Romney, “Self Deportation” and Mexican American Studies

by David Safier

OK, this one is just for fun. I was watching Rachel Maddow a few minutes ago. She was talking about the satirist who created the term “self deportation” in California a few years back to take the state’s proposed draconian deportation laws to their logical extreme, the kind of thing satirists love to do. Maddow pointed out, “self deportation” is now a Mitt Romney platform.

That was good enough for me. What could be better than self satire at that level: Romney adopting the phrase meant to satirize people like him.

But then she had the satirist on, a guy named Lalo Alcaraz. I sat up. I knew that name! He’s the guy who created the should-be-classic-by-now Ethnic Studies poster. This poster was created in 2011, long before the books were packed up from classrooms and sent into storage. It’s damn near prophetic.

The book, Ethnic Studies, being burned at the stake as a heretic. Doesn’t get much closer to home than that.

Alcaraz, by the way, is the creator of the daily comic strip, La Cucaracha, “seen in  scores of newspapers including the Los Angeles Times (syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, home of “Doonesbury” and “The Boondocks.”) Lalo has produced editorial cartoons for the L.A. Weekly since 1992 and also creates editorial cartoons in English and Spanish for Universal.”