It was when I first stood atop the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico in 1976 that I was finally able to grasp something my parents first communicated to me when I was five years old; that my roots on this continent are not simply Mexican, but both ancient and Indigenous.

My red-brown face should have been enough to teach me this. However, that was not the message I received in school at the time, nor is it the message little red-brown kids receive today.

I experienced a similar kind of reaffirmation this past month when I stood in front of the world-renowned, ancient Mayan observatory at Chichen Itza, on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Upon my return to the United States, I received a message from a colleague regarding the U.S. Census Bureau. My mouth soured; another decade and another story about how the bureau paradoxically insists that Mexicans are Caucasian. I will have to explain to them again that Mexicans are the descendants of those who built the pyramids at Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza – that it was not Caucasians who built them.

The genesis of this nonsensical “misconception” goes back to the era when the United States militarily took half of Mexico in 1848. At that time, the Mexican government attempted to protect its former citizens by insisting that the U.S. government treat them legally as “white,” so they would not be enslaved or subjected to legal segregation. That strategy only partially worked, because most Mexicans in this country have never been treated as “white,” or as full human beings with full human rights.

That era is long over, yet the fear, shame, denial, and semi-legal fiction of being “white” remains, perpetrated primarily by government bureaucrats.

Despite the bureau policy of racial categorization, the Indigenous Cultures Institute in Texas, a Census 2010 partner, has advanced an alternative: It asserts that Hispanics, Mexican Americans, and Indigenous people of Mexico are native or American Indian. After answering Question 8, regarding whether one is Hispanic or not, the institute suggests: “If you are a descendant of native people, you can identify yourself (in Question 9) as an American Indian in the 2010 Census? If you don’t know your tribe, enter “unknown” or “detribalized native.” If tribe or identity is known, fill it in, i.e., Macehual, Maya, Quechua, etc.

This may not be the best option, but the bureau has never made it easy to recognize the indigenous roots of “Mexican Americans/Chicanos” or “Latinos/Hispanics.” The long and sordid history of the census has been to direct or redirect them into the white category, even–and especially–when they have asserted their indigenous roots or when they have checked the “other” race category. (Since 1980, about half of Hispanics/Latinos have checked the “other” race category and are virtually the only group that chooses this category.) This has been a standard practice of the bureau since the second half of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, this is also when government bureaucrats imposed the term “Hispanic,” a tag that generally masks the existence of indigenous and/or African roots in many peoples of the Americas.

In 2000, the Census Bureau finally recognized a Latin American Indian category, but it did not create an educational campaign to go with it.

The bureau now recognizes peoples who are traditionally viewed (using arbitrary criteria) as indigenous in Mexico, Central and South America, but it does not recognize those who are considered “mestizo” — peoples who are at least part, if not primarily, native. The mestizo category, borne of a dehumanizing racial caste system in the Americas, is also a troublesome category, yet it is how most people of Mexican and Central American descent identify, comprising approximately 75 percent of all “Latinos/Hispanics.”

The Indigenous Institute promotes its idea as a means by which Mexican Americans or Latinos/Hispanics can honor their indigenous ancestry. If this option is widely embraced, it remains to be seen how the bureau will count this information. The same question arises if people choose the American Indian category and write in “mestizo.”

Traditionally, the bureau has taken a narrow view of who is indigenous, because the “American Indian” category was designed not to ascertain indigeneity, but to count “U.S. Indians.” If a more expansive view is embraced widely — as advocated by the institute — it would result in an increase from 5 million (the 2009 census estimate) to perhaps 30 to 40 million people. (Not all of the nation’s close to 50 million Hispanics/Latinos can or would claim indigenous ancestry.)

If done correctly, the institute’s suggestion need not negatively affect the allocation of resources to specific tribes. Neither should the way people identify be subject to government approval. Yet, the ramifications of exercising such an option should indeed be studied.

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   By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by a journalist: “What do you think of Western Civilization?“

He responded: “That Would be a Good Idea?”

It is not certain that Indigenous peoples in the Americas have ever been asked the same question, though the response can probably easily be surmised. Yet, on this continent, the issue is not theoretical in nature.

In Arizona, for instance, a variant of this question is indeed being asked. Yet here, the issue is not whether Western Civilization has been good or bad for the original peoples of this continent. Rather, as framed by Tom Horne, the State Superintendent of Schools, the issue is whether people of non-European heritage are part of Western Civilization itself. In his ongoing campaign to eliminate Ethnic/Raza Studies in the Tucson Unified School District, he has made it a point to allege that what is taught in Raza Studies is outside of Western Civilization.

One can easily cede to him this purported fact – except for three small details: According to Horne (whose latest salvo was trumpeting a severely flawed study this November that showed that students in Raza Studies do not do better than their peers) the roots of Western Civilization emanate from the Greco-Roman cultures – cultures squarely situated in Europe. The knowledge taught in Raza Studies, on the other hand, emanates from ancient and living Indigenous cultures rooted on this very continent. Thus, according to his formulation, knowledge Indigenous to the Mediterranean is acceptable knowledge and can be taught in Arizona schools, but knowledge Indigenous to this very continent is unacceptable and cannot be taught in Arizona schools.

For Horne to be correct, a massive [geographic] dislocation would again have to take place. In effect, Horne’s project asks us, or demands from us, that the so-called West be allowed to finish its imperial project; the dislocation, displacement and disappearance of the original peoples of this continent. Which brings up the third detail: Indigenous peoples from this continent have never ceded the direction of “the West” to peoples from across the ocean.

Ironically, Horne’s project actually allows for the teaching of American Indian or Native American Studies, but what it also does, is not acknowledge the cultural roots of Raza Studies – a discipline based primarily on the thousands-of-years Maiz or Maya-Nahuatl cultures of this continent.

Through his actions and with one stroke, he becomes royal geographer and arbiter as to who is Indigenous. It is he who determines what knowledge can be taught inside Arizona classrooms, this while calling for the setting up of mechanisms, to ensure that Maiz or Mesoamerican knowledge is not taught here. Under his definition, presumably, knowledge from Andean cultures – South America – would also be banned.

Beyond arbiter of who or what is Indigenous, he in a much larger way, has actually positioned himself as the arbiter of who or what is American. In his formulation, the only thing worth teaching in U.S. or Arizona schools specifically, is what is American… or what the Greeks and Romans have bequeathed us.

Generally, in the realm of knowledge, what the Greeks and Romans have taught the world has indeed benefitted the world. No one who teaches Ethnic or Raza Studies advocates eliminating Greco-Roman knowledge from the curriculum. Quite the reverse; Ethnic and Raza Studies teachers simply want the knowledge that is Indigenous to this continent – maiz knowledge – to also be taught in the classroom. In part, maiz knowledge – represented by what archeologists and anthropologists have designated as knowledge that emanates from Mesoamerica – does have a direct connection to what is today the United States. One: the presence of maiz and maiz knowledge can easily be documented in the United States. Maiz, created in the south somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago, has been here in Arizona and New Mexico for at least 5,000 years. Second: because of massive migration over the past 100 years from the south, we also know it continues to be a part of the ancient and lived knowledge and part of the daily reality and nutrition, of the many millions of peoples who have migrated here from Mexico and Central America.

These educators within Raza Studies need not romanticize the cultures of this continent, just as no one needs to romanticize the warfare of the Greeks & Romans. It is counter-intuitive, however, that teachers and students be deprived the right to teach and learn the culture and knowledge that has been here for many thousands of years… especially when all peer-reviewed studies do indeed demonstrate that students in Raza Studies far outperform their TUSD classmates.

Perhaps the actual debate should be about where on the world map does Pachamama or the Americas reside in?

* This week’s Huehuetlahtokan & In Xochitl In Cuicatl (Elder Gathering & Floricanto) events in Tucson precisely will celebrate both the success of Raza Studies, but also, shine the light on the creative talent and research learned by students from elders.

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Thanks & Sincerely
Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Column of the Americas
PO BOX 85476
Tucson, AZ 85754

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•    Rodriguez can be reached at: XCol...@gmail.com or PO BOX 85476 – Tucson, AZ 85754

•    NEW AMERICA MEDIA COLUMNS — http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/

•    ARCHIVED COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS — http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
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