Latinx Heritage Month: The Mexican Buddhist

Hispanic Star; Crystal Quintero, Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

"I'm a [Mexican Buddhist] with a battered brain/ Searching for a future, world is my aim/ Gimme gimme your hand, gimme gimme your mind/ Gimme gimme this, gimme gimme that," Darby Crash sang for the Germs on G.I., but he was a "Lexicon Devil" and a Celtic Buddhist, growing up in Hollywood. I was a Mexican Buddhist.

Would Frida Kahlo have been a Xicana?

"I want toy tin soldiers that can push and shove/ I want gun boy rovers that'll wreck this club/ I'll get silver guns to drip old blood/ Let's give this established joke a shove/ We're gonna wreak havoc on this rancid mill/ I'm searchin' for something even if I'm killed." Who knows what he's on about, youthful rebellion in nightclubs that repeatedly banned his L.A. band for being too much trouble perhaps.

L.A. is a strange melting pot of Latin and American

Latin-Irish rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara Lynch

And I had to find meaning in it all, in a town of people mostly concerned with survival and fame. Alice Bag was a Latina punkette, the Germs were, Black Flag, Wasted Youth, Circle Jerks, FEAR...it was an amazing time, right on the heels of the 1960s.

Struggling artists are the poorest, but they regard themselves as "The Beautiful People" (think Marilyn Manson lyrics), so they fake it till they make it or get lost in a world of drugs.

It takes a store of good karma to have the talent, beauty, health, and funding to make it in Hollywood's three main industries (film, music, and sex). Who's afraid of Joan Jett's protege Darby Crash? Just watch The Decline of Western Civilization, Pt. 1 and you won't be. Penelope Spheeris made sure of that. He's funny, he's high, and he's hiding in the closet with Pat Smear (Foo Fighters). He's an icon of punk.

Hispanic Heritage Foundation

"Empty out your pockets, you don't need their change/ I'm giving you the power to rearrange/ Together we'll run to the highest prop/ Tear it down and let it drop," because he's a Lexicon Devil singing about Buddhism as it helped him deal with his impending local fame that would make him "The Slave" and the infamy that would free him:

Blended worldclass beauty queens

"It starts in your head/ And moves to your hands/ Your body starts shakin'/ 'Cause you're in demand/ You do the slave to the beat/ Of the neuro-sutra can can...// You're lashed 'twixt the stars/ With your ice and motor cars/ You do the slave to the beat/ Of the neuro-sutra can can/ Oh yea! Yea! Pull out the Zen/ I've got a Buddhist principle in my hand/ Your life seems wasted your bodies laced in/ Don't stop now you've got to trace it.../ You put your hands together/ Writhe in the shackle/ You twist your body round/ 'Til it starts to crackle/ You do the slave to the beat/ Of the neuro-sutra can can...// Right here right now, shake it in and out some/ Lights on off now make it spin and fight now."

It was the late 70s. There were still hippies on the streets. And the punks didn't like them, if only as a fashion choice. Peace and love were out, rebellion and hate were in. There was a still a draft. Cops were hateful as ever, shooting protesters they dubbed "rioters." Mexican Americans have been battling police and the establishment in this town since a century or more before that. Police are racist today. Painful progress has been made, but there's still a need for Latinx*/Hispanic Heritage Month.

Latina Power in MX and the USA!

*The -x replaces the gender markers -a and -o, female and male, inherent in Latin and its lengua franca Spanish, the sexist European language forced on the peoples of the Americas. All Mexicans are forced to learn Spanish to get by, but it is not the language of Mexico as most of us thoughtlessly imagine. It's the colonial language of conquest, domination, and genocide. Nahuatl and other Native American (First Nations) tongues are what Mexico spoke before Conquistadors forced them to do otherwise.

It's easy to forget that Los Angeles was a sleepy Mexican pueblo when some Spaniards in [Mission] San Gabriel Concentration Camp decided to take the town to Olvera Street instead. Some businessmen of a certain religious persuasion decided to build Hollywood here, and the rest is history or herstory. Then Nury Martinez and the LA City Council had a scandal, and here we are.