Much like the border that I am from, I will offer my thoughts about la Día de la Raza 2025 in two parts, hoping that those two sections of bundled words will rub together to create a third space that will flood itself with a terse sense of hope.

Parte One: Mis Tierras, Border Crossers, Magu, GGP, and No. 25A169

My mother’s side of the family comes from the land of the Xiximes in the eastern mountains of Sinaloa, Mexico. My father was a “paper son” from China, who grew up part-time, during full-time Jim Crow, in the Mississippi Delta. I was raised in an anti-colonial home, that was culturally affirming, active bona fide border crossers, and not white. Our mom would often speak of returning to her lands, “mis tierras,” she would say wistfully. She told me that returning to your land is important; there is a power there, and your tierras draw you to it. When my mother spoke about “mis tierras,” it was not in reference to her owning property, not a piece of land that she had lawful rights over. It was a land of her origins that she shared with others, a land that contained her and her family’s history—a land with memory.

With my mother’s call for tierras, it is not a surprise that one of my favorite art pieces is Gilbert “Magu” Lujan’s 1983 serigraph, “Returning to Aztlan.” Imagine two Aztec warriors driving a colorful stretched and fantastical convertible with 1950s Chevy fat fenders, a large Aztec jaguar head with its tongue licking the breeze covering the grille, a palm tree, a nopal and an enormous tri-colored snow cone ride behind the drivers, a temple aloft shading them from the desert sun, and a fiery heart bursting with a single flame, propels them through a unified desert landscape of the “American” continent turned upside down, where south is now north. Geography, power, history, language, memory and a sense of belonging are inverted, lending itself to new possibilities, Nepantla, a third space that may suggest soft whispers of an unfulfilled promise.

My mother is from Sinaloa, I’m from Califas, and my father from La China. We are not strangers here. We have been walking through and to and from these ancestral lands for the last tens of thousands of years. My father fought in the US Marine Corp during World War II, was wounded in Guadalcanal, and pushed his comrades’ bodies away from the landing crafts churning propellors while landing in Tarawa. My mother at the tender age of 14 with a second-grade education, the wisdom of a gritty survivor, travelled north alone, to eventually meet my father to create us border crossers. At this moment in our history none of these things matters. No. 25A169 is what matters. Mis Tierras are not mine anymore if they were at all, another Lou myth. As a true blue Chino-Latino in the Smithsonian, that drives a 20 year old Ford pick-up with scraps of wood in the bed, living in Memphis, TN where the closest border is over 700 miles away, out of fear, I must confess, I must return to my old border citizen habits of carrying my US Passport with me; 854 miles from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico and 753 miles from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Now, No. 25A169 is what matters, and made Guillermo’s poem Califas prescient.

“I saw the ethno-police
busting a young Chicano
for breathing.
El Johnny looked at him
through his grandpa’s glasses
& asked en Califeño,
“Nomas for cruising carnal?
Si llevo 20 ciglos caminando.
Cruising low
From Aztlan to Tenochitlan
& back
Through Tijuas or Juarez
En camion de Tres Estrellas…”

Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Califas: IV El Johnny, 1987

Part Dos- I Promised Hope Somewhere, I Promise!

My bones are old, cartilage ground to dust, arthritis, real bone spurs, and I limp with a perpetual apology on my lips. Two years ago, I was shopping at my local grocery store, walking slowly and haltingly, pushing the smallest cart I could find, very conscious of blocking my co-shoppers or anybody else behind me that were more physically able. I kept glancing behind me, smiling at one of the produce workers, wheeling a cart filled with cheerful boxes of tomatoes and large sacks of onions, waiting for a gap to appear to my right to squeeze by my limping hulk. I smiled apologetically to him, wishing I wasn’t such a hinderance to his immediate task.

He scooted by me and said, “I work here can’t you see my badge? Why did you keep looking back at me, I wasn’t going to steal your wallet! Can’t you see I have a real job!”

I could not believe what was happening. My sincere smiling apologies for my painfully slow limping body were misinterpreted for racist glares locking him into simple fixated tropes. I muttered, “wait!”

“I don’t want to hear your ass!” he snapped and pushed his cart away from me and disappeared. We were both angry. The rage blinded our kinship. I was angry for him, angry at the source of our mutual anger and deeply saddened that I could not fix it. And it is still not fixed. We were and are both subsumed in the racial animus that has been purposefully and successfully deployed to keep those of us on the margins from sharing and collaborating on issues that are important to us. This is our new Raza as our battleground expands, not of our own doing; brown, queer, trans, black, and blue liberal, open minded men and women. Ordered to be silent, we are all El Johnny asking why.

“In the Borderlands
you are the battleground
where enemies are kin to each other;
you are at home, a stranger,
the border disputes have been settled
the volley of shots have scattered the truce
you are wounded, lost in action
dead, fighting back;”

― Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera : La Nueva Mestiza, 1987

Me Parte (Tres) Hasta Los Huesos: Esperando Las Esperanzas

Really digging deep so I can deliver. Here is my best. I have my wife, my kids, and my grandkids and I have you. I feel grateful for what I have and if I was Christian, I would say I feel blessed. Sometimes I feel dead, lost in action, inaction, paralyzed, doomscrolling my decreasing time away on this planet, overwhelmed by the flurry of the daily mayhem. But I have you. In the classroom I find joy and hope in the youthful faces of my students. On my way home from work I see protestors, some of my friends, standing on the street corner of Poplar and Highland, hold signs of hope, clinging tightly to each other, enjoying their absolute right to dissent, and I have them. When I get home and do the soft talk of sharing time with who you love, we turn to look outside the window or open the door and take a few steps out to hear the mockingbird singing proudly from the highest branch of the dogwood tree in our front yard just as the golden light flickers magically against our wooden fence, activated by the swaying of the spright branches of our black gum tree in our backyard and I have her. I call and text and see my adult children and we talk about our lives and what we are about to eat, and I have them. I pick up my grandkids every Friday and we eat breakfast at Perkins, and I am fearful for what is before them, what we have left for them, and then they ask, “Grandpa, I love you grandpa, and why is the sky blue?” And I have them too. I have my art and the words I write to keep me company, to solve my problems, to speak to the world. I remember reading about 20 years ago, that the opposite of war is poetry. So that is what I aspire to make in my work, poetic resistance. And I have that too. Yes, sometimes I feel wounded, lost, and dead to the world, but I am fighting back because of you. How about you?

Bio: Richard A. Lou was raised by an anti-colonialist Chinese father and a culturally affirming Mexicana mother. A formative aspect of Lou’s life was crossing the Mexican/US border daily and working with his family at the National City Swap Meet. As a Chicano Artist he has consistenly explored stories about his family and racism. Lou served 29 years as department Chair at three institutions of higher education, curated/organized over 50 exhibitions, had over 150 exhibitions nationally and internationally, and his work has been cited in over 40 scholarly books. His biography is included in the Smithsonian Archive of American Art.