leftist-linguaphile:

thinkmexican:

Noam Chomsky: Banning of Mexican American Studies Is an “International Disgrace”

While in Tucson to give a lecture at the University of Arizona,  Professor Noam Chomsky addressed TUSD’s banning of Mexican American Studies (MAS) and its reading list.

“When you start banning books of Chicano history … Rethinking Columbus, the classics and so on, it’s an international disgrace,” said Chomsky, one of the world’s leading intellectuals. “That’s reminiscent, I’m afraid, of Nazi Germany.”

Mr. Chomsky notes that much of this recent hostility toward the Mexican community is a calculated response to the millions of campesinos displaced by NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and were forced to seek opportunities in the United States.

“There used to be a pretty open border … it was militarized, strikingly, in 1994,” said Chomsky, referring to the year NAFTA was enacted.

Much of the issue behind the banning of MAS is about literally trying to re-write this history.

“…in the case of Arizona and banning of Mexican Studies programs, it’s particularly ironic because this is Mexico,” commented Chomsky.

But ultimately it’s about us. Do we accept the outlawing of history and culture or do we, as MAS students have been doing, fight back?

The answer is obvious.

Fight back. With teeth. As an Arizonan and a Mexican-American this affects me. It hurts me. How dare you try erase my history. How dare you try to erase the struggle of my people. How dare you try to erase me. But the beauty of this is that you’ll try and try, but you won’t. By 2030 the Latino population will be a majority in this country. Good luck erasing that. 

And a lot of people don’t agree with Chomsky, but he hit it right on the head here. ARIZONA IS MEXICO. I caught his lecture and it was brilliant. At the end of the day this man is a linguist and he can appreciate the importance of language and culture. This is beautiful.

(Source: tucsoncitizen.com, via onehundreddollars)