Laduque, I certainly did not mean to suggest that Anaya's work suffered at all because he wrote in English, and I frankly feel better about it knowing the reason. As I said, I no longer speak MY heritage language because it was socially unacceptable to speak it, so I understand that loss completely. I feared it was a refusal to speak Spanish in order to make a political statement, and I would have had a problem with that.
Gooseman brought up some interesting topics that I'd really like more information on. (I'm going out of town tomorrow, so if I don't respond, that's why!! ) You said Anaya had decided to make a political statement at this time and I'd like to know what his reasoning was. The Hispanics that I have had the most experience with are having trouble making it through high school, and more trouble making it through college. Part of the problem, as I stated above, was a hostility towards white education and white teachers...maybe more so if the white teacher is speaking Spanish and they don't. Yet if they don't go to college, there won't be any Hispanic teachers! I don't see how encouraging Hispanics to hate white America and to separate itself from Spanish culture helps in any way...and this could be plain old naivete on my part! I am NOT Hispanic and therefore I don't think like a Hispanic. I just don't follow the logic. I taught a kid whose mother was Mexican and whose father was "white". Mom encouraged the kid to join Mecha in the hopes he would learn more about his culture. He came home and asked if he could legally change his last name so he would have a Mexican name because he no longer wanted anything to do with his father and his "race." The mother was beside herself! The rest of the year (I lost track of the boy when he went to high school) he refused to speak to his father other than to answer direct questions and became, according to his mother, really nasty at home. The boy's grades dropped and he barely passed the year. When I think about this sort of thing I wonder what exactly is accomplished by groups like this.

You also mention the Mexican Indians, but don't say which and at what time. We have the Yaqui tribe here from Mexico who were given Native American status by Carter (even though they are originally from Mexico) because they were suffering under Mexican rule. Those Mexican Indians? The Aztecs? I read as much as possible on the history of the southwest because it fascinates me, and as I said earlier, I haven't found a lot of totally angelic people on either side of the issue. I teach my students as true a history as I've been able to uncover (and I mean researching the dusty books at the UofA, not just what text publishers tell me!), but I try to give a total picture...and that includes some of the human sacrifices those lovable Aztecs performed! Even if I could find evidence that all the Native Americans on both sides of the border were completely innocent people who never took a slave or tortured enemies in any way, how would it help descendants of those people today to live in the world they were born into? It is precisely BECAUSE of the power Anaya has as an author that I am upset by the direction he has decided to follow!

In case anybody wants to know which was the "Spanish technological Advantage" towards mexicans, I recomend reading "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España" by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the conquerors (first-hand information.

This way you will see why 500 men begun the conquer and 2.000 fulfilled it : because all the rest of the people but for the aztecs found them so merciful, fair, ..., compared with aztecs that they joined one by one, from the firs town of Cempoal to the mayor ones like Tascalt ... the only ones who faced them were the aztec ones like Tezcuco.

Horses helped to divide armies (as in any european battle), but they died too, and the mexicans soon learnt it, same as conquerors whose mith as gods soon was over when everybody saw their heads on pikes. When the 2.000 took Mexico, only about 150 of the 500 former ones were alive.

Same as mexicans, the spanish suffered from illnesses the enemy was inmune to.

They lacked food very often.

In the first 500, there were only about 20 horses, about 40 shotguns, and 40 cross-bows. The rest were spears and swords (which the indians also had. There was more people then in Mexico than in Spain, the armiers were of tenths of thousands of people, sometimes hundreds of thousands, ...

How could they possibly win?

Because after the 500 or 2.000 came a huge army of desperate slave races ready to fight to death aginst aztecs. May be that some of these people who claim against spanish is also descendant from one of these races, who were liberated and much better off since.

La maestra, I was basically refering to the first contact with the Aztecs, and through this contact we can trace ideological thinking patterns that still run in our society today. As for teaching a "true" history, I applaud your breaking of the grain. I myself am venturing into the education field. I am teaching a summer program called "Upward Bound," and most of my students are from hispanic lineage. I have tried to incorporate many types of Chicano literature to support the idea of a multi-cultural America. Most of my students have heard of Anaya before, but none of them knew of Cervantes, Cisneros, Soto, or many of the other "minority" authors I had chosen to discuss. It is very important to support all cultural backgrounds. This ensures, hopefully, that the student(s) feel comfortable in their academic surroundings. This will hopefully promote post-secondary education. I will try to get the name of the video I was talking about. I believe it was made in the mid 80s. Have a good day.

(throwing grains of salt every which way...)

OK, i'm passing out salt so y'all can take everything i say here with at least one grain. I teach at UNM (where Anaya IS professor emeritus and IS high profile still) and I teach Chicano and Latino literatures. (Oh no, the dreaded college teacher weighs in! :p ) So my view of Anaya's lit. and the current trend towards Chicano/"indigenous" separatism are colored by my position here, as well as by the fact that I'm Chicana myself.

Anaya: I find most of his writings pretty dreadful. They present a highly romanticized, unrealistic vision of what it means to be New Mexican or Chicano nowadays. His mysteries, which feature detective Sonny Baca, rely much too heavily on deus ex machina in the form of New Agey stuff (supposedly deeply-rooted Mexican indigenous beliefs, but it's all fairly contemporary in his rendering). His books are male-centered and have shallow, unimportant and sterotypical female characters. I much prefer other authors that Gooseman mentioned that do a much better job at representing contemporary Chicano culture without relying on stereotypes of Chicanos and wholesale dismissals (such as of anglo or peninsular cultures). Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Gary Soto, Alfredo Vea, Helena Maria Viramontes, Pat Mora, for instance, present a complex vision of Chicano/as.

They do all write in English. Why? Well, why not? Rodriguez's *Hunger of Memory* presents a deeply politicized view of why Chicanos should use English. The more practical side is that, as we live in the U.S. for more and more generations, Spanish is no longer the "creative" language because it is no longer the strongest or dominant language, even for bilinguals.

That said, I think it is important for any student of Spanish language who happens to be Chicano to learn all the variations (or that there are variations, at least) that Spanish presents us with, from Caribbean sound-dropping to Argentinian vos, to the vosotros form in Castilian. I have seen or heard of too many UNM students who expect their regional Spanish to be understood everywhere, enacting in a very unselfconscious way the "ugly American" stereotype on another level. ("What, you don't know what zacate is? I'll just say it louder and louder till you do get it!)

The need to understand that Spanish has many variations parallels the need for our young people to realize that demonizing any one part of their biological/cultural/historical makeup does our communities no good. We look "anglo", we look "latino," we look "indigeous"; we have blue, green, brown, and black eyes; we speak Spanish, we speak some Spanish, we speak no Spanish, we don't even understand "taco"; we are Republicans and Democrats and Greens; y'all get the idea... I could probably go on forever and you'd get bored (if you're not already! )...

my point, essentially, piggybacking on your complaint, lamaestra, is that as long as Chicano/Latino communities idealize and romanticize some distant past, we neglect to focus on the here and now and the MANY MANY problems that face our diverse communities today, from immigration to economic self-sufficiency, to my pet peeve, a DECENT LIBERAL EDUCATION FOR ALL!

ahem. I'll put away my soapbox now. Hmmm... it was a pretty big one, huh?

Ain't nothing boring about this thread. If we are to overcome cultural differences, we have to discuss the issues that build fences between people, and tear them down with knowledge, and respect for each other. I see that developing here.

I'd be more than glad to carry everyone's soap boxes for them, since it's an eye opener for those of us who never see the issues up close and personal.

Wolf (Who never ceases to be amazed at how little he really knows. :()

What is mecha exactly? Is it a widespread group?

MECHA is a student group (both high school and college) for/by Mexican Americans/Chicanos. It believe it got its start in the late 60s along with other civil rights organizations.

The tone and stance that the organization takes really depends on the region in which you live. (i.e., Southwestern Mechistas tend to be a bit more exclusionary, than, for instance, Michigan Mechistas.)

HTH

Picara, you really said it all! While I was traveling I thought through some of my complaints (and disapointment, frankly) with the stance Anaya has chosen to take. You have pretty much nailed it down though! It seems to me that if we are going to get anywhere as a society of diverse groups we are going to have to stop picking at 500 year old sores and start directing our energies towards solving our REAL problems. Thanks for your post!