Author Archives: Editor@naccs.org

NACCS – Statement on the Climate Crisis

October 29, 2019 8:45 AM ,

The NACCS board believes it is important to have our voice as part of the global movement against climate chaos, and we have asked NACCS environmental scholars Dr. Devon Peña and Dr. Gabriel Valle to compose the following statement:

The climate change crisis is affecting all living organisms and ecosystems on the planet but the enduring effects of decades of environmental racism are resulting in disparate impacts. Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC), including Chicanx/Latinx populations, are already suffering major deleterious effects from this global process of environmental violence. It is important to understand first of all that climate chaos is not simply driven by anthropogenic (human-caused) forces but by the type of ravenous destruction of the planet’s life support systems of the global capitalist economy. The combination of extreme heat and cold weather events illustrates for us how so-called “global warming” and even “climate change” are inadequate terms to describe what is occurring and that the concept of climate chaos illustrates how the entire climate system is characterized by unpredictable disruptions with cumulative effects that scientists are only now recognizing and understanding. It is also important to understand how the effects of climate chaos are destroying ecological systems that we depend on to produce our food, medicine, clothing, and shelter. Climate chaos destroys the natural conditions of material cultures.

We are facing a crisis in which Native communities from the Arctic to the Andes and the Pacific Rim island nations are already being devastated by the chaos of climate change. We are facing a crisis in which BIPOC and low income persons are already being killed or displaced by the effects of climate change.

The evidence of disparate impacts must be weighed when we consider what our policy and political needs are in light of these devastating processes:

1. Urban heat islands. Research confirms that African Americans are 52% more likely than whites to live in “urban heat islands” (UHIs) defined as microclimates that can get an extra 5 to 10 degrees hotter during heat waves. Asian Americans are 32% more likely and Latinxs are 21% more likely to live in UHIs. In the Phoenix area, the mostly Native American neighborhood of Guadalupe suffered more than a dozen deaths during the summer heat wave of 2017 which led to 155 people dying. That set a record for the state of Arizona, passing the 2016 total of 150. Most of these deaths involve BIPOC communities. These differences are results of the longstanding shameful practice of residential segregation and a lack of open green spaces and tree cover in these segregated neighborhoods.

2. Extreme Cold Weather Mortality and Illness. Beyond the effects of heat waves, BIPOC populations are also suffering higher rates of mortality and illness as a result of extreme cold weather events affecting urban low-income barrios and rural communities including reservations.

3. Farm and other natural resource workers. There are 2.5-3 million farmworkers in the United States. Of these 80% are Latinx and more than half of these are Mexican-origin workers an increasing number of whom are Native Mesoamericans. Between 2000 and 2010, 359 occupational heat-related deaths were identified in the U.S., for a yearly average fatality rate of 0.22 per 1 million workers. Highest rates were found among Latinx males in the agriculture and construction industries. Farm and construction workers accounted for nearly 58 percent of occupational heat deaths from 2000 to 2010, and Latinxs had three times the risk of heat-related death on the job than did non-Latinxs.[1]

4. Climate refugees (Central America, Mexico). The so-called “Dirty Wars” and decades of neoliberal “Shock Doctrine” (including NAFTA) initiated a set of violent forces that – combined with severe drought and climate change impacts – have led to a mass forced migration of mostly Indigenous populations. These are the same populations that are being dehumanized and terrorized by US border and immigration control forces that are separating families and placing their children in cages.

5. Displacement of ‘cultures of habitat’. Indigenous peoples are recognized for their deep traditions of resilient inhabitation of ancestral territories and are renowned for providing ecosystem services to the Earth. This is why ethnoecologists the world over have long defended “ecosystem peoples” or “cultures of habitat” and their resilient and regenerative livelihood traditions and practices.[2] The same corporate and settler colonial nation state agencies that are underlying forces of climate chaos are actively engaged in the forced relocation of Indigenous communities. In the Southwest, Native American/Chicanx acequias communities are facing the prospect of extinction and displacement due to declining mountain snowpack that serves as the water source for these celebrated community irrigation systems.[3] The cultural landscape and ecological services of the acequia systems are being damaged by the effects of drought, past and ongoing deforestation, and extreme fluctuations in weather patterns. In Alaska, the Iñupiat village of Kivalina is being relocated due to rising sea levels and it is only one of many dozens of such Arctic communities directly affected by climate chaos.

6. Food system and food sovereignty impacts. BIPOC communities are already disproportionately affected by hunger and malnutrition. A USDA study of so-called “food insecurity” demonstrates that Mexican immigrant children suffer the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition in the U.S. BIPOC communities have long faced death by “nutricide” and are already increasing experiencing the loss of traditional foods, foodways, and heritage cuisines and of the agroecosystems and land and waterscapes that support our direct livelihood traditions and food cultures. Climate chaos is intensifying these deleterious losses of heritage cuisine, and traditional foodways and undermining our agroecosystems and our access to traditional hunting, foraging, and fishing areas.

7. Air Quality. In 1987, the Commission for Racial Justice at the United Church of Christ released the groundbreaking report, Toxic Waste and Race in the United States.[4] The report was one of the first documents to use the term “environmental racism” to explain how communities of color are more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air, which can lead to conditions of asthma, among other things. The report shows that three-fifths of BIPOC communities live in or near areas of toxic waste. These conditions are not simply because many of these communities live in urban areas, but because of the historical process of urban planning and policy making that dictates where industrial business reside, where freeways are built and expanded, and even the flight patterns of air traffic. The commission released a second report, Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty 1987-2007, and their findings show that in spite of laws and policies created to promote justice, the conditions in many BIPOC communities remain much the same.[5] In the coming years, the climate crisis will exacerbate these conditions. In urban communities, the heat island effect (see item 1) will worsen air quality and increase the prevalence of asthma. In rural communities, the climate crisis will compound drought conditions. Air quality in Fresno, CA, recently received an F by the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2019 report.[6]  Today, approximately 43.3 percent of Americans live in counties that have unhealthy ozone and/or particle pollution – that is more than 141 million people exposed to unhealthy air.

8. Water and Water Quality. The availability and the quality of water are both exacerbated by the climate crisis. A recent report notes that half the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Even in non-water stressed areas, the quality of surface water could deteriorate as more rain and storms drive erosion and the release of toxins. These dynamics could affect everything from the availability of drinking water for people to a shortage of water for livestock and crops (with negative effects for the food supply) to decreases in hydroelectric power generation.”[7] These water quality impacts are already affecting the health of U.S. urban BIPOC communities. We have learned that Flint, MI, is not an isolated incident, but just the tip of the iceberg. Municipalities access the country are being to realize this. In predominantly Latino, agricultural communities that rely on groundwater, community members experience elevated and long-term exposure to nitrates in their drinking water. Epidemiological evidence suggests an elevated risk of cancer and congenital disabilities in communities that experience nitrate exposure at levels below U.S. EPA’s drinking water standard (10 mg/L NO3-N).[8] Recent findings have shown high levels of lead in public schools. In California, the Community Water Center conducted as state-wade report that concludes from 2003-2014 over one million students attended schools that did not meet primary safe drinking water standards. The report also finds the schools impacted by unsafe drinking water had higher percentages of BIPOC students.[9] The struggle over water, while frequently framed as an environmental problem (i.e., drought), is, in fact, a highly political matter that influences the livelihood and wellbeing of urban and rural BIPOC communities. Climate chaos is only worsening these problems aided and abetted by the perverse logic of neoliberal policies that eliminate the investments in environmental quality and the protection of the Earth’s life-support systems like air, land, and water.

Therefore, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies declares the climate crisis the most paramount issue of our time. The systems and institutions that destroy the environmental conditions needed for clean air and water are the same systems and institutions that have historically denied Chicana/o and Latinx peoples a means to self-determination. The climate crisis is not amendable through “technological fixes” or “green consumerism,” because the climate crisis is deeply rooted in a particular type of settler colonialism and capitalism that prevents, and even erases, the sustainable livelihoods of Chicana/o and Latinx people and communities. The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies recognizes that while the climate crisis becomes more perilous by the day, Chicanas/os and Latinx peoples have always been engaged in struggles to improve our environments. From the acequia farmers improving soil health and agrobiodiversity through traditional agricultural practices,[10] to the mujeres organizing against polluting industry,[11] we have been there. From the campesinxs resisting pesticides,[12] to the ciudadanxs reusing coffee tins,[13] we have been there. The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies declares that in order to truly address the climate crisis, we must remake our social, political, and economic systems to promote diversity, autonomy, resilience, and a just sustainability.

The NACCS Board of Directors specifically calls for the following actions in support of the vital climate justice movement:

  • NACCS endorses the climate strike actions that youth across the U.S. and the rest of the planet have launched and call for continued widespread activism by BIPOC youth and their allies in these campaigns for climate justice.
  • We call on U.S. universities and colleges to divest themselves of stocks in fossil fuel and other extractive industries that are the principal drivers of this environmental violence.
  • We further call on higher education institutions to end their participation in the global “land grabs” that are displacing Indigenous and other land- and water-based communities because this robs the first peoples of their ancestral lands while the world as a whole suffers the consequences of the loss of these sustainable, resilient, and equitable cultures of habitat that protect the planet.
  • We resolve that the Green New Deal is an essential tool for education and civic engagement and especially call on the shapers of this initiative to include community-based and grassroots-led projects for ecological restoration of our wounded watersheds and ecosystems.
  • We call for legal recognition of access to safe water and culturally appropriate food as basic universal human rights.
  • We support reparations associated with climate chaos and the harm this has caused to Indigenous and other land and water-based communities in the U.S. and the world. The primary reparations must involve investments to return Native lands to rightful Indigenous care-giver heirs and to heal the colonial wounds suffered by the land, water, air, and people.

[1] Gubernot, Diane M et al. 2015. Characterizing occupational heat-related mortality in the United States, 2000-2010: An analysis using the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries database. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 58:2: 203-11.

[2] Nabhan, Gary P. 1997. Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story. Washington DC: Counterpoint. Nazarera, Virgina, Ed. Ethnoecology: Situates Knowledge, Located Lives. Tucson: U. Arizona Press.

[3] Elias, E. H., et al., 2015. Assessing climate change impacts on water availability of snowmelt-dominated basins of the Upper Rio Grande basin. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 3: 525-46. URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.04.004. Peña, Devon G. 2019. “Climate Chaos, Acequias, and Land Grants Sin agua no hay vida, sin tierra no hay paz.” Paper presented at the 46th Annual Conference of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Thematic panel: “Land and Water Wisdom: Exercising Cultural Resistance and Sustainability Practices.” Albuquerque, NM, April 4-6, 2019.

[4] United Church of Christ. 1987. Toxic Waste and Race in the United States. Commission for Racial Justice. New York.

[5] United Church of Christ. 2007. Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty. Commission for Racial Justice. New York.

[6] American Lung Association. 2019. State of the Air Report https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/

[7] Goldman Sachs. 2019. Sustainable Growth: Taking a Deep Dive into Water. URL: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/clean-technology-and-renewables/cohen/report.pdf. Accessed October 10, 2019.

[8] Schaider, Laurel, Lucien Swetschinski, Christopher Campbell, Ruthann Rudel. 2019. “Environmental justice and drinking water quality: are there socioeconomic disparities in nitrate levels in U.S. drinking water?” Environmental Health 18(3) URL: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-018-0442-6#Abs1

[9] Community Water Center. 2016. “Are We Providing Our School Kids Safe Drinking Water? An Analysis of California Schools Impacted by Unsafe Drinking Water.” Full Report available at URL: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/communitywatercenter/pages/824/attachments/original/1462656752/CWC_MCL_05.07.16a.pdf?1462656752

[10] Gallegos, Joseph. 2017. “Chicos del horno: A Local, Slow, and Deep Food.” In Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements: Decolonial Perspectives. Eds. Devon G. Peña, et al. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

[11] Pardo, Mary. 1998. Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

[12] Pulido, L. 1996. Environmentalism and economic justice: Two Chicano struggles in the Southwest. University of Arizona Press.

[13] Diaz, David. 2005. Barrio Urbanism: Chicanos, Planning and American Cities. New York: Routledge.

Fall 2019 Vol. 44 No. 1

Posted in: From the Board

NACCS – Statement on the Continued Targeting of Chicana/o/x Communities

October 29, 2019 8:40 AM ,

Statement on the Continued Targeting of Chicana/o/x Communities by White Supremacy

At the request of the NACCS Board this statement was prepared by Dr. Carlos Reyes Guerrero (Past-Chair) and Dr. Armando Ibarra (Past At-Large Representative)

¡Basta… Ya Basta!

We oppose white supremacy, in ALL of its manifestations and forms. The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies is a collective of scholars and activists from diverse communities and with unique histories. Our Association’s consciousness is rooted in collectivity, community building, and participation in social movements that resist ideologies that normalize exploitation and degradation, and we work to replace institutions and practices that thrive on predatory and unjust practices with new, resilient practices based on solidarity and democracy. Our aim is the creation of institutions, critical standpoints, and beneficial practices based in a tapestry of struggle cemented by respect of all humanity.

The events of the last three years under the escalating violence of white supremacy have added urgency to our struggle. Violence against our communities has long been standard State practice.  Now, the State effectively demands that everyone in the United States accept and endorse this violence. Atrocities multiply, from the massacres in El Paso and Gilroy, to the ICE raids in Mississippi, the shocking and inhumane detention of thousands of migrants throughout the country in for-profit prisons, the separation of children from parents at the border, the rising death toll of migrants crossing the border (nearly 10,000 since 1994), attacks on LGBTQ+ lives and civil rights, the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, the dismantling of asylum opportunities, the outsourcing of border control to the Mexican government, continuing and exacerbated environmental racism, and the attempts to erase our history by institutions, and, even, by some allies who question our authenticity, fields of study and actions.   In all this, the powerful present their whims to us as necessities for progress and security. These attacks hearken back to eras of systemic attacks on Chicana and Chicano communities who faced lynchings, murder, displacement, miseducation, and deprivation of basic human needs and dignity. Today as then—WE RESIST!  

WE, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, stand in solidarity with all communities assaulted by White supremacist ideologies and practices. We commit to continue to engage in research, education, and actions that counter White supremacy and offer an alternative rooted in respeto for humanity.

Fall 2019 Vol. 44 No. 1

Posted in: From the Board

2020 Leadership Nominations

October 29, 2019 8:35 AM ,

Nominations sought for 2020-2021 leadership

The Nominations Committee seeks candidates and/or self-nominations for Chair-elect, Treasurer-elect, Secretary and two At Large Representative. If you are interested in running or want to nominate a candidate, the nomination form includes 3 questions regarding participation in NACCS, in Chicana & Chicano Studies and Community. The contact information you provide must also include a short biographical sketch.

Preferred/Eligibility Criteria

  • Current membership in NACCS
  • Immediate past membership in NACCS (for Chair-elect/Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer-elect/Treasurer 4 years minimum of past membership; for At-Large Reps two years minimum of past membership)
  • Significant and Demonstrated active participation in NACCS
  • Significant and Demonstrated active contribution to Chicana & Chicano Studies
  • Demonstrated contributions to advance the interests and needs of the Chicana & Chicano community
  • Active participation in NACCS Foco and/or Caucus

The nomination of any individual is not considered final. Based on the nominations received and/or outreached to, the Nominations Committee will decide on the slate that best represents the diversity (region, interest, and/or research) of the NACCS body. 

Submit your nomination(s) by November 30, 2019.

Submit Nomination Here

Fall 2019 Vol. 44 No. 1

Posted in: News

Resolution Procedure

October 29, 2019 8:30 AM ,

Resolutions must be submitted fourteen (14) days before the national conference begins so that Board may review them in advance of the conference.

For the 2020 conference resolutions must be submitted by April 1st.

Resolutions must be voted and approved by the body of the foco or caucus prior to submitting. No individual member can submit a resolution. Access to the form is available to members only.

The person listed on this submission must be a member who will be at the conference so that the Board can address any questions prior to the business meeting. The member must also be present at the business meeting to answer any questions from the floor.

Resolution must be written and formatted in the proper format to be accepted.  See an example.

The form is available at http://www.naccs.org/Forms.asp?MODE=NEW&Forms_FormTypeID=-229

Resolutions submitted must conform to the following rules:

  1. Resolutions must identify the Foco/Caucus that is putting the resolution forth;
  2. Resolutions must provide names of contact person(s) with phone numbers and email address in case further clarification is necessary;
  3. If the resolution has budget implications, the resolution must include amount and purpose;
  4. The resolution must be worded in such a way that the implementation of such resolution be realistic in terms of funding requirements and logistics involved.
  5. Resolutions not properly formatted will not be considered. (Writing a NACCS Resolution Link)

The Foco/Caucus must take responsibility for wording its resolution in such a manner that it is actually a resolution and not a call for support on an issue relevant to only one region. Resolutions must be edited so that they are easily understandable to the general membership. Resolutions must provide names of persons who are expected to act on behalf of NACCS and their professional or community affiliation. Resolutions that do not meet the criteria will not be considered. Once the Board approves the resolutions, the NACCS Secretary will compile, duplicate, and distribute the Foco/Caucus at the NACCS general business meeting. A consent agenda format (all resolutions are approved automatically unless a member requests that a specific resolution be removed for discussion and vote) will be followed during the business meeting. Resolutions that are pulled from the consent agenda or do not make the consent agenda will be voted on by the membership within two months of the conference online.

Members will have an opportunity to discuss the resolutions online. Details of this discussion will be forthcoming. Any questions should be directed to the Chair of NACCS or Secretary.

updated Fall 2019 – Vol. 44 No. 1
Posted in: From the Board

NACCS Job Announcements

October 29, 2019 8:15 AM ,


Employment: Assistant or Associate Professor, Cx/Lx Studies, Sonoma State Univ. see>>


Employment: UCLA, Assistant Professor, Chicana/o Studies see>>


Employment: Assistant Professor, Gender & Women Studies, CSU Northridge see>>


Employment: Director, Chicano Studies Research Center, UC Los Angeles see>> 

Fall 2019 Vol. 44 No. 01

Posted in: News

From the NACCS Chair

July 14, 2018 3:24 PM ,

by Aureliano M. DeSoto, Chair 2018-2019

Aureliano M. DeSoto, Chair 2018-19

Queridxs NACCS members,

Happy Summer! I hope you’re all enjoying a rejuvenating summertime. I bring you greetings and salutations from the Board of NACCS.

I would like to welcome and congratulate the newly elected members of the Board: Chair-Elect Karleen Pendleton Jimenez (Trent University), Secretary Lilia Soto (University of Wyoming), Treasurer-Elect Ernesto Colin (Loyola Marymount University), and new At-Large Representatives Francisco Villegas (Kalamazoo College) and Maria Gonzalez (University of Houston). I also wish to thank those who participated in the election for these positions, including Roberto Hernandez (San Diego State University) and Ron Lopez (Sonoma State University). Thank you all for your continuing service to NACCS.

Our new Chair-Elect Karleen Pendleton Jimenez is currently developing the 2019 Call for Papers. Please anticipate this CFP in August with an October submission deadline. We look forward to another exciting and invigorating meeting next spring.

Since we concluded our highly successful national conference in Minneapolis-Saint Paul this past April, your Board has been working to ensure that NACCS remains a key presence in matters concerning Chicano/Latino students, scholars, and communities across the nation. In particular, the Board has been working on organizational communiqués related to resolutions passed at the national conference, including a letter of support for the successfully passed California Assembly Bill 2772, which mandates required Ethnic Studies curriculum for students in California high schools, protecting and advocating for vulnerable faculty from threats to their academic freedom, and supporting formal campus sanctuary policies for undocumented students. Additionally, the Board is also working on a statement regarding the current administration’s family separation policies related to asylum-seeking refugees at the southern border.

We are currently living through a strange and tumultuous period, which may in fact reflect the birth of a new and horrific normal. Latin American immigrants in particular, and Chicano/Latino people in general, are increasingly the focus of nativist, xenophobic violence: rhetorical, physical, and systematic. How we respond as scholars and as an organization to this challenging moment is but one part of what will determine the future of Chicano and Latino people in the United States. Chicanxs are no strangers to struggle, and we must draw on the lessons of the past as well as develop new and innovative strategies for moving forward, securing increased civil, economic, and political rights for Chicanxs and Latinxs, and (re)establishing the fundamental legitimacy of Chicano and Latino communities as an integral part of the past and future of the United States.

It is difficult to advocate for optimism now, but we need to remain cognizant of the need for joy as well as struggle as we face these unparalleled challenges. As educators, scholars, and students, let us recall the words of Yuri Kochiyama: “Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.” So, let us gladly take up this challenge with the determination and the knowledge that, in the end, we shall win.

I encourage the membership to read two important pieces about our current political situation by our NACCS scholars,Kevin Johnson (2008) and Devon Peña (2013).

¡Palante, Siempre Palante!

Summer 2018 – Vol. 43 No. 1
Posted in: Organization

Assets and Liability Reports July 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017

July 14, 2018 3:23 PM ,

by Chalane Lechuga, Treasurer

Chalane Lechuga, Tresurer

 

Asset and Liability Report

July 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017

As of December 31, 2017, NACCS assets totaled $74,476.53. This total includes a checking account balance of $60,044.14, donations ($547.99), and membership dues paid ($10,297.85). The total assets also include 2018 conference income in the amount of $3,587.00. The liabilities include operating expenses in the amount of $14,898.56.  The total liabilities were $14,898.56. The Net Worth of NACCS as of December 31, 2017 is $59,577.97.

2017-18 NACCS Asset_Liability

 

 

Antonia Casteñeda Endowment

Asset and Liability Report

July 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017

On December 31, 2017, the total value of the Antonia Casteñdea Endowment was $27,868.95.   There was an overall increase in value of 218$2,020.16 from July 1, 2017, to December 31, 2017. The Net Worth of the Antonia Casteñdea Endowment as of December 31, 2017, is $27,868.95.

2017-18 NACCS AC Asset_Liability 

NACCS Membership Report

In 2017, NACCS members totaled 525. Graduate (169) and undergraduate students (102) constitute the largest contingent of NACCS members totaling 271. The largest Foco is Southern California with 219 members. The largest caucus is the Chicana caucus with 135 members. There are 41 NACCS scholars as of 2017.

2017 Membership 

Summer 2018 – Vol. 43 No. 1
Posted in: Organization

Chicana and Chicano Studies Loses Another Warrior

July 14, 2018 3:23 PM ,

By Julia E. Curry-Rodriguez, Executive Director NACCS

José Augustín Luz Díaz de León Villa

Chicana and Chicano Studies lost another warrior in June 2018! The San José community received the sad news from Joseph Villa, the son of José that his father had passed. We include his obituary here because it is important to remember the ones who came before us and whose courage, commitment and labor allowed us not only to develop an academic field of Chicana and Chicano Studies, but also to institutionalize departments and programs. At San José State University, Jose Villa was one of the founders of the first Mexican American Studies graduate program in 1969, with the name Mexican American Graduate Studies.

On July 19 Kathy Blackmer Reyes and I were in a community of southern Colorado engaging in research and made a pilgrimage to the New Mexican town of Alcalde to attend the mass and reception for Profesor Villa. The ceremony was moving and inspirational. It was amazing to learn about this gentleman who committed all of his adult life to bettering the lives of others, preserving his culture, and making the pathway for race and ethnic studies.

At the reception we were asked to leave a written memory of our awareness or interactions with José. I concentrated on being thankful for his work and for his inspiration. I met and spoke with Joseph and promised to follow up on the development of an archive of his father’s work at SJSU. I offered him my NACCS pin because without José Villa, his contributions and actions in the years of what his family states was “the Chicano Revolution” we would not have a present or a future as Chicana/ Studyists.

I was especially moved by the acknowledgement that my home department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at SJSU was inspired by activist people who were dedicated to work and not only to their personal professional development. José Villa and his fellow revolutionaries (including Dr. Ernesto Galarza, Dr. George Castro, Dr. Hector Cordova and many others) were in fact professional in every aspect of their collective work in the community. They used their research skills to develop their positions, to introduce policy, and to make demands on various institutions. I am thankful that Profesor José Villa made it possible for me to come many years later. I pledge to continue his work in the most humble manner – recognizing that much of the heavy lifting of institutionalization had taken place. Following his memorial I left Alcalde and his family with the renewed commitment to not forget the ones that offered their lives to ensure we can engage in our academic discipline but not without a commitment to our people and our culture. His grandson Jesús helped me to focus while he sang with a beautiful Spanish baritone voice as he strummed on his guitar, las canciones de su abuelo activista. Thank you, Profesor José Villa for your faith in us. Que en paz descanse compañero!

This obituary was shared with me by his son Joseph Villa.

José Augustín Luz Díaz de León Villa, 87, longtime resident of La Villita, NM, died peacefully at his adobe home on June 27, 2018, surrounded by his loving family. The last of his generation, he was preceded in death by his parents, Encarnación and Luz Díaz de León Villa, seven brothers and seven sisters. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Clare Cresap Villa and his eight children: Daniel (Jennifer), Mariluz (Tom Reynolds), Christopher (Margo), Gregory (Lisa),Virginia (Michael Hansen), John (Meli), Joseph (Kathleen), and Angela (Thollem McDonas); thirteen grandchildren: Jesús (Lily) Villa, Cipriano (Devin) Villa, Roxanne Jackson, Joseph Reynolds, Nicolás Villa, Emma Villa, Samuel Villa, Artemis (Matt) Ettsen, Persephone Eglaine, Alejandra Villa, Jessica (Christopher) Carbajal, Louis Villa and Lydia Villa; one great-grandchild, Lilith Ida Ettsen; numerous nieces and nephews of several generations, and a grateful community of co-workers and friends.

José was born in Clovis, NM, to Mexican immigrant parents with whom he and his siblings worked the cotton and broomcorn fields of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas for many years. He attended Our Lady of Guadalupe elementary school and Sacred Heart High School in Clovis, as well as St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, OH. He earned his BA in Inter-American Affairs from UNM in Albuquerque, his MSW from Arizona State U in Tempe, AZ, and his MA in Education from San José State U. in San José, CA.

In 1955, after completing four years in the Air Force serving in Korea and Japan, he married his high school sweetheart, Clare, and began on a life journey which took the family to Lovington and Albuquerque, NM, Yuma and Phoenix, AZ, San José and Felton, CA, until his retirement in 1992 when the couple returned to New Mexico to live in the adobe ruin in La Villita that they and their extended family had been restoring every summer since 1982.

José, a gifted community organizer, left his mark on every community that he touched. He helped develop the Community Council in Phoenix at the time of the War on Poverty under President Johnson; after appointment in 1969 as the first faculty member of the School of Social Work at San José State University in San José, CA, he helped in the formation of that School, taught Community Development classes for many years and served as Interim Dean for two years. He developed the Mexican American Community Services Agency into a major force in San José during the Chicano Revolution in the 1970’s, and served two years as director of the Mexican-American Graduate Studies Department at SJSU. He also worked several years for the San José Unified School District in Bilingual Education projects.

Shortly after retiring to the Española area, he co-organized the Española Valley/Los Alamos Habitat for Humanity group, which continues to thrive enthusiastically in the community. He worked two years for the Española Middle School as Parent Liaison, after which he set about uniting the local faith communities to take action against drug abuse in the Interfaith Leadership for the Advancement of all People (ILEAP) effort. He lobbied on behalf of AARP for two legislative sessions and helped raise funds for many local non-profits including the Española Valley Arts Festival and the Abiquiú Library. His last, and perhaps most beloved, project targeted designation of the northern Rio Grande as a National Heritage Area, which was achieved after many years of preparation by a dedicated group of local heritage aficionados.

He was a devoted member of the Hermandad at the Morada de Nuestra Señora de Dolores del Alto in Abiquiú, NM, as well as a Lector and Eucharistic Ministerat St. Anne’s Church in Alcalde.

Rivera Family Funeral Home is in charge of cremation. Memorial Mass will be celebrated at St. Anne’s Church in Alcalde at 9:00 AM on Thursday, July 19, preceded by a Santo Rosario at 8:00 AM led by his Hermanos from Abiquiú and followed by a reception at 10:00 AM at the Oñate Center in Alcalde.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers donations be made to Habitat forHumanity Española/Los Alamos (726 N Riverside Dr, Espanola, NM 87532:www.habitatevla.org) or St. Mary Indian Mission (P.O. Box 39, Tohatchi, NM87325; stmarytohatchi.org).

Summer 2018 – Vol. 43 No. 1
Posted in: News

The Legal Rights of Asylum-Seekers: A Primer for the Trump Administration

July 14, 2018 3:23 PM ,

by Kevin Johnson, NACCS Scholar 2008

Kevin Johnson, NACCS Scholar 2008

With a focus on aggressive enforcement of the immigration laws, President Trump has kept immigration in the headlines. And few committed to the humanitarian treatment of immigrants believe that the administration can be trusted.

The latest issue concerns migrants, including many women and children, from Central America. Many of these migrants have come to this country seeking asylum under U.S. law, which they have the right to do. Migration from this troubled region is nothing new, but the President has responded like no other president in recent memory. President Trump first adopted a heartless family separation policy and then abandoned it for a policy that will detain immigrant families together. What has gotten lost in the shuffle and political rhetoric, however, are the legal rights of the migrants in question. Although the President claims that the immigration laws must be enforced, his administration is not committed to protecting the legal rights of immigrants.

Working diligently to deliver on his campaign promises to crackdown on immigration enforcement, Trump has taken a number of steps to implement a “zero tolerance” policy. This was the motivation behind his original decision to separate families, which officials hoped would deter future immigrants. After unified political pressure (including from Republican congressional leaders), Trump backed down and issued an executive order ending the policy.

The White House also announced that the family separation policy would be replaced with one allowing for the detention of entire families. President Barack Obama’s administration operated family detention centers in Pennsylvania, Texas and, for a time, New Mexico. Critics argued that family detention was inhumane. There is no reason to believe family detention authorized by Trump wouldn’t be the target of similar legal challenges as well as political ones. And humanitarian concerns represent only one aspect of Trump’s potential legal problems.

First of all, keeping families in detention during the pendency of legal proceedings would require changing the consent decree from the class-action lawsuit that was initially brought against the Reagan administration as Flores v. Meese and was eventually settled by the Clinton administration in 1997. Known generally as the Flores settlement, this landmark decision limits the detention of migrant children.

Anticipating this, Section 3(e) of the executive order instructs the attorney general to modify the Flores settlement agreement “in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”

There are also important constitutional concerns involving the rights of unauthorized immigrants and asylum seekers to due process. These concerns can only be fully understood if we look at the general rights of noncitizens seeking asylum under the U.S. immigration laws.

U.S. law allows noncitizens who flee persecution on account of race, political opinion, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group to seek asylum in the United States. Central Americans fleeing violence have been seeking asylum since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980.

Under the applicable regulations, noncitizens apprehended in the U.S. by immigration authorities still have the constitutional right to a removal hearing that complies with the due process clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. (President Trump has stated that hearings are not required and has called for summary deportations, an idea that nobody is picking up on.). An immigration court at the removal hearing is tasked with evaluating whether noncitizens should be allowed to remain in America.

But the immigration courts are backlogged, and it can take months and sometimes years before a hearing is held. In the past, noncitizens have been eligible for bond during this period, provided he or she does not pose a flight risk or danger to public safety. President Trump referred to this practice, which the law requires, disparagingly as “catch and release.” He signed a memo in April ending the so-called “catch and release” of immigrants into the community.

Some critics argue that those who are released on bond fail to appear in court when the time comes. But data show that the vast majority of families who are apprehended and bond out of custody subsequently appear at their removal hearings. Thus, a policy ordering the indefinite detention of families must be viewed in large part as a way to force desperate families to abandon possibly valid asylum claims.

Here, again, the Trump administration should anticipate legal trouble. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court in Jennings v. Rodriguez sent a case back to the lower courts to decide whether detention without a bond hearing and possible release violated due process.

Although the Supreme Court has not addressed the lawfulness of such tactics, the lower courts have. For example, in Orantes-Hernandez v. Thornburgh, a court of appeals in 1990 found mass immigrant detention and various related policies by the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush to be unlawful. The policies included detaining immigrants in remote locations where it was difficult for them to retain legal counsel. The court found that the policies represented a concerted effort to deter asylum claims.

More recently, a court found that the Obama administration’s mass detention of Central Americans violated the rights of migrant children. In Flores v. Lynch (2016), the court of appeals found that detained children must be released after 20 days in accordance with the original Flores agreement. Trump’s executive order instructs Attorney General Sessions to try to amend the original Flores settlement in order to allow for indefinite detention of children, which seems like an uphill battle.

There remains some confusion as to what the Trump administration’s detention policy will look like going forward. A report published by the Washington Post claims that noncitizens who were detained at the border with children would not be held at this time due to a lack of resources. Meanwhile, a Justice Department spokesperson told the Washington Post that there “has been no change to the Department’s zero tolerance policy to prosecute adults who cross our border illegally instead of claiming asylum at any port of entry at the border.”

What is clear, however, is that whatever decision the administration makes will be carefully scrutinized by legal experts and advocates working to protect the rights of everyone, citizens and noncitizens alike, who steps foot on American soil.

Kevin R. Johnson is dean and Mabie-Apallas professor of public interest law and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis School of Law. He is NACCS Scholar 2012 and an active member of his Foco. This piece is adapted from a post on the NBC News blog. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-executive-order-ended-family-separations-legal-challenges-remain-ncna885491

Summer 2018 – Vol. 43 No. 1
Posted in: News

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BIOPOLITICS: Child gulags in ‘telluric’ America

July 14, 2018 3:22 PM ,

by Devon G. Peña, NACCS Scholar 2013

Devon G. Peña, NACCS Scholar 2013

“Autochthonous defenders of the home soil, who died for our altars and our hearths, the national and patriotic heroes who went into the woods, all elemental, telluric force in reaction to foreign invasion.”

—Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the Partisan, 52.

The Washington Post ran a story last week (May 15) about how the Trump administration is implementing a policy separating children from their parents or other relatives if they are caught trying to enter the U.S. without the standing to do so legally. The headline read: “Trump administration preparing to hold immigrant children on military bases.” It was featured under the topical by-line “NATIONAL SECURITY”, a problematic choice I will return to because it merits criticism about the role of the mainstream media in normalizing Trumpian national security policies.

Many of these families are from indigenous and working-class communities in Central America and Mexico and are fleeing the effects of decades of U.S. foreign, military, and trade policies associated with the violence of neoliberal shock doctrines in place since the early 1970s.

The idea of splitting up families apprehended and detained during unauthorized border crossings is one facet of an over-reaching and over-arching fully-militarized policy of direct repression of people in transmotion based on an ultra-nationalist ideology that declares white people must defend their imagined homeland from threatening (criminal, unintelligent, unassimilable) others. This from the descendants of the true invaders and settler colonists.

It must be noted this draconian measure has a longer history. During the Obama Administration in 2012, there were cases of young children in foster care for two years or longer, while parent(s) languished in federal detainment facilities awaiting deportation for being in the country without legal status (see the report by Ryan J. Stanton in the Ann Arbor News, April 15, 2012).

We can go deeper and mention the history of Native American children forced into missionary boarding schools to be stripped of their language and cultural memory. Xicanxs also faced forced deculturation in Americanization classrooms, often staged in the broom closet for “special ed” kids. It would seem white America has a problem with a nasty history of basically kidnapping or segregating and then mistreating other people’s children. Surely the courts will find this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment to the children and their relatives? We will have to wait and see how the policy unfolds and is challenged.

I wish to make two points about the split-the-children-from-their-parents policy: First, a point about the deplorable base of racists, white supremacists, and other telluric partisans mobilized by Trumpian racism: They may be ‘nativists’ but they sure as hell are not native.

We must end the self-righteous legitimizing narrative and brand it as false before the public discourse and popular imagination. This will starve the white supremacists of the type of resentiment they need to thrive. Everyone needs to remind white people how many are descendants of violent and interloping settler colonial populations and other less fortunate arrivants whose genealogies are not indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, unlike Mexicans, Guatemalans, and others with millennial indigenous roots across the entire continent and who now face the terror of the status of illegality.

Now about the Washington Post topic by-line of NATIONAL SECURITY. The only way I can see this as a national security issue is by noting how the regime in the White House is violating the constitutional rights of children and their relatives. This a threat to the prospects for security in democracy in a settler colonial nation-state bent on exercising the constituted power of white supremacists. The by-line follows the Trumpian logic of misconstructing immigration law reduced to a policy analog of national security. This has been part of a decades-old discursive strategy seeking to criminalize all immigrants by misrecognizing them as the moral equivalents of terrorists in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This is especially painful and harmful to displaced indigenoustransborder travelers who are only guilty of trying to escape death squads, narco-drug cartels, and other forms of structural violence unleashed by neoliberal shock doctrine policies of all recent U.S. administrations including Obama and Clinton had she won (never forget Berta Caceres).

Our social justice movements must foment awareness of these facts and punctuate the narrative by focusing attention on the legal and political consequences of the criminalization of those displaced by the American empire.

Second, this sort of draconian action has happened before. The case of the legal targeting of children as part of the pogroms of the Nazis in Germany is instructive to the point that it renders the question – is Trumpian ideology a form of fascism? – moot. This does not mean the U.S. is fascist. It does suggest we have an Executive intent on being a charismatic strong man like the killer Duterte he so admires and is a threat to any future, strongly indigenized, democratic prospects.

On being the new ‘Rhineland Bastards’

Ina Friedman is among the historians and social scientists focused on the “other victims” of Nazi laws. She notes how it was not just Jewish children who were affected but rather “…the lives of black children, who were the offspring of German women and African soldiers stationed in the Rhineland after World War I. Many of these so-called ‘Rhineland Bastards’ were picked up from the streets or from classrooms and sterilized, often without anesthesia. Due to the application of the “Law for the Prevention of Off-spring with Hereditary Defects,” which was passed in 1933, approximately 400 of these children were deprived of their right to reproduce.”

Following the Kristallnacht pogrom (commonly known as “The Night of Broken Glass”) on November 9-10, 1938, Nazi legislation barred Jews from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter designated “Aryan” zones. Sound familiar? (as recounted in The Holocaust Encyclopedia).

Let us therefore resolve to understand how #BlackLivesMatter, #Not1More, and similar movements are justified forms of civil disobedience against the real existing threat of daily lived violence at the hands of white telluric partisans, who are like the Schmitt irregulars, white men like Zimmerman who murdered Trayvon and got away with it because grandma had her way with stand you ground laws in Florida.

Illustrating this will further empower our indigenous social justice movements to challenge as unfounded, the claims over the policing and regulation of citizenship as articulated by fake telluric partisans with their questionable status as righteous natives. By overthrowing the nativist mythos and revealing the settler colonial origins of Trumpian white nationalism we may take a vital step across racially-politicized and polarized differences to advance movement toward a rethinking and indigenized  remaking of the very meaning of citizenship and territory. There really is nothing more repugnant than the children of invaders assuming the position of the elemental telluric force. The only telluric partisans in this conflict are the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere.

It is worth recalling Carl Schmitt in The Theory of the Partisan on the nature of the telluric partisan for it reveals how compelling the need is for us to challenge the delusion of nativity used by the deplorable base of white nationalists to justify the violence encouraged by the current strongman in the White House:

The partisan has then a real, but not an absolute enemy. That proceeds from his political character. Another boundary of enmity follows from the telluric character of the partisan. He defends a patch of earth to which he has an autochthonic relation. His basic position remains defensive despite his increasing mobility. He comports himself just as St. Joan of Arc did before her ecclesiastical court of judgment. She was not a partisan; she fought the English in a regular way. When asked a theological trick question by the judge—whether she claimed God hated the English—she responded: “Whether God loved or hated the English, I do not know, I only know that they must be driven out of France.”We have a choice: Allow the friend and enemy distinction to continue functioning as a primary driver of white nationalist politics, or reclaim our status as the true telluric partisans who really are the natives in this world-transformative dispute. We are the Helots among the Spartans at the gates of Athens, all elemental and fiercely grounded in our, for now, transborder homeland.

Original Article Appeared in Mexmigration

Summer 2018 – Vol. 43 No. 1
Posted in: News