Thread: Culture, heritage hold a country together

http://www.gulflive.com/opinion/mississ ... 227580.xml

Culture, heritage hold a country together
Saturday, December 23, 2006

To the Editor:

The following is a letter that I sent to Mr. Henry Cisneros in response to an editorial printed in The Mississippi Press on December 18, 2006. I hope you will see fit to print it:

With all due respect, Mr. Cisneros, I was appalled by an article written by you which was printed in my local paper recently. I am referring specifically to your call for homebuilders in this nation to rethink their building strategies to accommodate an "expanding Latino housing market." In short, you task builders and home designers to recognize what you call a "burgeoning Latino population" and to respect those Latino families, "who are increasingly manifesting pride in their heritage", when designing new homes. You even went so far as to demand that builders take this "Latino expansion" into consideration in the determination of "distinctive exterior and interior colors, cultural touches, furniture selection, art, fabrics, plants, landscaping and elevation details."

In the first place, Mr. Cisneros, we do not have a "recent Latino expansion" as you call it.

What we have is a huge wave of illegal immigrants sneaking across the border from Mexico. It is not something we welcome with open arms and want to bend over backwards to accommodate. On the contrary, it is something we wish to stop! And the people who are coming into this country illegally are predominantly Mexicans. You may wish to call them Latinos as if there were a negative connotation to the word "Mexican," but the last time I looked, people from Mexico were considered Mexicans! Is this an example of the "pride in heritage" to which you so deftly refer?

Mr. Cisneros, as a proud citizen of the United States of America, I too have a rich heritage. I wish to recognize Columbus day, not denigrate the discoverer for whom the holiday was named. I like to celebrate Thanksgiving, which has little or no meaning for or is of no importance to illegal immigrants. I wave an American flag on Independence day, not the flag of another country. I wish to keep these customs alive, not let them be trampled on and brushed aside by people who want to come to America but do not want to become Americans. That is exactly what you are "accommodating" whether you realize it or not.

Culture and heritage is what the glue is made of that holds a country together. Without it, a nation simply falls apart. I don't want to see that happen to the United States of America.

Sincerely,

Vernon Steele

Pascagoula

Powerful letter.

Oddly enough we were just having that conversation on our town board. You may want to skim over it. The thread started by an 'indegenious' person stating it was 'our land.'

http://www.waukegan.org/Forum/topic.asp ... hichpage=5

scroll down a bit to see it. sample and a response to cuauhtli.

We are the descendants of the Indigenous Inhabitants of this land. We are not Spaniards. We are not from Spain. We did not Immigrate to Spain and then come back. Most of us have not even had a single Spanish ancestor in the last one hundred years (often it is more than that). We may have Spanish surnames, but this is a result of colonization, mass baptism, and originally...of rape.

Not even the Spaniards were "pure" White: they had a history of over seven hundred years of being conquered and raped by Muslim-Berbers and African soldiers (The Moors, 711-1492 A.D.).
The Spaniards were Mestizos (mixed) people if there ever were any: their language is from Italy's Latin as well as the Arab Moors Arabic. Their religion is from Rome. Their racial gene pool was blended with Arab Moors and before that, Mediterranean Romans. The name "Spain" doesn't even come from Spain! It came from the Romans who named it "Hispania"

We are not based on European definitions. Otherwise, we would be Europeans.

Today, the nation of Mexico takes it namesake not from Cortes or Spain, but from the Mexica (Mesheeka) a.k.a. the Aztecs. This Indigenous core is ackowledged at the center of the Mexican flag with the Aztec legend

What do you mean what culture do we have? Look at everything around you. Not quite like Mexico or any other country is it? Those differences are a part of our culture. From another perspective, our culture is made up of hundreds of sub-cultures that immigrants brought with them when they came to the US.

Oh my lord...

http://www.waukegan.org/Forum/topic.asp ... hichpage=6

Palomablanca
Advanced Member
1198 Posts
Posted - 12/23/2006 : 09:07:28
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Originally posted by cuauhtli

Yaotl,

This is how I see it; do our Geometry teachers ever mention that the Aztecs and Maya had to have a firm grasp on the following concepts in order to construct their pyramids?
· Right angles
· Symmetry
· The "Pythagorean Theorem"
· Volume
· parrallelograms
· Optical illusions (as in the "moving serpent" shadow on the pyramid-temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza that occurs every Winter Solstice)

Do our Science teachers tell us of the genius of the Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, and Aztec astronomical star mapping? The Maya calculated a solar year to 365.22 days! Their calendar was more accurate than the calendar used in Europe at the time! What about the astronomical observatory at Monte Alban in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

· Pyramid-temples that rival those of the Egyptians (The Pyramid of Cholula is greater in volume than any pyramid in Egypt)
·
We built the first metropolis in the Western Hemisphere: Teotihuacan. It was larger in area than Rome or London (8 square miles) and larger in population (200,000). It was the Western Hemisphere's first planned, grid-pattern city. It's still there in Mexico today, just 25 miles outside of Mexico City! Every year, thousands of people come from around the globe to see the city and climb its two enormous pyramids. It is the largest tourist attraction Mexico.

· Invention of the chinampa ("floating garden") system of agriculture, which yielded three times the amount of food as standard agriculture. These chinampas are still present for viewing in the Xochimilco area of Mexico City.

· Writing, from the Olmec glyphs, to the Isthmian script of La Mojarra, to the Aztec pictographs,
to the Maya alphabet.

· Medical knowledge (pharmacology), using thousands of pharmacological plant cures, and obsidian blades for surgery. Our medical books were burned by the Spanish invaders (specifically, Bishop Zumarraga). Today, people called curanderos still use some of the surviving ancient medical knowledge.

· Enormous libraries of books (99% burned by the Spaniards). The city of Texcoco was labeled "The Athens of The New World" by the Europeans because of its libraries crammed with books, and Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) housed the greatest amount of scholar-priests anywhere.

· We were the first people in the world to start mandatory schooling for all children (in the Telpochcalli and Calmecac), regardless of rank or station (Daily Life of the Aztecs, Jaques Soustelle, Stanford University Press). This is something British and Americans didn't do until the 20th century.

· The Mexica (Aztec) Empire commanded an army of over 200,000 soldiers...it was the largest army anywhere in the world at that time, and would rank as one of the largest even today

We built the largest city in the world - twice: once in Teotihuacan (200,000) and later in Tenochtitlan (350,000). During this time of the Aztec Empire (Tenochtitlan), London was still a city of only 60,000


Our people in Aztlan, built the largest apartment complex (Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico) in America, only surpassed in size during the 20th century by the apartment ghettos of New York City

100 years before the first gothic cathedral was built in Europe, the people of Pueblo Bonito (New Mexico) were constructing a massive multi-story ceremonial and trading center that drew religious pilgrims from the Southwest and turquoise merchants as far away as the Valley of Mexico. The ruins of this massive center are still standing just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico !


· We did all of this on our own, with our own people within the region known as "Mesoamerica".
We did not have to "borrow" from Egypt (like the Greeks did)
or borrow from Greece (like the Romans did)
or borrow from the Arabs (like the Spanish did)
or borrow from Rome and Greece (like the British did)
...or borrow from Mesopotamia (like all of Europe did)!
We did not have to "borrow our civilization from anyone" but ourselves!
·
· Primitive people? I don’t think so! They don’t want us to know the truth because then they would have to answer to the world as to why they butchered such advanced and intelligent Nations.

Science...Agriculture...Astronomy...Architecture.. .Philosophy...



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You said it better than I could! Because the anglos are momentarily on top, its easy for them to forget they didn't do everything!!

How do the accomplishments of long dead empires in territory thousands of miles to the south of the USA make it okay for them now to come into our nation illegally?

But as long as we're talking about civilizations, Western Civilization, which the USA is the pinnacle of, is IMHO the best the world has ever seen:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3234