defines those people of any mixed race because it has no clear definition of what it’s supposed to be and it creates an ethnic chaos with no order and no unity. It also poses a lethal threat to the identity of Mexico because it promotes foreigners to come into the fatherland and stamp their own ideologies that confuse and distort our traditions which will result in the ultimate destruction of our identity as a people. For the good of all sovereign nations, not just Mexico, the ideology of a "Latino people" must be abolished and authentic national identity must be promoted. Nowhere else in the world do you apply a racial-linguistic term like Latino to define a vast number of different people who have barely anything in common. The proper and only true way to call any people is by their national, regional or cultural identity, i.e. French (National), African (Continental), Islamic (Cultural). The "Latino" term must be abolished.

Next is the idea of us being Latinos only because we speak a "Romance" (Latin based) language. This idea I have already dealt with in the previous essay. The Mexican nation has no official language, some Mexicans do not even have Spanish as their first language and an increasing number of people, now approximately 1.5 million, in Mexico are speaking Nahuatl along with various other Native American languages. To brand us to be Latinos only because Spanish is a common language is a stupidity, why aren’t the French, Italians, Portugese, and Algerians considered Latinos in the same context that so many of us are branded to be Latinos? Well because Latino is NOT solely about language. The word Latino is actually more or less a word of limbo, it’s a word that implies that those outside of us have no clue what we are. And, as mentioned above, "Latino" did not originate with the region of South American but was implanted unto it by foreign imperial power and to this day undermines and degrades every single culture that exists in South America by promoting a mixture which is severely damaging the heritage and identity of Mexico because it is seeping north into our nation through ignorance, the media, and propaganda.

                                                              Bibliography:

Lira & Muro. Historia General de Mexico. Pages 307-360. El Colegio De Mexico, 2007.

Cline, Howard F. The United States and Mexico. Harvard University Press. Massachusetts, 1967.

Young, Robert J.C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Pages 1-28.

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century." Ed. Fredi Chiapelli. First Images of America: the Impact of New World on the Old. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.