What most people don't know about me: I'd rather be running the continent than getting involved in politics.
--from Salvador Reza's information page on azcentral.com
Reza sees himself as a victim of racism, stemming back to his days in kindergarten.
--Sonoran News.
by Jerome du Bois
The funniest part of Hispanic exploiter Salvador Reza's latest opinion piece in the Arizona Daily Star comes after he calls for an international Boycott Arizona Now:
This is not a boycott against Arizona's indigenous nations. In fact, we encourage conventioneers who want to honor our call to contact the beautiful facilities available throughout these sovereign nations as an alternative to Arizona's business facilities.
Unless he means "Come climb down to Havasupai Falls," or "Come climb up to First Mesa," or "Come get fry bread at the Window Rock Inn," or "Come to the Pow-Wow in the White Mountains," then what he's saying is:
Come gamble, sucker.
Come to Fort McDowell to hear Paul Revere and the Raiders do "Indian Nation." Come hear Air Supply at Gila River Casino, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Rick Springfield. Come to the Endless Buffett. Slug down fake champagne handed out by half-clad fools with no self-respect while you flog the clanging bandit with your forefinger. Forget the unshakeable truth that Chance Has No Memory. Nourish the most craven instincts within you while filling the pockets of people who should be ashamed of what they are doing, and who, so far, have built nothing substantial for the future with their legal-loophole enrichment without crucial help from the United States of America and its ingenious people. (Go read about Ivan Malkin, for example, and take away all references to non-tribal infrastructure and support, and see how far he would have gotten performing his undeniably good deeds. We are interconnected here in the 21st Century. Mr. Reza wants to obliterate this intricacy, this balance, this consensual agreement.)
Well, go ahead, conventioneers, get on out there . . . But the problem is, if you're boycotting Arizona, which I assume means its private bus companies, its limousine services, its highways, its surface streets and restaurants and quick-stops and gas stations and streetlights, then how the hell are you going to get out to the Beautiful Facilities of the Sovereign Nations without trespassing on your own declarations and contributing to the Arizona economy, and without directly piggybacking on the law-abiding contributions of millions of legal Arizona taxpayers? The Sovereign Nations (how dare you say Reservations) are smack dab in the middle of lots of Arizona, Mr. Reza. Anybody who drives to any one of them would be Violating the Boycott. (Unless they snuck into the Tohono O'Oodham Sovereign Nation from the border they share with Mexico. But maybe you know more about that than I do.)
I know: helicopters! Small planes! Oh, but you can't hire any Arizona helicopter companies. And even if you managed to fly in from New Mexico, say, you're still using Arizona airspace, protected by all kinds of regulations, radar, supervision, and actual aircraft, all paid for, in part, by Arizona taxpayers. You would be supporting all those workers. (Do illegals pay the same taxes, Mr. Reza?)
But what about the economic engines inside the Sovereign Nations themselves? Tell you what: follow the money. Mark the money flowing around in them and see the percentage that comes from off the Rez. Start with the hard-earned dollars of the non-Indian gambling fools, earned off-Rez, which is huge. Then move on: Where does the food come from? The bricks and mortar and wood and cement? The martini glasses? The very neon? Sovereign? Hah! They are as dependent on the foolish spenders (and bonded contractors) of Arizona as a drunk on crutches. I would truly like to see them become sovereign, or at least strong, but I view the New Casino Indians the way I view the people who run Las Vegas and Atlantic City and the plying riverboats: they're grifters, every smirking one of them, from Donald Trump on down, people who have a basic contempt for other humans, working other people's weaknesses to line their own pockets, and praying their marks never grow smart or strong.
I look at Salvador Reza the same way, only he's worse. His capital is poor brown human beings, the more the better to expand his power base. He wants power. He wants to run his own little nation. (So then maybe he can lead raids on Ward Churchill's tribe.) He wants as many illegals in this land as soon as possible, preferably ignorant Indians from Chiapas, who he thinks may be easy to push around. He thinks the sheer weight of their numbers will make them undeniable. And he's right. He will exploit them, and they will crush our schools, hospitals, and all social service agencies. Salvador Reza doesn't care about that. He hates the United States of America, and wants it brought down.
And he doesn't care how many die on the Arizona desert to get what he wants. I say it. I claim it. I'll repeat it: I say that, given his druthers, he would say to bring them on, bring them all on, men, women, and children, and let the dead bury the dead. How do I know? He's got a column on pluggedin, and he hasn't said word one about the recent 11 poor dead people scattered like forgotten firewood from Yuma to Bisbee, some abandoned by their own smugglers.
It's not so funny anymore, is it, reader?
Here's another quote from his latest opinion piece:
In consultations with people in the migrant community, we are truthful and tell them a boycott may cause the loss of some jobs. The answer comes from the people themselves: "They can't hurt us any more than they already do when they deport us, separate our families, exploit us without paying us because they call us 'illegals.'"
No real person said the sentence in quotes, of course. These are Reza's words, neatly summarizing the "migrant view"; Salvador Reza, who fancies himself some kind of Heron Jefe of the New Aztlan.
we are truthful and tell them a boycott may cause the loss of some jobs.
But not his job. Don't worry about that. No matter what happens to anyone else, Mr. Reza will miss neither a paycheck nor a meal, though he could do with fewer of the latter. And now that I've brought up his weight, let me add a personal inquiry to this insult: In your new world, Mr. Reza, when The USA has collapsed into indigenous chaos and squabbling sovereign tribes, where will you get the insulin and other supplies you will surely need, if you don't need them already? You'll steal them, of course, because a person of limited and amoral vision like you can't see the how the whole system hangs together by law, and by the consent of the governed, and by dedication to a rational future. Typical bully.
The answer comes from the people themselves: "They can't hurt us any more than they already do when they deport us, separate our families, exploit us without paying us because they call us 'illegals.'"
And the reply to this manure comes from this person --me-- himself: "They can't hurt us legal Americans (including legal Mexican immigrants) any more than they already do when they invade our land, destroy our property, raise our crime rates, bog down our schools, exploit our health care and legal systems without paying for them, all because they spit on the rule of law and any distinction between 'legal' and 'illegal.'"
Who is this guy, anyway, whom the Arizona Republic and Phil Boas implicitly endorse by giving him space to bray his hatred?
Who has always lived off the contributions of others as a "lobbyist" or "activist"? Who would destroy the best country ever designed for the sake of a tribal, barbaric ideal?
Who has grown literally fat off this land? (Don't tell me he doesn't know that his size is an instrument of intimidation. He loves to loom. I've known lots of these bliveys, as has Catherine. Which is why we know the bigger they are, the harder they fall, one and all. Gordos.)
Who makes his living by making sure the jornaleros, the day workers, stay that way?
Here's a précis Linda Bentley of the Sonoran News wrote a couple of years ago, on April 3, 2003 as part of a larger article on several of these corrosive immigration activists:
Tonatierra's coordinator, Salvador Reza, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. His family moved to Ysleta, Texas when his father, a farm worker, was granted a work permit under the bracero program. Reza sees himself as a victim of racism, stemming back to his days in kindergarten.
After graduating from the University of California, San Diego, Reza began working for immigrant advocacy groups. He says he came to Phoenix because he believes it is the center of Aztlán, the original land of the Aztecs before they migrated south to Mexico. Of all the stories about where Aztlán might have been, Reza is the only one who believes its center is in Phoenix. Reza, one of the major lobbyists for the Palomino Day Worker Center in Phoenix, was quoted in an interview as saying that jornaleros, or day workers, are "forced to stand on street corners and suffer the scorn of a society which utilizes them to clean their houses."
One of Tonatierra's initiatives was the Macehualli Project, to organize the hundreds of day laborers in Phoenix. Reza believes the Macehualli Union de Jornaleros (Day Laborers Union) will achieve justice and dignity through the establishment of day labor centers.
Tonatierra and Reza's goals go far beyond the day laborer centers he wishes to create throughout the city. He is pushing for increased Latino political representation and expanding the Xinachtil Program (Xinachtil means "seed" in the Aztec language) in the public school system to teach "traditions, culture, art and science of indigenous people."
Immigrant advocacy groups no longer promote legal immigration, citizenship, learning English or any other assimilation into this country. Hispanic-rights groups talk of reoccupation and repatriation of the southwestern United States, the land of "indigenous people."
And what's with the Aztec obsession? What was it about the "traditions, culture, art and science [!] of" this "indigenous people" that attracted him? Here's a clue:
Best Known Features: In modern times, the Aztec are best known for human sacrifices. On special occasions, a slave was sacrificed. His flesh would be elaborately dressed and would be the center ornament of the banquet. Cannibalism was not a daily occurrence in the Aztec life, but it was common on special religious and social occasions. Human sacrifices were necessary to honor the gods and to perpetuate human existence. They believed that humans were responsible for the pleasure or displeasure of the gods and, therefore, they aimed to make sure that the deities were happy. Twenty to fifty thousand people were sacrificed yearly.
Salvador Reza's dream come true. He would slay you and flay you. I say it. Why else even try to resurrect any Aztec references? It's a psychological tell. The Aztecs were bloodthirsty, short-sighted, and illiterate. They never even developed a real written language. They spoke Nahuatl --picture-thought, accompanied by hieroglyphics; they were tribal, hermetic, and stunted; their language was transliterated by others later-- so it helped them not at all when it came to the future. Nor anyone else. Maybe that's the attraction for Reza. Keeps them ooga-booga that way, eh, bwana Sal? The Feathered Serpent will save us all! Not likely.
The Aztecs. The Mayan. The Toltecs. What marvelous social models to emulate. From Camille Paglia's recent article on "The Magic of Images":
Though most major studies of Meso-American culture acknowledge the enormity of human sacrifice that occurred, particularly in the two centuries before the Spanish conquest, the issue has been de-emphasized over the past thirty years in the ideological campaign to convict Christopher Columbus of genocide. Otherwise well-produced picture books of Chichén Itzá, for example, the mammoth Mayan complex in the Yucatán, document the great step pyramid, the ball court, the domed observatory, and the temple of a thousand pillars crowned by a raffish Chac-Mool statue holding a belly plate on which freshly extracted, still-quivering human hearts were laid. But it is difficult to find photographs, much less comprehensive ones, of Chichén Itzá's centrally situated Platform of the Skulls, where the severed heads of sacrificed prisoners, ritual victims, and even losing ballplayers were displayed on wooden racks to bake in the sun. Around that imposing stone platform, which I have personally inspected, runs a complex frieze of stone skulls still bearing remnants of bright red paint. The widespread view of the Maya as peaceable, compared to the bloodthirsty Aztecs, certainly needs adjustment.
Such platforms, called tzompantli, date from the prior Toltec era in Central Mexico and northern Yucatán. Among several eye-witness accounts by Spanish soldiers and priests in Cortés' expedition, one extravagantly estimated that 136,000 skulls were displayed on the tzompantli in the main Aztec temple complex of Tenochtitlán on the site of present-day Mexico City. A codex ink sketch by Friar Diego Duran shows tiers of skulls tightly strung like an abacus with rods piercing the cranium from ear to ear. In their orderly symmetries, these vanished skull racks resemble Byzantine icon screens as well as the tall magazine shelves of modern libraries. The grinning, pre-Columbian skull also appears in isolation on stone altars and on the heads, crowns, or trophy belts of ferocious earth goddesses like Coatlicue ("She of the Serpent Skirt"), who represents the cycle of fertility and death. Even more striking are unearthly masks worn by Aztec priests: an example in the British Museum, which may have belonged to king Montezuma himself, consists of the front half of a real human skull surfaced with mosaic and tied around the face; it was worn with an elaborate feather headdress. The finest of these mosaic masks are faceted with brilliant turquoise jade, with detail work in red or white seashells and obsidian, a black volcanic glass.
I don't remember reading about Thomas Jefferson or James Madison or James Monroe drawing upon these kinds of inspiration, or finding resources in this kind of history, to help develop the tools to shape the future. And as far as I know, not one of these men ever had the inclination to place another human's physical features upon his face.
But I believe that Salvador Reza would do so in a heartbeat. It may be a cruel thing to say, but I've read this man's careless words for months. His latest piece celebrates a pugilist from a recent movie --a man who hits other men for money and the basest pleasures of other men-- so that Reza can make this plug:
I went to see Cinderella Man and it broke my heart every time Jim Braddock went out as a day laborer to feed his kids and the labor gang boss would pass him up.
It reminds me of the Home Depot corners where the modern labor bosses pull up and start pointing at the strongest and younger workers while passing up the elderly and the weak.
Pass the fooking kleenex. If Salvador Reza drove by these guys, he couldn't give them a job if his life depended on it, but he sure wants every one of them to be there, old, young, and in-between, keep them coming, the more the merrier --for him, not them. He wants them to justify his borrowed existence.
It's completely appropriate that Salvador Reza would glorify a movie where men pound other men with their fists. It's his kind of language. Boxing aficianados call it "the sweet science," believe it or not, compounding all kinds of linguistic felonies. Reasoned arguments go bye-bye. Hit me.
Bullshit. Nobody gets to hit me. You ever been hit, Sal, punched with a fist? I have. Ain't no fun. Want some more? Some more? Some more? Want to glorify it? You sure? You're tapping the most primitive instincts inside us. You sure? Yeah, he's sure. He's retro. He's not about growing up. He's about growing down.
Just because Reza can't imagine a heroic movie about a machinist or inventor or farmer or folk scientist, doesn't mean those people didn't make a bigger contribution to our country than some idiots with fast hands and nothing else. They did. Boxers do nothing, nothing, nothing at all, to help the human race. They draw blood, and trigger testosterone atrocities. They contribute nothing to what we need.
And neither does Salvador Reza. Read the title of this piece, Sal: we can do it without a bit of violence, because Aztlan is dayud. And because it never was. The United States of America, though --that's real, and alive, and booming.
The bell's rung. Your time is over. You just don't know it yet.
Posted by Jerome at June 10, 2005 02:00 AM | TrackBack