Co-Opting Language
By Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante
English is not intended to work the same way for them as it does for us.
The rulers use it to create rules to maintain their rule.
The colonizers’ language came first to steal and contract our land, imaginations, Our People. It doesn't matter if it was the british king or the spanish king they were monarchs. Those words came to raze Our Libraries, Our Art, Our Culture. And then they would use the kings tongue to declare us illiterate and declare our land their land and then create the documents that would undocument us.
That racket continues. It is in the user agreements we are tricked, conned, forced, bribed into signing every hour of every day. English is brutally honest, but we are all too brutalized. We numbly click all the user agreements. We are boxed into their perspectives via petty barrages every day.
Just to give you an example of how this hustle has expanded over generations think about what those early invaders are titled. In school, during the half hour that the state sanctions material about Meso America, these early high way robbers are called the Spanish Conquistadores.
They created a racket that would continue for half of millennia which was an update of the monarchies of europe. Europeans were expert at manipulating feuding tribes because that is they were. Europe teemed with tribes that not get along over centuries that turned into imperial armies then fought, manipulated each other, stole each other's riches. Their modus operandi was violence when you didn't have your way, resorting to the most barbaric nasty violence known to man.
cortes was no genius. He was mediocre. Why else would he get into a boat and float into uncertainty? His hopes for wealth, power, and fame were stunted in spain. He could not compete with the 1%. He was good at violence, but not enough to conquer the surrounding more cunning, more violent monarchs. kortez was a master of violent arts for his master-the king who engendered universes called universities to educate subjects so subjects made him the center of that universe.
cortez showed flashes of brilliant violence. he was cunning he was loud. Surely, the king was more than happy to gamble with cortes’s life to get him far, far, far away from the court. And maybe, just maybe, the gamble might pay off.
I know all this because I am a Librotraficante. I grew up as a translator. I understand how language is weaponized against us and against others. I also know it is powerful. It helps us survive and thrive. When I earned my Master of Fine Arts I mastered the masters english, but I rejected masters.
I am liberating english to finish my Book.
This is not a book with a lowercase “b” because it is not simply a consumer product meant to make another buck, which means it's not written following the rules and regulations and myths of the corporate publishing world which simply cranks out colonizer fantasies or manuals for rules for the rulers to maintain their rule in the fine print of their fine art.
This is a Book with a capital “B” because we are co-opting English, infusing it with Community Cultural Capital to liberate Our Voices, Our Art, Our Culture, and freeing the most potent of Community Cultural Capital-our stories, our imagination, Nuestra Palabra.
I type this Book in time for the 10th Anniversary of the Librotraficante Caravan that smuggled back into Arizona the books from the Mexican American Studies Curriculum banned by right-wing Republican politicians. It is true, our History and Culture were banned during our lifetime. And Arizona officials have yet to apologize or make amends. This Book is a reckoning because there are forces that strive to prevent us from acquiring knowledge. We must school them.
I am typing this in time for the 25th anniversary of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, which I founded in 1998 in the party hall of Chapultepec Restaurant.
I write this 500 years after the Spanish pirates invaded and stole the land of the Mexica and razed their libraries, temples and burned their books and art.
The epigram to Our History is 500 years long. Now, we begin to tell Our Story. Our Terms on Our Terms.
And the time is now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Writer, activist, and professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, was the first Chicano to earn a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He earned his bachelor's degree in Communications from De Paul University in Chicago. Diaz is currently a professor of Mexican American Literature and Rhetorical Analysis in Houston, Texas.