Inside the Latin@ Experience
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Inside the Latin@ Experience A Latin@ Studies Reader Edited by Norma E. Cantú and María E. Fránquiz
inside the latin@ experience Copyright © Norma E. Cantú and María E. Fránquiz, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–62178–7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company First edition: May 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
A toda nuestra gente with love
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Contents
List of Figures
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List of Tables
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Acknowledgments
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Introduction María E. Fránquiz
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Part I Historical Roots and Contemporary Realities 1
2
3 4
Changing the National Ethos or Just Being American? Latin@ Political Participation Sylvia Manzano and Arturo Vega State-Federal Relations Concerning Latin@ Civil Rights in the United States Norma V. Cantú Latin@s in the U.S. Military Jorge Mariscal The “Swirl” Migration of Mexican-Origin Students: A Cross-Border Analysis Using the Mexican and U.S. Censuses Stella M. Flores and Germán Treviño
3
23 37
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Part II Popular and Traditional Cultural Expressions 5
6
7
Making, Buying, Selling, and Using the Umbrella: Recognizing the Nuances of Latin@ Popular Culture Patricia Marina Trujillo Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Educators Paving a Road toward Conocimiento María E. Fránquiz Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States Norma E. Cantú
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93
111
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CONTENTS
Language and Identity of Immigrant Central American Pentecostal Youth in Southern California Lucila D. Ek
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Part III Performance Arts and Literature 9
Staging the Self, Staging Empowerment: An Overview of Latina Theater and Performance Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz 10 Literary Currency: Coined Contributions of Latin@ Literature in the United States Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs 11 Politics of Aesthetics: Mariachi Music in the United States Russell C. Rodríguez 12 From Boricua Dancers to Salsa Soldiers: The Cultural Politics of Globalized Salsa Dancing in Chicago Frances R. Aparicio
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173 193
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Epilogue: A Final Look at the Latin@ Experience: Past, Present, and Future Norma E. Cantú
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Bibliography
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List of Contributors
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Index
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List of Figures
1.1
Difference in volunteerism by race/ethnicity, GSS 1996, overall volunteer mean: 1.293
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Mexican states with the highest percentage of households with a member migrating to the United States, 1995–2000
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Mexican states with the highest percentage of children aged six to fifteen migrating to the United States, 1995 and 2000
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4.3
School-age migrants by the size of locality of origin
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4.4
Migration of school-age children to the United States, by month
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Total Mexican-born migrant population in the United States, 2000
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States with the highest number of Mexican-born residents not in the United States in 1995
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States with the highest percentage of Mexican-born children under eighteen years of age, 2000
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States with the highest percentage of noncitizen Mexican-born children under eighteen years of age, 2000
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4.9
School-age “swirl” migrants’ return to Mexico, by year
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4.10
Return of school-age children to Mexico, by month
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7.1
Circles of experience and of influence
4.1 4.2
4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8
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List of Tables
1.1
Frequency distribution of volunteerism, 1996 GSS
10
1.2
Volunteerism, ethnicity, and SES-GSS 1996
12
1.3
Predicting civic participation: Ethnicity and SES, GSS 1996
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Latino political participation: Volunteering and political activities
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New Mexican-origin migration states, 2000
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4.1b Traditional Mexican-origin migration states, 2000
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1.4 4.1a
4.2 5.1
Point of origin and destiny of migrant populations by size of locality
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List of subject fields from the Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture’s “Entries by Subject”
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Yo soy la sangre del indio soy latino soy mestizo, somos de todos colores y de todos los oficios y si contamos los siglos aunque le duela al vecino somos más americanos (“Somos más Americanos,” Los Tigres del norte)
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Acknowledgments
Primeramente, gracias to all who supported us in this endeavor: a Roberto Con Davis who first approached me with the idea of such a collection of essays; that project was not to be, but we found a home for it at Palgrave. To my coeditor, mi querida amiga, María Fránquiz, and all the contributors whose presence and work enrich my life and my scholarship, mil gracias! Thank you to the University of Texas at San Antonio whose support provided the superb research assistance of, first, Cordelia Barrera, and, in the final stages, of Magda García and Christina Gutiérrez, and to my niece Vanessa Cantú for her help one particularly busy week. To the contributors for not giving up on the project and to the various readers along the way—they are too many to list, but they know who they are—we thank you for the insight and recommendations. To the copyeditors and staff at Palgrave, especially to Julia and Samantha, mil gracias. Finally, al universo, as always, gracias! Norma E. Cantú
Este libro me llena de felicidad—it is truly a labor of love precisely because it represents the sweetness and beauty of insiders’ perspectives, not all of whom are authors in this book. En primer lugar I extend my thanks to Tony and Dora Fabelo, who made it possible for Norma and I to discuss the book en mi querido Puerto Rico. For three summers we met in the house where Tony was raised in Santurce to discuss revisions of chapters and the reorganization of ideas. With us in these summer writing retreats were Cinthia Salinas and Elvia Niebla, who nurtured our spirits as we kneaded and twisted and shaped the pandulce creations of the other twelve chefs that helped us bake this wonderful feast of insider conocimiento. Mil gracias Tony, Dora, Cinthia, and Elvia for your generosity, patience, and encouragement as this project expanded to life. María E. Fránquiz
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Introduction
María E. Fránquiz
Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader1 was compiled while contrasting events were impacting the lives of Latin@s in the United States and beyond. First was the fact that a 1,952-mile fence was being built along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to constrain or eliminate undocumented immigration through Mexico into the United States. This fence impacts the millions of adults and children living in the shadows of the fourteen-foot-high steel wall and the conscience of all Americans—in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas—including but not limited to educators, lawyers, political and social scientists, military professionals, artists, and researchers. As editors of this project, Norma and I invite you to come up with more humane ideas toward a dignified and nonviolent solution to social challenges such as the mobility of humans, precisely because the contemporary social and political reality of Latin@s in the United States owes much to the transnational movements of people back and forth between the United States and Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean. In stark contrast to the concerns of border protection and undocumented immigration during the first decade of the twenty-first century are other noteworthy national events that reflect positive views about what persons of color can and do contribute to mainstream life in the United States, the Americas, and the world. In January 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States. The month before taking office he nominated Hilda L. Solis to serve as the Secretary of Labor. Given the recognition that she had earned in promoting the rights of workers and justice for the environment during her tenure as a House representative for the 32nd Congressional District in California, Solis was confirmed in February 2009 as the first Latina
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secretary of labor in U.S. history. Then, in July 2009 President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter in the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court. Her broad legal experience as a New York assistant district attorney, an international corporate litigator, trial judge in the U.S. District Court, and appellate judge in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, proved that she was supremely qualified. Thus, she was the first among Latin@s to be nominated to and confirmed in this capacity—a historic landmark. To have Hilda Solis, a MexicanAmerican from a working class background—both her mother and father were blue-collar union members—as the Secretary of Labor and to have Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican who grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx, with appointments at the highest levels of U.S. government marks achievements with remarkable potential for the recognition of other valuable resources within Latin@ communities. From an interdisciplinary perspective, Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader specifically explores the varied and unique Latinidades, or Latin@ cultural identities, that reside in the United States. Each author in the anthology is an insider of the Latin@ community, and together the authors deploy various theoretical tools to present the condition of Latin@s living in the United States. Its appeal lies in the inclusion of essays that cross several disciplines, and it thus postulates a view of Latin@s in the United States that is different from the merely social science or literary or popular culture arenas. The underlying vision for Inside the Latin@ Experience was grounded in the fact that the U.S. Latin@ population is the fastest growing group and that it will soon become the largest ethnic minority in the country; therefore, a collection of essays that seeks to render the lived reality of this population seemed critical for a better understanding by both insiders and outsiders of Latin@ communities. Inside the Latin@ Experience is organized into three parts with each part containing four chapters. The first part presents the historical roots and contemporary realities of Latin@ communities. This part identifies salient historical trends that have impacted the relations of Latin@s with each other and with other groups in the United States. The second part focuses on popular and traditional cultural expressions as found in schools, churches, and the wider Latin@ communities. One challenge of this section is the monolithic idea of a pan-Latin@ identity that sells in the marketplace but is typically not helpful in the identity formation of insiders represented by the term Latin@ (for example, Salvadorian, Puerto Rican, Mexican-American, Panamanian, Argentinean, etcetera). The final chapters provide perspectives on the performance arts and literary productions of Latin@s, including theater, music, and dance.
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As a brief introduction to the contributions made in each of the three sections the following paragraphs offer an outline of a wide panoramic view of the Latin@ condition as presented by the authors in this reader. The authors who come from various disciplines and theoretical perspectives use specific methodologies, including empirical, ethnographic, linguistic, literary, and textual analyses, along with cultural studies and other appropriate approaches. This diversity is seen in the contributions from various disciplines and the distinct perspective each contributes to the research and study of the Latin@ community. In the following sections a summary of the content of each part and the essence of each chapter is captured in an effort to provide you, our reader, with a guide, of the book’s contents. Historical Roots and Contemporary Realities In the first part, Historical Roots and Contemporary Realities, the authors present demographic data, including transnational migration patterns, as well as the history of how Latin@s promoted their own civil rights in the United States. Important economic avenues for immigrant and working class Latin@s, such as their participation in military service and their political attitudes and perceptions, are examined. Large databases such as the Pew Hispanic Center / Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey of Latinos and the U.S. Decennial Census of 2000 are used to evaluate residence patterns, attitudes toward immigration, and views on the role of government, among others. These chapters use the disciplinary tools of political science, law, and sociology to present compelling information needed for considering directions for a new decade and era. Chapter 1 of Part I by Sylvia Manzano and Arturo Vega discusses the influences of U.S. Latin@ civic participation. Manzano and Vega employ the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) and the Pew Hispanic Center / Kaiser Family Foundation 2004 National Survey of Latinos to examine the relationship between socioeconomic variables and civic participation across ethnic groups. They consider the influence of Latin@ participation, specifically volunteerism and political activity. They demonstrate that Latin@s vary along dimensions of political and economic incorporation, but this fact is no indication of “American-ness”; rather the distribution of resources within a highly diverse ethnic community explains participatory patterns. As a civil rights lawyer, Norma E. Cantú continues the discussion begun in Chapter 1 regarding Latin@ political participation in local and national affairs. In her chapter, “State-Federal Relations Concerning Latino Civil Rights in the United States,” she provides a historical overview of ways Latin@s in the United States promoted their civil rights. Remarkably,
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Latin@s did not bring federal court cases to the U. S. Supreme Court until the second half of the twentieth century. The author includes a report of the resistance by states to federal intrusion into states’ rights as well as an enlightened overview of the pervasive tension between the federal and state governments. The author’s own position as a lawyer and an educator is woven into her analysis of the effects of the No Child Left Behind legislation in the field of education. The interaction of federal and state laws in the United States is highly relevant to members of “minority groups” who are caught between inconsistent governmental practices and interpretations of civil rights laws. An important component of any nation is the participation of its citizenry in the protection and maintenance of its national borders and worldviews. In Chapter 3, Jorge Mariscal presents his research in his chapter, “Latin@s in the U.S. Military.” He examines how Latin@ military service, sustained by a constant flow of new immigrants and relatively limited career opportunities for the native-born working class of color, has historically been the primary vehicle for assimilation, access to the full rights of citizenship, and the construction of “American” identities premised on traditional patriotism. He argues that Latin@s and other working class bodies—like the inexpensive Latin@ labor that continues to be used for building the national economy—have provided the raw material for U.S. military conflicts for over a century and a half. Noteworthy in this chapter is the fact that among all ethnic groups in the United States, Latin@s have won forty-one Congressional Medals of Honor, more than any other group, and to date thousands of new immigrants continue to believe that the “American Dream” can only be achieved through military service. Part I concludes with a binational focus on cross-border flows of immigrants. Stella M. Flores and German Treviño indicate that surges in Latin American migration to the United States since the 1990s have led to an impressive increase in immigration research. In their study they specifically analyzed migration patterns between Mexico and the United States using the 2000 National Census questionnaire for each country: the XII General Census of Household and Population 2000 of Mexico and the U.S. Decennial Census. They evaluate migration patterns to, from, and in some cases back to the original residence area before migration of Mexican-origin individuals. Their study is particularly original in that it offers a cross-national analysis of migration patterns between these two countries for adults and school-age children. Additionally, they employ Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping to visually explore migration patterns of the states most likely to send, receive, and reincorporate Mexican-origin migrant populations in Mexico and the United States.
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Popular and Traditional Cultural Expressions in School, Church, and Community The second part of the reader, “Popular and Traditional Cultural Expressions in School, Church, and Community,” looks at various forms of Latin@ culture, including the traditional arts as well as the fine and popular arts, and the ways these are enacted in school, church, and community. Highlighting the stellar contributions of educators, scholars in cultural studies, and sociolinguists, this section also foregrounds how traditional artists have been a mainstay and a resource for many popular arts. While one chapter uses a highway metaphor to explain the influence of Latin@ children’s literature on knowledge production among young Spanish speakers, another chapter highlights the heterogeneity of Latin@ communities in terms of socialization into language, culture, and religion. The first chapter in this section of the reader is titled “Making, Buying, Selling, and Using the Umbrella: Recognizing the Nuances of Latin@ Popular Culture.” The author Patricia Trujillo argues that multiple negotiations can be made when encountering and interpreting cultural symbols in the mass market and media. In considering Latin@ popular art and culture, she asks the following questions: Who is creating it? What images and symbols are being employed? How are they interpreted? By whom are they interpreted and for whom? She considers these questions important for a society that is becoming increasingly Latin@ and for a hegemonic popular culture that is increasingly influenced by these Latin@ communities. This growing phenomenon mandates that Latin@ art and culture be taken seriously as an economic and political influence that is able to inform and change what it means to be “American.” Accordingly, this essay provides a prefatory understanding of the various nuances of Latin@ popular and pop culture and serves as an introduction to a vast discourse. The essay also works to map out discursive signposts in the field but in no way claims to identify them all. Rather, in considering the ever changing nature of popular culture, this essay can be considered an entrance into a complicated, multifaceted, and dynamic field of study. Chapter 6, “Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Educators Paving a Road toward Conocimiento,” presents an argument for understanding the factors that support or constrain the development of Latin@ students’ biliteracy skills in U.S. classrooms. Data is presented on the ways in which teachers have created spaces for bilingual students to learn language, expand disciplinary knowledge, and experience powerful writing in their heritage or second language. Specifically, these teachers utilized two bilingual children’s books—Friends from the Other Side/Amigos del otro lado (Anzaldúa, 1993) and Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y
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la llorona (Anzaldúa, 1995)—to show how conocimiento (reflective consciousness) about the topic of immigration can be achieved in elementary bilingual classrooms. Fránquiz argues that examining Latin@ children’s development of biliteracy and conocimiento in U.S. schools is significant because these skills augment intellectual possibilities, provide access to a broader range of social and cultural resources, and encourage teachers and children to place value on funds of knowledge from Latin@ homes and communities. She points out that the issue of immigration continues to be as critical today as when Gloria Anzaldúa wrote about her child characters Prietita and Joaquin in 1993 and 1995. Norma E. Cantú in Chapter 7, “Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States,” writes about the contested area of the U.S.-Mexico border where a number of cultural expressions still exist that reflect the mestizaje of cultures that coexist in this geopolitical space. This chapter explores how religious and secular cultural expressions, such as the coming-of-age ritual of the quinceañera and the veneration of religious icons and holy sites, have functioned as forms of contestation and resistance to the onslaught of U.S. hegemonic culture. The rituals are also hybrid expressions of cultural threads that show Christian and indigenous influences. Drawing from the particular site of the border, the author launches an analysis of the cultural expressions of the various groups and argues that groups that celebrate with parades and processions as well as with in-family or in-group rituals survive because the very act of celebrating assures survival. Another site for cultural expression is the church. In Chapter 8, Lucila Ek uses theories of language and identity to examine the language uses, attitudes, and experiences of Central American Pentecostal youth in California. These youth are linguistically and culturally doubly subordinated, first by the mainstream European-American culture and the English language and second by the Mexican-American population that comprises the largest Latin@ group in California. Findings of her study include the centrality of the voseo2 in the construction and maintenance of a Central American linguistic and cultural identity, the Mexicanization or Chicanoization of Central Americans in Southern California, and the erasure of national identity in the church context. The author draws from a multiyear ethnography conducted in Southern California to highlight the heterogeneity of Latin@ communities in terms of language, culture, and religion. Performance Arts and Literature The chapters in Part III, Performance Arts and Literature, provide descriptive overviews of Latin@ contributions to theater, literature, the mariachi
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musical form, and salsa dance. The role of the performance arts in Latin@ identity constructions and the predominant themes particular to different Latin@ ethnicities (for example, Puerto Rican, Cuban-American, Mexicano, etcetera) during the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century are closely examined with lenses from literary and/or cultural studies. Interestingly, the four authors whose work comprises this section are scholars who work more or less across the four directions of the United States—Urquijo-Ruiz from the South (Texas), Gutierrez y Muhs from the North (Washington), Rodriguez from the West (California), and Aparicio from the East (Illinois). Given that indigenous education is grounded in respect for the laws represented in the four directions as the building blocks of creation, it is fitting to conclude the chapters in this reader with four perspectives on Latin@ creative performance. In “Staging the Self, Staging Empowerment: An Overview of Latina Theater and Performance,” Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz begins with a brief overview starting in the twentieth century and offers an example of an early type of performance. She then proceeds to focus primarily on the works created since 1980, briefly analyzing three Latina plays. The author focuses on the issues of self-representation and empowerment and at the same time attempts to contest the stereotypical and racist depictions that were historically created. Latina dramatic artists have chosen to voice their own concerns regarding issues of identity formation as subjects who constantly inhabit a liminal cultural space where multiple aspects of their cultures (mainstream and marginal) overlap. Furthermore, their contestation also addresses issues of gender and sexual discrimination from within their own ethnic groups, especially starting in the late 1970s when the first wave of Latina feminism produced empowering literary works that were later transformed and transferred to the stage. The chapter shows how Latina playwrights, in confronting the issues mentioned, insist on making their voices heard and on letting their “wild tongues” tell their own stories. With an emphasis on literature, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs provides a chapter that gives a glimpse of the predominant themes particular to each Latin@ ethnicity explored by more prolific writers in recent U.S. Latin@ literature. Organizing her chapter thematically and ethnically, the author examines the works of poets, novelists, and creative nonfiction writers that have all had a significant impact on U.S. Latin@ literature. The key themes in her analysis of literature continue to be identity, gender, inequality, racism, the importance and centrality of the Latino family, and the inscription of physical Latin@ representations of subjectivity, spirituality, and agency, as well as language. She cites exile as a theme that recurs continuously in Cuban-American literature. In Puerto Rican literature the themes of independence, territory, and nationalism, as well as invasions in all
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metaphorical senses are central and well recognized. For non-U.S.-born Latin@s, issues of the reformulation of identity and in particular the fluctuations of social class are essential, adding many dialectical shifting side ladders to the bridge of immigration. For Chican@s in contemporary literature, spirituality, migration, sexuality, social consciousness, and death themes are the most prevalent. For both Chican@s and Puerto Ricans, the geographic attack on bilingualism is central. In the penultimate chapter, “The Politics of Aesthetics” by Russell C. Rodríguez, a brief description of the mariachi musical ensemble of Mexico and two case studies exhibiting the diffusion of meaning and representation around the mariachi musical form are presented. Through ethnographic research the author describes the developments and transformations this musical form has endured due to its presence in new public spaces and the participation of new practitioners who diverge from the Mexicano working-class masculinity that signifies the “traditional” mariachi musician. As a result of these shifts the central argument is that mariachi music has become a terrain of new understandings of aesthetics in which new repertoire, practice, and authority emerge, which are in turn affirmed, appropriated, and challenged. The concept of the “politics of aesthetics” is proposed to examine the intersection of race, gender, class, and culture, as integrated in an understanding of practice, performance, and aesthetics to clarify the dynamic of the developing mariachi space. The final chapter moves from mariachi music to salsa music and dance. In “From Boricua Dancers to Salsa Soldiers: The Cultural Politics of Salsa Dancing in Chicago,” Frances Aparicio argues that despite the dominant discourses that the dancing industry and some scholars have used for promoting salsa dancing as a vehicle for intercultural understanding and racial harmony, social and popular dancing in the global city produces complex moments of intercultural conflicts and gender power dynamics that reveal the ongoing, colonialist anxieties over racial minorities in the United States. Through participant observation, the author explores the processes through which the globalization of salsa dancing has had a negative impact on the relationship that Puerto Rican women have had with salsa music and dancing as central forms of identity reaffirmation. Aparicio posits that the sense of displacement reflects the gradual ways in which the shift of dancers from Boricua individuals to what one woman she interviewed referred to as “salsa soldiers” has displaced previous Puerto Rican dancers from dancing venues and clubs in Chicago. The twelve chapters that comprise Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader are followed by an epilogue where Norma E. Cantú presents ideas for future directions and possibilities for Latin@s in the United States. Taking into account the interconnectedness of trade,
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natural resources, health and scientific knowledge, technological advances, and diverse expressions of cultural traditions, the authors of this project propose ways for (re)considering the stronger integration of Latin@ insider perspectives in all the pathways that will provide a safe and caring world for the generations to come. Notes 1. Latin@ is the term used by Latcrit (Latino critical race) theorists in the United States to identify persons of Spanish-speaking descent who designate themselves as being of Mexican-American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or other Hispanic origin (Franciso Valdés, “Under Construction—LatCrit Consciousness, Community, and Theory,” California Law Review 85 (1997): 1087–1142). We use the term Latin@ in this reader to acknowledge this wide intragroup diversity. 2. In Spanish grammar, voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos instead of tú.
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Part I
Historical Roots and Contemporary Realities
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1
Changing the National Ethos or Just Being American? Latin@ Political Participation Sylvia Manzano and Arturo Vega
Introduction re U.S. Latin@ political participants really changing the national ethos or simply behaving in typical American fashion? In Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Samuel Huntington argues that U.S. Latin@s threaten the ethos of the nation due to an inability to assimilate or due to their resistance against assimilation into American life.1 However, there is substantial evidence to the contrary, indicating that Latin@ immigrants do indeed adopt many of the core cultural dimensions of American life.2 Civic participation and political engagement constitute one visible and measurable norm in American society. The decline in overall American civic engagement over the past half century is well documented.3 Yet during this same period, there is evidence that Latin@ participation in electoral politics has increased.4 This paper examines the political and civic assimilation of U.S. Latin@s using the Pew Hispanic Center’s 2004 National Survey of Latinos: Politics and Civic Participation. If Huntington is right, we should find uniform levels of nonparticipation across a broad spectrum of Latin@s. We challenge Huntington’s assertions and expect to find significant variation in political participation among Latino subgroups. Demographic and socioeconomic variables, particularly national origin, language, nativity, generational cohort, education, and income level should explain the variation in Latin@ political participation.
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Latin@ Civic Participation: Same Variables, Some Similar and Some Different Results Several strands of literature typify examinations of political behavior—the traditional socioeconomic status models (education and income); individual, community, and institutional characteristics (race/ethnicity; election types and designs; partisan versus nonpartisan, local, state-wide versus national among election types); and assimilation and acculturation (nativity, language, socialization). Cutting to the chase—the weakness of this literature is its application to the diversity of U.S. Latin@s and nonelectoral political activity within this population. The most enduring consistencies in the political behavior literature are the linear relationships between socioeconomic and political participation. Higher levels of education and income are associated with the likeliness to vote and participate. But how does this model perform when applied to the civic engagement of U.S. Latin@s? For example, it is well recognized that U.S. Latin@s are not normally distributed among the typically used socioeconomic status measures. Broad sectors of the Latin@ population are below the mean income and education levels and statistically different from their white counterparts. And, while there is no shortage of literature describing the depressed rates of political engagement among Latin@s, there is an emerging literature that finds Latin@s low on the socioeconomic status (SES) scale actively engaged in politics and community.5 To develop more sophisticated explanations for Latin@ political behavior, researchers have tested models that incorporate more demographic and contextual variables to predict participation in various activities.6 Here, a number of individual, community, and institutional factors are typically examined as explanations for why Latin@s are less apt than whites to participate in both electoral and nonelectoral politics.7 Political and social trust, for example, are also often cited relative to both acculturation and civic engagement. Unfortunately, the relationship between political and social trust and acculturation and engagement are not always clear. What comes first? Trust, then acculturation and engagement or the other way around? Several surveys, for example, have found that U.S. Latin@s differ from their ethnic and racial counterparts relative to levels of political trust. The 1980s Latino National Political Survey (LNPS), for example, found that Latin@s overall expressed slightly more political trust in the government officials to do what is right than non-Latin@ whites did. At the time of the survey, 40 percent of Mexican-origin survey respondents indicated that they trusted government officials—“just about always” (7.5 percent) or “most of the time” (32.7 percent). In contrast, 35 percent of the Anglo respondents expressed a similar level of trust—1.4 percent
CHANGING THE NATIONAL ETHOS OR JUST BEING AMERICAN?
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“just about always” and 33.7 percent “most of the time”. Notably, among the two other Latino groups surveyed, Cuban-Americans expressed the highest levels of political trust (48.6 percent) while Puerto Ricans were similar to respondents of Mexican origin.8 Since the LNPS, however, Latin@s are becoming less politically trustful. When asked about their level of political trust in the Pew 2002 survey, for example, a majority (51.5 percent) of the Latin@ respondents indicated that they never or only sometimes trusted the government in Washington to do what is right.9 In examining these data, Vega reports that “less than a third (29.5 percent) trusted the government most of the time and less than one in seven (14.1 percent) trusted the government always.”10 Moreover, Chávez and Fraga found that Latin@s have the lowest levels of social or generalized trust compared to African-Americans and whites.11 In the category “people can be trusted,” Latin@s rated the lowest (23 percent agreement); concerning “you can’t be too careful,” a measure of distrust, Latin@s rank the highest (68 percent agreement). And, what are its effects? One study, for example, concludes that acculturation corrodes political trust—“The more acculturated and thus assimilated Latinos become, accordingly, the more ‘American’ they become in their cynicism.”12 If this is the case, then “assimilated” Latin@s may exhibit “normal” (low) levels of civic participation, which, of course, says nothing about the independent effects of low levels of social trust. Michelson hints at important characteristics within the U.S. Latin@ population that influence participation. Others have found similar results, suggesting that it may be valid to say that there are differences in behavior. Segura and colleagues, for example, also found that being naturalized rather than native-born is associated with lower levels of political and social engagement.13 In a separate study Garcia and Arce also found that differences in organizational involvement for Latin@ joiners and nonjoiners rested on socioeconomic status and longer exposure to U.S. society.14 They added that the political integration of Latin@s was both uneven and diverse. On another level, still, using measures of commitment to community involvement and problem solving, Segura and colleagues found that support for the view “that individuals should help the community” was high among four Latino communities surveyed (97), suggesting an important contextual norm that could be associated with nonelectoral civic participation and engagement.15 Similarly research on the effects of the political efficacy of racial/ethnic members relative to their white counterparts in civic engagement is mixed. Emig, Hesse, and Fisher, in their study of Mobile, Alabama, for example, found that African-Americans exhibited more trust, efficaciousness, and involvement in the community than whites.16 Bobo and Gilliam suggest that in communities with greater and sustained political empowerment
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(or incorporation), African-Americans have shown higher levels of political trust, efficacy, and participation than their counterparts in communities with less political empowerment.17 Shingles proposes that black consciousness (the awareness of a shared and historically oppressed status as a racial group) was linked to increased political efficacy and participation relative to whites and also to high levels of mistrust of government.18 Finally, Portney and Berry found that “black neighborhoods of all economic stripes demonstrate relatively high levels of political participation in neighborhood associations.”19 The Pew 2004 Latino National Survey also indicates that U.S. Latin@s exhibit mixed levels of efficacy. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “political leaders do not care much what people like me think,” 54 percent of the respondents either strongly agreed or agreed. In contrast, when asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “In the United States, citizens can have an influence at all levels of government, from top to bottom, by voting and engaging in other political activities,” 77.5 percent either strongly agreed or agreed. When applied to U.S. Latin@s, foreignborn Latin@s exhibit a stronger sense of political efficacy and trust government less.20 Given its typical use (high efficacy impacts civic engagement) and its mixed results when applied comparatively to racial/ethnic groups and, certainly, the mixed levels of efficacy for Latin@s, we wonder how political efficacy impacts civic participation for Latin@s relative to traditional socioeconomic and individual characteristic (subgroup identity, sex, education, etc.) models. A third strand of the literature on political participation includes separate considerations of assimilation and acculturation. Gordon defined cultural assimilation as acculturation.21 Here, new immigrants “absorb” the cultural behavior patterns (norms, values, and lifestyles) of the “host” country.22 The other side of acculturation is primary assimilation or “the subjectively felt or psychological identification with the majority.”23 Fuchs adds that according to the ideal behind the “acculturative power of American society,” differences between ethnic and racial groups and identities are gradually eliminated.24 Michelson, citing Parks, also adds that the speed of assimilation depends on the immigrant’s race, religion, and language; “the closer a group is to English-speaking Protestants, the more quickly assimilation can happen.”25 Interestingly, the literature on assimilation, acculturation, and political integration has traditionally taken a one-dimensional perspective. Racial and ethnic minorities “become” or “adopt” the norms and attitudes of the larger group. Few analyses, however, consider the reciprocal effects of racial and ethnic minorities and emerging immigrant communities’ cultures and practices within larger communities. These reciprocal effects
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indeed seem to be driving the extended conversations over the direction of the ethos of the nation, for example. Measures of nativity and English language proficiency can be indicators of acculturation. Both factors mitigate socialization into American society. These two variables significantly influence socioeconomic outcomes and other variables associated with participation.26 Educational and economic opportunities, for example, are inextricably linked to language ability and nativity. Additionally, it is not the number of years in school that increases the propensity to vote, but rather the socialization that takes place within educational institutions that increases political participation. Many immigrants are not schooled in the United States. Frequently, those who do enroll in American public schools are tracked into academic programs that are distinct from the average student population. Similarly, the number of years of experience with American social and political norms, not age per se, has a positive influence on voting.27 Immigrant and U.S.-born Latin@s may have different information, interpretations, and experiences with American politics and its associated concepts, including ideological frameworks, parties, candidates, norms, rules, and processes. Nativity and language place additional direct and indirect participation costs on a significant proportion of the Latin@ population. Before they can even cast a ballot, immigrants must absorb the information costs of a new political environment in addition to the high costs associated with becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. These obstacles are exacerbated for those with poor English skills. For Latin@s language ability is a clear line of demarcation with respect to acculturation, political participation, and social mobility.28 In short, language ability sets the social and formal parameters of interaction among Latino groups and across racial groups as well. As noted earlier, most foreign-born Latin@s’ primary language is Spanish, and they cluster on the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum. As one might expect, this group is also less likely to register or vote. In some instances though, low resources become a catalyst for political engagement aimed at redressing these circumstances.29 For example, in recent years foreign-born Latin@ voters in California have turned out to vote in larger numbers than expected. Ramakrishnan’s recent study of immigrant voter behavior by generational cohort confirms that age, education, income, marital status, and residential stability are all positively associated with Latin@ immigrant political participation.30 In terms of nonelectoral participation, it may be the case that Latin@s are better poised to participate in these activities due to institutional barriers coupled with low socioeconomic resources. Yet studies have found that Latin@ civic engagement lags behind that of other racial groups.31 However, DeSipio finds that nativity makes no difference in predicting civic engagement, which is quite low across the population.32
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In terms of partisanship most Latin@ voters identify as Democrats. Voters of Cuban origin and the small proportion of voters who are of affluent Mexican and Puerto Rican origin tend to be more partial to Republicans.33 These trends are rather consistent. In early 1990, for example, the LNPS found that more than two-thirds of Mexican and Puerto Rican respondents identified as or leaned toward the Democrats and more than two-thirds of Cuban respondents identified or leaned toward Republicans. Anglo respondents were perhaps more evenly divided, with half identifying with the Democrats and 40 percent with Republicans.34 By 2002, U.S. Latin@s, in terms of partisan affiliation, identified principally as Independents (37.7 percent) and Democrats (35.2 percent). While one in nine (11.1 percent) did not provide an answer to the question, less than one in six (15.9 percent) Latin@ respondents identified as Republicans. Latinas were slightly more Democratic (37 versus 33.4 percent) and slightly less Republican than their male counterparts (14.5 versus 17.3 percent), while Latinos tended to identify more as Independents than Latinas (39.9 versus 35.5 percent). The differences by sex, however, were weakly associated.35 Montoya and colleagues found evidence that the factors influencing Latina and Latino voting are not the same.36 For Latinas, the most consistent predictors of turnout are an interest in politics, church attendance, and organizational and school involvement. Finally, we hasten to add that media explanations of the 2004 presidential election gave acculturation/assimilation explanations of Latin@ voting behavior. Russell (2005), for example, points to differences between secondand third-generation Latin@ voters.37 Campo-Flores and Fineman of Newsweek added nativity or country of origin to generational impacts.38 Clearly, rates of Latin@ political participation and partisan affiliation vary by identity, political trust, citizenship status, sex, generational cohort, and, seemingly, by context. Taken alone, one can begin to understand how comments like Huntington’s can be made. The literature, for example, correctly illustrates distinctions between immigrant and native-born Latin@s in voting behavior, attitudes, and preferences. What the literature lacks is a comprehensive application of traditional “explanatory” variables and models relative to the unique characteristics (nativity, heritage, citizenship/registration, generational cohort, and English proficiency) of U.S. Latin@s. Moreover, there is far less research on the relationship between nativity and nonelectoral political activity within the Latin@ population. There is some utility in examining more recent trends given the growth in immigrant population and national-origin diversity in the past fifteen years. Even though Latin@ voter turnout has increased in several elections, it is still the case that millions of adult Latin@s remain ineligible to participate in electoral politics. For this reason, we turn our attention to political and civic activities.
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Latin@ Civic and Political Participation The first set of analyses is conducted to establish a benchmark in terms of the relationship between socioeconomic variables and civic participation across ethnic groups. We expect to find patterns consistent with the social science literature where increased income, education, and age have a positive impact on civic participation, specifically volunteerism in several activities. Controlling these socioeconomic variables, it is expected that Latin@ ethnic subgroup identities will not have a distinctive impact on participation in one direction or the other. The second set of analyses considers the influence of Latin@ demographics, political trust, efficacy, and socioeconomic variables on Latin@ participation, specifically volunteerism and political activity. Because immigrant status and language ability are strongly associated with socioeconomic status, we expect that generational cohort, years in the United States, English language ability, income, and education will have an effect on both types of participation. Data and Methods The 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) and the Pew Hispanic / Kaiser Family Foundation 2004 National Survey of Latinos: Politics and Civic Engagement are utilized to test the hypotheses.39 The 1996 GSS serves as a point of context and benchmark because it includes a racially diverse national sample of respondents. The data from the GSS allows for some rudimentary crossgroup comparisons and a test of the traditional socioeconomic status variables on civic participation. The Pew survey includes only Latin@s, permitting specific modeling of civic engagement for the group. Details related to all variables and coding are included in the Appendix. Baseline volunteerism The first test considers the influence of socioeconomic variables on overall participation and civic engagement. To measure civic participation in the first model, we use a series of volunteerism and civic engagement questions. The dependent variable is developed by adding a series of fourteen questions on the topic. The 1996 GSS asked respondents to examine a card with different areas in which people do volunteer work, then asked the respondents if they had “done some volunteer work in the past twelve months” in any of the areas listed.40 The list included the following volunteer activity areas: (1) health, (2) education, (3) religious, (4) human
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Table 1.1
Frequency distribution of volunteerism, 1996 GSS
No. of activities 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
No. of participants
% of Total
606 306 168 104 53 37 24 14 4 4 3 2
45.7 23.1 12.7 7.8 4 2.8 1.8 1.1 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2
Cronbach Alpha = 0.69.
services, (5) environment, (6) public or social benefit, (7) recreation, (8) arts, (9) work-related organizations, (10) political, (11) youth development, (12) private and community foundations, (13) international, and (14) informal, individual volunteer work. The scale measuring participation in these activities ranges from a minimum 0 to a maximum value of 11 as no respondents exceeded participation beyond the eleven activities illustrated in Table 1.1. The cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.69 indicates the solid validity of the constructed variable. The first test considers the impact of traditional socioeconomic variables on volunteerism. The independent variables in the first regression are sex, marital status, education, income, age, number of children in a household, and ethnicity. The focus of this model is to evaluate whether Latin@ political behavior emulates other American racial groups. Thus ethnicity was recoded as a dichotomous variable indicating Latin@ origin or non-Latin@ origin. The difference in means test (ANOVA) and ordinary least squared multiple regression are utilized. Latin@ political activity and volunteerism The Pew dataset is used to test the impact of socioeconomic variables and Latin@-specific demographic variables on participation. Two dependent variables are constructed to measure two aspects of civic participation: political engagement and volunteerism. The first dependent variable measures Latin@ political participation; it is an additive index of five politically oriented activities. They are: 1) contact an elected official, 2) contribute money to a candidate, 3) work for a candidate, 4) participate in a meeting
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or demonstration, and 5) attend a political party function. The values on this variable range from 0 to 5, and a Cronbach alpha test produces a coefficient of 0.66, confirming these variables cluster together well. The second dependent variable measuring Latin@ volunteerism is also an additive scale. Included are four variables that measure different types of volunteer work. They are: 1) church or religious groups, 2) schools, 3) neighborhood, business, or community, and 4) ethnic group. The values for the volunteerism variable range from 0 to 4 and chronbach alpha coefficient of 0.60. The independent variables in the Latin@ participation models include measures for specific ethnic group demographics as well as socioeconomic indicators. The independent variables are: English proficiency, citizen and voter registration status, generational cohort, religion, sex, education, income, age, employment, years in the United States, political trust, political efficacy, marital status, heritage, and partisanship (see the Appendix for the list of variables). Again, the difference in means test (ANOVA) and least squares multiple regression are utilized. First, the findings from the baseline volunteerism model using the GSS 1996 data are reported, then the results from the Latin@ participationspecific models. Findings If political participation remains an issue of opportunity costs, there should be a positive association between participation and traditional socioeconomic measures. Increased income and education, for example, should have a positive impact on volunteerism. Americans averaged slightly over 1.3 volunteer activities, with 46 percent of respondents reporting no involvement in any of the listed activities. About one in four (23 percent) participate in one activity. On the whole, Americans are not involved in volunteer work; 69 percent participated in only one activity or none at all in 1996. However, are Latin@s different in their civic participation? Figure 1.1 graphically represents a difference in means test of the volunteerism scale created from the 1996 General Social Survey. Latin@s do volunteer for a slightly higher average number of activities (average 1.5 for Latinos, Table 1.2); however, the statistical difference across groups is insignificant. Thus Latin@s are no different in their overall depressed levels of volunteerism compared to Anglo, African-American, and Other groups. These findings suggest that in this arena of civic participation, Latin@s exhibit “typical American” levels of volunteerism. Table 1.3 reports the regression results with the GSS 1996 volunteerism scale against Latin@ as an independent variable and traditional
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Figure 1.1 Difference in volunteerism by race/ethnicity, GSS 1996, overall volunteer mean: 1.293 Table 1.2
Volunteerism, ethnicity, and SES-GSS 1996
Group
No.
Mean activities (SD)
White African American Other Latino Native American Asian American
989 178 20 71 42 25
1.29 (1.74) 1.24 (1.82) 1.4 (1.39) 1.51 (2.06) 1.21 (1.91) 1.24 (1.94)
Table 1.3
Predicting civic participation: Ethnicity and SES, GSS 1996 B
Latino Sex Married Education Age Income Children
0.2 0.226 0.113 0.144 0.073 –0.008 0.053
Standardized B 0.025 0.062 0.031 0.229 0.098 –0.07 0.051
SE
t
0.231 0.104 0.112 0.019 0.024 0.003 0.035
0.866 2.161* 1.008 7.454** 3.099** –2.226* 1.526
R2 = 0.086 N = 1150. ** p = 0.01, * p = 0.05.
socioeconomic status variables. While the overall model performs poorly (multiple R2 = 0.09), the statistical significance and direction of the independent variables is illustrative. Here, the dichotomized Latin@ variable remains statistically insignificant, while educational attainment and income have the most influential and statistically significant effects. Sex and age
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are also significant and in the expected direction, while marital status and the number of children in a household is insignificant. The results here show that Latin@ ethnicity itself does not depress volunteerism. To dissect and update Latin@ political participation, we turn to the 2004 Pew National Survey of Latinos. Table 1.4 reports the findings on four regression models. There are two tests for each of the two dependent variables: volunteerism and political activities. Models 1 and 3 include independent and control variables. Models 2 and 4 include identical independent variables with the addition of the other dependent variable of interest but as an independent variable. While moderately correlated (0.42), the dependent variables—volunteerism and political activities—contribute significantly to the previous models (1 and 3). It seems that Latin@s who are politically active are also active volunteers and vice versa. Models 1 and 2 demonstrate the effects of our measures of interest in explaining volunteerism among Latin@s. In Model 1, English ability, education, sex, Mexican heritage, trust, and employment status are all statistically significant. An outcome of interest is that citizenship/voter registration status and generational cohort, while in the predicted directions, are not significantly associated with Latin@ volunteerism. When the political activities Table 1.4
Latino political participation: Volunteering and political activities
Sex Education Income Citizen/Registered Age Employed Years in the United States Trust Efficacy Children Married Democrat English fluency Gen cohort Religion Mexican heritage Political acts Volunteerism (Constant) R2 (adjusted) **p = 0.01, *p = 0.05.
Model 1 volunteer
Model 2 volunteer
Model 3 political acts
Model 4 political acts
0.13** 0.16** 0.03 0.03 0.06 0.07* –0.04 0.13** 0.01 0.06 0.02 –0.05 0.20** 0.02 –0.06 0.14**
0.13** 0.13** –0.01 0.00 0.05 0.07* –0.06 0.12** –0.01 0.07* 0.01 –0.07* 0.17** –0.02 –0.07* 0.10** 0.33**
0.01 0.08* 0.10** 0.06 0.01 0.02 0.05 0.03 0.06 –0.05 0.03 0.05 0.14** 0.01 0.03 0.11**
–0.03 0.04 0.10** 0.06 –0.01 –0.02 0.08 –0.01 0.06 –0.05 0.01 0.07* 0.05 0.01 0.06* 0.05
0.19 0.23
–0.46* 0.09
0.34** –0.27 0.21
0.14
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variable is added as an independent variable (Model 2), it overshadows the statistically significant variables of English ability, education, sex, Mexican heritage, trust, and employment status. In addition, with this respecification, the presence of children in the household, Democratic partisanship, and Catholic religious affiliation are also statistically significant, with Democrats and Catholic Latin@s having negative influences. Regression models 3 and 4 produce coefficients for the political activities dependent variable. Model 3, without volunteerism as an independent variable, performs poorly (R2 = 0.09). Here, English ability had the largest effect (0.14), followed by income, Mexican heritage, and education. With all else being equal, as English proficiency, income, and education increase, and we move from non-Mexican-heritage to Mexican-heritage Latin@s, participation in political activities increases. When volunteerism is added as an independent variable in Model 4, the equation performs substantially better (R2 = 0.21). Here volunteerism had the strongest effects (0.34). Income remains statistically significant but English proficiency, Mexican heritage, and education are not. Partisanship and religious identity are also significant predictors. Education, sex, citizenship/registration status, political trust and age, years in the United States, number of children, and generational cohort were not statistically significant. The effect of generational cohort, political trust, efficacy, years in the United States, and citizenship/registration status are of particular interest, given previous statements concerning assimilation and civic participation. For Latin@s, the rate of volunteerism and political activism are linked and are important correlates of civic participation and, ultimately, of social incorporation. Discussion/Conclusion Our findings point to somewhat different dynamics at work for Latin@ volunteerism and political activities. On the one hand, these findings are somewhat consistent with previous work that finds language, education, and income as important variables in predicting Latin@ electoral participation. English proficiency and education, for example, had consistent and positive influences in three of the four models of volunteerism and political activities. Income was only influential in the political activities models—an important albeit subtle point that differs from the traditional models of civic participation. In combination, these variables are indicators of social, economic, and political incorporation for Latin@s, whether U.S. or foreign-born. On the other hand, Latin@s of Mexican heritage were also significantly different from other Latin@s with respect to our civic engagement measures. The consistent and positive performance of this variable in three of the four models points to an important difference in Latin@ civic engagement
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between Mexican-heritage and non-Mexican-heritage Latinos. Broad strokes of the painter’s brush (à la Huntington) fail to capture this important difference. Still, our measures of generational cohort, years in the United States, age, citizenship/registration status, efficacy, and marital status—other measures of incorporation—had no impact on civic engagement for Latin@s. Interestingly, for Latin@s, level of political trust is a positive influence on volunteerism but insignificant to nonelectoral political participation. Being a Democrat and a Catholic also inhibit the level of volunteerism, but are positive attributes for the level of political activities when the level of volunteerism is included. The fact that Latin@s vary along these dimensions of political and economic incorporation (education, language, income, generational cohort, citizenship/registration status, years in the United States, etc.) is not indicative of their “American-ness” or even their lack of “American-ness,” but rather of the distribution of resources within a highly diverse ethnic community. It is also reasonable to acknowledge the formal and social rules that preceded these participatory patterns. Segregated public institutions, voter disenfranchisement, and racially exclusive civic arrangements were developed expressly to isolate and exclude specific minority groups from American society. Current trends show that white Americans are less civically engaged than previous generations. This pattern may be exaggerated among minority groups not only due to a history of exclusion, but also because in the calculus of participation, the costs are higher for many Latin@s. Simple institutional norms can create significant barriers for those with less linguistic and socioeconomic resources. Given our findings, we await the addition of cross-sectional and comparative racial/ethnic data to further examine whether U.S. Latin@s are unique relative to other Americans in their levels of civic engagement. Appendix Dependent variables 1996 GSS: Volunteering (Qs. 640A–646E): In which, if any, of the areas listed on this card have you done some volunteer work in the past twelve months? Item numbers 1–14 coded 0 = no, 1 = yes 1. health 2. education 3. religious organization
4. human services 5. environment 6. public/society benefit
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7. 8. 9. 10.
recreation arts, culture, humanities work-related political organizations or campaigns
11. 12. 13. 14.
youth development private and community foundations international/foreign informal, alone
Pew Survey: Political activity People express their opinions about politics and current events in a number of ways. In the United States, in the past year, have you: Item numbers 1–5, coded 0 = no, 1 = yes 1. Contact: Contacted any elected official? 2. Contribute: Contributed money to a candidate running for public office? 3. Worked: Worked as a volunteer or for pay for a political candidate? 4. Meeting: Attended a public meeting or demonstration in the community where you live? 5. Partisan Meeting: Attended a political party meeting or function? Pew Survey: Volunteerism Next I would like to talk with you about volunteering, spending time helping without being paid for it. In the past year have you volunteered your time to: Item numbers 6–9 coded 0 = no, 1 = yes. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Church: Any church or religious group? School: Any school or tutoring program? Community: Any neighborhood, business, or community group? Ethnic: Any organization representing your own particular nationality or ethnic or racial group? Independent variables
Education range (treated as interval) 1 None, or grade 1–8 2 High school incomplete (grades 9–11) 3 High school grad 4 General Equivalency Diploma (GED) 5 Business, technical, or vocational school after high school 6 Some college, no four-year degree 7 College graduate 8 Postgraduate training / professional schooling after college
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Age: Actual values Income: Range (treated as interval) 1 Less than $5,000 2 $5,000 but less than $10,000 3 $10,000 but less than $15,000 4 $15,000 but less than $20,000 5 $20,000 but less than $25,000 6 $25,000 but less than $30,000 11 $30,000 but less than $35,000 12 $35,000 but less than $40,000 13 $40,000 but less than $45,000 14 $45,000 but less than $50,000 19 $30,000 but less than $50,000 21 $50,000 but less than $60,000 22 $60,000 but less than $75,000 23 $75,000 but less than $100,000 24 $100,000 but less than $150,000 25 $150,000 but less than $200,000 26 $200,000 or more 29 $500,000 or more Years in the United States: Actual values Children: Number of children Employment Sex Citizen and voter registration
Children English fluency Generational cohort
Religion Married Mexican heritage
0 unemployed 1 employed 0 = Male 1 = Female 0 = not a citizen 1 = citizen, not registered to vote 2 = citizen, registered to vote 0 = no children 1 = children 0 = not English dominant 1 = English dominant 0 = foreign born 1 = first generation 2 = second generation 0 = not Catholic 1 = Catholic 0 = not married 1 = married 0=Non-Mexican Heritage 1=Mexican Heritage (Continued)
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Trust—How much do you trust the government in Washington to do what is right? Party Efficacy—Political leaders do not care much what people like me think.
0 = little 1 = most 0 = Not Democrat 1 = Democrat 0 = disagree 1 = agree
Dependent variable distribution for Latino models Political activity No. of activities
Frequency
% of Total
0 1 2 3 4 5
1613 365 160 83 43 14
70.8 16.0 7.0 3.7 1.9 0.6
No. of activities
Frequency
% of Total
0 1 2 3 4
1088 557 357 207 65
47.8 24.5 15.7 9.1 2.8
Volunteer
Notes 1. See also Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge,” Foreign Policy (March/April 2004): 30–45. 2. Gary M. Segura, “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” Perspectives on Politics 3 (September 2005): 640–42; and Rodolfo O. de la Garza et al., “Will the Real Americans Please Stand Up? Anglo and Mexican American Support of Core American Political Values,” American Journal of Political Science 40 (May 1996): 335–51. 3. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); X. De Souza Briggs, “Bridging Networks, Social Capital, And Racial Segregation In America” (working paper, John F. Kennedy School Of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Harvard University, 2003); and S. Knack and
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 9.
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P. Keefer, “Does Social Capital Have An Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (November 1997): 1251–88. David Leal et al., “The Latino Vote in the 2004 Election,” PS: Political Science & Politics 38 (January 2005): 41–49; and Matt A. Barreto and others, “The Mobilizing Effect of Majority-Minority Districts on Latino Turnout,” American Political Science Review 98 (February 2004): 65–75. Current Population Survey data (2004), for example, estimates that approximately one-third (34 percent) of voting-age Latin@ citizens were registered to vote in November 2004, compared to 68 percent for whites and 64 percent for African-Americans. Further CPS data reports that of the adult age population, 28 percent of U.S. Latin@s reported voting in the 2004 election compared to 60 percent of whites and 56 percent of African-Americans. “Reported Voting and Registration of the Total Voting-Age Population, by Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin, for States: November 2004,” U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey, Internet release date: May 25, 2005, Table 4a; Adrian Pantoja et al., “Citizens by Choice Voters by Necessity: Patterns in Political Mobilization by Naturalized Latinos,” Political Research Quarterly 54 (December 2001): 729–50; and John Arvizu and F. Chris Garcia, “Latino Voting Participation: Explaining and Differentiating Latino Voting Turnout,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 18 (May 1996): 104–28. Adrian Pantoja and others, “Citizens by Choice Voters by Necessity,” 729–50; and Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “Latino Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science, 7 (2004): 91–123. Rodney Hero, Latinos in the Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Martha Menchaca, and Louis DeSipio, eds., Barrio Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Elections (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994); Sidney Verba et al., Voice and Equality—Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Louis DeSipio, Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); John Arvizu and F. Chris Garcia, “Latino Voting Participation,” 104–28; Daran Shaw and others, “Examining Latino Turnout in 1996: A Three-State, Validated Survey Approach,” American Journal of Political Science 44 (April 2000): 332–40; Adrian Pantoja et al., “Citizens by Choice Voters by Necessity,” 729–50; and Carol A. Cassel, “Hispanic Turnout: Estimates from Validated Voting Data,” Political Research Quarterly 55 (June 2002): 391–408. Rodolfo O. de la Garza and others, Latino Voices—Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban Experiences On American Politics (Boulder: Westview, 1992). The Pew Hispanic Center / Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey of Latinos was conducted by telephone April 4–June 11, 2002, with a nationally representative sample of 4,213 adults, including 2,929 Latinos. Survey data were weighted by the Center for the national sample (weight) and separately for Latino respondents (weight). A third weighting process was created by the author to reflect nativity and gender segments within the Latin@ subpopulations relative to newly released U.S. Census data (WGT3). The Pew Hispanic
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10. 11.
12.
13. 14.
15. 16.
17.
18. 19.
20.
21.
22.
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Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation bear no responsibility for the interpretations offered, or conclusions made based on analysis of the Pew Hispanic Center / Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey of Latinos. Arturo Vega, “‘Americanizing?’ Attitudes and Perceptions of US Latinos,” Harvard Journal Of Hispanic Policy 18 (January 2006): 45. Maria Chávez and Luis. R. Fraga, “Social Trust, Civic Engagement and Social Mobility” (paper, The Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Denver, Colorado, March 26–29, 2003). Melissa R. Michelson, “The Corrosive Effect Of Acculturation: How Mexican Americans Lose Political Trust,” Social Science Quarterly 84 (December 2003): 918–33. Gary Segura and others, “Hispanics, Social Capital, And Civic Engagement,” National Civic Review 90 (March 2001): 88–96. J. A. Garcia and C. H. Arce, “Political Orientations And Behaviors Of Chicanos: Trying To Make Sense Out Of Attitudes And Participation,” in Latinos and The Political System (Notre Dame, Indiana: University Of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 125–52. Segura, 97. A. G. Emig, M. B. Hesse, and S.H. Fisher, “Black-White Differences in Political Efficacy, Trust, And Sociopolitical Participation—A Critique Of The Empowerment Hypothesis,” Urban Affairs Review 32 (1996): 265–76. R. Browning, D. R. Marshall, and D. H. Tabb, Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle Of Blacks And Hispanics For Equality In Urban Politics (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1984). Richard D. Shingles, “Black Consciousness and Political Participation: The Missing Link,” American Political Science Review 75 (March 1981): 76–91. K. E. Portney and J. M. Berry, “Mobilizing Minority Communities—Social Capital In Urban Neighborhoods,” The American Behavioral Scientist 40 (1997): 639. Using the Pew 2004 National Latino Survey, contingency analysis reveals statistically significant differences but weak associations among foreign-born and second- and third-generation Latinos relative to political efficacy (official care about me) and trust, with foreign-born more efficacious but less trusting. Crosstabs are not included. Milton M. Gordon, “Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality,” Majority and Minority—The Dynamics of Racial and Ethnic Relations (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1975), 248. Also see Michael Lemay, The Perennial Struggle—Race, Ethnicity And Minority Group Politics In The United States (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000); Reid Luhman and Stuart Gilman, Race and Ethnic Relations—The Social And Political Experiences Of Minority Groups (Florence: Wadsworth Publishing, 1980); and Richard Alba and Victor Nee, “Rethinking Assimilation Theory For A New Era Of Immigration,” International Migration Review 31 (1997): 826–74.
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23. Michael LeMay, The Perennial Struggle—Race, Ethnicity and Minority Group Politics in the United States (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2004). 24. Lawrence H. Fuchs, “Cultural Pluralism and The Future Of American Unity: The Impact Of Illegal Aliens,” International Migration Review 18 (Autumn 1984): 800–813. 25. Melissa R. Michelson, “The Corrosive Effect Of Acculturation: How Mexican Americans Lose Political Trust,” Social Science Quarterly 84 (2003): 918–33. 26. Wendy Tam Cho, “Naturalization, Socialization, Participation: Immigrants and (Non-) Voting,” Journal of Politics 61 (November 1999): 1140–55. 27. Wendy Tam Cho, “Naturalization, Socialization, Participation,” 2. 28. Louis DeSipio, Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Lisa García Bedolla, “The Identity Paradox: Latino Language, Politics and Selective Dissociation,” Latino Studies 1 (July 2003): 264–83; and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Democracy in Immigrant America: Changing Demographics and Political Participation (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2005). 29. Richard D. Shingles, “Black Consciousness and Political Participation: The Missing Link,” American Political Science Review 75 (March 1981): 76–91; and L. Bob and F. D. Gilliam, Jr., “Race, Sociopolitical Participation, and Black Empowerment,” American Political Science Review 84 (June 1990): 377–93. 30. S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Democracy in Immigrant America: Changing Demographics and Political Participation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 31. Sidney Verba et al., Voice and Equality—Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); and William A. Diaz, “Latino Participation in America: Associational and Political Roles,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 18 (1996): 154–74. 32. Louis DeSipio, Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996). 33. Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “Latino Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004): 91–123. 34. Rodolfo O. de la Garza et al., Latino Voices—Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban Experiences on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 122, 127. 35. Arturo Vega, “ ‘Americanizing?’ Attitudes and Perceptions of US Latinos,” Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy 18 (2006): 39–57; Susan Welch and Lee Sigelman, “A Gender-Gap Among Hispanics? A Comparison with Black and Anglos,” Western Political Science Quarterly 45 (March 1992): 181–91; and Lisa J. Montoya, Carol Hardy-Fanta, and Sonia Garcia, “Latina Politics: Gender, Participation, and Leadership,” PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (September 2000): 555–61. 36. Lisa J. Montoya, Carol Hardy-Fanta, and Sonia Garcia, “Latina Politics: Gender, Participation, and Leadership,” 555–61. 37. Jan J. Russell, “Grand Opportunity Party—The Republicans and George W. Bush Won a Record Share of Hispanic Vote in November—And That Ought to Scare the Democrats to Death,” Texas Monthly (March 2005),
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http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2005-03-01/russell (accessed in June 2005). 38. Adrian Campo-Flores and Howard Fineman, “A Latino Power Surge,” Newsweek (2005), http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7937184/site/newsweek (accessed in June 2005). 39. The Pew telephone survey was conducted from April 21 through June 9, 2004, among a nationally representative sample of 2,288 Latin@ adults, eighteen years of age or older. These data were weighted by the Pew Hispanic Center to represent the actual distribution of adults throughout the United States and was included in the data set. The margin of sampling error +/–2.83. 40. James A. Davis and Tom W. Smith, General Social Surveys, 1972–2002 Cumulative Codebook (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2002), 614–17.
2
State-Federal Relations Concerning Latin@ Civil Rights in the United States Norma V. Cantú
Early Court Appearances by Latin@s atin@s did not bring federal court cases to the U.S. Supreme Court until the second half of the twentieth century. The earliest case promoting the civil rights of Latin@s urged the Supreme Court to overturn the practice of excluding Latin@s from serving on juries in criminal cases.1 The case concerned a Latino defendant in a criminal case who was tried in a county in which no Latin@ had ever been permitted to serve on a jury in several decades. The highest state court in Texas held that the attorneys for Pete Hernandez had failed to assert a viable legal challenge to the jury process as whites had overwhelmingly been selected to serve on juries because “Mexicans are white people.”2 The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision. Basing the decision on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Hernandez ruling resulted in three prominent and related holdings by the highest federal court:
L
●
●
Latin@s were an identifiable class to be distinguished from Anglos (whites, Caucasians) and from African-American persons (then called Negroes); Latin@s were entitled to the highest level of review, or strict scrutiny, offered by the court in evaluating whether the State’s public actions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution; and
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The Court recognized U.S. society’s proclivity to identify new groups upon which to heap discrimination, and the Court acknowledged its duty to protect new groups who suffered from unconstitutional conduct.3
The Hernandez decision, decided immediately before the landmark school decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas,4 signaled that the NAACP legal strategy would win equal opportunities that would also benefit non-African-American students. The Hernandez case offered an excellent illustration of the conflict between how the federal and state governments identified, counted, and classified Latin@s. The States selected varying definitions of race and eligibility for state services that met local interests. On the other extreme, the federal government sometimes ignored existing classifications of race and ethnicity. For example, the term “Hispanic” was not in common use until the U.S. Census created it in the 1980s to combine data about MexicanAmericans, Chican@s, Mexican@s, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans, and “other Spanish.” The ambiguity of the labels and terms no doubt caused a serious undercount of Latin@s in the United States. Nor did Census respondents fully adopt the term “Hispanic.” Thus, the problem of the Census undercount continues to this day. States relying on full and accurate Census counts were affected by the new definitions of ethnicity.5 Tension between Federal and State Governments in Employment Cases In the 1960s, Congress passed the federal civil rights laws to create a mandate to end discrimination and to bring the formerly excluded into the mainstream of American life. For Latin@s, the barriers of discrimination appeared in the form of bias on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, culture, language, accent, and ethnic appearance. Although forty years have passed since these laws were enacted, national progress has sometimes been tragically slow, and on rare occasions dramatically brilliant. Empowered by the civil rights laws, the federal government established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate claims of employment discrimination in both the public and private sectors. The new agency was given the responsibility to review individual and class action complaints and to ascertain whether the federal government needed to bring lawsuits or to intervene in existing lawsuits to require compliance with Title VII, a piece of civil rights legislation that prohibited discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or national origin.6 The U.S. Congress augmented the impact of the Title VII laws with those aimed
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specifically at the plight of women workers, including the Equal Pay Act7 and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.8 The EEOC has the authority to sue private employers as well as state governments, and to order broad remedial relief, including monetary damages, for workers who have suffered discrimination, as well as to seek that judges issue injunctions, such as to rehire dismissed minority workers, or to promote them, to award back pay and fringe benefits, or to place employers under orders to cease acts of discrimination. Title VII also authorizes the courts to award attorneys’ fees.9 Employers who disagreed with the EEOC obtained rulings by the Supreme Court that curbed the recovery of compensatory damages. In response, Congress passed several amendments that clarified the circumstances—such as instances of intentional discrimination—under which these damage awards were warranted.10 Not surprisingly, litigants seeking to enforce the newly passed Title VII laws in the courts experienced delays as the courts pondered which party had the burden of proving whether the discrimination had occurred. In 1973, the Supreme Court placed the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case of racial or national-origin discrimination on the injured party.11 The plaintiff carries that burden by showing proof (i) that he/she belongs to a racial or ethnic minority; (ii) that he/she applied and was qualified for the job or employment opportunity for which the employer was seeking applicants; (iii) that, despite his/her qualifications, the minority applicant was rejected; and (iv) that after the rejection, the position remained open with the employer continuing to seek applicants.12 According to the information on EEOC’s Web page, the number of national-origin charges filed with the federal government showed a steady increase in the past ten years.13 The data does not report the percentage of these charges brought by Latin@s. However, the EEOC has noticed an increase in the number of charges brought to complain of English-only workplace rules ever since the federal agency began tracking such charges separately.14 The EEOC permits English-only rules or initiatives only when such rules are justified by business necessity or are required by reasons of safety. The EEOC’s interpretation of the illegality of English-only rules stands in contrast to state initiatives that have been presented and approved in several states. In the employment area, a substantial amount of litigation ensued regarding conflicts in interpretation between the federal and state governments regarding who had the power to receive and investigate charges of employment discrimination, and whether the deadlines for filing such employment complaints had been met. The U.S. Supreme Court has frequently encountered difficulties with state classifications dealing with aliens, including efforts to restrict
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employment opportunities based on alienage. See, for example, Ambach v. Norwich15 and Yick Wo v. Hopkins.16 In Cabell v. Chavez-Salido, a case involving a California statute requiring all “peace officers” to be U.S. citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court continued to draw a distinction between States that reserved certain economic benefits exclusively for citizens for economic reasons from those States that excluded noncitizens to further the sovereign functions of the local government. The Court recognized a State’s interest in limiting participation in government to people who fit the State’s definition of community. Sugarman v. Dougall17 upheld California’s statute. Four of the Supreme Court’s Justices dissented, urging the court to reconsider, and concluding in the dissent that the inclusion of deputy probation officers in the category of persons who must be citizens stemmed “solely from state parochialism and hostility towards foreigners who have come to this country lawfully.” One last Supreme Court case regarding employment concerns the relationship between the hiring of minority teachers and the pattern of minority student enrollments in the public schools. The case Hazelwood School District v. U.S.18 rejected the efforts by the U.S. government to insist that the school district in St. Louis County, Missouri, would have to make greater efforts to obtain qualified “Negro”19 faculty members. The Supreme Court noted that the district had hired its first “Negro” teacher in 1969 and had steadily increased its hiring patterns until 5.7 percent of the teachers in the district were “Negro.” The Court of Appeals ruled for the U.S. government, noting that 15 percent of teachers in the relevant labor market were “Negro,” and that only 3.4 percent of the new teachers hired were “Negro.” The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeals, criticizing the school district for its lack of precision in ascertaining the relevant figures from which the district might hire its teachers. It allowed the district to use as a defense the competitive recruitment policies of neighboring districts and to consider whether “Negro” teachers preferred to teach in neighboring districts where the percentages of “Negro” teachers were higher. The high court sent the case back to the trial court for more evidence. The decision drew a stinging dissent from Justice Stevens, who questioned whether such “absolute precision” was “too much to expect.”20 Justice Stevens’s words were prophetic, with few court cases successfully closing the gap between the increasing percentages of minority students and the decreasing percentages of minority teachers.21 Sovereign Immunity of the State Governments The resistance by States to federal intrusion into States’ rights has deep historical roots. The Tenth Amendment reserved to the States all powers not
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27
delegated to the U.S. government by the Constitution. This role of States as sovereigns entitled to immunity from lawsuits is a closely guarded right. The Bill of Rights, consisting of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, was not successfully advanced in the post-Reconstruction era, either because African-Americans were not apprised of their rights or because state actors were unwilling to extend these rights to minorities. The U.S. Supreme Court spoke to the great need to pass the 1871 Civil Rights Act, as follows, in Monroe v. Pape:22 It is abundantly clear that one reason the legislation was passed was to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason of prejudice, passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment might be denied by the state agencies.
Section 1983, enacted in 1871, altered the relationship between federal and state governments by enabling victims of unconstitutional state action to bring suit against the “person” doing wrong. This law removed a substantial barrier to suits against state actors who had interfered with the civil rights of citizens to sue or be sued, to hold property, and to enter into contracts, among other rights. Preemption of Federal Government in Immigration-Related Matters In matters where the U.S. Congress has spoken plainly and comprehensively, federal courts have ruled that the action by Congress has “preempted” the issue so that state and local governments may not act inconsistently with the will of Congress. Areas of preemption include, for example, maritime law and immigration law. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) expanded employment protection to persons who were residing legally in the United States.23 The Department of Justice interpreted those rules to prohibit only intentional acts of discrimination.24 The IRCA does not prohibit the hiring or giving of a preference to a U.S. citizen over another qualified individual who is an alien.25 Tension between Federal and State Governments in Education Cases Latin@s brought both state and federal claims regarding education, employment, and other denial of their rights, urging theories of prejudice,
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differential treatment, and discrimination by differential outcomes. The earliest cases in education served as test cases for the trailblazing litigator, the honorable Thurgood Marshall, who filed briefs against the segregation of children in Mendez v. Westminster,26 several years before arguing in Brown v. School Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Relying on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Latin@ plaintiffs in Mendez (who were Puerto Rican and Mexican-American) challenged patterns of segregation of Latin@ children in schools near Anaheim, California. The legal strategies in the Mendez v. Westminster case departed dramatically from the theories of the Brown case. In Mendez, the Latin@ parents asserted that the district official sought to keep children with darker complexions from attending the same schools as children with lighter skin color. This case was not about the concept of segregation by race. The Mendez parents asserted their children were white, a claim the school district did not dispute. According to the students’ attorneys, the children did not deserve to be treated differently from other white children. Also, in contrast to the State law in Kansas that supported the segregation of African-Americans, the State law in California did not support the use of segregation of white children from other white children. Thus, the Latin@ legal arguments were unique, but the outcomes were the same: the courts rejected the segregation. The federal Civil Rights Acts, passed in 1964 and 1965, prompted several key changes in the relationship between Latin@s and the court system. First, the passage of the bills encouraged the filing of individual court actions on behalf of Latin@ clients by private attorneys across the country. Secondly, the activities of the NAACP to enforce the new federal laws inspired legal visionaries such as Pete Tijerina and Mario Obledo to establish the national nonprofit Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in 1967, with a generous grant from the Ford Foundation.27 Thirdly, newly elected Latin@ state legislators began to file state bills to overturn discriminatory state laws and to pass state civil rights legislation. In Keyes v. School District No. 1 (Denver), the high court acknowledged that states and local school districts outside the southern states had engaged in the illegal acts of segregating schoolchildren by race.28 By ruling that Latin@s in the Denver, Colorado, schools had been illegally segregated, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the reach of the Brown case to states outside the traditional South. In Rodriguez v. San Antonio School District, lawyers for Latin@ students, attempting to cover low-income students with the same Equal Protection rights already available to racial minorities, argued that State officials should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of poverty. The U.S.
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Supreme Court ruled that poverty was not a suspect class;29 therefore, low-income students in predominantly Latin@ school districts could not successfully challenge vast disparities in funding for public schools.30 The federal court declined to treat education as a fundamental right that merited special protection under the U.S. Constitution, noting that education was not mentioned in the original Constitution. In rejecting the students’ federal claims, the Court suggested that the students should bring cases in the State court. Thereafter, students who challenged school finance disparities appeared in state courts until more than half of the states were embroiled in legal battles over school funding gaps. In a split 5–4 ruling, the Supreme Court granted a federal legal victory to undocumented children in 1982 by overturning a Texas law that allowed local districts to charge out-of-state tuition to public school students whose parents were not legal U.S. residents. The ruling in Plyler v. Doe chastised the State for asserting an economic interest in keeping students out of school, believing the plaintiffs’ experts who testified that the costs of keeping the students uneducated would be much greater than the small savings realized from denying the students an education.31 Congress passed the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974, 20 U.S.C., section 1703(f) to ensure that state and local districts would take appropriate action to remove barriers against the education of nonEnglish-proficient students.32 That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered an opinion regarding Title VI33 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Lau v. Nichols.34 In ruling that the equal treatment of unequal children violated Title VI, the Court did not reach the Equal Protection Clause argument advanced in the case. The holding in the Lau case resonated in the case Guardians Association35 in 1983, in which the Supreme Court wrote that Title VI forbids the use of federal funds “not only in programs that intentionally discriminate on racial grounds but also in those endeavours that have a disparate impact on racial minorities.” The Supreme Court has held that “Title VI itself directly reached only instances of intentional discrimination . . . [but that] actions having an unjustifiable disparate impact on minorities could be addressed through agency regulations designed to implement the purposes of Title VI” in Alexander v. Choate.36 More recently, in Alexander v. Sandoval, though,37 the Court determined that private plaintiffs could urge only intentional discrimination cases under Title VI. In this case, Latin@s challenged the operation of Alabama’s driver’s license process as discriminating against Latin@s because the testing was conducted solely in English, having a disparate impact on ethnic minorities. The Court explained its view that only the federal government could challenge disparate impact claims under
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Title VI as it believed that Congress never intended private individuals to bring these claims. The Court rejected the view of the U.S. Attorney General that the private right to bring a disparate impact claim could be implied by the statute, even though such private suits had been filed for over two decades. This ruling serves as a caution to policymakers and law enforcers alike that the federal courts may attempt to avoid giving full force and effect to the laws if the laws are not expressly written or are not supported by ample record and evidence to bolster the directives of Congress. With the federal government as the sole entity that may bring disparate impact claims, the opportunities for legal issues concerning Latin@s to be heard are greatly diminished. The Department of Justice brings hundreds of cases to enforcement per year out of tens of thousands of administrative complaints that are filed with federal agencies annually. While it has been hailed as a new civil rights law, the No Child Left Behind Act of 200138 did not expressly create any rights that could be filed in court. Parents who attempted to sue for better instruction by using the new federal education law were quickly and quietly dismissed from court. School districts and state governments are now attempting in court to determine whether the law adds or detracts from the hard work of educating children. In 1994 I addressed the Hacemos 5th Annual Conference in Lubbock, Texas, and urged the Latin@ community in attendance to reject “what some have called the conspiracy of low expectations.” Later, in the same speech, I applauded the Goals 2000 education bill for “sweeping away the tyranny of low expectations.” How could I have known that the phrase would change into “bigotry of soft expectations” and become the rallying cry for the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The Goals 2000 law, signed by President Clinton on March 31, 1994, already contained much of the substance of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, but the emphasis on the annual testing of students, the sanctions and accountability of transfers of students, and the loss of school funds based on low test scores has done little to end the “tyranny of low expectations.” On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a highly divided legal opinion in which five of the justices agreed in the result that two public school districts had illegally considered race in student assignments. The cases issued jointly were Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.39 Each of these two cases is helpful for understanding the level of complexity that arises when both the federal government and the state governments step in to review the actions of local governments. The Seattle case concerned a voluntary school desegregation plan that included a “tiebreaker” that considered the race of the student applicants
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for popular, overenrolled schools. The parents in the Seattle case alleged that Seattle’s use of race among other factors for determining student assignments violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,40 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,41 and the State of Washington civil rights law.42 In following the State claims in the Seattle case in which the parents challenged the school district’s use of race as a tiebreaker in situations where equally situated students had asked for the same placement in the same school, the Court considered the facts and concluded that the Washington State Civil Rights Act barred only preferential treatment programs “where race or gender is used by government to select a less qualified applicant over a more qualified applicant.”43 The federal district court considered the same evidence as applied to the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI. First, the district court asked whether the district had a compelling interest in using race at all. Secondly, the court inquired whether the use of race was appropriate and sufficiently narrowly tailored to avoid discrimination against third parties. The first inquiry required a deep understanding of the district’s motives in agreeing to consider race in the selection of students for oversubscribed schools. The district explained to the court that the population from which the district drew its students was 70 percent white, and that the public schools were only 40 percent white. Further, most of the minority students lived south of downtown, and the more popular schools were located north of downtown. The district had never been ordered by a court to desegregate its school, but had historically implemented voluntary measures to integrate. These measures included voluntary majority-to-minority programs in which students volunteered to attend schools in which their race was underrepresented in the student body. The district had also attempted to adopt a desegregation plan, but it was blocked by a State law that had been adopted due to the Washington voters’ initiative against desegregation. Later, the initiative was found to be unconstitutional. In the interim, the Seattle School Board had adopted a different student assignment plan, one that gave parents three top choices of schools in which to enrol their students. All parents were guaranteed that the students would be enrolled in one of the three schools, but that no parent would be guaranteed the top choice. The legal challenge in Seattle by a parent who did not receive their top choice of schools serves to remind Americans that our history of basing decisions on race is shameful and embarrassing. The justifications for any governmental decision that uses race should be bolstered by clear evidence and abundant documentation to support the claimed need. Yet, Justice Kennedy’s separate decision in the Seattle case correctly noted that
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in our zeal to insist on proof of the need to consider race, we should not foreswear the use of race in situations where it is justified. By stating that four of the Justices were too “dismissive of government’s legitimate interest in ensuring that all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race,” Justice Kennedy brought some common sense back into the debate between the federal and state lawmakers. We have not arrived at the point where all matters of race no longer matter. Local and state policymakers will continue to need a variety of raceconscious measures to address the problems of race, both long-standing and newly created. It will take hard work for the Seattle schools to walk that tightrope and to deliver to Justice Kennedy the careful, thoughtful policies that the U.S. Constitution demands. It would be consistent with the optimism of the Seattle School Board for them to continue to make that attempt, though. They are most aware that this country strives to rid itself of its history of creating new groups that can suffer discrimination, while continuing to hold back groups that have borne that burden for too long. Conclusion The legal system in the United States attempts to harmonize inconsistent federal and state laws by expecting the courts to try in good faith to give force and effect to both laws. To the extent that the federal law does not reach the substance of a state law, the Tenth Amendment reserves the sovereign power of the State to settle the legal question. To the extent that the federal law substantially reaches the question, the federal law trumps the State’s authority. This hybridized form of civil rights legislation and enforcement can be easily justified and defended if certain assumptions were to prove true: 1. The goal of protecting the civil rights of Latin@s is too important to leave to either the federal and state laws alone; 2. The duplication in laws is necessary to respect federalism and states’ rights; 3. The federal and state laws amplify the message of the importance of respect for Latin@s’ human rights; and 4. The federal and state laws serve as checks and balances to ensure a safety net for Latin@s and others. In all of the areas discussed above, the combined strength of federal and state civil rights laws and enforcement have been insufficient to protect fully the human rights of Latin@s. For example, despite the enormous activity in both federal and state legal arenas, the economic disparities for
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the Latin@ workforce are problematic. The unadjusted earnings data for Latin@s reflect earnings that are 65 percent of the earnings of white men and 79 percent of the earnings of white women.44 Roughly one-third to one-half of the disparities could be traced to differences in fluency in the English language.45 Nonetheless, the most visible successes in raising compliance with civil rights laws have occurred when federal and state agencies cooperate, rather than engage in conflict. In one example, one of the school superintendents in Georgia determined he would avoid a confrontational posture with the U.S. government, and approached the federally funded Desegregation Assistance Center for help in ending the use of IQ tests as screening devices for entry in gifted and talented programs in his district. With the help of the Center and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the superintendent was able to identify valid entry criteria that did not have the effect of screening out minority students. He later succeeded in encouraging the entire state to drop its overreliance on IQ tests. Before his state-wide efforts, whites were five times as likely to be recognized as gifted than were African-Americans. The superintendent won a national award for his courage in defying the tradition of maintaining all-Anglo gifted and talented classes.46 The last thirty-five years have been most fruitful and exciting for understanding the relationship between federal and state laws as they define Latin@ civil rights. Unlike some countries in which the human rights of its minority citizens are fixed in legislative enactments that the courts may not interpret, the U.S. legal system has some small, crucial bits of flexibility. One may speculate that a stronger, centralized federal government might have wrested more control from the States, and might have passed more civil rights laws, but I do not agree that the model of a more powerful central government would have caused more economic and social gains for Latin@s than the combined efforts of States and the federal government. The relationships between the federal laws and state laws have given me more reason to have optimism than would a scenario in which the federal government acted alone. The two forms of government working to bring about the most balanced result have caused frustration at times, but the gains have been nonviolent, and in many instances, directly related to the hard work of law enforcers. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King should inspire our efforts toward finding the right level of collaboration between federal and state governments. In his own words, Dr. King preached: Through our scientific genius we have made of this world a neighborhood. Now . . . we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together
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as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. We must come to see that no individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We must all live together. We must all be concerned about each other.”47
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
Hernandez v. State of Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954). Hernandez v. State of Texas, 160 Tex. Crim. App. 72 (1952). Hernandez v. State of Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954). 347 U.S. 483 (1954). In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget, the federal bureau charged with setting out definitions of racial and ethnic categories for the U.S. Census, decided that respondents to the Census could identify themselves as belonging to more than one racial group, and thereby created “multiracial” categories. See 62 Fed. Reg. 58781 (October 30, 1997). Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended in 1991, 42 U.S.C. Section 20003-2000h. I served as co-counsel in employment discrimination cases from 1980 to 1992, during which time the national female-male earnings ratio for Latinas (Hispanic females) advanced from 49 percent to 61 percent. Equal Pay Act of 1963, 29 U.S.C. Section 206(d) (1). Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000(k). 42 U.S.C. Section 2000-5(k). Civil Rights Act of 1991 (adding a new Section 1981a, which allows for damage claims for intentional discrimination by private defendants). McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). Ibid. See www.EEOC.gov, last visited August 6, 2007. The number of complaints against employers who misused English—only policies grew from 77 charges in the fiscal year 1996 to 365 charges in the fiscal year 2000. See www.EEOC.gov/press/9-19-00.html (retrieved on January 6, 2010). Cases regarding restrictions based on alienage have “not formed an unwavering line over the years.” Ambach, 82. 118 U.S. 356 (1886). 413 U.S. 634, 642 (1973). 433 U.S. 299 (1977). The original language as it was argued and decided in 1977 is used in this chapter. For this reason “Negro” is used to refer to African-Americans. Ibid. I spoke about the lack of racially and ethnically diverse teachers to several nonprofit groups. At a meeting with the Quality Education for Minorities Network, I reported that one-third of the nation’s children belonged to a minority group, but only 12 percent of U.S. teachers were from minority backgrounds. See Remarks by author, Washington, D.C. (1996).
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22. 365 U.S.167, 180 (1961). 23. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, 8 U.S.C.A. Section 1324b (a), creating a separate set of rules from the EEOC’s Title VII laws prohibiting national-origin discrimination. 24. 28 C.F.R. Section 44.200(a). 25. 8 U.S.C. Section 1324b (a) (4). 26. Mendez v. Westminster School District. 27. Rudolfo De la Garza, ed., The Mexican American Experience: A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 281–83; citing MALDEF annual reports. 28. Keyes v. School District No. 1 (Denver), 413 U.S. 189 (1973). 29. In American jurisprudence a classification of suspect meets a series of criteria suggesting the classified group is probably the subject of discrimination. 30. Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District, 411 U.S. 1 (1973). 31. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982). 32. 20 U.S.C. Section 1703(f). 33. The regulations passed by the agency then known as Health, Education and Welfare, 45 C.F.R. Section 80.3(b)(1), required in subsection (iv) that recipients of federal funding may not “restrict an individual in any way in the employment of any advantage or privilege enjoyed by others receiving any service, financial aid, or other benefit of the program.” When the HEW agency split to produce the U.S. Department of Education, the Title VI regulation was continued by the agency, and published at 34 C.F.R. Part 100. The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education enforces Title VI as it applies to recipients who offer educational programs and who receive federal funding. 42 U.S.C. Sections 2000d et seq. 34. 414 U.S. 563 (1974). Students of Chinese ancestry who did not speak English received their instruction in English. The Court did not interfere in the school’s options, which might include, among other options, to either choose to teach English to students of Chinese ancestry or to give instructions in their mother tongue. Instead, the Supreme Court held: “ . . . there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.” 35. Guardians Assn. v. Civil Service Commission, 463 U.S. 582 (1983). 36. 439 U.S. 287, 295 (1985) (discussing Guardians) 37. Alexander v. Sandoval, 427 U.S.1 (2001). 38. 20 U.S.C. Section 6301 (2001). 39. 551 U.S. 701 (2007) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, Nos. 05-908 and 05-915. 40. “No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 1. 41. “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race . . . be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000d.
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42. “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment, to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Wash. Rev. Code Section 49.60.400(1) (2006). 43. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. 1, 149 Wash. 2d 660, 689–690, 663, 72 P.3d 151, 1666, 153 (2003)(en banc)(PICS V). 44. Arthur Smith, Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials, 5th ed. (New York: Lexis Nexis Matthew Bender, 2000), 43 (citing Carlson and Swartz, “The Earnings of Women and Ethnic Minorities, 1959–79,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 41 (1988): 530–46, Tables 3, 4). 45. Ibid. 46. Remarks by me at the 2nd Annual Civil Rights Summit, Kansas City, MO (1995). 47. Commencement address at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (1961).
3
Latin@s in the U.S. Military Jorge Mariscal
rom the time the first tejanos, nuevomexicanos, and californios joined the ranks of the U.S. military out of cultural displacement and economic despair in the second half of the nineteenth century, Latin@s have been an essential part of the U.S. armed forces. When Puerto Ricans became eligible for the draft during World War I, another source of recruits was established that would produce 1,250 fallen boricuas and four Puerto Rican Congressional Medal of Honor winners in U.S. wars throughout the twentieth century. During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a guatemalteco, a mexicano, and a colombiano, all noncitizens, were among the first to lose their life. Sustained by a constant flow of new immigrants and relatively limited career opportunities for the native-born working class of color, Latin@ military service has been a primary vehicle for assimilation, access to full rights of citizenship, and the construction of “American” identities premised on traditional patriotism. Not unlike the ways in which inexpensive Latin@ labor fueled (and continues to fuel) the growth of the national economy, Latin@ and other working-class bodies have provided the raw material for U.S. military conflicts for over a century and a half. Among all ethnic groups in the United States, Latin@s have won forty-one Congressional Medals of Honor, more than any other group.
F
Historical Background Narratives about “Hispanic-Americans,” deploying a broad definition of “Hispanic” that includes Spaniards and other Spanish-speaking groups, trace a line of Latin@s in uniform from the American Revolutionary War
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through the Civil War (in both the Union and Confederate armies) and into the present. From this perspective, a “proud tradition” of military service includes Civil War admiral David Farragut (1801–70), the son of a Spaniard, who led Union forces in the 1862 battle of New Orleans and Hispanic members of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the war against Spain in 1898. Less expansive stories about the role of Spanish-speaking minorities in times of war begin with World War I in which Latinos from diverse national backgrounds served in segregated units in Europe. The cultural power of these narratives cannot be underestimated insofar as they perpetuate the idea of military service as a necessary pathway to full acceptance by the dominant society in the United States. On the one hand, they reproduce the tropes of courage and service that indeed are values deserving of recognition and inclusion in the national memory. On the other hand, the emphasis on “heroes” and “honor” obfuscates the oftentimes questionable motives for which numerous U.S. wars have been waged from the interventions of 1898 to the Korean and Vietnam conflicts to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There is no doubt that the Latino and Latina individuals who fought in all of these wars and their families made tremendous sacrifices, but too often the historical and political realities that informed those wars had less to do with the defense of the nation and more to do with the very ideologies—colonialism, racism, and Manifest Destiny—that had led to oppression in Latin@ barrios domestically and Latin American countries abroad. The one war about which there is little debate, however, is World War II, and indeed it was the participation of Latinos and Latinas in that war that altered significantly their role, both overseas and on the home front. Even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, National Guard units from New Mexico made up almost exclusively of hispanos were stationed in the Philippines. These men would later participate in the Battle of Bataan, many of them suffering in the Bataan Death March and, for extended periods, as prisoners of war. In every other campaign in Europe and the Pacific, Latin@s were present. Members of the famed 65th Army Infantry Regiment, the “Borinqueneers,” which is made up almost exclusively of Puerto Ricans, won numerous medals both in World War II and the Korean War. Less well-known is the participation of the Mexican military in the war in the Pacific, especially the 201st Mexican Fighter Squadron that provided air support for U.S. forces during the battle for the Philippines. Many Latina women served as members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and other military branches as nurses for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, or the Red Cross, or in the defense industries, giving rise to the popular image of “Rosita the Riveter.” As the scholar Naomi Quiñonez has
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written: “The wartime labor shortages created a window of opportunity for ethnic populations who had been historically restricted from any kind of economic mobility.”1 Latin@s as a Racialized Group Upon their return to the United States, many Latin@ veterans encountered the same discrimination they had left behind. The irony of the so-called Zoot Suit riots of 1943, in which servicemen assaulted young Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and other urban centers, was not lost on Mexican-American communities whose sons were fighting in the war. It would not be the last time that Latin@s, as a racialized minority, experienced the paradox of fighting abroad for democracy while being denied equal rights at home. The decisive case of Felix Longoria, a soldier killed in the Philippines and denied access to facilities at the cemetery in Three Rivers, Texas, until Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and Dr. Hector P. García intervened on the family’s behalf, gave visibility to the plight of the Latino veteran who had completed his patriotic duty only to be denied the most fundamental rights. Longoria was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. Advocacy groups such as the American GI Forum were born of these demands by Latin@ veterans for equal rights as citizens of the United States. Latin@ soldiers were present again in the Korean War and the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. The decade-long conflict in Vietnam coincided with the emergence of the Chicano movement, a mass mobilization with diverse political agendas ranging from reform to revolutionary change. During the same period, the Puerto Rican Young Lords adopted anti-imperialist and internationalist political programs. Even as thousands of young Latinos served in the U.S. military, their sisters and brothers at home protested against the war as part of the radical transformation of Latino and Latina identities. The National Chicano Moratorium Committee founded by the Los Angeles Brown Berets, the draft resister Rosalío Muñoz, and others staged massive antiwar demonstrations that culminated in the rally of August 29, 1970. The killing of three people by law enforcement officers at that rally revived the bitter paradox of Latin@s dying in the streets at home while many of the community’s young men fought for “democracy” in Vietnam. For a brief moment in the late 1960s, one sector of the Latin@ community had questioned the traditional relationship between Latin@ youth and the armed forces. If basic civil rights were denied to them at home, asked militant Chican@s and Puerto Ricans, why should they fight in a
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war against Third World peoples abroad? “La batalla está aquí” became the slogan adopted by this briefly radicalized sector of the Latin@ population. In the years following the war in Southeast Asia and the end of obligatory military service in 1973, social conditions in Latin@ communities once again conspired to elevate the armed forces as one of the primary career paths for working-class youth. The conservative retrenchment of the Reagan era was followed by a concerted campaign by the Pentagon during the Clinton administration to target Latin@ youth with Spanishlanguage advertising and ethnic-based outreach. Given the fact that Latin@s represented the fastest growing military age population and faced limited economic and educational opportunities, multimillion dollar recruiting campaigns for the “volunteer Army” were intensified. The promise of job training, high school equivalency (GED) diplomas, money for college, and a sense of direction in life led many Latin@s to enlist despite the fact that U.S. foreign policy produced a steady string of armed conflicts in Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Since at least the U.S. war in Vietnam and the tremendous pressures created by the military draft, Latin@ communities have sensed that their young people were fighting and dying in disproportionate numbers. While it is true that in the early years of that war Chican@s and Puerto Ricans served in numbers higher than their percentages of the total U.S. population, it is also true that the disparity subsided toward the end of the war. Today it is difficult to know with any certainty how many Latin@s served in Southeast Asia, but given traditional military practices of testing and job placement we can say that the number of Latin@s in combat units was consistently high. Recruitment of Latin@s for Military Service A tradition of military service often informs family histories across multiple generations. Portraits of young men and women in uniform grace living rooms in countless Latin@ homes, and the rhetoric of “duty to country” and patriotism is a powerful influence. For young men, to break the continuity of service is an inexcusable act in many families, given the association of manhood with military experience and ancient cultural traditions based on warrior identities. Recruiters have become adept at exploiting such traditions, and Louis Caldera, the secretary of the U.S. Army under President Bill Clinton, once remarked that Latinos are “predisposed to military service.” For young women from traditional patriarchal homes, the military is often seen as a road to empowerment and agency. For all young people, the desire “to make a difference” is a strong motivation that often leads to military service.
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Since at least the 1990s, the Pentagon has employed Hispanic ad agencies to tailor its recruiting message to Latin@ communities. Large Hispanic advocacy groups such as the National Council for La Raza (NCLR) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) have assisted the military in fashioning recruitment campaigns that exploit certain perceived ethnic stereotypes. In 1997 LULAC, through its National Educational Service Centers, established a partnership with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command to expose Latin@ youth to military careers. A 1999 study completed for the Department of Defense on how best to target Hispanics for recruitment enjoyed the participation of many prominent Latin@s who reemphasized cultural traditions that might make the recruitment message more effective. At the Marine Corps website, for example, the potential recruit is told: “At the core of every Marine is the warrior spirit, a person imbued with the special kind of personal character that has defined greatness and success for centuries. And in this organization, you will be regarded as family.” The powerful trope of “family” functions here as an essential part of the sales pitch, and the invocation of the “warrior spirit” reproduces the narrowest forms of traditional Latin American masculinity. Within this complex ideological field there is no doubt that such messages resonate with Latin@ youth. The Marine Corps slogan “Born to fight and die” is not very different from the Mexican “Grito, ‘Mi raza sabe morir dondequiera’” (“Yell, ‘My people know how to die anywhere’”). In working class barrios, role models are often associated with returning veterans or local law enforcement. Combined with limited educational and career opportunities, this means that many young Latin@s will be channeled toward careers as police officers, border patrol agents, prison guards, and in the military. A 2009 study by the Research and Development Corporation (RAND) lamented the fact that elevated high school dropout rates for Hispanics, low scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, and a high percentage of overweight Latin@ youth inhibit the ability of recruiters to increase the number of Latin@s in uniform. Weight and educational attainment standards will most likely be lowered given that the Obama administration remains committed to increasing the overall size of both the army and the Marine Corps. According to the Army Times, the study’s conclusions “suggest that it would be worthwhile to direct more recruiting resources to black and Hispanic markets.”2 Local community leaders in Latin@ urban centers across the country often push youth toward a military career as an alternative to gang and drug culture. Ironically, many Hispanic charter schools created in the 1990s, including so-called Raza schools that espouse chicanismo and its
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critique of assimilation, welcome the presence of Junior ROTC units and military recruiters. It is not surprising, therefore, that large numbers of Latin@ high school students have had more exposure to military recruiters than to college recruiters. The heightened militarization of educational spaces inhabited by Latin@ youth has led to surveys such as the one conducted in December 2007 by the Department of Defense in which 12.6 percent of eighteen to twenty-four-year-old Latin@ respondents stated they were probably or definitely going to join the military, compared with 10.1 percent of black respondents and 6.6 percent of white respondents.3 For decades, the State educational and media apparatus has manipulated the inherent contradiction for Latin@ parents—between their desire to assimilate and the need to see their children safe and out of harm’s way. Although parents might fear the dangers inherent in military service, the pressure to display acritical forms of patriotism is often overwhelming and the need to “fit into” one’s surroundings drives many to accept the military as a viable option for their children. This is especially the case for first-generation immigrants. Immigrants and Military Service After an unusually large number of legal immigrants (most of them from Latin America) were admitted into the United States during the decade of the 1990s, the potential for increasing the ranks of the military with immigrants and their children was not lost on the Pentagon. The phenomenon of “green card soldiers” slowly emerged as a major issue, especially after the declaration of the so-called Global War on Terror, and in 2002 President George W. Bush reduced the length of time that permanent residents in the military had to wait before applying for citizenship. Another pool of potential recruits was to be found among the many undocumented youth who had lived most of their life and even completed high school in the United States. Although many of them lacked resident status, they attracted the attention of the Pentagon in part because of rising demands on military force levels caused by the long occupation of Iraq that began in 2003. Legislation such as the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act), designed to “legalize” undocumented youth so that they could attend college, suddenly included military service options. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 10, 2006, Under Secretary of Defense David Chu made the connection between immigration status and military service: “According to an April 2006 study from the National Immigration Law Center, there are an
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estimated 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented alien young adults who entered the US at an early age and graduate from high school each year, many of whom are bright, energetic and potentially interested in military service . . . Provisions of S. 2611, such as the DREAM Act, would provide these young people the opportunity of serving the United States in uniform.”4 Ironically, undocumented family members of those in the military gained little from their relative’s service. Among the most troubling cases was that of Army Private Armando Soriano, aged twenty, who died in Iraq in 2004. In the summer of 2007, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids swept across the country, his Mexican-born father Enrique was arrested in Houston and threatened with deportation. In a similar case, the undocumented Dominican wife of Army Specialist Alex Jimenez, who went missing in action in Iraq in 2007, was about to be deported until pressure from media reports forced the government to grant her a green card. Structured Glass Ceilings for Latin@s in the U.S. Military The predicament for many Latin@ families is that structural glass ceilings continue to make economic mobility difficult. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, ethnic Mexicans in the United States fell below every other Latin@ group on almost every social and economic indicator, according to the 2002 “Interim Report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.” Firstgeneration Mexican immigrants, who made up 54 percent of all legal Latin American immigrants in 2003, had significantly reduced life chances compared to their U.S.-born Mexican-American counterparts. High school dropout rates of around 30 percent for U.S.-born Mexican-Americans were bad enough, but the rate doubled to 61 percent for first-generation immigrant children. This was not because recent arrivals did not value education, as conservative ideologues often claim, but because the public school system simply was not equipped to deal with linguistic and cultural difference. College attendance rates for Latin@s also lagged behind those for other groups. Conditions for Puerto Ricans in the United States were equally dire and in Puerto Rico itself, a source of thousands of draftees and recruits for the U.S. military over the decades, they were especially difficult. In 2005 the poverty rate on the island was over 40 percent. Although Latin@s have a high rate of participation in the labor force, in 2007 over 21 percent of all Latin@s were living in poverty (compared to 8.2 percent for whites). The Economic Policy Institute noted that according to a variety of measurements the United States was in “the longest continuous stretch of job decline since 1944–46” during the eight years of the
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Bush administration. What was clear from the data was that many Latin@s were working extremely hard but were trapped in minimum-wage jobs. Many held multiple jobs at low wages. In 2002, 61 percent of all workers in agricultural production were Latin@s; the vast majority of them were of Mexican descent. While nearly 11 percent of non-Hispanic whites earned more than $75,000 a year, only 2 percent of all Latin@s earned as much. The so-called economic recovery that took place in early 2004 in the midst of the housing bubble was limited to the financial sectors and did little to ameliorate conditions for working-class families whose children became the recruits for what was in essence a “working poor military draft.” The bursting of the housing bubble led to the deep recession that began in 2008 and to an increasingly contracted job market (the February 2009 Hispanic unemployment rate soared to 10.9 percent compared to 6.3 percent the previous February). These and other factors will continue to drive many working-class Latin@s into the military for economic reasons. Once situated within the structure of the armed forces, Latin@s become part of what is essentially a secondary class system. In 2007, Latin@s made up only 4.7 percent of the commissioned officer corps. Over 75 percent of the officer corps (in all branches of the service) was white. According to official Pentagon records, the majority of Latin@s are bunched together in the private and corporal ranks (or lowest ranks) and therefore are among the most likely to receive hazardous duty assignments. According to the Office of Army Demographics in 2003, Latin@s made up only 11 percent of the enlisted force but represented high concentrations in the combat arms and combat support occupations. (Although women do not serve in the “infantry,” they can be found on gun crews and in other forms of hazardous duty.) It was a disturbing but not surprising fact, then, that in the early weeks of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Latin@s made up almost 20 percent of those killed in action. These statistics are less the result of a conscious conspiracy (a claim made by some Latin@ activists since at least the U.S. war in Vietnam) than they are the product of inferior educational opportunities in civilian society and the resultant placement of Latin@ recruits in low-tech military occupations. Like class divisions in the U.S. economy, disparities in rank and occupation in the military are structured along racialized lines. According to a 1997 Pentagon survey of over 40,000 active duty members, 38 percent of Latin@s interviewed felt that the military did not pay sufficient attention to issues of racial harassment and discrimination.5 Although military academies continue to employ affirmative action policies in an effort to diversify the officer corps, race, class, gender, language proficiency, and sexual preference continue to be sites of unequal treatment for many Latin@s in the enlisted ranks. In 2006, for example, military investigators
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in Kuwait forced members of the New Mexico National Guard to disrobe for a “tattoo search,” because it had been reported that some guardsmen had “gang tattoos.” The majority of troops subjected to the body search were Mexican-American, and charges of racial targeting were soon levelled by the unit’s commanding general Kenny Montoya who wrote to the army’s chief of staff: “Let me know how I can help our Army to end their discriminatory practices, both now and in the future.”6 Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) The combination of reduced life chances for a majority of Latin@s, demographic changes that make Latin@s the largest “minority market” of military age youth, and lingering ideologies of masculinity will continue to push Latin@ youth into the armed forces. Facilitating the process is the increasing influence of militarism in the public school system, a process that gained momentum in the 1990s. In the wake of the Los Angeles riots of 1992, the then general Colin Powell argued that as a preventive measure of social engineering the number of JROTC units should be dramatically increased. Within a five-year period the number of JROTC units had more than doubled from 1,600 in 1992 to 3,500 in 1997. At any high school with a large Latin@ population one finds JROTC units, Army-sponsored computer games, and an overabundance of recruiters, often more numerous than career counselors. Although the Pentagon periodically claims that JROTC is not being used for recruiting purposes, studies by promilitary think tanks state: “Junior ROTC is a strategic initiative that allows us to present the idea of the military lifestyle to high school students. By mission JROTC attempts to create better citizens, but also emphasizes military values, and presents the idea of the military lifestyle.”7 According to Department of Defense statistics, about 40 percent of high school students who have spent more than two years in JROTC enlist in the military.8 During the Clinton administration, Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera increased the army’s Spanish-language yearly budget from $5 million to $10 million. Elaborate websites in Spanish such as elNavy. com and hip-hop campaigns such as the Hispanic H-2 Tour—whose goal according to its creator Latino Sports Marketing of San Diego, California, is to “build confidence, trust, and preference of the Army within the Hispanic community”—aimed the recruiter’s message at Latin@ youth. The Marine Corps, the service branch of choice for young Latino men and women, waged especially effective campaigns. By 2006, the Marine JROTC program (MCJROTC) had established over 250 units in high schools across the country, and the “Young Marines” initiative offered “character
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building” for boys and girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. On some school grounds, air rifle ranges were installed for JROTC weapons training. In 2007, the Army launched its “Leaders Among Us” (LAU) program to specifically target Latin@ youth. With events taking place at select universities in key Hispanic recruiting markets (Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Miami), the program pitched military service through video games, music, and motivational speakers. At one LAU event at California State University, Fullerton, student groups protested the targeting of Latin@s and attempted to stop the activities. In 2002, a program called the Broad Superintendents Academy began offering a ten-month management program to train former military officers as top-ranking administrators in public school systems, especially in urban areas. Half of the Academy’s 2007 graduating class was made up of former senior military officers. Many of these school officials would become de facto recruiters in inner-city school systems. Women and Military Service As the role of women in the military expanded during the 1990s, more Latina women joined the ranks of not only the active duty services, but also, of JROTC units in high schools across the country. For working-class women and women of color, the military was viewed as a site that offered them a feeling of “empowerment” that was lacking in their private lives and domestic situations. The reality of military life, however, was that a large majority of all women on active duty and in the service academies such as West Point experienced some form of sexual harassment ranging from inappropriate remarks to rape. According to a 1995 Department of Defense survey of active duty women, 78 percent experienced “military sexual trauma.”9 In 2008 it was reported that the number of reported cases of sexual assault had increased by 9 percent over the previous year. Given that thousands of other cases go unreported, the Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman (California) told the Washington Post: “Military women are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.”10 In the first six years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, 104 women serving in the U.S. military lost their lives. Approximately seventeen of those women were Latinas, which means that the death rate of Latina women was higher than that of Latinos in the military (approximately 13 percent in 2009). Among the first women soldiers lost was the Mexican citizen Ana Laura Esparza Gutiérrez. A green card soldier who had come to the United States with her family from Monterrey, Mexico, when she was seven, Esparza joined the army in 2002 so she could receive money to attend the
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University of Houston. Her dream was to become a psychologist and buy her parents a bigger home. According to her father, the military officers sent to notify the family of their daughter’s death did not speak Spanish. Ana Laura’s parents do not speak English. An improvised explosive device had destroyed her vehicle on October 1. She was twenty-one years old. In 2007 Army Captain Maria Ortiz, who was born in New Jersey but raised in Puerto Rico, died during a mortar attack in Baghdad. The forty-year-old Ortiz was the first nurse to die in combat since the U.S. war in Vietnam. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, a small number of Latinas held high profile positions throughout the military. In 2006, for example, the Marine Corps officer Angela (Angie) Salinas became the first Latina to achieve the rank of brigadier general. A native of Alice, Texas, Salinas enlisted in 1974 and soon after was selected for a special officer–training program. Many of the best-known successes are “Horatio Alger” stories like those of Salinas and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sánchez who commanded coalition forces during the first year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Contradictions and Moral Dilemmas Rick Sánchez, as he was known while he was growing up, spent his childhood two miles from the Mexican border in Rio Grande City in Starr County, Texas, one of the poorest counties in the nation. The son of a singleparent family, his uneducated mother once made him spend the day picking cotton as she had done so that he would learn the value of hard work. In a 2003 interview with Hispanic magazine, Sánchez asserted: “When I became a soldier the ethics and the value system of the military profession fit almost perfectly with my own heritage. It made it very easy for me to adapt to the military value system.”11 Several months later, revelations about Sánchez’s role in the abuse and torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq raised serious doubts about Sánchez’s understanding of the values of his “heritage.” More importantly, they forced a rethinking of the costs of military culture in which morally questionable orders from superiors must be followed at any cost. Although he had been scheduled for promotion, Sánchez’s name continued to surface during the investigation of misconduct by U.S. troops in Iraq. He quietly retired from the Army in 2006. One of the more interesting developments early in the U.S. occupation of Iraq was the appearance of Latin@ war resisters and conscientious objectors within the U.S. military. Soldiers such as Camilo Mejía, Agustín Aguayo, and Aiden Delgado (of Nicaraguan, Mexican, and Cuban ancestry respectively) served in Iraq but subsequently spoke out against the war. Because he refused to redeploy to Iraq, Mejía spent nine months in prison and later wrote: “On those occasions when I destroyed human life in failing
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to refuse my orders, I also failed myself, my soldiers, the Iraqi people, and humanity. I should have resisted my orders, and I should have fought for the dignity and preservation of life.”12 In the civilian sector, the movement against militarism generated a robust counterrecruitment campaign across the country in which Latin@ activists challenged the presence of military recruiters in public schools. Such actions were particularly strong in Puerto Rico where the battle over Vieques and the status of the island and its population gave rise to organizations such as the Universitarios por la Desmilitarización, the Coalición Ciudadana contra el Militarismo, and Madres contra la Guerra. In San Diego, California, young Latin@s joined with African-American high school students to form the “Education Not Arms” coalition to demand the removal of firing ranges from their schools and the involuntary placement of Latin@ students in JROTC courses. As the militarization of U.S. culture progressed in ways invisible to the general public, the Pentagon and Department of State under President George W. Bush pursued a program of outsourcing many traditional military occupations in theaters of war. In Iraq especially, the role of private contractors increased notably during the long occupation. By 2006, private companies such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and Halliburton employed over 150,000 combat and support personnel, many of whom were recruited in Mexico and Latin America. In the summer of 2005, with thousands of Mexican-Americans (as well as hundreds of non-U.S. citizen Mexican nationals) fighting and dying in Iraq, the so-called Minutemen hunted Mexican workers along the border and harassed them in locations as diverse as southern California and eastern Tennessee. Hiding behind the issue of illegal immigration and tacitly supported by politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California governor, the Minutemen join the long line of racist vigilantes who pockmark U.S. history. As the veteran Charley Trujillo, the author of the first oral history collection of Chicano Vietnam veterans, puts it in his documentary Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam: “They call us Americans when they need us for a war. The rest of the time we’re just Mexicans.”13 Such racist residue has the potential to taint the historical record because of the propensity of mainstream academics and filmmakers to either consciously or unconsciously erase the contributions of Latino servicemen and women from official accounts of U.S. wars. The most egregious example of this embedded bias was the Ken Burns film The War, the original version of which contained not a single Latin@ despite the fact that almost half a million Latin@s served in World War II.14 The fact that the Public Broadcasting System sponsored and promoted the Burns film with public monies made the omission even more offensive and throughout 2007 Latin@ groups battled with the network. Burns finally agreed to add footage of two Latino veterans.
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Conclusion Despite the continuing paradox faced by U.S. Latin@s who serve only to be treated upon their return as “foreigners,” thousands of new immigrants continue to believe that the “American Dream” can only be achieved through military service. The Pentagon and recruiters will exploit ideological traps like “gratitude to my new country” and “machismo” to draw Latin@ youth into the ranks of U.S. forces as the wars of the twenty-first century loom in the distance. The narrative of Latin@ military service is inescapably structured along a series of parallel and often contradictory tracks—on the one hand, the desire to recognize the valor and sacrifice of our elders who have served and on the other hand, the recognition that so many of our youth have been drawn to military service because of a lack of educational and economic opportunity; on the one hand, the pride born of a deeply felt patriotism that transcends past and current injustices and on the other hand, the knowledge that America’s wars have too often had little to do with national defense and a great deal to do with the kind of imperial hubris that informed the earliest U.S. contacts with Spanishspeaking peoples. Notes 1. Naomi Quiñonez, “Rosita the Riveter,” in Mexican Americans and World War II, ed. Rivas Rodriguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 249. 2. Army Times, “N.M. Guard Unit Alleges Racial Profiling,” Associated Press, April 24, 2007. 3. Defense Human Resources Activity 2008; and Beth Asch, Christopher Buck, Meridith Kleykamp, Jacob Alex Klerman, and David Loughran, Military Enlistment of Hispanic Youth: Obstacles and Opportunities (Santa Monica, CA: RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009), xv. 4. Prepared Statement of The Honorable S. C. Chu, July 10, 2006, http://armedservices.senate.gov/statemnt/2006/July/Chu%2007-10-06.pdf, accessed on July 17, 2009. 5. Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey (Arlington: Defense Manpower Data Center, 1997). 6. Army Times, “N.M. Guard Unit Alleges Racial Profiling,” Associated Press, April 24, 2007. 7. “Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps: Contributing to America’s Communities,” Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997. 8. Linda D. Kozaryn, Help Wanted: DoD Seeks JROTC Instructors, Department of Defense, American Forces Information Service, 2001, http://www.defense. gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44939, accessed on January 6, 2010.
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9. Amy Street and Jane Stafford, Military Sexual Trauma: Issues in Caring for Veterans, in Iraq War Clinician Guide (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: National Center for PTSD, 2004), 66–69. 10. Anne Gearan, “Military Rape Reports Rise, Prosecution Still Low,” Washington Post, March 17, 2009. 11. Mark Holston, “Soldier of Fortune,” Hispanic Magazine (2003): 10–12. 12. Camilo Mejía, Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejía (New York: New Press, 2007), 299. 13. The documentary film Soldados directed by Charely Trujillo and Sonya Rhee was aired on PBS in 2003 and followed the publication of Trujillo’s Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam (San Jose, CA: Chusma House Publications, 1991). 14. The War, directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, written by Geoffrey C. Ward (Boston: Florentine Films and WETA-TV, 2007), film.
4
The “Swirl” Migration of Mexican-Origin Students: A Cross-Border Analysis Using the Mexican and U.S. Censuses Stella M. Flores and Germán Treviño
Introduction surge in Latin American migration to the United States since the 1990s has led to an impressive increase in immigration research, using both original data and data collected by national governmental agencies.1 Data from the U.S. Census Bureau have been especially critical in understanding patterns of migration to the United States over time.2 Other datasets, such as those used by Feliciano,3 expand the field of migration and educational attainment research by presenting premigration characteristics of individuals by country of origin, thus illustrating differences in the social and human capital of migrant families arriving in the United States. These studies and others have made important contributions to the study of migration and educational attainment for the United States. The study of Mexico, however, continues to dominate this area of research due to the large number of both documented and undocumented migrants from that country, its proximity to the United States, and the growing literature on participation in the labor force as a primary reason for migration. A phenomenon more recently documented, although not new in occurrence, is the return of migrants to their country of origin. Migration
A
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to the United States, followed by a return to the country of origin, and subsequent reentry to the United States is another pattern that is even more difficult to capture than a single-direction migration path from one country to another. We label these phenomena “swirl” migration and attempt to document this pattern through existing government databases in the United States and Mexico. Such efforts to capture a “swirling” pattern of migration are expectedly complicated, however, and require multiple datasets from the countries involved. That is, representative information both from the country of origin of migrating individuals and from the country entered is the most desirable form of data to use for constructing these multidirectional migration patterns. Our aim is to understand multidirectional migration patterns between Mexico and the United States and the effects this movement might have on the educational status of school-age children who are participants in these migration pathways. We employ the national census questionnaires from both countries: Mexico’s Sampling Measure of the XII General Census of Household and Population 2000 and the 2000 U.S. Decennial Census. Using a common and specific window of time (1995–2000) that documents the place of residence of census respondents in Mexico and the United States, we evaluate the migration (to and from the United States and in some cases back to the original area of residence) patterns by state, in both countries, of Mexican-origin individuals. Our study is particularly original in that it offers a cross-national analysis of migration patterns involving these two countries for adults and school-age children. We also employ Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to visually explore the migration patterns of the states in both countries that are most likely to send, receive, and reincorporate Mexican-origin migrants. The mapping provides a visual overview of these “swirling” patterns over time and creates a snapshot of human movement that helps to identify the new areas of activity and need that are shaping the social environments of the areas in question. Such changes have strong implications for the education systems and labor forces in these areas of the United States and Mexico.
Research Questions The purpose of this study is to illuminate multidirectional migration patterns or “swirl migration” between Mexico and the United States between 1995 and 2000, with a particular examination of the educational conditions and factors encountered by school-aged migrant children.
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In exploring the hypothesis of “swirl migration” activity during this period, we were guided by the following questions: 1. What were the migration patterns of children under the age of eighteen between the United States and Mexico from 1995 to 2000? 2. Where in the United States did the flow of Mexican-born migrants go starting in 1995? What were the patterns of return and reincorporation into Mexico, if any? 3. Are there differences in the demographics of the U.S. states receiving and returning the highest percentage of Mexican-born migrants from 1995 to 2000? We provide a brief theoretical framework to address these questions, followed by a description of our methods for matching and corroborating data from both national censuses. We then provide results on migration patterns in the states that send, receive, and reincorporate migrant families and their school-age children. Finally, we present a summary of our major findings and the implications of those findings, and call for further research in the area of transnational, database-driven comparisons of migration activities in relation to educational outcomes. Theoretical Motivation We evaluated “swirl migration” activity at the turn of the twenty-first century, using a framework of migration-specific social and human capital theories expounded by Massey and Espinosa,4 who find that the fundamental forces behind Mexican migration to the United States are the formation of social capital and human capital, and the opportunity for market diversification in the form of economic development activities that result from migration to new locations. Social capital in a migration context is accumulated with each act of migration, thereby creating the conditions that facilitate and sustain additional migration activity,5 especially among individuals who are related to migrants. Human capital, which is represented in the knowledge, skills, and labor market experience gained as a result of migration, also leads to additional migration. Within this framework, once a person migrates, the odds of their migrating again will be even higher. Finally, in regard to market diversification as a motive for migration, we build on the work of Wortham, Hamann, and Murillo,6 who describe the states most recently receiving large numbers of Mexican migrants—located primarily in the U.S. South and the Northeast—as the “new Latino diaspora.” We utilize theories on this diaspora and the new Latino demographics to identify
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locations where Mexican-origin individuals entered the United States in the late 1990s. In sum, we apply these migration data and the Mexico-specific framework to the multidirectional migration movement of Mexican-born migrants and their school-age children between the United States and Mexico during the specified time period. Methods This study utilizes the 2000 censuses of Mexico and the United States. The Mexican Census incorporates survey data from both the basic and expanded questionnaires at the individual and state levels of analyses. The U.S. Census data used are from Summary File 4, which has disaggregated data on the country of origin for Hispanic groups in the United States; this allows us to focus specifically on the Mexican-origin population. This level of detail regarding the country of origin is needed to accurately compare Mexican-origin residents in the United States to Mexican citizens surveyed by the Mexican Census. Nonetheless, some data limitations remain. While the Mexican Census provides data at the individual level of analysis for all ages in the survey, individual-level data for school-age students from the U.S. Census, using similar sampling and timeframes, were not readily available. Individual-level data are available for respondents aged sixteen and older, using the U.S. Current Population Survey. However, this older age range is not the only or primary focus of our analysis. To answer our research questions, we employ U.S. Census data on school-age students (aged five to eighteen) by using the state as the primary level of analysis. We analyze the data by country and by the states within each country. These include fifty U.S. states and thirty-one Mexican states, including the federal district. We provide a trend analysis of various factors over time, using both the Mexican and U.S. censuses. Finally, we use GIS mapping techniques, as described earlier, to visually evaluate migration activity for individuals by age and citizenship status for both the United States and Mexico. Results Mexico: The traditional and new migrant-sending states We introduce GIS mapping to illustrate migration patterns most effectively, as it helps to identify the particular regions in Mexico and the United States that are sending and absorbing migration, broken down on the basis of individual states. For example, the Mexican census data allow us to examine, by household, the Mexican states that sent the highest
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percentage of migrating adults and children to the United States between 1995 and 2000, as well as the Mexican states that reincorporated these migrant families into Mexico’s public and economic institutions. Mexican census data show that the states with the largest percentage of households that had at least one member migrating to the United States between 1995 and 2000 are Zacatecas, Michoacán, and Guanajuato.7 In these states, between 10 percent and 12 percent of households had a member who migrated to the United States between 1995 and 2000; this is considerably above the Mexican national average of 4.14 percent. Other states experiencing high rates of migration to the United States can be seen in Figure 4.1. Since migration between Mexico and the United States is often primarily motivated by economic factors, most of the existing research in the Mexican context focuses on adult migration. There is less research on school-age children who migrate to the United States, either to reunite with their families already there or to stay with their migrating parents. According to these data, the number of children that migrated to the United States during this time period is considerable. Of the total migrating population, 24 percent (approximately 354,996 migrants) were children of primary-, middle-, and high-school age, and thus eligible for mandatory education in the United States. Twenty-two percent of them (about 84,000) were between the ages of six and fifteen.
Figure 4.1 Mexican states with the highest percentage of households with a member migrating to the United States, 1995–2000 Source: Censo General de Población y Vivienda, México (2000).
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Figure 4.2 Mexican states with the highest percentage of children aged six to fifteen migrating to the United States, 1995 and 2000 Source: Censo General de Población y Vivienda, México (2000).
Figure 4.2 shows the states from which the majority of school-age children migrated to the United States. These states include Michoacán (11.96 percent), Jalisco (10.86 percent), Oaxaca (7.68 percent), Guanajuato (7.42 percent), and Puebla (7.26 percent). Together these states account for 45 percent of school-age child migration. States with lower percentages, although still significant numbers, are Guerrero, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, and San Luis Potosi. It was also important to consider not only the states where the migrants were coming from, but also the demographic characteristics, such as size, of their specific communities. Mexican migration to the United States has been a rural phenomenon, with about 80 percent of migrating children coming from small cities in rural areas. An important percentage of these children come from the rural areas of Oaxaca (10.2 percent) and Puebla (8.7 percent). These are states with high concentrations of indigenous people who were not considered traditional migrants in the past. Figure 4.3 details the migration of children by the size of the sending locality between 1995 and 2000. The rural origins of most migrant children might be a relevant indication of their educational profile. Previous research documents that children attending rural and indigenous schools are clearly at an academic disadvantage in Mexico.8 These trends suggest that migrating
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Figure 4.3 School-age migrants by the size of locality of origin Source: Censo General de Poblacion y Vivienda, Mexico (2000).
children already have a lower than average academic performance and are in need of more educational help even before they arrive at their U.S. destinations. The data also indicate that the geographic origin of school-age child migration is not static, and has been getting more complex since the mid1990s. Over the last five years, we have seen a considerable percentage of migrants coming from medium and large cities. For example, about 11 percent of school-age children migrate from cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more; 18.3 percent of children migrating from the largest cities come from the state of Nuevo León and from Mexico City, areas with greater than average educational resources. These trends suggest that the educational background of children migrating to the United States in the twenty-first century might be changing. The timing of when Mexican families migrate to the United States, as well as of their reincorporation back into Mexico, is also a critical factor to consider in examining the effects of migration on each country’s school systems. An important issue identified in this research is that the migration of school-age children often does not coincide with the U.S. school-year calendar. Various U.S. school districts thus have to incorporate immigrant children at different times during the academic year. As seen in Figure 4.4, 27 percent of the Mexican children migrated in the first three months of the year. There is a spike in the number of migrants that arrived in the United States in March (10.4 percent) and in August (9.2 percent). The remainder of the respondents migrated in almost equal numbers
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Figure 4.4 Migration of school-age children to the United States, by month
during the remaining months of the year. One hypothesis is that the peak of migration in March and August could be associated with the spring and the summer school breaks in Mexico, although the difference from the other months is not particularly large. Any policy aimed at incorporating Mexican migrant children into U.S. schools—as noted by López, Romo, and Salinas and Fránquiz—should take the seasonality of immigration into account.9 The United States: Traditional and new migrant-receiving states With these migration patterns in mind, we now examine Mexican migration to the United States from 1990 to 2000, more specifically from 1995. Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we investigate where in the United States these Mexican-born migrants were residing at the time the Census was taken. The data show, for example, which U.S. states are receiving this immigrant group both in raw numbers and as an increasing share of the population. For example, it is not surprising to see continued migration to states with traditionally high rates, such as California, Texas, Florida, and Illinois. However, states in the South that have less such history appear to be experiencing an unprecedented increase in their share of Mexican migrants. Of interest are the U.S. states that continue to experience migration activity and are experiencing the starkest transitions in their educational, political, and economic infrastructure as a result of changes in their share of migration activity.
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The greatest change in the migration patterns of the Mexican-born population in the United States post-1995, and to a certain extent since 1990, is in the increased number of these migrants in the southeastern and northeastern regions of the United States. The movement of Spanish-speaking migrants into the Northeast is not a new phenomenon; for some time this region has had a Spanish-speaking immigrant population that includes Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and some South American groups.10 New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, for example, are other states familiar with Spanish-speaking populations in the educational and political realms. However, these states have never before experienced a large influx of Mexican migrants, a group with cultural and historical characteristics that are distinct from those of their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts.11 The states that have experienced the most notable “shock” or change in the incorporation of a Mexican-born population are in the Southeast. Historically, this area has served a primarily black and white population, and its educational, political, and economic infrastructure is still adjusting to this rupture in the traditional racial dichotomy.12 For example, while issues of racial segregation in southern schools remain contentious fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the landmark Supreme Court decision that outlawed this type of segregation in schools as an acceptable practice, schools in the South are now also dealing with a new minority population that is both racially and linguistically different from the predominantly
Figure 4.5 Total Mexican-born migrant population in the United States, 2000
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English-speaking student body in these areas. The data presented below on Mexican-born migrant students in the United States, and specifically in these traditionally non-Mexican areas, illuminate the gravity of the adjustments these states must make to accommodate new migration. Moreover, it quantitatively confirms once again that there truly is a new Latino diaspora—a phenomenon documented by recent research.13 U.S. census data from 2000 indicate that the states with the largest Mexican-born populations are California (CA), Texas (TX), Arizona (AZ), and Illinois (IL), states that historically have had the largest number of immigrant and U.S.-born individuals of Mexican origin (Figure 4.5). However, by 2000, states that traditionally have not had a Mexican-born population joined those with the largest. These newcomers included Washington and Oregon, which have served a seasonal migrant population, southeastern states such as Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, and New York in the Northeast. The data in Figure 4.6 show that in absolute numbers, almost all of the states with the highest number of foreign-born residents before 1995 are also the states with the most recent Mexican migrants to the United States after 1995 (California, Texas, Illinois, and Arizona). However, states in the Southeast and the Midwest show increasing numbers of Mexican-born residents who were not present before 1995.
Figure 4.6 States with the highest number of Mexican-born residents not in the United States in 1995
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After 1995, the areas experiencing significant increases in the schoolage Mexican-born migrant population expanded beyond the Southwest. Figure 4.7 shows this dramatic shift in the states that had the highest percentage of the Mexican-born school-age population as a percentage of the total Mexican-origin population in the state by 2000. In this category, several southeastern states and two in the Northeast—North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Connecticut—shared the distinction of having the highest percentage of Mexican-born children under the age of eighteen in 2000. Other states in the Northeast (New York and Pennsylvania) and several midwestern states also showed a relatively higher percentage of Mexican-origin migrants than in 1995. The citizenship status of school-age children is another key factor in understanding the educational trajectories of these students in U.S. schools. A number of Mexican-born individuals live in households where family members have varied citizenship status. The educational options of migrating students who stay in the United States and those who return to Mexico may be predicted in part by the citizenship status they are able or not able to attain while in the United States. To link data on school-age Mexican children who came to the United States after 1995 to data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we examine states where noncitizen Mexican-origin
Figure 4.7 States with the highest percentage of Mexican-born children under eighteen years of age, 2000
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Figure 4.8 States with the highest percentage of noncitizen Mexican-born children under eighteen years of age, 2000
children who were under the age of eighteen in 2000 represent the highest percentage of the state’s Mexican-origin population. Looking more closely at Mexican-born school-age children who are not citizens, we see an even more extensive territory of educational transition for families and students with higher odds of having uncertain citizenship status.14 Figure 4.8 shows that states in the Southeast have the greatest percentage (20–34 percent of all Mexican-origin individuals in those states) of the Mexican-born school-age population that are noncitizens. Additionally, a large number of states throughout the United States have a Mexican-origin population with approximately 14 percent to 20 percent of them being foreign-born noncitizens. Opportunities in higher education for students in this population who do graduate high school are limited; of the states newly receiving this high percentage of noncitizen school-age children, only New York and Utah have legislation that allows undocumented high-school graduates to attend college at in-state resident tuition rates.15 Comparison of selected characteristics of U.S. migration states While the change in migration activity throughout the United States is considerably more dramatic in some states than others, the demographic
Table 4.1a
New Mexican-origin migration states, 2000
State
North Carolina Georgia New Jersey New York Delaware South Carolina Tennessee Connecticut Arkansas Alabama
Pct foreign-born
77.59 75.76 73.35 71.04 70.16 65.97 63.53 60.47 59.72 58.81
Total Pct Non-U.S. Pct year of foreign-born residence in entry 1990 to 1995 March 2000 by m-o 185,890 205,083 74,434 177,755 8,497 33,635 47,995 14,074 36,032 24,795
Source: Authors’ calculations; 2000 U.S. Census.
35.47 33.15 25.49 19.35 25.92 33.14 30.43 24.41 21.74 24.00
80.41 77.47 73.16 66.48 72.86 81.12 76.84 70.24 67.25 74.87
Pct male
63.41 63.42 58.62 57.47 56.95 64.86 62.75 58.92 57.91 59.24
Pct foreign-born under 18 35.34 33.83 29.15 25.76 30.94 28.35 24.93 22.69 25.49 22.83
Total Pct school age foreign-born (5–17 yrs) under 18 27,181 29,589 9,519 21,432 1,416 4,358 6,038 1,640 5,874 3,428
19.13 19.88 20.12 21.30 23.37 18.55 19.54 19.86 24.14 22.66
Pct m-o male ages 5–17 enrolled in school
Pct m-o female ages 5–17 enrolled in school
73.77 76.38 69.20 69.55 73.68 79.84 75.46 62.73 78.03 75.69
77.60 79.76 73.20 70.23 77.65 72.80 73.63 64.92 79.89 76.01
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State
California Texas Illinois Arizona Colorado Florida New Mexico Nevada
Traditional Mexican-origin migration states, 2000 Pct Total Pct Non-US Pct year of entry foreign-born foreign-born residence 1990 to March in 1995 2000 by m-o 47.53 37.59 57.75 41.96 40.86 57.23 31.14 56.54
4,087,992 1,947,068 666,726 454,614 187,502 204,940 106,279 164,445
Source: Authors’ calculations; 2000 U.S. Census.
6.91 7.92 11.86 10.62 14.06 17.32 5.42 13.34
39.38 46.64 49.28 54.18 65.59 61.47 39.95 53.45
Pct male
51.68 51.21 53.70 51.81 54.51 58.64 51.17 54.39
Pct Foreign-born Pct school-age under 18 total (5–17 yrs) foreign-born under 18 14.43 12.84 18.23 16.84 18.20 21.02 11.64 20.04
471,346 238,553 77,768 70,057 30,181 26,522 14,286 22,436
26.81 25.20 24.95 26.55 24.64 23.64 25.98 25.70
Pct male ages 5–17 enrolled in school
Pct female ages 5–17 enrolled in school
74.57 73.76 74.29 75.94 76.35 75.56 74.66 80.24
71.68 77.55 73.05 75.61 75.87 75.16 71.81 79.28
STELLA M. FLORES AND GERMÁN TREVIÑO
Table 4.1b
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portrait of the Mexican-origin population (both U.S.-born and foreignborn) also differs significantly in the following categories: percentage with foreign-born status, entry into the United States after 1995, gender, and percentage of school-age children as a share of the Mexican-origin population by state. Table 4.1 shows that many of the “new” migration states (Table 4.1a) have a share of Mexican-born individuals as a percentage of their Mexican-origin population that is greater by 20 percentage points or more than in the traditional migration states of California and Texas (Table 4.1b). In addition, the number of individuals of Mexican origin in the new migration states who were not in the United States in 1995 is much higher than for their counterparts in the traditional migration states; this is true to an even greater extent for those who have entered the United States since 1990. These new migration states also have a much higher percentage of male migrants and a lower percentage of children of school age than the traditional migration states. This pattern is characteristic of areas experiencing recent migration, where men are usually the first in their household to migrate, bringing partners and children to join them later in the migration process.16 Among children of Mexican origin aged five to seventeen who were enrolled in U.S. schools, the data do not seem to show stark differences by gender. “Swirl migration”: Return and reincorporation to and from Mexico Approximately one million Mexican households (around one percent) experience the phenomenon we identify as “swirl migration.” For this analysis, we define a “swirl migrant” as a person who migrated to the United States between 1995 and 2000 and returned to live in Mexico within the same window of time, a period explicitly documented in the 2000 Mexican Census survey. Migration, therefore, is not a one-way phenomenon. “Swirl migration” complicates the educational experience of migrant children and poses distinct challenges to both the Mexican and the U.S. education systems. Our data indicate that 10 percent of school-age children who migrated to the United States between 1995 and 2000—about 39,000 students—returned to Mexico within the same window of time. This means that the children in this group faced not only the challenge of incorporating into new schools in the United States, but also of reincorporating back into the schools of their homeland. In some cases, as will be presented later in this analysis, they also had to adjust to a new area of Mexico before migrating to the United States. The size of the “swirl migration” has recently been increasing. Figure 4.9 shows that approximately 86 percent of the children who returned to
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Figure 4.9 School-age “swirl” migrants’ return to Mexico, by year
Mexico from the United States did so in 1998 and 1999. This increasing trend of children returning to Mexico signals the growing importance of Mexican children’s ability to readapt to schools in their homeland after having migrated to the United States. Where in Mexico these children return to after migrating to the United States is also worth noting. The Mexican states that receive the largest percentage of returning school-age migrants are Jalisco (14.8 percent), Nuevo León (11.4 percent), Michoacán (10.7 percent), Chihuahua (8.4 percent), Zacatecas (5.9 percent), Distrito Federal (5.23 percent), and the State of Mexico (5 percent). A significant finding of this research is that the states reincorporating migrants differ from those sending them. Some states receive a larger share of returning migrants than they originally send. Chihuahua, for example, accounts for only 3 percent of Mexican migration to the United States but receives more than 6 percent of all returning migrants. One possible explanation is that Chihuahua is a border state and might serve as a buffer or transition area for future migration. Nevertheless, this trend indicates that schools in Chihuahua receive and integrate children from other parts of Mexico. Another interesting case is Nuevo León, which is now a primary reincorporation state although it is not a major sending state. These findings call for future research on the effects of this reincorporation of migrants into local governments and school systems in Mexico. Another interesting finding is that although migration is still predominantly a rural phenomenon, a larger percentage of “swirl migrants” return
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Point of origin and destiny of migrant populations by size of locality
Size of Locality Fewer than 2,500 inhabitants 2,5000 to 14,999 inhabitants 15,000 to 19,999 inhabitants 20,000 to 49,999 inhabitants 50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants 100,000 to 499,999 inhabitants 500,000 inhabitants and more
Percentage of Migrants
Percentage of Returning Migrants
61.3 19.7 1.3 4.1 2.5 5.1 6.0
50.9 18.4 1.3 4.8 3.5 8.9 12.1
Source: Censo General de Poblacion y Vivienda, Mexico (2000).
Figure 4.10 Return of school-age children to Mexico, by month
to cities than leave them. Table 4.2 shows a side-by-side comparison of the sizes of the localities that migrants to the United States leave and return to after migration. The data show that although the majority of children return to rural areas, about a quarter of the “swirl migrants” return to cities of 100,000 inhabitants or more. This phenomenon indicates that the profile of migrants who return from the United States might differ from the profile of all migrants as a group. One hypothesis is that these migrants might be more educated or in a better economic condition to make the transition back to urban areas in Mexico. Another important issue to consider is the timing of return. There is a clear pattern of school-age children returning to Mexico. Figure 4.10 shows that approximately 50 percent of these children return to Mexico in
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the last three months of the year. As one would expect, the return of this age group coincides with the return of adult migrants, again indicating that the nature of “swirl migration” is unrelated to the education cycle. This pattern of return means that from an organizational perspective, schools in Mexico have to reincorporate Mexican students returning from the United States after the educational cycle has already started. From the students’ perspective, they again have to catch up with their peers, this time back in their home country, but not always in the original school system that they attended prior to migration. Conclusion, Implications, and Future Research A summary of the findings from both the Mexican and U.S. national censuses includes the following: ●
●
●
●
●
Mexican school-age child migration to the United States is a growing phenomenon with important educational implications. Approximately 24 percent of migrants are children between four and eighteen years old, and thus eligible for compulsory education in the United States. Migrating children come mainly from rural areas in the states of Michoacán, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, and Puebla, where schools have been documented to have lower than average academic performance. However, an increasing number of migrants are coming from medium and large urban areas. Almost one in five children in this group comes from the states of Nuevo León and México. The number of children identified as “swirl migrants” increased considerably from 1997 to 2000. These transnational students account for approximately 10 percent of all school-age migrant children from Mexico. The number and age of migrants differ in the states that send, receive, and reincorporate them. In addition, states reincorporating migrants differ from states sending migrants. However, current data do not allow the identification of the reasons why children from certain states in Mexico participate in “swirl migration” more than those in others. The timing of migration to the new country and return to the home country is worth considering in any policy aimed at helping migrant children to perform well in school. Movement across the border does not seem appropriately coordinated with the academic year calendars of either the United States or Mexico. These timing issues
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indicate a severe adjustment not only for the students but also for the national systems that educate them. On the U.S. side, significant implications related to citizenship and educational opportunities must be considered for this particular group of school-age children. States with the highest number of noncitizen children as a percentage of their Mexican-origin migrant population are also states with the least experience in educational programs designed to support these students and their families. Finally, although this is primarily a story of the education of schoolage migrant children, the families that accompany these children in the migration process are an integral part of their educational outcomes. The labor markets in which adults participate are as essential to their children’s educational opportunities as the schools that educate them.
The data show that each side of the U.S.-Mexico border is faced with enormous educational implications for children and their families who engage in the migration process. The “swirl migration” pattern captured by the national censuses of Mexico and the United States illuminates the great need for continued quantitative and qualitative research to investigate these patterns and their effects on the school systems that host migrant children, and the labor markets in which their parents and families participate. Moreover, for families that do stay in the United States, their educational opportunities beyond the K-12 system are limited by their citizenship status. New in-state resident tuition laws that promote greater access to college for undocumented immigrants in Texas, California, and eight other states offer additional educational opportunities to this population. However, the states with the most dramatic surge in noncitizen school-age children do not have such legislation. Finally, the data indicate that children migrating to the United States with their parents are perhaps the most vulnerable and most in need of educational opportunities. The complexities captured by these cross-national databases highlight the need for additional research in the area of transnational comparison of educational and labor outcomes of migrant families and their children. Notes 1. Frank Bean and B.L. Lowell, “Unauthorized Migration,” The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration Since 1965, ed. Mary Waters, Reed Ueda, and Helen Marrow (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 70–82; Douglas S. Massey and K. Espinosa, “What’s Driving Mexico-U.S. Migration?
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2.
3. 4. 5. 6.
7. 8.
9.
10. 11.
STELLA M. FLORES AND GERMÁN TREVIÑO
A Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology, 102 (1997): 939–99; Jeffrey S. Passel, Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), available online at http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report/php?ReportID=44 (retrieved on September 1, 2005); Jeffrey S. Passel, J. Van Hook, and Frank D. Bean, Estimates of Legal and Unauthorized Foreign-Born Population for the United States and Selected States, Based on Census 2000 (Report to the Census Bureau) (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2004); Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Mariela M. Páez, eds., Latinos Remaking America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). George J. Borjas and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Evolution of the Mexican-Born Workforce in the United States,” in Mexican Immigration to the United States, ed. George J. Borjas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 13–55; and David Card and Ethan G. Lewis, “The Diffusion of Mexican Immigrants During the 1990s: Explanations and Impacts,” in Mexican Immigration to the United States, ed. George J. Borjas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 193–227. Cynthia Feliciano, Unequal Origins: Immigrant Selection and the Education of the Second Generation (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2006). Douglas Massey and K. Espinosa, “What’s Driving Mexico-US Migration? A Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Analysis,” 939–99. Ibid. Stanton Wortham, Edmund T. Hamann, and Enrique G. Murillo Jr., eds., Education in the New Latino Diaspora: Policy and the Politics of Identity (Westport: Ablex, 2001). Douglas Massey and K. Espinosa, “What’s Driving Mexico-US Migration? A Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Analysis,” 939–99. Germán Treviño and Ernesto Treviño, Factores socioculturales asociados al rendimiento de los alumnos al término de la educación primaria: Un estudio de las desigualdades educativas en México (México: Instituto Nacional de Evaluación, 2004). Gerardo Lopez, Jay D. Scribner, and Kanya Mahitivanichcha, “Redefining Parental Involvement: Lessons from High-Performing Migrant-Impacted Schools,” American Educational Research Journal 38 (2001): 253–88; Harriett D. Romo, “The Newest ‘Outsiders’: Educating Mexican Migrant and Immigrant Youth,” in Children of La Frontera: Binational Efforts to Serve Mexican Migrant and Immigrant Students, ed. Judith L. Flores (Charleston: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, 1996); and Cinthia Salinas and María Fránquiz, eds., Scholars in the Field: The Challenges of Migrant Education (Washington, DC: AEL, 2004). Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Regina Cortina and Mónica Gendreau, eds., Immigrants and Schooling: Mexicans in New York (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2003).
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12. Stanton Wortham, Edmund Hamann, and Enrique Murillo Jr., eds., Education in the New Latino Diaspora. 13. Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), available at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/ 50.1.pdf (retrieved on September 15, 2007); and Wortham, Hamann, and Murillo Jr., eds., Education in the New Latino Diaspora. 14. The U.S. Census captures citizenship status only up to the level of “noncitizen.” This category includes both legal resident and undocumented immigrants. 15. Michael Olivas, “IIRIRA, The DREAM Act, and Undocumented College Student Residency,” Journal of College and University Law 30 (2004): 435. 16. Douglas Massey and K. Espinosa, “What’s Driving Mexico-US Migration? A Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Analysis,” 939–99.
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Part II
Popular and Traditional Cultural Expressions
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5
Making, Buying, Selling, and Using the Umbrella: Recognizing the Nuances of Latin@ Popular Culture Patricia Marina Trujillo
ecently, I discovered a T-shirt at the corporate-owned department store Target. The shirt was in the women’s clothing department, salmon-colored and clearly cut for a woman’s body. It had a central image of bright red chile (pepper) proclaiming, “I’m HOT!” I was immediately drawn to the T-shirt and simultaneously repelled. In a store that rarely has culturally relevant or culturally specific items, I knew as a Latina that this T-shirt was made with me in mind. The “hot chile” image made my own thoughts collide. On the one hand, the bright, curvy, and plump chile on the shirt at once evoked within me issues of the mass commodification of my culture and the objectification of Latinas (after all, it is the chile, an object, that is hot and supposed to represent “the” Latina on the shirt— como se dice, or how would one say, “reification?”), and emphasized the common stereotypes of Latinas as fiery, hot-tempered, and overly/overtly Sexualized. On the other hand, as a Latina who is manita (an identity linked geographically to northern New Mexico), the chile is a central image that I identify with culturally. My yearly seasons are planned around the chile harvest, and most cultural events include chile preparation in one way or another (tying ristras, making tamales, packing green chile away for the year in Ziploc bags, and so on). Even though I clearly saw the T-shirt as stereotypical, I was also able to appreciate it with tongue-in-cheek humor. Chiles are hot! They literally spice up the food I eat and as a metaphor they
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can be read as culturally symbolic of the passion and orgullo, the pride I feel as a manita. Chiles culturally connect me to my family, our land, and our traditions. I can disconnect culturally from the stereotypical connotations of “hot” and embrace “hot” and “spicy” in nonstereotypical ways that might only be obvious to others who share my cultural heritage. Chiles are symbolic as the central heat (read: a cultural energy) in our lives. Here I was in the store, staring at this shirt. I considered how this shirt was being marketed. There were shirts of similar style all around it. One with a central image of a slice of cherry pie proclaimed, “Sweetie Pie.” Another with a picture of a chick (that is, a baby chicken) in a frying pan said, “Hot chick.” Yet, the “I’m HOT!” chile was the only one I considered buying. It was supposed that I would want to buy it because on multiple levels I connect with this image, and this image is connected with me, positively and negatively. It was supposed that non-Latinas would want to buy chile because it is a conduit to the stereotypical traits that are seen as positive for Latinas. For non-Latinas, putting on the T-shirt is a way to assert that they too are “hot” and “spicy” in a dominant culture with exploitative mores of what constitutes an attractive woman. In the context of the non-Latina wearing the shirt, issues of reification take on an additional layer of objectification. A Latina sporting this shirt (in a nonsubversive way) stereotypes her own identity by proclaiming via the printed message: “I am like a chile. I am hot.” A non-Latina sporting this shirt further problematizes this reification by implicitly proclaiming: “I am like a chile that is hot like a Latina. Therefore, I am hot.” The more I saw that T-shirt, the more I wanted it and the more I felt like a Tía Taco (sell-out) for colluding with the corporate structure that would stereotype me. I picked it up. I put it down. The woes of graduate student shopping in a Latin@ cultural marketplace! This encounter with a Latina “pop” image while shopping is an example of the multiple negotiations that can be made when encountering and interpreting cultural symbols in the mass market and media. In considering Latin@ popular art and culture, we must ask the following questions: Who is creating it? What images and symbols are being employed? How are they interpreted? By whom? For whom? In an increasingly Latin@ United States, hegemonic popular culture will be increasingly influenced by Latin@s art and culture, in this sense, must be taken seriously as an economic and political influence able to inform and change what it means to be “American.” This chapter seeks to provide a prefatory understanding of the various nuances of Latin@ popular and pop culture. Popular culture can be generally defined as some aspect of culture that is accepted and consumed by significant numbers of people, as in the case of Latin@ popular culture. While popular culture can be understood as a cultural
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representation created and supported by the populace that is being represented, “pop culture” can be said to be a reified representation that is often used for mass marketing or hegemonic maintenance of conventional stereotypes. Working as an introduction to a vast discourse, the chapter works to map out discursive signposts in the field but in no way claims to identify them all. Rather, in considering the ever-changing nature of Latin@ popular culture, this chapter can be considered an entrance into a complicated, multifaceted, and dynamic field of study. My use of the term “umbrella” in the title and throughout this chapter is a way to keep readers connected to and questioning the concept of a pan-Latino identity. The term “Latin@” is considered an umbrella, or unifying term, to speak about a large group (hundreds of millions) of diverse people from over twenty countries and territories where Romance languages are spoken. Spanish and Portuguese are predominant, but French is also considered in this definition. In addition, indigenous and Creole languages, as well as other world languages, are spoken in Latin America. One of the challenges of writing a broad description of Latin@ popular culture is that Latin@ identity is not indicative of a singular culture with a singular worldview or even similar traditions and customs. Rather, while considering Latin@ popular culture, we must question our terminology from within and without the United States’ mainstream academy. Because of my own position as a Latina and a scholar from the United States, the primary focus of this chapter will be Latin@ popular culture in the United States from the perspective of Latin@s as U.S. ethnic minorities who have been marginalized and underrepresented. However, I want to stress that this is one of many vantage points from which to enter the discussion. As you can imagine, an introductory essay to Latin@ popular culture written by an El Salvadoran writer might be configured much differently. Bear in mind that even though the term “Latin@” is useful for discursive discussions, many people would choose to identify nationally, for example, as Mexicano or Brazileña; or locally as I did earlier in this chapter as manita or Nuevomexicana, and even politically as Chican@ or Boricua, for example. In this chapter I will contextualize the study of Latin@ popular culture and engage in a Latin@-centered study of Latina popular culture, then I will speak to Latin@ community participation in the production of popular culture, and finally I will speak to perspectives that complicate understandings of Latin@ popular culture. Contextualizing Latin@ Popular Arts and Culture For Latina@s who may share a dedication to issues of racialization, class, gender, sexuality, and language, popular culture is an avenue that
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necessarily explores power relationships embedded in such forms of popular expression as theater, film, music, sports, and dance. However, expressions of popular culture can vary from empowering and oppositional, such as the Teatro Campesino (Chican@ street theater of the 1960s and 1970s) and public murals, to blatant appropriations of cultural stereotypes, such as Speedy Gonzalez (a Looney Toons character) and Chiquita Banana.1 As discussed earlier, a distinction in vocabulary is usually made between these two types of cultural production. An understanding of popular culture should include familiarization with the terms high culture, low culture, folk culture, and mass culture. These terms are central to most discussions of popular culture in what is a long, much contested, and continuing sphere of academic inquiry. Historically, high culture is the term used to identify “activities that appeal to an educated and sophisticated audience” that often signals recognition of Western European works of literature, classical music, theater, opera, and artwork housed in museums and privately owned galleries and collections.2 Since education and pecuniary access is necessary for this definition, high culture, thus, is established on an accepted notion of classism and intellectual prejudice that elevates art and artists from particular backgrounds, allowing audience access to a few, and production access to even fewer people. This conceptualization of high culture has been historically accepted as the determinative norm of “highly developed aesthetics.” In contrast, low culture has been defined as activities that tend to appeal to a more general audience whose tastes are considered less refined and sophisticated. Examples of low culture could include sporting events, reality television, and rock and roll concerts. These definitions are based on a hierarchal view of culture, one that generally orders culture according to those who control economic and political power and those who do not. High and low culture can be problematized through the example of Plácido Domingo’s singing of rancheras, or popular Mexican folk songs. Domingo is an international tenor, most celebrated for his singing with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti as The Three Tenors. His experience and expertise in the realm of opera place him squarely in the high culture category. However, Domingo has been criticized for his participation in recordings made of popular ranchera songs, such as Feria de las Flores, because of their low-culture origins. On the one hand, Domingo was criticized for recording songs that have low-culture origins, and on the other hand, for taking popular culture productions to the realm of high culture. The designations of high/low culture are constructed along a problematic binary that associates art and aesthetics from a Eurocentric perspective as superior and more refined than non-European art and aesthetics. Thus, cultural productions emerging from Latin@-centered positions are often
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rendered as “low” art, or are placed in the realm of folk culture. Folk cultures are the practices of small groups within a larger society; generally, the cultural productions are not widespread throughout the entire cultural group but are limited to traditional geographical locales. Like high/low culture designations, folk culture is a term that can be called problematic, since “folk” is usually a term applied to communities because of their “otherness” in relation to hegemonic culture.3 Mass culture was articulated by the Frankfurt School theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer as culture industries invested in producing cultures that keep the majority of a population accepting specific cultural mores. Culture industries can include television, print media, advertising for mass media, as well as new media such as the Web sites, blogging sites, and social networking interfaces, such as Facebook, MySpace, and the like. Mass culture, in this figuring, is invested in keeping consumers buying products and accepting ideas that make capitalist systems like the United States endure and prosper.4 Likewise, the theorists Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci considered popular culture as a form of dominant ideology through which the dominant group controls subordinate groups by making them complicit with hegemony in multiple ways—for example, the Puerto Rican actor Jennifer Lopez’s choice to portray the stereotypical housekeeper in Maid in Manhattan. Many critics of Lopez’s choices in movie roles problematize her success as an actress as dependent on collusion with the stereotyping forces of the hegemonic structure of Hollywood. However, Althusser and Gramsci’s view of mass or popular culture has been criticized by theorists who are not willing to concede that audience members from subordinated groups are only passive, vulnerable, and exploitable.5 John Fiske and Stuart Hall emerged from the Cultural Studies school of thought that defines popular culture as the expression of the interests, the experiences, and the values of common people.6 This definition is inclusive, acknowledging historically silenced or ignored groups as producers of popular culture. As Hall posits, “Popular culture is one of the sites where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the take to be won or lost in that struggle. It is the arena of consent and resistance.”7 In this paradigm, cultural representation is produced from the bottom up rather than in accordance with the hierarchical model of from the top down. This fundamentally different approach to popular culture not only allows for subordinated people to represent themselves, it also allows for subordinated people to analyze, criticize, and undermine hegemonic cultural constructions. Néstor García-Canclini, the Argentinean/Mexican anthropologist, believes that popular culture also serves the function of “‘re-elaborating’ social structures and inventing new ones.”8 An example of this “bottom up” approach to popular culture can
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be considered in forms of popular Latin dance. Dances such as merengue and salsa emerged from Latin@ communities and have influenced, changed, and been incorporated into the dominant conceptualizations of dance throughout the world. Blurring the theoretical lines of popular culture, Latin@ popular art and culture emerges as a field that can simultaneously be problematic and problematizing. That is to say that there is a whole spectrum of ideological thought that can be identified through popular culture and art. One can see the influence of Latin@ popular culture in many aspects of U. S. culture, in the names of major cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Albuquerque), and in the popularity of Latin@ dance styles and rodeo culture. Popular culture can be problematic when complicit with hegemony to monitor and maintain aesthetic production for the benefit of the dominant society through cultural commodification and capital; take, for example, the recent emergence of the literary sub-genre of “Chica Lit.” Though Chica Lit seeks to forge a space for Latina-centered narratives in the mass-market paperback book trade, many of the texts such as The Dirty Girls Social Club and the forthcoming sequel, Dirty Girls on Top, both by Alisa Rodriguez-Valdes, maintain and exploit problematic stereotypes of Latinas.9 Read as popular culture, the texts reify Latina identity to sell a product.10 However, at the same time, Latin@ popular culture is an empowered articulation by subordinated groups seeking to express collective discontent about prejudicial institutions in the United States. Thus, Latin@ popular culture and identity cannot be separated from issues of class, labor, and political economy—language, nationality, and citizenship. Latin@ popular culture and art represent a politics of self-representation that addresses the need to confront the countenance of the United States and Latin America. It affirms a multilingual and multicultural heritage that necessarily seeks to represent complexities and contradictions that accompany the simultaneous worldviews that accompany mestizaje (mixed race heritage) and La Raza (a synoptic term for Latin@s). Popular culture is simultaneously progressive and problematic. Through the technologies of popular culture, traditional practices are maintained but new practices are constantly emerging to provide avenues for interrogating and reconceptualizing culture. Popular culture concurrently articulates the need to interpret the cultural images and symbols for contemporary usage, while it privileges the need for preserving traditions for posterity, and at times, nostalgia. Often the multiple significances of popular culture emerge on various levels of recognition, as I will interrogate below in discussing the 2007 boxing match between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather.
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Making the Umbrella: Community Participation and the Production of Latin@ Popular Culture Of central importance to Latin@ popular culture is the understanding that it is a study of la raza’s (the people’s) creative capacity in all aspects of cultural production: traditional, economic, political, artistic, spiritual, and intellectual. Latin@ popular culture studies problematize previous scholarly models that looked toward Latin@ cultural production as strange, quaint, exotic, or outside of the dominant conceptualization of normativity. Rather, many recent publications and scholarly works have begun to address Latin@ popular culture through “contemporary analytic and interpretive frames [that] challenge prior perceptions and current conceptualizations” of Latin@ culture as an artifact.11 This reframes Latin@ cultural production as epistemological and ontological in and of itself rather than as a production that can be compared to those of the dominant society. In this sense, scholarly work by Latin@s about Latin@ cultural production can be read from multiple perspectives as simultaneously a theoretical and a cultural production. Recent publications of such scholarship includes: Latino/a Popular Culture (2002), edited by Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero; Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities (2003), edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba; and Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana and Latina Popular Culture (2005) by Michelle Habell-Pallán. In the 2004 publication Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, the editors, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, Peter J. Garcia, and Alma Alvarez-Smith, worked to create a reference text that commits textual space to specific entries about creators and creations of Latin@ popular culture. In the introduction, the editors acknowledge the contributions of interdisciplinary scholarship in fields such as women’s studies, African American studies, Chican@ studies, cultural and ethnic studies, and ethnomusicology as the foundation for the framework of the encyclopedia. They assert that interdisciplinary fields since the 1960s have produced a vast reservoir of research, documentary evidence, theoretical approaches, and sources of knowledge that have begun to repair the damaging consequences of neglect, and, even worse, the inaccuracies and distortions of traditional European gazes.12 Drawing from the ethnographic, theoretical, and ideological insights of scholars from interdisciplinary fields was central to the framework of the text because a consequence of the rethinking and concomitant reconceptualizing arising from such vigorous research investigations was the recognition that popular culture—people’s living expressive practices and creative forms—encompasses a wide and heterodox range of mutually influencing and interanimating forms and styles. As a result, the attitudes
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toward popular culture began to shift among scholars and other researchers. Once considered less than and inferior to the evolved and highly stylized patterns of what was once called and understood as elitist “high” culture, popular culture came to be valued for the shaping multiplicity that it, in fact, is—the dynamic, everyday practices and expressive forms that include food, clothing, language, music, dance, religion, literature (print, spoken, digital, and other forms), theater and ritual performance, geographical influences, and art in all its media and performative styles.13 It is from this perspective that Candelaria, Aldama, and others designed the taxonomy for The Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture. The twovolume reference thus becomes a valuable tool for those interested in reading on specific contributions and contributors to Latin@ popular culture.14 In efforts to further clarify the types of endeavors that constitute the field of Latin@ popular culture, the table below identifies the subject fields provided by the editors. I have included the table above to make clear the myriad entryways to studying and understanding popular and pop culture in the Latin@ United States. The encyclopedia’s taxonomy is important to consider as it broadly categorizes fields for consideration in Latin@ popular culture. As evidenced through the extensive list, the field spirals out into many realms of influence. Entries in the encyclopedia include actors such as Jessica Alba, the popular Mexican American star of television and film; Table 5.1 List of subject fields from the Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture’s “Entries by Subject” Actors and Performers Art Artists Associations and Community-Based Organizations Business and Commerce Crafts and Technology Cultural Centers Dance Ethnicity Fashion and Clothing Film Folklore Food and Cooking Gangs Gender Geography and Place History Holidays and Fiestas
Health Practices Immigration Language Law and Policy Leaders and Legends Literature Museums, Libraries, and Archives Music Musicians and Singers Periodicals and Newspapers Playwrights Politics Publishers Religion Sports Television and Media Theater and Drama Holistic Theory
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Andy Garcia, the Cuban American actor and director; Benjamin Bratt, the Peruvian American action star; and Rita Hayworth, the Mexican American actress of classic American film. Along with entries about people involved in various popular culture industries, the encyclopedia also defines the products of traditional, historic, and contemporary Latin@ creativity. The entries range from papel picado (decorative paper garlands) used as decorations at celebrations to celebrations such as Día de los Muertos, Cinco de Mayo, and Quinceañeras. The encyclopedia works to provide as broad a spectrum of popular culture as possible in hopes that “in providing solid, documented information about Latin@ popular culture and heritage, the Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture will deepen the substance of conversations throughout the world on culture, (trans)nationalism, and representation, to contribute to a genuine narrative of community.”15 With regard to “making the umbrella,” the above discussion makes clear that Latin@s involved in any of the multiple forms of production are actively making meaning. In the introduction to Latino/a Popular Culture, edited by Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero, the editors articulate the tensions between the kinds of meaning made inside and outside of the Latin@ communities. They argue, “As emergent signifiers, ‘Latina’ and ‘Latino’ have no fixed definition; historical and social locations create shifting fields of meaning. The power to define these terms is political and economic and plays out symbolically in the imaginative products of the popular culture machine.”16 Thus, the readers or the audience of such imaginative products are left to negotiate the tensions of the meaning(s) that is (are) being made. In a recent boxing match on May 5, 2007, between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, the producers of the boxing match, de la Hoya’s own company, Golden Boy Promotions, carefully marketed the sporting event as a cultural event17 hosted on Cinco de Mayo.18 Was de la Hoya paying reverence to his own Mexican American heritage by promoting the fight on Cinco de Mayo? Or did the major moneymaking machine that corporate America has made out of Cinco de Mayo influence the marketing choices? On the night of the fight, many nods toward recognizing the significance of the date were made. From Pepe Aguilar, the popular ranchera musician singing the Mexican national anthem and the Puerto Rican musician and singer Marc Anthony performing “The Star Spangled Banner” to Mayweather approaching the ring in a Mexican sombrero, wearing trunks reminiscent of the green, white, and red of the Mexican flag, the cultural underpinnings of the fight were apparent. Very soon after the fight, the economic significance of marketing to a Latin@ audience brought by the careful marketing was also made clear. The revenue for the fight’s HBO Pay-Per-View release generated a record high of $120 million.
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De la Hoya’s purse from the event, regardless of his loss to Mayweather, has been recorded at over $50 million. In what ways can this event be read? Viewing this boxing match as a major event in Latin@ popular culture, Romero and Habell-Pallán inform the reading of this event “as social and artistic phenomena through which major cultural and political debates, conflicts, and social expressions of identity, gender, sexuality, community, and nation are staged and performed.”19 It becomes meaningful that media coverage leading up to the event kept the boxers in a contentious dialogue, not only about the fight, but also about their “tough” backgrounds growing up in their respective Mexican American and African American communities and the ways in which their communities shaped their masculinities. In a Time magazine article “Will the De La Hoya-Mayweather Fight Save Boxing?” Floyd Mayweather is described as a child whose father “taught him how to punch in his stroller,” and it is noted that as an infant Mayweather was used by his father as a human shield in a gun altercation with another family member. De la Hoya is figured as a “softer” man, “bred tough in East L.A. but now a clean-cut corporate sweetheart whose broad, boyish smile has made millions swoon into his corner.”20 In this configuration, the two men are not only prizefighters, they become symbolic of the stereotypical violent roles cast onto Mexican American spaces and African American men in the United States. In the media’s figuring of the fight, de la Hoya, unlike Mayweather, is presented as being domesticated by corporate America. Since the 2000 census, much has been reported in the media about Latin@s “taking over” as the largest U.S. ethnic minority group, whereas this group was historically African American. The ring, in this sense, becomes one of the battlegrounds where this political debate posing a brown man against a black man can play out visually, reinforcing the absence of the dominant white society’s responsibility for the lack of resources they are symbolically fighting over. It also keeps men of color in the realm of violence even though that violence is mitigated through the auspices of a sporting event. That Cinco de Mayo was chosen as the date adds layers of meaning to the fight in that de la Hoya became a symbolic figure of cultural pride to the many Latin@ viewers (particularly Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Chican@s). To further complicate this reading, even with the split-decision loss of the fight, de la Hoya was actually the economic winner earning $30 million more than Mayweather through his production of the fight, and was projected to be the highest-paid athlete in the United States for 2007.21 This example is laden with opportunities for Latin@ popular culture interpretations. For Romero and Habell-Pallán, “issues of popular culture and the construction of Latina and Latino identity cannot be separated from issues of class, labor, and political economy—language, nationality,
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and citizenship.”22 It is clear that a reading of this event is always already invested in language, nationality, and citizenship, from considering the decision to host the event on Cinco de Mayo to the bicultural inclusion of the Mexican national anthem sung in Spanish and the United States’ national anthem sung by a Latino, as well as the simultaneous Pay-Per-View showing on HBO in English and HBO Latino in Spanish. For de la Hoya, this production springs from a long boxing history of Mexican Los Angeles.23 In the first half of the twentieth century, Los Angeles boxing contributed to a sense of belonging among people of Mexican descent in the way flags, anthems, religious icons, geographical boundaries, commonality of language, political structures, and the ideas of a shared culture did.24 Decades later, de la Hoya’s influence as a boxer and promoter poses notions of mere inclusion in a mainstream sport against those of being a leader in producing the sport. Early in his career, de la Hoya “appealed to many corporate sponsors because he was telegenic, family-oriented, and wholesome. His promoters portrayed him as ‘all-American,’ the antithesis of the stereotypical, threatening Mexican masculinity so often represented by the media.”25 Also, as he became more successful, the media often reported on how his community had read him as emasculated for his wholesome persona (i.e., not “macho”) and deracialized him for allegedly colluding with the mores of Anglo American corporate thought when he moved out of East Los Angeles to the more affluent Montebello. However, de la Hoya consistently presented himself as a proud, bicultural man of color through his choice of boxing trunks with the Mexican flag on one side and the U.S. flag on the other, which he consistently wore in his early career. In this sense, the bicultural spectacular of the Cinco de Mayo fight can be read as a reassertion of his racialized masculinity through a negotiation of his role as fighter/performer and as promoter/producer. We must juxtapose de la Hoya with the hypermasculinized Mayweather who could be read as taking the “macho” Mexican pose as he entered the ring. Mayweather’s choice to wear a sombrero and trunks in the colors of the Mexican flag can be understood as purposefully ambiguous. Were they meant to provoke de la Hoya and the Latin@ fans by invoking stereotypical images of media Mexicans? Could they have been an earnest attempt to celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Or could his choice of uniform be read as an attempt to express Anzaldúa’s concept of mestizaje, “or cultural syncretism, in which survival has meant negotiating identities in the borderlands of racial, sexual, and national power?”26 In this sense, we can read de la Hoya and Mayweather as negotiating a ring of historic exploitation in the boxing world and in society in general. Rather than “brown man versus black man,” the visual rhetoric of Mayweather’s entrance suggests
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to the reader that we are to read him as “the stereotypical, threatening Mexican” with whom de la Hoya is referenced in counterdistinction. However, in setting up this problematic binary—“macho” man against soft man—Mayweather immediately begins to dismantle it when he removes the sombrero. Left only with his Mexican flag trunks, reminiscent of de la Hoya’s own bicultural trunks, the removal of the stereotypical sombrero signifies a change in Mayweather’s masculinity. This plays with how we are to read race in this boxing match. Mayweather’s “black”-ness is not erased, rather it is refigured, opening avenues for us to read Mayweather’s identity through a lens of mestizaje, as a man negotiating the borderlands of race, gender, and sexuality. Thus, we can read the two boxers’ performances not as contentious but as collaborative. Historically, there have been complex and meaningful relationships between African Americans and Mexicans in the United States.27 As symbolic of men of color historically pitted against one another to fight for resources—representation, housing, education, health care, etc.—de la Hoya and Mayweather’s fight can remain in this realm of investigation. However, I offer a different reconfiguring—the fight as a collaborative act. In this figuring, the ring becomes a place where both of these men, figured in stereotypes in the mainstream media, can be economically victorious. On the surface they are fighting each other, but they are also renegotiating (i.e., fighting) a system that has historically disenfranchised them as men of color. There are obvious ways to further complicate this reading: How are de la Hoya and Mayweather replicating problematic race, gender, and sex hierarchies? How can this discussion take into account gender and sexuality to include a discussion of how women are or are not involved in the boxing world, specifically, but in sports, generally? And so on. However, with regard to exemplifying the complex nature of reading Latin@ popular culture, the de la Hoya / Mayweather fight provides a rich model for reading the multiple layers of Latin@ cultural production and also for understanding the ways in which Latin@ cultural production is consistently invested in cross-cultural alliances as well.
Using the Umbrella: Complicating Latin@ Cultural Production in a Corporate Age From boxing to hip-hop music to corporate commercials, understanding Latin@ popular culture also means understanding how people are selling, buying, and using the “umbrella” of Latin@ culture. Latin@ cultural expressions are created within and outside Latin@ communities. Oftentimes, particularly in corporate constructions of identity, Latin@
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pop images are often invoked to create a sense of inclusion without being rooted in the historical or sociopolitical context in which they were created. An example of this is the 1990s Taco Bell advertising campaign that parodied cultural revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara as a taco-selling Chihuahua. In “Appropriation and Popular Culture,” Arturo J. Aldama and Cordelia Chávez Candelaria explain that implicit in the understanding of appropriation in popular culture studies is the first definition of the word in its strictest sense, which means “to take possession of, without consent and unlawfully.”28 Significantly, the Latin root of “appropriation,” proprius and proprietas, is the same stem form as that of the word “property.” This linguistic context underscores the significance of appropriation in popular culture studies, for a large number of scholars believe that much of American popular culture, possibly even a majority of it, is adapted and appropriated from the creative property and cultural practices of marginalized peoples. Like the concept of colonialism wherein a more powerful country takes over a smaller, more vulnerable country and exploits that nation’s resources, appropriation, in essence, is about dominance and exploitation for profit.29 Contemporarily, it is common to see corporate appropriations of identity as Latin@ populations and economic buying power grow in the United States. In a 2007 Starbucks campaign, the corporate coffee giant advertised its Latin American coffee blends under the slogan “Soy Starbucks. I am Starbucks.” The bilingual advertisements featured Latin@s at all stages of coffee production (as growers of coffee and makers of traditional flavorings like dulce de leche) and as consumers of the coffee. In addition to the print campaign, Starbucks has also started serving food items such as empanadas to create an ambience of inclusivity. Again, these types of appropriations beg scholars of Latin@ popular culture to begin asking questions: Is Starbucks taking advantage of traditional Latin@ foods and methods of food production for profit? How does the corporatization of culture limit the ways in which Latin@ communities can market their own products for profit? Can their selling of Latin@ products mainstream Latin@ culture in positive ways while simultaneously exploiting traditional cultures? How does our reading change when considering how the slogan “Soy Starbucks” is evocative of the slogan “Soy Zapatista”? The Zapatista movement was started by indigenous people in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas to assert their rights to autonomy of culture with full rights to their ancestral lands. The phrase “Soy Zapatista” was popularized by Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesperson for the EZLN, in the early 1990s as an effort to encourage their global audience, reached in large part through the Internet, to identify as Zapatistas to understand how the oppression of indigenous people in Chiapas is connected to the
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oppression of people everywhere. The Zapatistas actively fight neoliberalism and the corporate models (like Starbucks) that benefit from policies like NAFTA that exploit indigenous and poor people. In their efforts toward remaining autonomous, many Chiapanecan communities have started organic farming cooperatives to sell coffee at a fair price to growers. This grassroots movement has put pressure on major buyers, such as Starbucks, to serve only fair-trade coffee. In this context it seems unlikely that the company could claim ignorance of the similarities in slogans. Aldama and Candelaria address this tension by arguing that in a globalized society one could argue that all culture is up for grabs and that when food, music, and clothing corporations launch international campaigns to appropriate ethnic cultures it is a form of corporate acknowledgment. Until it actually means economic success for impoverished communities, however, and until artisans of the community are credited and paid for their labor, the homogenization and selling of ethnic-inspired products will continue to fail to meet the needs of grassroots people and cultures.30 This passage speaks to how appropriation disallows Latin@ communities from participating in many large corporate markets, but it is important to note that Latin@s find a way to participate in other ways. Studying popular culture allows scholars not only to read the mass media models of identity but also to read how communities interpret and refigure those mass media models. In my hometown of Española, New Mexico—a predominantly Chicana/o and American Indian community— a local entrepreneur opened a local coffee shop named Carlbucks.31 The hand-painted signage advertising the shop mimics the corporate logo with the exception of the wording and variations on the central image of a woman drinking coffee in the Starbucks version. In the Carlbucks version, the central image is of an elk’s skull with antlers framing a zia sign (a pueblo Indian four-directions symbol and the central image of the New Mexico flag); stylized lines around the central image mimic the form of the woman from the original Starbucks logo. The zia symbol and the elk’s skull are images of local significance. In particular, the elk’s skull speaks to the large population of hunters in northern New Mexico who commonly travel on Highway 285, the road on which Carlbucks is located. Upon first glance, the viewer is caught off guard by the Carlbucks sign, but it takes no more than a few seconds to realize that the sign is riffing on and simultaneously depending on the recognition of the Starbucks sign to lend credibility to the business or to provide a stark alternative to the corporate coffee business. In her text Chicano Art: Inside and Outside the Master’s House, Alicia Gaspar de Alba cites Tomás Ybarra-Frausto as coining the term rasquachismo, “a uniquely working-class aesthetic of Mexican origin—resourceful, excessive, ironic, and, in its transformation
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of utilitarian articles into sacred or aesthetic objects, highly metaphoric.”32 Though Carlbucks cannot necessarily be read as sacred or aesthetic, the term rasquache certainly applies as it transforms a common symbol of mass culture into a resourceful and ironic metaphor for an alternative to corporate consumption. Though Gaspar de Alba is looking specifically at Chicano art, she articulates a paradigm of rasquachismo that is useful for considering the ways in which Latin@s have creative agency over Latin@ popular culture, specifically, but also mass culture, generally. Her model is based on Celeste Olalquiaga’s study of kitsch and religious paraphernalia.33 Gaspar de Alba formulates the three degrees of rasquachismo as such: Like kitsch, rasquachismo comes in at least three flavors noted by Olalquiaga: first-degree rasquachismo, or icons, objects, and practices that are rooted in the oral and popular traditions of Chicano/a culture; second-degree rasquachismo, which is appropriated from its original context by mainstream commercial enterprises such as stores that sell “ethnic” paraphernalia by taking, for example, iconography from Mexican and Chicano culture (such as Popocatépetl/Ixtaccihuatl imagery taken from calendarios, the José Guadalupe Posada calaveras, and reproductions of Frida Kahlo’s work) and appliquéing these images to clothing, mouse pads, coffee mugs, throw rugs, etc., all bearing the business’s own labels; and third-degree rasquachismo that informs the work of Chicano and Chicana artists—writers, musicians, filmmakers, and other producers of culture.34
Carlbucks is articulating third-degree rasquachismo in that it recycles a commodified symbol of coffee consumption that originally exploited the traditional Latin@ food practice of selling coffee. In this figuring, Gaspar de Alba’s model of rasquachismo works to empower Latin@s producing popular culture to gaze back at dominant culture and to question problematic models of appropriation. It provides a model for appropriating the mass images that appropriate Latin@ culture, and highlights the ways in which Latinas/os challenge, produce, and incorporate structures to, in some cases, replicate problematic power structures, and in other cases to revise the power structures more equitably.
Did I Buy the Umbrella?: Trajectories for Further Considering Latin@ Popular Culture It is important to note that as the field of Latin@ popular culture grows, there is a reassertion of la raza constantly defining and redefining itself. As members of our specific communities and as consumers in the capitalist marketplaces found in the United States, Latin@s constantly employ
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differential consciousness models of identity when negotiating popular and pop culture to decide how and in which ways to interact with the multiple processes involved as producers, creators, writers, audience members, and/or consumers. We all negotiate these roles on multiple sites. In Methodology of the Oppressed Chela Sandoval asserts that the differential consciousness model allows identity negotiations from the liminal space between the either/or binaries where subjectivity designated for third-world people of color in the West emerges.35 With regard to Latin@ popular culture, Sandoval’s differential consciousness model allows shifting between and amongst the simultaneous identities that inform and maintain cultural production. From this position, “the practitioners of the differential mode of social movement develop and mobilize identity as political tactic in order to renegotiate power.”36 From this perspective, Latin@s as producers and reproducers of culture are involved in a social movement invested in the politics of representation as power. We are producers and consumers of Latin@ popular culture empowered to maneuver identity formations. As the Latin@ population in the United States booms, more and more companies, universities, and institutions are also being forced to consider their collective identities to include Latin@ perspectives in their practices. This leads us back to the beginning; in the introduction of this chapter you will remember that I was considering buying the “I’m Hot” chile T-shirt at Target. Did I succumb to the culturally produced moment of impulse shopping? Or did I just say no to the product as another gross stereotype of Latinas? I said no. I realized that the T-shirt made me laugh precisely because it failed to represent me. Even though I am rather fond of chiles, on this shirt they were oversimplified symbols of my identity. If I were to buy a T-shirt with chiles on it, the image would have to encompass the more complex nature of chile production, including the land, the water, the sun, and the hands of the people who cultivate it. In much the same way, as a field of exchange, Latin@ popular culture, with all of its dynamics, contradictions, and complexities, offers an exciting opportunity for scholars to interrogate the worlds in which Latin@s live, thrive, change, and create. Notes 1. Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero, eds., Latino/a Popular Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 2. 2. Charles M. Tatum, Chicano Popular Culture: Que Hable el Pueblo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), 3.
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3. See John Laudun’s discussion on the use of the term “folk” in his article “Is “Folk” a Four-Letter Word?” in Louisiana Living Traditions. Available at http:// www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/folk_is_not.html (accessed on January 11, 2010). 4. T. W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 5. See Antonio Gramsci’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971). Also see Louis Althusser’s Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001). 6. For more on mass culture, see John Fiske’s Reading the Popular (Boston: Unwin and Hyman, 1989) and Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. Stuart Hall, David Morley, et al. (New York: Routledge, 1996). 7. Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular,’” in People’s History and Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel (Boston: Routledge, 1981), 39. 8. Nestor García-Canclini, Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico, trans. L. Lozano (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 10. 9. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, The Dirty Girls Social Club (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003); and Valdes-Rodriguez, Dirty Girls on Top (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008). For a longer discussion of Valdes-Rodriguez’s Dirty Girls texts, see “Subjective Agency, Global Nuevomexicana Identity, and the Politics of Consumption in the Dirty Girls Social Club, Dirty Girls on Top, and Mother Tongue,” in Patricia Trujillo’s dissertation, Gentefication: A Spatial Rhetorical Analysis of Differential Landscapes in Northern New Mexico Literature and Social Space (diss., University of Texas at San Antonio, 2008, print). 11. Cordelia Chávez Candelaria and Arturo Aldama, et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, vol. A-L and M-Z (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), xxv. 12. Ibid., xxiii. 13. Ibid., xxiv–xxv. 14. One note that should be made for usage of the reference is that the editors of the encyclopedia did not clarify the differences between the terms “popular culture” and “pop culture” as described above; therefore, in the encyclopedia these terms are used interchangeably and without nuanced differences between meanings. 15. Cordelia Chávez Candelaria and Arturo Aldama, et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, vol. A-L and M-Z (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), xxxi. 16. Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero, Latino/a Popular Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 2. 17. See “A Real Knockout” by Larry Stewart and Lance Pugmire, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2007; and “Will the De La Hoya-Mayweather Fight Save Boxing?” by Sean Gregory, Time Magazine Online, April 26, 2007. 18. Though not a federally recognized holiday in the United States or Mexico, the day commemorates an initial victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio
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19. 20.
21. 22. 23.
24. 25. 26. 27.
28.
29. 30. 31.
32. 33. 34. 35. 36.
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Zaragoza Seguín over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The date is observed internationally as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride. Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero, Latino/a Popular Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 6. Sean Gregory, “Will De La Hoya-Mayweather Fight Save Boxing?” Time Magazine Online, April 26, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1615178,00.html (accessed on January 12, 2010). Ibid. Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero, Latino/a Popular Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 3. Gregory Rodriguez, “Boxing and Masculinity: The History and (Her)Story of Oscar de la Hoya,” in Latino/a Popular Culture, ed. Michelle Habell-Pallán and Mary Romero (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 253. Ibid., 253. Ibid., 254. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 2002). A traveling exhibition on the issues of Afro-Mexicanidad and African identity in Mexico is currently being exhibited around the country at various cultural arts centers and museums. In addition, there is a companion exhibit entitled “Who Are We Now? Roots, Resistance & Recognition” that explores the complex relationships between African Americans and Mexicans in the United States. Both exhibitions were organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois. Arturo J. Aldama and Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, “Appropriation and Popular Culture,” in the Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, vol. A-L., ed. Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo Aldama, and others (Westport: Greenwood, 2004), 30. Ibid., 30–34. Ibid., 33–34. As of July 2009, Carlbucks is no longer the name of the business mentioned in this chapter that was written at an earlier date. Despite the change in business name, I keep the example to show how the riffing of a mass culture production influenced the business owner at one time to incorporate the well-known image into the marketing of his business. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Chicano Art: Inside/Outside the Master’s House (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 12. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 13–14. Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University Press of Minnesota, 2000), 144. Ibid., 145.
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Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Educators Paving a Road toward Conocimiento María E. Fránquiz
When you include the complexity of feeling two or more ways about a person/issue, when you empathize and try to see her circumstances from her position, you accommodate the other’s perspective, achieving un conocimiento that allows you to shift toward a less defensive, more inclusive identity. When you relate to others, not as parts, problems, or useful commodities, but from a connectionist view compassion triggers transformation. (Gloria Anzaldúa).
n her explanation of the seven stages of conocimiento (reflective consciousness), Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa1 explains that this concept is embodied in the wisdom known in many cultures—that we walk in others’ shoes, that we love them as ourselves, that we empathize and sympathize with others from our own or a different group, and that we listen carefully to each others’ views. This is sound advice. So how can teachers develop this kind of consciousness work among young students in educational settings, particularly in classrooms with majority Latin@ students? To address this question I present portraits of teachers and students in U.S. classrooms who are interested in making schools and literacy instruction more responsive to bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate learners. Because I am primarily interested in working with teachers that actively promote opportunities for the positive social and academic development of young Latin@2 students who can be said to be traveling on the biliteracy highway,3 I pay attention not only to what teachers say (for example, in
I
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interviews) but to what they actually do in educational settings with their students’ linguistic and cultural resources to foster conocimiento. This chapter, then, presents a case study of student engagement with and responses to children’s stories written by Anzaldúa, Amigos del otro lado (Friends from the Other Side), published in 1993, and Prietita y la llorona (Prietita and the Ghost Woman), published in 1995. These two stories were selected because they have been found to assist with the development and use of critical thinking skills or with “reading to learn.”4 Put another way, by critical thinking I am not referring to instances when teachers ask students only “known information questions”5 that invite them to recite the facts (characters, setting, plot, outcome) in stories. Rather, by critical thinking I refer to Anzaldúa’s theorization of conocimiento or the development of deep reflective consciousness that questions conventional knowledge while fostering a less defensive and more inclusive personal and collective identity. The two books Amigos del otro lado and Prietita y la llorona are appropriate for fostering conocimiento as they are typically chosen by elementary school districts’ Departments of Language Arts and Bilingual / English-as-a-Second-Language Education precisely because they provide many culturally relevant references that connect Latin@ students to story characters and authentic social contexts. However, documents of effective strategies used by teachers during the reading and response to bilingual parallel texts such as Anzaldúa’s Amigos del otro lado and Prietita y la llorona in the elementary grades are few. Additionally, educators rarely find appropriate literature for drawing out firsthand accounts of their students’ various stances toward complex social issues— specifically, undocumented immigration, curanderismo (folk knowledge about healing), biosystems along the U.S.-Mexico border, poverty in both rural and urban settings, and tension between U.S.-born Latin@s and recently arrived Latin@s, among other themes. My Position as Writer, Researcher, Theorist Although I am not of Mexican-American descent as are Anzaldúa and the majority of teachers and students whose lives I discuss in this chapter, I share the same social justice orientation. As a Puerto Rican professor of bilingual/biliteracy studies I locate myself in the camp of Diasporican scholars. The term Diasporican was popularized by the Nuyorican poet Mariposa and refers to the increasingly diverse and dynamically evolving nature of Puerto Rican identity within the United States.6 This identity aligns with theories of the sociocultural foundations of education and of critically caring feminist theorists.7 Caring theorists value an ethos of caring and are concerned when the curriculum and school are not actively
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promoting a search for meaningful connections between teacher and students, between students and families, and among students themselves. These interpersonal connections are the ones that have profound consequences for the ways in which students’ identities develop and for the ways in which their academic resiliency is influenced.8 A premise underlying all my work is that when interpersonal relationships, curricula, and institutional structures do not place value on the native languages, histories, and cultures of students, literacy resources for learning are subtracted9 and academic resiliency suffers.10 As explained by Thompson,11 critical educators ought not to equate caring with emotionally laden practices of feeling pity for Latin@ students’ circumstances nor ought they to lower academic expectations. More poignantly noted, critical educators are not motivated by “ay bendito” or “pobrecito” (“poor little one”) forms of teacher caring.12 Instead I suggest that communities of color understand caring within their own sociocultural context and possess promising, rather than deficient, funds of knowledge.13 Unfortunately, these funds of knowledge are too often not academically validated in schools.14 Thus, in this chapter I pay particular attention to how the neglected and misunderstood hidden literacies15 among Latin@ students demonstrate potential for positive identity formation, development of conocimiento, and potential for academic success. The Transformative Potential of Bilingual Children’s Literature In 1982 Linda Smuckler asked Anzaldúa the question, “Can you talk about your voice in writing?” Gloria responded: I have many voices. But I think the voice I most treasure is this little voice I had when I was little, which I call Gloria Gaurita; she was my little childself. She was repressed and never got a chance to be a child. She had to be adult. I associate creativity and imagination with her. She’s tender, open and vulnerable. I think that’s my main voice. And then I have these other voices. You know, Gloria the lesbian, Gloria the feminist, Gloria the person interested in philosophy, psychology, psychic phenomena.16
With this child-self in mind I worked with a team of three doctoral students17 to learn about the child voices of Chicanit@s attending public elementary schools in Austin, Texas. As a research team we were interested in learning about how teachers used and children responded to two children’s books written by Anzaldúa—Amigos del otro lado (Friends from the Other Side) and Prietita y la llorona (Prietita and the Ghost Woman). We recorded classroom observations and discussed the types of connections
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Latin@ children made with these two pieces of literature. We were particularly invested in learning about how the linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge from children’s homes and communities were used to better understand these texts. Our hope was to witness ways that critical thinking was promoted through this literature. This meant observing for questioning by teachers or students of “conventional knowledge’s current categories, classifications, and contents”18 as well as documenting opportunities provided and taken up for development of reflective consciousness— moving from desconocimiento (ignorance or willful unawareness) toward deep critical awareness. The theoretical assumption for the study of the movement toward awareness requires that the teacher become a bridge between the funds of knowledge from home and the valued language and literacy practices of school. In this way students’ travel toward conocimiento is facilitated when teachers choose to be a bridge rather than a wall and provide an invitation to travel on a biliteracy highway rather than demand travel on a parallel English-only thoroughfare. But how do teachers themselves acquire this conocimiento and what strategies do they use to promote conocimientos? Anzaldúa defines conocimiento as the Spanish word for knowledge and skills, and argues that the acquisition of conocimiento has to do with getting to know each other by really listening with the outer and the inner ears. I argue that the two children’s books authored by Anzaldúa can be used to promote conocimiento. At the same time it is how the teacher uses these books in her/his class that determines whether critical thinking takes place or not. To provide an appropriate context for the argument presented in this chapter, I provide a synopsis of the two books. Then, I will show how two teachers used these books to provide students opportunities to acquire conocimientos. In Amigos del otro lado, the protagonist is a girl from Texas, Prietita, who asks Joaquín, a boy from the Mexican side of the border, “Did you come from the other side? You know, from Mexico?” Since their arrival in Texas, the boy and his mother suffered the scorn of some of the MexicanAmericans, but Joaquín immediately discovers that Prietita meant no harm. In fact, they begin a solid friendship in spite of the economic hardships that Joaquín and his mother endure after crossing the Rio Grande River in search of a better life. In the story, Prietita’s cousin and other neighborhood kids taunt Joaquín. They call him mojado, a derogatory term for individuals who have crossed the river from Mexico to the United States. Prietita successfully warns the kids off. The feelings of children as well as adults are explored, and Prietita plans to take Joaquin to the curandera (natural healer) for treatment of the sores he hides under long sleeves. The climax of the story is when Prietita must figure out what can
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be done to protect Joaquín and his mother from the Border Patrol. While the suspense builds there is also a good dose of Chican@ humor when Prietita’s neighbors tell the Chicano migra that there are some “illegals” living in “the gringo side of town” (n.p.).19 The book is not considered overtly didactic. Instead it paints for its readers a picture of humanitarian engagement.20 Additionally, the illustrations by Consuelo Méndez are rich with cultural references (Don Pedrito Jaramillo, Santo Niño de Atocha, mesquite trees, nopal, La Virgen de Guadalupe) that provide opportunities for exploring deeper levels of reading with young readers. In the second book that Anzaldúa wrote for children, Prietita is again the protagonist. The story takes place in a setting in South Texas near the infamous King Ranch, one of the world’s largest ranches with hundreds of thousands of acres considered by many as stolen from Mexico. This area is home to many native plants such as nopal and animals like the jaguarundi as well as trees such as mesquite and huisache. Ever since she can remember, Prietita has heard frightening stories about La Llorona—the legendary ghost woman who steals children at night. One day when Prietita goes in search of the missing herb that can help cure her mother’s illness, she becomes lost in the woods. Suddenly she hears a distant crying sound and sees flashes of white in the trees. She wonders if it could be La Llorona. In Prietita’s search for the healing ruda plant that will cure her mother, she discovers that La Llorona is not at all like what people had said she would be. Both stories offer powerful themes for teachers drawing out funds of knowledge regarding students’ lived experiences and those of their parents and community, and provide opportunities to critically think about sensitive social and political issues. However, teachers must become comfortable teaching topics where students must struggle with uncomfortable themes.21 In the two books that teachers used for this study, themes included the hardship of daily life on the border for poor children and their families, the beauty of the plants and animals in the landscape, intergenerational apprenticeship related to health and healing, and examining the dignity and generosity Mexican-American and Mexican immigrants ought to share among themselves but often do not. As Anzaldúa explains, to be a bridge “is an act of will, an act of love, an attempt toward compassion and reconciliation, and a promise to be present with the pain of others without losing themselves to it.”22 Others concur and provide further ways of imagining how to be a bridge: There can be bridges that join community knowledge and school validation of that knowledge. There can be bridges between parents and teachers, school and community. There can be bridges of understanding in learning communities. There can be bridges between practical, out-of-school,
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experiential knowledge and academic, abstract knowledge. And of course, there are bridges between diverse peoples who come together to fulfill a common mission. There is also the bridge between childhood and adulthood.23
Two Stories and Two Classrooms During the academic year 2008–2009 pedagogical strategies such as Read Alouds, literature discussions, and writing activities in six bilingual classrooms from the third to the fifth grades were observed for five months. Oral discourse and written artifacts from more than 100 students were collected. Analyses of transcripts and artifacts from these classes provide firsthand accounts of students’ various stances on complex issues, such as undocumented immigration, curanderismo, and endangered wildlife, among others, within the stories. For this chapter, I focus on two of the six classrooms. Reading Amigos del otro lado in a newcomers’ class In the first classroom example, issues of documented and undocumented immigration examined through the lens of the characters in Amigos del otro lado provided a rich context for fifth-grade students to arrive at new conocimiento. All students in this fifth-grade class were newcomers to the United States (they had arrived in the United States in the previous two years) and were being provided a Spanish language arts literacy class to improve overall biliteracy development. They were pulled out of their regular homeroom class (English monolingual) for approximately ninety minutes a day to work with the bilingual teacher. The newcomers’ group was comprised of four fifth-grade girls and four fifth-grade boys whose families recently emigrated from Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru. The teacher whom I will call Nereida was an apprentice in the education profession and was raised in the border city of El Paso, Texas. In an autonarrative that she wrote for a writing class that I taught in Fall 2008, Nereida remembered some noninspiring experiences in her own education. I hated my reading classes because the tasks were ever so boring. The class consisted of reading passage after passage and answering questions. I think I would have much rather read a novel or anything that I could bring from home at least once in a while to distract the routine of reading short stories and answering questions. In high school, I recall reading To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Hamlet, The Bluest Eye, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights. These books were great, but even now, I don’t get very
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enthusiastic talking about them. I prefer books such as El Alquimista and Cien Años de Soledad.
For Nereida the superficial reading of classic literature and answering of superficial comprehension questions during her middle and high school years was not satisfying. She felt frustration in not being able to connect with content, having no choice in the type of material to read, and in being deprived of reading material in her heritage language. Overall, she did not feel she was “reading to learn.” For this reason Nereida stated further in her autonarrative, “Based on what I liked and disliked about my learning growing up, I will allow student choice in their writing and reading assignments. Keeping a balance between rigorous curriculum and language choice can make a difference in students and how fond they become of reading and writing.” True to her desire to provide a rigorous curriculum, cultural content, and language choice, during her student-teaching semester Nereida read Amigos del otro lado in Spanish to her newcomers in the fifth grade. They could follow the reading in English or Spanish as the story is written as a dual-language parallel text. During the reading the children noticed a dicho (proverb) written on the book’s illustration of the jacal (shack) where Joaquín lived with his mother, la espada rota no se rinde nunca (“The broken sword never surrenders”). Because the children were attracted to the dicho, for homework they were asked to collect dichos to share in class the following day. Among the ones collected from family and community members were: Perro que ladra no muerde (“A barking dog does not bite”), Más vale sola que mal acompañada (“It’s better to be alone than in bad company”), Más vale prevenir que lamentar (“It’s better to anticipate than to regret”), and Es mejor dar buena cara al mal tiempo (“It’s better to be positive during hard times”). Nereida compiled the collection of dichos into a class text representing the accumulation of funds of knowledge that had assisted her Latin@ students from different countries when they experienced geographical as well as spiritual dislocations as they traveled on the biliteracy highway. Interestingly, when the newcomer class was “brainstorming” the meanings of the concept of immigration, one young female said, “Hay personas que cruzan y hay personas que nada más pasan; que pasan nada más así” (“There are people who cross and there are people who only have to pass, who pass just like that”). This critical vocabulary distinction signals that this fifth-grade girl was aware of the different kinds of border-crossing experiences, both documented and undocumented. The use of the word solamente or “only have to” suggests that she knew about the deeper and more complicated challenges of what it meant to cross the border. Her
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peers—one who had crossed the border via the river and one who had passed the border in an airplane—took up this distinction of cruzar/pasar. For example, one girl in the newcomers’ class stated, “Yo cruzé por el Rio Bravo. ¡Yo soy inmigrante!” (“I crossed through the Rio Grande. I am an immigrant!”). However, before she made this very risky declaration to class members, she pointed at another girl in the newcomers’ class who had papeles (legal documentation) and said, “No me juzgues” (“Don’t judge me”). The teacher reinforced the need for class members to learn about and honor the different border-crossing experiences that people in general, and, they in particular, had experienced. This new range of understanding about ways people immigrate to the United States provided conocimientos that students were not always comfortable reporting to or accepting from class members. However, in this class every student was motivated to produce an immigration narrative and to compose an accompanying drawing. These narratives and illustrations were compiled in a culminating anthology representing the various firsthand experiences of children and families who emigrated from Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru to the United States. In this way the teacher acted as a bridge in assisting students to shift toward a less defensive, more inclusive identity as to who is an immigrant. She used a culturally relevant book, class discussion, illustrations, and writings as forms of activism, because her goal was for students themselves to become bridges within their own spheres of influence. Reading Prietita y la llorona in a science class In the second classroom example, the students were also fifth graders and bilingual. However, they were not newcomers to the United States. They were enrolled in a bilingual science class where their personal growing understanding of and uses for yerbas en remedios caseros (herbal use in home remedies) were documented by the researchers. In the classroom, the enrollment consisted of Texas-born students of Mexican descent and more recent immigrants from Cuba, Honduras, and Mexico (more than two years in the United States but some prior schooling outside of the United States). The teacher whom I will call Liliana was born in South Texas in the Suntex Farms ranch right outside of Rio Grande City, Texas. She is a first-generation U.S. citizen born of migrant farm workers. Liliana was also enrolled in one of my courses during the summer of 2008 and wrote in her autonarrative: When I was introduced to researching in my science and social studies classes I came to the realization that I loved to write about facts. Reading
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history books and writing reports about my learning became a favorite pastime of mine. This type of writing together with my poetry writing and letter writing really gave me an outlet to express the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and learning that I was experiencing at school and at home. Writing provided me with the consciousness of thinking about my thinking and putting it on paper. I guess in my literary life the one thing I always tried to find was my own voice. In the chaos of child poverty and migrant working, it became very important. It was an outlet away from the realities of life and a place to contemplate on what life should become for me in the future.
The search for her voice as a writer, both in disciplinary and social writing, provided Liliana with the tools necessary to deal with the mobility that was an ordinary part of her bilingual migrant family and Mexican-American community. She was acutely aware of the benefits of the funds of knowledge at home as can be seen in another passage of her autonarrative. Today, I am bilingual because of the fact my environment provided me with an enriched life filled with bilingualism and biculturalism that I wouldn’t have otherwise. If it had been up to my educational system they would have stripped me of it all. I find myself today as a teacher struggling with the fact that my students could experience this stripping away of their language and culture. The only thing I pray for is that I give them some tools to defend themselves and to protect themselves from it all.
Liliana’s writing illustrates deep conocimiento that in her own education maintenance of her Spanish-heritage language had typically been seen as a problem to be expunged by her and other Latin@ students. Instead, Liliana knew that her bilingualism should have been seen as a resource for her learning or acknowledged as her fundamental human right.24 The desire to equip her students with the bilingual and bicultural tools that had been passed to her by family and community was evident across the weeks that her lessons were documented using the Anzaldúa story Prietita y la llorona. When Liliana used the story, she wanted to use the text as a bridge to understanding concepts such as habitats, ecosystems, and animal and plant adaptations. As was customary she pretaught these science concepts in Spanish and later extended knowledge of the concepts in English. The bilingual story of Prietita y la llorona was ideal for preteaching as well as for eliciting students’ prior knowledge and experience. The teacher began by reading the story from the overhead projector. As she read she asked students to jot down the plant and animal life included in the illustrations or mentioned in the conversations among the characters in the story. Among the plants identified by the children were many hierbas (herbs). These
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included yerba buena (mint), ruda (rue), sábila (aloe vera), pino (pine), and nopal (cactus). Among the animals identified by the children were luciérnagas (fireflies), jaguarundi (endangered feline animals of South Texas), venado (deer), and salamandra (salamander). The individual contributions were used to create a class list regarding the plants and animals that could be found around the ranches and rural cities in South Texas, a relatively short drive on the interstate from their school. To build a bridge between the funds of knowledge at home and the required science curriculum, Liliana asked her students to bring actual hierbas (herbs) from home. These were compared with each other. Next the students wrote an expository text explaining how their families used these herbs as remedios (remedies). Some brought nopal (cactus), ruda (rue), canela (cinnamon), oregano, manzanilla (chamomile), and arnica (species of sunflower family). They wrote about the ways mint was used to cure stomachaches or colic, how chamomile was used for sore throats or headaches, and that rue was used for headaches and earaches. The aloe vera was mentioned by many of the children because the sap could be used for rashes, pimples, wounds, and cuts; the juice could be used for gastritis; and the plant, like many others, was used in making healing teas. One student wrote, Le avisé a mi mamá que me dió fiebre y me hizo una canela y me quedé mirando cómo lo hacía. Primero pones una olla con agua a hervir. Luego pones la canela en la olla y la dejas por unos minutos. También me quedé mirando para saber cómo hacer para que cuando [me] sintiera mal me hiciera uno yo sola. [I let my mom know that I had a fever and she made cinnamon tea and I watched how she did it. First you put a large pot of water to boil. Then you put the cinnamon in the pot and leave it for a few minutes. I watched so that when I feel sick I can make the tea alone.]
With this student’s story there was an accompanying detailed illustration of the school, the route that led to her house, and the exterior and interior of her house with the herb, stove, pot, and her bed, all labeled. This illustration was a concrete example of how this student felt about the bridge her teacher was constructing between lived experience at home and the science curriculum at school. The class was better able to understand the science curriculum as a result of examining the role of herbs in family/community healing practices. For example, students were able to articulate that the rue plant grows by water and that Prietita found the healing herb on the riverbank. Students also agreed that the nopal adapts to grow in the desert and that the jaguarundi adapts to live in the underbrush.
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The Path of Conocimiento through Sustained Literary Study What seems important in these two classrooms is that both teachers are responsible for teaching the required curriculum but without separating school instruction from the funds of linguistic and cultural knowledge children bring to the classroom from home and their community. The teachers, Nereida and Liliana, see their students’ lived experiences as an important resource for learning. They see the heritage language and cultural traditions as equally credible resources. For them, achieving conocimiento is about creating class assignments that capitalize on all the linguistic and cultural resources from home as much as it is about teachers and students taking risks in using these resources at school. The way Anzaldúa explained this type of bridge is summarized in the words that Jamie Lee Evans captured on audiotape when she interviewed her in 1993: “One of the drawbacks to being a bridge is being walked on, but one of the pluses is that it’s two-way—oncoming and outgoing traffic. It’s being in different worlds and getting the best from those worlds.”25 As discussed in this chapter, the children in these two classrooms lived in different cultural worlds at home and in school, but their teachers were willing to be a bridge across these worlds as they traveled together with their students along the biliteracy highway that comprises fifth grade and beyond. Nereida and Liliana’s pedagogy can be described as a humanizing pedagogy26 because it produces what Anzaldúa stated were “new conocimientos [that] have to shift the frame of reference, reframe the issue or situation being looked at, connect the disparate parts of information in new ways or from a perspective that’s new.”27 Implications for educators The findings reported in this chapter were from a collaborative study proposing the use of Anzaldúa’s bilingual children’s books in the language, arts, and science curriculum to provide Latin@ students with opportunities to develop critical thinking and biliteracy skills for the development of conocimiento related to the study of (im)migration and the ecosystem of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. This study verifies the importance of providing children with reading materials that are culturally relevant, because such readings provide connections with their background knowledge and lived experiences. Such readings must be supplemented with discussion, including the investigation of the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the text that are typically incorporated in the dialogue and actions among characters and in the accompanying illustrations. Often the Read Aloud
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by the teacher allows students the opportunity of becoming familiar with and appreciating the sounds and structure of written language, be it the heritage or the second language. When homework relates the topics of the story to the cultural experiences of home, children are better able to generate their own stories, or at least to contribute a page to a class text. Examining the Latin@ children’s development of biliteracy and conocimiento in school is significant, because these skills augment intellectual possibilities, provide access to a broader range of social and cultural resources, and encourage teachers and children to place value on household and community funds of knowledge as key sites for linguistic and cultural identity formation as well as content-area learning. Because Mexican immigrants in the United States are often targets of symbolic violence,28 Liliana and Nereida recognized that dominant ideologies are often internalized by such students and motivated them to create spaces in the language arts and science curriculum for close reading and responding to relevant stories—such as Amigos del otro lado and Prietita y la llorona—where child protagonists can actively resist, interrupt, and contradict the status quo. By utilizing a sustained literacy study approach (or the studying of one literacy theme over time), they provided opportunities for students to accrue information, without which children are less able to question, synthesize, and evaluate what they read. This pedagogical approach aligns with the worldview of Anzaldúa who stated, “When you relate to others, not as parts, problems, or useful commodities, but from a connectionist view, compassion triggers transformation.”29 Through sustained literacy study children are able to practice making connections with their self, others (like and unlike themselves), and the complex world of the twenty-first century. What Anzaldúa described as “conocimiento—consciousness work” seeks to connect the inner life of each child to the outer worlds of action and as she specified, “Writing is a form of activism, one of making bridges.”30 While it should not be news that the inner life and funds of knowledge that students bring into classroom literacy events can be effectively used as material resources for communicating, making meaning, and constructing one’s identity as a bilingual person, it must still be shouted by the travelers on the biliteracy highway for there are different roads that English-only advocates in the United States would construct. And, while there are other researchers who agree that Spanish/English bilinguals draw on all linguistic codes available to them in patterned and structured ways to communicate, to (re)claim membership and affiliation,31 and to support children’s bilingual development at home or in school,32 there are those who would question and deny those benefits, particularly to immigrants.
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The issue of immigration continues to be as critical today as when Anzaldúa wrote about Prietita and Joaquin in 1993 and 1995. It may be that the economic recession in the United States makes the political debate more difficult today, but senior officials of the Barack Obama administration report of plans to begin addressing the U.S. immigration system comprehensively, including looking for ways that undocumented immigrants can become legal citizens.33 Such possibilities anger representatives of anti-immigration groups such as The Minutemen, Numbers USA, and FAIR (a recognized hate group). Who would ever imagine that supporting children’s bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate development would be such a contested issue in the twenty-first century? That adults would be “marinated in the vile and racist juices of an anti-illegal immigration movement that often seeks to dehumanize people it considers ‘illegal alien invaders’”?34 What we need to keep in mind is that there are teachers like Nereida and Liliana who do not judge their students by their immigration status but by their right to an additive education that honors both the part of the road left behind as well as the one on the horizon. After all, the Social Policy Report Brief, volume 22, Issue 3, of 2008 reminds us: Children in immigrant families are the fastest-growing population in the United States. This rapid growth is transforming the racial and ethnic composition of America, with the result that racial and ethnic minorities will become the majority US population. Baby boomers will depend heavily for economic support in retirement on young people who grew up in immigrant families. The current circumstances and future prospects of children in immigrant families are therefore important not only to the children themselves, but to all Americans.35
Notes 1. Gloria E. Anzaldúa, “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts,” in Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (New York: Routledge, 2002), 540–78. This essay describes the stages of conocimiento; however, Anzaldúa refers to this concept in many of her other works. 2. See the note in the introduction of this reader regarding the use of the term Latin@. It is intentionally used here even though the student populations described in this chapter are for the most part of Mexican heritage. Because Central, South American, and Caribbean students often feel invisible and struggle against being culturally and linguistically swamped by the local Mexican population, and because many students are ethnically mixed (for example, of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage), I use the term Latin@ to acknowledge this wide intragroup diversity.
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3. Traveling on the biliteracy highway is a metaphor that refers to students learning to read and respond orally and in writing in both Spanish and English. In elementary schools with bilingual education programs, the biliteracy highway is often referred to as the bilingual track or the bilingual strand. For examples, see María E. Fránquiz, “Featured Essay Book Review: Literacy Reform for Latin@ Students,” Reading Research Quarterly 38, no. 3 (July/August/ September 2003): 418–30. 4. A differentiation between “learning to read” and “reading to learn” is made in elementary education. In the former process many skill-based strategies are used to help students learn to become independent readers by emphasizing phonics, phonological awareness, and systemic phonics instruction; in the latter process children use their acquired literacy skills for greater comprehension, to question, wonder, analyze, summarize, and synthesize information. For a discussion of how fourth-grade teachers foster “reading to learn” with its reduced reliance on processing every characteristic of the word and letter, see Richard L. Allington and Peter Johnston, Reading to Learn: Lessons from Exemplary Fourth Grade Classrooms (New York: The Guilford Press, 2002). 5. Known information questions refer to questions that ask for information that is already known to the questioner. Rather than seeking information, the teacher or parent merely requires children to rehearse or verbally display their knowledge. These types of questions are commonly used in middleclass homes and help socialize children into the preferred ways for displaying knowledge in classrooms. Children from nondominant cultural groups in the United States may not be socialized to such displays of knowledge. Also see Hugh Mehan, “What time is it Denise? Some Observations On The Organization and Consequences of Making Known Information Questions in Classroom Discourse,” Theory Into Practice 18, no. 4 (1979): 285–92; Shirley Bryce Heath, “The Learner As Cultural Worker,” in The Teachability of Language, ed. Mabel R. Rice and Richard L. Scheifelbusch (Baltimore: Brookes, 1989); and Ron Scollon and Suzanne Scollon, “Athabaskan-English Interethnic Communication,” in Narrative, Literacy, And Face In Interethnic Communication, ed. Ron Scollon and Suzanne B. K. Scollon (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981), 259–90. 6. See Rene Antrop-González and Anthony De Jesús, “Toward a Theory of Critical Care in Urban Small School Reform: Examining Structures and Pedagogies of Caring in Two Latino Community-Based Schools,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 19 (2006): 409–33; and Jorge Matos Valldejuli and Juan Flores, “New Rican Voices: Un Muestraria/o Sampler at the Millennium,” Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 12, no. 1 (2000): 49–96. 7. See Rosalie Rolón-Dow, “Critical Care: A Color(Full) Analysis of Care Narratives in the Schooling Experiences of Puerto Rican Girls,” American Education Research Journal 42, no. 1 (2005): 77–111; and Nel Noddings. The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992).
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8. In a 2004 article published in the High School Journal, María del Carmen Salazar and I propose a theoretical model of respeto that is based on three principles that Chican@ high school students identified as instrumental for their academic resiliency: fostering confianza, providing buen ejemplos, and access to critical consejos. In another article written by Jason Irizarry and René Antrop-González in 2008, the authors discuss ways in which what teachers call culturally responsive teaching can be extended to combat the colonial pedagogies specifically impacting DiaspoRican student resiliency in schools; they propose “RicanStructing” the discourse of school success. 9. See Sonia Nieto, Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives for a New Century (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002); and Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999). 10. Jason Irizarry and Rene Antrop-González, “RicanStructing the Discourse and Promoting School Success: Extending a Theory of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for DiaspoRicans,” Hispanic Health Care International 6, no. 4 (2008): 172–84; and María del Carmen Salazar, “Echándole Ganas: The Elements that Support or Constrain the Academic Resiliency of Mexican Immigrant Students in a High School ESL Program” (Phd Diss., University of Colorado, Boulder, 2004). 11. Audrey Thompson, “Not the Color Purple: Black Feminist Lessons for Educational Caring,” Harvard Educational Review 68 (1998): 522–54. 12. See Lilia I. Bartolomé and María V. Balderrama, “The Need for Educators with Political and Ideological Clarity,” in The Best for Our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students, ed. Maria de la Luz Reyes and John J. Halcón (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 48–64; and María E. Berzíns and Alice E. López, “Starting Off Right: Planting the Seeds of Biliteracy,” in The Best for Our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino students, 81–95; and Eugene Garcia, Hispanic Education in the United States: Raíces y Alas (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). 13. Funds of knowledge are the accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household as well as individual functioning and well-being. These funds may include activities and knowledge related to household management (for example, knowledge of contemporary as well as folk medicine), agriculture and gardening (for example, soil and irrigation systems), mechanics (for example, repair), and religion (for example, moral knowledge of ethics), among others. For contextualized details, see Luis C. Moll, Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma González, “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms,” Theory into Practice 31 (1992): 132–41; and Carlos G. Vélez-Ibañez and James B. Greenberg, “Formation and Transformation of Funds of Knowledge among U.S.-Mexican Households,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1992): 313–35. Later in 2002, Gonzáles and Moll argued that funds of knowledge are rooted in practice—in what individuals and households actually do and what they think about what they do. Often exchange of these vital funds of
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14.
15. 16. 17.
18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24.
25.
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knowledge involves the use of literacy in Spanish and English, and constitutes the necessary economic and labor resources for family survival. These funds are resources from home and community with great potential for learning at school and in other contexts. Carmen Martínez-Roldán and María E. Fránquiz, “Latin@ Youth Literacies: Hidden Funds of Knowledge,” in Handbook of Literacy Research, ed. Leila Christenbury, Randy Bomer, and Peter Smagorinsky (New York: Guilford Press, 2009), 323–42. Kerrie E Villalva, “Hidden Literacies and Inquiry Approaches of Bilingual High School Writers,” Written Communication 23 (2006): 91–129. Anzaldúa and Keating, 61. During the initial collection of data, Angie Zapata, Dolores Godinez, and Toni Avila—all doctoral students in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas—recorded field notes, made video recordings of selected activities, and conducted interviews. I express my profound gratitude for their assistance in collection and discussion of the data presented in this chapter. Anzaldúa and Keating, 541. There were no page numbers as these children’s books do not have pagination. Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez,“Chicano/a Children’s Literature: A Tranaztlantic Reader’s History,” Journal of American Studies of Turkey 23 (2006): 15–35. In a separate study in California I used Anzaldúa’s concept of nepantla to discuss the process of struggle to interrogate powerful ideas when a teacher in a bilingual fifth-grade classroom had students “read to learn” about hate and violence in historical contexts such as World War II. In this case one student from Israel was in-between an “American” and a Jewish identity, while others were comfortable in their identities as African-American or Mexican-American. For a more detailed description of how student thinking was transformed, see María E. Fránquiz, “Learning in the Transformational Space: Struggling with Powerful Ideas,” Journal of Classroom Interaction 34, no. 2 (1999): 30–44. Ibid., 4. González and Moll, 624. In his seminal 1984 article, Richard Ruiz differentiated three premises that are used by school administrators for language-planning programs in school. Language can be seen as a problem in learning, as a human right, or as a resource for learning. Escamilla adds that school assessments are aligned with the language-as-a-problem orientation. For more comprehensive details, see Richard Ruiz, “Orientations in Language Planning,” The Journal for the National Association of Bilingual Education 8, no. 2 (1984): 15–34; Kathy Escamilla, “Monolingual Assessment and Emerging Bilinguals: A Case Study in the U.S.,” in Imagining Multilingual Schools, ed. Ofelia García, Tove SkutnabbKangas, and María Torres-Guzman (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006), 184–99. Jamie Lee Evans, 206.
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26. Lilia Bartolomé, “Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy,” Harvard Educational Review 64 (1996): 173–94; María E. Fránquiz and María del Carmen Salazar, “The Transformative Potential of Humanizing Pedagogy: Addressing the Diverse Needs of Chicano/Mexicano Students,” The High School Journal 87, no. 4 (2004): 36–53; and Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1970). 27. Lilia, 178. 28. See Sheila M. Shannon and Kathy Escamilla, “Mexican Immigrants in U.S. Schools: Targets of Symbolic Violence,” Educational Policy 13, no. 3 (1999): 347–70. 29. Anzaldúa and Keating, 569. 30. Ibid., 206. 31. See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters / Aunt Lute, 1987); and Norma González, I Am My Language: Discourses of Women and Children in the Borderlands (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2001). 32. See Bertha Pérez, ed., Sociocultural Contexts of Language and Literacy, 2nd ed., (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004); and Ana Celia Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). 33. Julia Preston, “Obama to Push Immigration Bill as One Priority,” New York Times, April 8, 2009. 34. Ruben Navarrette, “Editorial: A Racist Stew,” San Antonio Express-News, January 12, 2009. 35. Social Policy Report Brief, volume 22, III, 2008, http://www.srcd.org/index. php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=381 (accessed on July 31, 2009).
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Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States Norma E. Cantú
Introduction* hroughout the Americas, cultural expressions include the syncretic process of 500 years of cultural mestizaje that brings together European, chiefly Spanish, cultural expressions and the autochthonous practices of the Amerindian peoples of this continent. For the last thirty years, I have researched this cultural phenomenon by examining the traditional culture of Spain and of Texas as sites that reflect this blending of cultures. Contemporary Spanish culture includes elements from the three main cultural threads that have been celebrated and contested throughout its history. The three—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—as can be easily discerned in a number of locations such as Toledo, where the city prides itself in its multicultural past, have not always coexisted in harmony, but through the sheer power of historical weight have shaped each other, however reluctantly, despite the resistance of the currently predominant Christian culture. Thus, it was an already hybrid culture that arrived in the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century and became further hybridized for the next 400 years.
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Undoubtedly, we can see the remnants of the disastrous clash that occurred over 500 years ago as we witness the folk Catholicism that evolved around the Christian rituals in their diasporic reality as well as the foodways of the Spanish and other European cuisines. For instance, the wedding ceremony in Mexico retains remnants of a rich cultural mestizaje from the Arabic, Christian, and Nahuatl nuptials. Many of the elements of the ceremony, such as the lazo or arras, are not practiced in Europe but thrive in the folk Catholic rituals in the Americas as practiced in much of South, Central, and North America, especially in Mexico and in the Southwest, or in what Américo Paredes referred to as Greater Mexico.1 Another example of the significant impact of that clash of cultures exists in the foodways of both the Americas and Europe. The tomato and chocolate are but two American foodstuffs that transformed the culinary production of Europe. Although there is growing interest in the Afro-Mexican and in the Jewish-Mexican cultural practices, both of which reveal added layers of cultural mestizaje, I am limiting the focus of this overview and analysis to religious Catholic and secular cultural expressions, such as the comingof-age ritual of the quinceañeras, the veneration of religious icons and holy sites, as well as folk saints and secular folk manifestations that have functioned in Latin@ communities as forms of contestation and resistance to the onslaught of hegemonic U.S. culture. If we examine the Latin@ experience in the United States, we find ourselves in enclaves of cultural production that mirror that production in a number of communities in the Americas. The various Latinidades that celebrate with parades and processions as well as with in-family or in-group rituals survive as cultural groups because the very act of celebrating assures survival. In my analysis, I focus on secular and religious celebrations and on how these traditional practices cement the otherwise seemingly disparate Latin@ community, the various Latinidades, through the creation of a pan-Latin@ culture and language. Theorizing around the ideas of border theory and third-space Chicana feminist theories of identity, I view the cultural production— both secular and liturgical—through the lens of a cultural studies theory partly grounded in Raymond Williams’s notions of cultural studies and in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa. Williams’s “structures of feeling” and Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness” are useful for my argument that cultural expressions and practices cohere a group’s identity and assist in the project of self-construction that Latin@s are engaged in as they move to the United States and join the millions of Latin@s who have been here for generations. Central to my argument is that those who have been here since before there was a border set the stage for the rest of the diasporic contingent. I structure my essay around two main axes: the secular and the liturgical celebrations; further grounding my analysis in key elements of
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language, material culture, and performative acts such as the quinceañeras, I set forth a theory for examining Latinidades and the cultural panorama. But first I explore the theories of Raymond Williams and Gloria Anzaldúa because they form a trellis, as it were, upon which I situate other concepts such as the concepts of sitio y lengua (site and language) that Chicana feminist historian Emma Pérez uses so ably in her analysis of the decolonization project that we are all involved with in the twenty-first century.2 What follows is a very brief synthesis of the aspects of the work by Williams and Anzaldúa that I use for this project. Cultural anthropologist Raymond Williams, in a chapter of his book Marxism and Literature, explores the relationships between groups’ identities actively lived and thought, and proposes that the process be seen as a structure whereby society shapes itself. He claims, “We are . . . defining these elements as a ‘structure’: as a set, with specific internal relations, at once interlocking and in tension,” and thus superimposes a structural frame onto the emotive or affective realm of society.3 He further proposes that “structures of feeling can be defined as social experiences in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available.”4 In such a view, then, cultural expression is relegated to the realm of symbolic action. Williams also proposes that it is structures of feeling that allow us to recognize fellow members of our group—to tell impostors. Exploring the linguistic and semantic nuances, he also traces how groups construct and define these structures. While Williams identifies claims that these structures exist to bind the group, Chicana philosopher Gloria Anzaldúa explores how the structures of cultural feelings can both bind and deter bonding with the group. In her feminist work Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa time and again refers to the cultural expressions that shaped her identity. As a lesbian, she identifies the “structures of feeling,” to use Williams’s phrase, that force her to resist the group culture of homophobia.5 At the same time, she claims that the music, corridos, and many other cultural expressions help form an allegiance to and loyalty to that cultural group.6 Anzaldúa posits that we must bridge our differences, and she proposes a path for achieving just that as the structures are dismantled and reconfigured through a consciousness that includes confronting “the shadow beast” and finding a path to conocimiento, to a new consciousness that will lead to wholeness.7 All the while she situates the process in the border spaces and places, the nepantla (the Aztec concept of the third space), the in-between space, the liminal space, a third space that allows for such movement. Chicana feminist third-space theorist Chela Sandoval takes Anzaldúa to yet another realm as she employs a differential
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consciousness to achieve the desired change in society.8 Useful for our analysis of the Latin@ traditional cultural expressions are Anzaldúa’s ideas, for while they are grounded in her South Texas lived reality, they transcend across borders and address issues found in the greater Latin@ cultural world.
Sitio (Site or Place) The very location, the place where Latin@s live in the United States as well as the places they come from affects the cultural production of the group. Briefly, at the national level, the largest group by far, the over thirty-five million Mexican Americans—the majority—reside in the Southwest in the territory that became part of the United States when Mexico lost more than half of its land mass in 1848 at the conclusion of the U.S.-Mexican War and in subsequent agreements such as the Gadsden Purchase. While the whole country has pockets of populations from other Latinidades, such as Central Americans and Puerto Ricans, the Northeast has long been recognized as a center for Puerto Ricans. Specific traditional celebrations, then, occur in these spaces and define the Latin@ experience there. Two brief examples: the Puerto Rican parade in New York City and the Guelaguetza as celebrated in Los Angeles. The former is a constructed social event that brings together the Puerto Rican community to celebrate nothing more than its very presence in New York City, and the latter reenacts a celebration from Oaxaca in California, and, while also celebrating the community’s presence there, hearkens back to its social and religious purposes in its home space. In like fashion, local communities celebrate fiestas, religious and not, all over the United States; the religious folk matachines dance celebrations in Bernalillo, New Mexico, or in Laredo, Texas, and the Día de Reyes celebrations in Austin, Texas, or Brooklyn, attest to the widespread presence of Latin@s and their continued celebration of identity-based cultural expressions. But the regional differences are also there in the language spoken by these groups.
Lengua (Language/Tongue) Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands / La Frontera (1987) cites the importance of loyalty to cultural roots for the survival of a community that is accosted and harshly attacked. She is specifically talking about language and identity as she says, “So if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language.”9 Indeed language is one of the main identifiers we Latinos who live in the United States share. Nevertheless, not all of us speak the language
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of our ancestors, and those of us who do, speak a variety of Spanishes that are intelligible even as they are different and unique. In addition, the variant Spanish of a Columbian or Puerto Rican and a New Mexican, or the variants within Chicano groups that have been in the United States for generations—such as the variant forms of Spanish spoken by Tejanos and Tucsonenses—are all unique and distinct, yet intelligible. In terms of lexicon, the regional differences are due as much to the local material history as to the influences of recent immigrant groups settling there. I limit my example, as there are many, to the term used to refer to an infant or child. While there are 1500 Yoeme, or Yaqui, in Mexico and about 500 in Arizona, the linguistic impact on the Spanish of the region is vast. In Arizona the term for a child is buqui, variant spelling buki, one of many words in the local Spanish that comes from the Yoeme or Yaqui. (There is even a music group from Sonora, Los Bukis, that would translate as “the kids.”) In northern Mexico and South Texas a common term is huerco or huerca whose etymology is Spanish, but it is not used for child in other Spanish-speaking countries. In Spain the most common is peque or peke, a clipped form of pequeña/o. Only a few years ago, the preferred term was crío. But in the Americas, the terms “Chamaco/a” or esquincle are also used to refer to a child, and both derive from the Náhuatl and are in more general use, especially in Mexico and in Greater Mexico. In a column published in 2007, Ricardo Espinoza lists over fifteen terms used to refer to a child in various variants of Spanish from pibes in Argentina to chavales in Spain. Yet, this last one was a common term in the caló of my youth. Other terms such as rorroro/a or simply nene or “nena” find their way into local usage for practical purposes. The latter, for example, is often the nickname of the oldest child, or of the child who bears a parent’s name and is still in practice, while the term “junior” has fallen into disuse although it was very common up to about thirty years ago. Suffice it to say that the many Spanish variants that are spoken in the Americas all find their way to the United States, making marketing to this group a challenge not easily solved. The solution seems to be the creation of a pan-Spanish that is easily understood by all, so baby products will not use crío or pibe or chaval or huerco, or even nena; instead the preferred term when selling baby products is bebé, and thereby it is marketing that creates a standard Spanish term that then becomes the “official” or standard term. Although I must say that I have not heard anyone in Laredo use bebé, yet everyone switches to English and uses “baby,” or opts for niña or niño in Spanish.10 In the last fifty years, language laws have instituted dramatic changes such as the introduction of bilingual education where children accustomed to saying “cachete” instead of “mejilla” are now being taught the latter term as the “correct” one for “cheek.” This is but one of many words that will
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no doubt fade from the Spanish of South Texas. Yet, the “English only” movement threatens the language even more dramatically as the push for English may bring about even more serious changes in the Spanish spoken in the United States. However, I remain an optimist as I observe the various languages spoken by the many Latin@s in the United States. Language is never static, and it will no doubt continue to change as speakers adapt to their regional and rich historical reality. Additionally, the potential market is so large that targeting the population in their language, Spanish, will no doubt also impact its survival. Indeed sitio y lengua, location/region, and language are inextricably linked with the Latin@ experience in the United States. The cultural expressions of Latin@s found in the most remote areas of the country where one would not suspect that there would be much of a Latino presence, such as Boise, Idaho, or Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to the most populated, where Latin@s have a historical presence, such as New York City or Los Angeles, all adhere to what we can claim constitutes Latin@ cultural artifacts that signify Latinidad. Chief among these cultural artifacts are celebrations and feasts or fiestas that function in a particular fashion to strengthen group identity or to reassert individual and group presence. Celebrations and Fiestas—Secular and Religious If language is ever changing and demands that new speakers inherit old forms and create new ones, traditional cultural expressions also are ever changing and demand that its practitioners inherit the old variants and create new ones to serve their purpose and insure their survival. As I turn to the celebrations themselves, I would like to keep in mind a discussion of the theoretical tenets that I discussed earlier as they will frame my analysis. Any analysis of traditional cultural expressions regarding fiestas and celebrations implies a cross-Latinidades enterprise as we can see that the impact of transnational movements and the Internet have influenced cultural production beyond what Williams and Anzaldúa ever imagined. We must keep in mind the ways in which such social structures pervade groups and transform themselves in an effort to survive intact in processes similar to languages that evolve and change and yet remain structurally the same. Secular fiestas are those that are outside of any religious or liturgical calendar and can be classified either as folk or socially constructed. Further, they can be schematically placed along a continuum of concentric circles around the self and that individual’s involvement. Imagine that there are five concentric circles at the center of which is the self, and proceeding outward, the family, the neighborhood (or the barrio), the city, the state, the nation, the hemisphere, and even the world. Given this schema we can
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Figure 7.1 Circles of experience and of influence
place both secular and religious celebrations within the parameters of each concentric circle (see Figure 7.1). For example, a birthday celebration focuses on an individual and is secular insofar as it is not necessarily a religious ritual or celebration, while a Catholic child’s first communion event would also be at the level of the individual but within a religious or liturgical realm. Yet, the Latin@ birthday or first communion celebration includes certain elements found in the larger hegemonic cultural group of the United States across Latinidades: a birthday cake, a birthday song (sometimes two in the case of Mexican American celebrations such as the ones I often attend in Texas where singing “Happy Birthday” is followed by Las Mañanitas), and often a piñata (a phenomenon that seems to be in the process of crossing over as I have seen them appear outside of Latin@ birthday celebrations). (As an aside, I would point to the fact that the impact of the “Happy Birthday” song sung in Spanish at birthday parties in Spain can be interpreted as a process of cultural migration.) So at each level of the concentric circles we find feasts and celebrations that can be either secular or liturgical. As purely secular events, constructed celebrations that commemorate or celebrate military or political events as well as national celebrations of a hero’s birthday, such as Presidents’ Day or Martin Luther King Day, perform a different function. Secular community celebrations can be Founders’ Day or other origin stories such as San Antonio’s Canary Islanders celebration, or the State
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of Texas celebration of Texas Independence. As a whole the Latin@ community celebrates, at the level of the hemisphere, Día de la Raza or as it is known in the United States, Columbus Day, on October 12, a celebration that indigenous people in the Americas are wont to eschew—often there are “counter-celebrations.” For instance, in Uruguay, the feast celebrating the end of European rule is called Día de la Resistencia Indígena. Beyond the level of the self, however, at the level of the nation state, we find a constructed celebration that ostensibly commemorates the Latinidades in the United States—the month-long celebration of Hispanic heritage. This constructed event began as a week-long celebration under President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 and was established in its current format under President Reagan twenty years later. I first learnt of this celebration when I moved to D.C. in 1993 and worked for a government agency. It was then that I discovered that there was a month set aside to celebrate the culture, history, and contributions of the Hispanic community in the United States. The celebration included the requisite parade, and various Latino groups in the D.C. area participated. However small the contingent, the parade had representation from Dominican, Peruvian, and, of course, a larger presence of Puerto Rican, Salvadoreño, and Mexican American participants. Fiestas Patrias celebrations for a number of countries fall within this month, and commemorate Independence Day on September 15 in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and on September 16 in Mexico and on September 18 in Chile. A fiesta that celebrates the overthrow of a colonial empire implies an ethnocentric and often nationalist fervor, although not always so. Even now, fifteen years later, the celebration is not widely known, except in school and in government offices. Some communities and institutions such as Knoxville, Tennessee, or El Paso Community College, El Paso, Texas, observe Hispanic Heritage Month with a pan-Latino community celebration. Such constructed celebrations, usually sponsored by a governmental or institutional organism, by definition become in-group identity affirming events as do nationalist celebrations such as Fourth of July, Texas Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veterans Day that celebrate the nation-state as a unit. Among the secular fiestas, we also find those that are designed to instill group identity. The celebration of George Washington’s Birthday in Laredo, Texas, is perhaps the oddest but clearest example of this.11 Additionally, some celebrations have traveled from one to country to the other; the Día del niño (Day of the Child) celebrated in Mexico on April 30 is now celebrated in the United States on the same day. The first such celebration was organized in 1997 when the poet Pat Mora and the librarian Oralia Garza de Cortés teamed up to establish the celebration. Of course, as I bring up El Día del Niño, I must mention Mother’s Day, which in most Latino communities
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is celebrated on May 10, while the United States celebrates it on the second Sunday in May. Mother’s Day in Mexico and, consequently, in many celebrations in greater Mexico involves a day-long observance with children and adults honoring mothers with poetry, flowers, gifts, and other ceremonial behavior. Schools often have programs where children declaim poetry memorized for the special occasion and adults sport either a red or white flower, usually a carnation, in honor of their mother; the latter is for someone whose mother has passed on and the red honors a living mother. Other celebrations that fall within the secular realm are those that commemorate special dates such as New Year’s Eve. The many traditional practices around the latter include special meals, practices, and behaviors that exist in the United States, such as bacalado (cod) for the New Year’s Eve dinner that many combine with black-eyed peas, the practice of wearing certain garments—red underwear—for good luck, or of sweeping the house, or of eating twelve grapes at the stroke of midnight. But many secular feasts coincide with religious feast days as well. Many towns keep the tradition of celebrating the patron saint’s day even when they are away from their community, as is the case with the Los Angeles celebration of the Guelaguetza. In many other communities, the saint’s day celebrations date back to the Spanish conquest. Such is the case in Bernalillo, New Mexico, where it is San Lorenzo that has been celebrated from August 9 to August 11 for over 300 years, with matachines dancing and religious and secular events such as a mass and a social dance.12
Religious or Liturgical Celebrations The San Lorenzo celebration in Bernalillo falls during the religious feasts at the local level but outside of the liturgical calendrical feast dates for the Catholic Church. The fiestas patronales, or saints’ day festivals, are the most common form of religious celebrations at the level of the community; they are numerous throughout Europe and the Americas. Of course, the liturgical calendar feast days around the Catholic Church cycle are celebrated across the Latinidades since the majority of Latin@s are culturally Catholic, whether lapsed or not. I focus on the Catholic liturgical calendar, but obviously all religious groups hold special feasts or commemorate certain dates or events; thus, Latin@ Jewish and Buddhist practitioners would celebrate different feast days. I further limit my observations to the folk Catholic celebrations, first acknowledging the formal church celebrations. The cycle begins with the Christmas cycle that can be said to begin on December 12 in Mexico, with the celebration of la Virgen de Guadalupe.13 The liturgical cycle dictates the religious celebrations according to the Catholic Church’s feast days: from Christmas through Easter and to
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Corpus Christi, these global celebrations cross national and hemispheric borders and are not particular to Latin@s. However, the folk celebrations associated with each are distinct and unique for various Latinidades. For example, the observance of misa de gallo, or midnight mass on Christmas Eve, is part of the folk religious celebration for although attendance at mass is obligatory, since it is a feast day, there is no requirement that it be held at midnight. Indeed nowadays, many church services begin as early as 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve. On the other hand, some quite secular aspects of religious feast day celebrations are similar to the various elements of Easter celebrations in South Texas where the cascarónes, colorfully dyed and confetti-filled eggshells, are decorated and then broken on people’s heads on Easter Sunday. Among the fiestas patronales, that is, the feasts that are off the calendar of official feasts within the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar, I would like to focus briefly on the vejigantes in Loiza, Puerto Rico, celebrating the Fiesta de Santiago Apóstol (Feast of St. James the Apostle) on July 25. The vejigantes, the clownishly clad masked characters of Ponce, differ somewhat from those found in Loíza. For one, in Ponce they form part of the Carnival festivities, a liturgical calendar celebration; additionally, the masking tradition differs somewhat from the vejigante masks in Loíza. In doing some very brief research on the fiesta, I observed several elements that lead me to situate the festival within the fiestas patronales and folk religious celebrations at a local level. The Fiestas de Santiago lasts ten days or so, with parades featuring traditional bomba and plena musicians and various vejigante figures that some believe are symbols of resistance to colonialism and imperialism. The main characters of the Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol are El Caballero (the knight), los vejigantes, los viejos (the elders), and las locas (the “crazy women” who may often be men dressed as women). As in other celebrations, such as the San Lorenzo fiesta of Bernalillo, New Mexico, the townspeople of Loíza prepare yearlong for the festivities, and the community members perform structured duties. What one can glean from these fiestas patronales centers on the communal aspects of the celebration at the level of the local, sometimes at the barrio- but most often at the community-wide level. Let us now turn to the individual level where the celebration of a young Latina’s coming of age reaches across the extended family to the community. La Quinceañera Perhaps the one secular and semireligious celebration found across various Latinidades is the coming-of-age celebration called the quinceañera or quince. In my own research, however, I have found significant differences in the ways that the event is celebrated across Latinidades. A Salvadoreña
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celebrates her quince (literally fifteen), and a Chicana celebrates her quinceañeras in variant fashion; the similarities, however, overshadow and confirm that as a cultural ritual signifying the transition from childhood to adulthood the quinceañera is alive and well. In other publications, I have delved into the differences and have looked at the ways that the tradition has changed diachronically.14 While scholars have attempted to find a root or origin for the tradition in indigenous tradition, mostly based on the coming-of-age rituals such as the one described by Inez Talamantes in her essay “The Presence of Isanaklesh: The Apache Female Deity and the Path of Pollen,”15 other scholars trace the origin to European court presentations and consider the event a syncretic fusing of both indigenous and European traditions. I do not wish to trace the origins or the evolution of the tradition in this brief discussion. Here, I would like to present a brief synchronic overview of the tradition. Julia Alvarez best traces this synchronic phenomenon in her book on her travels across the United States talking to the young women and attending a number of celebrations. Her findings explicate the overarching goal of the performance; even as she focuses on the celebration by an immigrant family in the Bronx and pays little attention to the celebration as it occurs in Chicana/Indian families where the hybrid nature of the celebration is often most evident; Alvarez does render a good overview of the many nuanced and varied celebrations.16 From my perspective, the differences that signal the various Latinidades are often associated with class and with the desire to reconnect with the past or with the home community in Mexico or El Salvador. The lavish and extravagant celebrations found in the Miami Cuban community contrast sharply with the often more religious but sometimes as lavish celebrations of the Salvadoran community in the Washington, D.C., area, such as in Manassas, Virginia. So, if class is a significant marker, then we must also look at the cultural accoutrements defining the celebration. For example, the most sought-after limousine by the honoree and her court is currently a Hummer, an expensive gas-guzzling monster.17 In addition to the ostentatious display of class status and its obvious secular nature, insofar as the dance and the external artifacts play a significant role in the ritual, the quinceañera celebration is in essence a folk religious tradition as well, for it is not a sacrament of the Catholic Church, nor is it liturgically linked in any way to the sacraments, although the sacrament of confirmation may be the closest to a coming-of-age ritual within the liturgical space. The church ceremony at present is usually a mass, if Catholic, and some sort of religious service, if not. Often the young Latina who is being honored will forego the religious part of the celebration, thus supporting my contention that it is both secular and religious and that it takes
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place at a communal as well as at an individual level. If we consider that the quinceañera is a birthday celebration of the individual (see Appendix 1), we can also see that it traverses across the concentric circles (see fig. 7.1). The concentric circles beyond the level of the barrio and extended family and friends are also involved in the quinceañeras celebration. Turning to the earlier discussion, the Catholic Church does not recognize the quinceañera as a sacrament; yet, it has instituted a special liturgy for the celebration, thereby sanctioning the celebration. The church, we can deduce, has adapted to fit the needs of the community. The dance and the numerous levels of relationships with the extended family, neighbors, and friends position the celebration at the level of a community-wide secular event. Various other celebrations at the level of community sustain my argument insofar as the levels where secular and religious celebrations occur. For example, when communities celebrate either a military battle or founders’ days, or even an invented festival such as Borderfest (a short-lived Fourth of July celebration in Laredo, Texas) or the American Folklife Festival (the national celebration in D.C. held annually for two weeks around Fourth of July), the groups are coming together to celebrate and join around a common goal or group identity. At the barrio or neighborhood level, reunions or street fairs would fall within the secular domain, while a parish celebration of a patron saint, fiestas patronales, or of a particular religious feast day, such as the Day of the Holy Cross, would fall within the religious domain. In South Texas, local parishes may celebrate a patron saint’s feast day with what is called a jamaica, or what in other Latinidades is called a kermes, or church fair. These would be at the level of the barrio or neighborhood since they do not usually go beyond the local and since participants’ celebrations are localized. The secular community- or city-wide celebrations may include a town’s main celebration such as Spanish Days in Santa Barbara, California, or Charro Days in Brownsville, Texas. Then there are economically driven festivals like Spanish Market in Santa Fe. These could be classified as secular and be observed at the level of the city. At the level of the state, we could highlight celebrations that underscore the nationalist feelings of certain groups such as Texans; in San Antonio, Fiesta is celebrated for over two weeks around April 23, the day of the Battle of San Jacinto when the Texans defeated the Mexican Army. Ironically, it is the descendants of many of those who lost the battle who now celebrate, oblivious to the origins of Fiesta. At this level, the celebration takes on a different goal. I contend that this goal is the intent, whether planned or not, to socialize a population into a hegemonic reality and that the festivities work on the social and even on the emotional consciousness. I now turn to folk religious celebrations that also operate at the level of the local: the matachines dance and the shepherds’ plays or pastorelas.
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Matachines and Pastorelas Outside of the liturgical calendar, feast days are celebrated by religious dance groups, such as the religious dance ceremony of the matachines; within the liturgical calendar, fiestas are celebrated with folk tradition events—such as the pastorelas, or Christmas shepherds’ plays—that are celebrated simultaneously by the organized church. In Chican@ tradition, especially in the Southwest, these two folk religious celebrations definitely lie within the realm of folk Catholicism. In this section, I delve into aspects of these folk celebrations and focus on the function of folk celebrations as a social glue that works within groups. Both of these celebrations function at the level of the neighborhood as well as that of the individual, for dancers often vow to dance to fulfill a promise made. The matachines dance tradition, as scholars have noted, exists in the Americas as a hybrid performance of indigenous and Spanish folk dance.18 In many patron saint celebrations in Spain, the dance element comprises an important segment—for example, “La Endiablada” in Almonacid del Marquesado in Spain, where the clownishly attired masked dancers wearing huge cowbells on a belt dance outside and inside the church in honor of San Blas, and the feast discussed earlier for Santiago Apóstol with vejigantes in Loíza, Puerto Rico, who also dress in clownish attire and are masked. Situating a barrio-level fiesta within the folk religious tradition is simple when we look at the matachines, the folk religious dance tradition. The matachines in Laredo, Texas, can assist as we draw conclusions insofar as the numerous Latin@ celebrations that take place in the community are concerned. Matachines dance traditions are found across the Americas, as the ethnomusicologist Brenda Romero explores in her work, and in the United States matachines dance groups exist in the Southwest and in greater Mexico.19 The New Mexico matachines may dance during fiestas in the reservations, such as during the dance in Jemez Pueblo, or in Hispano communities, such as the one in Bernalillo. In Texas and Arizona they are mostly held at the level of the barrio and cluster around the celebration of the Virgen de Guadalupe, or for specific liturgical feast days, such as the Day of the Holy Cross for the Laredo group. The Pastorela, or shepherds’ play, falls within the calendrical liturgical feasts category of Christmas, but it occurs outside of the Catholic Church auspices in the home areas of devotees whose ancestors performed the cycle play and bequeathed it to contemporary players. The drama’s simple plot revolves around the trials and tribulations faced by a group of shepherds who are on the way to adore the newborn child Christ. Along the way Archangel Michael and Luzbel, often accompanied by other “fallen angels”
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fight a sword fight in which good triumphs over evil, and the shepherds reach their destination and offer their gifts to the child Christ.20 In San Antonio, one group with its base in Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the West Side has performed the play that depicts the shepherds on their way to adore the child Christ for generations; the group is the subject of Richard Flores’s book Los Pastores: History and Performance in the Mexican Shepherd’s Play of South Texas. Conclusion As I conclude this chapter, I focus once again on the nature of these celebrations and how they signify Latinidad. First, we must note the specific markers, at a semiotic level, of the various celebrations, from the personal birthday parties, which the quinceañeras ultimately are, to the group celebrations, such as Mother’s Day. Specific markers set the celebrations apart from the general U.S. celebrations. Second, the liturgical and secular celebrations provide a space for cultural performance so that while a baptism is celebrated equally in the Latino and non-Latino Catholic communities, the former includes the tradition of the “bolo”—coins tossed out to the gathered children by the padrino or madrina, the sponsors. Third, we can point to the adaptation of home or root cultural practices to the new place. Here I am reminded of Day of the Dead celebrations that take on a different tenor as communities celebrate the liturgical feast day in a secular fashion, especially so with contemporary art museums holding special Day of the Dead altar exhibits or inviting artists and writers to construct special Day of the Dead ofrendas, or altars, for the special day. While the feast day was celebrated by Latin@ communities in the United States before the 1980s, it seems to me that it was at about that time that the celebration exploded, both in the United States and in Mexico. It quickly became, in part, an artist-constructed celebration as art collectives and individual artists constructed altars not just for home use but for public display. The traditional performance of the drama Don Juan Tenorio fell into disuse, and Chicano playwrights such as Raquel Valle Senties (Path of Marigolds) and Carlos Morton (Johnny Tenorio)21 wrote new plays for the occasion. Just as the Day of the Dead popular traditions fuse the elements of the liturgical celebration of November 1 and 2, other liturgical celebrations cross into popular or folk celebrations as well. Such a practice can also be observed in Teatro Campesino’s productions of La Pastorela and La Virgen de Guadalupe, two plays written and produced specifically for the Christmas celebration cycle. For the production of La Pastorela the Teatro takes the traditional script as described above
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and reinterprets it adding and rewriting the dialogue. The scripts take the traditional stories that existed in the folk literary repertoire and create a staged performance, no longer performed in someone’s backyard or in the church grounds, but on a stage and for a paying audience. The pastorelas (shepherds’ plays) that were the object of my dissertation study in the late 1970s no longer exist in the same form as a traditional practice in Laredo. In San Antonio and elsewhere, though, some community devotees maintain the tradition of Los Pastores or La Pastorela. Many more aspects of traditional culture can be explored and analyzed for insight into the Latin@ community. It is the constantly changing and evolving nature of traditional culture that is ultimately the gauge that attests to the vibrant and rich cultural production of the community at all levels, from the individual and personal to the barrio, the city, the state, the nation, and the hemisphere. Our rich cultural performances offer a thermometer to how we are doing in terms of survival as Latin@s at the level of group identity. As long as the language on Univision and Televisa continues to adapt to the target population, as long as Day of the Dead celebrations persist, as long as young Latinas celebrate their coming of age with a quinceañera, and as long as Latin@s continue celebrating the feasts and celebrations that the Latin@ cultural world celebrates, we can rest assured that our identity as Latin@s will survive.
Appendix Level
Secular
Religious
Self
Individual life cycle markers: birthday, bridal and baby showers Anniversary, family reunions Reunions, street fairs, summer festivals, Founders’ Day, city-wide celebrations; Laredo’s George Washington’s Birthday; Brownsville’s Charro Days Battles—San Jacinto, D-Day Independence day; Hispanic Heritage Month Día de la Raza / Día de la Resistencia Indígena Earth Day, Labor Day, Mother’s Day, New Year’s
Baptism, confirmation, bar mitzvah, wedding Weddings, funerals Jamaica/kermes (parish patron saint celebration); matachines Fiestas patronales; Corpus Christi in Toledo
Family Barrio City
State Nation Hemisphere Global or Transnational
Thanksgiving Virgen de Guadalupe Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah
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Notes * I would like to thank María E. Franquiz for feedback on this essay and acknowledge the contribution of Elsa Ruiz whose wizardry with the computer helped me with the graphics needed to illustrate my concepts. 1. For a discussion of “el México de afuera,” the concept that cultural mexicanidad was not restricted geographically to the nation-state of Mexico but extended to wherever the Mexican-origin population resided in the United States; see Américo Paredes, “The Folklore of Groups of Mexican Origin in the United States,” Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, ed. Richard Bauman (Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican American Studies, 1993), 3–18; and Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958). 2. Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1999). 3. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132. 4. Ibid., 133–34. 5. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987), 41–42. 6. Ibid., 60–61, 82–83. 7. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 77. 8. The concepts of third-space Chicana feminism explodes Eurocentric feminisms and drives the feminist analysis to an Anzaldúan level, rupturing the expected male/female dichotomy to create a “messy” and inclusive third space. Third spaces then exist as liminal or nepantla locations, neither here nor there; in terms of Latin@ studies, the here or there refers to the United States and to the places of origin, and in some cases vice versa—especially for transborder studies exploring the movement of subjects back and forth between these spaces. See Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 9. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 59. 10. Lucila D. Ek’s chapter later in this book also discusses the terms used in Central America for children in her analysis of linguistic experiences of Nicaraguan, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan youth. 11. For a discussion of the George Washington’s Birthday celebration, see Cordelia Barrera, “Border Places, Frontier Spaces: Deconstructing Ideologies of the Southwest” (PhD Diss., University of Texas at San Antonio, 2009); Dion Dennis, “Washington’s Birthday on the Texas Border,” CTTheory.Net.e036 (1997), available at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=169 (accessed on January 29, 1998); and Stanley Green, Laredo Neighborhoods, The Story of Laredo no. 18 (Laredo: Border Studies, 1993). 12. See Peter García’s chapter on the celebration in Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 318–34.
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13. The date celebrates the appearance of our Lady of Guadalupe in 1538 to an Indian in Mexico. For extended discussion on the appearance and various takes on the tradition, see Ana Castillo’s anthology of essays, Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe (New York: Riverhead, 1996). 14. See “Chicana Life Cycle Rituals,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, ed. Norma E. Cantú and Olga Nájera Ramírez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), for a discussion of the tradition. Also see Norma E. Cantú, “La Quinceañera: Towards an Ethnographic Analysis of a Life-Cycle Ritual,” Southern Folklore 56. 1 (1999): 73–101. 15. Inéz Talamantez, “The Presence of Isanaklesh: The Apache Female Deity and the Path of Pollen,” in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, ed. Nancy A. Faulk and Rita M. Gross, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Press, 2001), 290–300. 16. Julia Alvarez, Once upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in America (New York: Viking, 2007). 17. The film Quinceañera has a working-class young woman desiring to have a Hummer for her quinceañera. Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, Kitchen Sink Entertainment LLC, distributed by Sony Pictures, August 2, 2006. 18. Various scholars have studied the matachines dance tradition, including Silvia Rodríguez, The Matachines Dance, A Ritual Dance of the Indian Pueblos and Mexicano/Hispano Communities (Albuquerque, NM: Sunstone Press, 2009); Rodríguez, The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley, a publication of the American Folklore Society (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); Max Harris, Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); and Claude D. Stephenson, III, “A Comparative Analysis of Matachines Music and Its History and Dispersion in the American Southwest” (PhD Diss., University of New Mexico, 2001). Among Brenda Romero’s numerous publications is a historical and bibliographical overview, “The Matachines Danza as Intercultural Discourse,” in Dancing across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, ed. Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Norma E. Cantú, and Brenda M. Romero (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 185–205. 19. Romero, ibid. 20. See Norma E. Cantú, “The Offering and the Offerers: The Laredo Pastorela in the Tradition of the Shepherds’ Plays” (PhD Diss., University of Nebraska, 1982); and Richard R. Flores, Los Pastores: History and Performance in the Mexican Shepherd’s Play of South Texas (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). 21. Carlos Morton, Johnny Tenorio and Other Plays (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1992).
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8
Language and Identity of Immigrant Central American Pentecostal Youth in Southern California1 Lucila D. Ek
he state of California is the home of 31 percent of the U.S. Latin@ population, and these numbers continue not only to increase but also to diversify as immigration from Latin American countries other than Mexico increases.2 In Los Angeles County, for example, Central Americans constitute 9 percent of the Latin@s in the county.3 Together Salvadorans and Guatemalans represent 80 percent of the Central American population in Los Angeles.4 Yet, Mexicans and Mexican Americans continue to be the majority Latin@ population. Despite the growing numbers of Central Americans, scholarly research in education has largely overlooked the specific needs of these students. Much more research has been conducted on Mexican-origin groups and Puerto Rican populations. Research on how issues of language and identity play out in the daily lives of Central American students is scarce. Drawing from a larger ethnography, this chapter builds on the research on Central Americans in the United States by examining the language and identity of Central American Pentecostal youth in Los Angeles. Specifically, I document the language uses, attitudes, and experiences of these youth to demonstrate how Central Americans in California are linguistically and culturally doubly subsumed, first by the mainstream European American culture and English and second by the Mexican / Mexican American majority of Latin@s and their varieties of Spanish.
T
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Central Americans in the United States and in California There are now more than a million Central Americans in the United States, most of whom came after 1980.5 Central America is comprised of seven countries: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The largest Central American groups in Los Angeles and in the United States are Salvadorans and Guatemalans. There are two widely different ethnic groups within Guatemala. Ladin@s are nonindigenous Guatemalans who speak Spanish and wear Western clothing. They are largely mestizos and European descendants and have been culturally Hispanicized.6 Mayan Guatemalans typically wear traditional attire, speak a Mayan language, and are generally poor and associated with low social status.7 During the 1980s large numbers of Salvadorans and Guatemalans immigrated to Southern California due to war and violence in their own countries.8 In Los Angeles the population of Guatemalans and Salvadorans quadrupled during this time. Yet, Mexican immigrants and their descendants were the dominant Latin@ group in the southern California region and are still the largest Latin@ population. Los Angeles, which has the largest Salvadoran population outside of El Salvador, contains the largest Central American populations in the United States. Such demographic changes have resulted in the movement of long established racial/ethnic groups from some areas of southern California. In California, the labels of “Latino” and “Hispanic” had long been identified with Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Thus, as Central Americans arrived, they were subsumed by the larger Mexican American population. The second-generation Central American children who were born in the United States began to adopt the labels “Latino” or “Hispanic” rather than identify with their nationalities, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, or Central American. The complex relations between Mexican Americans and Central Americans are marked by friendliness and cooperation, but there is also contention and resentment. For example, Mexican Americans’ long history in California led to resentment of the “new” Latin@s groups, while Central Americans thought some Mexicans exhibited a sense of superiority.9 Theoretical Framework: Language and Identity of Latin@s My theoretical framework draws from a body of research that focuses on the connection between language and identity for Latin@s. Research on the language and identity of Latin@s emphasizes the importance of the Spanish language in the construction, maintenance, and transmission of
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cultural and ethnic identity.10 Different languages or dialects are symbolic of identity.11 The Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa argued that “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity.”12 Other scholars who highlight the roles of English and Spanish in the performance of the self include Mendoza-Denton, whose study has contrasted recent Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born Chicanas and demonstrated how English and Spanish were symbols of social allegiance and identity for these girls.13 A burgeoning body of work on language socialization in Latin@ communities, using the framework of an anthropolitical linguistics, contributes much to our understandings of identity construction through language. Coined by Zentella, an anthropolitical linguistics is “research that sees through the language smokescreen that obscures ideological, structural, and political impediments to equity.”14 Research that follows this political perspective emphasizes the multiple voices of Latin@ communities and recognizes that Latin@s are “enmeshed in socioeconomic and political realities as well as sometimes conflicting cultural frameworks that shape our ways of speaking and our ideas about life.”15 Zentella’s groundbreaking ethnography of a Puerto Rican barrio in New York demonstrated how English and Spanish and their varieties were used by New Yorican youth to signal various identities.16 González’s study of Mexican–origin women and children in Tucson emphasizes the links among language, emotion, and identity.17 Baquedano-López’s study documents how Catholic doctrina (catechism) classes socialized Mexican immigrant children to ethnic identity through religious narratives.18 These studies all reinforce the importance of language as a key tool for the maintenance and expression of social identities and particularly ethnic identities. The Linguistic Landscape For Latin@s, issues of language and identity are never simple nor neutral given historical and current language and immigration attitudes. Historically, the thrust of the education of immigrants in the United States has been that of “Americanizing” them to the dominant culture, that is, to white, upper-class, English-speaking culture.19 For example, the southwestern United States has traditionally characterized Mexicans and their Spanish language as “problems.”20 Hence, rather than preserving Latin@ culture and languages, the United States has attempted to erase them. Such negative attitudes and linguistic discrimination have resulted in the devaluation of immigrant languages—Spanish, in particular—and the privileging of English. This U.S. anti-immigrant stance continues today, as evidenced by a slew of laws passed in the last two decades. California serves as a prime
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example of these policies. During the 1980s and ’90s, the state witnessed the passage of several propositions detrimental to minority and immigrant students. These included Proposition 63 (1986) that made English the state’s official language, Proposition 18721 (1994) that attempted to eliminate health and educational services for undocumented immigrants, Proposition 209 (1996) that eliminated affirmative action, and Proposition 227 (1998) that dismantled bilingual education. Recently, Arizona and Massachusetts have followed in California’s footsteps to dismantle bilingual education, and Michigan has passed an antiaffirmative action policy. The consequence of such policies is an increase in English’s prestige along with the stigmatization of immigrant languages, Spanish in particular. The marginalization of Latin@ immigrants and of the Spanish language provides a complicated context in which to study the language and identity of Central Americans. Methodology This chapter draws on the combined data from a four-year ethnography of a Pentecostal youth class in addition to a longitudinal case study of a Guatemalan American young woman carried out over a period of ten years. My ethnography of La Iglesia (the church) was comprised of two phases of data collection. I began Phase I of the data gathering in October 2000, focusing on the church’s clase para jovenes (youth class.) The majority of my visits took place between March and December 2001, and some follow-up visitations were conducted in 2002. I focused on the socialization to morality and identity as children and youth participated in the language and literacy practices of their Sunday school. The majority of my participant observations took place in the youth Sunday class. Over the course of the year, I attended thirty youth classes. I also observed the other Sunday school classes for the younger children and the adult service. Along with participant observations, I used video and audio-recording whenever possible to capture linguistic interactions. Phase II of the data gathering took place from October 2002 to April 2004. I conducted additional participant observations in the church about once a month and carried out focal case studies of three of the youth in their high schools. Originally, I selected four adolescents, two males and two females, two Mexican Americans, one Guatemalan, and one Salvadoran, thinking that by selecting them, I would have a representative of the nationalities represented at the church. All of the students were in high school; the boys attended the same high school while the girls attended different schools. All initially agreed to be observed and interviewed for the project. However, several months into the data collection,
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one of the Salvadoran girls no longer wished to participate, stating that she felt uncomfortable with the process. Conducting Ethnography Guided by Respeto (Respect) Driving to my field site on a typical day during my data collection, I encountered a variety of sights, smells, and sounds. Among the most noteworthy was the diversity of languages that the residents of this immigrant community spoke. I heard the well-known sounds of English and Spanish, as well as the familiar and distinct sounds of Korean and Mayan languages. Businesses, offices, and billboards responded to the different languages by printing and posting their signs in English, Spanish, and Korean. The juxtaposition of the different languages and alphabets on the billboards signaled the peoples who lived in this community, immigrants from Central America and Mexico, as well as a smaller number of Koreans. On my drives, I often passed a number of Latino panaderías (bakeries), Korean bakeries, taquerías (taco shops), pupuserías (Salvadoran stuffed masa flatbread shops), and restaurants offering a combination of MexicanSalvadoran-American food. None of these, though, tempted me as much as the La Flor de Yucatán (The Flower of the Yucatan) bakery and the El Taurino taquería (The Taurine taco shop). Further down the street, I passed Liborio’s, the large grocery store whose produce and inexpensive prices drew many customers. The sidewalks were full of people going about their Sunday business. A woman hurriedly pushed a cartful of clothes across the street on her way to the laundromat. A well-dressed family strolled down the block perhaps on their way to church. At one corner stood several men, women, and children waiting for the bus. As I approached the street where the church was located, an insistent and urgent voice cut through the noise. A man dressed in a suit stood at the corner, microphone and Bible in hand, preaching loudly in Spanish, invoking “Dios nuestro Señor” (“The Lord, Our God”). I left him and his voice behind as I rounded the corner and approached the church. I drove by the familiar signs and billboards announcing restaurants and stores, Dino’s, Fabric text, Las Vegas Tours, and El Yayalteca. The final billboard I saw was found in the church’s parking lot—a large red sign with white lettering in English and Korean, a remnant from the last business that was housed there. I grew up very near this community. When I was a child, my parents often took my sisters and me to El Piojito (the little louse), the local discount store. As an adolescent, my family and I often visited the neighborhood park after attending our Baptist church service that was temporarily housed in the auditorium of a nearby junior high. My own experiences and background led me to this research. I am a working-class immigrant,
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born in Yucatan, Mexico, and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up, I identified with the other Mexican immigrants around me, but I knew that there were distinct differences between us. The primary difference was that my family and I are Mayan, and my daily linguistic experiences included hearing the Yucatec Maya that my parents spoke and that was my father’s first language. Second, even the variety of Spanish that my family spoke sounded different from the Spanish spoken by other Mexicans. These differences were largely phonological and lexical and marked us as different from the larger Mexican population that came from northern Mexico, while my family and I were from southern Mexico. Thirdly, my family and I were not Catholic, the way most Mexicans and indeed most Latin@s are. As Baptists, we had different values, beliefs, and a different relationship with God. The experience of being “different” and of often wanting to hide that “difference” sensitized me to the experiences of Central Americans, who have a different language and culture from the majority Mexican and Chicano group and who are often subsumed by this group. As a member of the same ethnic group that I studied, some researchers and scholars may consider me a “native anthropologist,” “native ethnographer,” or “indigenous insider.”22 Indeed, my personal background resembled that of my participants in several key ways, including ethnicity and religion. These shared characteristics with members of the church facilitated my entry and gave me a unique viewpoint. However these similarities with my participants did not necessarily always make me an “insider” from the perspective of the participants in the study. Instead, these categories are more fluid, as Rosaldo and Narrayan have argued.23 They have noted that ethnographers need to recognize that we have multiple subjectivities that may mark us as both “insiders” and “outsiders.” Echoing Rosaldo’s and Narrayan’s stances, Linda T. Smith wrote: There are a number of ethical, cultural, political, and personal issues that can present special difficulties for indigenous researchers who, in their own communities, work partially as insiders and are often employed for this purpose, and partially as outsiders, because of their Western education or because they may work across clan, tribe, linguistic, age and gender boundaries.24
My background allowed me a particular position in my ethnographic work that required the constant negotiation of identities such as working-class Mexican immigrant, Chicana, and university researcher. Ethnographers’ positions or identities are dependent on their relationships with the participants in a study. In other words, while we researchers may think of ourselves as insiders in certain interactions, the participants do
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not necessarily share our point of view. I found that my identities were often negotiated in my interactions with the participants of my study, particularly when I was referred to as belonging to los universitarios (academics) by the pastor. Thus, my status of university researcher set me apart. Other differences that marked me as an outsider included being Mexican in a largely Central American church. My acknowledgment of these differences helped me to have a critical stance on ethnographic relations in the field. For example, I am very much aware that although my identities/culture as Mexican, Chicana, and Mayan Chicana were similar to the participants in the study and may have facilitated entry, I often wonder if the difference in nationality may have influenced what my participants were able to share with me about their relationships and interactions with other Mexicans. Moreover, these shared identities gave me insight into the respeto (respect) ethnographers need to have; it encompasses not only the English notion of respect but more importantly the sharing of cultural norms concerning appropriate speech, behavior, and gender roles.25 Thus, in my fieldwork I tried to be friendly and humble in my conversations with adults and children and also participated in some of the activities of the church, such as the giving of ofrendas (donations) and the purchasing of food sold at the end of the service, although I was not expected to do so. When visiting the church, I drew upon my Baptist upbringing to inform my actions and behaviors in the field. But, I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Pentecostal Church. Home Socializes to Central American Language and Culture The Guatemalan participants in my study whose voices and perspectives I draw upon included Amalia and her younger brother Aldo, who, at the time of the study, were in high school and middle school respectively; their cousin Dario who was in high school; and Dario’s older brother Tommy who was in community college. One Salvadoran student Carla who was in high school also contributed her words. Amalia, Aldo, and Carla were all born in the United States and thus were U.S. citizens by birth, but are considered second-generation immigrant students when classified according to the sociology of immigration. It is important to note that Amalia has been a focal student in my research since she was in the fifth grade, and thus her experiences are central to my analysis and findings.26 The linguistic border crossings in which these Latin@ youth engage are evident in the immigrant community where I conducted my fieldwork. The 1980s and ’90s witnessed a large influx of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, and Honduran migration into this working-class area in
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southern California that was once predominantly Mexican.27 Additionally, there is a small number of Koreans who live in the bordering community. Thus, to be socialized as a young Latin@ in this community means being exposed to an Asian code and graphic system and to come into contact with Koreans with whom they speak English. The language repertoire the participants were exposed to in this community included various English and Spanish dialects such as Mexican Spanish, Central American Spanish, standard English, and Chicano English. The linguistic context of the community makes this area a rich setting for the study of language. One of the strongest markers of Central American Spanish is the use of the pronoun vos (“you,” singular informal). Lipski writes that the “use of vos and accompanying verb forms is the rule in Guatemalan Spanish. The voseo verb forms are identical to those used elsewhere in Central America.”28 Lipski also states that among Guatemalan ladinos (those who identify with Hispanic rather than indigenous culture and language), tú (“you,” singular informal) carries a higher social value. Salvadoran Spanish is very similar to Guatemalan and Honduran Spanish. Spanish uses the same voseo patterns found elsewhere in Central America. “Many urban educated Salvadorians also use tú with other Salvadorians (a term usually reserved only when speaking to non-Central Americans) . . . Vos remains the pronoun of maximum familiarity and solidarity, while usted expresses distance and respect. Tú . . . [expresses] familiarity but not confianza or deep trust. Rural and working class Salvadorians do not make this distinction, using vos and more frequently usted in all circumstances.”29 For many Central American youth, home is the space that socialized them to a Central American language and identity. For example, Amalia proudly called herself a “Guatemalan girl” even though she was born in the United States.30 Her family’s small and tidy one-bedroom apartment was full of artifacts and signs of their homeland. The blue and white Guatemalan flag stood out prominently on a wooden keychain holder that hung on a wall by the kitchen and dining table. Her family traveled back to Guatemala often, and she and Aldo had the experience of traveling about once a year until their schoolwork became so demanding that they often had to take classes during their vacation breaks. However, they always stayed in touch with relatives through phone calls, letters, photographs, videos, and e-mail. Relatives in Guatemala, in turn, also visited them in the United States. Visits for special occasions were particularly important. By sustaining these transnational ties, immigrant children and youth build and maintain linguistic and cultural knowledge of their parents’ home countries.31 An important event was Amalia’s quinceañera (fifteenth birthday party) that drew many of her relatives to the United States for the festivities.
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Her blue, floor-length gown was brought from Guatemala by her cousin whose quinceañera in Guatemala Amalia had attended previously. Among Latin@s, the quinceañera is a ritual for girls. Mexicans, Cubans, and Central Americans celebrate quinceañeras in very similar fashion.32 The quinceañera itself is not just a birthday celebration but also a coming-ofage party, a very important rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood. Traditionally, quinceañeras marked a woman’s readiness for sexuality, marriage, and children.33 In addition to such celebrations, Central American identity was also signaled by the variety of Spanish spoken at home that sounded different from the Mexican Spanish that is primarily spoken in southern California. The following transcript provides an example of the use of the voseo pattern. This interaction took place during one of my visits to Amalia’s home when her mother was babysitting her five-month-old cousin. Mother: Hablale. (Gestures toward Baby Kris) [Speak to him.] Amalia: ¿Qué tenés? ¿Querés ( )? [What do you have? Do you want ( )?] Baby: (Looks at Amalia)
Using the voseo pattern, Amalia’s mother instructed her to speak to the baby. The vos is omitted but the verb Hablale is in the appropriate form. Amalia asks the baby: “What do you have? What do you want?” using the voseo verb forms tenés (“you have”) and querés (“you want”). In Mexican Spanish, Amalia’s mom would have said to her Háblale (“Speak to him”), placing an accent on the first syllable of the word rather than on the second. In turn, Amalia would have said to the baby: “¿Qué tienes?” (“What do you have?”) and “¿Qué quieres?” (“What do you want?”). This baby was being exposed to the Central American way of speaking like Amalia was when she was a child; in turn, Amalia participated in the baby’s socialization into the Guatemalan language and into the Guatemalan identity.34 Additionally, they were both learning the rules for formality and informality in that the informal pronoun is used rather than the more formal “usted” (“you,” singular) that is common to both Mexican and Central American Spanish. Amalia said that she used voseo “a lot” with her cousins in Guatemala but not much here in the United States and only occasionally in directives to her brother. Indeed, I have heard Amalia use voseo only a few times. Most of the voseo pattern uses were among the first-generation adults, particularly her mom and aunts. That these Guatemalans are still using the voseo is significant because Guatemalan ways of speaking are difficult to maintain from generation to generation in the United States.35 The majority Mexican Spanish that is spoken in Los Angeles usually replaces the Central American Spanish.36
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In addition to Central American ways of speaking, Central American parents taught their children Guatemalan history and culture. During a dinner at Amalia’s home, her parents, grandparents, and aunts remarked that the Mexican states of Chiapas and Yucatán once belonged to Guatemala, and that is why Guatemaltecos today are called chapines (i.e., from Chiapas). Amalia too demonstrated knowledge of her ties to Guatemalan politics, telling me that her family was related to a former Guatemalan president. Food represents another way in which Guatemalan culture was present in Amalia’s home and demonstrated the differences between Mexico and Central America. Amalia’s mother, for example, recounted her first experience ordering a chile relleno (stuffed pepper) in the United States. She recalled her disappointment when she was given the Mexican version rather than the one she was used to in Guatemala. Once, Amalia made me a tortilla and melted cheese dish that her aunt stated are called chilaquiles in Guatemala. Thus, Central American students have to learn two sets of vocabulary in Spanish to navigate their position in the United States. Challenges to Maintaining Central American Language and Identities Maintaining Central American ways of speaking is, as previously stated, difficult in the U.S. context. For example, Tommy, who was also a Sunday school teacher stated, “Sí claro, vos, vos . . . Yo lo uso con mi mamá y con mis hermanos” (“Yes, sure, you, you . . . I use it with my mother and with my brothers”). But he went on to say, “Definitivamente perdí el acento Guatemalteco” (“I definitely lost the Guatemalan accent”). When questioned about their uses of the voseo, the Central American Pentecostal youth expressed various attitudes toward their own use of the voseo, and recounted instances where their ways of speaking were questioned or rejected. Students’ own perceptions of vos as illegitimate or incorrect revealed ideologies that echoed the marginalization of Spanish and of their variety of Spanish. In addition, the Mexicanization of the Central Americans in California was a significant factor in erasing the Central American ways of speaking. In the following segment from an interview I conducted with Dario, he demonstrated surprise at my—a non–Central American’s—knowledge of the voseo. Dario: So, it’s a correct word? To say vos? Ek: Yeah. Yes. Dario: It is? Ek: I mean that’s, when you look at the different kinds of Spanish, that’s one of the pronouns that is used is vos, in Guatemala.
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Dario: Mhm. Ek: Do you use it? Dario: Yeah, I use it because somehow, since a little child, they taught me to say vos. Vos, vos is like, it’s like saying you, you, you, you. And so I say vos, vos, vos, vos. Ek: You use it with everyone? Dario: Yes. Even, like in church, some people say like vos? They like make fun, like sometimes I call them vos and they’re like, “Oh, yo no soy vos” (“Oh, I’m not vos”) (laughing). You know? So they kinda of know, they, they know. Ek: Are these people that make fun of the way—¿no son Guatemaltecos? (“They aren’t Guatemalan?”) Dario: No, because mostly everybody in church is Mexican.
The transcript does not capture fully to what extent Dario was surprised— really, shocked—that I knew what vos was. He asked whether vos was a correct word. Even when I assured him that it was right, he repeated his question later. His surprise underscores the rarity of vos in southern California, especially in public spaces. I went on to explain how it is a pronoun that is a part of the Guatemalan variety. The interview continued, and Dario explained that vos was his childhood language and that he used it with everyone, but I have rarely heard him use it in the church. He then shared that some church members make fun of how he speaks and attributed it to the church members being mostly Mexican, but in fact the church was overwhelmingly 70 percent Central American to 30 percent Mexican—a fact that Dario may not know because Mexican ways of speaking dominate at the church. Although Tommy laughed when he recounted others’ reactions to his use of the voseo, such teasing can be seen as a rejection of Central American ways of speaking. Other students also encountered negative uptakes of their ways of speaking. Tommy, for example, told me about a new girl in church who was from Nicaragua. He noticed that she spoke Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan speech) with her parents but not with others at the church. When Tommy asked her why she did not speak to him in Nicaragüense, she said that she used to speak in that language to other people who were not from Nicaragua, but they would demand, “¿Por qué me hablas así?” (“Why do you speak to me that way?”). Such reactions caused her to stop speaking Nicaragüense with others. Sometimes, even people from the same home country as the students reacted negatively to the use of vos. Tommy told me of an unpleasant experience when he addressed his cousin’s aunt, also Guatemalan, with the vos form. Using the tú form, she snapped, “No me tienes que decir vos” (“You don’t have to call me vos”). Taken aback, Tommy said he stopped
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using vos with other people, even with other Central Americans. Hence, the use of the pronoun is complex, and users have to know where, when, and with whom it is appropriate to use vos, tú, or usted. Carla, the girl from El Salvador, says she does not use vos with her parents or her siblings. However, she knows the form because her brothers, grandparents, and other family members in El Salvador use it when they visit her in the United States. When I asked her if she uses the form with her relatives from El Salvador, she laughingly responded, “No, no, ’cause I’m not used to saying it so I feel weird.” The negative experiences and “weird” feelings described above make Central Americans wary about speaking in the ways of their home countries. The pronouns tú and usted are more neutral in the United States and do not invite such ridicule or hostility. Americanization and Mexicanization in Schools Ely and Gleason observed, “As an institution, school is the epitome of socialization.”37 Historically, U.S. public education’s socialization of Latin@s has had an assimilationist thrust, socializing toward an Americanization that requires Latin@s to leave behind their culture and language.38 Along with the pressures of Americanization, Central Americans in the United States also find themselves undergoing Mexicanization, a complicated process that occurs in places like California where Mexicans and Mexican Americans are the majority Latin@ population.39 Latin@ culture in schools continues to be defined as Mexican culture, holidays, and celebrations. At school, Mexican or Mexican Americans sometimes ridicule the Spanish varieties spoken by Central Americans. In addition, schools can veil the linguistic and cultural practices that are found in immigrant homes and communities resulting in a social space in which individuals’ ethnic and racial identities are uncertain.40 At the high schools, the presence of the majority Mexican population masked the Central American students’ national identity. An example of this phenomenon can be found in Amalia’s high school and particularly in her Spanish for Spanish Speakers class. The Spanish teacher was from Jalisco and her classroom was saturated with Mexican cultural references and artifacts, including posters and pictures of César Chávez and Frida Kahlo, the famous Mexican artist. Music in the classroom from both the radio and the teacher’s own singing were Mexican selections, including Mexican boleros sung by Mexican pop star Luis Miguel and the song “De Colores” (“Of Colors”), a traditional Mexican song. In November paper skeletons celebrating Día de Los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) hung from the classroom walls. During one of my visits, the teacher recalled eating saladitos (“little salty things”) in
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her home state and explained that they are a typical Mexican snack food. The teacher also referred to a drink from her home state, remarking, “En Jalisco por ejemplo . . . Piquete, la leche pura de vaca con tequila es como un Mexican coffee” (“In Jalisco, for example . . . Piquete, pure cow’s milk with tequila is like a Mexican coffee”). Other examples of the teacher’s Mexican lexicon included certain vocabulary such as qué chulada (“how cute”), chatarra (“junk food”), and cochinero (“nasty thing”). As in school, Mexican ways also dominate at the Pentecostal Church. Blurring Languages and Nationalities at the Pentecostal Church Churches play an important role in connecting immigrants’ communities of origin with their new communities in the receiving countries.41 Religious institutions also play a role in the formation of ethnic communities.42 This is certainly true for the Central American and Mexican immigrant Pentecostal Church I studied. A small sign depicting a picture of a cross with a curving flame marked La Iglesia, the small storefront Latin@ immigrant Pentecostal church reflecting the surge of Pentecostalism in Latin America and in the United States.43 La Iglesia was part of a larger English-language Pentecostal movement that promotes Christian service and has over six million members worldwide in nearly 150 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. About one out of every seven Latin@s left the Catholic Church in the last twenty-five years.44 There were about 7,000 Latin@ Protestant congregations, most of them Pentecostal or evangelical ten years ago in the United States.45 Out of thirty-seven million Latin@s living in the United States, nearly five million are either Pentecostal or Charismatic.46 La Iglesia offered religious services and activities throughout the week to its working-class Latin@ members. As previously mentioned, the church membership was approximately 70 percent Central American (Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Honduran, and Nicaraguan) and about 30 percent Mexican. One of the church elders informed me that most of the children and youth at the church were born in the United States, and the few born in Latin America came to the United States as very young children. Sánchez-Walsh has found that Latin@ Pentecostals have an “ambivalent relationship with their ethnic identity.”47 She gives two reasons for this: Pentecostals feel they need to relinquish any identity that interferes with their religious identity; ethnic identity has little to do with the experiential nature of Pentecostalism. However, U.S. Latin@ Pentecostals’ church
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membership helps them maintain the Spanish language that bolsters their ethnic Latin@ identity, but erases the language and nationality of the Central American members. In other work, I document how membership at La Iglesia entails an erasure of national identity.48 The nationalities of the members were not foregrounded, and elders rarely referred to their home countries by name. In addition, in formal spaces, including the Sunday school classes and the sermons, the adults did not mention the countries they or the children were from. In fact, I did not know the youths’ nationalities until a year into my ethnography when I asked the Sunday schoolteacher. With respect to language, as occurs among Central Americans in the larger city and state context, usted and tú predominate at the church to the near exclusion of vos. I heard the vos used only a few times. When I asked Tommy about this, he said that he used vos with his brothers at church, but calling the students in the class by vos felt very informal. The pastor who is from El Salvador and the other youth class teacher who is from Honduras also used the tú and usted forms with the students. In addition, Mexican terms outnumber Central American ones. For example, the Salvadoran pastor called the children and youth niños/niñas (children) and muchachos/muchachas (boys/girls) instead of the Salvadoran cipotes or bichos.49 Asserting Central American Ways The identity work that Central American youth undertake involves resisting Americanization and Mexicanization. Amalia, for example, was aware of the predominance of Mexicans and Mexican Spanish. She knew that she spoke a different Spanish with her friends. When asked what she spoke, she asserted: [C]on mis amigas el español Mexicano. Porque el español se adapta. Yo creo que cuando estás en un lugar si alguien está dice-todos son Mexicanos y tú eres la única de otro país, se te pega lo Mexicano. [With my friends, Mexican Spanish. Because Spanish changes. I think that when you are in a place if someone is say—all are Mexican and you are the only one from another country, the Mexican style rubs off on you.]
Nevertheless, she claimed to be faithful to the Central American lexicon in the United States. She stated: “Como esto, la straw, ‘popote,’ pero yo no le digo popote, yo le digo ‘pajilla’” (“Like this, the straw, ‘popote’ [Mexican], but I don’t call it ‘popote,’ [Mexican] I call it ‘pajía’ [Central America]”).50 Amalia’s words point to her attempts to mark her Guatemalan identity in the face of strong pulls toward a Mexican one. Despite these attempts,
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she has adopted some of the Mexican lexicon; for example, I have heard her refer to chilaquiles as quesadillas. Nevertheless, she attempted to resist the strong pull of Mexican language and culture, as demonstrated during Hispanic Heritage Month celebrated in the month of September. She was a member of a group called Latinos Unidos that was sponsored by the teacher of the Spanish for Spanish speakers class. The group decided to do something on César Chávez for the parade. Amalia had observed that César Chávez and other Mexican heroes had always been chosen. She remarked that Guatemalans have leaders and heroes too. She asked to meet with the teacher so that they could choose someone else who was not Mexican. As a compromise, the group chose Don Quixote, the fictional Spanish character from Miguel de Cervantes’s book. Ironically, they chose a fictional European persona who does not represent the U.S. Latin@ experience. Other ways in which the Central Americans asserted their own language and culture involved their maintaining linguistic practices to protect family relationships that they brought from their homelands. Tommy, who came to the United States in his late teens, reported that the pastor and others tell him to speak to his mother using usted (“you,” singular formal) as a sign of respect for her. However, he said that he would feel like she was a stranger if he did. He strongly stated: Pero nosotros desde pequeños estamos acostumbrados a decirle vos y ahora, si yo le hablo de “usted” a mi mamá, oh my goodness, es como si no la conociera, es como es una persona extraña . . . Yo la llamo de usted es imposible. Yo no puedo hablarle de usted. [But we, from a very young age, are used to calling her “vos” and now, if I call my mom by “usted,” oh my goodness, it’s as if I didn’t know her, it’s as if she were a stranger . . . Me calling her by “usted” is impossible. I can’t speak to her by “usted.”)
That the Salvadoran pastor suggested he call his mother by usted also demonstrated the differences in linguistic practices within the Central American community. Hence, Central American youth may also feel pressure from other Central Americans to speak in ways that seem imposible (impossible) to them. Conclusion This research shows how already complex processes of socialization for Central American students are further complicated by the position of being a subgroup within a minority group. Linguistically, their Spanish
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is doubly subordinated. First, Central American Spanish has a low status in the United States, and, second, Mexican Spanish predominates in Los Angeles. Thus, Central American students’ use of their native Spanish and the Central American variety, in particular, are ways of asserting their own identities and resisting processes of Americanization and Mexicanization. Their negotiation of national identity sheds light on what is referred to as “the reciprocal relationships between individuals’ linguistic resources and activities and the historical and structural forces that permeate their lives.”51 Investigating Central American students’ language and literacy learning in the Pentecostal Church is also important for understanding the experiences of Latin@s who are not Catholic, and demonstrates the range of religious experiences in diverse Latin@ communities. In addition, the focus on home, school, and church highlights the ways in which institutions contribute to or take away from language and cultural maintenance. Educators and researchers need to be aware of Central American youths’ position in the larger social, political, and linguistic context of the United States, and need to address issues of language and identity in classrooms and other learning spaces. Increased knowledge and familiarity with the heterogeneity of Latin@ cultures, religions, and languages can help us better meet the needs of these talented and resilient students. Notes 1. Acknowledgments: I wish to thank the editors for their insightful feedback on previous drafts of this chapter. I am also grateful to the Pentecostal youth for their participation in my research. 2. Robert Suro and S. P. Jeffrey, The Rise of the Second Generation: Changing Patterns in Hispanic Population Growth, Pew Hispanic Center, 2003, available at http://www.thepewcharitabletrusts.net/pdf/pew_hispanic_2nd_generation_ 101403.pdf (accessed on August 1, 2004). 3. M. Lavadenz, “Como Hablar En Silencio (Like Speaking in Silence): Issues of Language, Culture, and Identity of Central Americans in Los Angeles,” in Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities, ed. Ana Celia Zentella (New York/Covina: Teachers College Press / California Association for Bilingual Education, 2005), 93–109. 4. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Summary File 1 (Sf 1) 100-Percent Data, Hispanic or Latino by Type (Los Angeles: U.S. Bureau of the Census, California, 2000). 5. Carolina Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Children of Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 6. Cecilia Menjivar, “Living in Two Worlds? Guatemalan-Origin Children in the United States and Emerging Transnationalism,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no.3 (2002): 531–52.
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7. Ibid., 531–52. 8. Marjorie F. Orellana, “The Work Kids Do: Mexican and Central American Immigrant Children’s Contributions to Households and Schools in California,” Harvard Educational Review 71, no.3 (2001): 366–89. 9. Nora Hamilton and Norma Stolz Chinchilla, Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001). 10. Patricia Baquedano-López, “Creating Social Identities through Doctrina Narratives,” Issues in Applied Linguistics 8, no.1 (1997): 27–45; Sandra R. Schecter and Robert Bayley, Language as Cultural Practice: Mexicanos en el Norte (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002); Bonnie Urciouli, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996); and Ana Celia Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1997). 11. Susan Gal, “Diversity and Contestation in Linguistic Ideologies: GermanSpeakers in Hungary,” Language and Society 22, no. 3 (1993): 337–59; and Norma Mendoza-Denton, “Language and Identity,” in The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 475–99. 12. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters / Aunt Lute, 1987), 81. 13. Norma Mendoza-Denton, “Fighting Words: Latina Girls, Gangs, and Language Attitudes,” in Speaking Chicana: Voice, Power, and Identity, ed. Letticia Galindo and María Dolores González (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999), 39–56. 14. Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York; and Zentella, Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities, ed. A. C. Zentella (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), 9. 15. Ibid., 10. 16. Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. 17. Norma González, I Am My Language: Discourses of Women and Children in the Borderlands (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001). 18. Baquedano-López, “Creating Social Identities Through Doctrina Narratives,” 27–45. 19. Sonia Nieto, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, 4th ed. (New York: Pearson Education, 2004). 20. Gilberto G. González, “Culture, Language, and the Americanization of Mexican Children,” in Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader, ed. Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres, and Henry Gutiérrez (New York: Routledge, 1997), 158–73. 21. Proposition 187 was deemed unconstitutional by the courts. 22. Michéle Foster, “Like Us but Not One of Us: Reflections on a Life History Study of African-American Teachers,” in Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women’s Personal Narratives, ed. Michéle Foster and Gwendolyn EtterLewis (New York: Routledge, 1996), 215–24; Norma González, I Am My
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23.
24. 25. 26.
27.
28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
33.
34. 35. 36.
37.
38.
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Language: Discourses of Women and Children in the Borderlands (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001); Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York; and James A Banks, An Introduction to Multicultural Education, 3rd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002). Kirin Narrayan, “How Native Is a Native Anthropologist?” in Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, ed. Louise Lamphere, Helena Ragoné, and Patricia Zavella (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1–23; and Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books Ltd. and Dunedin / University of Otago Press, 1999), 5. Zentella, Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Lucila del Carmen Ek, “‘Allá en Guatemala’: Transnationalism, Language, and Identity of a Pentecostal Guatemalan-American Young Woman,” The High School Journal 92 (4): 67–8; and Ek, “‘It’s Different Lives’: A Guatemalan American Adolescent’s Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2009): 405–20. Hamilton and Chinchilla, Seeking Community in a Global City; and Orellana, “The Work Kids Do: Mexican and Central American Immigrant Children’s Contributions to Households and Schools in California.” John M. Lipski, Latin American Spanish (London: Longman, 1994), 266. Ibid., 259. Ek, “‘It’s Different Lives’: A Guatemalan American Adolescent’s Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts.” Ek, “‘Allá en Guatemala’: Transnationalism, Language, and Identity of a Pentecostal Guatemalan-American Young Woman.” See Norma E. Cantú’s “Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States” (Chapter 7), earlier in this book. Norma E. Cantú, “Chicana Life-Cycle Rituals,” in Chicana Traditions: Change and Continuity, ed. Norma Cantú and Olga Nájera Ramírez (UrbanaChampaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 15–34. Ek, “‘It’s Different Lives’: A Guatemalan American Adolescent’s Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts.” Lavadenz, “Como Hablar En Silencio (Like Speaking in Silence): Issues of Language, Culture, and Identity of Central Americans in Los Angeles,” 93–109. Ibid., 93–109; and G. Guerra Vasquez, “Centroamericaztlan: Contact, Convivencia, Conocimiento and Confianza in California’s Millenial Cultural Projects,” La Gente UCLA (2003): 18–19. Richard Ely and Jean Berko Gleason, “Socialization Across Contexts,” in The Handbook of Child Language, ed. Paul Fletcher and Brian MacWhinney (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 265. Gilberto G. González, “Culture, Language, and the Americanization of Mexican Children,” in Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader, ed. Antonia Darder, Rodolfo Torres, and Henry Gutiérrez (New York: Routledge, 1997), 158–73.
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39. Guerra Vásquez, “Centroamericaztlan: Contact, Convivencia, Conocimiento and Confianza in California’s Millenial Cultural Projects,” 18–19; and Lavadenz, “Como Hablar En Silencio (Like Speaking in Silence): Issues of Language, Culture, and Identity of Central Americans in Los Angeles,” 93–109. 40. Benjamin H. Bailey, Language, Race, and Negotiation of Identity: A Study of Dominican Americans (New York: LFB Scholarly Publications, 2002). 41. Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet S. Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000); Cecilia Menjivar, “Living in Two Worlds? GuatemalanOrigin Children in the United States and Emerging Transnationalism,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no.3 (2002): 531–52; and R. Stephen and Judith G. Wittner, eds., Gatherings in Diasporas: Religious Communities and the New Immigration (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). 42. Ebaugh and Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations. 43. Peggy Levitt, “Two Nations Under God? Latino Religious Life in the United States,” in Latinos Remaking America, ed. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Mariela M. Páez (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and D. Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant: The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 44. Levitt, “Two Nations under God? Latino Religious Life in the United States,” 150. 45. R. S. Warner and J. G. Wittner, eds., Gatherings in Diasporas. 46. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Society, and Self (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 47. Ibid., 1. 48. Lucila Ek, “Staying on God’s Path: Socializing Latino Immigrant Youth to a Christian Pentecostal Identity in Southern California,” in Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities, ed. Ana Celia Zentella (New York / Covina: Teachers College Press / California Association for Bilingual Education, 2005), 77–92. 49. Lavadenz, “Como Hablar en Silencio (Like Speaking in Silence): Issues of Language, Culture, and Identity of Central Americans in Los Angeles,” 93–109. 50. Ek, “‘It’s Different Lives’: A Guatemalan American Adolescent’s Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts.” 51. Bailey, Language, Race, and Negotiation of Identity: A Study of Dominican Americans, 21.
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Part III
Performance Arts and Literature
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9
Staging the Self, Staging Empowerment: An Overview of Latina Theater and Performance Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz
“We’re going to have to do something about your tongue . . . I’ve never seen anything as strong and as stubborn.” And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down? Wild tongues can’t be tamed; they can only be cut out. (Gloria Anzaldúa).
he origins of U.S. Latina1 theater and performance can be situated in the Southwest during the time this geographical region was still under Spanish colonial domination.2 Historically, Latinas have contributed to all the creative and technical components of U.S. theater and performance from its incipiency. I begin this chapter with a brief overview starting in the twentieth century and offer an example of an early type of performance, and then I proceed to focus, primarily, on the works created since 1980, briefly analyzing three Latina plays. Anglo American theater has slowly begun to recognize and incorporate theatrical cultural productions by Latinas (and Latinos) into its canon. But just when it seems that members of this ethnic group are being incorporated into mainstream theater, it becomes apparent that less than 2 percent of the plays produced in the United States are written by them.3 Given this virtual invisibility, I will address issues of self-representation and empowerment and at
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the same time attempt to contest the stereotypical and racist depictions historically created. Latina dramatic artists have chosen to voice their own concerns regarding issues of identity formation as subjects who constantly inhabit a liminal cultural space where multiple aspects of their cultures (mainstream and marginal) overlap. Furthermore, their contestation also addresses issues of gender and sexual discrimination from within their own ethnic groups, especially starting in the late 1970s when the first wave of Latina feminism produced empowering literary works that were later transformed and transferred to the stage.4 In confronting the issues mentioned above Latina playwrights insist on making their voices heard and as the epigraph by Anzaldúa states, their “wild tongues” will tell their own stories regardless of the consequences faced from mainstream and Latin@ cultures. Alicia Arrizón, the preeminent scholar of Latina theater and performance, states: [The Latina] subject is the one who replaces whispers with shouts and obedience with determination. In challenging her assigned position, she begins to transform and transcend it . . . She is the . . . taboo breaker. She is the transgressive, the lusty and comical performer, the queerest among us . . . Latinas today bring a rebellious sensibility to the task of dismantling the structures that have defined, silenced, and marginalized them.5
These ideas of rupturing the silence and defying the patriarchal roles assigned to Latinas have been theorized by several Chicana feminist writers, especially Tey Diana Rebolledo and Yolanda Broyles-González. In Women Singing in the Snow Rebolledo exalts women whom she calls mujeres andariegas and mujeres callejeras (women who wander and roam, women who walk around), and explains that whenever women step outside of the oppressive roles traditionally assigned to them they are chastised and considered “whores, loose women.” The author reclaims, redeems, and reempowers such terms6 when she offers the following definition: [w]omen who wander and roam, women who walk around, women who journey: the terms imply restlessness, wickedness. They are not bound by societally constructed morals, nor cultural practices. The negative cultural stereotypes placed on mujeres andariegas result from a patriarchal culture that wills women to be passive, self-denying, and nurturing to others. And [these] women . . . can be demanding, self-satisfying, and worse, perhaps they don’t need a man . . . [They are] symbols of empowering the body, sexuality, and the self.7
Such terms, then, can be applied to Latinas in theater and performance when they empower themselves by breaking the chains of patriarchy, even
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at the risk of being considered traitors8 to their communities and ethnic groups, to finally reclaim their experiences, their voices, and especially their bodies on stage. Along similar lines Broyles-González theorizes about the Latina performance artist who can be considered atravesada, traviesa, and entremetida (crosswise, mischievous, meddling). When explaining the meaning of the terms, she states: a crosswise woman (atravesada) . . . [that] crosses conventions, borders, and hierarchies with wisdom. When the atravesada is grotesquely comical, then she is a traviesa, a trickster. Laughter is the ingredient [that] magically changes everything, which turns the atravesada into a traviesa, the trickster who shocks us out of the complacency of seriousness . . . She is an extravagant traviesa atravesada pelada . . . Entremeter . . . carries the connotation of “voicing” and breaking decorum, breaking the established ongoing rules of his-story, interrupting and inserting new elements, and breaking onto the scene.9
In their (re)codification of previously oppressive terms, both Rebolledo and Broyles-González contribute theories of empowerment for Latinas whose voices traditionally have not been heard. Latina theater and performance, then, can be analyzed through the theoretical framework of Latina and third world feminisms. Whether we apply the theoretical terminology created by Anzaldúa (new mestiza consciousness)10 or by Chela Sandoval (oppositional consciousness),11 we must situate the Latina subject in a “third space” or in between cultures from where she is empowered to enact her own (re)presentation(s).12 Historical and Cultural Differences The term “Latin@” is, by no means, all encompassing; it is critical to note that Latin@ cultures are far from homogeneous within themselves and among each other. The racial and ethnic groups that form these cultures are a result of racial and ethnic mestizaje throughout the Americas that comprise indigenous, African, Asian, and European (especially Spanish) ancestry. The long history of colonialism in the Americas also created a caste and class system where each subject was situated in a hierarchical social structure according to the color of one’s skin with white at the top and black/indigenous at the bottom.13 This type of racism and classism was also found in and expanded to the United States in its colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial encounters with Latin America. The histories of people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban ancestry in relation to the United States are strikingly varied and the task of detailing them here is an impossible one. However, it is important to consider that each of these
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ethnic groups relates to the United States differently, whether in terms of annexation, migration, or exile.14 After pursuing its Manifest Destiny and concluding the war against Mexico in 1848, the United States annexed more than half of its territory15 with the broken promises that Mexican citizens would keep their land, language, and economic power. Instead, Mexicans became second-class citizens in a “new country,” in their old land. For Puerto Ricans, the United States represents a totalising imperialist power given the island’s relationship to it as a free associated state, a euphemism for “colony.”16 Puerto Rico became a U.S. territorial possession17 after 1898, as a result of the war with Spain, and in 1917 its people became U.S. citizens. The most important waves of migration to the U.S. mainland, and especially to New York, occur in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s. It is important to note that out of the three Latino groups referenced here, Puerto Ricans are the only ones that historically have not been concerned with migrating to the United States as undocumented people.18 This, of course, comes at a big price given their colonial status and once they migrate to the major cities like New York, they are also treated as second-class citizens. For the same reason and in the same year as Puerto Rico, Cuba also became a U.S. possession; however, its colonial status lasted only until 1902. The first wave of Cuban migration to the United States happened in the late 1860s as Cubans migrated to Florida19 because of the need for tobacco laborers in that state.20 The second migration wave (by mostly middle- and upper-class whites) occurred in 1959 when Fidel Castro deposed Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship and imposed a socialist state. Soon after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, most of these immigrants became exiled.21 Finally, the third important wave of Cuban immigrants happened in 1980 when the Marielitos, who were described as the “unwanted homosexuals, and mentally ill of the island,” arrived.22 This last wave of immigrants was composed of mostly mulattos from the poorer classes who were not welcomed by the more economically established, mostly white, Cubans in Miami.23 Although each group’s history and relationship to the United States is remarkably different, in general terms, Latin@s (especially when grouped as such) are still considered an “Other” and are marginalized in the United States. Because of this status as subaltern subjects, Latina dramatic artists have been able to create a contestatory body of work denouncing their marginality and exalting the positive cultural aspects of their communities. Initial Staging(s) From its beginnings to the 1940s U.S. Latina theater and performance can be divided into two types: the professional and the popular. The first kind was presented exclusively inside theater houses, and it was created for
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the upper classes that preferred to attend shows, primarily monolingual Spanish productions where the works of established Latin American and Spanish playwrights were highlighted.24 The second type was a poor people’s itinerant teatro de carpa (tent theater) where the artists performed in Spanish (and sometimes incorporated words in English) as they set up their tents in small towns and wherever they found congregations of workers.25 The most accomplished companies (both types) traveled throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico. Virginia Fábregas, who was originally born and raised in Mexico and later moved to California, is a primary example of a woman who was an entrepreneur, playwright, and actor. She presented professional theater to middle- and upper-class Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S. Southwest. On the other hand, there were other women such as Carmen Soto de Vásquez,26 the owner of a theater house in Tucson, Arizona, around 1915, who participated in teatros de carpa and wrote and performed their own work.27 In Texas the famous Tejana singer Lydia Mendoza and her mother, Leonor Zamarripa Mendoza, led their family group in a variety show as they traveled throughout the Texas Valley to entertain migrant agricultural field workers. Leonor wrote and directed the comic sketches, taught her children how to play various musical instruments, and created costumes for the family—activities that helped the family save money.28 All of these women’s contributions helped the survival of the companies in the first half of the twentieth century. Because of its economic maintenance and low traveling costs, teatro de carpa became the most enduring and famous type of entertainment in which Latinas participated. Out of the many women who represent both types of Latina theater and performance, there are two in particular who left their indelible mark: Josefina Niggli (1910–1983) and Beatriz Escalona (1903–1979). Niggli, a child of an Anglo American father and a Mexican mother, was originally born in Monterrey, Mexico, into a wealthy family that left for San Antonio, Texas, during the Mexican Revolution. She lived most of her life in that state and given her privileged upbringing she was one of the few women of Mexican ancestry to formally study theater and performance in the United States. Niggli graduated in 1931 with a bachelor of arts degree from Incarnate Word College in San Antonio and a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1936. Two years later, she published her Mexican Folk Plays with that university’s press.29 She is often criticized for her assimilationist views and for attempting to make Mexican culture palatable to Anglo society through her writing. Nevertheless, her writings have begun to be reexamined and recovered. Niggli was a pioneer in Latina letters in general, given that she also published works of poetry and narrative when few Latin@s had access to U.S. publication venues.30
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Beatriz Escalona, famous for her teatro de carpa contributions, was another accomplished woman in Texas. Although she did not have the privilege, like Niggli, to study theater formally, she did this organically and started when she was young. Because she could not afford the high prices of the theater houses in San Antonio, where she was born, she started working as an usher and was able to see most of the shows while working. She later succeeded in inscribing herself in the male-dominated world of teatro; and on stage she was free from the patriarchal restrictions of her time. Her company, Atracciones Noloesca, became renowned and traveled throughout the United States and internationally. Escalona became the epitome of a peladita, a destitute, downtrodden Mexican social type that she called La Chata Noloesca. Her humor incorporated the rasquachi31 aesthetic and was often associated with bodily functions. Tomás Ybarra Frausto states, “[t]he crude and ribald content of many such comic sketches centered around what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘the lower stratum,’ humor related to body functions: copulation, birth, growth, eating and defecation.”32 Throughout her career Noloesca wrote and performed her own comic sketches that incorporated music and dance. The following is a song recently found in her archival materials33 that offers an excellent example of her strong voice and rasquachi humor: El chivo Por aquellas piedras negras donde se amansan los chivos [h]ay corazones ingratos y pechos adoloridos. Ya se acabaron los chivos ahora que comen las aves como han de cornar los chivos si tienen pa’ tras las llaves [cuernos]. Un chivo pegó un reparo calló junto a las lomitas que comerán los borregos que van regando bolitas. Ya con esta me despido con las frutas de un olivo y aquí se acaban cantando los versos del pobre chivo. [The Goat Around those black hills Where goats are tended to
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There are ingrate hearts And souls/hearts aching. The goats are gone Now what do birds eat? How can goats gore If their horns are backwards. A goat parried [and] Fell by the hills What do lambs eat They they’re dropping little balls? And now I bid you goodbye With the fruits of an olive tree Here ends the song Of the poor goat.]
This song entitled “The Goat” makes reference to the bodily functions (eating and defecating) and daily activities (cornar or “to gore”) of the animal, and, by cultural implication, to cuckolded or betrayed heterosexual men, especially within Mexican and Chican@ cultures. While in English this sexual betrayal of a husband by a wife makes reference to and carries the connotation of birds,34 in Spanish the reference is associated with several horned farming animals, particularly the goat. The betrayed man is called chivo or cornudo (horned, cuckolded), and is depicted as having invisible horns (put on him by his wife) that everyone, except him, can see. The specific reference in the song to these cuckolded men starts in the third and fourth verses that allude to the existence of “ungrateful hearts” and “hurt souls/hearts” when singing of the place where goats roam. The second stanza contains the most powerful verses that lament, “How can the (poor) goats attempt to gore when their horns are positioned backwards on their heads?” The backward and, therefore, dysfunctional horns represent the men’s penises that are believed to be useless after the betrayal. One can only imagine a carpa filled with mostly working-class people who would laugh constantly throughout La Chata’s performance of this song, especially as she incorporated many lewd corporal signs while singing it. Escalona represents exactly a mujer andariega and traviesa, as defined above, a woman who is not afraid to speak her mind and make fun of patriarchal power; here she does this by ridiculing men and their “broken” penises while empowering women to take control of their sexuality. Traveling theater companies like Escalona’s frequented the areas where Mexican and Chican@ workers were employed. They set up their tents on the outskirts of town, and attempted to address the issues pertaining to the communities they visited. Ybarra-Frausto indicates: “[e]ssentially a form of entertainment for the masses, carpas helped to define and sustain ethnic
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and class consciousness. Their robust ribaldry and rebellious instincts were wedges of resistance against conformity and prevailing norms of middle-class decency within Chicano communities.”35 Teatros de carpa, and their significant work throughout the first half of the last century, served as models for modern-day Latin@ theater and performance. Like Mexican theater, the origins of Puerto Rican theater in the United States were based on teatro popular or leftist proletarian theater as well as professional theater. Both types were produced in Puerto Rico and in the United States at the same time.36 Given the island’s relationship to colonialism, as stated above, the majority of Puerto Rico’s most famous plays focused on criticizing this issue. In the United States, the Puerto Rican immigrant experiences of discrimination, language differences, and destitution were also reflected in theatrical works prior to 1960. In its origins, Cuban and Cuban American theater too had a workingclass base. Teatro bufo, a comical, minstrel-like theater, became popular in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the last one. Originally, and until the 1980s, most Cuban theater in the United States was written in Spanish, and it favored middle- and upper-class views of the experience of exile and nostalgia for life on the island.37 Sandoval-Sánchez and Sternbach indicate that it was not until a new, bilingual generation of Cuban American writers emerged in the 1980s that these notions and attitudes began to be challenged.38 Post-1960s Chicana/Latina theater, in its present form, owes much to the theater produced in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, when people of color (especially Chican@s and Latin@s) were reclaiming their own rights and identities while denouncing their second-class status. The works of ensembles like El Teatro Campesino (ETC) and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PRTT) intended to make theater accessible to the masses. Later, both companies also offered writing and acting workshops, producing some of the most famous Latin@ actors and playwrights.39 Unfortunately, in ETC, which was led by Luis Valdez, the contributions of the women in the ensemble, Socorro Valdez, Diane Rodríguez, and Olivia Chumacero, were not acknowledged.40 All three women developed solo careers as writers, directors, and producers after they left the ensemble. Unlike ETC, PRTT was run and directed by Miriam Colón, who was apparently more sensitive to women’s issues and struggles within and outside of the ensemble. In 1971 El Teatro Nacional de Aztlán (TENAZ) was formed as a Chicano theater organization to tackle the issues of the time. Overall, TENAZ had a nationalist agenda that privileged male power. El Teatro de la Esperanza,
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originally from Santa Barbara, California, as an ensemble member of TENAZ, made an effort to include and acknowledge women’s issues in their plays. But this ensemble was an exception within the umbrella organization, and, therefore, the women who were members of separate ensembles within TENAZ formed their own organization called Women in Teatro (WIT). This facilitated the creation of all-women ensembles in California like Teatro Raíces and Teatro Chicana41 in San Diego and Las Cucarachas from San Francisco, led by Dorinda Moreno. In 1974 Moreno’s group wrote and performed the play Chicana that traced Chicanas’ historical ancestors,42 such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Adelita.43 Chicanas in WIT demanded that their needs be recognized within TENAZ: “[t]he need for women’s playwrights, producers, and directors; the need for strong women’s roles in the messages through which we educate our public; the needs of the individual woman, such as child care; and the need for support of all Raza for the development of women in teatro.”44 By the late 1980s the most powerful positions within TENAZ were held by women: Lily Delgadillo was the chair and Evelina Fernández the artistic coordinator.45 The all-women ensembles within TENAZ also created Teatropoesía, a theatrical performance that incorporated theater, poetry, and music. Yarbro-Bejarano states that it “exploits the beauty and power of words, a dimension often neglected in Chicano Theater, combining the compact directness and lyrical emotion of the poetic text with the physical immediacy of the three-dimensional work of theater.”46 Many of the women in this new genre were not playwrights or actors, but they utilized their artistic abilities to get their message of resistance and change across to the audience. As Chicanas, they extended their solidarity to the struggles in the Americas in general, such as those of the people from El Salvador and Nicaragua.47 One Teatropoesía performance piece entitled Tongues of Fire was based on the first Chicana/Latina anthology of feminist writings: This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Latinas created an impressive body of theatrical performance work, whether as part of ensembles or on their own. There were also important collaborations with Latin American theaters that contributed to their knowledge of the theater of protest and activism. Themes and Languages Overall, the issues in Latina theater and performance are as varied as the people that compose these groups. The most common topics can be listed under issues of gender and sexuality, class, and race. Most writers
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explore the subject of identity formation (be it sexual or ethnic), family and cultural matters, the challenge of Latin@ stereotypes, poverty in the barrios, nostalgia for the “homeland,” the need to assimilate, homophobia, incest, body image, and education, among many others. These topics are presented in a variety of languages that range from monolingual Spanish or English, to bilingualism or Spanglish. Occasionally, one encounters other indigenous and European languages in dramatic cultural productions by Latinas, like Nahuatl in works by Chicanas such as Elvira and Hortensia Colorado,48 and German in plays by Cuban American lesbian performance artist Alina Troyano, whose artistic name is Carmelita Tropicana.49 Recent works such as Troyano’s Leche de Amnesia (Milk of Amnesia), Chicana playwright Josefina López’s Simply María or The American Dream, and Colombian Asian writer Milcha Sánchez-Scott’s Latina all present issues of assimilation into the mainstream, Anglo society. Initially, this theme is presented as the only alternative to “fit in” but as the protagonists struggle to find pride in their cultural and ethnic identities while managing their lives in the mainstream, they each reach a compromise at the end.50 Theater Labs Latin@ playwrights have been fortunate to have had a small but effective number of spaces where their work and voices have been nurtured. Such Latin@ theater labs began to emerge in the 1970s, and have been responsible for the majority of Latina dramatic cultural productions since then. On the east coast, Miriam Colón’s Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre (PRTT) company developed into a writing lab in 1979.51 In California, the Bilingual Foundation for the Arts at the Los Angeles Theater Center was created in 1973 by Mexican actor Carmen Zapata and a theater designer from Argentina, Estela Scarlata. Its artistic director, Margarita Galbán, was originally from Cuba.52 José Luis Valenzuela has chaired the Los Angeles Theater Center’s Latino Theater Lab (LATC) since 1985. LATC has produced Evelina Fernández’s How Else Am I Supposed to Know I’m Still Alive and Luminarias, which deal specifically with issues of women’s sexuality, identity, midlife crisis, and women’s support systems. In 2002 LATC also produced Fernández’s Dementia, a play about homophobia, AIDS, and dying in the Chican@ cultural context. José Cruz González, for several decades, has directed another lab in California: the Costa Mesa South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project. One of the main contributions by this lab was the publication of the anthology Latino
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Plays from South Coast Repertory.53 New York is the home of one of the most renowned labs of this kind: International Arts Relations Hispanic Playwrights-In-Residency Laboratory Group (INTAR), which was directed for over a decade starting in 1981 by the famous Cuban American playwright and director María Irene Fornés. She is the author of over forty plays and is considered the “godmother” of Latina playwrights such as Cherríe Moraga and Migdalia Cruz.54 Post-1980s The beginning of contemporary Chicana professional theater can be situated in 1986 with the publication of Cherríe Moraga’s first play, Giving Up the Ghost. With this play, she became a pioneer in writing about Chicana/ Mexicana lesbian desire and identity from a sympathetic perspective.55 Originally from California, and of Anglo and Chicana ethnic heritage, Moraga is one of the most famous Latina writers. She has produced literary works in several genres: theater, poetry, essay, short story, and memoir. Her plays also incorporate issues of labor exploitation among women and men in the Chicana/o and Mexican immigrant communities (Heroes and Saints, Watsonville: A Place Not Here). Other Chicana playwrights such as Edith Villarreal (My Visits with MGM—My Grandmother Martha) and Denise Chávez (Novenas Narrativas) have also written works that specifically deal with women’s issues of identity formation and generational conflicts. Two of the younger playwrights’ works—Josefina López’s Real Women Have Curves and Milcha Sánchez-Scott’s Roosters— concentrate on themes about identity, self-image, exploitation of immigrant labor, and life in the barrios.56 Migdalia Cruz, who was born in New York, is perhaps the bestrecognized dramatist of Puerto Rican descent; she has written more than thirty plays and musicals with themes that represent the life of Puerto Ricans in urban settings. Among her most produced works are Miriam’s Flowers, Fur, and The Have-Little. Dolores Prida, along with María Irene Fornés, are two playwrights of Cuban ancestry who have had successful careers in theater and have been nationally and internationally recognized for their work. Two of Prida’s most famous plays are entitled Coser y Cantar and Beautiful Señoritas, and their focus is on dismantling Latina stereotypes (especially as sexually promiscuous women) and national/ ethnic identity formation. Two of Fornés’s most produced plays are The Conduct of Life and Fefu and her Friends, which undertake issues of repressive military regimes and refusal of patriarchal domination respectively.57
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Three Examples of Latina Theater I will now briefly discuss examples of works by three prominent Latina writers: Migdalia Cruz (The Have-Little), Dolores Prida (Botánica), and Evelina Fernández (Dementia). Cruz’s play was created at INTAR under the tutelage of Fornés in 1986–87, and it also premiered there in 1991. The play exposes the life of a poor Puerto Rican family living in New York in the 1970s, where the father is an alcoholic who has physically abused his wife and has been kicked out of the apartment, as a result, by his wife. He also attempts to molest his teenage daughter Lillian, the protagonist who is constantly looking for love. The mother, Carmen, physically abuses her daughter out of desperation and frustration about her life. Lillian’s friend Michi represents her opposite—a smart and ambitious girl who always dreams of getting out of the South Bronx and attaining the “American Dream” through education. As a complication in the story, at the age of fifteen, the protagonist gets pregnant by her boyfriend who dies of a drug overdose soon after. Lillian’s life is presented as one of abandonment as she loses everyone except her newborn son (her father leaves because of his addiction, her mother dies young, and her best friend moves away without saying good-bye). At the end, the story of hopelessness and entrapment in a dangerous barrio, her parents’ story, is repeated in her life, and Lillian finds herself a prisoner in her own home. One of the recurring images throughout the entire play is that of blood (that of murder, overdose, menstruation, death); Lillian says, “I hope nobody gets kilt. There’s always so much blood. Can’t jump rope over blood. It gets in the sandbox and the little babies try to eat it . . . We keep away from the sandbox now. It’s strange when people from an island are scared of sand.”58 The play offers no resolution for the protagonist who has resigned herself to praying for a better life. Cruz’s realism depicts life as she knew it in New York where she witnessed crimes and death all around her. The playwright, though, is more like Michi the protagonist’s best friend, as she managed to get away and take control of her own life to become a mujer andariega and entremetida who can now tell these stories in her own voice and without romanticizing her past. In Botánica, by Prida, we also find a young protagonist, Milagros Castillo, who fervently insists on being called “Millie” because she negates her Puerto Rican and Cuban ancestry, and her name in Spanish represents everything she has learned to hate about herself. Millie’s household also has an absent father, and she is raised by her mother and especially by her grandmother who owns a botánica. For Millie, this space represents the “backwardness” of her ethnic cultures, and she desperately fights her elders to get rid of the store and move out of the New York barrio
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they have known as home. The protagonist attends a private, expensive university, majors in business, and returns home to “modernize” (read “assimilate”) her family and the clients who believe in miracles more than in a Protestant work ethic like she does. Millie’s internalized racism and classism had been her defense mechanism while in college, where she was constantly accosted for the way she looked, talked, dressed, danced, and (even) the way she was named, “Miracles.” Unlike Migdalia Cruz’s play, this one offers a resolution and a “happier ending” given that Millie learns her lesson through miracles performed by the saints in the botánica. At the end, when she receives a phone call where she is presented an offer to assimilate completely by selling the family’s botánica and their home, she states: “No, it won’t be necessary, because—because I’ve changed my mind. No, it’s not the money. It’s that—that I’ve decided that my buffaloes [cultures and sense of self] are not for sale.”59 Evelina Fernández’s play Dementia, as mentioned above, undertakes difficult and silenced subjects in Chican@ culture: homophobia and AIDS. Although queer writers like Moraga, Anzaldúa, Luis Alfaro, Mónica Palacios, and others have brought queerness to the forefront of the Chican@ imaginary, ignorance and bigotry still abound in this community. Unfortunately, this often translates into discrimination, fear, and isolation of such subjects. Dementia details the life of a Chicano community activist, Moisés, who is dying of AIDS complications and who has lived his gay life secretly. On his deathbed, he has only one wish, to dress up as a drag queen and throw a party for himself with his loved ones. The complication arises when Raquel, Moisés’s ex-wife who does not know he is gay, decides to join the party. Throughout the play, the character of Lupe (a drag queen who is also Moisés’s alter ego and whose name is based on the Cuban singer by the same name) constantly accuses him of being a coward for not coming out to Raquel and to the world. Toward the end of the play, Moisés responds: [w]e were so scared people would “know.” All we could wish for was to be “normal.” To “feel” like a man, love a woman and have kids, like a man. Do you know how many of us got married, had kids and did what we were “supposed” to do? Do you know how many of us are still pretending? . . . Still dying of “cancer” or “pneumonia” because their families are still ashamed to say they died of AIDS[?] . . . So what if I’m a coward! I’ve never been courageous . . . There is no greatness in me . . . I am no fucking “hero.”60
In the end, Moisés still dies without fulfilling his wishes, like many protagonists with AIDS who die too young at the end of other plays. Dementia is an important contribution, given these topics and the fact that it was
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produced at a time when there was an oppressive silence surrounding the topic of AIDS and queerness in general and especially in the Latin@ communities. As in the other examples discussed, in this play Fernández’s “wild and sharp tongue” is utilized to give voice to the voiceless: the queer and the sick/dying who are abandoned by the communities they once served. All three playwrights, in their own style, present a small example of Latin@ life and critical topics of importance to such communities. Even when the plays do not offer a solution to such problems, the fact that these issues are written about is fundamental. These Latina playwrights struggle to create works of art that can represent their lived experiences as close to their reality as possible. Latina Performance Art The second type of theatrical cultural production in which Latinas have participated since the 1970s and especially in the last two decades is performance art. This is more related to the works of Teatropoesía, as discussed above, than to plays in the strict sense of the genre. Many performance artists present their solo or one-woman shows in community and university spaces. These shows often incorporate slides, music (recorded or live), visual art, photographs, and the artists’ own bodies. Given their economic production cost, Latina artists have witnessed a recent proliferation in their own work in their communities, and yet continue to occupy minimal space and time within the mainstream artistic world. In her definition of Latina performance, Arrizón emphasizes the issues of resistance and agency when she states that: Performance art, with its focus on identity formation, enhances the cultural and political specificity of categories such as ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality . . . This definition moves identity formation into the realm of indefinite processes unfolding in the bodily “acts” of the performer, the agency of production, and the spectator . . . Chicana [and Latina] performativity must be located in the realm of negotiations which transforms silence into sound, invisibility into presence, and objecthood into subjecthood.61
The three most recognized and produced Latina performance artists are Alina Troyano (Leche de Amnesia or Milk of Amnesia and Memorias de la Revolución or Memories of the Revolution); Mónica Palacios, a Chicana from California (Latin Lesbo Comic: A Performance about Happiness, Challenges, and Tacos and Greetings from a Queer Señorita); and the Puerto Rican-Cuban-American Marga Gómez (Marga Gómez is Pretty, Witty,
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and Gay; Half Cuban / Half Lesbian; and La Familia Cómica). All three of these artists deal specifically with queer, feminist issues and Latina cultural identity through comedy. Troyano’s Leche de Amnesia (Milk of Amnesia) highlights and contests assimilation into U.S. mainstream culture: In high school I was asked to write an essay on the American character. I thought of fruits. Americans were apples, healthy, neat, easy to eat, not too sweet, not too juicy. Cubans were like mangoes, juicy, real sweet, but messy. You had to wash your hands and face and do a lot of flossing. I stood in front of the mirror and thought I should be more like an apple. A shadow appeared and whispered: Mango stains never come off. I didn’t write about fruits in my essay, I didn’t want them thinking I wasn’t normal.62
The young protagonist, Carmelita Tropicana, in her attempt to assimilate, is reminded by a shadow (read: a Cuban cultural ghost) that she can never “be an apple” and that instead she will always be “stained” or marked with her ethnic, (in)visible traits. As a queer Latina, Troyano’s use of fruits for the metaphor of difference is appropriate given the generalized stereotype of queers as “fruits” or “fruity.” In a similarly humorous manner, Mónica Palacios, in Greetings from a Queer Señorita, centerstages Chicana lesbian desire and identity by giving voice to a previously silenced subject: I wish they would have told me [that I was a lesbian] sooner. I wish someone would have taken me aside—preferably an angel and said: “The reason you felt like an outsider when you were growing up . . . the reason you’ve had the unexplainable weird feelings for women—is because you were born a lesbian and NOBODY TOLD YOU!” But now I know. Because I have reached/Deep in the Crotch of My Queer LATINA Psyche./And it told me to kiss that woman./And she tasted like honey./And I kissed her entire body until I passed out!/When I came to—I realized I was a lesbian!/Lesbian— Lesbian—Lesbian! . . . And I didn’t have horns or fangs or this uncontrollable desire to chase Girl Scouts: “Hey little lady, can I bite your cookies?”/I was ready to embrace myself./I was ready to embrace other women./And feel safe./And feel a sense of equality./And feel myself gripping her sensual waist./Massaging her inviting curves./Kissing her chocolate nipples./And sliding my face down/Lick . . . /Down/Lick/Down/Lick/ Wanting all of her inside my mouth/And knowing I was never, ever going back/Because honey is/too sweet/To give up.63
Palacios is not afraid to shout her sexual desire for women after she struggles to become comfortable with her queer identity. Throughout her performance, she dismantles taboos to encourage and empower queer and nonqueer Latinas to assert their identity and take control of their bodies.
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Marga Gómez, in La Familia Cómica, also highlights assimilation and Latina stereotypes, especially in Hollywood. The protagonist recounts, again in a comic way, her struggles as an actor in the film industry where the roles offered to her were specifically those of a gang member, a whore, and a maid. Frustrated with these choices, especially since she comes from a performance family (her father and mother were a singer and a dancer, respectively) background, she decides to drop out of the acting circles and create her own stand-up and solo performance shows directed exclusively at Latin@ and/or queer audiences. Other Chicana performance artists from Los Angeles and San Antonio respectively are María Elena Fernández (Confessions of a Cha-Cha Feminist) and Laura Esparza (I DisMember the Alamo: A Long Poem for Performance).64 Both focus on Chicana feminism and historical identity. Fernández’s protagonist recalls her childhood in Los Angeles as a chola, and Esparza rewrites her Mexican ancestors into the history of the Alamo as she uses her own body as a screen to project their images on stage. Another important performer is María Elena Gaitán, a Chicana artist and community activist from East Los Angeles. Gaitán produced an important body of work related to the struggles of oppressed peoples of Mexican and indigenous descent. Some of her titles include Chola con Cello: A Home Girl in the Philharmonic, The Adventures of Connie Chancla, Aztlán—Africa: Songs of Affinity, De Jarocha a Pocha, and The Teta Show.65 Her topics include issues of racial discrimination, labor exploitation, women’s history, African-Mexican cultural and ethnic ties, and breast cancer. The most recent work in Latina performance is exemplified by Chicana artists Adelina Anthony and Vicki Grise. Anthony has toured with three performance art pieces throughout the country: Mastering Sex and Tortillas (a work about lesbian sexual identity), La Angry Xicana (a standup comedy routine on the discrimination faced by the protagonist as a Chicana and queer), and Tragic Bitches (a poetic performance about the pain and struggles of Xicana queer love and intrafamily violence).66 Vicki Grise has collaborated with Chicana writer and teatrista Irma Mayorga on the creation of The Panza Monologues (on issues of body image among Latinas). She has also created Rasgos Asiáticos, which traces the Chinese cultural heritage and ancestry in Mexico.67 In the spring and summer of 2007, Grise created A Farm for Meme, a multimedia text installation that premiered in Los Angeles and was also performed in Butari, Rwanda. This performance piece highlights the struggles of a community to save the largest urban farm that was located in Los Angeles and bulldozed for land development.68
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Conclusion This short overview of Latina theater and performance allows for an appreciation of the expansiveness of the field and its various topics and themes that have concerned such writers and artists in the last century and a half. Although each Latino group has a different civic and historical relationship to the United States, as a collective they struggle to assert their identity and take their place in U.S. society. The communities whose works are highlighted continue to occupy marginalized spaces in mainstream U.S. society, where these women’s artistic production is either erased or tokenised. Whether in the professional or popular arenas, Latina theater and performance artists have continued to create and produce their own works to rupture stereotypes and taboos placed on them. Each artist has faced discrimination and isolation for confronting the mainstream’s and their own community’s social ills. Nevertheless, it is thanks to their fearless and risk-taking stances that Latina artists have created safer spaces for the marginalized. It is clear that some accomplishments have been made by women in general in the world of American theater as a whole; but it is even more obvious that it is still necessary to continue to demand access in all theatrical and other art spaces in the United States for the voices of Latinas to continue to be heard. All of the playwrights and performance artists discussed here fit specifically into the definitions provided above about women who take control of their own tongues, bodies, and lives to continue to assert their own identities individually and communally. The hope is always that the struggles will continue to lessen as more and more Latinas achieve their status as published and produced artists nationally and internationally. Notes 1. This term was first used in the 1980s for women of Latin American descent who were born and/or are living in the United States. In Chicana and Chicano studies it has been customary to separate women of Mexican ancestry from the group, and instead use both terms “Chicana/Latina” given that the first is demographically the largest group of all. However, in an attempt to not privilege any individual ethnic group, I will only use the term “Latina” or its plural when referring to the group as a whole and “Chicana” when referring specifically to that group. Unfortunately, given the gaps in the study of Latina theater and performance, the three major groups referenced throughout this text are Chicanas, Puerto Rican/Nuyoricans, and Cuban American. The dramatic work of Latinas with ties to Central and South America still needs to be researched.
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2. Nicolás Kanellos states that as early as 1789 there were theatrical productions in Spanish in Monterey, California. See Nicolás Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). 3. Maria Teresa Marrero quotes an article from the 1998–99 season with these statistics: “82 percent of all plays produced were of male authorship. That leaves 12 percent of female authorship, regardless of ethnicity. A paltry, appallingly miniscule 1.8 percent were written by playwrights with Hispanic surnames . . . ” See Maria Teresa Marrero, “Out of the Fringe? Out of the Closet: Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance in the 1990s,” The Drama Review 44.3: 149. 4. According to Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano in her study of Teatropoesía (Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, “Teatropoesía by Chicanas in the Bay Area: Tongues of Fire,” in Mexican American Theatre Then and Now, ed. N. Kanellos [Houston: Arte Público Press], 78–94), in the Bay Area, the writings by Lucha Corpi, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, Alma Villanueva, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, María Moreno, Ana Castillo, among others, were considered primarily responsible for opening up Latina feminist spaces on and off the stage. 5. Alicia Arrizón, Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), xvi. 6. There are other terms used by Rebolledo that serve a similar purpose by alluding to rebel women: “atravesadas, escandalosas, troublemakers, malcriadas, and wicked women.” For more specific details on the minor variations on each term, see her chapter entitled “Mujeres Andariegas: Good Girls and Bad,” in Tey Diana Rebolledo, Women Singling in the Snow: A Cultural Analysis of Chicana (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press), 183–206. 7. Ibid., 183. 8. Anzaldúa, a leading third-world feminist theorist, clearly states that one (especially women of color) must not fear being called a “sell-out” when fighting for self-empowerment. She states, “I feel perfectly free to rebel and to rail against my culture. I fear no betrayal on my part . . . [s]o mamá, Raza, how wonderful, no tener que rendir cuentas a nadie. To separate from my culture (as from my family) I had to feel competent enough on the outside and secure enough inside to live life on my own . . . [a]nd if going home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una cultura mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture.” See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters / Aunt Lute, 1987), 21–22. 9. Yolanda Broyles-González, “Performance Artist María Elena Gaitán: Mapping a Continent Without Borders (Epics of Gente Atravesada, Traviesa y Entremetida),” special issue, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (2003): 92, 94. 10. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 79. 11. Chela Sandoval, “U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness,” Genders 10 (1991): 11. 12. Homi K. Bhabha states: “The importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me
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14. 15.
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is ‘the third space’ which enables other positions to emerge. This third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives which are inadequately understood through received wisdom” (211). He also identifies liminality as powerful and productive when he explains: “[w]ith the notion of cultural difference, I try to place myself in that position of liminality, in that productive space of the construction of culture as difference, in the spirit of alterity or otherness” (209). See J. Rutherford, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. J. Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 207–21. For a more detailed discussion of the colonial caste system and its relationship to social class and ethnicity (especially as related to Mexico), see Douglas R. Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). These terms are utilized by Arrizón, in Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 5. In my historical oversimplification, my intent is not to negate the violent and devastating history of Spanish colonization imposed on the indigenous native populations in the territory that was renamed “New Spain” first and “Mexico” second. For a thorough history of Chicanas/os, see Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle Toward Liberation (San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1972). For more details on Puerto Rican history and identity, see Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993). Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, although each with its own history of colonialism, have a similar status as U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico. This civic status privilege for Puerto Ricans has been analyzed by Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, especially in the face of the anti-immigrant and antiundocumented bashing in the post–September 11 “terrorist hysteria.” See Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, “Imagining Puerto Rican Queer Citizenship. Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican,” in None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, ed. Frances NegrónMuntaner, New Directions in Latino American Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 147–64. In 2003, Nilo Cruz, a gay Cuban American writer, became the first Latino playwright to receive the Pulitzer Price in drama. His play Anna in the Tropics details the lives and struggles of Cuban tobacco and cigar workers in Florida during 1929. For more details, see the essay, “Two Centuries of Hispanic Theatre in the Southwest,” in Mexican American Theatre Then and Now, ed. Nicolás Kanellos (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1989). See Arrizón, Latina Performance, 14. See ibid., 15. Ibid. See Kanellos, Mexican American Theatre Then and Now.
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25. See Yolanda Broyles-González, El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994); and Tomás YbarraFrausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause. La Farándula Chicana: carpas y tandas de variedad,” in Hispanic Theatre in the United States, ed. Nicolás Kanellos (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984), 45–61. 26. See Nicolás Kanellos’s essay in A History of Hispanic Theatre. 27. For examples of other women of Mexican and Latin American ancestry who participated in earlier theater and performances, see Elizabeth C. Ramírez’s Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre: A History of Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), especially the first two chapters that offer the sociohistorical context before 1950. 28. Lydia’s father, Francisco Mendoza, was the one to drive the family from town to town. It was also his idea to write signs with the family’s artistic names “Familia Mendoza. Variedades. Lydia Mendoza” or “Lydia Mendoza, la guitarrista, y el grupo de Variedades de Sketches Cómicos.” See Yolanda BroylesGonzález, especially Chapter 1 in Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music or La Historia de Lydia Mendoza: Norteño Tejano Legacies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 29. Arrizón (1999) provides an in-depth analysis of Niggli’s play Soldadera, in particular the representation of the character of Adelita, “[c]ontradictions abound: Anglo women play Mexican soldaderas; they wear clean and colorful skirts and shawls; they are surronded (sic.) by basketry and cacti meant to evoke folk art and a warm, exotic country side . . . Despite her childlike qualities, Adelita is revealed in the end as an aggressive, valiant hero. Beyond the folklore and subjective historical interpretation of Soldadera, Niggli’s depiction of Adelita and the other female soldiers centers the courage and bravery of these women.” See Alicia Arrizón, Latina Performance, 60. 30. See Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez’s book on Niggli entitled Josefina Niggli, Mexican American Writer: A Critical Biography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), which, according to the publisher, recovers Niggli’s works and situates her among the lineage of influential Latina writers. 31. Although Ybarra-Frausto published the first article on “rasquachismo” in 1990, Broyles-González, in 1994, also presented a pertinent working definition in his contribution: “[t]he rasquachi aesthetic is the inventiveness driven by necessity: not only economic necessity, but also by the need to resist, to speak out, and to address the burning issues of the day. Rasquachismo makes the most out of very limited performance resources and, thus, is not ensnared in the cumbersome machinery of theatrical productions, their aesthetics, and their politics.” See El Teatro Campesino, 94. 32. Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause,” 50. 33. The San Antonio Conservation Society hosts three of Escalona’s Scrapbooks, and I found two songs on the back of two postcards in 2004, El chivo and Pero nunca hicimos nada. See Urquijo-Ruiz, especially Chapter 3 for an extended analysis of Noloesca’s performance. 34. See any unabridged English dictionary for a detailed explanation and history of the term.
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35. Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause,” 53. 36. See Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre. 37. See Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez and Nancy Sternbach, eds., Stages of Life: Transcultural Performance and Identity in U.S. Latina Theater (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001). 38. Ibid., 48. 39. See Elizabeth C. Ramírez, Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre, 141, for more details on PRTTC. 40. See Broyles-González’s chapter on the participation of women in ETC, “Toward a Re-Vision of Chicana/o Theater History: The Roles of Women in el Teatro Campesino,” in El Teatro Campesino. 41. Teatro Chicana’s collection of plays was recently published as part of the University of Texas Press Chicana Matters Series in 2008. See Laura E. Garcia and others, eds., Teatro Chicana: A Collective Memoir and Selected Plays, Chicana Matters Series (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008). 42. See Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, “Chicanas’ Experience in Collective Theatre,” Women and Performance, vol. 2, issue 2 (1985); and Broyles-González, El Teatro Campesino, for a more detailed discussion on women’s participation in theater during the 1960s and 1970s. 43. Yarbro-Bejarano, “Teatropoesía by Chicanas in the Bay Area: Tongues of Fire,” in Mexican American Theatre: Then and Now, ed. Nicolás Kanellos (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1989), 74–94. 44. See Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, “The Female Subject in Chicano Theatre: Sexuality, ‘Race,’ and Class,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990), 138. 45. Yarbro-Bejarano, “Teatropoesía,” 78. 46. Ibid., 79. 47. Ibid., 82. 48. Ramírez, Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre, 136–37. 49. See Alina Troyano’s “Your Kunst is your Waffen,” in I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). 50. All three writers’ works are readily available given that they are three of the most famous, and their plays/performances are among the most produced. See Troyano, I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); López, Simply María, or The American Dream (Woodstock: Dramatic Publishing, 1996); and Milcha Sánchez-Scott and Jeremy Blahnik, “Latina” in Necessary Theater: Six Plays about the Chicano Experience, ed. Jorge Huerta (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1989), 85–149. 51. Ramírez, Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre, 141. 52. Ibid., 142. 53. See Juliette Carrillo and José Cruz González, eds., Latino Plays from South Coast Repertory: Hispanic Playwrights Project Anthology (New York: Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 2000). 54. See Huerta and Ramírez for more information on Fornés’s influence on Latina writers.
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55. Estela Portillo Trambley’s anthology Sor Juana and Other Plays contains the play Day of the Swallows (written in 1971), which is considered the first of its kind for incorporating lesbian identity issues in the Chican@ cultural context. Moraga cites Swallows as an example for her in spite of the play’s homophobic treatment of lesbians. See Estela Portillo Tramble, Sor Juana and Other Plays (Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1983). 56. For a more in-depth discussion of all the writers mentioned in this paragraph, see Elizabeth C. Ramírez’s chapter entitled “The Emerging Chicana Playwright: A Political Act of Writing Women,” in Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre: A History of Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 57. See Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez and Nancy Saporta Sternbach, Stages of Life: Transcultural Performance and Identity in U. S. Latina Theater (Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 2001), especially Chapter 2 for a discussion of both Fornés and Prida in general and as queer writers who had not acknowledged their sexuality as lesbians during the publication of these works. 58. Migdalia Cruz, “The have-little” (excerpt), in Contemporary Plays by Women of Color: An Anthology, ed. Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno (New York: Routledge Press, 1996), 108. 59. See Dolores Prida, “Botánica,” in Puro Teatro: A Latina Anthology, ed. Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez and Nancy Saporta Sternbach (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000), 45. 60. Evelina Fernández, Dementia, unpublished manuscript, 55–6. 61. Arrizón, Latina Performance, 73–74. 62. See Alina Troyano, “Milk of Amnesia—leche de amnesia,” in O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance, ed. Holly Hughes and David Roman (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 28. 63. See Monica Palacios, “Greetings From a Queer Señorita,” in Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latin@ Theater and Performance, ed. Caridad Svich and María Teresa Marrero (New York: Theatre Communication Group, 2000), 388–89. 64. Arrizón, Latinas on Stage. 65. See Urquijo-Ruiz, “Las figuras de la peladita / el peladito y la pachuca / el pachuco en la producción cultural chicana y mexicana de 1920 a 1990” (diss., University of California, San Diego, 2004), especially Chapter 3 for a discussion of Gaitán’s unpublished works. 66. This is a collaboration with Chicano artists Dino Foxx and Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano. 67. Except for The Panza Monologues, all of Anthony’s and Grise’s work remain unpublished. 68. Grise’s latest work Blu, a play highlighting intergenerational gang violence and the participation of Latin@s in the war in Iraq, won second place in the Latino Playwriting Awards at the Kennedy Center College Theater Festival in the United States.
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Literary Currency: Coined Contributions of Latin@ Literature in the United States Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
t the beginning of the twenty-first century, the key themes in U.S. Latin@ literature are identity, gender, inequality, racism, language, sexuality, the importance and centrality of the Latino family, and the inscription of physical Latin@ representations of subjectivity, spirituality, and agency. Since the early 1980s, issues of class and gender have emerged, and thematics dealing with the middle class are building greater presence. While all Latin@1 groups share identity invigilation, racism, family, gender, and class issues, the literary production of each Latino group is unique. For example, exile is a theme that reoccurs continuously in Cuban American literature, but exile is destierro (exile), a particularly different twist on exile that literally means the “delanding” or “unlanding,” that is, taking land away from a people. In Puerto Rican literature the themes of independence, territory, nationalism, and invasions in all metaphorical senses are central and well recognized. For Latin@s born outside of the United States, issues of the reformulation of identity and in particular the floating fluctuations of social class are essential, adding many dialectical shifting side ladders to the bridge of immigration. In contemporary Chican@ literature, the themes that are resurging are spirituality, migration, immigration, sexuality, social consciousness, and death. Finally, for Chican@s and Puerto Ricans, the geographic attack on bilingualism, language, and in particular the Spanish language is central because for the most part, third- or fourth-generation Chican@s and Puerto Ricans living in the United States have had to oftentimes begrudgingly give up the Spanish dominance of their parents and grandparents.
A
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This chapter provides a glimpse of the predominant themes explored by more prolific and renowned writers in recent U.S. Latin@ literature. Organized thematically and ethnically, the authors included here are poets, novelists, and creative nonfiction writers that have all had a significant impact on U.S. Latin@ literature. While all literature by Latin@s in the United States exhibits different themes, there are some thematic overlaps; nonetheless it is essential to respect the evolution and direction of each group, without continually encasing it in a set of unchanging characteristics that in turn may devalue the group’s evolution and creative vein, which is oftentimes light years ahead of that of many of its counterparts. Chican@ In 1959 Jose Antonio Villarreal, a young Mexican American from East Los Angeles, published Pocho with a large publishing house, Doubleday. This is a text that many scholars consider marks the beginning of the modern Chican@ literary movement because it gave literary voice to many Mexican communities existing inside the U.S. border. Since then, the civil rights and Chican@ movements of the 1960s have given rise to many other Mexican American / Chican@ authors, many of whom are unpublished, specifically women who did not make it into literary anthologies and did so only liminally in the 1980s when the focus on the recovery of literature by Chican@s began. Those Chican@ writers and poets who managed to rise from obscurity and share their literary creations with the mainstream U.S. literary world of the 1960s and 1970s have created a platform for this ever-broadening genre. Even though some of these authors are foreignborn, they subscribe to a nationalistic U.S. ethnic profile as in the curious case of Lucha Corpi who was born in Mexico but identifies first as a Chicana. Her story is particularly interesting because she moved to the United States under circumstances that were different from those of most other Chicanas who are either U.S.-born or who arrived in the United States as children or teenagers. Lucha arrived as a fully mature adult accompanying her husband to the university, yet has always considered her work and her literature to be part of the Chican@ movement, given the Chican@ influences on her young adult life and the contents of her writing in the United States. One of the most predominant themes in Chican@ literature is identity, as Chican@s explore various ways to articulate Chican@ experiences and entities. Sandra Cisneros, the most commercially successful and widely known Chicana writer, documents and expresses the lived experiences of her people and community in ways that writers and readers have not yet been exposed to in mainstream U.S. literature. In an interview Cisneros
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states: “I’m trying to write the stories that haven’t been written. I feel like a cartographer; I’m determined to fill a literary void.”2 In Caramelo, she utilizes mainstream Mexican popular culture heroes and inserts them into contemporary U.S. culture, exposing and mixing cultural elements in a unique manner.3 Cisneros for example, utilizes the “other” to Mexican culture like Cuban musician Pérez Prado, the American cabaret dancer Tongolele, or the Afro-mexican Toña la Negra to parallel them to the Chican@, juxtaposing in this way their truly Mexican identity to theirs, because they are accepted and acceptable icons to the mainstream Mexican culture she represents in the novel. In this saga of families crossing borders back and forth from the United States to Mexico, Cisneros creates her own type of borders: nontraditional borders, a reconstruction of both the main Chicana and Chicano protagonists’ respective female and male identities, and a total reformulation of the Chicana entity by delving deeper into facile assumptions of immigration and the female and male immigrant. In fact, in Caramelo, Cisneros also establishes the novel as historical by authenticating the historicity of her story with an inscribed “chronology” that gives a historical timeline formatted by the author. Another Chicana writer Graciela Limón, born in Los Angeles in 1938, also explores themes of Chican@ identity not yet articulated in mainstream literature as a professor at Loyola Marymount. Limón explores Mexican cultural heritage for its anthropological and historical elements. Her novels center on the experiences of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, as her characters grapple with issues of sexual and personal identity, autonomy, and interracial love. Limón’s work—In Search of Bernabé, The Memories of Ana Calderón, Song of the Hummingbird, The Day of The Moon, and Erased Faces—has effectively created a dialogue about these issues, which have long been ignored in traditional literature.4 Scholar Ellen McCracken theorizes the notion of Central Americans, Mexicans, and Latin@s from Los Angeles coming together without borders and examining their social and historical past through the literature of Graciela Limón. Erased Faces is particularly important because it contributes a new literary perspective about the Mexican indigenous communities in Chiapas, allowing for an additional theoretical framework.5 While Cisneros and Limón articulate the Chican@ experience in unprecedented ways, Pat Mora also expresses the need for writing about the Chican@ experience for children and young adults. Mora was born in 1942 and raised in El Paso, Texas. She is very proud of the fact that she is identified as a Hispanic writer and struggles for the rights of children’s and teenagers’ Chican@ literature to be validated as much as all other literature. Having published numerous books of poetry, fiction, and
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nonfiction for children, adolescents, and adults, Mora is also an activist for children’s literacy and bilingualism. She is the founder of Día de los Niños and Día de los Libros, days of celebration and inspiration for young bilingual readers and writers. Her efforts express her commitment to ensuring the existence of Chican@ literature for all generations (for example, her poetry for adults in Chants or her historical fiction for kids in A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inez).6 In her literature, Mora incorporates an emphasis on the desert scenery of her place of birth, such as in Oye al desierto (Listen to the Desert), as well as on her borderlands identities, such as in Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle.7 Articulating the immigrant complexities of the Chican@ experience, Alejandro Morales explores a Chican@ identity grounded in history and migration previously ignored by mainstream U.S. literature. Morales has sought to “[tell] the true story of California,” as the blurb for his novel The Brick People claims.8 This historical novel was first published in English, and recounts the story of a Mexican family that lived in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, confronted the reality of working for an upperclass family in California, and survived a system of indentured servitude similar to the Pre-Revolution hacienda hierarchy in Mexico. The experiences of the Mexican family that was indentured along with many other ethnic groups at Simon’s Brickyard—originally situated in Montebello, California—and that escaped an oppressive Mexican regime are absent from the fiction and nonfiction of the early decades of the twentieth century. For this reason Morales’s “true story” was the first Chicano novel to be published in Spanish in Mexico by a large publication house (Joaquín Mortiz published Caras viejas y vino nuevo / Old Faces and New Wine in 1975).9 Ana Castillo, too, belongs to this group of Chican@ writers that solidly establish the Chican@ experience and assert its presence in literature. In her novel Peel My Love Like an Onion, available both in English and Spanish (first translated and distributed in Spanish in Argentina), and in the poetry collection I Ask The Impossible: Poems, Castillo unequivocally addresses issues of race as she did in Massacre of the Dreamers earlier on in her career (an example is her poem “I am not Egyptian”).10 Exploring themes of sexuality and gender, Castillo’s The Invitation: A Collection of Poems is a much misunderstood collection, because she is central in constituting a discourse on sexuality by doing this. In the acknowledgments to her book Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (1995), Ana Castillo underlines the exclusionary state of her work: “Sensitive and introspective reflection is needed on the part of all those who desire to participate in the ongoing polemic of our five-hundred-year status as
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country-less residents on land that is now the United States.”11 By doing this, Castillo has gone beyond the American educational institutions, solidifying the real contributions of Chican@ writers internationally; thus the book Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma, completed as her doctoral dissertation for a German University. Identity A significant aspect of the Chican@ exploration of identity is the challenge of merging and living among and between two cultures; Lorna Dee Cervantes encapsulates this challenge in her work. Representing a multiethnic indigenous and mestiza population of Mexican and Chumash heritage, Cervantes was one of the first Chicana authors to read at a public forum in Mexico to express the Chican@ dissatisfaction with the mistreatment and misunderstanding of Chican@s to mainstream Mexico. For example, in the poem “Oaxaca” from Emplumada, Lorna Dee Cervantes narrates her magical visit to Oaxaca that also problematizes race, class, and gender.12 The children that are laughing in the streets are laughing at her, and there is a discrepancy between her thoughts that need to be “colored and her brown body.” The children are calling her names, and the old women are blaming her ancestors, and she is blaming her name “[that fights her]”: ¡Es puta!/ on this bland pochaseed./ I didn’t ask to be brought up tonta!/ My name hangs about me like a loose tooth./ Old women know my secret,/ “Es la culpa de los antepasados.”/ Blame it on the old ones./ They gave me a name/ that fights me.13
Death Among the more predominant themes of Mexican American literature, aside from sexuality, migration, spirituality, and history, which are all aspects of the exploration of identity, is death. Because of the high mortality rates both in the border zone, the zona fronteriza of northern Mexico and the Southwest, and in the rural areas, death is a continuous contemplation in Chican@ literature because it is also a constant reality. Stella Pope Duarte’s novel If I Die in Juarez documents the experiences of young women in the Juarez desert. This polemical theme began its evolution in the 1950s with the Mexican writer and philosopher Octavio Paz, and has become a centrally represented theme in Chican@ literature since then. Most Chican@ poets and writers have written a poem or a passage about death, dying, or El Día de Los Muertos. Norma Elia Cantú, the poet and
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author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en La Frontera, gives us a prime example of the intricacies of cultural practices dedicated to death: I remembered Bueli and missed lighting candles for the animas perdidas. We had prayed so her dead would find peace. But what I regretted most was missing the visit to the camposanto to visit Buelito’s tomb, because you couldn’t visit if you were sick or had a wound, even something as minor as a scratch, much less a burn like mine.14
In another of Cantú’s short stories “El Luto,” which appears in the bilingual literary journal Ventana Abierta’s anthology Cruzando Puentes in 2002, the protagonist subverts the meaning of mourning by going dancing after her father dies.15 Cantú’s works demonstrate that Chicanas are taking mourning into their mortars and refining a new way of being Chicana and mourning. In addition, the Chicano author Rigoberto González, the winner of numerous awards and the object of much critical acclaim for his novel Crossing Vines, his collection of short stories Men without Bliss (2008), and his poetry collection So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until it Breaks, as well as his recently published second novel, also underlines the validity and importance of death as an extension of life in his detailed descriptions of the “Day of the Dead” and the notion of the celebration.16 He states in his poem “Day of the Dead”: “Before, it was a fascinating game/ we played with our dead: a candy skull/ wearing my abuelo’s sugared name/ across its front, a molasses-coffin full/ of sweetened bones,/ a picnic on his grave/ spread out like marble . . . ”17 His poetry records the details of celebrations and exchanges in delicate language. As in the previous quote, González, Cantú, and other Chican@ authors dismantle and delve into the geography and symbolism of the Days of the Dead, theorized into a literary map and a culture of death as part of the representative symbols of life. Social justice Another significant theme in Chican@ literature, which should be noted, is a noteworthy concern for social justice. This has been true since the nineteenth century. Chicanos like Americo Paredes and Juan Bruce Novoa’s research on the recovery of Chican@ literature as well as Diana Tey Rebolledo’s anthology Infinite Divisions and collection of essays Women Singing in the Snow discuss the issues the pobladoras encountered in dealing with injustice all along in early Chican@ life and culture, having been the children of those who lost the Mexican territory that is now the United States. Jimmy Santiago Baca, a Chicano poet from New Mexico, expresses a deep commitment to at-risk youth, those who may turn to drugs and violence
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in response to lack of care and education. In his readings, he advises the young members of his audience: “If you’re going to buy a bag of dope tonight, buy one of my books instead. The dope may get you high tonight, but a book will keep you high all week.” Such words are powerful, coming from a man who taught himself to read and write unique poetry while in prison. His mastery of language is indeed intoxicating, as is his understanding of and compassion for a people struggling with continuous bias, given the flow of recent immigration and migration, related to identity. Also moved toward a critical look at social change, the Chicana author of The Moths and Other Stories, numerous short stories, and the novels Under the Feet of Jesus and Their Dogs Came with Them, Helena María Viramontes, grew up in an East Los Angeles home that was a refuge for members of her extended family, their friends, and other recent arrivals from Mexico.18 There she heard the stories that she acknowledges inspired her writing. Her most important influence within this diverse household, one which figures significantly in “Cariboo Café,” is Viramontes’s relationship with her mother and other older sister and mother figures who sacrificed their education so she and her other sisters could lead an economically safe lifestyle. She is internationally known today for her award-winning fiction. Her second novel, Their Dogs Came With Them, also blends feminist, race, and class consciousness in a critique of U.S. government policies; the mistreatment of and poor conditions for migrant workers and immigrants, particularly the homeless and poor people in the inner city; and sexuality.19 The poet, novelist, and children’s book writer Lucha Corpi—who was born in Jaltipán, Mexico, in 1945 and came to Berkeley at the age of nineteen—also deals in a creative array of mystery novels. In her work she explores social justice issues. She has written the books of poetry Palabras de Mediodia (Noon Words) and Variaciones Sobre una Tempestad (Variations on a Storm); the children’s books Ahí, Donde Bailen los Luciérnagas (Where Fireflies Dance) and El niño goloso (The Triple Banana Split Boy); and the novels Delia’s Song, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, Cactus Blood, and Black Widow’s Wardrobe.20 Corpi says her writing is a survival mechanism: “I was compelled to write just so I could survive emotionally and intellectually, and writing poetry or prose became as vital to me as eating and breathing.”21 She uses her work to theorize many topics that are central to Chicana feminism: race, spirituality, political issues, symbols and myths in Chican@ culture, and borderland identity. Corpi’s work expresses the intense distress in many Chicanas’ search for identity, and, in doing so, she gives voice and validity to Chicanas, both in the world of literature and in the context of an American culture that is beginning to become aware of this diversity of experience and has recently empowered its authors with the publication of their literature by large publishing houses.
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While the authors here represent prolific and marked contributions to U.S. Latin@ literature, numerous other equally prolific writers are not included here. Examples are Benjamin Alire Sáenz, whose writing explores death and some class issues; Francisco X. Alcarón, Michelle Serros, and Rosemary Catacalos, who explore the languages and ethnicities involved in a more complete Chicana identity; Floyd Salas, Gary Soto, and Denise Chávez, who are all pivotal writers in working toward greater feminist, race, and class consciousness in social change; and Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Michael Nava, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, who are gay and lesbian writers working at the forefront of social change. While more writers belong in a complete survey of Chican@ literature, these writers deserve mention in this growing field of literature, and attest to the vibrant sector within Latin@ literature that has perhaps the largest number of writers and certainly the longest sustained literary history. Puerto Rican The Puerto Rican critic Carmen S. Rivera has best stated that one of the new important contributions of Puerto Rican authors is to “move beyond the traditional and sometimes romantic imagery of the sea to submerge themselves into the politics of body fluids and everyday liquids.”22 Puerto Rican women authors have done so much more than expand their discourse on the body, entering the realm of the scatological. They have focused on the loss and hybridization of language, as is the case of Sandra María Esteves; expanded their mestiza/mulata subjectivity into other realms, including the Jewish domain, as is the case of Aurora Levins Morales; and explored an expansive view of subversive sexuality and sexual behavior, as is the case of Ana Lydia Vega. Many Puerto-Rican American authors and poets were born and/or grew up in the Puerto Rican community of New York City. Miguel Algarín underlines the clapping hands, the whistles of joy in his Nuyorican Poets’ Café, and the poetry that clicks from the long list of contemporary hip-hop poets, only recently emerging into a mass number: 4.1 million persons of Puerto Rican ancestry in the United States and 3.9 million on the island.23 Much of these authors’ work reflects these experiences and focuses on the culture and people of El Barrio. Nicholasa Mohr is, however, one of the first writers—along with the island woman and native upper-class writer of her generation Rosario Ferré—to be respected for her work as a writer in U.S. mainstream literary cultures. Mohr was born in 1935 in New York after her parents had emigrated from Puerto Rico. Drawn to the works of the Mexican modernists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco for their ability to express the
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need for positive social change, Mohr initially painted before writing short stories and her first book for children, Nilda. Many of Mohr’s stories center on characters, like Mohr, who are growing up in Latin@ neighborhoods in New York City. Her books are in large part written about and aimed toward children and young adults. Victor Hernández Cruz, another of Mohr’s contemporaries, who is originally from Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, moved with his family to New York City in 1954. He began a poet’s career while still in high school. He opened several doors for Latin@ poets by being the first Latin@ poet to appear in Life Magazine in April 1981 as an “outstanding American poet.” His work is invaluable because he highlights the consciousness of island culture in mainland life.24 By 1966, he had published a collection of verse, Papo Got His Gun, and Other Poems, and in 1969 published Snaps.25 He was also the first poet to be published by Random House.26 Cruz names the three languages in which he writes, Spanish, English, and Bilingual, and states that they are central to his work. In fact, one of the characteristics that distinguishes his work is the great attention that he pays to his linguistic choices. Rather than being grounded in popular culture or life in El Barrio, which is characteristic of many of his contemporary Latin@ poets, his unique voice is influenced by various literary movements. His other works include Mainland; Tropicalizations; Rhythm, Content, and Flavor: New and Selected Poems; Red Beans: Poems; and The Mountains and the Sea.27 Martín Espada, who has been called “the Latino poet of his generation,” was born in 1957 and also grew up in New York City. Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. Espada is truly a voice that Latinoizes/ Boricuanizes the mainland by creating Puerto Rican spaces. He particularly addresses the intricacies of racism: Niggerlips was the high school name/ for me./So called by Douglas . . . So Niggerlips has the mouth/ of his great-grandfather,/ the song he must have sung/ as he pounded the leather and nails, the heat that courses through copper,/ the stubbornness of a fly in milk,/ and all you have, Douglas,/ is that unloaded gun.28
Aurora Levins Morales, a poet and historian, was born in Puerto Rico in 1954 and moved with her family to the United States in 1967. She writes from the perspective of a self-identified feminist who is both a Puerto Rican and a Jew concerned with political and social issues of race and gender. However, unlike many of her contemporaries, Morales’s works do not deal with life in El Barrio of New York City. Her experiences deal instead with urban Chicago and rural New Hampshire, where her family
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first moved after coming to the United States. She explores her mestiza identity through a critical discussion of her two cultures: those of the United States and Puerto Rico. One element of this discussion can be seen in the generational dialogue that takes place in a novel written with her mother, Getting Home Alive.29 Levins Morales’s work is an example of the diversification occurring in U.S. Puerto Rican literature. As Puerto Ricans have moved beyond New York, Puerto Rican writers have begun to deal with themes besides New York City, and their voices are emerging in much greater diversity. Identity The following Puerto Rican writers write primarily of the tension and complexity involved in notions of identity for Puerto Ricans living in the United States. Esmeralda Santiago was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her mother and ten siblings when she was thirteen years old. She has written a memoir, When I Was a Puerto Rican, and novels such as America’s Dream and Almost a Woman, and cofounded a production company for documentary filmmaking. Exploring questions of identity, her memoir describes vividly the experiences, sights, and smells of her childhood in Puerto Rico, and documents the experience of her journey to the United States as both intensely personal while at the same time being in a sense universal to many immigrant groups in the United States. Santiago documents the merging and clashing of multiple cultures, which proves to be a challenge to many immigrants. In her memoir, perhaps her most popular quote is where she speaks of her difficulty upon returning to Puerto Rico for a visit as an adult: “I felt as Puerto Rican as when I left the island, but to those who had never left, I was contaminated by Americanisms, and therefore, had become less than Puerto Rican. Yet, in the United States, my darkness, my accented speech, my frequent lapses into the confused silence between English and Spanish identified me as foreign, non-American.”30 Her novels share this thematic, illustrating the struggle for identity and search for place, while highlighting the triumph of determination, and specifically the struggle and difficult work of American immigrants searching for identity and a new kind of “American Dream.” Jack Agüeros was also born and raised in East Harlem. He is a wellknown community activist, poet, translator, editor, and writer. He has written several books of poems, and short stories, including Lord, Is This a Psalm?; Sonnets from the Puerto Rican; Correspondence Between Stonehaulers; and Dominoes and Other Stories from the Puerto Rican.31 Agüeros writes poems, sonnets, and psalms that are deeply political; he
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deals with themes of immigration, and specifically with the complex and challenging struggles that are experienced by Puerto Ricans living in the United States. He documents and speaks of/to his community with warmth, humor, and impassioned anger, and his work is both well received and critically acclaimed. The fact that his first entirely self-authored book of poetry was published over twenty-five years after his first critically acclaimed poems were published is evidence of the prevalence of the boundaries against Latin@ writers that he has helped to break down. Miguel Algarín’s contributions as a writer and as the owner/administrator of the Nuyorican Poets’ Café have made him one of the founders and leaders of the Nuyorican literary movement. He was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and moved with his family to New York in the early 1950s. Algarín writes plays and prose, but is most widely known as the creator of bilingual poetry that is eclectic in nature. His poetry takes the form of everything from jazz-salsa poetry to avant-garde verse. He is the author of award-winning books of poetry that are exemplary of his eclectic sense of style, which incorporates the pace and rhythm of jazz poetry and the bombarded media messages and popular culture that are important to Nuyorican poetry. A complete anthology of his work is available in Survival/Supervivencia.32 Latin American Writers The class issues that privilege the arrival of middle- to upper-class intellectuals in the United States as shaped subjects also affirm the entrance of these Latin@ authors into the intellectual class and the obscure path to the aperture of “barrioized” writers. Their experiences could only unequally become parallel. While Julia Alvarez’s work is essential to the understanding of the differential use of class in Latin America and the deconstruction of classism and established unfair hierarchies that exist throughout, they are also a problematic, sweetened entity within American academic life. Latin Americans were initially privileged by Spanish Departments, as were Spanish intellectuals during the 1950s (in comparison with Puerto Rican or Chican@ professors) and up until the 1980s—they are preferred even now in some universities in comparison to the U.S.-formed Latin@s. Thus, the work of Julia Alvarez and her transparency in confronting head-on the Trojan monster of classism in Latin@ societies is invaluable. In her poem “Homecoming,” Alvarez undresses Dominican, and by extension Latin American, social class structures in front of mainstream America: It would be years/ before I took the courses that would change my mind/ in schools paid for by sugar from the fields around us,/ years before I could
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begin to comprehend/ how one does not see the maids when they pass by/ with trays of deviled eggs arranged in daisy wheels.33
Her privilege is exposed through her writing, openly exhibiting the fact that her education was achieved because of systems that oppress—classism and racism. A Mexican-born Jewish critic who underlines issues of class in his research and who now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, Ilan Stavans is another writer who is controversial yet important in Departments of Modern Languages in U.S. academic circles. In his work he unbraids the ruthlessness lived in Mexico for the first twenty years of his life, being mistreated by both Mexicans and Sephardic Jews for his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. He has contributed in a prolific manner to the mainstream American establishment with his books The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America, The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Popular Hispanic Culture, The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories, and others.34 But perhaps his most significant contribution is that of letting others know and appreciate the privilege of enjoying religious freedom in the United States as well as the deconstruction of Spanish Language Departments and their hierarchy in the United States, as previously stated in this chapter. Considered one of the first successful Latin American women novelists, Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer in the magic realist tradition. Allende was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, and left Chile to live her adolescence in Bolivia, the Middle East, and Europe. A letter to her terminally ill grandfather that she began writing in 1981 evolved into her first novel, La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits) in 1982.35 This novel was followed by De amor y de sombras (Of Love and Shadows), Eva Luna, and El plan infinito (The Infinite Plan), and a collection of short stories entitled Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna).36 All of Allende’s works are written in the style of magical realism, using myth and fantasy in otherwise realistic fiction, and they often portray South American politics. Her first four novels, which examine the role of women in Latin America, are reflective of her own personal experiences. El plan infinito, however, has a male protagonist and is set in the United States. Her first nonfiction work, Paula (1994, translated 1995), was written as a letter to her daughter, who, afflicted with a hereditary blood disease, had fallen into a coma.37 Allende’s more recent books are Aphrodite, Hija de la fortuna (Daughter of Fortune), Retrato en sepia (Portrait in Sepia), La ciudad de las bestias (City of the Beasts), Mi País Inventado: Un Paseo Nostálgico por Chile (My Invented Country), and El reino del dragon de oro (Kingdom of the Golden Dragon).38
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Marjorie Agosín, a Chilean not born in Chile but in New Jersey, is a Latina who identifies as Jewish. She is one of the most accomplished and prolific poets of our times. Although American-born, she is very much a Latin American writer/woman, one of those unique individuals who is able to project all her subjectivities elegantly and open new literary ground with her work. A pioneer in creative writing and human rights, Agosín melds and beautifully alloys humanistic goals and contemporary Latin American writings about women. For example, her book Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras is about Chilean women who make their struggles known through their arpilleras, tapestries that are a record of their courage in the face of oppression.39 Agosín is the author of at least twenty collections of poetry, short stories, and fantastic literature. Her latest is Cartographies: Meditations on Travel.40 She has received the “Good Neighbors” award from the Conference of Christians and Jews and numerous other scholarly and literary awards in the last few years that bridge subjectivities, getting much deserved credit for successfully catapulting Latina literature into mainstream America. Cuban Americans The Cuban American writers perhaps comprise one of the most diverse groups in relation to generation, class, and race. I categorize them into two waves. The first wave is comprised of either established writers like Oscar Hijuelos or the daughters and sons of upper-class privileged people who arrived in the United States “standing,” as one would say in Mexico, without many possessions, but owning the status of their backgrounds and education, with skills that would easily allow them to publish or guide their children into academic and literary careers. The second wave is comprised of the revisionist writers of the new generation like the Cubanborn poet Dionisio Martínez who grew up in Spain and then settled in the United States in the 1980s. The second wave also includes his niece Ana Menendez—the author of the successful Loving Che, a novel about the fictional nostalgia that Che represented for many Cuban women.41 Oscar Hijuelos, born in New York City in 1951 to working-class Cuban American parents, focuses much of his work on examining his feelings about his Cuban heritage and his experiences as a Cuban American. He was the first Latino to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He received the prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, a story of Cuban musicians living in New York in the early 1950s.42 Most of his novels deal thematically with the struggles and dreams of Cuban Americans who are faced with the harsh reality of life in the United States. In 1983 Hijuelos published Our House in the Last World, which explores the complex
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themes of family and memory—topics that he has returned to in many of his novels.43 Whereas Hijuelos focuses primarily on life in the United States, much of Achy Obejas’s writing depicts images and themes from Cuba, her birthplace. Obejas moved from Havana, Cuba, to Michigan City, Indiana, in 1962, when she was six years old. The intermingling of her childhood memories and imaginings of Cuba with her recent experiences in Cuba are central to her work as a novelist. In Memory Mambo (1996), she describes her process: other lives lived right alongside mine interrupt, barge in on my senses, and I no longer know if I really lived through an experience or just heard about it so many times, or so convincingly that I believed it for myself—became the lens through which it was captured, retold and reshaped.44
Her work reveals an accomplished journalist and creative writer shaped by a profound sense of Cuban identity and definition as a woman and as a lesbian outlier. As she uses writing and activism to explore her Cuban identity and her experiences of identity and ethnicity, Obejas has become a unique and powerful Cuban American voice. Recently her novel Ruins has become one of the most celebrated pieces of literature, having received multiple literary awards.45 Like Obejas, Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba, and lived there until her family moved to the United States after the revolution in 1962. Her poetry and fiction also centers on exile, and particularly on her own experience of crossing cultural borders and finding identity. In Prayer to Lourdes, she writes: Lourdes, forgive me, I wasted too much time/ worrying whether I was Cuban enough/ to claim the loss of that country as my loss./ I claim it now in the name of my Yiddish grandfather/ who worked on the railroad in Artemisa,/ growing hands as thick as the ceiba,/ hands like a map, like memory, hands that never wept.46
Through her personal and artistic exploration of identity, she seeks to build bridges, and to uncover a common culture and history with Cubans who remain on the island. She asserts that “we have one country, as Martí said,/ Cuba and the night.”47 In this vein, her work strives toward an emotional and spiritual healing of the divisions caused by exile. Ana Menendez, who has published a collection of short stories, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Loving Che, also centers her work on Cuban and Cuban American themes of identity and exile.48 Born in the United States, the daughter of Cuban expatriates who anxiously awaited a
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return to Cuba and encouraged her to remain steadfast to her Cuban roots, Menendez frequently portrays the experience of exile as imbued with loss and identity. Her stories are often set in modern-day Miami, where her characters struggle to survive economically while preserving their identity and dignity. Describing the challenges her characters face, Menendez’s narratives articulate the life and identity birthed by exile. Much of this life and identity confronts the intersections of memory, myth, and identity, as Menendez combines her imaginings of Cuba with her experiences of visiting Cuba as an adult. Christina García was one of the first Cuban American writers to illuminate the experience of the generation of Cubans born and/or raised in the United States. Though born in Cuba, García soon moved to the United States where her parents went into exile after the Cuban revolution. Her work centers in part around cultural and geographical divisions and barriers, and the ways in which individuals caught up among and between these divisions create and maintain identity: The night is stenciled with stars but Celia does not notice. In a corner of the sky, a desolate quarter moon hangs. Celia smells the ocean from the highway, smells it all the way to Havana.49
Depicting life as a Cuban raised in the United States, García’s work delves into women’s perspectives on exile and the tension of living a life that is forced between two cultures. As the first Cuban American woman novelist to achieve mainstream success with the publication of her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, García has written many highly acclaimed and widely successful novels, including her first novel for children in the middle grades, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox.50 Gustavo Pérez Firmat, born in Cuba and raised in Miami, examines a wide range of themes relevant to Cuban American life, from language and identity to relationships and sex. A poet, fiction writer, and scholar, Pérez Firmat has written several books of literary and cultural criticism, a novel, a memoir, as well as four collections of poetry. Like many Cuban American, Puerto Rican, and Chican@ poets, he handles Spanish and English seamlessly in his collections of poetry, writing with humor and sincerity in both languages. His work has been critically acclaimed widely; his memoir, entitled Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano’s Coming of Age in America, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Like Pérez Firmat, Roberto Fernández is a novelist, poet, and scholar. Because of the fantastic and surreal qualities of his fiction, Fernández has been called a “Cuban William Burroughs.” He writes in both Spanish and English, often within the same work, in organic thematic unity with the
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immigrant experience of collision of cultures. His focus on the “immigrant experience” in the United States yields a humorous style in harmony with the lived realities of Latinas/os in the United States; unexpected plot elements and the use of both Spanish and English are the hallmarks of his work. Virgil Suárez was also born in Havana, Cuba, and immigrated to the United States with his family, but, unlike most of the other Cuban American writers previously discussed, he arrived in the United States in the mid-1970s rather than directly following the revolution in the early 1960s. He has written several books of poetry including Banyan, for which he won the Book Expo America / Latino Literature Hall of Fame Poetry Prize.51 He is also a novelist, having written two memoirs that deal extensively with his experience as a Cuban American refugee. His entire creative work centers on the complex and difficult themes of identity, ethnicity, and culture, and many of the characters in his novels struggle intensely with these issues. In his piece in Bridges to Cuba (an anthology edited by Behar), the character Xavier describes feeling “bothered” that: his partner spoke with such a thick accent when he was capable of speaking without one. They had grown up together, gone to the same schools, learned the same language from the same teachers. Whenever Xavier mentioned the accent, Wilfredo called him an arrepentido, embarrassed to be Cuban. Wilfredo believed he was as much Cuban as he was American, fitting right in the middle where the hyphen separated the two worlds.52
Suárez’s discussion of this theme illustrates the universal nature of particular themes in the contemporary Latin@ literary cannon: themes of personal and communal struggles with culture, ethnicity, and identity. Other themes that can be prominently seen in Suárez’s work have to do with the Cuban American experience of political dissidence and exile, a specific but universal struggle for survival, and the feelings of loss experienced by newly minted residents of the United States. “So much left behind. Our house. Our family. Our lives together,” Suárez writes in Infinite Refuge, his memoir of life as a Cuban refugee.53 Conclusion All the authors discussed in this essay offer but a glimpse of the wide range of U.S. Latin@ literature, which encompasses many more authors, who are equally as well as less prolific, and far more themes that represent the diversity of U.S. Latin@ literature. As this field of literature grows, expands, and develops, it is also important to note that several Latin@ writers have passed away. We have put to rest many of the pioneering writers who first
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fought for the rights to establish a new borderland as Gloria Anzaldúa has done for literature. In particular, the perception of women and young adults is specifically shaped by the melding of cultures in the metaphorical and ideological interstices of the United States, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as these literatures evolve in U.S. literary colors. Latin@ writers have particularly influenced the thematics of U.S. literature and expanded as well as Latinoized and Barrioized its sensitivities toward topics like death, identity, destiny, immigration, migration, sexuality, nationalism, exile, feminism, and social class. Notes 1. I am using the term “Latino” to include literature by the descendants of immigrants from Latin America, including Mexico. This includes Brazilians and indigenous groups tracing their ancestry back to Latin America. 2. Jim Sagel, “Sandra Cisneros Interview,” Publishers Weekly (1991): 74. 3. Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo (New York: Vintage, 2002). 4. Graciela Limón, In Search of Bernabé (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993); Limón, The Memories of Ana Calderón (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1994); Limón, Song of the Hummingbird (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1996); Limón, The Day of the Moon (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1999); and Limón, Erased Faces (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2001). 5. Limón, Erased Faces. 6. Pat Mora, Chants (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984); and Mora, A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inez (New York: Knopf Books, 2002). 7. Mora, Oye al desierto or Listen to the Desert (New York: Clarion Books, 1994); and Mora, Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). 8. Alejandro Morales, The Brick People (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1992). 9. Alejandro Morales, Caras viejas y vino nuevo / Old Faces and New Wine (Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz, 1975). 10. Ana Castillo, Peel My Love Like an Onion (New York: Anchor, 1999); Castillo, I Ask The Impossible: Poems (New York: Anchor, 2001); and Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 92. 11. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, Essays on Xicanisma, ix. 12. Lorna Dee Cervantes, Emplumada (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981). 13. Cervantes, Emplumada, 44. 14. Norma Elia Cantú, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 70. 15. Norma E. Cantú, “El Luto,” in Cruzando puentes: antología de literatura Latina, ed. Luis Leal and Victor Fuentes (Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara, 1998), 192–96.
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16. Rigoberto González, Crossing Vines (Tulsa: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); González, Men Without Bliss (Tulsa: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008); and González, So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until it Breaks (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999). 17. González, So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until it Breaks, 9. 18. Helena María Viramontes, The Moths and other Stories (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1985); Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 1996); and Viramontes, Their Dogs Came With Them (New York: Washington Square Press, 2007). 19. Viramontes, Their Dogs Came With Them. 20. Lucha Corpi, Palabras de mediodía: Noon Words (Berkeley: El Fuego de Aztlán Publications, 1980); Corpi, Variaciones sobre una tempestad or Variations on a Storm (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1990); Corpi, Ahí, donde bailan las luciérnagas or Where Fireflies Dance (San Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 2002); Corpi, El niño goloso or Triple Banana Split Boy (Houston: Piñata Press, 2009); Corpi, Delia’s Song (Los Angeles: Arte Público Press, 1989); Corpi, Eulogy for a Brown Angel (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2002); Corpi, Cactus Blood (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1995); and Corpi, Black Widow’s Wardrobe (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2000). 21. Gabriella Gutiérrez and Muhs, Communal Feminisms: Chicanas, Chilenas and Cultural Exile (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), 143. 22. Carmen S. Rivera, Kissing the Mango Tree (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2002), 57. 23. U.S. Census Bureau, 2007, available at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ DTTable?_bm=y&-state=dt&-context=dt&-ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_&CONTEXT=dt&-mt_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G2000_B03001&-tree_id= 306&-redoLog=true&-all_geo_ty pes=N&-_caller=geoselect¤tselections=ACS_2006_EST_G2000_B03002&-geo_id=01000US&search_results=01000US&-format=&-_lang=en (accessed in August 2009). 24. Francisco Lomelí, ed., Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Literature and Art (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993). 25. Victor Hernández Cruz, Papo Got His Gun (New York City: Calle Once Publications, 1996); and Cruz, Snaps (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). 26. Nicolas Kanellos, Hispanic Firsts (Canton: Visible Ink Press, 1997), 163. 27. Hernández Cruz, Mainland (New York: Random House, 1973); Cruz, Tropicalizations (New York: Reed, Cannon, and Johnson, 1976); Cruz, Rhythm, Content, and Flavor: New and Selected Poems (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1989); Cruz, Red Beans: Poems (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991); and Cruz, The Mountains and the Sea (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2006). 28. Martin Espada, “Niggerlips,” in Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, 1990), 152. 29. Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales, Getting Home Alive (New York: Firebrand Books, 1986). 30. Esmeralda Santiago, Random House Author Page, available at http://www. randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679756767&view=rg (accessed in August 2008).
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31. Jack Agüeros, Lord, Is This a Psalm? (New York: Hanging Loose Press, 2002); Agüeros, Sonnets from the Puerto Rican (New York: Hanging Loose Press, 1996); Agüeros, Correspondence Between Stonehaulers (New York: Hanging Loose Press, 1991); and Agüeros, Dominoes & Other Stories from the Puerto Rican (Willimantic: Curbstone, 1993). 32. Miguel Algarín, Survival/Supervivencia (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2009). 33. Julia Alvarez, Poems of Exile and Other Concerns, ed. Daisy Coccode Felippes and Jane Robinett (New York: Ediciones Alcance, 1988), 61. 34. Ilan Stavans, The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995); Stavans, The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Popular Hispanic Culture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998); and Stavans, The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996). 35. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (New York: Bantam Books, 1982). 36. Allende, Of Love and Shadows (New York: Bantam Books, 1984); Allende, Eva Luna (New York: Bantam Books, 1985); Allende, The Infinite Plan (New York: Harper Collins, 1991); and Allende, The Stories of Eva Luna (New York: Bantam Books, 1989). 37. Allende, Paula (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); and Allende, Paula, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: HarperCollins, 1996). 38. Allende, Aphrodite (New York: Harper Collins, 1997); Allende, Daughter of Fortune (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999); Allende, Portrait in Sepia (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001); Allende, City of the Beasts (New York: Rayo, 2003); Allende, My Invented Country (New York: Harper Collins, 2003); and Allende, The Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (New York: Harper Collins, 2004). 39. Marjorie Agosín, Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1987). 40. Agosín, Cartographies: Meditations on Travel (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2004). 41. Ana Menendez, Loving Che (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003). 42. Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1989). 43. Hijuelos, Our House in the Last World (New York: Persea Books, 2002). 44. Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1996), 9. 45. Obejas, Ruins (New York: Akashic Books, 2009). 46. Ruth Behar, “Prayer to Lourdes,” in Bridges to Cuba, ed. Ruth Behar (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 23. 47. Ibid., 24. 48. Ana Menendez, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (New York: Grove Press, 2001); and Menendez, Loving Che (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003). 49. Christina García, Dreaming in Cuban: A Novel (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 95. 50. García, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox (New York: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2008). 51. Virgil Suárez, Banyan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001). 52. Behar, ed., Bridges to Cuba, 330. 53. Virgil Juarez, Infinite Refuge (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2002).
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Politics of Aesthetics: Mariachi Music in the United States1 Russell C. Rodríguez
he western hemisphere has historically produced iconic musical expressions that represent territorial and national identities. Puerto Rico has contributed the wonderful rhythmic expressions of bomba and plena, Cuba the rumba and son, Colombia and Venezuela versions of cumbias and vallenatos, Argentina the tango, Brazil the famous samba, and the United States jazz and our beloved rock and roll. A vast array of musical expressions have emerged from Mexico in which people illustrate pride for their regions and states, but no other expression has enjoyed international recognition to the extent of the mariachi. Mariachi music has stood and continues to stand as a symbol of the Mexican nation, people, and identity. For the Mexican community residing outside the nation of Mexico, to which Américo Paredes referred to as México de afuera,2 the mariachi categorized as a “traditional” cultural expression similar to the “ballet folklórico has become extremely influential in shaping the cultural imaginary of Mexican national identity”;3 it is a strong signifier of Mexicanidad. The transnational movement of this musical expression into the United States and to other countries and territories has ushered mariachi music into the international realm of popular culture. In this chapter I propose a discussion about mariachi that examines its historical, recent, and emerging dynamics as a transnational expression, while recognizing that mariachi music is simultaneously located within the categories of popular, commercial, contemporary, and traditional music. Through transnational movement and multicategorization, mariachi continues to capture new public spaces in the United States— theaters, institutions (educational and cultural), community centers, and
T
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politics4—making various changes become increasingly evident. In its method of transmission, mariachi has witnessed a shift in emphasis from learning through apprenticeship to the institutionalization of learning in school curricula and mariachi conferences. Another significant change concerns the diversification of mariachi practitioners in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, and class. Traditionally a working-class Mexicano male performance practice, mariachi has opened up to women and non-Mexicanos from different classes with the emergence of these new spaces.5 As a result of these shifts a “politics of aesthetics” based on notions of sound, style, “authenticity,” and “tradition,” which I utilize as the theoretical frame for this study, has emerged from the intermingling of people with diverse backgrounds invested in practicing, representing, and defining this specific field of cultural expression. Richard Peterson, in his work Authenticating Country, widens the scope of this politics by explaining how the discourses around cultural production are not solely engaged by the practitioner of the art form, but also by people that are involved in its production, distribution, evaluation, and consumption, which he refers to as the “production-of-cultural perspective.”6 So it is important to recognize how people from different social locations and points of perspective contribute to the representation and evaluation of this cultural expression. My focus here is on understanding the diverse participation of people characterized within or outside the masculine Mexicano working-class subject, the “traditional” practitioner. My general question is: what do these different participants want mariachi to mean? I provide a few examples that illustrate some perspectives of what people want mariachi to be, but I must make clear that these perspectives are not—as they may seem to be at times—defined by specific constructs of race, gender, nationality, or class as much as they are defined by the “social locations” at the intersections of constructs and cultures inside and outside the field of mariachi from which they emerge.7 The broad range of music practitioners, while conveying a spirit of unison for the preservation and promotion of this cultural expression, are producing new protocols, practices, meanings, and authorities that have been or in time may be incorporated into the knowledge of mariachi. In addition to these new developments, the integration of new technologies (digital recordings, Internet, youtube) continue to challenge older, established representations of the music form, all of which ultimately generate competing discourses from well-established “traditional” practitioners. I propose that these competing discourses inform the politics of aesthetics and interestingly expose types of social and labor networks integrated within the mariachi art world. Concurrently, because of the transnational
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character of the expression, a politics of identity is also apparent in which claims of mariachi knowledge and Mexicanidad are subjected to scrutiny. The politics of aesthetics thus is utilized as a process of maintaining authority. It helps identify a structure of aesthetics as central to defining the field of mariachi cultural production in specific places and spaces. It helps us examine the emergence of new cultural practices, but more importantly it directs our analysis in understanding how people talk about the elusive ideas of music aesthetics. While I do believe that it is extremely difficult to characterize sound, it is productive to provide a space in which practitioners talk about it and make conclusions around it. For instance when a specific group sounds more Mexicano, indexing sound as being nationally different, or when an individual musician plays mariacheramente well (with a mariachi aesthetic), we are provided with examples of how musicians set up hierarchal systems within the field of mariachi.8 Mariachi Expression The mariachi style ensemble can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, when various precursors and versions of this ensemble existed throughout the Western central plateau.9 A mestizo musical expression integrating indigenous, European, and African influence, the mariachi emerged during the colonial period in the central western region of Mexico, encompassing the present states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima, and Michoacan. Historically, the musicians were campesinos (farmer workers), ranch hands, or tradesmen from rural areas. They played music for personal and communal entertainment and as a means of supplementing their incomes. The musical ensemble consisted of an assortment of stringed instruments, typically including a violin to play the melody, arpa (harp) or guitarrón (a large six-string guitar-type bass with a convex back) as bass instruments, and an assortment of native guitar types such as the guitarra de golpe (a five-string rhythm guitar also referred to as a quinta or jarana) or vihuela (a small fivestring guitar with a convex back) to provide rhythm.10 Today the standard mariachi ensemble is most often composed of at least eight musicians. This ensemble is what could be thought of as a complete group. It includes two trumpets, three violins, a guitarrón, a vihuela, and a nylon six-string guitar. Mariachi ensembles today can be anything from a quartet—which includes a trumpet, violin, guitarrón, and vihuela—to a full-blown ensemble that will include two to three trumpets, six to seven violins, arpa, guitarrón, vihuela, guitarra de golpe, and guitars.11 Central to the ensemble are musicians who can also carry out the roles of lead singers. The demand for lead vocalists has become more and more evident with the amalgamation of the mariachi into the realms of popular culture.
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Part of the mariachi appeal lies in the musicians’ ability to perform a wide range of musical genres such as sones jaliscience, polkas, waltzes, huapangos, and rancheras. In addition to these “traditional” genres, the mariachi has incorporated a repertoire from other popular musical styles of Mexico and other countries such as the joropo from Venezuela, danzones of Cuba, show tunes and rock and roll from the United States, and classical music. Consistently incorporating popular and commercial music into its repertoire, the mariachi demonstrates a very important characteristic of integration that partly explains its longevity.12 Since the beginning of the twentieth century, interest in mariachi music in the United States has grown steadily with the flow of immigration from Mexico. Significantly, in the 1970s with the growth in momentum of the Chicano movement and the civil rights movement, mariachi music was incorporated into community centers and school programs from universities to elementary schools as a musical performance course.13 This caused a fascinating development of mariachi transmission and diffusion occurring in a formal educational setting. In addition to developing a new manner of transmission and interpretation during this era, the mariachi progressively became a topic for discussion, criticism, and investigation, creating new authorities, arriving at new understandings, and developing a new sense of aesthetics. Mariachi in the United States has since become a large field of diverse performances, ideologies, and participants in which the authorities on this topic are increasingly English-speaking U.S.-born musicians from different racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds. Within the conference and festival circuit in the United States, musicians such as Mark Fogelquist, Jonathan Clark, and Daniel Sheehy are considered the authorities on mariachi music research.14 This is not to say that Mexicano musicians such as Natividad “Nati” Cano, José “Pepe” Martínez, and Rubén Fuentes, who are positioned within the show group scene, are not considered authorities; however, they are rarely invited to a conference/festival to lead discussions or present on the conditions of the field. Notably, Mexicano musicians located within the working group space are rarely even considered as a source of information in the planning or presentation of a mariachi conference/festival.15 There are now musicians, committee members, and teachers that work within the space of mariachi programs, conferences, and festivals, who publicly represent the art world of mariachi in the United States. These representations are illuminating transformations such as apprenticeship to classroom curriculum learning, social event performance to formal concerts, and audience-requested repertoires to group-mandated repertoires as standard practices of mariachi. As discussions emerge from the
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public forums in the United States that are predominantly in English, Spanish-speaking Mexicano musicians, and those who apprentice with them, have become much more vocal about the developments in the mariachi field. Though they may not be incorporated into the “public transcripts,” they develop “hidden transcripts” that circulate throughout the network of working musicians that maintain the manners in which they learn, practice, and perform, now as an alternative archive and academy to mariachi representation.16 In an era of anti-Mexican/anti-immigrant sentiment it is important to recognize those fields and spaces in which Mexicana/os and those marginalized in the United States feel a sense of belonging, contributing to what Renato Rosaldo has suggested is a “cultural citizenship.”17 In recognizing and claiming that the knowledge and manners with which they work are valuable and contribute to the maintenance of community—and, I would add, the maintenance of a collective memory—these musicians make claims of authority affirming and contesting the discussions about mariachi that are diffused in the public space. Promoting and Preserving Mariachi The ideology of preservation and promotion of Mexicanidad by citizens and residents of the United States is a topic that needs much examination, for it formulates the context in which a politics of aesthetics emerges. In the United States the dominant discourses about preserving the “authentic tradition” of Mexico are oftentimes framed as maintaining “traditional” cultural products such as music, art, literature, and folklórico dance as historical and cultural items.18 Because of the types of policing and authorities that have developed, these terms become problematic, especially when those preserving the form have neither engaged sociopolitically in the culture from which the expressions emerged, nor critically analyzed the expression or context of the cultural form they are preserving,19 and more often than not fail to recognize the vibrancy of expressions as part of a living culture that shifts, transforms, and evolves into new productions of practice and performance, especially in new contexts. Fortunately, folklore scholars such as Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman have provided a basis for theorizing folklore studies as a communicative process, moving away from an emphasis on examining traditional cultural products as (historical) cultural items.20 Mariachi music provides an interesting example of how, in the United States, citizens and residents can engage in a transnational sociopolitical context that constitutes vibrant practices of culture. For instance, the social significance of mariachi performance in Mexicano communities
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illuminates contributions to the collective memory of a community, as it formulates important understandings of placemaking. Mariachi music has an incredible ability to convert a backyard into a space in which people reconnect their memories to a homeland, revisit the experience of crossing a border, reinstate the history, and reimagine the sentiments of patriotism, heroism, love, and lost love. Some mariachi participants choose to preserve and promote mariachi in a manner that almost freezes the expression and performance by promoting, for example, songs that have fallen out of the “commercial” repertoire, and by performing repertoire with which audiences are not familiar. There is no doubt that repertoire, instrumentation, musical style, and practices have shifted and have been lost. An emphasis, however, on lost cultural items rather than on what has emerged, especially as it still directs us to the past, may mislead us from a richer understanding of how expressive culture (traditional and modern) communicates history, current conditions, a vision for the future, and identity formation.21 Most recently, through the virtual space of the Internet, other mariachi participants have developed a method of preservation and promotion through public discourse. To illustrate this latter practice that characterizes some of the dynamic of the politics of aesthetics, I have copied some excerpts of a few reviews by a person named Raymond E. Rojas found on amazon.com:22 “La Nueva Era del Mariachi Sol De Mexico De Hernanadez” ~ Mariachi Sol de Mexico Very bad, September 13, 2003 Hernandez seeks to take Mariachi music into new fields and pastures, but why do it so badly? I know this mariachi has put some good stuff out before and can do better . . . Hernandez plays some good solo jazz trumpet. The song that he should have stayed away from was “El Cuartro.” God Damn! They really butchered that “son jalisciense.” Silvestre Vargas must have been rolling in his grave [sic]. “XXV Aniversario” ~ Mariachi Cobre It’s amazing that such a mariachi exists, September 13, 2003 Probably the best interpreters of the son jalisciense today, Cobre begins with the son “El Jilguerillo.” This son has not been recorded a lot. I remember only Mariachi Oro y Plata and some really old recordings of Mariachi Vargas and Mariachi Tapatio. Mariachi Camperos recently recorded it. Steve Carrillo is perhaps one of the best arrangers in mariachi today . . . All I can say is “wow” to their rendition of Los Arrieros. There has not been such a good rendition of this son since Mariachi Vargas “Sones de Jalisco” album . . . With exception of Los Camperos, most show mariachis butcher sones jaliscienses today [sic].
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In reading a page of Rojas’s reviews regarding mariachi music recordings (specifically Mariachi Sol de México and Mariachi Cobre), it is obvious that he feels that Mariachi Sol de México represents a rupture in the tradition of mariachi music that has been established previously by the groups (or more precisely by the earlier recordings of) Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, Mariachi México, and Mariachi Oro y Plata. For Rojas there is an investment in the son jaliscience when he suggests that Mariachi Cobre are “probably the best interpreters of the son jalisciense today.” For many practitioners and aficionados of mariachi music the son genre is a central representation of the mariachi musical tradition. Rojas emphasizes Sol de Mexico’s departure from tradition by making the claim that “they really butchered that son jalisciense,” when referring to their interpretation of El Cuatro that he misspelled. However, Rojas does not explain how or what Mariachi Sol de México did to the form, sound, style, or feel that led him to this harsh criticism. Nevertheless, it is apparent Rojas is determined to contribute to the understanding that mariachi music is a tradition that maintains certain manners of performance, sound, style, and repertoire, and he is invested in exposing the deviations of the characteristics that are “traditional” to the mariachi musical form. Rojas is but one person with interesting opinions on mariachi music. It is unclear whether he is a working musician or a student musician, or on what foundation he bases his critique. Nevertheless, his attitude does represent a large constituency of U.S. mariachi practitioners who attend conferences and festivals and are influenced, positively and negatively, by the groups who work in the show group scene. Below are two other reviews of a Mariachi Cobre recording that further illustrate these attitudes:23 Best of the best, May 5, 2003 Reviewer: Dr. Ron Ribble (San Antonio, TX)—See all my reviews As the son of a professional musician, I have acquired a reasonable taste and appreciation for all kinds of music. When I recently saw Mariachi Cobre on TV I was astounded by the excellence of this group. They combine the very best of instrumentalists, vocalists, and arrangements to produce a sound that is the best of the best in the world of Mariachi Music today. Steve Carillo’s classical training and voice quality make him a lead mariachi without peer [sic]. Good but not as good as the first, November 15, 1998 Reviewer:
[email protected] (Houston, Texas) Mariachi Cobre truly is one of the finest mariachi groups in the world . . . However, I am a mariachi purist, and I didn’t enjoy some of the more “Norteña” sounding songs on this recording . . . I did really enjoy Cobre’s renditions of the traditional sons like “La Madrugada” and “Los Copetonas.” [sic]
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Obvious in these reviews is the claim of authority that musicians and nonmusicians take in articulating the discourses of tradition. The comments portray this group, Mariachi Cobre, as not only one of the best mariachi groups in the world, but also frame them as true practitioners of the “tradition.” These types of discussions accentuate a preservation of tradition to which many U.S. mariachi practitioners and aficionados as well as some archivists and scholars in the United States and Mexico that participate in the conference and festival spaces adhere. Musicians trained through apprenticeships, however, are not tied to discourses of tradition and authenticity as much as to the aesthetics that communicate the practice, performance, and interaction between audience and performer in a social context, which Don Brennies has referred to as a “social aesthetic.”24 An interview with two well-respected musicians, Efraín Rodríguez and Jesús Francisco Peña López, both working in Guadalajara, provides an example of how other musicians, not from the conference and festival space, interpret the positioning of the same group, Mariachi Cobre, within the mariachi performance world.25 FP: El Cobre, a mi, las voces se me hacen muy chingonsisimo, pero es como otro género, mas superístico. Pero suenan muy bien. (Mariachi Cobre, for me, their voices are fuckin’ great, but it is like another genre, more “high brow.” But they sound good.) ER: Pues tienen mucho tiempo juntos. (Well they have been together a long time.) FP: O sea, el repertorio de ellos va ser Granada, Júrame (like for instances, the repertoire for them is going to be Granada, Júrame).26 ER: Es el mismo repertorio que han tenido desde que yo creo que iniciaron, desde que yo les conozco. (That’s the same repertoire they have had since I believe they began the group, since I learned of who they are.) FP: Por el tipo de voces que ellos manejan pues. (For the style of voices that they utilize.) RR: Pero si tiene mucho repertorio de mariachi; folclórico. Aprendan muchos cosas, por ejemplo de Miguel Aceves, y luego sones. Tocan muchos sones. (But they do have more repertoire of mariachi: folkloric. They learn a lot of things, for example from Miguel Aceves, and then the sones. They play a bunch of sones.) ER: O sí, y los tocan bien los sones, pero no. O sea están bien tocados pero no con el sabor . . . (Oh yes, and they play them well, but no. In other words they are played well but not with the feel/flavor.) FP: Como que esta robotizado (As if they were robotized [overly technical].) ER: Exacto, pero se escuchan muy afinados. Se escuchan bien no mas sin el sabor de mariachi. Y muchas veces los grupos mas pequeños los toman como ejemplo y es cuando ya se va perdiendo más. (Exactly, but they
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sound very in tune. They sound good only without the feel of the mariachi. And often the small groups model themselves after them and that is when more is lost.)
Rodríguez and Peña’s hidden transcript about Cobre is not uncommon within the realm of working musicians. Various musicians embedded within the working group and show group scenes that I have worked with, interviewed, and engaged in passing conversations with recognize this group as an important contributor to mariachi, as fine and talented musicians, but are sure to critique their sound, questioning their legitimacy as mariacheros de a deveras (“real” mariachi musicians). For these musicians Mariachi Cobre represents a sound de allá (from over there), or the emergence of a Mexican American mariachi, a Mexican American sound that has been described as more technical or with different sabor (flavor), or sentimiento (feel), suggesting a national difference in what is heard. Nevertheless, there is a consensus among musicians from all social locations that this group does contribute to the contemporary mariachi knowledge. The notion of mariacheros de a deveras is further expressed by Luis Enrique Reyes, better known as El Remy.27 An outstanding musician, well recognized within the transnational network of working and show musicians, he is a wonderful source to learn from, yet is also passionately opinionated about the understanding and representation of mariachi in the United States. Soon after being exposed to the Internet and chat rooms he wrote the following letter in response to conversations occurring on the Web between U.S.-born musicians discussing mariachi music. Estimados compañeros de la musica vernacula: por los comentarios hechos en esta pagina me he dado cuenta de que su conocimiento musical es muy precario, o mejor dicho mediocre . . . si quieren tener un buen desarrollo musical en cualquier genero les voy a dar un consejo: P A R E N D E S U F R I R , P O N G A S E A E S T U D I A R !!!!!!!!!! Dejen de andar escuchando mariachis cagados: . . . ponganse a escuchar mariachis de a deveras: como el mariachi vargas de los 40’, 50’ 60’ 70’ y 80’s si algun dia medio quieren aprender a tocar y no a hacer tortillitas con las nalgas!! como todos los mariachis de la union Americana que creen que si no mueves el culo no eres buen mariachi, o si no estas carita o delgado ellos creen que tu no sirves para nada, y tratan de engañar a todos los pendejos que compran sus discos, cualquier pregunta, aclaracion o comentario estoy a sus ordenes . . . : ATTE: SU PAPI;EL REMY CABRONES.28 [sic] [Esteemed colleagues of the vernacular musical form: according to the messages posted on this page it has come to my attention that your musical
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knowledge is very precarious, or better yet mediocre . . . if you want to experience a good musical development in any genre I will give you this advice: STOP SUFFERING, AND START STUDYING!!!!!!! Quit listening to shitty mariachis: . . . listen to the true mariachis: like the mariachi vargas from the 40s, 50s, 70s, and 80s that’s if one day you feel like learning to play and not sit on your asses until they are flat like tortillas!! like all the mariachis from the United States who think that if you don’t shake your ass you are not a good mariachi, or if you are not good looking or slim they believe that you are worthless, and then act superior to all those assholes that buy their records, any question, clarification or comment I am at your service . . . : ATTE: YOUR DADDY; EL REMY BITCHES (Translation by author)].
Presented as a harsh scolding, Remy’s intention was to encourage the student musicians to become more engaged in the practice instead of the discussion of mariachi occurring on the Web, if they really wanted to understand mariachi music.29 He shared, in a conversation with me, that he realized he does not articulate his thoughts in a nurturing manner; nevertheless, he was disappointed that people were responding more to the way he talked rather than to what he said.30 Now with Web spaces such as Youtube and My Space, a new imagined (virtual) mariachi community is being created, one that is in many ways welcoming to new practitioners and aficionados (musicians and nonmusicians), and at the same time it is marginalizing many of the “traditional” musicians that did not grow up or are not growing up with access to computers. And while some “traditional” musicians are claiming (cyber) space, we must understand that interjections such as Remy’s—by someone who has such a rich experience in the practice and performance field—were rare incidents.31 Many of the “traditional” musicians affirm Remy’s comment that mariacheros de a deveras are not about talking (discourse performativity) but about performative practice. Included in the new places of mariachi performance, the Internet has become one of the most prevalent spaces for “performativity,” establishing discourses that are inclusive and exclusive and meanings that become widely diffused, affirmed, and contested.32 Nevertheless, while cyberspace does present a fascinating array of interaction, conversation, and representation that moves across communities, cities, states, territories, and nations, the face-to-face interactions, which were established long before the all-evasive Internet, offer rich information about how participants feel and act within the field of mariachi. In addition to a discussion of how the Internet has opened up a forum for discussions on aesthetics and tradition, the gender dynamics also offer ample room for exploring the politics of aesthetics of mariachi music.
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Mariacheras en Guadalajara (Women Mariachi Musicians in Guadalajara) While working with Mariachi Los Tecolotes in Guadalajara, I had the opportunity to hear some of the women groups in the city. In one incident, we were playing a series of gigs at a restaurant called Las Corajudas, sharing sets with the Mariachi Las Reynas de Jalisco, which Francisco González (better known as El Pilón, a former Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán member) rehearsed and directed.33 When we arrived for the job, Las Reynas were preparing to go on. This was the second time we had traded sets with this group at Las Corajudas. They had a very professional presence, all uniformly dressed in highly adorned charro suits, which included dark blue skirts and jackets with stylistic silver and gold thread embroidery and sequences. Their attire was within the aesthetic of mariachi uniforms. The musicians I was working with agreed, “los trajes se miran bien” (“the suits look good”). The group was composed of two guitars, one vihuela, a guitarrón, five violins, one female trumpet player, and a male trumpet player who was sitting in with them this evening because the other member who played trumpet could not make it to the gig. They started with a musical theme that introduced the group as Mariachi Reynas de Jalisco. They went straight into a medley of rancheras that featured the vocal talents of the group that at times was very impressive. Las Reynas went on to perform a very entertaining set that included various genres. They were there to make a good impression on the owners of the restaurant, because it was rumored that the owners wanted to do an extended series of shows at Las Corajudas. The group was musically well rehearsed, playing their own arrangements of standard and contemporary pieces. While listening to them, Don David, the director of the group, in discussion with a few of the musicians, stated “tocan bien pero falta el sonido” (“they play well but they still lack the sound”).34 It was obvious that their sound would not compare to ours. We had musicians like Mirinda, Chapula, Heri, and Bambino who had worked with groups like Mariachi Los Toritos, all of whom have been playing for at least thirty years, and have had experience playing all over the world. Other musicians included were Efraín, Jorge, and myself, who have each worked extensively with well-experienced musicians for twenty plus years, developing solid manners of playing and of style. Don David alone represented an experience of more than forty-five years working in Mexico City and Guadalajara with some of the best players this style of music has produced. In response to Don David’s comments, Heri, in an empathetic manner, stated “pues les falta experiencia” (“they lack experience”), assuming that no one in Las Reynas had playing experience that could compare to that of the musicians in Mariachi Los Tecolotes.
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Within this conversation there were no feelings of animosity or threat toward the women. I believe what emerged from it was a fascinating perspective on how sound is connected to experience and genealogies. Nevertheless, demonstrated also was an expectation that these women would play with a mariachi style, emotion, and sound. Interestingly, the conversation moved on to analyze what can be expected from these performers, considering their experience—time spent on practicing and performing, and with whom they had mentored. One musician commented that the arrangements were good but then disclaimed that they were most likely written by Pilón, the male director. This musician’s comments repositioned the conversation at a male center, making it unclear whether he recognized that the women had to have a grasp on the music and their instruments so we would even be able to hear that the arrangements were good. Ultimately, there was consensus that a couple of the women did sing very well, that the group in general was good, and that they were good performers. There was no doubt that Mariachi Las Reynas de Jalisco was a good ensemble; this was confirmed by the attention they attained and the conversation that they provoked about their performance. Had it been a bad group we would have moved outside to talk about other things, like we have done before. I do believe, however, that in this case expectations were formed as soon as we saw the women and before we heard the group. Sherrie Tucker, in her book Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s,35 clarifies this problematic condition as she states: Men simply did not walk into the same set of expectations when they entered the bandstand. Women did not have to play differently to be consumed differently. Jazz and swing musicianship is gendered before anyone blows a note. These are key elements of dominant swing discourse that we miss when we talk only about men’s bands.36
There is no doubt that a critique of Las Reynas, though based in a discussion of aesthetics, was instigated by their gender, by their divergence from the Mexicano working-class male musician. Though the scrutiny of Las Reynas was targeted because of their gender, the fact remains that they maintained the attention of their critics throughout their set, importantly establishing new possibilities for the performance of mariachi music. Coda Within the mariachi musicians’ scene, tensions around the issues of authenticity of non-Mexicano male and female musicians are apparent. I have observed, however, that “traditional” musicians more often challenge
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the authenticity of a “nontraditional” practitioner by questioning their knowledge and manner of performance. The manner in which the new practitioners interpret the music (technically and stylistically), how they engage their audiences, how these musicians sound as compared to the socially constructed notions of a mariachi sound, and the type of sentimiento (feeling) these musicians convey in their performances are what traditional practitioners highlight in their critiques. I argue that these critiques are based in a politics of aesthetics that illustrates the claims of authority and investment in the representation of this specific cultural expression of mariachi. Though embedded in discussions of aesthetics, the critiques equally illuminate a politics of identity, targeting those that diverge culturally, racially, and through gender from the “traditional” construction of the mariachi practitioner. The idea of a working group Mexicano musician critiquing another working group Mexicano musician in a manner that challenges their authenticity or belonging to the mariachi practice was not as apparent. What was clear was that Mexicanos critiqued their compatriots by placing groups or individuals on a scale between good and bad. “No hombre, toca rémalo ese grupo” (“no man, that group plays extremely bad”), or “invita aquel, pues toca regular” (“invite him, he plays all right”), were phrases that were commonly used to describe the aesthetics of other Mexicano musicians than “no matizan la music” (“they do not stylize/nuance the music”), or “tocan con otro estilo, no suena mariachera” (“they play with another style, it does not sound mariachi”). The politics of aesthetics is a strategy to maintain authority and to claim one’s connection to the cultural expression of mariachi that can be utilized by musicians from diverse social locations. Now that mariachi has been incorporated into educational and cultural institutions in the United States, new manners of transmission, practice, and performance are implemented and framed in discourses that argue for the larger U.S. society to recognize mariachi music as a legitimate form. For a public transcript, most musicians from the diverse sectors of the mariachi performance world would agree that the recognition of mariachi is productive and significant and that the musicians and groups who set forth to represent the performance world do this with dignity and professionalism. At the same time musicians of the working group scene, who are rooted in a specific mariachi culture and lifestyle, will most likely be excluded from the process of legitimation and representation. These musicians circulating a hidden transcript suggest, however, that those who represent mariachi in public spaces should also be able to work in diverse settings of performance and fulfill the wide range of expectations, not only of stage performances but of social events and context, que sean mariacheros de a deveras (“that they be Mariachis for real”).
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Notes 1. I would like to thank Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Alicia Nájera, George Lipsitz, and the editors, Norma E. Cantú and María E. Fránquiz, for their time and comments on the different drafts of this piece. I nevertheless take full responsibility for the material presented in this chapter. This work is an excerpt of a larger ethnographic study, my dissertation, Cultural Production, Legitimation, and the Politics of Aesthetics: Mariachi Transmission, Practice, and Performance in the United States (Santa Cruz: University of California, 2006). 2. Américo Paredes, “The Folklore of Groups of Mexican Origin in the United States,” in Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, ed. Richard Bauman (Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican American Studies, 1993), 3–18; and Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958). 3. Olga Nájera Ramírez, “Unruly Passions: Poetics, Performance, and Gender in the Ranchera Song,” in Chicana Feminisms: Disruptions and Dialogue, ed. Gabriela Arrendondo and others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 184–210. 4. Most recently, in the 2008 presidential primary race, mariachi music and ensembles were utilized to promote candidates such as Hillary Clinton in San José when Mariachi Azteca played for her rally. Even more significant was the combining of mariachi music and the Internet to produce a video for the Obama campaign in which a mariachi of Oxnard, California, performed a rewritten version of the song “¡Viva Chihuahua!,” to state “¡Viva Obama!,” changing the lyrics to explain Obama’s history and affinity with the Latino community, specifically in Texas. Visit the Web address http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=0fd-MVU4vtU (accessed on August 2, 2009). 5. In using the term non-Mexicano I include those born in the United States of Mexican descent, those who identify as Chicano, Mexican, Mexican American, Hispanic, Latino, or Tejano, within this category. 6. Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 10. 7. Patricia Zavella, “Reflections on Diversity Among Chicanas,” in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 199–212. 8. Throughout my research “traditional” musicians would characterize sound to make clear distinctions between musicians, utilizing descriptions such as a Mexicano, traditional, regional, or a mariachi sound interchangeably or a U.S./American, classical, or technical sound to specifically describe some of the groups in the United States. 9. Rafael Mendez Moreno, Apuntes Sobre el pasado de mi tierra (Mexico: Costa Amic, 1961); Hermes Rafael, Origen en historia del mariachi (México: Editorial Katún, 1982); Jesús Jáuregui, El mariachi: símbolo musical de México (Banpaís: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1990); and Daniel Sheehy, Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
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10. Historical photos presented in Jesús Jáuregui’s book El mariachi: Símbolo musical de México demonstrate that the musical ensemble utilized many different types of instruments, including wind and brass, prior to the standardization of the ensemble circa 1940. 11. The accordion was another instrument utilized in large show ensembles that accompanied famous singers such as Juan Gabriel; some quartets and quintets also used this instrument to supplement a trumpet or violins. 12. For an empirical explanation of mariachi history, music form, and ensemble in English, see Sheehy, Mariachi Music in America. 13. For further discussion of the development of mariachi music in the United States, see Mark Fogelquist, “Mariachi Conferences and Festivals in the United States,” in The Changing Faces of Tradition (Washington DC: The National Endowment of the Arts, 1996); and Sheehy, Mariachi Music in America. 14. Fogelquist, Clark, and Sheehy are all musicians who have invested much energy to investigate mariachi history, music, and context, and have published materials on the topic that can be compared to performing authorities, such as Cano (the founder/director of Mariachi Los Camperos), Martínez (the director of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán), and Fuentes (the director/producer of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán). 15. In my dissertation (2006) on mariachi, I break down the field of musicians into three groups: show groups, working groups, and student groups. The working groups are those musicians that work the local casual gigs (weddings, quinceañeras, birthdays, political and social events) and local restaurant and cantina spaces. These musicians learn mariachi music through an apprenticeship, establishing standard manners of playing and interpretation as compared to more specialized student groups that learn song by song in a classroom by performing those same songs. The show groups are more organized, specialized ensembles that are most often composed of highly skilled musicians, who have worked their way through the working group scene and also perform a group-mandated repertoire. 16. James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) refers to the public indexing of the recorded open interaction between subordinate and dominant groups and the hidden discourses and practices that circulate beyond the view of the dominant to contest or affirm the public record. 17. Renato Rosaldo, “Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 2 (1994): 402–11; and Renato Rosaldo, “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism,” in Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 27–38. 18. For further discussion of the notion of preservation and promotion of cultural expressions that illuminate Mexicanidad, see Russell Rodríguez, “Folklórico in the United States: Cultural Preservation and Dissolution,” in Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, ed. Olga Nájera Ramírez and others (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 335–58.
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19. In his analysis of the category of “folk,” Robin Kelly (1992) explains that “terms like ‘folk,’ ‘authentic,’ and ‘traditional’ are socially constructed categories that have something to do with the reproduction of race, class, and gender hierarchies and the policing of the boundaries of modernism” (1402). 20. See the publication edited by Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman, Toward New Perspectives in Folklore (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1972). 21. Donald Brennies, “Aesthetics, Performance, and the Enactment of Tradition in a Fiji Indian Community,” in Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Frank J. Korom, and Margaret A. Mills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 362–78. 22. Both reviews are from the Web address below, which hosts a compilation of reviews written by Raymond E. Rojas of El Paso, TX. All Web materials are cut and pasted without editing, so all spelling, grammar, highlighting, and language are left in the manner that the reviewers presented them—http:// www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A365R9A3BQE7K8/ref=cm_cr_ pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview (accessed on March 29, 2009). This address, however, may change, so if this address does not work, look up Amazon.com reviews for the Mariachi Sol de Mexico CD, “La Nueva Era del Mariachi,” and you will find Rojas’s review, then go to “see all my reviews” next to his name. 23. These reviews were pasted from the Web site below that contains various other reviews of the same recording. Available at http://www.amazon. com/Este-Es-Mi-Mariachi-Cobre/product-reviews/B0000018XZ/ref=cm_cr_ dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy= bySubmissionDateDescending (accessed on May 3, 2006). 24. Donald Brennies, “Musical Imaginations: Comparative Perspectives on Musical Creativity,” in Perspectives on Creativity, ed. M. Runco and R. Albert (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1990), 170–89. 25. Efraín Rodríguez is a guitarronero who has played with Mariachi Mexicanisimo and Los Tecolotes, and Jesús Francisco Peña López is a guitarist and lead singer who has worked with Mariachi Reyes de Jalisco and Sol de América. 26. Granada and Júrame are two songs that are expected to be performed by an operatic-type voice. Listen to “Granada” (2000) by Mariachi Cobre with The Boston Pops Orchestra, from The Latin Album featuring Keil Lockhart and The Boston Pops Orchestra (New York: RCA Victor, BMG. 09026-63717-2); “Estrellita” (1995) by Mariachi Cobre, from Mariachi Cobre: Este Es Mi Mariachi (Germany: Kuckuck. 11105-2); and “Júrame” (n.d.) by Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano, from Sounds of Mariachi (Tlaquepaque: Delfín Records. CD28). 27. Luis Enrique Reyes is a Mariachi 2000 alumnus who came to the United States and played with many of the show groups, but unfortunately because of his temperament was integrated into the working group realm of mariachi. 28. This message from Remy was entered into a mariachi chat room but was immediately taken down by the host; this caused much controversy, and many of the participants of this chat room argued that the host should not be censoring people’s opinions, so the message was reposted after various musicians
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32.
33.
34.
35. 36.
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explained to the host that Remy was a musician who played with some of the well-known groups in Mexico. The host reposted this message stating “Ok Angel, here is the original e-mail. (I honestly thought it was only someone trying to make some trouble, you all can read it and judge for yourselves per Angel’s request.)” In many cases, I will refer to musicians by their apodo (nicknames), which is how they are publicly known. Luis Enrique Reyes, personal phone conversation, April 2006. Within the past couple of years, more and more working musicians from the transnational network have been contributing their opinions and thoughts on the distributed images and performances of mariachi, especially on those uploaded for youtube. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993); and George Yudice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Pilón is a well-known musician throughout the transnational mariachi field because of his participation with Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán. Upon his return to Guadalajara he started his own show group Mariachi Los Reyes de Jalisco, which included women from its inception. The terms Doña (female) and Don (male), as in Don David, pronounced with a long “o” sound, are prefix terms of respect for elderly, experienced people. Don David is the director of Mariachi Los Tecolotes. Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). Sherrie Tucker, 7. For further discussion of women’s participation in mariachi music and music scenes, see Olga Nájera-Ramírez, “Unruly Passions: Poetics, Performance and Gender in the Ranchera Song,” in Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader, ed. Gabriela Arredondo and others (Durham: Duke University, 2003), 184–210; Leonor Xóchitl Pérez, “Transgressing the Taboo: A Chicana’s Voice in the Mariachi World,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, ed. Norma E. Cantú and Olga Nájera Ramírez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 143–63; and Cándida F. Jáquez, “Meeting La Cantante through Verse, Song, and Performance,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, ed. Norma E. Cantú and Olga Nájera Ramírez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 167–82.
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From Boricua Dancers to Salsa Soldiers: The Cultural Politics of Globalized Salsa Dancing in Chicago Frances R. Aparicio
That feel of neighborhood is now gone. (Maria, Puerto Rican woman, 36, Logan Square resident, Chicago).
et me begin by sharing an incident particular to Humboldt Park in Chicago, the Puerto Rican neighborhood and the locale of one of the Latin dance studios that I examine in this research project. Along Division Street, between Western and California, the development of Paseo Boricua—an economic project of Puerto Rican–owned restaurants, stores, and businesses—evinces the ways in which urban gentrification is being resisted by ethnic-based economic investments. Within Paseo Boricua, there is a Latin dance studio. One evening in the summer of 2004, white and Latin@ students from other parts of the city and from the suburbs arrived here to learn salsa dancing, while a couple of older Puerto Rican women walking by stopped and gazed into the studio through the glass window to see what was happening. They then read the name of the business, the Latin Academy of Dance, and their facial expressions revealed both surprise, joy, or pleasure, and, simultaneously, a sort of dismay or anger at the studio and at what was going on inside. These ladies are insiders to the community and to Puerto Rican culture, yet at that moment they became outsiders to dance as a performance of culture. As Humboldt Park residents, they were seen as cultural insiders. We, the students who had
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come to learn dance, were the cultural outsiders. This moment inverted power dynamics and served as a metaphor for the need to explore salsa dancing as a site in which ethnic and cultural nationalist meanings about salsa dancing for Chicago Boricuas are being restructured and reorganized into more intercultural and global values. Perhaps that night we were the objects of her gaze, the exotic outsiders who were trying to learn steps that they most surely have performed for years in the context of local clubs, family events, and ethnic festivals. However, by the end of the six weeks of dance lessons, all of us—the students—would be benefiting from the increased value and social capital that the knowledge of dancing produces for those very outsiders. The globalization of salsa dancing relies not only on the international circulation and dissemination of bodies performing culture, that is, on the very act of synchronizing steps, turns, and gestures to the discrete musical rhythms and forms, but also on the desire for embodying what Patria Román has called “the latinized body,” that is, “the cultural construction of the body in relation to salsa; a body that is latinized, and recognized as such by participants, through cultural practices informed by gender relations and discourses about sexuality.”1 This desire is also mediated through a discourse of the erotic and of a utopian racial harmony that masks the colonialist/globalized economies behind the desire to dance. Here I argue that despite the dominant discourses that the dancing industry and some scholars have used for promoting salsa dancing as a vehicle for intercultural understanding and racial harmony, social and popular dancing in the global city produces very complex moments of intercultural conflicts and gender power dynamics that reveal the ongoing, colonialist anxieties over racial minorities in the United States. I explore the processes through which the globalization of salsa dancing has had a negative impact on the relationship that Puerto Rican women have had with salsa music and dancing as central forms of identity reaffirmation through participant observation as a student in a dance studio in the summer of 2004 and at various dance venues in Chicago; through eight interviews with two Anglo women, one dance instructor, three men (two Latino and one non-Latino), and two Puerto Rican women from Chicago; and by the discourse analysis of Web sites, advertising, and a review of the scholarly literature on salsa dancing. The sense of displacement expressed in the epigraph above reflects the gradual ways in which the shift of dancers from Boricua individuals to what one woman referred to as “salsa soldiers” has displaced previous Puerto Rican dancers from dancing venues and clubs. This displacement is not surprising, given the analogous effects in urban gentrification.
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Due to gentrification and urban displacement, Puerto Rican spaces, neighborhoods, and communities in Chicago have been gradually dispossessed of a sense of place, of belonging, and agency within particular urban areas. Likewise, we have witnessed in the past ten years the gentrification of cultural practices such as food, clothing, music, and dancing within the same urban sites that had been historically marginalized and segmented from the mainstream circulation of capital. Ralph Cintrón defines gentrification as the “capitalization of an urban neighborhood” that is not a natural process or the result of social mobility, but a concerted attempt on the part of dominant sectors and institutions to change the face of a particular area.2 Gentrification is about increasing value, about “improving” neighborhoods, and hopefully making money as a result. In this context, I am most interested in the multiple and complex webs of social interaction, intercultural constructs, and circulation of bodies (body movements as well as bodies across urban spaces) that are constituted through the social and popular practices of Latin dancing as another instance of the mixed results of gentrification in terms of power dynamics, social capital, and intercultural encounters. I explore how the globalization and gentrification of salsa dancing has led to diverse social, gendered, and cultural meanings, intercultural conflict, and/or affinities. Does the value of Latino identity and culture increase as a result of the mainstreaming of salsa dancing? While my research suggests that salsa dancing increases the social status of most non-Latino students as they learn to master new bodily moves, for Latinas in particular the sense of being objectified in colonialist and exoticizing ways and the gradual sense of displacement as agents of culture through dancing are clear results of this globalization process. However, cities like Chicago are composed of heterogeneous sites in which Latin dancing is performed and produced by very diverse social agents and cultural subjects and in radically different ideological sites. Latin dancing is currently being enacted by folkloric, educational dance groups such as AfriCaribe, led by Puerto Rican educators and community members; in the Summerdance program in Grant Park sponsored by the City of Chicago, which attracts diverse audiences and tourists; in private studio dance lessons offered throughout the city; and even in aerobics exercise lessons in the suburbs and in videotapes. Thus, identifying and analyzing a mosaic of sites throughout the city that maps this complex web of social interactions will allow us to avoid discursive binaries that reify cultural and racial identities. While taking into account the intersectionality of multiple identities or subjectivities in any individual experience will allow us to tease out multiple power dynamics without being reductionist, it is also true that subjectivities are partially constituted and heavily mediated by dominant discourses and assumptions about Latinidad.
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If, as Jane Desmond argues, movement “serves as a marker for the production of gender, racial, ethnic, class and national identities,” then studio dancing and the multiple social and commercial contexts in which Latin dancing occurs, complicate notions of authenticity, cultural reaffirmation, and authority.3 If Puerto Ricans have traditionally performed dance steps in night clubs, public festivals, and in neighborhood streets as a reaffirmation of cultural identity and as a form of reclaiming space, then the diversification of dancers and the distribution of knowledge about dance steps, forms, and body movements, create what Mary Pratt has called “contact zones” in which the power dynamics of colonized and colonizer are rearticulated.4 Jane Desmond has observed that the ideological values of dance and bodily movement can be evident in asking who dances what kinds of dances, and who does not dance in certain ways.5 What are the emergent cultural politics that are being produced in these new spaces of cultural encounters, or in the contact zones of the dance floors, or the neighborhood streets during a festival? How do Puerto Ricans respond to the increasing commodification of Latin music, or to what can be deemed a cultural gentrification that is accompanied by the spatial and urban gentrification process in Chicago? How do Latin dance instructors and experts define this phenomenon? How do they mediate cultural knowledge about Latin@s through dance lessons? How do these various sites of Latin dancing embody the larger, cultural politics at play in the city and nationwide? Does intercultural dancing cement a transnational space or new modes of crosscultural knowledge or does it perpetuate conflict? How is authenticity redefined and reclaimed by Puerto Ricans and Latin@s? “If You Can Dance Salsa, You’re in the Thing, You’re Doing Good”: Salsa as Social Capital in a Global World Miguel Méndez, a native of Puerto Rico and a professional dancer, is the owner of and dance instructor at the Dance Academy of Salsa, located in the heart of Paseo Boricua on Division Street, Humboldt Park. Born in Moca, Puerto Rico, Miguel grew up in Chicago, where he has lived all his life. A tall, slender man with the suave looks of a ballroom dancer of the 1950s, during our interview Miguel enthusiastically reaffirmed the international and global popularity of salsa and Latin dancing. He indicated that this international craze had its origins in the 1997 World Salsa Congress held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. While it is true that the popularity of many Latin dance forms, such as the tango, the cha cha cha, the mambo, and others well predate this congress, Miguel explained that this first event attracted amateur and professional dancers from all over the world; these dancers were trained further in salsa dancing, and later returned to their
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own countries and taught salsa dancing to their students. When asked why he thought salsa dancing was increasingly popular among Latin@s and non-Latin@s, he mentioned that many of his clients want to learn salsa dancing because they are traveling to Puerto Rico or the Caribbean and want to know how to dance before they get there. This suggests the articulation between identity, place, and culture as performance, for particular geographical locations are deemed as authentic places of Latinness. This articulation is echoed in the practices of many dance instructors who identify particular steps or styles with a nationality. In London, for instance, Román writes about Nelson Batista, a Cuban dance teacher, who advertised himself as el cubanísimo Nelson with whom students would learn “to dance the fiery Cuban style of salsa to the hottest Latin sounds around.”6 In Chicago, Lisa La Boriqua is a complex figure in this regard. Half-Irish and half–Puerto Rican, her professional name includes the national signifier (with the “q” in the spelling rather than the “c”) to index a degree of authenticity and authority as a Latin dance instructor. Red-haired and freckled, Lisa owns the Latin Street Studio on La Salle in the downtown area; this signals, at least in the politics of space, a certain mainstream following. However, Lisa has numerous students enrolled in her studio, both Latin@s and non-Latin@s, and is considered a smart businesswoman and a highly competitive figure in the local industry. In her comprehensive analysis of the salsa dancing industry in Montreal, Sheenagh Pietrobruno also examines the claims to cultural authenticity made by various dance instructors in that highly diverse city.7 Further complicating notions of authenticity, Miguel also indicated that it was a Frenchwoman, Anyes Daskal, who invited him in the early 1990s to join her in teaching salsa dancing in Chicago and in making it his professional career. She was his first dancing partner. Priscilla Renta documents the same phenomenon in the early career of New York dancer Eddie Torres.8 Moreover, Miguel currently dances with Sophia, who is from Bulgaria and who attests that salsa dancing has transformed her life. Sophia mentioned during our conversation that once she discovered salsa dancing she broke up a personal relationship to continue learning to dance, and that once in Chicago dancing has allowed her to get to know the Puerto Rican community and to let go of her previous fears about Puerto Ricans. She observed some of the differences in the dynamics of dancing in the United States and in Europe, where, in her opinion, dancing in Italy seemed less informed by competition and more by collaboration and collectivity. These are only some of the many facts that evince the globalization of salsa dancing, the connections between the local (Chicago) and the global (Bulgaria, France, Italy, and the Caribbean), or, the global in the local (the glocal), and the ways in which dancing constitutes sites and
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spaces for intercultural encounters and potential transculturations. The global circulation of salsa music is evident in places like Venice, Italy; in the major salsa and Latin music concert venues outside of Rome; in Cairo, Egypt; in the salsódromos in Peru; and in the high levels of popularity of salsa in Japan. An additional site for facilitating the globalized circuits of salsa dancing is the Internet; Web sites have become the preferred and most lucrative form of advertising and publicity for Latin dance studios. Miguel Méndez mentioned that through his Web site he makes an income of around $3,000 more per month than what he used to make when advertising through the yellow pages. His Web site is very international in scope. It includes news about salsa dancing throughout the world. It is also used to announce local, national, and international guest instructors that he invites to offer workshops in Humboldt Park, as well as lists of sites from all over the world where students can dance to Latin music. Mendez reaffirmed that salsa is “a worldwide phenomenon,” and gave the example of the Japanese guest instructor who came to Humboldt Park and offered a workshop on salsa dancing. Among the participants there were a Polish and an Irishman who were visiting Chicago for business and who attended that particular workshop because they did not have numerous opportunities like these in their countries. The presence of the Japanese expert and the students from Poland and Ireland, the fact that Miguel Méndez entered the dancing industry through the mentorship of a French ballroom dance instructor, all reveal that dancing to Latin music is indeed a global phenomenon. This also reveals that, as such, the global players and agents embody culture as performance, knowledge, and expertise, rather than as lived experience, or that the performance, acquired knowledge, and expertise about a culture enhance their lived experience.
The new “fraternity” of salsa dancing This restructuring of notions of culture leads us to examine the increasing value of salsa dancing and of its practitioners in the context of urban gentrification and a global economy. For years, salsa dancing had been defined and constructed as a popular dance, while it was “naturally” or “intuitively” performed mostly by working-class Latino communities— thus devoid of value as an art form, technique, skill, and expertise.9 In the current globalized context, salsa dancing has increased its social capital as ballroom and studio dancing, as a product of technique, expertise, and skills, rather than as a reaffirmation of nationality / cultural identity. This, of course, is related to the invisibility of salsa dancing in scholarship. Latin
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dancing had not been a systematic object of study until more recently. Priscilla Renta, in “Salsa Dance: Latino/a History in Motion,” examines the “disregard for embodied knowledge”10 in salsa scholarship as well as the invisibility of analysis of dance in the scholarship about the music. She argues that this has to do, partly, with the fact that salsa dancing is seen as “a social dance tradition, which is undervalued in comparison to theatrical/concert dances such as ballet, modern, and jazz, which fall under the realm of art.”11 Indeed, this perceived lack of value as an artistic practice motivated dancer Eddie Torres to begin his dancing school in New York City. “It’s an art more than a street dance,” he explained in the short film A Bailar: The Journey of a Latin Dance Company.12 In addition, the “dancing body of color” has been a “particular threat for Europeans in their efforts to colonize the Caribbean and the Americas” because of “the power of dance and its potential for military mobilization.”13 Beyond these historical and political factors, we need to ask why there is an inversion or restructuring of these meanings and values. In other words, is it the mainstreaming of salsa dancing that has imbued it with the values of social capital, whiteness, and desirability? Or is it only because it has become a commodity, a product to be consumed, that it has increased in value? While salsa dancing still retains many of its meanings as collective rituals for Latin@s in the United States, it is also true that this meaning is being restructured according to the U.S. ethos of individualism and the logic of capitalism. Tito Rodríguez, the leader and founder of the dance group AfriCaribe in Chicago, talked about the benefits that he saw in dancing and teaching Puerto Rican bomba. AfriCaribe is an educational (not an entertainment) group that fosters the teaching and passing down of Puerto Rican dance traditions, such as the bomba and the plena. In an interview in 2004, Rodríguez mentioned that he feels better on stage than on the street. He added that dancing opened doors for the acceptance of individuals and of the group. Dance could be used to promote the culture and to organize the community. For him, it was more inviting to visually see and feel, through dance, cultural identity and the interpretation of history. This collective and oppositional value of dance as a tool for collective mobilization, represents a continuity with the politics of Afro-Caribbean dance and music since colonial times. In contrast, today one of the downtown Latin dance studios in Chicago lists the benefits of dancing as “a change of pace, to do something new, a social life boost, stress relief, exercise, to meet others with the same interest, to the enhancement of one’s skills, ‘some really want to be a demon dancer,’” most of which remit us to individual needs and benefits.14 It is not risky to state that for those who learn to dance salsa, this new knowledge means enhanced social power and visibility, the potential
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to find a mate, and a renewed sense of achievement and excellence, thus “success” for having learned a new skill. In addition, the sense of belonging, of community, is still being reclaimed by all groups who engage in salsa dancing, yet with a difference. Student testimonies (on Web sites like www.laboriqua.com) embody the tensions between the increased value of the individual accrued by salsa dancing and the larger sense of collectivity and human understanding that is predominant in the public discourse and advertising. Salsa dancing fosters an increased social capital among its practitioners in two ways; first, by increasing their social networks, circle of friends, and opportunities for entertainment and for being seen in settings such as clubs, the dance studios, and other public spaces in the city. For instance, salsa dancing is a great antidote to loneliness (“If I get lonely, I know I only have to go dancing”), partly because it occurs in a social setting but also because it is a couple dance form. The dance studio is described as a place of “love,” a multicultural space in which “so many people and ethnicities . . . all respect[ing] and show[ing] each other love.” The dance classes and the evenings at the clubs create the possibility for new affiliations, friendships, and relationships. It is ironic that the sense of community and of belonging that Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park, as well as other working-class communities throughout Chicago, feel is under threat and being dissipated by urban gentrification, is being simultaneously reclaimed by those who dance salsa. Salsa dance studios, clubs, and public summer festivals, become sites through which to connect with others. Yet those who are reconnecting are not necessarily the same residents of Humboldt Park, but may indeed be the multicultural elite and middle class who come to Humboldt Park only once a week and may stop by the Puerto Rican restaurant to eat an alcapurria or tostones after the workout. As a Latino dance student wrote, “I have a new group of very dear friends” through the studio that “has made possible for many non-Latin@ students to be in touch with Latin@s and Latino culture in a very friendly environment. The consequences of people from different social and ethnic groups working together harmoniously are related to the elimination of prejudice, racism, and ethnocentrism in our society.” One of the Latino men I interviewed also stressed that one of the pleasures of going salsa dancing was that “it offers you an opportunity to join a fraternity of people who enjoy salsa.” In fact, the non-Latino male interviewee reaffirmed the positive impact salsa dancing has had on his life. Before learning to dance, he considered himself “less outgoing and confident.” Now, he would not be “as happy a person . . . if it were not for salsa.” He has a “passion” now. Dancing, then, and the dance studio are represented and experienced as utopian sites in which “racial harmony” and understanding can indeed
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be realized. Grant Park’s Summerdance, modeled after the Lincoln Center’s program Midsummer Night Swing in New York City, advertises itself in a brochure framed by two major quotes: the first by Nietzsche, “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once,” and the second one by James Brown, “Any problem in the world can be solved by dancing.” Now in its ninth year, Summerdance has truly become a global microcosm, a multicultural, open-air urban space that brings diverse sectors together, from families with their babies, children, and dogs, to the salsa aficionados, the older Latino men from the west side, youth, students from nearby Columbia College, and the tourists who are passing by. Yet, despite its multicultural and transgenerational appeal, the fact is that dancing, as Helen Thomas reminds us, is continuously associated with freedom: “the idea that individuals can experience a brief flash of freedom from everyday life through dancing continues to underpin cultural studies’ interpretations of the role of dancing in youth cultures.”15 And while freedom is part of dancing, it would be erroneous to erase the complex and contradictory power dynamics that can ensue on the dance floor. For instance, a young Jewish woman in New York who went dancing at S.O.B’s, New York City, anticipated an evening of dancing only with young, non-Jewish men. However, as she puts it: As it turned out, my worries were unwarranted. Apparently, the Latin rhythm is becoming a hot thing among Jewish twentysomethings in America and abroad. It’s been a year since the Latin beat infiltrated Jewish circles in London. A lot of the young people there have admirable collections of Latin music, know all the Latin clubs in town and take salsa, lambada and merengue classes at least once a week, Sunday nights in clubs like Los Locos and La Rumba have turned into “Jewish nights.”16
For many of these young Jewish people, these Latin music clubs are perceived not as “pickup joints” but as spaces where “you feel completely free and uninhibited.” They describe dancing and being asked to dance as “a miniature love story in which the partners never learn each other’s name,” or as “a five-minute workout.” There is “no commitment and no bad aftertaste.” In other words, these club dancers have preestablished social, cultural, and racial boundaries that may eliminate any possibility for a more long-term relationship. This is an example, in fact, of one of the ways in which cultural and racial identities continue to reactivate themselves despite the “freedom” and multicultural presence in these social spaces. For, at the end of the article that quoted the young Jewish woman, she summarizes how she ended up meeting a young Jewish man, even though “he sang along with most of the songs in Spanish.”17
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The leap from interracial dancing to the elimination of racism is questionable, for indeed the intercultural constructions about the latinized body and about Latin@ culture within the culture of clubs and of studios remain deeply rooted in the ideologies and practices of hegemonic tropicalizations. Culture as Knowledge: The Banking Logic of Globalized Salsa One of the Puerto Rican women from Chicago commented that nowadays young men ask women “Do you know how to dance?” before they ask them to dance. This detail reveals the increasing importance that skills and knowledge have in deciding with whom to dance and in valuing individuals as good dancers. One of the Latino men interviewed also commented that “the level of skill is important” and that “you do want to look good on the floor.” Another Latino man spoke about his sense of heightened selfesteem and pride at “being the peacock on the dance floor.” For those who have learned dancing in the studios, the dancing increases one’s sense of achievement for having acquired a particular set of skills in dancing, including steps, doing turns, body movements, and couple dancing. Yet the increased sense of self-esteem and pride in learning what is a difficult dance form, salsa, leads to power struggles between dancers on the dance floor, while it also reproduces the capitalist logic of the accumulation of knowledge as a goal in the ethos of U.S. individualism. This stands in sharp contrast to the past Puerto Rican experience of salsa dancing as related to family events such as weddings, birthdays, and baptisms, and to a sense of local community enacted while dancing to salsa in the neighborhood clubs in Logan Square and Humboldt Park. When I interviewed Sarah in 2004, she had been taking lessons for about five months. However, she had grown up learning ballet, belly dancing, tap, swing, and other forms of dance. Sarah is self-employed as a freelance writer and produces newsletters for various companies and organizations in Chicago. Since she spends most of her day at home in front of a computer, she truly enjoys going out, socializing, and dancing a couple of nights every week. For her, learning the new movements, turns, and forms of Latin music have represented a challenge as well as a continuation of her previous skills. She also indicated that she feels very good about having acquired the difficult skills of Latin dancing. She is beginning to see herself as an expert. For Anna, salsa dancing allowed her to understand her body differently after having grown up in an Evangelical family and having attended an Evangelical college where dancing was never allowed. This suggests that salsa dancing has had a liberatory impact on her relationship to and
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self-construction of her own body. Yet Anna also shared with me the empowerment resulting from mastering this art. She said that in the past she “didn’t know how to move [her] hips, it was not natural to [her], it was something [she] had to learn.” After two years of dancing and of lessons, she feels a “sense of accomplishment,” “that I can do it.” Anna has reaffirmed her experience with salsa dancing as an art, technique, and discipline: “I’m using my mind,” “It doesn’t come easy for me,” and “It’s taken me a long time to learn it.” As an Anglo woman, she feels the anxiety of inauthenticity, of embodying the wrong identity, the wrong body movements, the wrong skin color, and the wrong language. When she messes up dancing with a Latino man, she “think[s] about how [she] is being perceived by the person she is dancing with.” Latin@s who learn to dance to Latin music in the dance studios also bring in their own anxieties, yet in their case the anxieties are informed by the conflation of culture and nature. As Patria Román has clearly shown in The Making of Latin London, the Latin@ body has been naturalized as the site of natural rhythm and dancing moves. This essentialist construct—that it comes from the blood, or that Latin@s dance well naturally—mediates numerous interactions on the dance floor: both high expectations on the part of others, and also anxieties about inadequacy among those Latin@ students trying to get the rhythm. Román writes about the point at which students achieve that “natural dancing,” which is when they do not need to count and when their feet, arms, legs, and bodies can move to the music without being too mathematical about it. I count myself among those Latinas who came into the studio having learned salsa beginning on the second beat, and now having to relearn it by counting 1–2–3, 5–6–7. When I see Asian women, Anglo women, and many others dancing salsa very well, much better than me, or when I cannot follow my dance partner because I am still trying to remember this new way of dancing, I do feel very inadequate as a Puerto Rican woman. I am torn between continuing to hone my skills with the new steps, or going back to my intuitive, “natural” way of dancing salsa, the way my father taught me (which, of course, is not natural but the result of learning within the vernacular space of home, in contrast to the legitimacy accorded to the dance studio). The desire to mimic the latinized body, its steps, and movements, is fueled precisely by the desire to achieve a certain degree of authenticity. Yet ironically, while Latinos and Latinas who learned to dance at home consider their styles “authentic,” this authenticity is being minimized or redefined through the values accorded by the studio style. The vernacular and the studio dance forms come into conflict on the dance floor. Here power dynamics are reproduced through expectations of what good dancing is, what the correct steps are, how turns are done, and
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issues of style as well. The increasing value of dancing as acquired knowledge is reflected in a comment by a young non-Latino man who spoke about “the importance of breaking down the steps.” For one of the Puerto Rican women, however, this new emphasis has had a negative impact on her own experience at clubs. First, she commented that these students “are not really listening to the music, they are too concentrated on the beat.” In fact, Pietrobruno also writes about this strong emphasis on steps, turns, and techniques “that enable salsa to become commodified as a set of marketable units.”18 As one of the instructors she interviewed stated, “You can dance the step or you can dance the music.”19 This shift is significant, since the function of music itself changes from being a content-based listening experience that has cultural meanings to being a mere vehicle of beats and rhythm. The Puerto Rican women also commented on the increased frequency of turns now: “I love turning, but not in a rough way. I was taught to turn in certain breaks—Now I dread it. It’s very rough now. They don’t take women into consideration.” Thus, she considers salsa dancing “not much fun anymore” since it’s “very choreographed.” Critiquing what she calls the new “salsa aerobic,” this woman in particular spoke about how she enjoyed dancing with older men who communicated with her through their hands, flowingly moving them across the dance floor, doing turns without any verbal cues, and changing the pressure of their hands on her back. Currently, it is amazing that dancers, particularly those who are aficionados or who frequent the clubs, wear T-shirts that identify them as a one-step or two-step salsa dancer. There is also the Puerto Rican style, the Cuban style, and the Colombian style, associated with a particular nationality. Yet intercultural conflicts also arise, as those who have learned in the studios expect their partners to dance the “correct” way. What happens then to the vernacular dancers? How does the cultural value of the vernacular dancer measure vis-a-vis the studio learner of the mainstream forms? Beyond the fact that many dancers nowadays are literally hit and hurt by dancing elbows sticking out, the reality of emerging conflicts over dancing forms and expertise suggests that the racial harmony associated with dancing is a partial experience and a utopian construct that elides the emerging tensions among dancers with various gender and racial subjectivities. Conflict in most cases is informed by gender roles, by heterosexual desire, objectification, and interracial assumptions. In contrast to a Latino man who did not perceive any conflicts in salsa clubs, one of the Puerto Rican women I interviewed in 2004 shared a revealing anecdote about dancing with a non-Latino who was learning Latin steps. She said she was proud of her salsa dancing style since salsa dancing, for her, is an
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important index of her own Boricua cultural identity, at times replacing the use of Spanish. Despite this strong cultural meaning, she has been “corrected” by non-Latino men who dance differently from her: This guy told me that I danced cha cha cha like an Americana and I felt quite insulted. He wanted to dance with me because I was Puerto Rican, but then we didn’t mesh while dancing. I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t like being corrected. I grew up accommodating to each other, not in this more technical way. The fact that you have to stop to do a new step is not a sign of good dancing. Good dancing continues on, it flows, even when one makes a mistake.
She has found herself dancing with male non-Latino partners who comment that their style is not the correct one, and then move on to teach them how to do it. These Puerto Rican Latinas do not necessarily appreciate being moved around like a rag doll as part of the more sensationalist and flamboyant moves of the ballroom mambo and salsa styles. Yet on the new, intercultural dance floor, they are recolonized as subjects who lack the appropriate knowledge to succeed in that social space. In fact, they are taught by the new male masters in dance. One evening at Summerdance, I met Captain Michael, an older, white man who taught me how to dance because his mother had been a dance instructor. An inverse situation from Anna, who felt self-conscious of her white identity as the source of her errors, this specific conflict renders Latinas not only as inauthentic but also takes away their sense of cultural authority and agency. During one of the Puerto Rican festivals in Chicago, Fiesta Boricua, I witnessed a similar inversion of power and agency between Latin@s and non-Latin@s. Fiesta Boricua is celebrated every August in Humboldt Park, more precisely in the area on Division Street called Paseo Boricua. Flanked by the two majestic Puerto Rican flags on Western Avenue and on California that were installed precisely as visual icons and reminders of Puerto Rican cultural agency and of Division Street as a Puerto Rican urban space with its own economic autonomy, Fiesta Boricua brings a handful of musical bands to perform. In front of one stage on which salsa and merengue music were being performed, a group of about twenty dance studio students, all wearing the T-shirts with the dance studio logo and name imprinted on them, danced in a closed circle, performing and practicing the skills, footwork, and turns that they had practiced and perfected in their lessons. What fascinated me about this particular moment or musical scene was the fact that around the circle the local Boricuas and many Latin@s were now staring at them, observing them dance. The racial divide was obvious, as the Latin@s and Boricuas were
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the onlookers and the Anglos were the dancers. The fact that this took place on Division Street, in the heart of Paseo Boricua, was an ironic statement on the struggles for power, presence, and the appropriation of urban space going on in Chicago. One of the Puerto Rican women summarized this sense of displacement for her: “They only dance with each other [students in dance studios]. Then I end up just watching others, like a show.” As a result, she and her friends rarely go out to dance salsa any longer. Are non-Latin@s exoticizing or eroticizing Latinos and Latinas as they learn to dance Latin? Karen Backstein, in an article entitled “Taking ‘Class’ into Account,” struggles with this issue. As a woman who learned to dance with Afro-Brazilian religious music, she explores the productive meanings and intercultural affinities that can ensue from these experiences.20 She writes: There is a joy in exploring movement that contests the rigid notions of Anglo motion, whether it be the tightly ruled steps of ballet or the so called freer, more natural movements of modern dance. If Anglos look for alternative kinetic possibilities in oppositional and demonized forms, are they engaging in exoticization? How would one reconcile the desire by Latinas for this same freedom, so visible in Aparicio’s own account of salsa and analysis of patriarchal critiques, as well as in Yvonne Daniel’s history of the danzon, which repeatedly refers back to issues of sexuality and upper class fear?”21
Here Backstein conflates very differently positioned desires on the part of Latinas and Anglos as “this same freedom.” The freedom that Latinas (interviewed for my book Listening to Salsa) sought in going salsa dancing on a Friday night is inflected by social class, gender politics, and national/ cultural dispossessions. The “freedom” that Backstein sought by enrolling in this Brazilian dance studio is more informed by the individual, therapeutic need for healing. She states that “traditionally forbidden motions” may be seen as “extraordinarily liberating,” thus reaffirming the changes in meaning that ensue from intercultural or transnational readings. Like Richard Gere’s character, John, in the Hollywood remake of the Japanese film Shall We Dance? ballroom and Latin dancing allowed him to revitalize his personal life, to enhance his routine-like marriage, and to expand his social circle. To be fair to the film, Jennifer Lopez’s character, Paulina, also heals as a result of dancing with, and training John for the ballroom competition. Yet enrolling in dance studios, as evidenced by the reasons I listed above, is hardly recognized as a form of understanding and of deepening one’s connections to another culture. The transformations and
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social meanings that John and Paulina experienced as a result of dancing were not intercultural, but individually/psychologically/emotionally based. If it is true that no dance is exempt from particular ethnic or cultural meanings and significations, it is also true that these meanings are displaced or replaced by others as the social spaces and the cultural agents that perform these dances change. “Dance students” may become “consumers of a culture” as a result of their newfound knowledge of that culture, but that does not imply that power relations have been diminished or equaled.22 Indeed, when student testimonies from Latin Street Studio in Chicago included comments such as “Soon, I was dancing merengue at Tropicana with divorced Puerto Rican women,” and when an Anglo psychiatrist at Summerdance confessed to me that he was there “because he was looking for a wife,” the notion of consumption of culture was extended to Latina women as objects of that consumption. Two years later, as I finish writing this piece, the desire for “divorced Puerto Rican women” still haunts me as an egregious reminder of the cultural and gender politics behind the globalization of salsa dancing. It is true that Latinos who are in this industry—from musicians to the dance instructors to the dance aficionados—have accrued financial gains and other forms of capital from these restructured forms of intercultural desire. And, Latinas in the city, like many other men and women, also make use of dance clubs and spaces to improve their social networks, to be seen and to see, to find potential mates or one-night lovers. They objectify and are objectified. They like new friends and clash with others. Yet the intercultural tensions and desires that are being articulated on the globalized dance floor, and the colonialist impulses on the part of dominant society, are still embedded within the hegemonic discourses of race and gender that have shaped Latin@ subjectivities throughout history. Interviews Sarah, August 2004 Anna, September 2004 John, October 29, 2005 Orlando, November 2005 Robin, March 8, 2006 María, October 29, 2007 Laura, October 29, 2007 Miguel Méndez, August 2004 Tito Rodríguez, July 22, 2004
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Notes 1. Patria Román-Velázquez, The Making of Latin London: Salsa Music, Place and Identity (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1999), 114. 2. Ralph Cintrón, “Gentrification in Puerto Rican Chicago” (Presentation for the Puerto Rican Agenda Group in Chicago, Illinois, March 2005). 3. Jane Desmond, “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,” in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, ed. Celeste Fraser-Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 36. 4. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” in Profession 91 (New York: Modern Language Association, 1991), 34. 5. Desmond, 37. 6. Roman-Velazquez, 118. 7. Sheenagh Pietrobruno, Salsa and Its Transnational Moves (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 111–14. 8. Priscilla Renta, “Salsa Dance: Latino/a History in Motion,” Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16.2 (Fall 2004): 151. 9. Karen Backstein, “Taking ‘Class’ into Account: Dance, the Studio. And Latino Culture,” in Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, ed. Agustín LaóMontes and Arlene Dávila (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 449–72; and Renta, 141. 10. Renta, 141. 11. Ibid. 12. Catherine Calderón, A Bailar! The Journey of a Latin Dance Company (New York City: The Cinema Guild, 1998). 13. Renta, 141. 14. Latin Street Dancing website: http://www.laboriqua.com (accessed on December 11, 2005). 15. Helen Thomas, The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 176. 16. Y.A Kazakina, “Young Women Find Freedom in the Rhythm of Salsa: In London and New York, Latin Clubs are a Favored Destination for Dance, Exercise, Fun,” Forward, December 18, 1998, V.CII; N. 31, 215: 18. Also available through High Beam Research at http://www.highbeam.com/doc/ 1P1-22213118html (accessed on January 15, 2006). 17. Kazakina, 18. 18. Pietrobruno, 144. 19. Ibid. 20. Backstein, 449–72. 20. Ibid., 456. 21. Ibid., 454.
Epilogue
A Final Look at the Latin@ Experience: Past, Present, and Future Norma E. Cantú
he beginning of the second decade of the century is an exciting time for the Latin@ community in the United States, for we can see significant change in our political, cultural, and social world. The election of Barack Obama and the subsequent changes that are being wrought in our political condition, such as the appointment of Latin@s to key positions in government, would seem to indicate that the oppressive conditions of the past are no more. But while it appears that the country recognizes the potential and significant role that Latin@s must play in this brave new world, serious problems remain: Latin@s drop out of school at an alarming rate; teenage pregnancy is not much lower than it has been in the past thirty years; the incarceration of our youth and the low scores on standardized tests hint at the severity of problems to come. But we still find reasons for hope even though we are starting out with such a bleak outlook. Drawn to the difficult and challenging predicaments that our world confronts, our book seeks to explore issues that take us to the heart of the Latin@ condition in the United States. The essays collected between the covers of Inside the Latin@ Experience provide snapshots of various sectors through various lenses. This important collection assists both the seasoned scholar of Latin@ studies and the student seeking an understanding of various disciplines and Latinidades to consider ways of responding to and engaging with the polemics around Latin@s in the United States. By presenting the research of Latin@s from various disciplines, our goal has been to impel students and scholars of the Latin@ experience in the
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United States to action, to join academically and intellectually in efforts to recognize the critical role that Latin@s play in our nation’s history, its present, and future. “The United States sneezes and X country has pneumonia,” the popular saying goes. Obviously the economic crises of 2008 provide a prime example of this dictum. The essays gathered in this book explore how Latin@s in the United States, situated as they are in “nepantla,” to use an indigenous term and concept popularized by Gloria Anzaldúa,1 are the ideal subjects who can traverse the diverse hegemonic worlds they occupy, be they cultural, political, social, legal, or educational. In an everglobalizing project, the nations of the hemisphere whose contemporary realities affect the Latin@ experience in the United States often respond to what happens in the United States; indeed they rely economically on the United States as a study of the remittances indicates. The economic crises, global warming and climate change, scarce resources, drug trafficking, and the scourge of wars and political unrest are all current crises that our world must confront. In like fashion, the political unrest in any country of the Americas, such as the recent developments in Venezuela and Bolivia, creates instability and concern in Latin American communities, such as the Venezuelan and Bolivian American communities. While we do not engage with all of these particular crises in our book, we conclude that what happens to one of the groups, one of the Latinidades, affects the others in the United States and elsewhere. Indeed, Latin@s are immersed in all of these crises—whether we like it or not. As a nation-state, the United States will continue to engage at all levels in what can be at times a difficult relationship with all Latin@s, those who are recent arrivals in this country and those whose ancestors were here before there was a United States but all of them an essential part of the whole that makes us the United States. Serious issues that affect Latin@s in the United States, and the whole hemisphere, such as immigration and global warming, especially insofar as environmental justice is concerned, remain at the forefront for policy makers and educators who prepare the future citizens of this country. As we conclude our book, we look back at the past, consider our present, and predict, with hope, a future that will lead us all to a more just and better world. The Past Latin@s have a rich history that has not often been recognized; they have helped shape the history of the United States on many fronts as some of the essays in this collection attest. In the origins of the Latin@ community, we can discern the complexity of mestizaje wrought by the colonizing
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project of Spain and of the United States. Diachronically situated at critical watershed times, the late fifteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century engendered the creation of Latinidades with unique histories and often vastly different historical conditions. Material conditions, however, remained similar across these centuries as the Europeans, mostly the Spanish, sought to Christianize and “civilize” the indigenous populations residing in the Americas. Historically, the Latin@ presence, especially if we consider our indigenous roots in what is now the United States, dates back to before colonization. In 1848, the United States defeated Mexico and half of Mexico’s land mass became part of U.S. territory. The Kickapoo, the Lipan, and Mescalero Apache, as well as other Coahuiltecan groups in southern Texas are still active in what is now the United States. In our past participation in the military, in church celebrations, in politics, and in cultural production, we can glean the intense role that the Latin@ community has played in weaving the fabric of what is the United States. As we have read in the preceding chapters, the presence of Latin@s impacts the very essence of a U.S. identity with its multiple and varied manifestations. The Guatemalan youth in Los Angeles whose ancestors arrived in the area in the 1980s constitute as important a subgroup as the Hispanos of New Mexico who have been in the region for over 400 years. Each with its own historical reality will express that Latinidad differently; the Guatemalans will assimilate linguistically into the predominant Mexican speech patterns and lexicon of the Los Angeles area, while the New Mexican “manit@s” will retain their unique linguistic and cultural expressions. As Ek and Trujillo demonstrate in their work, at the present time, the two groups find that their identity is constantly battling the larger forces of their location. Thus, the concerns and issues of the past collapse into the present. The Present Despite apparent gains, the Latin@ population in the United States faces challenges and must remain vigilant as new laws and policies foment even greater anti-immigrant sentiments and as there is a push for English-only legislation. The status of Latin@s in the United States as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century is arguably better than it was in the mid-twentieth century; yet the issues that faced our foremothers and forefathers remain. At the Primer Congreso Mexicanista convened in 1911 in Laredo, Texas, the delegates discussed issues of police brutality (for example, the lynching of Mexicans by Texas Rangers), education (the lack of schools and dire need for access of Spanish-speaking children to schooling beyond the elementary grades), and language (mostly the lack
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of respect for Spanish and what Latin@s perceived as a crisis that they faced, the loss of Spanish by the youth).2 When we are still faced by racial profiling and when the prison population is overwhelmingly Latino and is not representative in numbers of the population at large, when we have English-only legislation, and when we have serious dropout rates, it is apparent that the concerns of our ancestors are still with us. According to Justin Akers Chacon, who cites a Pew Hispanic Center study released in mid-February 2009, “Latinos now make up 40 percent of the estimated 200,000 prisoners in federal penitentiaries, triple their share of the total U.S. adult population and disproportionate to their representation in state and local jails (19 percent and 16 percent, respectively).”3 Akers Chacon’s focus is on the immigrants who are incarcerated, because as he writes, “nearly half of the Latino population in federal prisons are immigrants, with 81 percent sentenced for entering or residing in the nation without authorization.”4 This situation is due to the fact that many Latin@ immigrants “are being prosecuted under the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act of 2004, which was intended to break up organized theft rings and credit card scam artists,” but has become a way for persecuting those undocumented Latin@s who are working in the United States by using false documents. But this is only one reason that immigration reform is sorely needed. While the participation by Latin@s in the political process surged with the 2008 election, we cannot rest on our laurels, and must engage Latin@ youth who are also dropping out of high school disproportionately.5 The challenges are many and the answers are few, but there is no doubt that it is through education and through a concentrated effort to address these issues for all Latin@s that we can envision a future where the Latin@ community will be an integral part of the political landscape. The nation-state continues to disparage and use its subjects, whether they are citizen-subjects or not, in an effort to keep itself afloat in the financial crises wrought by the U.S. economic policies of the first decade of the twenty-first century that began with the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the ’90s. In the increasingly globalized world, the disposable subjects, as Norma Alarcón has called them, are the workers who provide the fodder for the capitalist machine to continue functioning.6 Latin@s play a critical role as workers, no doubt, but also as players in the economic and social drama that elites participate in and in fact write the script for. The fact that some of the wealthiest Mexican entrepreneurs are at the helm of some of the multinationals has not mitigated the dire effects of their policies. The feminicides of the Juárez across the border from El Paso, Texas, point to at least one blatant case of total disregard for the worker subject who succumbs to the capitalist enterprise, the maquiladora
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(sweat shop) system in this case. In addition to the dehumanizing and violent treatment of all workers, women are at the receiving end of even more egregious abuses. We are optimistic that our present condition will soon yield significant improvements; in fact, we consider it imperative for our survival and our well-being that Latin@s be an integral part of our country’s life. The Future According to the Mayan calendar, there will not be a world as we know it after December 2012. What the Mayan calendar makers knew or did not know of our world, we do not know, but if they had any notion of the ecological crises we face, no doubt they would predict the end of the world and of time, because we face sure extinction given our irresponsible use of energy resources. The greatest crisis we face is the ecological. In the brave new world that some are saying is postethnic, we could all aspire to have the ideal world free of injustice and with social justice for all citizens, all subjects across the world. But that world is in the making and will depend on how we handle our current crises, how we resolve conflicts, and how we imagine our future. Just as the events of 500 years ago are still impacting our world, the actions we take now will impact the future. The children in our schools will be the ones to witness travel to Mars; space stations that are inhabited by teams from across the world in the twentyfirst century will give way to whole colonies of workers in outer space whose task it will be to continue supplying the needed communications systems with data. The walls must come down and no doubt the borderless world will live as one. When Benito Juarez pleaded for a united America, the division that the United States instigated was the target. We as a country of immigrants must come to terms with the indigenous presence and with the Latin@ presence. By presenting the research of Latin@s from various disciplines, our goal has been to impel students and scholars of the Latin@ experience in the United States to action. The activist scholar aims to change the world through intellectual work. Policy decisions, as Norma V. Cantú’s work demonstrates, impact education directly. For instance, in some of the work centered on children, the authors present research that pushes us to think about language (Ek) and literature (Fránquiz), especially in theorizing about children’s literature and coming to conocimiento (reflective consciousness). In these chapters, we can see the link to our future. Studying the Central American youth’s views and predicament in southern California or exploring how teachers and children in bilingual classrooms use Gloria Anzaldúa’s concepts of conocimiento, we can develop a
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pedagogy that is at once culturally relevant and teaches inclusivity and values that will serve future generations well. Our intellectual work must be tied to grassroots community activism. We must recognize that researching salsa dancing (Aparicio) and voter participation patterns (Manzano and Vega) are equally important in analyzing and valorizing Latin@ experience in the United States. As we conclude our book, we wrap up some loose ends but leave many questions unanswered. Where are we going as a Latin@ community? What does the future hold for a child who will be twenty-five in the year 2025? This century and these generations must contend with limits—in resources and in space and time. For that reason, space exploration and alternative energy sources must occupy center stage in planning for the future. Just like the protagonists in the story of conquest that unfolded over 500 years ago had no idea that their offspring would live on this land mass and face discrimination and oppression, those who are Latin@ leaders must understand the repercussions of having a Sonia Sotomayor in the highest court of the land, Hilda Soliz in the cabinet, and a Barack Obama leading our country. The intellectual workers and organizers of our community and our allies from non-Latin@ groups will continue our pathbreaking trajectory. Final Thoughts The multiyear project Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader has been a labor of love over a period of several years when we brought together various disciplines into conversation with each other. As we look into the horizon, we optimistically predict a period of adjustment and redirection filled with innovation and with exciting projects. Firmly grounded in our indigenous past, the complex Latin@ community will reach new heights. Forging the bridges across our Latinidades with an inclusive agenda will lead us to realize our potential as a group. We will answer the difficult questions facing our community. But it will require all of us, Latin@s and non-Latin@s, working together to get there. We invite you, our readers, to join our voices to repeat a chant from the sixties, movimiento, ¡Sí se puede! and ¡Adelante!7 Notes 1. Gloria Anzaldúa’s book Borderlands / la Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987) lays out a frame for exploring Latin@ identity in the United States.
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2. See Jose E. Limón, “El Primer Congreso Mexicanista de 1911: A Precursor to Contemporary Chicanismo,” Aztlan 5 (1974): 1–2, 85–117. 3. Justin Akers Chacon, “Increase in Latino Federal Prison Population Reveals Flaws in Immigration Policy,” The Progressive, February 25, 2009. Available at http://www.progressive.org/mag/mpchacon022509.html (accessed on July 28, 2009). 4. Ibid. 5. The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University’s report, Left Behind in America: The Nation’s Dropout Crisis. Available at http://chicagowritingservice.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/clmsexecreport2.pdf (accessed on August 1, 2009). 6. I heard Professor Alarcón deliver an earlier version of this paper at a symposium in San Antonio in March 2007. Norma Alarcón, “ . . . but you don’t look Mexican,” in Cien Años de Lealtad en Honor a Luis Leal (One Hundred Years of Loyalty in Honor of Luis Leal), vol. II, ed. Sara Poot Herrera, Francisco A. Lomeli, and María Herrera-Sobek (Mexico City: University of California–Santa Barbara, 2007), 1259–72. 7. Movimiento is understood to be “movement.” The chant Si se puede means “yes, we can” and Adelante means “forward!”
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Warner, R. S., and J. G. Wittner, eds. Gatherings in Diasporas: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. Welch, Susan, and Lee Sigelman. “A Gender-Gap Among Hispanics? A Comparison with Black and Anglos.” Western Political Science Quarterly 45 (1992): 181–91. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 1977. Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Steven J. Rosenstone. Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Wortham, S., E. Hamann, and E. G. Murillo Jr., eds. Education in the New Latino Diaspora: Policy and the Politics of Identity. Westport: Ablex, 2001. Wuthnow, Robert. Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Chicanas’ Experience in Collective Theater.” Women and Performance 2, no. 2 (1985): 45–48. ———. “The Female Subject in Chicano Theatre: Sexuality, ‘Race,’ and Class.” In Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, edited by S. E. Case, 131–49. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990. ———. “Teatropoesía by Chicanas in the Bay Area: Tongues of Fire.” In Mexican American Theatre Then and Now, edited by N. Kanellos, 78–94. Houston: Arte Público, 1983. Ybarra, Lea. Vietnam Veteranos: Chicanos Recall the War. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Ybarra-Frausto, Tomás. “I Can Still Hear the Applause. La Farándula Chicana: Carpas y Tandas de Variedad.” In Hispanic Theatre in the United States, edited by N. Kanellos, 45–61. Houston: Arte Público, 1984. ———. “Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility.” In CARA: Chicano Art, Resistance and Affirmation, edited by R. Griswold del Castillo, T. McKenna, and Y. YarbroBejarano, 155–162. Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery, 1990. Zentella, Ana Cecilia, ed. Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities. New York: Teachers College Press, 2005. ———. Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997.
List of Contributors
Frances R. Aparicio is a professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois. The author of Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures (1998), she has also coedited important critical anthologies, including Tropicalizations (1997), Musical Migrations (2003), and others. Her English translation of Cesar Miguel Rondon’s El Libro de la Salsa (1980) was published in 2008 by the University of North Carolina Press as The Book of Salsa. She is currently interviewing MexiRicans and other hybrid Latin@s in Chicago to examine new notions of cultural identity among Latin@s. Norma E. Cantú received her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. She currently serves as a professor of English and U.S. Latin@ literatures at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas. She is the editor of the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo book series, at Texas A&M University Press. The author of the award-winning Canícula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera and the coeditor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change (2002), Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (2002), and Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos (2009), she is writing a novel tentatively titled Champú, or Hair Matters. She is known internationally as a poet, fiction writer, folklorist, and scholar of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and Chican@ cultural production. Norma V. Cantú is a professor of law and education at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. She began her professional career as an English teacher with the Brownsville school district in Brownsville, Texas. She litigated civil rights cases in state and federal courts during her tenure with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). Under President Clinton she served as the assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education. She holds the Ken McIntyre Chair in the Department of Educational Excellence and is acting chair in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the College of Education. Norma’s expertise extends to many areas of public law, including litigation, appellate advocacy, administrative law, employment law, gender
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discrimination, disability law, school desegregation, higher education law, and school finance. Lucila D. Ek received her PhD in education from the University of California, Los Angeles, California, and is currently an assistant professor in bicultural/bilingual studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas. Her research examines language and literacy issues of Chican@/ Latin@ immigrant communities through sociocultural lenses. In particular, she is interested in examining students’ language and literacy socialization and identity construction across multiple educational contexts, including public schools, homes, religious institutions, and other community spaces. Her work has been published in The High School Journal, The Bilingual Research Journal, and in Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities, edited by Ana Celia Zentella. Stella M. Flores is an assistant professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Her research investigates the impact of state and federal policies on college access for low-income and underrepresented student populations. She has written on the role of affirmative action in college admissions, demographic changes in higher education, Latin@ students and community colleges, and the impact of instate resident tuition policies on the college enrollment of undocumented immigrant students. Flores received her EdD from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the coauthor of Percent Plans in College Admissions: A Comparative Analysis of Three States’ Experiences and the coeditor of Legacies of Brown: Multiracial Equity in American Education (with D. J. Carter and R. J. Reddick) and Community Colleges and Latino Educational Opportunity (with C. L. Horn and G. Orfield). María E. Fránquiz received her PhD in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, California. She is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. Her research interests are in bilingual/multicultural education and in language/literacy studies. She has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas. She coedited the book Scholars in the Field: The Challenges of Migrant Education (with C. Salinas), and is the coeditor of The Bilingual Research Journal (with K. Escamilla). Her publications appear in professional journals, including Journal of Latinos and Education, English Leadership Quarterly, Multicultural Perspectives, The Journal of Border Educational Research, Language Arts, California English, The High School Journal, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Classroom Interaction, TESOL Quarterly, and Education Research and Perspective. Fránquiz is a native of Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
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Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, is an associate professor in modern languages and women’s studies at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington. She is the Wismer Professor Endowed Chair for Gender and Diversity, a poet and a cultural worker. She received her doctorate from Stanford University, Stanford, California. Her research focus is primarily on the recovery of subjectivity through the works of Chican@/Latin@ authors. Her edited book of interviews with Chilean and Chicana authors Communal Feminisms was published in 2007. Her poetry collection A Most Improbable Life was published in 2003. Currently she is editing Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena María Viramontes Critical Reader. Sylvia Manzano is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, in 2004. Her research focuses on Latin@ politics and representation in the United States. Her research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Ford Foundation. Her work has appeared in numerous academic outlets, including Political Research Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, and PS: Political Science and Politics. Manzano is a native of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Jorge Mariscal, a professor of literature and the founding director of the Chican@/Latin@ Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego, California, is the grandson of Mexican immigrants from the state of Sonora; he was born in East Los Angeles. He received his PhD in Spanish from the University of California, Irvine, California. He has taught at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Indiana, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. His research areas include early modern Iberian culture and the origins of Western racism, contemporary Chican@ history and culture, and the role of Mexican-Americans in the U.S. military. His books include Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War and Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975. Russell C. Rodríguez is currently teaching at San José City College and is working on his manuscript, Mariachi: Performing the Soundscape of Greater Mexico, which will be published by the University Press of Mississippi. He received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2006 and was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2007 to 2009. A practicing musician, he has worked as a professional mariachi musician for over twenty-five years, most recently with Mariachi Azteca in San José, California. He is also a member of the Chicano ensemble Los
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Soneros del Este and is in constant dialogue with Chican@ musicians throughout California, participating in musical collaborations in the Bay Area and Los Angeles with group members of Quetzal, Ozomatli, Dr. Loco and His Rockin’ Jalapeños, and La Colectiva. His performance background significantly informs his studies on Latin@, Chican@, and Mexican@ expressive culture in the United States. Germán Treviño is the director of the Omnilife Foundation, a social initiative of the Omnilife Group, committed to the provision and promotion of quality education for low-income children in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. He earned a master’s degree in international education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is currently a doctoral candidate. His research is devoted to the study of social and educational inequalities in Latin America, and is currently conducting an experiment about the impact of private schools on the educational achievement of low-income students in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Previous to his work at the Omnilife Foundation, he was a researcher for the Organization of American States and a consultant for UNESCO/Paris and UNESCO/Africa. Patricia Marina Trujillo is an assistant professor of composition and rhetoric with an emphasis on race theory at Colorado State University, Pueblo, Colorado. She received her doctorate in English with an emphasis on Latin@ literature from the Department of English, University of Texas, San Antonio(UTSA), Texas. Trujillo served as the assistant director of the UTSA Women’s Studies Institute (WSI) for five years and as the interim director for a semester. She received a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, was a 2007 recipient of the New Mexico Office of the State Historian’s Fellowship, and was selected in 2009 as one of twelve feminist scholars to be in the first cohort of the Ms. Magazine Writers Workshop for Feminist Scholars. She is a published fiction writer, and her areas of study include Chican@ popular cultural expressions, Chican@ rhetoric, and cultural geography. A native of the Española Valley in New Mexico, she is a contemporary fiber artist who has created many projects with traditional colcha and quilta techniques. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, PhD, is a Mexicana/Chicana who was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, and grew up in southern California. She received her doctoral degree from the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, California. Currently, she is an associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. Her areas of interest are Mexican and Chican@ literatures and cultures, gender and sexuality
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studies, as well as theater and performance studies. Her work has been published in Nerter and in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Her book on transnational Mexican popular culture is forthcoming. Arturo Vega received his doctoral degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, where he served as a fellow at Carl Albert Congressional Research Center in 1990. At St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas, he currently teaches courses on the U.S. government, including the legislative process, the U.S. presidency, and Latino politics, and directs the graduate Public Administration Program. He has also taught graduate courses in the areas of program evaluation, urban planning, public policy analyses, and research methods in public administration. Since the early 1990s, his research has focused on urban public policies, municipal structures, and public health disparities. He has participated in over a dozen community research projects, evaluations, and community-needs assessments. Over the last two years, he has conducted program evaluations in San Antonio, Texas, for St. Philip’s College’s Proyecto Alimento and Baptist Child and Family Services “Decisions for Life” Program—an in- and after-school youth leadership program.
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Index
Page numbers in italics with t or f indicate tables or figures, respectively.
A acculturation 3, 5–8, 37, 140–41, 157–58 Americanization and Mexicanization of youth 140–43 Anzaldúa, Gloria Evangelina 93, 94, 95–96, 103, 104–5, 112, 113–14, 131, 151 Aparicio, Frances R., “From Boricua Dancers to Salsa Soldiers: The Cultural Politics of Globalized Salsa Dancing in Chicago,” 211–26 appropriation in popular culture 87–89 armed forces 37–48 assimilation 3, 5–8, 37, 140–41, 157–58
B bilingual children’s literature 95–98 bilingual education 93–94, 115–16 biliteracy and conocimiento 93–109 boxing as Latin@ cultural event 83–86
C Cantú, Norma E. Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en La Frontera 177–78 “Final Look at the Latin@ Experience, A,” 227–32
“Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States,” 111–27 Cantú, Norma V. “State-Federal Relations Concerning Latin@ Civil Rights in the United States,” 23–36 careers. See employment Catholic church 119–24 celebrations 83, 116–19 Cinco de Mayo 83 Fiesta de Santiago Apóstol 120 Fiestas Patrias 118 identity and 116–18 matachines dance 122–24 nationalist 122 pastorelas (shepherds’ plays) 122–24 quinceañeras 83, 112, 113, 120–22, 136–37 religious 117, 119–20, 121 weddings 112 Census data 24, 54–58, 60 Chiapas, Mexico Zapatista movement 87–88 Chican@ literature 173, 174–80 children bilingual literature for 95–98 bilateral education of 93–109 discrimination against 27–32 identity, development of 94–95, 129–47
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children–continued immigration, accounts of 98–100 migration by size of locality of origin 57f “swirl” migration and 51–71 churches, immigration and 141–42 circles of experience and influence 117f citizenship 37, 61–62 civic participation 4–15 civil rights 23–36 class, social 152, 153, 173, 224–25 classification of minorities 24–27 Columbus Day (Día de la Raza) 118 coming of age celebrations. See quinceañeras conformity. See assimilation conocimiento (reflective consciousness) 93–109, 103–5, 113 creativity and popular culture 81 Cuban Americans literature of 173, 185–88 as political survey respondents 4–5 as Republicans 8 cultural knowledge and identity 220–25 cultural migration 117 cultural politics of dance 211–26 culture. See popular arts and culture religious and secular culture 111–27 curanderismo (folk healing) 94, 97, 98, 102
D dance 80, 211–26 death in literature 177–78 demographics and political participation 9 destierro (exile) 173 Día de la Raza. See Columbus Day Día de los Libros (Day of the Books) 176 Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) 83, 178
Día de los Niños (Day of the Children) 176 Día del Niño (Day of the Child) 118 dialects. See language discrimination education and 27–32 employment and 24–26 employment protection and 27 language and 131–32 Latin@ literature and 152, 173 in the military 44–45, 47 poverty and 28–29 Pregnancy Discrimination Act 25 See also harassment displacement, cultural 212 dynamics of power 78–79, 90, 158, 212–14, 217, 221–23
E economic influence of culture 76–77, 88 economic infrastructure (U.S.), migrant-receiving states and 58–62 economic mobility 44 economy and migration 53–54 education bilingual 115–16 biliteracy and 93–109 citizenship status and “swirl” migration 61–62 discrimination in 29 federal and state governments and 27–32 funding of 29 immigration and 129 JROTC and 45–46 migrant-receiving states (U.S.) and 58–65 migration and calendar year 57–58 military success and 44 minority teachers and 26 of non-English-proficient students 29
INDEX
opportunity and 43 political participation and 4, 14 rural origin of migrant children and 56–57 segregation and 28–29 “swirl” migration and 51–71 educators 26, 93–109 Ek, Lucila D. “Language and Identity of Immigrant Central American Pentecostal Youth in Southern California,” 129–47 employment discrimination and 24–26 earnings and wages 44 federal and state government court cases 24–26 military service as 39–42 poverty levels and 43–44 protection of 27 empowerment 151–72 English language 7, 14, 33, 131–32 English-only workplace rules 25 ethics and military service 47–48 ethnic identity. See identity ethnography in research 133–35 exile (destierro) 173
F family Latin@ literature and 173 military service and 41 See also children federal court appearances 23–24 federal government and education/ immigration 27–32 federal immunity of state governments 26–27 females. See women fiestas 116–19. See also celebrations Flores, Stella M. “The ‘Swirl’ Migration of MexicanOrigin Students: A Cross-Border Analysis Using the Mexican and U.S. Censuses,” 51–71
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folk culture 78, 79, 111–27, 116–19 folk healing 94, 97, 98, 102 Fourteenth Amendment, Equal Protection Clause 23, 28 Fránquiz, María E. xv–xxiii “Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Educators Paving a Road toward Conocimiento,” 93–109
G gender dance and 222–223, 224–225 Latin@ literature and 173 literature and 184–85, 187, 189 mariachi music and 194, 203–4 military service and 38–40, 46–47 “swirl” migration and 65 theater and 151–72 gentrification, urban 213, 216–17 Guatemalan Spanish 136, 137 Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella “Literary Currency: Coined Contributions of Latin@ Literature in the United States,” 173–91
H harassment. See also discrimination in the military 44–45, 47 healing and folk knowledge 94, 97, 98, 102 homosexuality in theatrical work 154, 163–66 human capital in migration 53–54
I identity Americanization and Mexicanization of 140–43 celebrations and 116–18 circles of experience and influence 117f
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identity–continued corporate construction of 86–89 cultural knowledge and 220–25 dance and 212, 215, 217–18 group 112–13 homosexuality and 165 inclusion and 94 language and 114–16, 129–47, 135–38 Latin@ literature and 173, 174, 175, 177, 182–83 loss of 223 maintenance of 138–40, 143 mass media models of 88 music and 193–209 popular culture and 80, 84–85 Puerto Rican 94–95 religious 141–42 sexual 175 of student, development of 94–95 theater and performance and 151–72 women’s issues and 161 immigrants military service and 42–43 voting behavior of 8 youth, language and identity of 129–47 immigration California and 129 churches and 141–42 federal government and 27 Latin@ literature on 173 student accounts of 98–100 inclusion and identity 94 income 4, 14, 32–33
J Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) 45–46
K knowledge and cultural identity 220–25
L la raza (Latin@s) 80, 81, 89–90 labor force. See employment language acculturation and 7 discrimination and 131–32 earnings disparity and 33 identity and 114–16, 129–47 Latin@ literature and 173 laws regarding 115–16 maintenance of 138–40, 143 marketing and 115 political participation and 14 prestige of 131–32 Spanish language 45, 98, 130, 131, 132, 142, 173, 184 socialization through 135–38 Latin American literature 183–85 Latin dance 80, 211–26 Latinas and military service 38–39 Latinidades 112, 113, 121 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) 41 lengua (language/tongue) 113, 114–16 literature bilingual 95–98 Cuban American 185–88 on death 177–78 on identity 177, 182–83 Latin@ 173–91 Latin American 183–85 Puerto Rican 180–83 on social justice 178–80 See also theater and performance liturgical celebrations 117, 119–20
M Manzano, Sylvia “Changing the National Ethos or Just Being American? Latin@ Political Participation,” 3–22 Mariachi music 193–209 education in 196 overview of 195–97
INDEX
practitioners of 194, 198–204 promotion and preservation of 197–202 Mariscal, Jorge “Latin@s in the U.S. Military,” 37–50 market diversification and migration 53–54 marketing and language 115 mass culture 78, 79–80 mass media, identity and 88 matachines dance celebrations 114, 122–24 merengue dance 80 mestizaje (mixed race heritage) 80, 85, 86, 111–12, 153, 228 Mexican-born migrant population in the United States 59f, 60f, 61f, 62f Mexican Census data 54–58 Mexican migration states 55f Mexican-origin Americans 4–5, 8, 51–71 Mexican-origin migration states 63t, 64t, 65f Mexican states and child migration 56f Mexicanization and Americanization of youth 140–41, 142–43 Mexico migration and census data 54–58, 66 music and 193 migrant-receiving states (United States), 58–65 migrant-sending states (Mexico), 54–58 migration cultural 117 education and 56–57 education and calendar year 57–58 gender and 65 human and social capital in 53–54 Latin@ literature on 173 Mexican states and 55f 56f
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of school-age children by month 57f, 58f, 67f migration, multidirectional. See “swirl” migration military service 37–48 minority teachers 26 music 193–209, 211–26
N National Council for La Raza (NCLR) 41 National Hispanic Heritage Month 118 No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 30
P pastorelas (shepherds’ plays) 122–24 patriotism, military service and 37, 40–42 Pentecostal Church, languages and nationalities in 141–42 performance and theater. See theater and performance political influence of culture 76–77 political participation demographics and 9 education and 14 English proficiency and 7 Latin@s and 3–22, 9–15, 13t migrant-receiving states (United States) and 58–62 military protest and 39, 47–48 political partisanship 8 political trust 4–6, 9, 15 popular arts and culture 75–90 appropriation in 87–89 attitudes of 81–82 commodification of 75 contextualization of 77–80 dance and 211–26 economic influence of 76–77 identity and 80, 84–85, 88 Internet and 202 marketing of 86–89 nuances of popular culture 75–90
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popular arts and culture–continued political influence of 76–77 prejudice and 80 preservation of 197–202 production of 81–86 rodeos as 80 symbols in market and media 76–77 poverty and labor force 44–45 power dynamics. See dynamics of power Pregnancy Discrimination Act. See under discrimination prejudice 78, 218. See also discrimination pronoun usage in language 136–37, 138–40 public schools Americanization and Mexicanization in 140–41 JROTC in 45–46 No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 30 See also education Puerto Rican dance 211–12, 217, 222 Puerto Ricans literature of 173, 180–83 migration of 154 military service and 43–44 music of 193 as political survey respondents 5 as Republicans 8 World War I and 37
Q queers in theater and theatrical work 152, 160, 163–66 quinceañeras 83, 112, 113, 120–22, 136–37
R racism 152, 153, 173, 218 rasquachismo 88–89
recruitment in military service 40–42 reflective consciousness (conocimiento) 93–109 relationships and salsa dancing 219–20 rodeos in popular culture 80 Rodriguez, Russel C. “Politics of Aesthetics: Mariachi Music in the United States,” 193–209
S salsa dance 80, 211–26 Salvadoran Spanish 136 segregation, education and 28–29 self-representation through theater and performance 151–72 sitio (site or place) 114 sitio y lengua (site and language) 113 social capital 53–54, 213, 214–20 social class 173, 224–25 social identity. See identity social justice, literature on 178–80 social mobility 7 social trust 4–6 socialization of language. See under language socioeconomic status, political participation and 4, 5 Spanish language. See under language spirituality, Latin@ literature and 173 state governments 26–32 state-federal relations and civil rights 23–36 stereotypes 75–76, 152, 160 students biliterate education of 93–109 discrimination against 27–32 identity, development of 94–95 identity and language of 129–47 immigration, accounts of 98–100
INDEX
“swirl” migration of students 51–71 gender and 65 reincorporation into Mexico 65–68
T teachers 26, 93–109 theater and performance 151–72 1960s to 1980s 158–59 1980s to present 161 Cuban, overview 158 examples of 162–64 Mexican, overview 155–58 origins of 151–58 performance art 164–66 professional 154–55, 158 Puerto Rican, overview 158 teatro bufo (vernacular theater) 158 Teatro Campesino 78, 124–25 teatro de carpa (tent theater) 155–56 teatro popular (popular theater) 158 Teatropoesia 159, 164 theater labs 160–61 themes and languages of 159–60 types of 154–58 women’s issues, addressing 161 Treviño, Germán “The ‘Swirl’ Migration of MexicanOrigin Students: A Cross-Border Analysis Using the Mexican and U.S. Censuses,” 51–71 Trujillo, Patricia Marina “Making, Buying, Selling and Using the Umbrella: Recognizing the Nuances of Latin@ Popular Culture,” 75–90 trust, political and social 4–6, 8–9, 11, 13–15
265
U urban gentrification. See gentrification Urquijo-Ruiz, Rita E. “Staging the Self, Staging Empowerment: An Overview of Latina Theater and Performance,” 151–72 U.S. Census data 24, 54, 58, 60 U.S. migrant-receiving states 58–65 U.S. military, Latin@s in 37–48 U.S. Supreme Court decisions 23–24, 27
V Vega, Arturo “Changing the National Ethos or Just Being American? Latin@ Political Participation,” 3–22 Venezuela, music of 193 volunteerism 9–15 voseo usage patterns 136–37, 138–40 voter behavior 4, 7, 8
W wages 4, 14, 32–33, 44 women literature and 184, 185, 187, 189 mariachi music and 194, 203–4 military service and 38–40, 46–47 sports and 86 theater and 151–72 World War II and Latin@ military service 38
Y youth. See children
Z Zapatista movement. See under Chiapas, Mexico
