Muertos de hambre is a derogatory phrase often used by Mexicans to refer to people who are predators, i.e., human vultures, vendidos. They are so starved for attention or recognition that they pounce on scraps of garbage discarded by their colonial masters.

The history of Chicana/o Studies is replete with examples of myths such as that they are failing because of a lack of enrollment. The truth is that they fail because they are denied a place on the Monopoly Board (General Education, electives and the like) that runs the university and rewards departments.

The CSUN Chicana/o Studies Department has a unique problem, it has been too successful. It offers 175 plus sections per semester, and campus wide departments are salivating at the prospect of picking off pieces of the program. The sad thing is that without the Mexican student population the university would be half its size.

The university is a plantation that is run by white overseers that are getting increasingly defensive about their illegitimacy. Take the College of Social and Behavioral Science. Like most colleges, it has avoided diversifying its faculty. Although there are approximately 12,000 Latinos on campus, out of 11 tenure track professors, Anthropology has 0 Mexican Americans; Geography (12-0); History (19-0); Pan African Studies (13-1); Political Science (17-2); Psychology (29-1); Social Work (16-0); Sociology 23-1); and Urban Studies & Planning (7-0).

Chicana/o Studies has challenged this inequity. It has confronted that there are few courses on the Mexican experience. In 1969, San Fernando State offered one course on Mexico that was taught by Dr. Julian Nava.

The professors, the overseers of the plantation, are nervous because the City of Los Angeles has changed, and over 50 percent are Latinos, 80 percent of whom are of Mexican extraction.

The white colonists are getting increasingly defensive about their privilege. Recently one of the departments discussed its hiring priorities. A Mexican American professor raised the racial disparity between the number of Mexican American students and its faculty. This evoked angry responses.

Faculty members said they were uncomfortable talking about race; that the department should not hire “unqualified” applicants; that they do not see color; that race has no bearing. Studies show that the race and class backgrounds of the professors determine the questions that students ask and research outcome.

Mexicans north from Mexico have always been under the illusion that the Mexican government and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) care about them and would protect their interests. They naively believed that they were part of the Mexican family.

This illusion was recently shattered by UNAM’s lack of respect for Mexican Americans at CSUN. It entered into an agreement to house a research center there. The project was clandestine. Over the past year, David Maciel who has abandoned more programs than any academician I know started to bring in speakers from UNAM. Recently dismissed from UCLA, it was his way to wangle a part time position.

Maciel and the CSUN administration slapped CHS in the face, and did not inform it about the center until it was a done deal. The slight was outrageous. Chicana/o Studies has 90 percent of the Mexicanists and Latin Americanists on campus. For over 40 years, it has had premier cultural groups, and championed Mexican immigrants with or without papers.

A meeting was held on November 12th involving UNAM’s criollo elite administrators and the CSUN faculty. Basically, they told us that we could join or not join –take it or leave it. They avoided the question as to why they showed disrespect for Mexicans on campus. Their attitude was one of porque nos da la chingada gana. Clearly it is a matter of class, they consider the Mexican population of 36 million as pochos, and prefer catering to gringos. They avoid contact with Mexicans who are not of their social class.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE: The Illusion of Inclusion » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.