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Letters

ASTUTE ARTICLES

I enjoyed your piece on leadership in the Latino community (Retooling leadership: The new vanguard, January 2006) and felt it was capped off quite well with Mr. (Raul) Yzaguirre's commentary (Ascending Latino Leaders, My Perspective, January 2006).

While my inclusion was certainly undeserved, you painted an insightful landscape of past and future leadership in the community and Arizona. Our calling for leadership does indeed need to be tempered by the fact that Arizona's needs are our own.

Well done!

Art Macias
Executive Director, Arizona Lottery

A MATTER OF DEFINITION

Although I enjoyed the (Retooling leadership) article, I wish you would have been less liberal with the use of the words "leaders" and "leadership".

I have lived and worked in the Valley for 34 years and I have read countless news articles profiling so called "Hispanic leaders" in one context or the other. Some of those mentioned in your article were the topics of the early articles and that speaks well of their dedication to the cause. And it is refreshing to see some new names. But here is my bripe.

The first definition of "lead" in Webster's is "to direct, as if by going before or along with, by physical contact, pulling a rope, etc.; guide."

Now, while those mentioned in those early articles and your article may be flattered to be called "leaders," those of us being directed, guided and/or being pulled by a rope are less so. When reading articles about "Hispanic leaders," I always envision a field full of bleating brown sheep being "led" by a tall, brown, slender "Hispanic leader" carrying a staff. Although that was probably the impression of the White media 34 years ago, it was not reality then and it sure is not reality today.

"Hispanic Leaders" are people like Cesar Chavez. The subjects of your article should be referred to as "Hispanic activists."

Peter A. Guerrero
Roush McCracken Guerrero Miller & Ortega, Phoenix

FED UP

I am a Mexican American male and the sone of wetbacks. The reason I signed up to this thing was so that I could express my opinion back to you who don't understand the hardship and stress that my people went and go through. I also signed up to try to fight back against your rallies... and to bring you all up on a little bit of history that you (the White people) yourself wrote!

You don't belong here in the U.S. any more than my people do. The Spaniards, French and English all came here in search of many things. Christopher Columbus came in search of a shorter route to India. The Spanish conquistadors came in search of fortune and conquest. The French came and claimed all of North America that Spain had not yet claimed and the U.S. bought it from them.

You are in a wy, wetbacks yourselves for coming to this land, taking it away from the natives and pushing them into isolated areas. If it wasn't for them, your people would have never survived and flourished in this land.

Now in the years 2005-2006, you repeat history by trying to assimilate whoever isn't from this culture into a culture that really doesn'nt exist. not one ethnic group is the majority in this country or will it ever be. The East Coast is swarmed with Italian, Dutch, Irish, English. The West Coast is swarmed by Mexican, Central and South American, Asian and Pacific Islander descendants. The struggle and fight that you are putting up is a repeat of the fight that the Black Americans put up from the end of slavery to the Civil Rights movement.

I see your commercials on television where there (are) people mad at the president for supposedly giving jobs away to anyone who is illegal, but yet the truth is that if those illegal aliens don't do the jobs, no one else will. I do not know any White or Black man who is not of Hispanic or Latin descent who will go work the fields unless they are supervisors.

 I will not call the U.S. America because it is not. There is a North, Central and South America and the reason people from all over the world come to this land is because it is the promised land. The home of the free. It's the ... Dream.

I will do anything in my power to fight in your fight, and come out on top. If not nationally, then locally, and we will see the efforts of everyone against this grow and grow until it does go national.

Marco A. Garcia
Outraged but not giving up

Editor's Note: Mr. Garcia wrote this letter in reaction to "Stop the Invasion" national protest day sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The group designated Jan. 7 to protest what it called "illegal worker pick-up" sites in America.