The Art of the Question

The Art of the Question

Australian writer William Alfred (Bill) Beatty once wrote, “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.”

When I write these blogs I never expect, or want my audience to accept at face value everything I’m inscribing. Nor to remember my opinion on the subject matter more than that of their own.

On the contrary, I write in hopes of conjuring up deep thought and critical thinking so that each person who reads my work will be left with an opinion of their own – in search of drawing personal conclusions in regards to the ‘why’s’ of the world.

Over the last few days while traveling with advocates of education with over eighty years experience amongst them, I learned a lesson that I will carry with me until my final breath… that lesson being that the answer is never more important than the question itself.

I learned over the last seventy-two hours that it is indisputably the question that is the seed of what eventually grows into a journey of roots, vines and leaves of answers… answers that allow us to grow into a tree of positive change only if action is taken. Thus the term activism is born.

Jorge Moreno-Cano, publisher of Urban Latino Magazine, coined the term “literary activist” for me, and placed the burden of responsibility on my shoulders to be active with my words… to take action when those around me choose to remain silent.

But it was starting to feel like I too was becoming stagnant myself. And I began to wonder if I’d ever have the answers to the question I am asked on a weekly basis after my blogs are published…

“OK Ivan we get it… this society is screwed up… But what can we do about it?”

And then the invite came…

I was honored to be invited to partake in a mission, which consisted of partnering with a college in Massachusetts to bring further education to the South Bronx, to our people and to one of the most socioeconomically depressed areas in New York City.

It was an emotionally draining experience, but one that has the potential to alter the course of society as a whole for generations to come.

And while I can’t share all of the details as of yet, what I can tell you is that through my journey with Attorney, Dr. Narciso Alemán of United Bronx Parents, Inc. and Activist Lupe Casares of Parents with Power based out of Houston, Texas, I was enlightened in ways that are truly immeasurable.

And that as the light bulbs began to illuminate in my head, it was as if a one-hundred light bulb chandelier began to glow with thoughts of what a better tomorrow would look like. If only we could educate the uneducated and transform their hopelessness into self-confidence, a belief in their communities and a belief in a brighter future for all generations to follow.

After all, it truly is about the legacies we leave behind in the end.

Dr. Alemán and Mr. Casares awakened me to the fact that we’ve been preconditioned to already know the answers that ‘they’ want us to know. That we’ve been force-fed the answers before we’re even posed the question in an unbalanced game of memorization.

Quite possibly because if we become accustomed to already knowing the answer, we’ll never go back and question the question itself.

Does that make sense?

Case in point: Who discovered America?

Well in the Catholic School system I’d been educated in, I was already pledging allegiance to the Americas and the “founders” of this country, while being taught about the demonic Indians and our savior Christopher Columbus who discovered this great new world.

To explain away those who already called this world home, they used words like savages and showed us imagery of white people being scalped to induce fear in our hearts.

The indigenous people were no better than roaming packs of wolves looking for their next meal and they seemed to prefer white meat… The Puerto Rican Nationalists were terrorists. Shit, kind of looks like CNN today showing us how all Mexican’s looking for a better tomorrow are “illegal’s” and “aliens” at the same time…

By default they’re going straight to jail… Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00… and even worse, they’re of an alien race, and we all know the little green men are coming to end the world as we know it one day. That’s enough to scare the hell out of America isn’t it?

They want us to remain scared so that they may serve as the saviors and protectors of ‘we the peasants,’ in order for us to remain forever grateful and indebted to them for saving us from ourselves, from our dirty little histories and from ever discovering our own greatness. A greatness which remains clouded and hidden from full view of the truth. A greatness they’ll never want us to discover for fear that we’d want to rediscover what we’re truly capable of.

Mi gente, we’ve been erased from the history books for decades past… and we continue to erase ourselves every time we fail to write our own stories, family histories and to support the few in existence that do…

What I can tell you with all certainty, is that we must be worth more than a welfare system, an unemployment line, a food bank line and peasant wages for quality work and commitments to better the organizations we serve…

We must be worth more than that, ¿Qué no?

Every once and a while we’re enlightened to the answers we’ve been searching for.

And I now know with 100% certainty, that until we raise the educational level of Latinos and minorities as a whole, we will “never” be able to compete, we will never be able to evoke positive change and we might not even survive all of the atrocities this world has to offer.

The truest change will come from the top, but only if it starts with those at the bottom who’ve survived against unimaginable odds and made it there with their convictions intact.

I once was a victim of the American dream and it almost swept me away to a world of plush green golf courses, expensive Cohiba cigars, bottles of exquisite tasting Merlots and filet mignon cooked to perfection.

I’ve experienced it and I wasn’t asked to leave… I made the conscious decision to come back into the community that birthed me in high hopes of shaking the next person out of the brainwashed induced coma they’ve successfully plunged us all into…

The mission is clear: To bring higher education to 100 Bronxites in Human Services so that they may serve as the next crop of leaders, activists and advocates of change…

The question remains: Who will step up and take this challenge?



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Latino controversy sells… But is it clean money?

Latino controversy sells… But is it clean money?

I was going to write this week’s blog about the negative impact social networking sites, such as Facebook and My Space, are having on our teenagers, thus on society as a whole. However, as I was doing research on the subject matter I also had one eye watching a seemingly quiet storm.

A Latino storm which was rapidly beginning to pick up a significant amount of force as it raced its way through the geographical bandwidth tunnels that connect us all in this Facebook domain, which is quickly becoming our virtual reality.

Welcome to the fast paced world of video blogs, blogs, status updates and enough controversy to put all daytime soap operas out of business at the close of my generation.

Several weeks ago my good friend Casper Martinez of Latino Film Chatter began to compile a list of top 1,000 reasons he was not going to attend the New York International Latino Film Festival this year.

Here’s an example of his list:

“Reason # 5 I’m not going to the wanna-be Latino Film Festival: Have you seen the idiot Tony Kaye telling us to cut the umbilical chord? Great, a British guy giving Latinos his take on our culture. Calixto you are an idiot for allowing that. Then again should we expect any better? Maybe Lyndon McCray can edit an apology video for you…” ~ Casper Martinez

A very comical and strongly opinionated entry no doubt… However, Casper has said on many occasions that he’s not personally attacking Calixto and this one seemed a wee bit on the personal attack side of life in my humble opinion.

I don’t think Casper will be happy with me for saying this. But we’ve always respected each others right to express ourselves. So I think we’ll still be friends after this blog goes up.

I don’t know anything about Tony Kaye other than that he directed American History X, which is a very powerful film that enlightens us all about racism in this country. And when I saw his interview, in my personal opinion, he seemed to be coming across as sincere in his suggestion that we’re all one people. Being that I have a daughter who is of African American, Philippine, Chinese and Puerto Rican descent, I’m very comfortable with the separation and segregation of races coming to an end in my generation.

However, Casper’s argument was that a Latino should’ve directed the commercial for the “Latino” film festival… I can’t argue with him on that point, being that it’s so difficult for Latinos to get work these days. I also couldn’t see myself faulting Calixto for wanting to work with a talent such as Tony Kaye, so I stayed silent on the matter.

Or as I learned to say down south, “I had no dog in that fight…”

Interestingly enough I met Calixto Chinchilla, founder of the New York International Film Festival through Casper Martinez some years back, and I’ve always found him to be a very personable and likeable gentlemen. So my only wish would’ve been to see this come to the table to find a resolve that all parties would’ve been satisfied with. In lieu of once again airing our dirty laundry for the world to laugh about. It seems there truly is very little loyalty amongst Latinos these days.

It must be part of what diminishes our strength in Hollywood and keeps us from acquiring the type of power the Jewish, Italians, African Americans and yes, the Mexicans have acquired in filmmaking.

But Ivan, aren’t Mexican’s Latinos?

I’m not even going to touch that one right now in regards to the strides Mexicans have made in Hollywood that the rest of the Latino populace can’t even begin to come close to. That’s a blog for another day.

Lyndon McCray is a talented filmmaker in his own right who I first met on the Franc Reyes film, The Ministers, EPK shoot. I ran across Lyndon several more times including at a screening of the short documentary, This War At Home, that I was involved in. He gave me a great deal of praise on the piece and placed it on the Cinedulce website, which is run by NYILFF.

And true, as Casper said, if anyone could edit a nice apology together for Calixto, it would be Lyndon. But why should Calixto apologize?

Well here’s where it gets interesting and where I’ve now had to place a ‘dog in the fight,’ if you will, possibly at the expense of being banned from the festival for life…

My good friend Linda Nieves-Powell, author (Free Style), award winning playwright and all around bad ass Latina chick who took on MTV last year and won her battle to remove some bullshit portrayals of Latinos from the channel, has taken offense to the early cuts of the NYILFF commercials now airing on the website.

The commercial is of a snobby little future filmmaker directing her abuelita to say her lines correctly, even though her lines only consist of the words, “Yes,” and “Si...”

When abuela fails to deliver the lines to her satisfaction she yells, “You stupid old bitch… these generation gaps really piss me off...”

As if the words weren’t shocking enough, the next thing you see on the screen is a gun firing off two rounds.

Are we to assume that this “pissed off” mini-filmmaker just smoked her abuela for not delivering her lines?

Only time will tell how the commercial ends… but so far, in my opinion… No Bueno!

I watched the commercial many times to see what it was that bothered me, or if anything about it bothered me, not to be the bandwagon guy…

And in all honesty, the only thing that bothered me was the gun being brought into the equation at the end. I see too much violence out here in the streets of the South Bronx to be turned on by the sound of gunfire.

I’m much more shocked when I see a four-year-old in the street call her mom a bitch and watch the mom laugh about it – but it happens all the time.

I’m much more shocked that we do have a generational gap that is so large that our elders truly are no longer respected in any communities I’ve been to recently.

I’m much more shocked that while I agree with Casper’s initial assessment, complaint and argument that he merely wants the NYILFF to live up to it’s mission statement, at least the part that reads, “Our mission is to showcase the works of the hottest emerging Latino filmmaking talent in the US and Latin America. Offer expansive images of the Latino experience. And celebrate the diversity and spirit of the Latino community…” That we still can’t come together as professional Latinos and find peaceful resolve to these conflicts.

Casper has helped many talented people find their way in this entertainment business – Shit, he discovered my book and placed me in a position to be writing this blog… Calixto has provided a platform to many others and hopefully will one day be airing Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx on the big screen at the festival when the right team comes along to produce it.

These are two brothers I have a great deal of respect and admiration for… I just can’t see why we have to continue to play the controversy card knowing it will help us sell but won’t help us progress… knowing it will also leave us all tarnished…

I guess Diddy has it right… It’s all about that dirty money.

Someone recently told me I’ll never be successful because I choose not to play the game dirty… I disagreed and told them when I get there I’ll change the rules. So get ready for a new game one day…

Until then, we’ll all have to agree to disagree.

And as NYILFF prepares to announce the panels for this years festival… there can be no better panel than to place Casper Martinez, Calixto Chinchilla, Linda Nieves-Powell, Lyndon McCray and Tony Kaye on a stage and let these great industry minds work their magic.

Towards a better resolve, a better festival, a better unity for Latinos and better days ahead.

Or is that just my wishful thinking getting the best of me again?



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Die Peasant… Die

Die Peasant… Die

I have to admit that it’s growing more and more difficult for me to come up with new shock and awe writing campaigns for all of my Urban Latino Magazine blog supporters.

Yet somehow, someway I manage to stumble onto a new astonishing topic almost weekly. A topic that I know will make the readers ask, “What the hell?”

Furthermore a subject matter that will make people stand up, pay attention and have a strong reaction to what it is I’m trying to raise awareness about.

In other words, I love to make you all angry in hopes of building a revolt and bringing about positive change!

And of course this week was no different as I innocently pressed play on a Michael Moore documentary titled, “Capitalism… A Love Story.”

For those of you who know me well enough, you’d know that I’m a chronic crier when I watch love stories play out on the silver screen; it always makes me emotional when they find their Mr. or Mrs. Right and live happily ever after…

And in keeping true to my emotional side, this documentary (love story) made me cry rivers of tears, tugged at my heartstrings and once again managed to make me feel very disheartened to be represented by this American government of ours.

Oh shit, did I just say that out loud and blog it for the world to read?

I guess I should prepare for all of the, “Leave our country spic,” comments that are going to come my way as a result.

After all, lord knows we’re not allowed to be anti-government without also being considered anti-American. Truth is though, I could care less at this point as I am continuously exposed to just how dead inside we all must be, to continue to allow the tyranny of this government to rule with an iron fist… minus any opposition.

Yes, mi gente… I do want a revolution. And it seems that hunter Bob from Middle America is starting to feel the same way… Maybe we are headed in the right direction after all.

Shortly after Moore’s documentary opens, an older Caucasian farmer (Bob) says, “There’s gotta be some kind of a rebellion between the people that have nothing… and the people that’s got it all…”

Seems that after doing everything he was supposed to do to live out the American dream, the refinancing loans on his family farm and home, had finally inflated beyond the point of affordable payments. Thus leaving him in the street with the rude awakening that this country is no longer the land of the free… only the land of the rich.

As the foreclosure madness swept through this country like never before, the banks found ways to maximize their cost ability and instead of paying clean up services thousands of dollars to prepare foreclosed homes for resale… They offered one final slap in the face of a thousand dollars to the evicted residents to leave their lost homes spotless.

“Here’s your check… now get the hell out!”

While the majority of this country continued to slide into the depths of poverty, the rich gained more wealth than their wettest dreams could’ve afforded them ever imagining…

Citibank released a top secret memo to its richest shareholders stating that this country was no longer a democracy; it was now a plutonomy, a fancy way of saying, an economy that is ruled by the very wealthy.

The country was now being run by the top 1% of households in America who now owned more wealth than the bottom 95% of households combined.

We were losing our lives, our jobs, our homes, our pension plans and life savings, while at the same time making the richest people in America 700 Billion dollars wealthier. What a sweet deal for them, huh?

In this same memo, Citibank wrote, “The most potent and short-term threat would be societies demanding a more ‘equitable’ share of the wealth.”

As Michael Moore stated, this basically meant that their only fear was that of the peasants revolting. And the peasants surely did…

Do you remember that vote for change we all excitedly and ecstatically cried about back in November 2008? Yeah, the new black president one… You know, the Obama is here to save the peasants vote that sent us to the polls in droves.

What a victory that was for we the peasants…

Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, JP Morgan Chase & Morgan Stanley began to fill his coffers in a way that would assure some loyalty just incase he did win the presidency.

They bought favor to ensure that the Treasury Department remained just another arm of Goldman Sachs and that’s exactly what’s happened since Obama’s been in office.

No Change, No Hope, No Victory after all… for We the People!

Make no mistakes about it… This country is being run by Wall Street bullies and the wealthiest of Americans whose only goal is to keep the poor man poor… while retaining their own family fortunes.

And when all else fails and these global corporate giants need just a few more bucks for themselves, they have one final trump card… a card nicknamed ‘dead peasants insurance,’ by the companies that take out life insurance policies on their employees without ever having to inform them.

Companies including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie and Walt Disney… those bastards aren’t making enough money off their magical kingdom empire… they have to pump just a few more bucks out of dead employees. Isn’t that some shit?

The companies collect millions of dollars on low-level employees, while family members often have hard times gathering burial money to send them off peacefully. It’s capitalism at it’s best.

A few days after seeing the documentary I still felt sick to my stomach… I mean literally sick in a way that barely allowed me to keep my food down… and then I just about lost my food when I saw one of the most ignorant men in America take the stage at the BET Awards…

Yep, there he was singing and dancing for the other ignoramuses in attendance… Mr. Kanye West himself rocking a gold chain, so exaggerated, so costly, that it could’ve moved a family of five out of the back of the van they now call home and given them a decent shot at a real life.

I know… I know… it’s not Kanye’s responsibility… But it still makes me nauseous to see such a ludicrous display of gaudiness and wealth being splashed all over the screen keeping us all blind to the true plight of America’s downfall… Keeping us stupid… Keeping us def, dumb and blind.

According to the people that now own most of this countries wealth… It’s those types of brainwashing displays of wealth that keep the rest of us dreaming, believing that it’s within our reach… the American dream…

They truly don’t want us to wake up, only to discover that we can’t even get a job to meet our most basic human needs…

They are successfully erasing the imagery of poverty out of our minds.

You don’t believe me?

Drive down any downtrodden neighborhood on any given day and see the hundreds of people lined up just trying to get a decent meal…

Now go Google “food bank lines…” and see how many pictures come up… very few, very small lines…

Now tell me they’re not hiding the truth of what’s happening to this country from us…

After all… we’re just peasants… voiceless, emotionless, unworthy peasants!

Unwilling to demand change… unwilling to even speak out about it.

Citibank was right… we’d only ever be a “short-term” threat.



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Life and Times of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican

Life and Times of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican

Literary Nobel Prize Winner George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.”

It’s a passage that strikes me as one of the most honest and sincere that I’ve read. A passage that I myself try to emulate, while at the same time being one of the biggest hypocrites this world has ever seen.

You see, I can work the phones all day trying to save the life of a child… and I can walk outside five minutes later, find my way into an argument with any neighborhood thug, turn and threaten his life and do it all without blinking an eye.

I can march peacefully while holding a banner that reads, “Save Baby Sophia,” while at the same time grabbing a hold of another Puerto Rican “brother” that tries to cut in front of us at the parade… while telling him, “It’s not gonna happen… So don’t do it to yourself…”

I can have dinner with business men… and I can have dinner with stone cold killers… and feel just as at home sitting at both tables… the good and the bad, the protector and the pursuer, the lamb and the lion…

It’s all the same to me… It’s my very own hypocritical existence wherever I go.

There’s something very wrong about me in that sense… and I don’t think its mere anger management that I need… I think I’m displaying more bipolaristic sensibilities than I care to admit to myself…

And for the record… Yes, I just made up the word bipolaristic… Add it to your word dictionary.

I started to write a book called, “Crazy: A Year in the Life of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican…” You have to admit, the title is catchy as hell. But I had to stop, because the book was scary as hell… I don’t think the world is ready for that much honesty.

I began the journey of writing the book by taking one of those bipolar “self-diagnosis” tests on WebMD and writing about it.

Are you so irritable you shout at people and start fights or arguments?

Um, check… everyday, including at my daughters High School graduation ceremony when the people behind me wouldn’t shut the hell up and let me hear the keynote speakers. I almost missed my daughters march due to that one.

At times do you feel more self-confident than usual?

Um, double checks on this one… everyday… sometimes I think I’m the shit… sometimes I don’t think I’m shit…

Does your mind race out of control seemingly in a never ending cycle of thoughts?

Um, triple checks here… every night before I lay me down to sleep… especially when I have to figure out how to make a million things work during the worst economic recession in the history of this country…

Does that mean I’m crazy though?

The findings of my self-diagnosis basically told me to find the nearest psychiatric hospital and check myself in immediately… Do not stop at Go… Do not collect $200.00… Just find help.

Yet here I am still running the streets, looking for fights with disrespectful human beings, feeling unsure about my confidence level and letting my mind race in circles about every worrisome thing I can fit in my head at the same time.

And that’s just in one afternoon…

But isn’t this everyone? Or are you guys going to leave me out here alone on this one? Am I the only crazy one out here?

I’ll tell you who I blame more than the food companies, who’ve been inserting chemicals in the food we eat for so many years now, that we have a ridiculous amount of people on psychotropic drugs… I blame the old neighborhood.

I blame the neighborhood fellas for instilling in me the need to be so respected that at any sign of disrespect I lash out and attack like a shark being pulled into a boat with a metal hook stuck in his body… at that point, it’s either me or you… and I don’t want it to be me – so your ass is gonna get bit.

I lose all sensibilities and I forget that I am supposed to be more man than monster… more gentleman of peace, than fiend of war… more savior than destroyer.

In the book, Crazy, I write – “It doesn’t matter if you are undiagnosed or diagnosed with bipolar disorder. What matters is that you are mindful of its existence in your life so that you can control it any way you know how. Lord knows the medical geniuses haven’t found the cure for the damage the food companies have done to our bodies, both mental and physical…”

Why are five year old children being placed on more psychotropic drugs than ever before? Are the doctors just that much better at diagnosing now? Or is that we’ve given up on teaching coping mechanisms as opposed to just doping up our children? Or are the kickbacks from the drug companies just that great?

Why isn’t anyone being held accountable, from the food companies to the pharmaceutical companies to the gun manufacturers that continue to kill more people off both mentally and physically than every war we’ve ever fought?

Why do we just keep taking it?

I guess we’re all just a little too crazy to see with clarity what is being done to our society, to ourselves, to our children, to our futures… Or maybe we just don’t have time to care anymore because Farmville, Mafia Wars and Casper Martinez’s Facebook rants keep us plenty amused… plenty entertained… and plenty dead inside.

Whatever it is that’s making me so angry inside… I hope I can get it out of my system, before it gets the best of me… I’m an argument away from arguing with the wrong person…

It’s funny to me when I get so many messages from people saying I’m an inspiration, a healer, a savior… Even from as far away as the Philippines last week.

It’s funny to me because I can’t even figure out how to save myself – much less your child.

I guess we’re all just trying to find our own sanity in the midst of the madness.

Most just aren’t honest enough to admit to themselves… much less to the world!

When all else fails – go see a doctor, they’ve got a prescription for you. And it’ll only cost you a $20.00 co-pay and your sanity.

As for me – I’ll keep writing it out of my system.




Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

There is an unknown author who once wrote, “We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them.”

So much for me ever being knighted into nobility, for I will forever remain prejudice against one group of people… that group being spics.

In all honesty, I haven’t had a problem with the word since the Irish kid (Danny) spit it out of his mouth in my direction in the 4th or 5th grade. It led to a fistfight and although he was bigger than me, I accidentally knocked him onto a bottle cutting his arm all up, ending the scuffle and declaring me victorious by default.

After that day, I never had a problem with the word – understanding that if it was used in a derogatory manner towards me, I’d stand and defend the honor of mi gente…

But then, what was there to defend once I grew into a little bad ass spic myself and had no honor in the way I carried myself into my late teens and early twenties?

I was the embodiment of a little spic, running around town, disrespecting everyone, robbing anything that wasn’t nailed down and believing that I had every right to do so… just because I felt like it.

Simply put… I wasn’t only a spic… I was a next level spic!

This weekend I experienced the beauty of being Latino, while at the same time experiencing the most disturbing side of our people… Yeah, the spics…

It was an emotional rollercoaster filled with love and hate, sometimes in the same five-minute span.

As I walked up 3rd Avenue towards 116th Street, I was overcome with the feeling of belonging as I was awash in a sea of red, white and blue…

The pride, the beautiful people, the Salsa, Reggaeton and Big Pun blaring from seemingly every corner on every block for miles around…

And the food… oh… the sweet heavenly smell of fried everything, from the empanadas y pastillios to the papa de rellenos y accapurias…

I had high hopes for this festival, being that it was the first time I’d ever stepped foot onto the concrete of El Barrio for the event.

But then I started hearing the spics… and they were everywhere…

“Yo ma, if you let me hit that… I’ll turn you out like the trick you are…” “F you beeyatch… you ain’t that cute anyway…” And x-rated things I’d never be able to repeat…

And then I heard mi gente… the laughter of children, the “Weeeeepa’s,” y, “Baya!! Boricuas…”

Then I saw the spics… “Fight, fight, fight…”

And then I saw mi gente: the baby with the “Got Marrow” sticker gently placed there by Aiesha who was with the Urban Latino Familia working hard to spread the word about 6-month-old baby Sophia’s plight to find a bone marrow donor of Latino descent.

I felt good, I felt bad… I felt happy, I felt sad… I felt like I was experiencing a Dr. Seuss existence with all of the colorful imagery blowing by me… both positive and negative…

It was some ride, let me tell you.

But overall, I’ll be honest and say I left feeling more prejudiced than proud that night…

The next morning I made my way over to 47th and 5th Avenue with a new friend, breast cancer survivor Vivian Rivera, who although is still healing from her own life or death battle, found the pride and heart to come out and march with the Urban Latino Familia and Hispanic Society of the MTA in support of Baby Sophia…

Unfortunately, within the first two-minutes of being there… I argued with a disrespectful cop and saw thirty Latin Kings & Queens standing on the corner looking for trouble way too early in the damn morning… They’d find their trouble later in the day while being handcuffed and hauled away by an all too happy NYPD.

I couldn’t help but allow the feelings of disgust from the day before to come flooding back like a thirty-foot wave in a Tsunami.

What the hell was I doing here again?

I just wrote a blog telling the world I didn’t believe in the false pride, the corruption of the Galos Corporation and National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc.

I wrote, “This man here sees no reason to raise the Puerto Rican flag in celebration…” I spoke about the lack of loyalty and support… But then life decided to teach me a lesson about both…

I was asked to help raise awareness about Baby Sophia Lopez’s fight for her life… and I realized that there was support and loyalty in my own camp… And my Rebel Radio family, Trig One and Liza Marie never hesitated when we found out a banner for the baby would cost us a few hundred dollars… We went to work and we made things happen in a relatively short time…

So there I was getting ready to march with people who were proud to be there, had reason to be there… had reason to be proud… And we marched that banner right up 5th Avenue in front of hundreds of thousands of people who displayed that same pride… in every wave of their flag and every scream in their voices…

I saw the smiles on the faces of the future…

I saw beauty and purity in the smiles of children who couldn’t contain their own excitement when you made eye contact and waved a flag at them…

I saw love, I saw pride… I saw joy… I saw life and what it could be if we all respected our past, present and future… If we all respected each other…

I saw myself eating my words… and I smiled about it because I have no problem doing just that in an effort to show my support for a Latino familia in need.

I marched with my Urban Latino familia… I danced… I blew into that whistle like I was a crossing-guard directing our children safely into school each morning… I high-stepped and strutted my way down 5th Avenue with tears of joy inside knowing that someone in that crowd looked deeply into the eyes of Baby Sophia’s picture and realized that she could be their child.

That there was no true pride in just standing on the sidelines… that the truest pride would come from an action… a step forward to help save a child’s life… an extending of your own heart in order to help another…

And in the end, I put away my prejudice and I found my pride in the moment. And as the rain began to fall down upon me as we reached the end… I was overjoyed… I was truly happy… I was fulfilled in another mission complete…

I was proud to be Latino… Proud to walk amongst mi gente… Proud to stand for something!

Visit www.getswabbed.com today… and stand for something…

Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Photos Courtesy of Francisco Reyes @ www.mamboso.net and Jenuine Focus and Aiesha Engineer

Yo Soy Nuyorican… But Not Like You

Yo Soy Nuyorican… But Not Like You

As we prepare to celebrate our Puerto Ricaness and all of its beautiful intricacies this weekend at the 2010 Puerto Rican Day Parade along Fifth Avenue, I can’t help but wonder if anyone even cares about the struggles – both past and present – of our people…

On any given Sunday in the past history of the parade you might’ve been marching behind the Latin King and Queen Nation who pretended to be an organization for the people, all the while killing their own brothers over drug deals gone badly.

This Sunday you might find yourself marching behind a group of self-professed, self-titled Taínos who are no more peaceful than the conquistadors of Christopher Columbus who cut Yucayeke (village) boys in half and fed the bodies of Taíno babies to their dogs.

I know… it’s a strong statement which makes us all sick to our stomachs.

But the problem is, there is truth behind my words, as I’ve heard one of these self-appointed Taíno chieftains threaten to pull out his glock-nine on anyone he deems an enemy of his people.

I guess he wants to ensure there will be no more genocide under his watch.

The only difference is that the Taínos only responded to violence, never perpetrated it.

To me personally, the Puerto Rican Day Parade is as representative of Latino people as the “Being Latino” Facebook fan page.

Which is to say it serves no real purpose, has no real sense of direction and merely serves as a mirage to make us all feel accomplished. When the truth is we have a long way to go before we should ever dream of raising a triumphant flag of our own red, white and blue design.

Why would I say the PR Parade doesn’t represent me in anyway? Well for one thing, my daughters aren’t represented by the half-naked girls walking around with Puerto Rican flags covering their overtly protruding breasts… barely fourteen years old with enough Sazón to season fifty pernils.

And although a great majority of young Latino males are in desperate need of male role models to guide them into adulthood. I refuse to believe that those showing off their Puerto Rican flag boxer shorts and do-rags are any representation of the next generation of Latino leaders we’ll surely have to find in order to be represented properly in the future of government and corporate America.

The Latino politicians who wave atop $50,000 floats certainly aren’t representing the communities they were voted in to improve upon…

And who the hell keeps inviting the man who changed the laws to be mayor, “Moneybags Bloomberg,” to this event every year? He certainly is no friend to the Latinos in New York, though he certainly puts on a great act every year complete with straw hat and guayabera.

Much like everything else in this world, the Puerto Rican Day Parade has become a big business trying to grab hold of the billions of dollars Latinos spend each year.

As such… the Galos Corporation and the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc., have secured the best spots along the parade route for the big money investors, while people trying to spread messages of hope and survival are priced completely out of the parade.

Case in point, the DKMS, can’t even afford a float or a banner to promote its lifesaving efforts for six-month-old Bronx Latina, Sophia Lopez who is in desperate need of a bone marrow donor of Latino descent.

She will certainly die without a match being found… and as she prepares to enter the hospital, possibly for the last time, no one has stepped up to assist in these life-saving promotional efforts.

There is a very real chance that a match could be found in the two-million Latinos expected to cover the parade route. But apparently, Sophia’s life comes behind the hottest reggaetón band whose record label can afford the float, so the young, half-naked little ladies in attendance will show the world just how much Sazón a 14-year-old has.

Are you starting to understand why I don’t exactly feel represented by this parade?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be proud of our heritage, our legacy, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

But during a time when Latino support and loyalty seems to be non-existent or a very rare find.

During a time when Latinos are flunking out of school at close to 60 percent in many districts in New York.

During a time when we’re suffering from obesity, drug addiction, poverty, homelessness, mental health disorder and many levels of abuse in the home.

During a time when it’s almost illegal to be Latino in some parts of the country…

This man here sees no reason to raise the Puerto Rican flag in celebration.

My loyalty is to humanity…

And when I see so many Latinos failing to show humanity in the simplest way to a six-month-old Latina baby… I see no reason to show solidarity in that. No reason to show my pride in something I’m certainly not proud of. Maybe next year…




Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

The Unwritten Life

The Unwritten Life

If I had a dollar for every time someone sent me a message posing the question, “How do I get published?” I’d have about $107.00.

And while I don’t consider the question to be a nuisance or a waste of my time, it is a very difficult question for me to answer. Because honestly, there is no right or wrong answer, no formulas that will guarantee you success and no secrets that only published authors share while trying to keep the next best writers locked out of the literary world.

What I can share with you is that becoming published requires more patience than your mother had to have with you not to beat you at the dinner table every time you refused to eat your vegetables – which for me, was every single time I sat at the table – right up to present day.

That’s right, I’ve never eaten a vegetable and I’m damn proud of that little known fact.

However, what I lacked in the taste buds department I more than made up for in the patience to someday see my story – in black and white – in some type of binding for a broad audience, preferably the entire world, to read.

It took me almost five years to become published, and even then I was only discovered by a friend of a friend who knew someone (Max Nomad) who owned a very small publishing company in Virginia Beach called Bohemian Griot Publishing.

I still recall the first phone conversation I had with Max when he said into the phone something to the effect of, “I don’t know how to market a book like this… but I know this story needs to be shared with the world… let’s meet…”

And the rest as they say is Latino literary history.

Prior to that fateful call though, I recollect taking the last $300.00 out of the bank to drive to New York to attend the BEA Conference at the Jacob K. Javits Center. The promise of the Book Expo of America and this particular conference was that you’d get to have your manuscript reviewed by a real publisher, literary agent or editor.

There I stood with a nearly completed manuscript titled, “Next Stop: Growing up in the Kingsbridge Section of the Bronx,” – the name would later be changed by Nomad – and a firm belief that the stories of my old neighborhood deserved a grand platform.

I believed in the deepest part of my soul that the stories of survival and the memoriam to those who didn’t make it out deserved to be documented for an eternity. And no one could tell me that my gut instinct was wrong.

These were the unwritten stories of our lives… and I wanted them to be cemented in the concrete of literary greatness for generations to come.

My hands shook when I handed the manuscript to the first editor and after browsing through the first few pages he promptly closed it and said, “I can’t market this,” and sent me on my way.

I quickly got into line number two to hear virtually the same thing… and as I walked up to Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management on my third and final try, my spirits had already been crushed and my hopes of finding anyone to publish me that afternoon had completely vanished.

And while Sharlene didn’t provide me with a publishing deal that afternoon, she did provide me with one thing the others did not… she provided me with kinds words of hope when she said, “Your stories seem to have potential, just polish up the manuscript and don’t give up.”

But that’s what I did at that very moment… I gave up… I quit… I accepted my fate as a failed writer.

While I sat on the sidewalk outside the Javits Center, for what seemed like an eternity, eating the only thing I could afford to eat – a dirty water dog – before trekking back to Virginia Beach, the only feelings I could muster were those of defeat.

I’d let everyone down… but at least I had the courage to try, right?

I tried to look at the bright side of Sharlene’s words, but the fact that I’d spent my families last few dollars trying to “make it,” was enough to cloud the bright side of anything in a wall of tears.

The manuscript for “Next Stop,” sat collecting dust for an entire year before a friend of Nomad’s overheard me talking about the forgotten tales I’d written at a beach party and offered to pass it on for review.

So you see… there is no great secret to being published… In my case, I still believe it was fate. And to this day I still believe that the lives of my friends who died on the streets of New York deserved to be shared with the world, if for no other reason, than to prove that they existed in some time or space.

And so if I had to give you just one bit of advice, I’d tell you to write a manuscript that is so honest it will literally hurt you to write it.

Moreover, that even if you’re writing a novel, take all of the pain and pleasure you’ve ever experienced in life and pour it onto the pages as if your only hope of survival is to confess the truths for what they are… the truth… the sad, lonely, happy, funny, unapologetic truths of life. Because I for one don’t want to read anything less than that.

Understand that your life, the lives of those around you deserve to be documented… deserve to be written… deserve to be told by us for future generations to experience.

“Next Stop: Growing up Wild Style in the Bronx,” was never a marketable book. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an important book.

And for the last year I’ve blamed everyone and their mother for not supporting and purchasing the book. Only to come to the realization through conversations with filmmakers like Franc Reyes and Mr. Moe that it was never the audiences fault.

How can you buy a book that you don’t even know exists?

And so in that regard we are still very much invisible to the mainstream markets of America.

Only this time, there is no need to give up… but instead to write more books and document more stories in hopes that eventually the market will find us.

Next Stop is officially going out of print on May 27, 2010.

But the book has its place in history as the first memoir by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx to be published by a major publishing house. And though Simon & Schuster never really pushed this book, my editor Sulay Hernandez fought hard to allow it to see the light of day on the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble and Borders.

I was fortunate enough to count amongst my fans people like Casper Martinez, Luis Guzman, Rosie Perez, Ramon Rodriguez, Luis Antonio Ramos and Urban Latino Magazine’s founder Jorge Cano-Moreno. But more importantly teens across America that saw themselves in the pages and questioned the paths they were traveling in life…

A few even altered their paths to find their own success in life.

Doors opened, friendships were built and new legacies were secured. In the end, my gut instinct was right… Our unwritten lives… deserved to be written.

To Be Continued

"It's the raw and brutally honest portrayal of a violent youth who walks through fire in order to find himself." -- Linda Nieves-Powell, author of Free Style

Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.