Category: Ramsey Muniz

And the Rights of Any Human Being

Citlalmina y nuestra gente Mexicana: "I covered my face
with my hands and sat still, in pure unconsciousness, neither hearing
nor feeling nor knowing, in the darkness of the dungeons of America,
like the deep of the sea. With no time and no world, in the deeps that
are timeless and worldless.
It was then that our spirituality of our ancient Mexicano ancestors
reached into the depth of my heart."– Tezcatlipoca (R. Muñiz)

By Ramsey Muniz

The entire United States of America has finally come to understand
and realize that our people, nuestros Mexicanos / Mexicanas, have
fulfilled our ancient destiny of returning to our land. It is written
in our ancient Mexican history that one day we as a people would return
to our land, which by law of God and nature was ours from the time of
its creation. At this point I’m not here to question or to share the
truth of whose land (Aztlan) is, or to prove the ownership. The latter
is and has been a question or matter of ownership from the beginning,
and by the preponderance of the evidence, we are rightful heirs.

At this point we are deeply concerned about the drastic laws and
American legislature which corrals our people like livestock.
Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, whatever nuestra raza decides to call
itself, it is our duty and obligation as Mexicanos to protect the human
rights of our people regarding the devastating and panicking
legislation against us throughout the United States.

Those of us Mexicanos who were born here in the United States must
provide the necessary assistance as if we were aiding our sisters and
brothers. We are not different; we are all the same. Nosotros somos
uno. Our sisters and brothers from our Holy Land of Mexico are not
criminals. In seeking a better life for our families our sisters and
brothers crossed into Aztlan
(Southwest) not only for job opportunities or careers, but fulfilling
the consciousness of reuniting once again in Aztlan.

The oppressed, regardless of race, have forever risen from their
oppression and have embraced liberation. After so many years, we, Los
Mexicanos del Sexto Sol, have become advocates of liberation, justice,
and eventually the ultimate
return of Aztlan. Regardless of how many laws and/or legislation are
passed to oppress our people, we shall overcome that oppression with
our ancient history and writings in our hands.

As a raza, as a people we cannot continue to permit the oppressor
(United States immigration laws) to violate the
God-given human rights of the masses of our people.
Mexicano organizations, Latin Americans, and others must come forward
and be advocates for our sisters and brothers who carry in their
possessions all their worldly property in one small paper sack. We must
protect the human rights of nuestra raza regardless of how they crossed
the river.

"We will collectively realize that there is more to us
as a people than the conquest. That we are not savages, and it is very
important to gaze back at our history, however much it hurts, and go
beyond that, and look at our magnificent Mexicano indigenous past. As
we decolonize our minds, we will realize that we are heirs to a
magnificent culture as well as
architects of our own future."–Oscar Benavides (Carrizo Springs, Texas)

The youth of today and tomorrow must now fully
understand our ancient Mexicano history and how within the last 500
years we have finally come into the passage of our cosmic future in all
America. We must protest against the structure of any wall or fence
(Mexicano Berlin wall) to be structured at the border.

Even if America decides to take such devastating inhumane action,
within a certain period of time we, Los Mexicanos, will be able to
overcome such actions. Scholars and those who have studied our history
as a profession, will share that history will provide the necessary
intellectual elements of arriving to the
conclusion that to begin with the entire Southwest of America (Aztlan)
was ours as a land at one time, and it was prophesized during times of
hardship and turmoil that we would rise once again.

A race who has no conception or knowledge of its ancient history or
past will be in a stage of non-existence. We are the 21st century proud
race, reclaiming that which was ours from the beginning.

"As I embrace our ancient Mexicano sacred indigenous
spirituality into the present, I’m transformed by a passion I have only
heard in our past; now I feel it in my own Mexicano soul. I have been
given access to a great and profound secret. Now I know the suffering,
sadness, sorrow and sacrifices of my Mexicano ancestors, and it has
become my own."– Tezcatlipoca (R. Muñiz)

National, state, and local Hispanic /Latino civil rights
organizations must come forward and protect the rights of our people.
We cannot continue to deny ourselves. We are all the same. We are one,
and the sooner we are able to accept that, then we will be able to
liberate all our people. It is a national/international political
disgrace to view on television the American minutemen organizations are
now patrolling the borders of America.

Hispanic/Latino leaders cannot avoid this racist issue of having
American citizens, without duly authorized jurisdiction, hunting down
our people like animals. Latino and Hispanic leaders cannot continue to
turn their faces as if our people were
in the wrong to begin with. We as Mexicanos cannot permit for American
minutemen or any other vigilante group to hunt our people in the
wilderness. Latino/Hispanic organizations should
also protest to our Holy Land of Mexico in order that they respond to
the illegal actions of policing forces at the borders. It is late into
the night, but for the last couple of days my heart has
searched for words to share with my people.

In conclusion, I urge all newcomers and those who seek to relocate
in the Southwest to move to the state of Arizona. It is a strong
Republican, ultra conservative community. We must move into that state
before they structure walls all around us. Arizona should be our future!

There is no question in my mind that all our destinies as a race
will be fulfilled. The future shall be ours and we must prepare for it
not only intellectually, but most importantly
spiritually. We must not be impatient with ourselves during times of
conflict and differences. The time has come for us to step forward as a
proud race and let the world know that finally we will be a free raza
in this universe.

In exile,
Tezcatlipoca (R. Muñiz)

"We want only to show you something we have seen and
tell you something we have heard….that here and there in the world and
now and then in ourselves is a new spiritual Mexicano."–Tezcatlipoca

Note: Received via emai from Irma L. Muniz on May 25, 2005. Ramsey’s message is dated May 2.–gm

Listening to Alex Jones, May 27

By Greg Moses

By happenstance Friday I tuned into Alex Jones via live internet stream as he took a call from a Hispanic woman who expressed tearful confusion over opinions that were being broadcast about MEChA and LULAC.

In response, Jones seemed to treat these Hispanic civil rights organizations as the moral equivalent of white supremacist groups such as the Klan.

When Jones asked the caller to talk about her own experience, she said that she has experienced enough discrimination to the point that she cannot trust any white person — “but I don’t want to see you killed.”

At this point Jones called attention to the alleged racism of the comment and spoke of his own experience facing anti-white sentiments during his youthful years in Dallas. On this topic, he promises more programs in the future.

Jones is an interesting and important player in the InfoWars of our times. He has an encyclopedic mind and a visceral instinct for liberty. I classify him as a libertarian. On the basis of today’s program, I subscribed to the radio program at a cost of about $10 per month. In the notes that follow I intend no disrespect to the man.

But I do take issue with his portrayal of Hispanic civil rights groups as the moral equivalent of white supremacists. On this issue, everything follows from where one begins.

Analysis at the Texas Civil Rights Review proceeds from a general assessment that white supremacy continues to have powerful effects in the history that we share. This is a structural assessment that when all the facts are added up, demographic trends for hundreds of years have trended in the direction of white power.

The thesis does not deny that (1) within the structures of white power, there are also class wars or that (2) bigotry against white folks is not real.

However, when a Hispanic caller speaks about patterns of discrimination that she has faced, and when Jones replies with his own experience of being called a honky or being mugged by a Black man, we have already a mismatch in the kinds of claims that are being made.

On the one hand, the two testimonials seem to be logically equivalent. The caller has experienced bigotry, and so has Jones. Therefore, bigotry may fall upon anyone’s head.

But the universal experience of bigotry does not address a quite different question: does one perceive in the patterns of bigotry a structure of racialized power such that trends of bigotry tend to fall in a direction that favors white power?

On the broader structural question, no one’s single experience – neither the experience of a single Hispanic caller nor the experience of a single Alex Jones – can be decisive. To make a structural assessment, one must cast a wide net around a multitude of facts and experiences.

For example, when the Hispanic caller says that she has been made to feel ashamed of her Spanish language, is she pointing to a pattern that is “representative” of “collective” relations between English and Spanish speaking citizens of Texas?

On this point, Jones began to affirm the validity of the caller’s complaint when he observes briefly that when it comes to Spanish speaking citizens of Texas, powers of the state do not want to invest much money in teaching excellent skills in English. In this comment, Jones helpfully acknowledges that a structure of power may be discerned in the Texas system of education. Attention to this structure of power is what remains decisive.

In the end, I wonder if the Texas Civil Rights Review will be able to find a common logical ground to discuss the problem of civil rights within a libertarian framework.

For libertarians, reality is overwhelmingly an individualized affair. According to this logical framework, it is difficult to find any categorical status for collective patterns of experience. Therefore, we will find very little ground to recognize the qualities of life that make race and racism most significant.

On the other hand, social democrats bring to the table a significantly different framework of analysis. For social democrats, collective analysis confers categorical status to social groups and classes.

In the conversation between libertarians and social democrats, there is little to be learned in tit for tat debates on issues like racism. The libertarian will continue to privilege the conclusions that follow from an individualistic framework, and the social democrat will follow a quite different path of analysis.

The debates over affirmative action, for example, are overwhelmingly disputes between logical starting points. Yet the debates are so fruitless because neither side stops to discuss the difference in framework.

From a social democrat point of view, when I’m listening to a libertarian, I ask myself, what is this person teaching me about the things that can be learned from reality if we take it from a fundamentally individualized point of view? In my own emphasis on the social structures of realty, how does the libertarian help me see what I may be missing?

We see in the testimony of Alex Jones that there is a pain to the experience of bigotry that is not completely numbed out by structures of white power. He remembers being called a honky and he remembers quite clearly that the man who attempted to mug him was Black. He also seems to take some delight in reporting that the attempt was turned back.

But also as a social democrat I would like the libertarian to consider the ways that individualized logic fails to learn important facts about individuals.

Especially among white individuals, there seems to be an assumption that group structures among people of color are simply mirror images of group structures under white power. Therefore, if people of color get together to fight white power, they must be coming from a place no different than white supremacy itself.

This is how civil rights advocacy falls under the charge of hate speech when civil rights advocates speak plainly about the problem of white supremacy. But if I am fighting white supremacy, to what extent am I attacking white people as such? In fighting white racism, how am I diminishing the humanity of white folks per se?

On the other hand, if I am advocating white supremacy, the enunciation itself is an attack on the humanity of people of color.

MeChA and LULAC are struggling toward parity. The Klan is struggling toward disparity. The moral difference between these collective projects is decisive. It is the difference between civil rights and anti-civil rights.

Now let’s carefully re-introduce Alex Jones pleasure in reporting that he turned back an attempted assault by a Black man. The pride and pleasure are expressed in his tone of voice. When you face an aggressor, there is pleasure in self-defense.
There is some bravado. If we listened to someone bragging about BEING an aggressor, it would be much more difficult to share in the pleasure. With Alex Jones, we can share a little in the pride and pleasure of self-defense.

Likewise, among struggling groups of color, one sometimes discerns a pride and pleasure of self-defense bravado. Malcolm X was a master of the art. Jose Angel Gutierrez is a great Texas example. Ramsey Muniz also expresses a kind of pride and pleasure envisioning a day when the conquest will have been turned back.

From a libertarian, individualistic framework, the pleasure and bravado of self-defense struggle can be mistaken for aggressive initiative. Perhaps it would be better if self-defenders did not fall for the pleasure of counter-assault, but when they do, who can blame them? It is after all an assault that has been turned back. And this is the raw material of every action movie that spreads the thrill of counter-assault to ticket buying audiences across the globe.

Should Alex Jones apologize for his pride and bravado at turning ba

ck an assault? When he mentions that the assailant was Black is he confessing to a racist motivation for his pleasure? On both counts, I answer no. Pride and bravado in self-defense is humanly understandable. Identifying the race of the assailant need not be an expression of bigotry. In the case of Alex Jones, I believe that he is not a bigot.

But if we take the moral qualities of self-defense bravado and apply them to collective struggles in a world of collective injustice, then we have the key for helping Alex Jones understand the difference between MEChA and LULAC on the one hand and the Klan on the other. One side is in a struggle of self defense. The other side is addicted to a tradition of supremacist aggression.

March 13, 2005

After eleven years as a continuous student of the
law in the dungeons of America, and a graduate of one
of the most constitutionally oriented, conservative
Texas law schools (Baylor School of Law), I am unable
to prepare the necessary post-conviction remedy defense
for the re-opening of my federal case.

By administrative policy of the Bureau of Prisons, we are only
entitled to telephone communications of 300 minutes per month, or the
equivalence of ten minutes per day. At times, due to the importance of
the legal matter in which I am involved, I have used my entire 300
minutes in the first two weeks of the month, thus leaving me without
communications with the free world.

I ask that every attorney and/or professor
and scholar of law to place themselves in my present
position, and immediately react to the truthful and factual
matter of the application of one’s constitutional rights
under the Constitution of the United State of America.
The only legal reaction to my present constitutional law
situation is that it is in violation of the Due Process
Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of
the United States of America.

Presently, I am 62 years of age, and have been
imprisoned in one of the harshest core penitentiaries
(Leavenworth USP) for the last eleven years, facing the
essence — the actuality of a death sentence (life sentence
without parole). It is extremely difficult for me to
accept the violations and actions of the prison administrative
policies on the limitation of my right to counsel and my
constitutional right to prepare my defense in accordance
with all my constitutional rights within the practice and
rules of the federal courts.

I am not a criminal. I am a Mexicano political prisoner
of the 21st century. In order to present to the appropriate
jurisdictional federal court why my case should be reopened,
I must communicate by phone, in person, and through
correspondence. I must communicate with different attorneys,
investigators, politicians, constitutional defense rights
committees, legal constitutional professors, scholars,
and different law student associations involved in the
violation of human rights.

I am not requesting the
determination of my present legal position. I am demanding
that the laws and rights from the written constitution of
this country be applied to my case. Without a doubt, if
I were allowed to prepare an adequate defense with
the fulfillment of my constitutional rights, then I would
become a free man. Until the Bureau of Prisons or the
Federal Courts of the United States permit me to communicate
using unlimited telephone time, my constitutional rights
are in violation at this very minute of the night.

In other
words – to make it clearer – an injustice of the law applies
to my life every day and night in this mode of darkness.
Americans must realize that I am not confined in Iraq, but
here in the United States of America. Or am I?

I will immediately share further information pertaining
to this illegal cloud of injustice on my life…

Sent by Irma Muniz via email. March 23.
For more on Ramsey see: http://freeramsey.com/

Dear Friends:

The current Supreme Court decision states that it is unconstitutional for a judge to determine a person’s sentence without the jury having knowledge. This violates one’s
constitutional right to a trial by jury. Ramsey was sentenced by a judge rather than a jury. He will be filing an appeal, but has been advised to wait, as others should do.
There will be many people filing appeals, and those appeals need to be studied in order to determine which ones will be granted
by the courts. This information should be shared with others who have hopes of obtaining their freedom.

Activists need to become involved in this issue, as it will affect many African-Americans and Mexicanos. Decisions made regarding
the sentencing guidelines should pertain to everyone, rather than being capricious, arbitrary decisions. If the current sentencing
guidelines are unconstitutional (and they are), then they need to be declared unconstitutional for everyone across the board.

Thank you for sharing this information with others.

Sincerely,
Irma Muniz
http://www.freeramsey.com
via email Jan. 15, 2005

By Greg

Moses

CounterPunch

Winter takes the

color away, but people put up lights. In my own cul de sac of the global village, the light show this

year is fantastic. We have colors like I’ve never seen, electric deer that raise their lit-up heads,

candy canes, icicles, y mas santas. At night the frozen ground glows in magical grace. With hope, we

have electrified a dying world.

Where does this spirit come from? If you think it

comes from Jesus, I get it. If you prefer a pagan yule tide, I get that, too. My own favorite story

for this season of lights belongs to Africa, where the Nile River once rose and fell. By x-mas time

each year, the water had fallen low, but the low ebb of the river was matched by the high hope of

Horus, the baby born of Holy Mother Isis and Green God Osiris, each and every December

25.

Whether the water is low or the snow is high, x-mas in El Norte finds us asking

metaphysical questions. Will we believe in the returns of Spring? Stake our cheer on nothing but the

future? Or feed our fear on everything we see around us?

For Ramsey Muniz on x-mas, it

is neither low water nor high snow. For Ramsey, and so many with him, it is thick walls that must be

hoped through. If he had to do it all over again, says Ramsey in an interview with Rolando Garza,

he’d rather not run for Governor of Texas. He’d rather serve as minister of cultura for his beloved

party, La Raza Unida.

Cultura. Familia. And most important, says Ramsey, is

Love.

“Let us celebrate the birth of this historic spiritual man whose destiny was to

change the entire world,” writes Ramsey from Leavenworth prison. The email comes from his esposa,

Irma. “It is not about a white Christmas. It is about accepting the truth of faith, charity, love,

forgiveness, and spirituality. We are in the midst of a world spiritual evolution and those who open

their hearts with patience and understanding will witness the resurrection of spiritual power which is

greater than any other power in the world.”

Although he says nothing directly about her

in this message, Ramsey’s voice reminds me who else is looking out. The Lady of Guadalupe, her

resplendent image watching from the East. She is mother to all the children of Aztlan, and it would

take a soul made from dry husk not to thank her that you live at this glowing cul de sac while Ramsey

Muniz is locked up in Leavenworth.

If the best things come from prison, as Ramsey says,

then in what way do the best things exist, and why do the power-fools of this earth lock the best

things away? In solitary confinement, Ramsey encountered a vision of Ricardo Flores Magón, and, having

nothing more urgent at hand, they talked. Was it the same cell where Magon had been beaten to death in

1922, four years into his fourth imprisonment? Magon had coined the slogan, “Land and Liberty.” In

his journal, Regeneration, he reminded Mechika readers that “emancipation of the workers must be the

work of the workers themselves.”

At the Irish anarchist website, struggle, they say “No

Gods, No Masters.” If you think the spirit belongs to this slogan, I get that, too. On x-mas day,

the point is never to be caught without the spirit that takes you through the low water

times.