I just got called a colonialist. He yelled at me about Christopher Columbus. Really angry. My people had killed off all the Indians. Proudly mestizo, he has a Spanish name and Spanish ancestors and strives to speak perfect Castilian Spanish. As for me, my father’s family was Austro-Hungarian and my mother’s family fiercely Irish and they all came through Ellis Island after 1900. They had German names and Irish names and none of them would be caught dead speaking the King’s English, not the way an English king ever spoke it. Certainly not my mother’s family, refugees from brutal English colonialism that they were.

Some ironies are best left unmentioned, I suppose. Though it would be nice if people read history once in a while. There’s a reason my denouncer has a Spanish name and Spanish ancestry and speaks perfect Castiliano. It’s not pretty.

Viva Aztlán, he said, in perfect Spanish, the final syllable reaching up to heaven.

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