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Boricua en la Luna : Why Citizenship and Identity Don’t Always Intersect

11:50 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Culture| Immigration| Latin America| Politics · 2 Comments

19 Sep 2009

Apparently Citizenship Day came and went. The entire I pondered my citizenship: how I was born into it, how my parents were born into it, and how my abuelos, when they were toddlers, woke up with it one morning. My U.S. citizenship, with all it’s rights, privileges, and associations is held somewhat heavily along with my passport and other “proofs” that I “belong” here. When I level criticisms against the U.S. and it’s policies, I am told to go back where I came from. Leave. As a Puerto Rican U.S. Citizen living within the 50 states, I can vote. If I were to reside in Puerto Rico, I could fight wars in the name of the United States but suddenly would have no say in who the Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces should be. I have considered going Juan Mari Bras style: moving to Puerto Rico and renouncing my U.S. Citizenship, after all, to quote the poeta Mariposa, Yo no naci en Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico nacio en mi. Pero when people ask “what are you”, I stumble a bit. Sometimes I say Nuyorican, placing myself firmly in the city I love while holding on to who my family is. Sometimes I say straight up, Rican. Sometimes I say Latina. Pero I never, ever say “American”, at least not the way people want me to say it.
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Have You Contributed to Our 30 Days of Latino Heritage Site Yet?

17 Sep 2009

Don’t forget you can send in your links, images, quotes and videos regarding Latino heritage here.

There will be more videos coming soon pero trying to make videos with a toddler is no easy task. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

xoxo
Mala

Contribute to Our 30 Days of Latino Heritage Tumblr

16 Sep 2009

As part of the 30 Days of Latino Heritage Series that I announced yesterday, I started a tumblr site of the same name.

There I will collect images, quotes, audio, video etc related to Latinidad and I invite you to do that same! If you would like to submit something, please visit the submission page or email latinoheritagemonth@tumblr.com to submit posts. All submissions are subject to my approval.

Gracias!!!

30 Days of Latino Heritage : An Introduction

15 Sep 2009

30 Days of Latino Heritage : Introduction from VivirLatino on Vimeo.

An introduction to the 30 Days of Latino Heritage Series on VivirLatino.com featured Maegan “la Mamita Mala” Ortiz.

Tonite in NYC : Support Political Prisoners and the Cuban 5

12 Sep 2009

Happy 65th Birthday Leonard Peltier!

FREE THE CUBAN 5: 11 YEARS OF UNJUST INCARCERATION!

VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE: 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF THE PUERTO RICAN PPS/POWS!

Saturday, September 12, 2009 • 7 to 9 p.m.

Judson Memorial Church Assembly Hall

239 Thompson St., NY, NY (Wheelchair Accessible)

$5-10 DONATION (no one will be turned away due to lack of funds)

LIGHT REFRESHMENTS

Program:

Representative from the Cuban Mission to the U.N.

Mahina Movement

GhostHorse

Attorney Mike Kuzma

Dylcia Pagan, former Puerto Rican Political Prisoner

Lynne Stewart

For more information: nyclpsg@gmail.com • nycjericho@gmail.com • 718-853-0893

Co-Sponsored by: NYC Leonard Peltier Support Group, NYC Jericho Movement, Iglesia San Romero de las Américas, The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign, The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5

9-11-09 : Random Pensamientos

11 Sep 2009

I almost feel like I’m obligated to write something today about 9-11 and frankly, I’m tired of the date. It’s exhausting on so many levels since the combination of numbers can be multiplied, added, subtracted and divided in so many ways. It’s a date that carries real physical weight and reaction in my muscles and bones. I can feel it settling, heavy in my gut.

I survived 9-11-01. Not in some abstract way but in a real sitting in a subway car underground in downtown Manhattan for houra as smoke and fire rose above. My mother survived 9-11-01, feeling the World Trade Center reverberate from the impact of a plane, she managed to lead all of her employees to safety. It was the second time she survived an attack on the WTC.

Pero I also have to sit down with my hijas, half Chilenas, and talk about their relatives that did not survive 9-11-73 or the 17 years of U.S. sponsored military dictatorship that followed. It is why the family of my younger daughter came to the United States. It is why the family of my older daughter remain active in Chilean politics in the southern part of that country.

Lunes Labor Day Musica : Victor Jara Te Recuerdo Amanda

7:40 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Chile| Labor| Music · Comments Off

7 Sep 2009

I woke up this morning thinking about the history of Labor Day in the United States. How is it that in the U.S. we don’t celebrate May Day and instead have taken this weekend in September and made it about bbq’s and last trips to the beach? Don’t get me wrong, I love some grilled carne and playa, but it seems like this U.S. holiday was rushed into existence in an effort to distract from real issues for the working/laboring class and purposely separated from May Day which reminds workers of the violence often unleashed upon them when they stand up with one voice.

Already the mainstream news media is turning the end of summer, the start of fall into a holiday of fear, recalling the horrors of 9-11-01 while denying other, earlier September horrors that are related thanks to the the politics of imperialism. Maybe that’s why when I woke up this morning I was thinking of Victor Jara and his musical legacy, how his art composed with the labor struggles of workers in Chile led to his murder. I am thinking of Amanda and Manuel in the song Te Recuerdo Amanda recognizing the Amandas and Manuels I see everyday in my family, on my block, in my community.

Venezuelan Synagogue Attack an Inside Job and a Sign of Wider Attacks on Latin Am. Left

7:23 am By Maegan La Mala · Latin America| Religion| Venezuela| israel · 5 Comments

6 Sep 2009

I’m often attacked and accused of being anti-Semitic, usually by one person, because I write about Palestine and draw connections among various occupied territories including Puerto Rico. Even when I wrote about the attack on a synagogue in Venezuela early this year, I was accused of not covering the story, or at least not in a way that some agreed with. Turns out that there was more to the story than met the eye. From NACLA:

In the early morning hours of January 31, vandals broke into Tiferet Israel, a Sephardic synagogue in Caracas. They strewed sacred scrolls on the floor and scribbled “Death to the Jews” and other anti-Semitic epithets on the walls, before making off with computer equipment and historical artifacts. Understandably, the incident frightened and upset many in the Venezuelan Jewish community. Right away, U.S. news outlets, including The New York Times and The Miami Herald, linked the incident to Venezuela’s increasingly strained relations with Israel, after the two countries suspended diplomatic relations two weeks earlier over Israel’s bombing of Gaza, then still under way.

A Herald editorial went so far as to describe an “official policy of anti-Semitism” in Venezuela and implied that Chávez’s foreign policy had unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in the country, culminating in the assault on the synagogue.1 Some international NGOs were no more nuanced. Just hours after the break-in, the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was already implicitly comparing the Chávez government to the Nazis, calling the synagogue attack “a modern-day Kristallnacht.”2

But the Caracas police investigation bore out a different story. Authorities quickly realized that the synagogue’s security fence had been cut from the inside, prompting detectives to investigate the break-in as an inside job. Within the week it became clear that the attack had in fact been a robbery disguised as anti-Semitic vandalism, carried out by the synagogue’s privately contracted security team. Eleven men were arrested for their role in the plot, and their statements to the police indicated that the graffiti and desecration were intended to throw off investigators.3

Alteracion Del Orden Publico : Terraza 7 Train Cafe, Queens NYC Tonite

8:27 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts| Books| Colombia| New York City| language · Comments Off

2 Sep 2009

Amigo Nicolás Linares Sánchez is celebrating the release of his new book, Alteracion Del Orden Publico at Terraza 7 Train Cafe in Elmhurst, Queens NYC tonite.

I’ll be there with or without the children tonite, so support independent artists, and you can support single mamas by coming through and buying me a glass of vino or taking my kid around the block so I can drink said vino in paz.

For those that cannot deal with coming into Queens because it scares you or cuz you are too far, the release will be streamed live aqui.

Why Isn’t Housing Considered a Right? Looking at Recent Evictions in Brazil

6:41 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Brazil| housing · 3 Comments

30 Aug 2009

From Global Voices Online:

On Monday, following a court order, 240 police went to evict 800 families from the Olga Benário squatter settlement in an area called Capão Redondo, sprawling southern São Paulo. The property had been occupied for two years by hundreds of families, many from the social movement Frente de Luta por Moradia (the Front of Struggle for Housing). The property’s owner, a transport company, was able to get an eviction order from a judge, even though it owes back taxes, and even as the State Public Defender’s office was attempting to protect the residents. The eviction ended with burned houses and cars, and hundreds of families on the street in the mud.

Having just come out of a personal housing crisis myself here in NYC where the cost of living continues to rise and gentrification is swooping into neighborhoods of color making it hard for old timers to stay, and for new immigrants to find homes, I have to wonder why isn’t housing a right, especially for families with children?

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