Kaleidoscope: Telling It Like It Is 1930s style

 (Editor’s note: I knew that my father, Servando Cárdenas, had a column in the newspaper La Voz which he published in the 1930s. I, however, had not taken the time to read any of them as I was working on a book on his poetry, La Voz de Amor. Recently I read one of his columns and discovered where I got my opinion writing skills. His column, Kaleidoscope, was the predecessor of “Telling It Like It Is,” a regular feature of the Duval County Picture. Who knew, especially since my father, unlike his youngest, had a very reserved personality. Hope you enjoy his pronouncements, which may seem outdated, but they are still relevant today and always.)

Without caring about the smooth or stormy turns of politics, I will try to embellish something on one of the purposes of the recent political organization called “Progressive Political Club” (Club Político Progresista).

“We solemnly declare once and for all: that we keep a sincere and respectful devotion for our racial origin.”

If all the natives thought like this, there would be more harmony, union, and rapprochement between our elements. But, unfortunately, there are very few who harbor these sentiments, and it is for these reasons that we are held in such low esteem in this country, as much as we, those of us who come from Mexico in search of a more favorable environment.

Servando Cárdenas

I have frequently heard this in the streets and on sidewalks. Even in family gatherings how your darlings and cretinous damsels making a marked contempt for their racial origin, their hearts and their mouths fill when they say: “I am proud to have been born in the United States, and the only thing that weighs me down is carrying Mexican blood in my veins.”

How much ignorance and imbecility are locked up in the brains of these poor people! If those who think this way had a bit of enlightenment and common sense, they would understand that these feelings, far from exalting them, denigrate them. They believe that with such expressions, they affirm their citizenship and are held in greater appreciation, but what they achieve with this is to destroy, in the eyes of sensible and educated people, what can favor them because by despising their race, they make themselves despicable since they are an integral part of Mexican race even if they were born in the most remote corner of Africa.

Logically, they are proud of their citizenship of this country because who is he who does not feel love for the land that saw him born? But also, who is he who is ashamed of his parents, his grandparents, and all his ancestors, throwing the ballast of ignominy on the sacred memory of their lives that perhaps were modeled on good, saying that it weighs him down to carry their blood? Only the ignorant, the stupid, the irresponsible...

It is fair that he loves the country where he was born, but honoring our race is an inescapable duty.

Servando Cárdenas
July 1936