Hacia Una Cartografía De Los Ángeles a Través De La Literatura Chicana”

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Hacia Una Cartografía De Los Ángeles a Través De La Literatura Chicana” “Hacia una cartografía de Los Ángeles a través de la literatura chicana” Albaladejo Martínez, Manuel ISBN: 978-84-690-5981- 4 · Depósito Legal: A- 582- 2007 UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS Departamento de Filología Inglesa Hacia una cartografía de Los Ángeles a través de la literatura chicana ISBN: 978-84-690-5981-4 · Depósito Legal: A- 582- 2007 Manuel Albaladejo Martínez Alicante, Mayo 2007 INTRODUCCIÓN PARTE I: LA ESCUELA DE ESTUDIOS URBANOS DE LOS ÁNGELES 1. INTRODUCCIÓN 2. EDWARD SOJA Y SU TRILOGÍA 2.1. POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES 2.2. THIRDSPACE 2.3. POSTMETROPOLIS 3. MIKE DAVIS Y SU TRILOGÍA 3.1. CITY OF QUARTZ 3.2. ECOLOGY OF FEAR 3.3. MAGICAL URBANISM PARTE II: LA LITERATURA CHICANA DE LOS ÁNGELES DESDE 1980 4. INTRODUCCIÓN 5. LUIS J. RODRÍGUEZ 5.1. POEMS ACROSS THE PAVEMENT 5.2. THE CONCRETE RIVER 5.3. ALWAYS RUNNING, LA VIDA LOCA: GANG DAYS IN L.A. 5.3.1. Landscape y media effect en Always Running 5.3.2. Law effect y la Calle en Always Running 5.3.3. La Casa en Always Running 6. ALEJANDRO MORALES 6.1. CARAS VIEJAS Y VINO NUEVO 6.2. LA VERDAD SIN VOZ 6.3. RETO EN EL PARAÍSO 6.4. THE BRICK PEOPLE 6.5. THE RAG DOLL PLAGUES 6.6. WAITING TO HAPPEN 7. KAREN TEI YAMASHITA 7.1. TROPIC OF ORANGE PARTE III: TRAZOS PARA UNA CARTOGRAFÍA CHICANA DE LOS ÁNGELES CONCLUSIONES BIBLIOGRAFÍA 1. INTRODUCCIÓN Like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) Southern California was and remains the most heavily mythologized place in America, even by those who live there and really should know better, but it is a concrete place as well. David Rieff, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (1992) La presente Cartografía de Los Ángeles a través de la Literatura Chicana, como la casi totalidad de estudios que analizan algún aspecto de la identidad cultural chicana, parte de un hecho histórico tan esencialmente espacial como fue la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo en 1848. Hasta esa fecha, el Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula había sido desde su fundación el 4 de septiembre de 1781 territorio español y, posteriormente, territorio mexicano. Sin embargo, la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo supuso que Los Ángeles y otras regiones pertenecientes a México, junto a los ciudadanos que allí habitaban, pasasen a formar parte de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, y con ello se produjese el singular nacimiento de una nueva identidad cultural: los chicanos. En el amplio espectro de campos artísticos donde la creatividad chicana ha dejado su impronta (literatura, cine, música, muralismo, etc.), varios son los temas que han sido objeto de representación como, por ejemplo, el mestizaje cultural, los estereotipos sociales, el racismo de la sociedad norteamericana, el machismo de la propia colectividad chicana, etc. Sin embargo, de todos esos temas es Manuel Albaladejo Martínez 1 uno el que, a nuestro entender, parece haber disfrutado de una mayor preeminencia dentro del conjunto de las creaciones artísticas llevadas a cabo por los chicanos y las chicanas: la representación del espacio y su creación discursiva. Sin querer ser excesivamente simplistas, se puede afirmar que el espacio representado por el colectivo chicano hace referencia constantemente a tres entidades geográficas concretas y profundamente relacionadas entre sí como son: la tierra mítica de Aztlán, el Barrio urbano, y la Frontera que separa México y los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Recuperado durante la década de los sesenta por el Movimiento Chicano, Aztlán se ha erigido como un espacio mítico-imaginario compartido por la gran mayoría de chicanos que, por uno u otro motivo, se han visto postergados de su tierra natal. Como tendremos ocasión de comentar a lo largo de la presente investigación, “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” (1969), en su intento por crear una conciencia común en el conjunto de la población chicana, recuperó un espacio ahistórico y utópico que en la actualidad únicamente existe en los corazones, en los poemas y en los murales de algunos ciudadanos mexicano-norteamericanos. Frente a la idealidad de Aztlán, se contrapone una realidad mucho más empírica y, en algunos casos, mucho más trágica como es la vida de la comunidad chicana en el Barrio. Considerado el chicano durante largo tiempo un ser esencialmente rural, nadie duda hoy en día de la condición urbana y cosmopolita de la experiencia chicana. Resultado de las importantes diferencias socio-económicas, el chicano ha sido relegado en muchos casos a una categoría inferior de ciudadano con respecto al resto de miembros que componen la sociedad norteamericana, de la cual forma parte por derecho propio. De ahí que la población chicana se haya visto obligada a hacer del Barrio, integrado principalmente por los espacios urbanos más marginales de cualquier metrópolis norteamericana, su propio hogar. A pesar de la importancia de las dos entidades geográficas que acabamos de apuntar, Aztlán y el Barrio, es un tercer espacio el que mejor define y más caracteriza la identidad cultural chicana: la Frontera. Además de haberse convertido en uno de los símbolos más representativos de la exclusión y la marginalidad padecida por los chicanos en estas últimas décadas, la Frontera ha sido igualmente descrita por la casi totalidad de artistas chicanos como un lugar de encuentro, diálogo, fusión y, por tanto, mestizaje cultural. De este modo, la Frontera se ha convertido en una especie de tercer espacio capaz de Manuel Albaladejo Martínez 2 aunar la más trágica experiencia de cualquier inmigrante ilegal con la más sublime creatividad de artistas de la talla de Gloria Anzaldúa y Guillermo Gómez-Peña. En definitiva, la Frontera se pude definir como un Thirdspace que fusiona lo real y lo imaginario en un mismo y único punto, convirtiéndose así en el espacio chicano por antonomasia. Posiblemente sorprenda al lector de la presente investigación una afirmación de este estilo, sobre todo a la hora de poder justificar la idoneidad de una Cartografía de Los Ángeles frente a una posible Cartografía de la Frontera, como cabría esperar de lo anteriormente apuntado. Sin embargo, y aunque a primera vista pudiera parecer lo contrario, una y otra cartografía para nada están tan distantes entre sí. Se ha de destacar, en primer lugar, que la Frontera que separa México y los Estados Unidos, lejos de ser únicamente una realidad física, es además una experiencia vital que queda inscrita para siempre en el recuerdo de todos aquellos mexicanos que se han visto impelidos a cruzarla. Como muy acertadamente señala Rubén Martínez en uno de sus libros más recientes, Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail,1 “the line is an idea” (Martínez 2001, 325). De ahí que, para llevar a cabo una Cartografía de la Frontera, no sea completamente necesario situarse en los márgenes espaciales delimitados por ésta, sino que más bien, expresado en un sentido platónico, realizar una Cartografía de la Frontera suponga plasmar una cartografía del alma y del recuerdo. Una actividad fácilmente ejecutable en el sur de California, sobre todo en la región y ciudad de Los Ángeles, dado el alto número de inmigrantes recién “cruzados.” Una segunda razón que nos ha llevado a realizar la presente Cartografía de Los Ángeles, en detrimento de una posible Cartografía de la Frontera, ha sido que el espacio mítico de Aztlán se ha localizado tradicionalmente en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos, en una zona próxima a Los Ángeles. De todos los estudios que se han realizado sobre Aztlán, ha sido la obra editada por Rudolfo A. Anaya y Francisco Lomelí, Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland2 (1989), la que ha tenido una mayor repercusión en ámbitos académicos. La gran mayoría de artículos que componen la citada obra son 1 Rubén Martínez, Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. Metropolitan Books: New York, 2001. 2 Rudolfo A. Anaya y Francisco Lomelí (eds.), Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, 1989. Manuel Albaladejo Martínez 3 merecedores de nuestra atención, sin embargo, el artículo firmado por Luis Leal, “In Search of Aztlán,”3 destaca con luz propia al aportar un inmejorable resumen del valor simbólico que Aztlán ha tenido y sigue teniendo para la comunidad chicana. Aztlán, which we propose to examine in this study, is as much symbol as it is myth. As a symbol, it conveys the image of the cave (or sometimes a hill) representative of the origin of man; and as a myth, it symbolized the existence of a paradisiacal region where injustice, evil, sickness, old age, poverty, and misery do not exist. As a Chicano symbol, Aztlán has two meanings: first, it represents the geographic region known as the Southwestern part of the United States, composed of the territory that Mexico ceded in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; second, and more important, Aztlán symbolized the spiritual union of the Chicanos, something that is carried within the heart, no matter where they may live or where they may find themselves. (Leal 1989, 8) El tercer y último motivo que nos ha llevado a realizar esta Cartografía de Los Ángeles ha sido que dicha ciudad se ha convertido en las últimas décadas en uno de los ejemplos más paradigmáticos de lo que ha venido a denominarse la experiencia urbana del chicano. Debido principalmente a la abundante proliferación de barrios marginales en la zona conocida como el Este de Los Ángeles –East L.A.-, tanto el mexicano-norteamericano que ha nacido en los Estados Unidos como el inmigrante recién llegado han podido participar, aunque de forma muy particular, de ese torbellino urbano en el que se ha convertido Los Ángeles desde principios de la década de los ochenta.
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