Posts By This Author
I Am Afraid of the American Flag
We live in the shadow of flags meant to forever hide us, to remind us we don’t belong.
The History of Racism Is Not Past
'We Serve White's Only No Spanish or Mexicans' sign outside a Texas restaurant. 1949. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This history runs through, into, and over my interracial children.
The Failures of American Capitalism Are Once Again On Display
People file for unemployment following COVID-19 outbreak, at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, Ark. April 6, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford
Today's economic demons resemble the 'Panic of 1893.'
Why Wartime Metaphors Fail Us
President Donald Trump listens to a question during the daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
COVID-19 ignores the social constructs we've made to disregard one another.
Migration and Living in a Purgatory of Injustice
Mexican American writers render their world — unrecognized and illegible — visible and legitimate.
'American Dirt' and the Problem with Good Intentions
A commitment to justice or equality cannot be purely voyeuristic or touristic.
Competing Theologies on the Road to Santa Fe
The impossible staircase. Tim Menzies / Flickr
I realized I minimize the miraculous.
Meritocracy's Double Standards
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg holds a town hall event in Creston, Iowa, Nov. 25, 2019. REUTERS/Scott Morgan/File Photo
Meritocracy fails to give communities of color the comforts and privileges of mediocrity.
Who Are the Latino Evangelicals That Support Trump?
Ramiro Peña. Credit: YouTube
The 2020 Latinos for Trump organization prominently features three Latino evangelical pastors with long ties to Trump.
Miracle: A Love That Lives Beyond Loss
Revelations are supposed to happen on roads. Prophecies on the road from Delphi. Epiphany on the way to Judah. Miracles on the road to Damascus. You don’t expect them to happen on empty highways in East Texas.
Bob Dylan's Overlooked Christian Music
Image from Xavier Badosa via Flickr
Dylan’s Christianity had less in common with Jesse Jackson’s and had more in common with Jerry Farwell’s. It fit comfortably within the perspectives of a reactionary Christianity that blamed liberalism and the Civil Rights movement for the nation’s religious, moral, and economic decline. The end times were near and the nation needed to prepare for God’s wrath.
Singing 'Amor Eterno' Feels Different Now
Shocked and saddened citizens of El Paso, Texas paying their respects to the memorial wall created just outside the parking area for the Walmart store. August 8, 2019. Credit: Shutterstock.
“Amor Eterno,”or Eternal Love, was written in 1984 by the famed Mexican singer and song writer Juan Gabriel, or JuanGa, after his mother passed away. It has become a standard that is played at funerals, wakes, get-togethers, and even restaurants across the U.S., Mexico, and the world to remember family and loved ones who have passed away.
When American Christians Were Socialists
Construction worker on the frame of the Empire State Building. 1929. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Shall Christ or Cain reign in our American civilization?
The Emerging Latinx Political Moment
Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas, where migrant children are beng held. 29 June 2019. Via Shutterstock
A Univision poll found that millennial (ages 18-33) Latinx voters believed that Julián Castro did the best among all presidential candidates in the first Democratic primary debate. This demographic is important because nearly half of all Latinx voters in the U.S. are millennials. Castro is connecting with this emerging generation because of his shared experiences and shared convictions.
The Writing and Rewriting of the United States
Wikimedia Commons
My family walks a palimpsest, on translations and mistranslations of rivers, of people, of places, of faith. My family walks on unfinished words that have yet to be formed, stuck on molar, in mouths, being shaped by tongues that twist two into one. My family walks on places unfinished and already traversed.
The Bodies the Desert Hides
Sonoran desert near Phoenix, Ariz.
I stared down at the bones. Whether covered under centuries of sand or exposed to sun, the body was claimed by the desert in life and afterlife. Even though it had been uncovered decades earlier, the dust of the desert never released it from its grip. Father Francisco Eusebio Kino died far from his Italian home. Migrants along the way had told me of the crypt of the Jesuit priest who had missionized the Sonoran Desert 300 years prior. He first entered this desert on a mission in 1687 and it swallowed him in 1711.
In My Mexican Heaven
Via Shutterstock
In my Mexican heaven, my grandfather's hands would be calloused from turning pages of poetry. He would be sitting at the dinner table, sipping coffee, and reading, looking up as I walked out the door to tell me “que dios te bendiga mijo.” He wouldn’t sing hymns or shout hallelujah, but every evening at the same time he’d sing the song “Gema” to my grandmother.
In 'God's Country,' But Far from Heaven
Photo by Ja'Corie Maxwell on Unsplash.
In that small town, we were told that we were in "God’s country." The physical and spiritual evidence that surrounded us made us all the more certain. If this was "God’s country," then this too was God’s community, God’s actions, God’s relationships. The community, its actions, its families, its relationships were sacred. Nearly every aspect of the community was transformed into some great action of the Kingdom. And we were reminded, almost as often, that The World was a threatening force trying to make its way in and it was our duty to keep it out.
I Will Be an Impatient Prisoner of Hope
Photo by Yousef Al Nasser on Unsplash
“For us America is our own country, and it’s all the same: hopeless,” the general told his solider.
General Simón Bolívar had lost faith. The great Liberator of Latin America who fought for independence from Spain, with a vision of a continent united as a single nation would never happen. His men wore the wounds of the revolutions his words inspired and only the frail old man at the end of his life knew how worthless they had been. Political and social change was impossible. He had known the cause was lost for years and kept fighting out of despair, with no dream of any meaningful end.
The Contradictions of 'Assimilation'
Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
When my white wife held her baby boy and girl to her chest for the first time, she cried. Falling from her cheeks onto their heads, her tears baptized them into a world that was confused and colliding and in desperate need of grace.
But she did not cry because she had brown babies.