Are you a Lubrega? Or a Califona?

The definition of lubrega is essentially a hick.  A country bumpkin, someone who is uninformed, uneducated and essentially, stupid. And even better, a Califona is someone from the islands who lives in America.  And comes back to the Azores, completely ignorant of what they actually are.  I'd like to imagine that these are the day-trippers, the ones who come for only a week and aren't still in touch with family. The ones who do only superficial tourism.  But I suspect that I will always be a Califona, no matter how long I spend there. Maybe that's my goal, to overcome this idea, at least for myself.

So, I'm fascinated by the fascination about the upcoming election.  The one that is STILL more than a year away.  I'm amazed that so much of the discussion from one party tries to simplify everything.  To appeal to people's lizard brain.  Don't let strangers steal my stuff.

Do Americans not realize how they are seen by the rest of the world? Do they not understand that EVERYONE was an immigrant at one point? The combover guy and the blond woman who are afraid of immigrants are a piece of performance art.  They realize they need to play on people's fears, the ugliest things possible. And worse, it influences and encourages hate.

Alberto Moreno posted this yesterday on Facebook.  It gets into the Mexican perspective and lots of other issues. IT IS IMPORTANT TO READ IT!! So I am sharing it here:

Potlandia

The Mexican me. The Mexican me hates your pot. Hates the smell of it as I am driving behind your recycled cooking oil powered hipster mobile. Here in Potlandia.

This Mexican who has never smoked it. Not ever. Not once. Just not part of our values. Yes, yes, I know, you carry a different narrative about Mexican us. But true. It is not.

I hate the smell of it spilling, spewing out. Your pot which smells like white privilege. The stink of it reminds me of our black and brown. Our black and brown boys who still rot in jail for delivering it, for delivering it to your protected suburbs. .

The smell of your pot reminds me of my white room mates at the University of Illinois who sold it with impunity while our young men of color were being arrested on city corners for the same offense. Persecuted while white America toked, toked up in your suburbs, behind lily white fences while our brown muled brothers payed for your embargoed sins.

If injustice had a smell. This would be it.

Every time I am assaulted by it I am reminded that it is more important to white Potlandia to legalize your weed, than the tender flesh of our immigrant children, mothers or fathers. Reminds me that the brown of our skins, criminalized is acceptable to you. Is palatable to you. Your indifference condones it. The smell of your pot makes it clear that your apathy is conditional. That it is possible to vacate your hipster armchair ennui when it is self serving. The stink of your pot reminds me that you care. Just not about us.

I resent that our ancestral cornfields in Latin AMERICA have been turned into marijuana fields for you. To feed your insatiable habit. That your ‘innocent’ habit gave birth to and has funded the cartels’ violence against our brothers and sisters. Transformed our sacred maíz agronomy in service to the base profanity of your addictions.

So while our jails are filled to the brim with our young men, white Portlandia smokes up in the comfort of your gentrified homes. Potlandia saunters to the nearest pot dispensary without fear of persecution or prosecution. And now hoards of young hipsters are racing each other to become drug dealers to profit from the same activity that indentures still, our men and their fatherless families. The frayed fabric of our communities stretched beyond repair. For generations to come.

But soon Potlandia’s habit will be minting green millionaires who will again rewrite the narrative of displacement to describe themselves as healers and pioneers! And like Dawson Park on North Williams, our children will never get to benefit from the post displacement improvements and investments made upon spaces, which we have occupied for so long. And White Potlandia will once again reap the benefits of our communities suffering.

And while we can be grateful that no more of our young men shall be arbitrarily prosecuted and used as prison fodder to feed a for-profit prison industry; while we can only hope that this tide will turn, who will bring our young brown and black men back? Who will restore them to their daughters and sons. Their mothers and grandmothers?

Even now a kind of erasure is happening. You can see it across this city. Recently, as I drove by the Oregon Convention Center I was surprised to find that Anzen, a small Japanese grocery store and community resource, which had stood there for a generation, is gone. Replaced, by of all things, a pot dispensary. And Mr. Anzen, a survivor of the Internment Camps (another attempt at human erasure) and his life work are gone now. Erased by this new ‘industry.’

This may be what is now. But I for one, am not sure, it is the best of us. And it makes me think that the ultimate sin of privilege is to come to it without cost or consequence. And to be fully and thoroughly unaware of its exacting cost on the back of others.

The rank smell of pot then is the smell of privilege, unearned. The rotting smell of injustice. And it lingers still in the Potlandia air.