Incredible, I seem to have extricated myself from one of the most dominant issues that impregnate the Xicano ens: immigration.
I don’t know why, exactly, we xicanos entangle ourselves so much with immigration. Immigration as phenomena to live the everyday, to give rise to consciousness, that thing you do when you wake up in the mornings, to create a drive to live is astounding in us. I suppose that we are so wrapped in it as children that slowly the fabric becomes the very meaningful existence of the sunrise in our daily lives. Immigration gives us sorrow, a fighting chance, happiness, excitement and a stake in that America that so often we portray as a foreign agent in our political discourse.
I feel nothing for immigration. This disinterest for the very issues that feeds much thought in Xicano narrative in the US is all but bygone. I first noticed this a few years ago but until now it has managed to manifest itself as formulated thought. It all came to light because I found myself surprised at an article that appeared in Svenska Dagbladet on how illegal immigration has saved an all gringo (pure and unstained from xicano culture one would guess) town due to the influx of illegal immigration. I’ve complained before about the skewed view this newspaper gives of illegal immigration in the US but to little or none effect, my thoughts have gone the way of disregarded thought, by the turn of a head, by unexpressed critic like ‘rubbish’ and so on.
One seldom sees an article explaining the phenomena or the causes of immigration in the Nordic press but rather one hears through the Swedish language the ailing and wailing of the American conservative outcry (a phenomena that started out in the middle of the 80’s) that mexicans are running over the USA. Perhaps that is to change
I guess that is what most riles a decent xicano about pochos. They seem to be able to have superseded this intrinsic drive and are as aloof as gringo can be. We hate that. We don’t like that. Yet here I am, away, the umbilical cord of immigration cut. I feel nothing and as if disfranchised from my community I must now seek my path. I sound like Geronimo, I know.
Luckily for me xicanismo liveth not only out of immigration.