Chicanonautica: Dispatches from Artsy-Fartsy Cowboy Land

by Ernest Hogan 

Lately, the news gives me déjà vû. I feel like I’ve been whisked back in time, once again reading the new wave spec fic of my adolescence in the early Seventies, when a man named Nixon (not Mojo) was in the White House, the Vietnam war was grinding into a faded preview of the heat death of the universe, and the counterculture was imploding. 

Since Arizona politics as they affect those of us in the Latinoid continuum is part of my beat, I promised to cherchez le weird about it while my wife Emily and I took a quick jaunt to Sedona and Prescott. There’s usually some weird shit going on.

It used to be that during a presidential election, the Republicans started out screaming about the border, and brown invaders, then veered off into other issues. Now they can’t stay away from it. 

 

Trump has just defeated Haley in the South Carolina primary. And what he had to say: “They’re coming from Asia, they’re coming from the Middle East, coming from all over the world, coming from Africa, and we’re not going to stand for it . . . They’re destroying our country. . . We have languages coming into our country . . . they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a horrible thing.”

The immigration bill failed because it was linked to aid for the Ukraine. And there is a surge of undocumented border crossings.They aren’t just bad hombres from Mejico any more. Bad politics are bringing them to the land of the free from Venezuela, Nicaragua, India, China, and others in a worldwide failure of democracy. Even Arizona’s Democratic governor Katie Hobbs wants to call out the National Guard, but to do what, help fill out forms? And yet, nobody likes Kari Lake, even the Republicans, who are advancing a bill allowing people to legally kill someone accused of “attempting to trespass or actively trespassing on their property.”

 

It’s been strange in a different way in 2024. Once you get away from the news feeds, it’s hard to tell that an election is going on. No bumper stickers, or signs. No declarations in public places. An eerie quiet.

As we left the Metro Phoenix area, it was the same, even though I was scanning the streets. The only mention of politics was some incomprehensible babble at a restaurant at breakfast. I couldn’t tell who the guy was for or against. He seemed to be influenced by conspiracy theories, but it was without form and vague.

It was the same on the drive up to Sedona, where at a store John Lennon's “Imagine” played and a little old lady sang along.

Little old ladies aren’t what they used to be.

But then, this was Sedona, a New Age Mecca. As I overheard someone say in a trendy thrift store: “We’re artsy-fartsy cowboy.”

However, amid the colorful shops, was this one place selling T-shirts proclaiming DONALD TRUMP MATTERS and LET’S GO BRANDON!

Later, while we were hiking on the Huckaby Trail, a California Trump fan with psychic tendencies sent me some texts. She was having dystopian dreams about oppression and militarization.

When we headed to Prescott, home of the world’s oldest rodeo, I was expecting things to be different. And they were more conservative, but still, no election signs or bumper stickers. The roadside sellers of flags, especially TRUMP 2024, had gone missing. The cowboys were becoming un poco más artsy-fartsy.

I contemplated that while sipping a mocha in the Art Deco splendor of the Hassayampa Inn and listening to old time jazz.

Biden and Trump won the Michigan primary. No surprise. Everything went as expected.

But I’ve learned to expect the unexpected.

Like the only political thing we ran into in Prescott, while Biden and Trump were doing political theater at the border, was a young black man on Whisky Row trying to collect signatures to get RFK, Jr. on the ballot for president.

The deadline to apply for Ernest Hogan’s online class on Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style has been extended to March 12.

Chicanonautica: Toward 2021 with Twisted Optimism

by Ernest Hogan

 

Chingao! This one is due to go up on New Year’s Eve. That changes things. I like to write these things about a week in advance, but right now everything is changing so fast. Keeping up will be impossible, especially with all  the presidential tantrums, rumors of martial law and coups, a Christmas morning bombing . . .

For the last few nights I’ve been hearing what sounds like artillery being shot off in the cold Phoenician night. Maybe it’s just premature Happy New Year fireworks. But what kind degenerate sets off fireworks at four A.M.?

But there are all kinds of degenerates running around these days.

And on still another hand, a short story came to me in those peculiar hours. Now all I have to do is write it down. Then I’ll have something for an anthology I promised to contribute to.

Like I said before, 2020 is coming to an end, and not a moment too soon, but what about 2021?

There is no guarantee that next year will be better. I hope it will be. I do so with my usual twisted optimism.

At least we won’t have Trump in the White House. I hope. Used to be that this far past Election Day, we’d know, but then this is a new era, and the cult of personality around the 45th President of the United States of America will not die easily.

 

 I miss days when the news after an election would be full of boring transition stories, and commentators would go on about how we’re the only country in the world that can do such a thing. Now it’s more like, is there any violence yet? What’s the body count? 

It’s not a case of putting the machinery of our society on cruise control and coasting into a new utopia, or dystopia--always remember that what is utopia for some is dystopia for others.

Trumpsters are bracing themselves for their own apocalypse even though they make noise and destroy property in the name of stopping the steal. They expect government agents of color to knock on their doors and take their guns, and to give their jobs (if they have any) to illegal aliens. And what are they going to do with all their made-in-China Trump paraphernalia?

I’m not expecting Biden to come in and establish a socialist utopia. I’ll be happy if he can just slam the breaks on our current slide into a New Dark Age, which will happen if we can pry the sociopath-in-chief out of there.

Do I even have to say what all this will mean to us Latinoids for the La Bloga audience? I still dream of a world where I can do my business as a venerable Chicano author without having to convince a lot of people that I’m not a drug-dealing rapist out to steal their lousy jobs. I’m a grey-haired senior citizen with a fresh Medicare card--you have no need to fear me!

Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my job (I have one, I don’t need yours), and keep working on my novel that really does look like it’s going to be a trilogy at this point--I’m still not sure if I’ll go hunting for a publisher on the fringes or brave the abuse of the New York corporate publishing world for a dubious, but very real, very American dream of big bucks, and do short stories and other things when I can get away with them.

It all depends. None of it’s certain. And that’s the hell of it.

Ernest Hogan is the author of High Aztech, and considered to be the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

Chicanonautica: 2020 is Coming to an End!

by Ernest Hogan

Is it too early to start saying goodbye to 2020? For me the Holidaze starts with a Thanksgiving/anniversary/birthday traffic jam. December is usually a weird blur. This year is even more so. It started out apocalyptic and just got worse.

And suddenly . . . it was all COVID-19 and quarantine. We all looked like masked bandidos. Businesses shut down. The economy crashed. The election raged on.

And so did life. Emily and I managed some socially distanced road trips. Con mucho cuidado. We did have her 99 year-old mother with us.

And I kept on writing. And publishing. And more. Before it started, I never even heard of Zoom. And strangely enough, the Chicano sci-fi biz is thriving in the pandemic, and the political turmoil only helps. Visions of alternate realities are in demand. High Aztech still sells. It encourages my twisted optimism.

After all, Trump lost, even though he thinks he can change it through denial and delusion, but sooner or later, reality bites everybody on the ass--including you, Señor Presidente.

It is disturbing that a lot Americans still think that his being in charge is a good idea. There are a lot of pendejos out there. Only I don’t believe in giving up and letting them win.

There is a chance that 2021 will be worse than 2020, but we've been singing this worst-year-ever song for a few years now. I think it’s been going on since about 2016 . . . We should do what we can to buck this trend, even reverse it. Like I said, twisted optimism.

After all, in my travels, I’m happy to report that I’ve found Mexican food—and La Cultura—everywhere, even in places like Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah. The Global Barrio is expanding, which is a good thing.

Ernest Hogan is working on his novel, and sending out stories, and creating the future of Chicano Science Fiction.

Chicanonautica: Whither Goest Thou, Trumptopia?

by Ernest Hogan

I'm scheduled for the Fourth of July, so I should do something special, like take a look at whatthehell's going on and how it affects us Chicanonauts, here in Trumptopia. So yippie-eye-yo-tie-yea, cabrones! We're off to look for America!

I'm sure we left it around here somewhere . . .

Another election is off and running. Or did the old one every really stop? Trump sure never stopped campaigning, it being what he does best, and now he's promising a whole lotta deportations, and his fans go wild.

Are we Trumptopia yet? How's that wall going? Is a closed border possible without a police state to enforce it? That's what I guess ICE and Homeland Security are for . . .

Trump doesn't really have to do anything. He just says something that offends the right people, and his fans are orgasmic. After all, politics is about making people feel good.

They have made a rather spectacular horror show with brutalized children, concentration camps, and corpses around the border.

Latinos for Trump just eat it up.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential hopefuls try to answers questions in Spanish . . . Hijo de la chingada!

It used to be that the right-wing political hacks would conjure up the brown boogieman early, get people riled up, then ditch him for other issues, but these days he is a main issue.

He looks a lot like me.

I suppose that a Chicano science fiction writer with a new story about social unrest shouldn't worry, but then I live in Arizona, and get these looks from some of my fellow Arizonans . . .

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I did a jaunt around the state, just a one-day thing to get us out of the Metro Phoenix madness. We soaked up some fine, Arizona-style Americano culture, not to mention huevos rancheros and meat-loaf sandwiches. In a thrift store I bought a copy of P.J. O'Rourke's How the Hell Did This Happen? because I figured that I'd want to re-read it in the upcoming year.

Then we cruised through Prescott on our way home. In the city square, on their famous Whiskey Row where cowboys whooped it up before the United States border crossed Arizona, there were protesters.

On one side some white-haired folks with slick, professionally printed signs declaring their support for Trump. On the other side were more grandparent-types, but their signs were arty, hand-drawn renderings of slogans like “Honk for Peace.” They were all smiling—tight, tense smiles.

Further on, some people in a truck were making their way down the street, planting an American flag ever few yards; apparently they were out to do it all the way across town. Maybe it was for the Fourth of July, which was still weeks away.

We managed to get out of there without starting a riot.

Now it is the Fourth of July. I hope everyone has a happy one.

Maybe as we thrash about deciding how we want to re-create the country for the next four years we can come up with something that isn't a bloody mess.

Ernest Hogan's lucha libre slapstick satire “PeaceCon” is available in Unfit Magazine Vol 3.

Chicanonautica: Old Gringos in Psychedelic Sombrero Land

by Ernest Hogan

“THE MILLENNIALS HAVE NEVER FACED ANY KIND OF ADVERSITY!”

An old lady screamed it as Emily and I sat down. She and two men were in the next booth over at La Sierra, a wonderful restaurant with furniture painted with day-glo folkloric scenes and psychedelic sombreros hanging on the walls, in Payson, Arizona. They were white, pale, the kind that makes you think, “Oh, so that's why they're called white people.” I didn't think anything of it at first, figured that she and the guys were having a lively discussion.

I looked over the menu. La Sierra has excellent tacos and carnitas.

And a tasty salsa, that they bring out with chips before you order. It doesn't make the inner ears tingle and tickle the brain the way I prefer, but a lot of gringos retire in places like Payson, like the folks in the next booth.

“BARACK OBAMA HAS DESTROYED THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”

That was one of the guys. There's a lot old guys like him in Arizona. Emily and I were in Payson getting away from the killer summer heat that had just hit Phoenix, and checking out antique stores in search of eccentric yard furniture and Aztláni western research material. We ordered and settled down, figuring that we were in for a chance to check out some Wild West political views.

They kept on blurting, throwing out their opinions as loud as they could – I think they may have all been mostly deaf. They didn't really engage in conversation as much as erupt with one-liners. It was like a no-tech version of Twitter.

I guess they could have just stood home and done this, but expressing these kinds of things is more fun with an audience, especially an unwilling one, that will probably be offended. They probably spend most of their time at home, listening to talk radio or watching news, getting offended themselves, until they can't help but scream:

“THE AMERICAN VOTERS HAVE ELECTED OBAMA TWICE – SO TO HELL WITH THEM!”

Yeah, the election had steam coming out of their ears.

They weren't crazy about Trump, but were willing to vote for him, because he was the Republican candidate. They were also delighted at the liberal outrage his statements caused.

They hated Hillary's guts and thought Bernie was a moron. Socialism was for lazy have-nots who want someone else to pay their way. Capitalism was the only way to go, but why was everybody these days too stupid to make it work?

I actually felt sorry for them. If you listened to them, the world was coming to an end – or at least their world was coming to an end, and there was nothing they could do but yell political incorrectness and hope somebody would be offended. I don't know if they enjoyed their food, or anything else.

“WE'RE BEING INVADED! I DON'T SEE HOW HISPANICS WHO'VE BEEN HERE FOR GENERATIONS ARE PROTESTING! I JUST DON'T!”

All the while, the brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking employees provided them with excellent customer service, and joyous Mexican music played in the background.

Ernest Hogan is a Chicano science fiction writer living in Arizona, where the West gets wild, especially on an election year.

Chicanonautica: Another Damn Election in Arizona

by Ernest Hogan

The midterm election was low key in Arizona. Hysteria and paranoia levels were remarkably low, though signs announced candidates as being against Obama -- and he wasn’t running for office in this state -- and repeated the word conservative.

There was no wooing of Latinos. I know when I’m being wooed, and it wasn’t happening.

The polling place at the library where I work was quiet. If the usual English as a Second Language class hadn’t been displaced, and I hadn't had to help move the tables and chairs, I might not have noticed it was even open.

The Republican winner of the race for governor, Doug Ducey, former CEO Cold Stone Creamery, played it cool. The joke going around is that voters expected free ice cream. He was anti-Obama anti-illegal immigration, and a businessman, who likes the term “job creator,” despite the fact that his business failed.

All things that a lot of Arizona voters like to hear. Especially the businessman thing. You keep hearing it: “Get a businessman in there -- that’ll fix things!”

They don’t remember Evan Mecham and Fife Symington, and what disasters they were.

The Democratic candidate, Fred DuVal, was practically invisible. I voted for him, but probably wouldn’t recognize him it if saw him on the street.

There was some of the usual Arizona weirdness: We kept getting calls from the same mysterious number. Out of morbid curiosity, my wife answered. Someone claiming to be taking a survey asked things like, “If you heard that Fred DuVal killed and ate Christian babies, would you still vote for him?” 

My wife said, “Yes.”

I would have been tempted to say something like, “Of course, the best thing about Christians is their nutritional value.” 

Back in West Covina, California,where I grew up, they practically knocked on your door and walked you to the polls. In Arizona they make voting hard, always moving polling places. Registered voters who have moved or gotten divorced often end up running around all over town. And I once saw a little Native American lady treated like a criminal because she showed up at the wrong precinct.

These days, my wife and I get early ballots.

And I vote, even though I know I’m outgunned and outnumbered, because when the rest of the world is dropping their jaws at what Arizona’s elected officials are doing, I can say that I voted against the bastards.

Besides, in my districts, we just elected Ruben Gallego to Congress, Martin Quezada to the State Senate, and Richard Andrade to the State House. 

Don’t tell anybody, but we’ve been electing Hispanic Democrats for a long time . . .

We’re in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jurisdiction, and who knows what would happen if he found out.

But then, I haven’t seen his deputies cruising around here lately. Maybe it’s all those rumors of cannibalism and human sacrifice. Or all the new businesses run by brown people who speak Spanish.

Ernest Hogan writes crazy books and stories. Living in Arizona helps.