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Fences Against Freedom As a person of mixed ancestry, I have always been very
sensitive to the prevailing attitudes toward people of color. I remember a
time around 1965, when the term race was nearly replaced with the term
ancestry on government forms and applications. For a short time questions
about one's ancestry and religion were even deleted from paperwork. During
this time, concerted efforts were made by public officials and media people
to use the term "ancestry" instead of "race." Geneticists
had scientific evidence that there is only one race, the human race; there is
only one species to which all people belong: Homo sapiens. This period of
conscientious education of the public to eradicate misinformation about
"race" grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and from
key decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
spoke explicitly about the blot on the honor of the U.S. made by centuries of
prejudice; even the U.S. Congress, with the exception of a few senators and
congressmen from southern states, joined them in asserting equality for all
human beings. In 1967 I chose race as my topic for a paper in one of my
college honors seminars. I had taken two semesters of anthropology in my
freshman year, and I already knew that "race" had been a hot topic
among the physical anthropologists for decades. I understood that the
"one race, human race" theorists like Ashley Montagu had finally
assembled incontrovertible biological proofs which had swept away the
nineteenth-century theories of distinct "races." But I wanted to
see exactly how this shift had come about because I knew that many people still
were under the influence of nineteenth-century notions concerning race. I went to the University of New Mexico library and checked out
all the books I could find on the topic of "race." As a person of
mixed ancestry, I could not afford to take my anthropology professor or
Ashley Montagu's word for it. Segregationists implied that liberals had
seized power on campuses and that to mollify blacks and other
"racial" minorities these liberals had concocted false data to
prove human equality. My parents and the people of the Laguna Pueblo
community who raised me taught me that we are all one family--all the
offspring of Mother Earth--and no one is better or worse according to skin
color or origin. My whole life I had believed this, but now I had to test what
I had been taught as a child because I had also been taught that the truth
matters more than anything, even more than personal comfort, more than one's
own vanity. It was possible that my parents and the people at home, along
with people like Ashley Montagu, had deluded themselves just as the
segregationists had alleged. I was determined to know the truth even if the
truth was unpleasant. I don't remember all the books I read, but I do remember that
Carleton Coon was the name of the leading physical anthropologist whose books
and articles argued the "racial superiority" of some
"races" over others. I wondered then if Mr. Coon's vehemence about
the superiority of the white race had anything to do with his name, which I
knew was a common slur used against African Americans. Had the other children
teased him about his name in the school yard? Was that why Coon had endured
censure by his peers to persist in his "race" research in physical
anthropology long after the Nuremberg trials? I once read an article whose author stated that racism is the
only form of mental illness that is communicable. Clever but not entirely
true. Racism in the U.S. is learned by us beginning at birth. As a person of mixed ancestry growing up in the United States
in the late 1950s, I knew all of the cruel epithets that might be hurled at
others; the knowledge was a sort of solace that I was not alone in my
feelings of unease, of not quite belonging to the group that clearly mattered
most in the United States. Human beings need to feel as if they "belong"; I
learned from my father to feel comfortable and happy alone in the mesas and
hills around Laguna. It was not so easy for me to learn where we Marmons
belonged, but gradually I understood that we of mixed ancestry belonged on
the outer edge of the circle between the world of the Pueblo and the outside
world. The Laguna people were open and accepted children of mixed ancestry
because appearance was secondary to behavior. For the generation of my
great-grandmother and earlier generations, anyone who had not been born in
the community was a stranger, regardless of skin color. Strangers were not
judged by their appearances--which could deceive--but by their behavior. The
old-time people took their time to become acquainted with a person before
they made a judgment. The old-time people were very secure in themselves and
their identity; and thus they were able to appreciate differences and to even
marvel at personal idiosyncracies so long as no one and nothing was being
harmed. The cosmology of the Pueblo people is all-inclusive; long
before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas, the Pueblo and other
indigenous communities knew that the Mother Creator had many children in
faraway places. The ancient stories include all people of the Earth, so when
the Spaniards marched into Laguna in 1540, the inclination still was to
include rather than to exclude the strangers even though the people had heard
frightening stories and rumors about the white men. My great-grandmother and
the people of her generation were always very curious and took delight in
learning odd facts and strange but true stories. The old-time people believed
that we must keep learning as much as we can all of our lives. So the people
set out to learn if there was anything at all good in these strangers;
because they had never met any humans who were completely evil. Sure enough,
it was true with these strangers too; some of them had evil hearts, but many
were good human beings. Similarly, when my great-grandfather, a white man, married
into the Anaya family, he was adopted into the community by his wife's family
and clans. There always had been political factions among these families and
clans, and by his marriage, my great-grandfather became a part of the
political intrigues at Laguna. Some accounts by anthropologists attempt to
portray my great-grandfather and his brother as instigators or meddlers, but
the anthropologists have overestimated their importance and their tenuous
position in the Pueblo. Naturally, the factions into which the Marmon
brothers had married incorporated these new "sons" into their
ongoing intrigues and machinations. But the anthropologists who would portray
the Marmon brothers as dictators fool themselves about the power of white men
in a pueblo. The minute the Marmon brothers crossed over the line, they would
have been killed. Indeed, people at Laguna remember my great-grandfather as a
gentle, quiet man, while my beloved Grandma A'mooh is remembered as a stern,
formidable woman who ran the show. She was also a Presbyterian. Her family,
the Anayas, had kept cattle and sheep for a long time, and I imagine that way
back in the past, an ancestor of hers had been curious about the odd animals
the strangers brought and decided to give them a try. I was fortunate to be reared by my great-grandmother and
others of her generation. They always took an interest in us children and
they were always delighted to answer our questions and to tell us stories
about the old days. Although there were very few children of mixed ancestry
in those days, the old folks did not seem to notice. But I could sense a
difference from younger people, the generation that had gone to the First
World War. On rare occasions, I could sense an anger which my appearance
stirred in them, although I sensed that the anger was not aimed at me
personally. My appearance reminded them of the outside world where racism was
thriving. I learned about racism firsthand from the Marmon family. My
great-grandfather endured the epithet "Squaw Man." Once when he and
two of his young sons (my Grandpa Hank and his brother, Frank) walked through
the lobby of Albuquerque's only hotel to reach the cafe inside, the hotel
manager stopped my great-grandfather. He told my great-grandfather that he
was welcome to walk through the lobby, but when he had "Indians"
with him, he should use the back door. My great-grandfather informed him that
the "Indians" were his sons and then he left, and never went into
the hotel again. There were branches of the Marmon family which, although
Laguna, still felt they were better than the rest of us Marmons and the rest
of the Lagunas as well. Grandpa Hank's sister, Aunt Esther, was beautiful and
vain and light-skinned; she boarded at the Sherman Institute in Riverside,
California, where my grandfather and other Indian students were taught
trades. But Aunt Esther did not get along with the other Indian girls; she
refused to speak to them or to have anything to do with them. So she was
allowed to attend a Riverside girls school with white girls. My grandfather,
who had a broad nose and face and "looked Indian," told the
counselor at Sherman that he wanted to become an automobile designer. He was
told by the school guidance counselor that Indians weren't able to design
automobiles; they taught him to be a store clerk. I learned about racism firsthand when I started school. We
were punished if we spoke the Laguna language once we crossed onto the school
grounds. Every fall, all of us were lined up and herded like cattle to the
girls' and boys' bathrooms where our heads were drenched with smelly
insecticide regardless of whether we had lice or not. We were vaccinated in
both arms without regard to our individual immunization records. But what I remember most clearly are the white tourists who
used to come to the school yard to take our pictures. They would give us kids
each a nickel, so naturally when we saw tourists get out of their cars with
cameras, we all wanted to get in the picture. Then one day when I was older, in
the third grade, white tourists came with cameras. All of my playmates
started to bunch together to fit in the picture, and I was right there with
them maneuvering myself into the group when I saw the tourist look at me with
a particular expression. I knew instantly he did not want me to be in the
picture; I stayed close to my playmates hoping that I had misread the man's
face. But the tourists motioned for me to move away to one side, out of his
picture. I remember my playmates looked puzzled, but I knew why the man did
not want me in his picture: I looked different from my playmates. I was part
white and he didn't want me to spoil his snapshots of "Indians."
After that incident, the arrival of tourists with cameras at our school
filled me with anxiety. I would stand back and watch the expressions on the
tourists' faces before trying to join my playmates in the picture. Most times
the tourists were kindly and did not seem to notice my difference, and they
would motion for me to join my classmates; but now and then, there were
tourists who looked relieved that I did not try to join in the group picture.
Racism is a constant factor in the United States; it is always
in the picture even if it only forms the background. Now as the condition of
the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate and the people grow restive with
the U.S. Congress and the president, the tactics of party politicians sink
deeper in corruption. Racism is now a trump card, to be played again and
again shamelessly, by both major political parties. The U.S. government
applications that had used the term "ancestry" disappeared; the
fiction of "the races" has been reestablished. Soon after Nixon's
election the changes began, and racism became a key component once more in
the U.S. political arena. The Republican party found the issue of race to be
extremely powerful, so the Democrats, desperate for power, have also begun to
pander racism to the U.S. electorate. Fortunately, the people of the United States are far better
human beings than the greedy elected officials who allegedly represent them
in Congress and the White House. The elected officials of both parties
presently are trying to whip up hysteria over immigration policy in the most
blatantly racist manner. Politicians and media people talk about the
"illegal aliens" to dehumanize and demonize undocumented immigrants
who are for the most part people of color. The "cold war" with the
Communist world is over, and now the military defense contractors need to
create a new bogeyman to justify U.S. defense spending. The U.S.-Mexico
border is fast becoming a militarized zone. The Army and Marine units from
all over the U.S. come to southern Arizona to participate in "training
exercises" along the border. When I was growing up, U.S. politicians called Russia an
"Iron Curtain" country, which implied terrible shame. As I got
older I learned that there wasn't really a curtain made of iron around the
Soviet Union; I was later disappointed to learn that the wall in Berlin was
made of concrete, not iron. Now the U.S. government is building a steel wall
twelve feet high which eventually will span the entire length of the Mexican
border. The steel wall already spans four-mile sections of the border at
Mexicali and Naco; and at Nogales, sixty miles south of Tucson, the steel
wall is under construction. Immigration and Naturalization Services, or the Border Patrol,
has greatly expanded its manpower and checkpoint stations. Now when you drive
down Interstate 10 toward El Paso, you will find a check station. When you drive
north from Las Cruces up I-25 about ten miles north of Truth or Consequences,
all interstate highway traffic is diverted off the highway into an INS
checkpoint. I was detained at that checkpoint in December 1991 on my way from
Tucson to Albuquerque for a book signing of my novel Almanac of the Dead. My
companion and I were detained despite the fact that we showed the Border
Patrol our Arizona driver's licenses. Two men from California, both Chicanos,
were being detained at the same time, despite the fact that they too
presented an I.D. and spoke English without the thick Texas accents of the
Border Patrolmen. While we were detained, we watched as other vehicles were
waved through the checkpoint. The occupants of those vehicles were white. It
was quite clear that my appearance--my skin color--was the reason for the
detention. The Border Patrol exercises a power that no highway patrol or
county sheriff possesses: the Border Patrol can detain anyone they wish for
no reason at all. A policeman or sheriff needs to have some shred of probable
cause, but not the Border Patrol. In fact, they stop people with
indio-hispanic characteristics, and they target cars in which white people
travel with brown people. Recent reports of illegal immigration by people of
Asian ancestry mean that the Border Patrol now routinely detain anyone who
looks Asian. Once you have been stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint, you
are under the control of the Border Patrol agent; the refusal to obey any
order by the Border Patrol agent means you have broken the law and may be
arrested for failure to obey a federal officer. Once the car is stopped, they
ask you to step out of the car; then they ask you to open the trunk. If you
ask them why or request a search warrant, they inform you that it will take
them three or four hours to obtain a search warrant. They make it very clear
that if you ÒforceÓ them to get a search warrant they will strip-search your
body as well as your car and luggage. On this particular day I was due in
Albuquerque, and I did not have the four hours to spare. So I opened my car
trunk, but not without using my right to free speech to tell them what I
thought of them and their police state procedures. "You are not wanted
here," I shouted at them, and they seemed astonished. "Only a few
years ago we used to be able to move freely within our own country," I
said. "This is our home. Take all this back where you came from. You are
not wanted here." Scarcely a year later, my friend and I were driving south from
Albuquerque, returning to Tucson after a paperback book promotion. There are
no Border Patrol detention areas on the southbound lanes of I-25, so I
settled back and went to sleep while Gus drove. I awakened when I felt the
car slowing to a stop. It was nearly midnight on New Mexico State Road 26, a
dark lonely stretch of two-lane highway between Hatch and Deming. When I sat
up, I saw the headlights and emergency flashers of six vehicles--Border
Patrol cars and a Border Patrol van blocked both lanes of the road. Gus stopped
the car and rolled down his window to ask what was wrong. But the Border
Patrolman and his companion did not reply; instead the first officer ordered
us to "step out of the car." Gus asked why we had to get out of the
car. His question seemed to set them off--two more Border Patrolmen
immediately approached the car and one of them asked, "Are you looking
for trouble?" as if he would relish the opportunity. I will never forget that night beside the highway. There was
an awful feeling of menace and of violence straining to break loose. It was
clear that they would be happy to drag us out of the car if we did not
comply. So we both got out of the car and they motioned for us to stand on
the shoulder of the road. The night was very dark, and no other traffic had
come down the road since they had stopped us. I thought how easy it would be
for the Border Patrolmen to shoot us and leave our bodies and car beside the
road. There were two other Border Patrolmen by the van. The man who had asked
if we were looking for trouble told his partner to "get the dog,"
and from the back of the white van another Border Patrolman brought a small
female German shepherd on a leash. The dog did not heel well enough to suit
him, and I saw the dog's handler jerk the leash. They opened the doors of our
car and pulled the dog's head into the car, but I saw immediately from the
expression in her eyes that the dog hated them, and she would not serve them.
When she showed no interest in the inside of the car, they brought her around
back to the trunk near where we were standing. They half-dragged her up into
the trunk, but still she did not indicate stowed-away humans or illegal
drugs. Their mood got uglier; they seemed outraged that the dog could
not find any contraband, and they dragged her over to us and commanded her to
sniff our legs and feet. To my relief, the strange anger the INS agents had
focused at us now had shifted to the dog. I no longer felt so strongly that
we would be murdered. We exchanged looks--the dog and I. She was afraid of
what they might do, just as I was. The handler jerked the leash violently as
she sniffed us, as if to make her perform better, but the dog refused to
accuse us. The dog had an innate dignity, an integrity that did not permit
her to serve those men. I can't forget the expression in her eyes; it was as
if she was embarrassed to be associated with them. I had a small amount of
prescription marijuana in my purse that night, but the dog refused to expose
me. I am not partial to dogs, but I can't forget the small German shepherd.
She saved us from the strange murderous mood of the Border Patrolmen that
night. In February of 1993, I was invited by the Women's Studies
Department at UCLA to be a distinguished visiting lecturer. After I had
described my run-ins with the Border Patrol, a professor of history at UCLA
related her story. It seems she had been traveling by train from Los Angeles
to Albuquerque twice each month to work with an informant. She had noticed
that the Border Patrol officers were there each week to meet the Amtrack
trains to scrutinize the passengers, but since she is six feet tall and of
Irish and German ancestry, she was not particularly concerned. Then one day
when she stepped off the train in Albuquerque, two Border Patrolmen accosted
her. They wanted to know what she was doing, why she was traveling between
Los Angeles and Albuquerque. This is the sort of police state that has
developed in the southwest United States. No person, no citizen is free to
travel without the scrutiny of the Border Patrol. Because Reverend Fife and
the sanctuary movement bring political refugees into the U.S. from Central
America, the Border Patrol is suspicious of and detains white people who
appear to be clergy, those who wear ethnic clothing or jewelry, and women who
wear very long hair or very short hair (they could be nuns). Men with beards
and men with long hair are also likely to be detained because INS agents
suspect "those sorts" of white people may help political refugees. In Phoenix the INS agents raid public high schools and drag
dark-skinned students away to their vans. In 1992, in El Paso, Texas, a high
school football coach driving a vanload of his players in full uniform was
pulled over on the freeway and INS agents put a cocked revolver to the coach's
head through the van window. That incident was one of many similar abuses by
the INS in the El Paso area that finally resulted in a restraining order
against the Border Patrol issued by a federal judge in El Paso. At about the same time, a Border Patrol agent in Nogales shot
an unarmed undocumented immigrant in the back one night and attempted to hide
the body; a few weeks earlier the same Border Patrol agent had shot and
wounded another undocumented immigrant. His fellow agent, perhaps realizing Agent
Elmer had gone around the bend, refused to help in the cover up, so Agent
Elmer threatened to kill him. Agent Elmer was arrested and tried for murder,
but his southern Arizona jury empathized with his fear of brown-skinned
people; they believed Agent Elmer's story that he feared for his life even
though the victim was shot in the back trying to flee. Agent Elmer was also
cleared of the charges of wounding in the other case. For years, undocumented
immigrant women have reported sexual assaults by Border Patrol agents. But it
wasn't until Agent Elmer was tried for murder that another Nogales INS agent
was convicted of the rape of a woman he had taken into custody for
detainment. In the city of South Tucson where eighty percent of the
respondents were Chicano or Mexicano, a research project by the University of
Wisconsin recently revealed that one out of every five persons living there
had been stopped by INS agents in the past year. I no longer feel the same about driving from Tucson to
Albuquerque via the southern route. For miles before I approach the INS check
stations, I can feel the anxiety pressing hard against my chest. But I feel
anger too, a deep, abiding anger at the U.S. government, and I know that I am
not alone in my hatred of these racist immigration policies, which are
broadcast every day, teaching racism, demonizing all people of color,
labeling indigenous people from Mexico as "aliens"--creatures not
quite human. The so-called "civil wars" in El Salvador and
Guatemala are actually wars against the indigenous tribal people conducted by
the white and mestizo ruling classes. These are genocidal wars conducted to
secure Indian land once and for all. The Mexican government is buying Black
Hawk helicopters in preparation for the eradication of the Zapatistas after
the August elections. I blame the U.S. government--congressmen and senators and
President Clinton. I blame Clinton most of all for playing the covert racism
card marked "Immigration Policy." The elected officials, blinded by
greed and ambition, show great disrespect to the electorate they represent.
The people, the ordinary people in the street, evidence only a fraction of
the racist behavior that is exhibited on a daily basis by the elected leaders
of the United States and their sluttish handmaidens, the big television
networks. If we truly had a representative democracy in the United
States, I do not think we would see such a shameful level of racism in this
country. But so long as huge amounts of money are necessary in order to run
for office, we will not have a representative democracy. The form of
government we have in the United States right now is not representative
democracy but "big capitalism"; big capitalism can't survive for
long in the United States unless the people are divided among themselves into
warring factions. Big capitalism wants the people of the U.S. to blame
"foreigners" for lost jobs and declining living standards so the
people won't place the blame where it really belongs: with our corrupt U.S.
Congress and president. As I prepare to drive to New Mexico this week, I feel a
prickle of anxiety down my spine. Only a few years ago, I used to travel the
highways between Arizona and New Mexico with a wonderful sensation of
absolute freedom as I cruised down the open road and across the vast desert
plateaus in southern Arizona and southern New Mexico. We citizens of the
United States grew up believing this freedom of the open road to be our
inalienable right. The freedom of the open road meant we could travel freely
from state to state without special papers or threat of detainment; this was
a "right" citizens of Communist and totalitarian governments did
not possess. That wide open highway was what told us we were U.S. citizens.
Indeed, some say, this freedom to travel is an integral part of the American
identity. To deny this right to me, to some of us who because of skin
color or other physical characteristics "appear" to fit fictional
profiles of "undesirables," is to begin the inexorable slide into
further government-mandated "race policies" that can only end in
madness and genocide. The slaughters in Rwanda and Bosnia did not occur
spontaneously--with neighbor butchering neighbor out of the blue; no,
politicians and government officials called down these maelstroms of blood on
their people by unleashing the terrible irrational force which racism is. Take a drive down Interstate 8 or Interstate 10, along the
U.S.-Mexico border. Notice the Border Patrol checkpoints all vehicles must
pass through. When the Border Patrol agent asks you where you are coming from
and where you are going, don't kid around and answer in Spanish--you could be
there all afternoon. Look south into Mexico and enjoy the view while you are
still able, before you find yourself behind the twelve-foot steel
"curtain" the U.S. Government is building. Leslie Marmon Silko's books include
Ceremony and Almanac
of the Dead. |
From
Hungry Mind Review
An
Independent Book Review