The Hispanic Reconquest of American History
Support group for HiddenHispanicHeritage.com / Grupo de apoyo para HerenciaHispanaOculta.com
VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTDear friends,
At a time when we need to come together as a community more than ever before, the comments on our Facebook group page, The Hispanic Reconquest of American History, over the past two weeks have clearly illustrated just how divided we are, and even worse, how little interest there is for finding common ground. Frankly, it's very depressive. • We’ve had bigots blatantly displaying their racism by making outrageous and unfounded comments about Black Lives Matter, from calling them all from communists to terrorists and beyond. One member posted a painting of a vandalized statue surrounded by monkeys and then argued that the posting was not racist. These are people who refuse to see that while BLM may be infiltrated by a few troublemakers, the overwhelming majority of them have been peaceful demonstrators who ARE NOT vandalizing statues or disrespecting out Hispanic heritage. Yet some members of this group want to fight against them all. Hispanics are divided even about what to call ourselves, and yet these people think this is the right time to fight, and even make racist comments, against the biggest civil rights movement this country has seen in many years. It’s absurd! • We’ve seen some group members get extremely personal and offensive when they don’t agree with another member. Some of you have complained about those people and some have already been blocked from this page, but only after being warned and having persisted with offensive behavior. We are not going to be so patient with those people from now on. • We’ve had totally uneducated people prove their limited capacity to argue history and yet insist that the rest of us have to hear their Black-Legend-distorted information. We had a group member who insisted, for example, that the rest of us need to do more reading, que "damos vergueza” because we were defending Columbus, who according to her, was executed by order of the queen of Spain. Beyond absurd! • We have Spaniards, posting from Spain, who clearly don’t understand that it is a lot easier to be Hispanic in Spain than in the United States. And they make all kinds of erroneous assumptions about the Hispanic community here. Some have even suggested that my webpages should be published only in Spanish and my course should be in Spanish too — when in fact many of my students only speak English! And when in fact the people we need to reach with this information is the English-speaking American public! • We’ve had group members giving lectures to other members over whether we are Hispanics or Latinos. Some are even arguing over whether we Hispanics/Latinos in the United States can call ourselves and ethnic group. Really? Our monuments are being vandalized or removed and our heritage is being disrespected, but you want to waste time fighting over semantics? The worst thing about it is that some people use their insistence on semantics to derail important discussions. You may be in the middle of a great discussion, but just because you used “Latino” instead of “Hispanic,” for example, someone will take the conversation totally out of whack, and restart the Hispanic vs. Latino arguments we have had on this page many times before, without accomplishing anything! • We’ve had people who get very defensive about news they don’t agree with, and become very offensive against others. Just recently, I happened to be watching TV and saw Joe Biden defend the statues of Christopher Columbus. Quite innocently, I thought this would be news that would be of interest to the members of this group, especially since vandalized statues have been the topic of many of our postings in the past two weeks. However, when I posted a brief announcement saying “Bravo” because our cause was getting recognition from a major American politician and potential president, the Trumpistas exploded! Some struck back with everything from making childish remarks about Biden’s age to implying that I must be a closet-communist. LOL Do these people even know that I was born in Cuba and have spent three decades exposing the horrors of communism as a newspaper columnist? On several occasions, I told them that if Trump defends our Hispanic monuments, I will announce it too. But they felt I had given them the opening to the bring in the frequently dirty political campaign arguments we see in other Facebook group pages. All of a sudden, these people were putting the interest of their political party over those of our Hispanic community and our efforts to defend our heritage. Yet Friday night, when Trump spoke from Mount Rushmore, I listened to his speech very carefully, so that I could announced immediately that he had remembered to mention us, and to pacify the anger of the Trumpistas. But it didn’t happen. He mentioned at least two dozen great Americans and not one of them was Hispanic. Something similar occurred during his Saturday speech in Washington. To his credit, on Saturday Trump recognized that the American way of life “began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America.” But unfortunately, since he forgets to mention Hispanic monuments, as he spoke about “not allowing angry mobs to tear down our statues,” an angry mob was indeed tearing down another Columbus statue in Baltimore. That’s the sad truth, even for people who don’t know how to accept it. My friends, THIS IS ALL WRONG AND IT HAS TO STOP! In the future, to avoid political arguments of any kind, I will refrain from sharing political news, even if it may be relevant to our group. And I ask you please to do the same. Let's stick to history, please! As you know, especially because it is clearly explained on the top of every page, this page was created as a support group for HiddenHispanicHeritage.com and my mission – now 107 articles -- to fill the huge gaps in American history and expose the very positive Hispanic contributions that have been hidden from us. If you are here for anything else, you are in the wrong place. There are many other FB pages where you can express racist attitudes and call people communists or terrorists. There are many other pages where you can fight (for ever and ever) about whether we are Latinos or Hispanics, or whether Latin America does or doesn’t exist, or whether you can dictate from Europe that U.S. Hispanics cannot even call ourselves an ethnic group. Please, not here. This page is for those who are proud of our Hispanic heritage in the United States, and who want to help me TEACH our fellow Americans about all the reasons we feel proud. Period. That’s it. End of story! Frankly, if you are a Hispanic who wants Hispanic monuments torn down, if you hate some of the blood that run through you veins, if you know very little history and instead of listening you are trying to lecture, if are a repentant Hispanic, if you are here to release whatever hatred or psychological hang-ups you may have about your Hispanic identity, you are in the wrong place. Until now, my two co-administrators and I have been quite busy deleting posting that have nothing to do with this page. It’s truly amazing how many people insist on violating our rules. We are constantly having to delete everything from political and religious sermons on video, to people trying to sell things, to members who try to divert the conversations to the history of Latin America and Spain — which are not the topic of this page. But now that our Hispanic heritage is under attack in this country, mostly because of ignorance of our history, this page has been overwhelmed with comments that, instead of supporting me, my students and my project, represent everything I stand against. Let’s be clear: I support Black Lives Matter. I support my students who march with BLM. They have every right to protest against the discrimination and police brutality we have seen in this country. Obviously, I despise the few idiots who are vandalizing our monuments. But that’s all they are, a few idiots. If you can’t see the difference, if you want to use this page to attack all of them, even by calling them “devils” or illustrating them as monkeys, you don’t belong here. Frankly, although I have many more articles I want to write and photos taken and still unpublished, I have had little time to continue expanding my project because I find myself arguing with anti-Hispanics, people who don’t belong on this page in the first place. And that has to stop. However, if you are here because you appreciate my work and that of my students, I’m very grateful. If you are here to help us educate our fellow Americans about all the history of Hispanic contributions that has been hidden from them, welcome aboard! We need you on our crew! And if you are here because you are proud of your Hispanic heritage and, now more than ever, you see the need for coming together as a community to defend our heritage (and avoid fighting over petty issues), you have no idea of how much we truly appreciate you! From now on, even more than before, because of all that has happened recently, I intend to use my HiddenHispanicHeritage project as a bridge to other communities (and even parts of our own) that don’t know our history. Those who are with me will defend our Hispanic heritage through education instead of confrontation. Let’s be realistic, my friends: Ignorance cannot be defeated with more ignorance. I hope you will still be with me! Miguel Pérez |
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