San Antonio, Texas is the most soulful city in the state, we're a haunted city with the Alamo, the ghosts that wander around it at night, and a river, now over-developed and touristized, but a river nevertheless that haunts the memory of the descendants of the people who have been here since before the Alamo...
So many wars and battles here, the Alamo itself is the centerpiece of its glorification, and the modern-day equivalents are the four bases here. True to San Antonio, and the magical world of paradox we embody, is the irony of how it's been the military that's taken so many latinos into middle-class life. The textbook case is Henry Cisneros, whose late father was a colonel, and Henry himself was in the ROTC at Texas A&M, where he graduated from college.
San Antonio was defined by a war, the Texas Revolution, and continues to serve the interests of the military-industrial complex. The San Antonio Express-News, Hearst-owned, gives us stories every day it seems, about the heroes in Iraq, there is rarely a story about those of us who think differently. The high schools are replete with ROTC programs, and there are politico-military pressures on St. Mary's University, previously known for its social justice focus, to create a "torture law" center.
And of course, la raza, our young people keep getting the poorest education possible, just look at our rankings for the inner-city, we are the meat, the supply-center for soldiers. The MLK March is coming, and the military has now co-opted the day, pushing the city council to allow "fly-overs" in commemoration of the day. Even when T.C. Calvert and other black leaders in the city articulated how MLK was against the Vietnam War.
San Antonio has to support the war. The War feed us, brainwashes us, and tells us how to celebrate.
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