Customer Reviews

Mr. Spic Goes to Washington

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Notwithstanding Prof. Stavans fine reputation as an academic, and my sympathy with his point of view, his creation is a disaster--preachy, contrived, poorly drawn, as boring as an academic lecture, and as subtle as a jalapeno pepper. Want a quality political/biographical graphic novel? Try Kyle Baker's "Nat Turner", Chester Brown's "Louis Riel", or Ho Che Anderson's "King", not to mention masterpieces like "Persepolis" or "Maus". More to the point, want a really cool fantasy about a minority politician seizing power? Try Aaron McGruder's superb "Birth of a Nation". It's too bad, but "Spic Goes to Washington" isn't nearly in the same league, and fails miserably as an effective expression of an important issue.

. . . this is the story that would result.

In the not-too-distant future, the Mexican-American mayor of Los Angeles successfully runs for U.S. Senator. In Washington, he proposes laws to get more Latinos into government and to get more Latino-friendly legislation enacted nationwide. "Monolingualism" is a form of repression. California offers no future for anyone but the rich and powerful. Washington D.C. is a snobbish white man's world because it lacks a decent taqueria. White Senators denounce the French on the Senate floor for not speaking English. Blah blah, turning pages fast, he gets assassinated apparently by a Puerto Rican janitor at the behest of some white colleagues. "A visionary Latino is a dead Latino," sobs his family back in California. I don't really care enough to go back and find out what the plot was, but the point could be that white people work their evil by getting (paying) browns to turn on each other.

Ilan Stavans divides people into groups according to their race and figures that's the way to apportion wealth and political representation. People of color are all victims; guess who their predators are? He quotes Cesar Chavez: "We seek our basic, God-given rights as human beings because we have suffered, and aren't afraid to suffer in order to survive. We're ready to give up everything -- even our lives -- in our struggle for social justice." I'll bother to argue against this: if you're ready to suffer and lose your lives, why aren't you doing so in Mexico, the land of your citizenship and your birth? What's with going to a different country where you're not even a citizen and demanding that its inhabitants throw their money at you? And please, don't tell me it's your God-given rights you're seeking. You're seeking my human-earned money.

A few nuggets of Stavans's own wisdom:

"Why isn't there a site to commemorate the victims of Minutemen on the U.S.-Mexico border and the thousands of people who die every year dehydrated while walking the desert in search of the American dream?"

"Who else will harvest lettuce, oranges, and strawberries? Remember, the people who put food on your table also give you their heart."

It's useful as a look into a prejudiced, wrong-thinking, misanthropic mind.