Justin Akers Chacón, Author at puntorojo

August 8, 2019

Announcing puntorojo

Puntorojo is a digital magazine that publishes voices and viewpoints of Mexicanx, Chicanx, Latinx, transborder and transnational radicals. This includes workers, scholars, activists, artivists, historians, and other commentators whose historical experiences and perspectives are shaped by the effects of U.S. imperialist intervention and domination across the Americas, and resistance to all oppressive aspects of capitalism and imperialism that manifest in daily life. This struggle—the class struggle—is reaching a turning point. We are in an epoch of global crisis, conflict, reaction, and potential transformation.

The working classes and oppressed peoples across the Americas are in motion against the destructive and exploitative economic system of capitalism and the political forces that maintain it internationally. This arrangement, referred to here as imperialism, is administered by the US state and its ruling class allies and enforcers across the region. It promotes and props up corrupt dictatorships and fascist regimes that uphold Its objectives, while also attempting to overthrow non-compliant governments through coup, invasion, economic blockade and sabotage, and by giving direct material support to reactionary opposition groups and movements.

August 2, 2019

by Justin Akers Chacón

The Mexican condition in the US

As of the 2010 census, there were 31,798,258 Mexicans in the U.S., out of a total population of 308,745,538 and out of a total Latino population of 50,477,594. Mexicans make up 10.1% of the total population in this country and 62.9% of Latinos. Most Mexicans live in the Southwest, 46.5% of Latinos are in California and Texas alone, an area that used to be part of Mexico.

Of the 31 million Mexicans in the U.S., 11.7 million were born in Mexico. In 2010, the average median earnings for them was $23,810, lower than the average of $33,130 for foreign born residents in the U.S. The percentage of these Mexicans living in poverty was 29%, higher than the national average of 10% and the national average for foreign born residents, which was 17%. 54% of immigrants from Mexico had less than a high school education, which is more than the national average of 9% and the national average for all foreign born of 27%. The percentage of Mexicans immigrants without a high school diploma was higher than for immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and Central America.

Of these Mexican immigrants, 4.9 million were undocumented in 2017, a drop from 6.9 million ten years earlier. The significant numbers of immigrants deported under Obama is in large part responsible for this decrease in numbers of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. Over half (53%) of these immigrants live in California and Texas, with 10% living in Los Angeles County alone.