| Let’s call a truce on flag wars |
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Ramón Del Castillo
States, unions, organizations, clubs and other organized groups have sutured flags together as symbols of identity since time immemorial. Flags epitomize a nation’s values and symbolize causes where the citizenry demonstrates unabashed patriotism and veneration towards those nations and its causes.
Flags can also be seen as contradictory symbols, especially to those who believe that they have lost their meaning. They can symbolize discontent; they are both revered and spat upon to demonstrate the degree of love or dissatisfaction that groups may have with a country, its policies and its laws.
Those on the right side of the equation believe that it is disrespectful to disgrace the flag.
Supporters of free speech believe that when hypocrisy replaces idealism, it is their obligation to publicly display that living contradiction.
The tortilla curtain for the first act in the premier of “The Flag Wars,” has officially opened. The community has been transformed into a stage as legal citizens and undocumented workers enter the actors in a modern day tragedy.
Brown people from South of the Border are no longer peeping out of window panes through broken shard and hiding behind the dark shadows of obscurity.
Ellos del Sur realize during this year’s legislative immigration fiasco that a silent voice must find its space in a free society.
At the risk of mass deportation, they have made their presence known to the community through civic protest, an old American tradition, guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America.
Many are Mexicano undocumented workers. Many of the children are American citizens. A wedge threatening to destroy this sacred institution has emerged and forced immigrants to take action.
Many argue that undocumented workers have no civil rights in American society. What about human rights? Do their children, the victims of the flag wars, have rights? Who is willing to stand up for them?
Their collective voice is ringing loud and clear in a cacophony of Spanish dichos whose echoes are traveling throughout Denver’s communities. They want to be heard. They want to be included in the democratic process.
Shouting César Chávez’ slogan, “Si Se Puede, they have created a cultural linchpin to the Chicano community.
Mexicanos and their supporters marched with the Mexican flag in public. They have been accused of being seditious during this contentious time when borders are seemingly porous. The flags, held high and mighty, were cultural gesticulations of pride and dignity for a people whose history has been tainted with conquest, invasion, war and cultural genocide.
They are following a historical path that other groups have followed while in search of the American dream that has been transformed into a vicious nightmare.
Seldom do Mexicanos display only flags during their spiritual marches and protests. Usually postured somewhere close to the Mexican flag is the banner of La Virgen de Guadalupe, the symbol of a people whose lives are both religious and spiritual. They understand the role of spirituality in social protest.
Internationally, it is not uncommon to see countries that are at odds with American foreign policy, burn effigies of presidents in a symbolic gesturing demonstrating disdain for our leaders. Similarly, it is not unusual for Americans to burn American flags or display them in ways to symbolize dissatisfaction.
Mexicanos have not demonstrated that kind of disrespect for the American flag. What they have displayed is cultural reverence for their own flag.
The Chicano Movement pried open a closed mentality so that Brown folks from the south, the pawns of economic supply and demand, would come to the United States do not have to suffer the indignities of previous generations.
During the Hippy Movement, hippies made shirts, and converted the American flag into quilts and patches used to cover conspicuous parts of the body. Conservatives saw it as counter-cultural. Hippies saw it as resistance. Anarchists saw it as ultimate freedom.
I have traveled in the South where the Confederate flag is hung openly in public by southerners who believe the civil war has never ended. The students at Skyline High School displayed the confederate flag last week to counter act the Mexican flags that had been publicly displayed. I have not heard any criticism towards them.
César Chávez’ and the United Farm Workers (UFW) created a red flag with La Huelga, a black bird centered en el medio symbolizing freedom and justice for the farmworkers. As the UFW proudly displayed the flag, Chávez was called a Communist. Nothing could be further from the truth. The flag symbolized the plight of the farmworkers and their quest for social justice.
I say that we call a truce on the Flag Wars and sit at the table, break bread and converse.
Dr. Ramón Del Castillo is an Independent Journalist.
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