Editorial - "Critical Times."
Published March, 2004

Xispas Magazine is coming into existence at a crucial time in our history. California in the fall of 2003 carried out its first gubernatorial recall and elected multi-millionaire actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. One of the governor’s first acts was to repeal a law that would have allowed undocumented workers in the state to obtain their driver’s license—adding to the second-class status of Mexicans without documents. The new governor also brought former Governor Pete Wilson into his campaign support team, alienating many Xicanos who consider Wilson one of the most anti-Mexican governors in the state’s history.

Schwarzenegger has already proposed massive cuts to balance an extremely bloated state debt, including $2 billion from the schools that will impact all school children, including the large and growing Xicano, Mexicano and Central American student population. The debt was largely due to the unregulated practices of the major energy companies, including the discredited Enron Corporation; bureaucratic mismanagement; and from putting billions of dollars into prison construction. But those who will pay will be those who have the least to give—the working people and poor of the state, of which Xicanos and Mexicanos make up a significant number.

President Bush’s War against Iraq continues to wage, a war in which Xicanos and other poor and working people have had to pay a greater price in lives and injuries. Xicanos have proven themselves to be some of the most heroic and consistent fighters since World War II—including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and in various U.S. military campaigns into Central America, the Caribbean, Bosnia, Africa, the Philippines, Afghanistan, and other places.

While the Pew Hispanic Center says close to 10 percent of the actively enlisted forces are made up of Latinos, they are around 20 percent of the troops on the front lines—in the most dangerous areas such as infantry, gun crews and seamanship. At the same time, although Xicanos and other Latinos make up close to 25 percent of the state’s population, they consist of around 40 percent of prisoners in the largest prison system in the United States. Yet we continue to be less than 5 percent of college and university graduates and are almost non-existent in the most powerful corporate, media and political positions.

Xicanos have come a long way from the extreme poverty and disenfranchisement they found themselves after the United States wrested close to half of Mexico’s territory after the U.S. invasion of Mexico in the 1840s. But we are still at the bottom of the social heap. We have a long way to go. Xispas magazine aims to provide the necessary clarity, dialogue, research, history, and voice to help change these circumstances. We don’t do this at the exclusion of anyone else—we start from the premise that if things get better for Xicanos and other working and poor people in the state and country, it would get better for all.