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Moving towards Latinotopia
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Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Moving towards Latinotopia Vers un Latinotopia…
Karin Ikas and Francisco A. Lomelí
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5331 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
Brought to you by Université Rennes 2
Electronic reference Karin Ikas and Francisco A. Lomelí, « Moving towards Latinotopia », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http:// lisa.revues.org/5331 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5331
The text is a facsimile of the print edition.
Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org
Moving towards Latinotopia Vers un Latinotopia…
Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí
Karin Ikas is a Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures with a particular focus on North American, British and New English Literatures and Cultures and currently teaches at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen (Germany). In the summer term 2012 she held the position of an Acting Chair for British and Anglophone Literature and Culture (chair holder: Prof. Dr. Jens Gurr) at the University of Duisburg- Essen, Essen (Germany). Prior to that she taught at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich (Germany) where she held the position of an Acting Chair for Modern English Literature (chair holder: Prof. Dr. Christoph Bode) at the Department of English and American Studies. She studied at the univer- sities of Würzburg (Germany) and Texas (UT Austin) and has been a visiting scholar at various universities in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Her Ph.D. thesis on “Modern Chicana Literature: An Intercultural Analysis” (published in German as Die zeitgenössische Chicana-Literatur: Eine interkulturelle Untersuchung, Winter, 2000) won the Daimler Chrysler Foundation’s “Academy Award for Intercultural Studies 2001.” In 2010 she obtained her second PhD (“Habilitation”) in English Studies at the University Frankfurt/M. with her thesis “‘A Nation Forged in Fire’: Canadian Literature and the Construction of National Identity” (publication forthcoming). She is the recipient of several research awards and scholarships and has published widely on American, Chicano/a, Canadian, Australian and (Post-)Colonial Literatures and Cultures. Homi K. Bhabha prefaced her co-edited book Communicating in the Third Space published by Routledge in 2009. Harrassowitz publishing house released her edited collection of critical essays entitled Global Realignments and the Canadian Nation in the Third Millennium in 2010. Among some of her other book publications are: U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures: Transnational Perspectives (2000), Mexican American Stories — Viewfinder Literature (2001, ²2006), Chicana Ways: Conversations with ten Chicana writers interviewed by Karin Ikas (2002, ²2003), Gender Debat(tl)ed: Gender and War — Special Issue of Gender Forum (5/2003), Stories from Down Under: Australia and New Zealand — Viewfinder Literature (2004) and Violence and Transgression in World Minority Literatures (2005). Forthcoming is her bilingual (German/English) edition — with preface and annotations — of William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline — Englisch-Deutsche Studienausgabe der Dramen Shakespeares (Stauffenburg).
Francisco A. Lomelí is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara as part of two departments: Spanish and Portuguese, and Chicana/a Studies. Currently, he is serving as Director of the Education Abroad Program in Santiago, Chile, for the University of California system. He has published extensively on a wide variety of Chicano topics ranging from literary history, border studies, language acquisition, literary genealogy, poetics and hermeneutics, Latino/a imaginary, New Mexico cultural practices, transna- tionalism and others. He has also written critical studies on some Latin American authors (Carlos Droguett, Rodolfo Usigli, Rodolfo Braceli, Armando Tejada Gómez, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, etc.). He is well known for promoting Chicano/Latino literatures internationally and in part thanks to his many reference books. Among some of his publications are: La novelística de Carlos Droguett (1983), Chicano Studies: A Multidisciplinary Approach (1984), Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide (1985), Dictionary of Literary Biography, Chicano Writers (vols. 82, 122, 229; 1989, 1993, 1999), Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland (1989), Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the U.S.: Art and Literature (1993), U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures: Transnational Perspectives (2000), Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico; Miguel de Quintana´s Life and Writings (2006), Imagined Transnationalism: U.S. Latino/a Literature, Culture and Identity (2010) and The Writings of Eusebio Chacón (2012).
Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí
La utopia no es lo imposible, appears Latinos are now everywhere in the world in sino lo que aún no existe. 1 diasporic trends like never before. From all indications, therefore, Latinotopia is Ariane Mnouchkine, about to become an increasingly domestic influence Director of the Théâtre du Soleil as well as an international or rather transnational phenomenon triggered by an ever-growing Latino “The most global of global cities holds a new mani- and Spanish-speaking population worldwide. fest destiny: New York is now ‘Latinotopia,’” so clai- Nevertheless, it is particularly in the United States med Antoni Bernat an architect and cultural critic where a critical mass has accumulated in recent years, 2 based in Barcelona, Writing in ReVista: The Harvard almost producing a country within another country Review of Latino America in 2010. New York City, Los to the point that U.S. Latinos as a group represent the Angeles and Miami are not the only cities facing second largest number of Latinos only superseded such a challenging transformation as other spaces by Mexico among all Spanish-speaking countries. At are turning into a Latinotopia as well, including least, the figures speak for themselves: U.S. Latinos smaller cities or towns in Missouri, North Carolina, already number over 50 million (15% of the U.S. Washington, New Mexico, Georgia and across the population in the 2010 Census), with a growth rate United States – even some parts of Appalachia. For of 24.3% or almost four times the growth rate of Anthony De Jesús, such developments particularly the rest of the population (6.1%). It is here that a influence education and teaching. In a presentation new catchphrase has been making the rounds and at the School of Social Policy & Practice Latin@ headlines first: “Latinotopia-USA” and that is preci- Social Service & Policy Initiative, he claimed that sely why we chose this phrase for our special volume. American educational institutions of higher learning The buzzword which we proposed independently of are now “Tinkering Toward Latinotopia: Pipelines, anyone else – without knowing that someone else also Pathways and Paradox” in an effort to develop better was using it – ultimately becomes a poetic coinci- 3 strategies to improve higher education for Latinos. dence in attempting to capture the internal cultural The growing importance of modern information and demographic changes happening in the United technologies and virtual spaces has further suppor- States, having of course other transnational implica- ted the proliferation of Latinotopia. In cyberspace, tions in Germany, Canada and other countries. The Latinotopia is booming as a domain name for inter- limited usage of the term has been in specialized net blogs, chatrooms and the emergence of virtual spheres (i.e. architecture, commerce), but we pre- communities. The website
2 Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Moving towards Latinotopia disciplinary angle. Thus, we have brought together a considerations of Latinotopia in this introduction, broad roster of interested critics and specialists from the individual essays that follow provide variegated far corners of the globe who submitted innovative case studies from multiple contexts and perspectives critical and interdisciplinary vistas on the burgeoning while attempting to illuminate the theoretical points- real and discursive landscape of “Latinotopia-U.S.A”, of-view sketched in these opening pages of the col- a term which we resorted to in order to challenge the lection. applicability of such a notion from a variety of pers- So what does “Latinotopia” mean and encom- pectives. As a result, the phenomenon helps us assess pass? Linguistically, the term is composed of the the new (inter)national significance and role of U.S. affix “Latino” and the suffix “topia”. According to Latinos within and beyond the United States, which The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is ever more Latino-realigned and globally transfor- (Houghton Mifflin,4 2006), “Latino” refers to “a per- ming, as the 21st century is getting into full swing. son of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, Given the comprehensive scope of the subject mat- often one living in the United States” but we also want ter, the contributions in this volume cover a fascina- to highlight their transnational contexture. “Topia” is ting and broad range of disciplines and approaches: derived from the Greek term “topos” meaning place theoretical angles, linguistic approaches, literary and and generally speaking it signifies a “place with spe- cultural treatments, gender analyses, genre discus- cified characteristics”. “Topia” commonly appears sions, historical ventures, sociological methodologies, in key terms such as “utopia” signifying an imagined popular cultural emphases, anthropological precepts, place or a state of things in which everything is per- film and (multi-)media studies, including re-examina- fect, or the later invented opposite term “dystopia”, tions of key concepts and categories such as migra- in which everything is viewed as negative and catas- tion, diaspora, exile, identity, community, transna- trophic. Of course “heterotopia” embodies another tionalism, hybridity, borders, third spaces and third theoretical concept to invoke an alternative place of figures. As these entries will illustrate, the potential conflict, negotiation and difference. But we want to and challenges of Latinotopia are manifold and can emphasize that we have deliberately chosen the term best be approached from an interdisciplinary angle Latinotopia to raise expectations and provoke new that allows us to mix and match in order to deal with treatments on the subject of U.S. Latinos through a the complexities of contemporary times. broader transnational lens. It is surprising to discover that despite the term’s We also acknowledge that Latinos no longer fit a recent usage – usually in isolated instances – there is simple or neat social classification or cultural cate- no single or precise definition of the “Latinotopia”. gory, nor do they belong to one place exclusively. Yet, maybe it is exactly its inherent vagueness, expan- Consequently, we envision the term Latinotopia as siveness and inherent suggestiveness that makes this offering a new paradigm beyond its original cultural- term so attractive and provocative. It enables users to geographical location and roots (Aztlán, Borinquen, read almost anything into it and apply it in their own Cuba, etc.) in order to establish a foundation for what ways for their own purposes as the aforementioned Latinos themselves are creating and generating today examples have already illustrated. However big the and in the near future. The term connotes a variety heuristic gain might be in all this, such a proceeding of conceptualizations and some might be negative is rather detrimental to scientific analysis. The fol- (dystopia) or some positive (utopia); yet they are lowing pages aim to fill important gaps to change anything but indifferent. We hope to go beyond the this. Setting out to contribute to the clarification of formulaic, the predictable and the assumed because the term, we propose first taking a closer theoretical Latinotopia hopefully suggests opening new ground, look at the two components, “Latino” and “topia”. configuring new alternatives, conquering new spaces, Proceeding to connect them systematically with each creating a new ethos, and also accepting that Latinos other will then lead to expounding further on what are not all recent immigrants as the media gene- Latinotopia attempts to achieve for the participants rally want us to perceive them. This is exactly what (those affected and activated), their relationship, as Latinos seem to be doing by breaking boundaries and well as society and the world community at large. challenging outdated labels. Latinotopia captures the After these general reflections and fundamental processes of a social-cultural metamorphosis taking
Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí place in the United States as something both real often repressed or denied. He provides a sample of and imagined, both internal and external. Their for- the paradoxes found within Cuban culture in terms mer invisibility is something of the past as they have of nation, exile and identity within the context of reached center stage of society in virtually all areas Jewishness trying to find its niche within Cuba. The through their cultural presence. process described is an infinite state of waiting for More recently, the suffix “topia” has commonly something to happen. In “Cubanness Within and suggested and embodied new challenges, issues and Outside of Cuba,” U.S. scholar Mica Garrett from developments. “Technotopia”, for instance, has come Murray State provides an in-depth analysis of what to represent a vision of a utopia brought about by the constitutes being Cuban in the country and outside expanding potential of science and technology and of it. It is one of the most precise explanations on “ecotopia” has emerged to designate a community how Cubans have inherently had to struggle with whose environment is organized on environmentally Otherness due to their historical background and the friendly ecological principles. If we apply the gist of various influences from within and outside that have the above to “Latinotopia”, the following definition governed their lives. The essay can serve as a solid can be derived: Latinotopia signifies a real, imaginary foundation for others as a basis to conduct research and virtual space and/or environment that is organi- related to Cuban studies, literature, immigration, zed, designed, shaped, envisioned and impacted by politics and of course history. people of Hispanic, especially of Latin-American descent, and often those living in the United States Gendered Latinotopia: Pushing New with the motivation to create a new world of possi- Boundaries bilities. Indeed, the consequences encompass shifting power relations in various contexts and fields which The single author of this section revisits some of increasingly appear in contemporary life, politics and the foundational proponents and their texts in order arts and which will definitely shape the future of the to put gender studies among Latinas in a broader United States and in an ever-more transnational and theoretical and ideological position. Jackie Cuevas borderless, translocal or globalized world. from Syracuse University, in “Imagining Queer In the following eight essays, we encounter well- Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands,” takes some of known international experts from a variety of fields Gloria Anzaldúa’s and Cherríe Moraga’s ideas about who take a fresh look at these developments in the both borderlands and genderqueerness in order to following six thematically organized chapters. examine Felicia Luna Lemus´s novel Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties. In the process she adds greater nuance to what it means to be genderqueer, sugges- A Glocal or Translocal Latinotopia ting that this novel transcends some of the past bina- of Paradoxes rities to propose a more advanced and sophisticated This first section blends the local and the global notion of genderqueerness. She clearly expands our as “glocal” as Ronald Robertson has sketched it in understanding of gender and especially genderquee- “‘Glocalization’: Time-Space and Homogeneity- rness as an evolving theoretical concept. Heterogeneity.” 4 Here, among others, the subtleties of mentality, race and culture manifest themselves Transnational Latinotopia beyond a in quite original ways through the prism of what it Third Space means to be Cuban in exile and in Cuba. In the first entry, therefore, entitled “The Politics of Waiting: This section presents a Latinotopia that has Transnational Identity and Exile in Achy Obejas’ now superseded and transcended a third space as Ruins,” Kevin Concannon, currently from Texas something more expansive and interrelated within A & M, Corpus Christi, examines a unique work a far-reaching global transnationalism. It opens to discuss a Jewish presence in Cuba that has been with Ramón A. Gutiérrez’s study of “Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities: The 4. Ronald Robertson, “‘Glocalization’: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Hete- Creation of Latinos in the United States.” In this rogeneity,” in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Ronald Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1995, 25-44. insightful entry, the renowned scholar from the
4 Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Moving towards Latinotopia
University of Chicago delves into the complexity Latinotopia’s Philosophical of ethnic identities in different national spaces Challenge of Old Definitions and explores the emergence of panethnicity in the United States, which has become a phenomenon of The two authors discussed in this section offer deep significant sociological importance since the early reflections on identity in terms of an old vs. a new 1970s. Specifically, Guitiérrez looks into how indi- construction for the changing world. Theory and viduals from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central philosophy merge to unveil new approaches toward America and South America came to think of them- understanding what U.S. Latinos are attempting selves as tied politically as Latinos. He argues that to capture and define in their own terms. Sophia such panethnicity can come from above, from state Emmanouilidou from Zakynthos, Greece, in action to gather distinct national and ethnic identi- “Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of ties, or it can come from below, from communities Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings,” that band together for a common purpose. In “So focuses on the theoretical premise that hybridity, limi- Close and Yet So Foreign: Trans-Border Relations nalities and displacements can lead us to more fully in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (200l),” Maria comprehend how identity is constructed in two cano- Antònia Oliver-Rotger from Barcelona, Spain, nical works: Tomás Rivera’s “...y no se lo tragó la tierra” then concentrates on a U.S.-Mexican border wri- and Tino Villanueva’s Scene from the Movie GIANT. She ter whose intimate experience of the region offers demonstrates how such works counteract the effects insightful information on the mind and psychology of disempowerment within the Chicano commu- of both sides of the border. She unveils the many nity through institutional and economic racism. The factors that reverberate among the people, namely result in both essays is a discovery of individuation the militarization of the border, the drug trafficking as a new state of consciousness that paves the way and consumption, the anti-immigrant sentiments and for greater community development. Villanueva, for the imbalance of power found there. example, expresses a poetic means of turning melan- choly into a critical tool for dissecting the racial indi- gnities of the past. Educational Latinotopia in the Struggle for Access Latinotopia of Spirituality, Education stands out as a barrier to and a medium Inspiration and Reconciliation for potential progress and social mobility. The obs- tacles, however, do not cease or diminish in relation to In the concluding section, German scholar Karin the increasing numbers of Latinos going into higher Ikas from the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, education. Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita sheds lights on the concept of “Reconciliation and from the University of California at San Diego, in Latinotopia” as pressing and ever-more popular sub- “The Privatization of Education and its Implications ject matter that takes us beyond conflicts and bor- for Latinos/as,” offer a highly incisive and analytical ders. Ikas demonstrates that reconciliation is pivo- article that examines education in a global context tal when discussing the United States. Historically as it relates to U.S. Latinos. The fact that education speaking, one may go as far as to claim that reconci- has been turned into a business directly works against liation or, rather its failure, was the seed from which providing access for those students who have tradi- the Mexican American community emerged. Today, tionally not had easy entry paths. Privatization of when addressing how to deal with the border- public education in a system like the University of lands and how to go beyond conflicts and dualities, California, then, works against such access and avai- reconciliation exerts a significant influence on the lability for Latino students by making their journey shaping of contemporary identities and the well- through higher education that much more difficult being of a community. Thus, the region is gaining to navigate. greater influence as an in-between space – in the sense of a glocal, geo-political and transcultural as well as aesthetic space beyond a third space – not only in the Americas but internationally. How and to
Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí what extent Latinotopia can eventually be perceived stemming from feeling as if they belong to something as a discursive site for reconciliation in the Third larger instead of feeling marginalized. More than Millennium is the question her essay aims to answer social theory, it is a practice through a mixed identity by integrating socio-political, historical and literary that is not a contradiction. Latinotopia should not be works in an interdisciplinary manner and by sugges- understood as a Latino island, but rather the unique ting considering Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s methods by which they interface, blend and amal- figure of the “rhizome” as an illustrative concept to gamate survival strategies for the sake of creating a capture Latinotopia theoretically and practically in two-way method of assimilation instead of the past further studies. method by which Anglo meant normative. Collectively, the entries prove that Latinotopia Now, the idea is finding ways to feel comfortable embodies an innovative and ever-more significant with what you were and what you are becoming – and relevant topos with transnational challenges split or dual subjectivities, bisensitivities – by keeping that open up new insights into reassessing national some of both without sacrificing one way over the identities in a global environment. As a Latino lens other. In this regard, Latinotopia denotes creating to view the world, Latinotopia aims to anticipate the a new hegemony of diversity by avoiding hierar- future in new critical terms after having weighed the chies or exclusivities. While it is true that Latinos are past and the present. Thus, this collection reaches becoming a significant cluster of consumers with well beyond the study of the United States, Latin considerable buying power and potentially political America and Latino communities worldwide and clout, they are mainly becoming a force of contri- can be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for aca- butors and not only passive observers, actors instead demics, professionals, teachers and students as well of receptors, protagonists instead of spectators. By as the general reader of various disciplines while Latinotopia we do not suggest a cultural Trojan coping with such developing issues in which Latinos horse attempting to take over or overthrow anything are increasingly operating as greater protagonists. because they aim to enrich. We view it more as a Latinotopia, then, embodies a working construct process, a mentality for changing the character of that combines utopia, dystopia and heterotopia all homogeneity and past hegemonies. Latinotopia is the in one in order to best represent how Latinos are acceptance that Latinos have come of age in their becoming an imposing social-cultural phenomenon. American environment as they adapt in their own One of the main differences from past portrayals terms, meanwhile influencing, inflecting, and shaping is that Latinotopia does not imply segregation or their social surroundings with their customs, foods, separation from majority society. Nor should it be rituals, music and work ethic. In this way Latinotopia conceptualized as a kind of internal colony as Tomás is the conduit and the burgeoning context that permit Almaguer and Rudy Acuña 5 first proposed back in Latinos to grow roots in their new environments and, the early l970s in terms of a binary of resistance. in the process, change and impact their surroundings Latinotopia implies empowerment, leverage, cultu- much like a powdered drink gives water a new look ral capital, counteracting hegemony with num- and flavor. Latinotopia ultimately signifies a broad bers and a real presence: this embodies an identity transformation, an uplift, and injection of vitality, beyond the bilingual-bicultural Generation Ñ as a reinvigoration of either stagnant spaces or spaces Latinos settle more comfortably in various regions that attempt to remain the same. as active agents or generators of new cultural forms. Thus, we find the anthropology of new tastes, new Therefore, Latinotopia can best be understood as a rhythms and new styles where worlds and cultures sense of community by Latinos within their diversity converge into new hybrid forms of being where in contrast to the past essentialism: more than geo- Latinos feel they belong. As a consequence, American graphy and pure demographics, it is a state of mind society is gaining more color, a broader palate in addition to adopting new sounds into an ever-chan- ging American social evolution. More than ever 5. See Tomás Almaguer’s key article “Ideological Distortions in Recent Chicano Historiography: The Internal Model and Chicano Historical before, Latinos feel as an integral part of American Interpretation,” in Aztlán 18, Spring 1987: 7-28, and Rudy Acuña’s Occupied culture because it is no longer as foreign. Latinotopia America: Chicanos’ Struggle Toward Liberation, San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1972. is fast becoming part of the New American matrix.
6 Moving towards Latinotopia, Ikas & Lomelí, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
The Politics of Waiting: Transnational Identity and Exile in Achy Obejas’ Ruins La politique de l’attente : identité transnationale et exil dans Ruins d’Achy Obejas
Kevin Concannon
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5307 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
Brought to you by Université Rennes 2
Electronic reference Kevin Concannon, « The Politics of Waiting: Transnational Identity and Exile in Achy Obejas’ Ruins », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/5307 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5307
The text is a facsimile of the print edition.
Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org The Politics of Waiting: Transnational Identity and Exile in Achy Obejas’ Ruins La politique de l’attente : identité transnationale et exil dans Ruins d’Achy Obejas
Kevin Concannon
Kevin Concannon is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University--Corpus Christi, USA. He is the co-editor of Imagined Transnationalism: Latino/a Literature, Culture, and Identity and is currently working on a manuscript exploring representations of time and exile in U.S.-Latino/a literature. He is also co-editing a collection of essays on Postnationalism. His areas of specialty include Border Studies, Latino and Latina Studies, and 20th-Century U.S. Ethnic Literatures.
Abstract: In her Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin asks, “What does it mean to be ‘included’ in or ‘excluded’ from the nation?” The question reflects the transnational turn within American Studies, as increased attention to patterns of movement and changing notions of citizenship have led to a sense of indeterminacy over how national belonging is defined. A tension emerges within the transnational as a result, as attempts to re-imagine the fluidity of political belonging are countered by a national rhe- toric organized in terms of maintaining division. This tension highlights much of the work of Cuban-born writer Achy Obejas, whose recent novels have focused attention on the challenge of “remembering” Cuba in the United States. In the novel Ruins, Obejas complicates understandings of the nation by conceiving of it in a larger global and temporal context, seeking to historicize the U.S.-Cuban expatriate experience within the broader Jewish diaspora. By constructing this alternative history, Obejas expresses the U.S. expatriate connection to Cuba not in terms of remittances or political debate, but within the larger context of diaspora, separation and forgetfulness, and by doing so, defines Cuban identity through a transnational prism of historical difference and denial. Résumé : Dans son discours prononcé devant l’American Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin s’interroge : « Que signifie être ‘inclus’ ou ‘exclus’ de la nation ? ». Cette question reflète un tournant transnational au sein des Etudes Américaines, alors qu’une attention accrue portant sur les différents types de mouvement et les évolutions de la notion de citoyenneté ont conduit à une confusion quant à la définition de l’appartenance nationale. De cela, émerge une tension au sein de cette dimension transnationale alors que des tentatives visant à ré-imaginer la fluidité de l’appartenance politique sont mises à mal dans une rhétorique nationale élaborée pour encourager un sentiment de division. C’est cette tension qui sous-tend l’œuvre de l’écrivain cubain Achy Obejas dont les récents romans insistent sur le défi de « commémorer » Cuba aux États-Unis. Dans le roman intitulé Ruins, Achy Obejas complexifie les nuances du mot nation en le plaçant dans un contexte plus général, en tentant d’historiciser l’expérience des expatriés cubains sur le sol américain dans le cadre de la diaspora juive. En construisant cette histoire alternative, Obejas évoque les liens entre les expatriés et Cuba, non pas en termes d’envois de fonds ou de débat public, mais plutôt dans le cadre plus large de la diaspora, de la séparation et de l’oubli, et ce faisant, définit l’identité cubaine à travers le prisme transnational de la différence et du déni historiques.
Keywords: Transnational, island nation, remembering, memory, diaspora, Obejas, Cuba. Mots-clés : Transnational, île nation, souvenir, mémoire, diaspora, Obejas, Cuba.
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Kevin Concannon nn In her 2004 Presidential Address to the American tance – by recognizing the United States’ position Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin asks, both in the hemisphere and the globe. “What does it mean to be ‘included’ in or ‘excluded’ Though this critical genealogy might make the from the nation?” (23) The question reflects the trans- shift to the transnational appear a reactionary one, national turn occurring within American Studies, as as a breaking free of the past, others argue that the increased attention to patterns of movement, chan- speeded up experience of movement and time in the ging notions of citizenship and the border has led to a modern period lends itself to this approach beyond sense of indeterminacy over how national belonging the nation. The increase in immigration within the or difference is defined. At the same time, questions Western hemisphere, and specifically from Latin of inclusion and exclusion remain determinate parts America into the United States, in fact, has popu- of nationalist rhetoric – as Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 larized the analysis of the transnational practices emphasizes as well as past debates on the Dream Act of border crossers. The immigrant experience, and in the United States Congress. A tension emerges especially the experience of immigrants forced to within the transnational turn as a result, as attempts flee their home, however, continues to underscore to re-imagine political and cultural identity in terms the power of the modern nation-state as an integral of boundary crossing or mixture are challenged by part of the transnational experience. One should efforts at nation-building rooted in the construction probably not be surprised that the critical category of separation or difference. The transnational turn of the transnational has itself such an ambiguous away from the nation as a critical category of analysis place, that its borders are not sure, and that attempts in American Studies also carries with it a (re)turn to to position, as Fishkin tries to do, the transnational the nation itself, as increased transition across natio- at the center of American Studies, does little to de- nal boundaries carries with it increased attention to center the nation. The wish to foreground one over national boundaries themselves. the other, or the attempt to replace one means of Recent works by Paul Gilroy and Brent Hayes analysis with another, struggles to explain the exilic Edwards provide a way around this by deemphasi- experiences of those who desire a national identity zing the nation as a critical category and by focusing that no longer exists, or of those whose transnational instead on alternate forms of community formation. experience is not of their own choosing. This essay In The Black Atlantic (1993) and The Practice of Diaspora takes as its starting point this uneasy relationship (2003), respectively, Gilroy and Edwards rely upon between the nation and the transnational by explo- racial constructions of identity to develop historical ring Fishkin’s question from another perspective: linkages between individuals and communities that what does it mean to be included and excluded cannot be defined solely by national borders or by a within the nation? This seeming paradox becomes national ideology. In other words, by reorienting race an important starting point for exploring the work within a larger context – the Atlantic, for instance – of Cuban American author Achy Obejas’ work Gilroy is able to develop different constructions of Ruins (2009), and specifically her construction of the identity shaded not in terms of national citizenship, Cuban exile experience. but in historical terms of movement, connection, While some might perceive the Cuban exile as and destination. In many ways, this effort to bypass similar to other Latin American migrants, who are the nation as a means of ‘doing’ American Studies either waiting to return home or building a life for reflects recent discussions of post-nationalist scho- themselves in their new land, José Quiroga argues lars, who like John Carlos Rowe and others argue that many exiles from Cuba feel a part of the island seek to move “away from uncritical nationalist pers- and yet are not, because they are waiting to return pectives and toward what has been variously called to a Cuba that may never arrive. In other words, the critical internationalism, transnationalism, or glo- Cuban exile is not waiting to return home, but ins- bality.” (Curiel et al., 7) By shifting away from the tead waiting for their home to return (23). Their exile nation as an analytical category, American Studies is defined as much by geography as by time, by the scholars attempt to counter a history of American historical unfolding of events, emphasizing a stasis at scholarship that supports early nation-building – and the heart of the movement associated with traditional hence imperial notions of Manifest Destiny, for ins- understandings of exile. In other words, one can be
2 The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Politics of Waiting an exile within Cuba itself, caught within a revolution and as a result are challenged by the desire to return that may never achieve its goals and by a ‘home’ that to a nation that remains, but, at the same time, no may never arrive. Paralleling Kristeva´s argument longer exists. This sense of alienation focuses atten- that “the foreigner lives within us [and that] he is the tion on the temporal distance one is from home, an hidden face of our identity,” the Cuban foreigner is exilic experience that challenges national identity by part of modern-day Cuban identity, questioning how understanding movement as both a temporal and seemingly determinate terms such as inside and out- spatial construct. side, belonging and difference, citizen and foreigner The repetition Antonio Benítez-Rojo attributes are to be understood (Quiroga, 1). As Quiroga states, to the Caribbean is underscored in these terms, since one might argue this exile experience on the Living outside of the island does not necessarily island finds its repetitive counterpart in the Cuban privilege exilic memory. To pursue this point fur- American community. The repetition, of course, as ther: there are Cuban exiles in Havana, living in Benítez-Rojo argues, is not without obvious diffe- very real houses and apartments, and moving here rences, as a linkage between these communities roo- and there in order to make a living. (23, original ted in exile and displacement at the same time does italics) not mean the communities are politically, culturally This experience leads one to wonder whether exile or socially isomorphic. This possibility of community is to be understood in terms of the individual leaving based in large part on disjunction, emphasizes the the nation or in the more abstract terms of the nation formation of hemispheric or transnational identity in leaving the individual. The question becomes even ways that attend to issues of incomparability rather 3 more complex when one realizes, in the case of Cuba, than similarity. In other words, rather than focu- that this disappearance of the nation also carries with sing on notions of crossing (transactional changes) it another paradox: the inescapable presence of the as defining the transnational, the Cuban/Cuban nation, of harsh prison sentences, a lack of individual American communities could be seen as linked by freedoms, and fear, a fear of the nation that for some, their mutual experience of exile, differentially defi- unfortunately, stretches beyond the boundaries of the ned. Understood in this way, Cuban American exiles island. 1 In this way, the exile-on-the-island remains in remain in an imagined sense part of an island com- many ways between nations, caught within an unor- munity, drawn together as much through a shared thodox transnational experience between memories experience of waiting (“next year in Havana”) as by of a past, pre-Castro, nation and a present nation a disjunction rooted in different understandings of that has yet to be fully realized. what they are waiting to see happen: the fall from This contrapuntal experience is based as much power of the Castro family? the continued growth on time as geography and challenges classic exami- of socialism? By conceiving of the passage of time nations of exilic consciousness as caught between in political terms, of the act of waiting as a politi- home and beyond. 2 For the modern-day Cuban, cal act, the Cuban/Cuban American exile critiques who remains an exile on the island, time poses the a national identity that refuses to accept outsiders hope for change even as history has marked a series (Socialismo O Muerte). of failures, and this sense of temporal betweenness This imagined sense of dis/connection emphasizes becomes understood as representing a form of dis- the alternate means of structuring community and placement, a defamiliarization of one’s homeland. belonging beyond the nation. A hemispheric unders- Cuban exiles remain metaphorically homeless in tanding of community based upon temporal and spa- their native land, strangers to its practices and plans, tial disjunction works to challenge nation formations that are often rooted in the similarities of a common language, religion or ethos. As David Luis-Brown 1. I am thinking specifically here of the tragic case of Calvert Casey, a Cuban writer, whose suicide in Italy may have been the result of his fear that argues, hemispheric discourses can be sensitive to Cuban spies were following him. See Ilan Stavans’ introduction to Calvert developing inter-national connections between mar- Casey: The Collected Stories. 2. Edward Said argues, “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of 3. Susan Gilman’s essay in Hemispheric American Studies discusses the importance vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness of examining “incomparability” within (and against) a transnational or that – to borrow a phrase from music – is contrapuntal.” (186) hemispheric framework. (335)
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Kevin Concannon ginalized communities, as he shows in his analysis He struggles to overcome this contradiction by wor- of the connections between three seemingly distinct king hard for the revolution as the novel opens, only movements of the 1920s: the Harlem Renaissance, to slowly become disillusioned with Castro as he dis- Cuban negrismo and Mexican indigenismo. Because covers the power of American dollars. these movements have been previously conceived in Usnavy’s gradual turn away from the revolution “distinct ethnic and national categories” (148), Luis- is rooted also in the discovery of his Jewish heri- Brown argues that important linkages relating to tage. He had previously traced his history through questions of oppression and denationalization have the stories heard of his Jamaican father, reading his been missed. By placing these categories of identity past back through the Middle Passage and the arri- within a larger hemispheric field, he complicates val of African slaves in the Caribbean, informing his questions of belonging, recognizing within notions present-day role as a revolutionary against the past of dissimilarity, political and historical points of com- capitalistic system of slavery. 6 His discovery questions parison. I would argue that in much of Achy Obejas’ this grounding and exemplifies the text’s larger inte- work she complicates the ‘categorical’ difference rest in complicating individual and object identity. between the United States and Cuba by reconceiving This is emphasized by the novel’s central motif: the their dissimilar relationship in hemispheric and trans- large ceiling lamp Usnavy inherits from his mother. national terms. The complication of this difference The designs on the lamp again draw him back to serves as a metaphor in the text for challenging other Africa, but he later learns that it is actually a Tiffany notions of individual or community marginalization that was possibly designed to hang in the Presidential within the nation, specifically difference founded on Palace before the Revolution. As Usnavy discovers, religious belief and sexual orientation. however, the lamp is a Tiffany in name only. It was This hemispheric linkage is developed within her more than likely designed by Cuban Jews as part of most recent novel, Ruins. Set in 1994 during the a larger project to mass produce fake Tiffany lamps height of the balseros, when many Cubans fled the to drive down their cost as revenge for Tiffany not island on homemade rafts to escape the shortages on paying for work done. The passing down of this one the island, the novel focuses on the Special Period item from mother to son symbolizes a Jewish pro- in Times of Peace following the dissolution of the venance, and hence that the lamp is a forgery. The Soviet Union. 4 The struggles to find sufficient food negotiation of his connection to Judaism through the or fuel during this decade led to occasional street prism of inauthenticity means that Usnavy’s expe- riots in Havana which in at least one case required rience foregrounds a larger history of inauthenticity the presence of Castro to dissolve. Unlike Obejas’ that surrounded Cuban Jews pretending to convert two previous novels which focused on female Cuban to Christianity as a means of settling in the New American protagonists planning to return to Cuba, in World. These so-called crypto-Jews speak of an early Memory Mambo (1996), or actually returning, in Days Cuban history tied to the Spanish Inquisition and to of Awe (2001), Ruins focuses on the experiences of a the repression of individual and community beliefs. male Cubano, who never leaves the island. The gen- The result for many early Jews in Cuba was the gra- der shift challenges traditional images of male travel dual erosion of their beliefs and the lack of awa- and female domesticity that is emphasized by the reness from generation to generation of their fami- protagonist’s unusual name, Usnavy. Named by his ly’s ethnic history. This secretive lineage becomes an mother for the power represented by the American important metaphor in Obejas’ work. It emphasizes battleships stationed in Guantánamo Bay, his name the ideological construction of identity by focusing at once mocks the number of hardly seaworthy boats on the centrality of the exile position as a means of Cubans built to escape the island during this period, even as it marks him as “El Yanqui” to his friends. 5 “she” or “her” in English, highlighting how Usnavy’s stasis is in part a question of how he identifies himself. 4. According to Susan Eckstein, “The Special Period, a euphemism for a siege 6. Even though his discovery threatens this history of the Middle Passage and economy, involved sacrifices and reforms ‘to save the revolution,’” including unsettles his revolutionary position, Usnavy is told of the large number of sacrifices over electricity usage, transportation and food. (607) Jamaican Jews who can trace their history to Spain. For more information 5. To be male and named for a ship continues this gender confusion as it about the Jewish population on Jamaica, see Marilyn Devante’s The Island relates to movement. Most ships are represented by the female pronoun of One People.
4 The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Politics of Waiting understanding how national identity or acceptance by nuevos cristianos in Spain and his interpreter was is to be understood. considered a converso since he knew both Hebrew and By presenting Usnavy as a supporter of the revolu- Aramaic (9). The history is critical here, as Spanish tion and at the same time of Jewish descent, the novel colonization in the New World becomes directly lin- explores this contradictory role of the outsider or the ked to the disapproval and repression of difference exile in the nation, of what it means to be positio- at home, foreshadowing the future destruction of ned in crypto-national terms. Usnavy’s name, given Cuba’s ‘different’ native population. Even as Cuba to him by his mother, emphasizes this contradictory became an endpoint for many Jews in these early position, as not only a sign of American involvement years who were either converted or who fled the in Cuban life, but also of his own sense of distance Spanish Inquisition, others continued on into nor- from the nation. To see Usnavy’s repressed heritage thern Mexico, living in the present-day United States as a means of conceiving of the Cuban/Cuban Southwest. They were not alone in the New World American exile experience means to look east and as Jews populated both the Caribbean islands as well not to the west, to understand what it means to be as the coast of South America, specifically Dutch a gusano in the United States by understanding his- Brazil. torically what the Jewish Cuban population had to This early vision of Cuba as both an endpoint give up to leave Europe and to conceive of the deve- for Jewish immigrants as well as a staging ground lopment of Cuba in terms of the Jewish diaspora. for movement into the United States continued Through Usnavy’s experience, the flight from Cuba well into the 20th century. In Yiddish, Cuba was to the United States becomes understood as part of a known as Akhsanie Kuba or Hotel Cuba, as a result larger diasporic movement that historicizes Latina/o of a lenient immigration policy that created a cos- movement within a larger global context. The result mopolitan Cuba by the 1950s, and a loophole in is a hemispheric vision that cannot understand the American immigration law that allowed immigrants Americas without also looking beyond itself, reco- to migrate to the United States after staying for a gnizing the importance of framing one’s discus- year in a Latin American country. 8 According to sion in terms of what is similar (geographically or Ruth Behar, “Cuba was a substitute America. The culturally, for instance), but also in what is dissimilar. real America, the one to which they aspired, was on Usnavy’s family lineage underscores this contradic- the other side of the ocean, ninety miles away.” (6) tory approach by balancing what it means to live in The early emphasis here on transit as defining Cuba’s Cuba with the desire to maintain a signifier of his role in the Americas is significant, historicizing pre- exiled difference through his possession of the frau- sent-day concerns over Cuban exiles’ connection to dulent Tiffany lamp. Usnavy straddles this line being their native land. But it also emphasizes a temporal a Cuban who supports the revolution while at the construction of Cuba’s relation to the United States, same time being pushed beyond the nation through positioning Cuba in terms of a migratory narrative his “Yanqui” heritage and his secret Jewish lineage. that sees the island more as a temporary stopping The early Jewish migrants to Cuba were given a point, as a “hotel”. This narrative emphasizes the number of names that expressed either their status as impact of American myths of success, as they do not recent converts to Christianity or the recognition of only draw people into the United States, but re-draw their continued – albeit highly discreet – expression other nations in transitory terms, as only stops along of their Jewish faith. 7 The Jewish presence in Cuba the journey. dates back to the journeys of Columbus, since, as This situation changed dramatically with the pas- Robert Levine points out, his voyage was supported sage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of
8. Because of the transitory nature of the Jewish Cuban communities in the 7. They were known as conversos, nuevos cristianos, or as crypto-Jews. They were early 20th century, it is difficult to know with much certainty the number also called by the more overtly critical term of marranos which Achy Obejas who actually were making their home in Cuba in the early decades of the defines as: “Literally, pig. Pejorative term for crypto-Jews from the time of century. Not only was the lure of the United States powerful, but many the Inquisition to the present. Until contemporary times and the popu- Jews remaining in Cuba married out of their religion or did not continue lar acceptance of anuism [forcibly converted Jews], it was often the only practicing their faith. Levine estimates the “permanent” population from available descriptive for persons who were publicly Catholic and privately 1921-24 to be approximately 5,000, even though over 40,000 Jews migra- Jewish,” (Days of Awe, 364). The following discussion of the history of the ted into Cuba during this period only to leave for the United States after Cuban Jewish population is based upon Behar, Levine and Levinson. a year. (Levine, 307)
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Kevin Concannon
1924, which set quotas on the number of immigrants office and constantly conceived as outsiders. The from Europe who would be accepted in the United revolution did little to change this perception, as Jews States. As a consequence, Jewish migrants coming struggled to understand the Communist leanings of to Cuba either immigrated illegally into the United Castro sympathizers. The situation was made even States or married an American citizen. The rest were more complex by the policy of atheism practiced by required “to make their America in Cuba.” (Levine, the Communist party. It probably should come as 33) The Jewish population rose as a consequence no surprise to learn that many of the early Jewish both of this change in legislation and a Cuban open supporters of Castro’s revolution, who were given door immigration policy, numbering approximately political positions as recompense, considered them- 16,500 by 1939 (ibid., 308). Jews arriving in Cuba selves non-Jewish Jews. The image of the crypto-Jew experienced varying levels of acceptance, finding remained a powerful figure in Cuban history, boo- roadblocks to achieving Cuban citizenship (until the kending the nationalist rhetoric of colonial Spain 1920s) and struggling with laws put in place during and modern-day Cuba. the Depression to limit the number of non-Cuban Many of the others who disagreed with Castro’s workers employed at individual companies. At the policies fled the island by the early 1960s with the same time, many Jewish merchants were successful in majority ending up in the United States. By 1965, creating their own companies and did not experience there were fewer than 2,500 Jews living in Cuba, the anti-Semitism or violence that was directed at a number that continued to dwindle up until the them in their home countries. This changed with the Special Period in Times of Peace in the 1990s, when growing influence of Nazism in 1930s-1940s Cuba, there were fewer than 1,000 (Levine, 308). Many of coming to a head with the infamous decision in 1939 these individuals had married non-Jewish spouses to prevent the SS St. Louis, which had departed from and in some cases were no longer practicing their Germany, from docking in Cuba. The majority of religion, even though the national policy of atheism passengers – totaling over 900 – were Jews escaping had been rescinded in 1992. Ruth Behar shows that Germany who were forced to return to Europe when “[f]amilies that had a Jewish heritage were dispersed the Cuban government revoked their landing per- throughout Havana and the provinces” during the mits. 9 last decade of the 20th century even as the means of The national anti-Semitism represented by the cultural separation, such as separate Jewish schools, political decisions of the Cuban government in had ceased to exist (23). regards to the St Louis incident was minimized in the The history of Cuban Jews in part is a history of post-war boom experienced by Cuba of the 1950s. transit. Seen as a movement away from Europe or This said, the Jewish population struggled to assi- away from Cuba, it is an experience rooted in notions milate, a result in part, according to Levine, from a of survival, secrecy, and also success. Defined in this desire to remain separate, but also from a wish from manner, the Cuban Jewish experience can be seen some in the Cuban upper-class to ban Jews from as a means of figuring the sense of loss felt by other expensive resorts and country clubs and from lower- Cubans who discover that to maintain their sense class Cubans labeling Jews as either polacos or turcos. 10 of Cubanismo meant to leave their island home or Jews remained a part of Cuba, but seemingly not a to construct it within a larger veil of secrecy. At the powerful part of the nation, rarely holding public same time, the Cuban Jewish experience is also one of arrival in Cuba as Behar’s and Maritza Corrales’ 11 9. The St. Louis was one of three ships that set sail from Hamburg on 13 May anthropological work on the island attests. While 1939, carrying German refugees to Cuba. They were allowed to leave as this sense of movement toward the island does not part of a propaganda effort initiated by Joseph Goebbels to show the world that Jews could not find a home anywhere in the world. After being turned in any way constitute a wave, but in many cases away from Cuba and being refused entry into the United States, Belgium, is seen in terms of individual or familiar visits, it Holland, France and England each accepted a number of the refugees. Tragically, of the 907 passengers who returned, 667 were ultimately killed emphasizes that, for some, questions of home and in German concentration camps. (See Levine, 102-149. 10. The terms identify Jews according to a presumed national identity: polacos (Poles) and turcos (Turks). According to Levine, neither of the terms are “explicitly pejorative, but both names were rooted in the acknowledge- ment that the Jews were different, foreigners in a society that did not value 11. Corrales’ The Chosen Island: Jews in Cuba presents 36 interviews with pre- cultural pluralism.” (217) sent-day Cuban Jews who either moved to or were born in Cuba.
6 The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Politics of Waiting belonging cannot be easily answered. 12 This sense of possibility of starting his own business (47). Even so, migration from the United States into Cuba also has much of Usnavy’s life is defined by the United States, its historical precedent as so-called American Jews as his apartment is described as “no bigger than one migrated into Cuba following the Spanish-American of those bloated American cars”; his daughter keeps War predominately to participate in Cuban recovery a picture of Michael Jackson on the wall; and one through investment (Levine, 5). This sense of move- of his favorite authors is Chester Himes (14-15). ment means to understand the position of Cuban These connections are underscored by his childhood exile in terms of departure from the island as well experiences living in Caimanera, near the American as presence, emphasizing the contradiction Behar military base at Guantánamo Bay, and in a house expresses about her trips to Cuba: “I kept thinking I that was named The Brooklyn (18-19). Born in 1940, was running away from home in order to run toward and as he notes “shortly before Pearl Harbor” (18), home.” (3) Usnavy’s life is one that is structured by a hemisphe- The experience in between emphasizes life on ric context as well as by an imperialism that reco- the hyphen for the Cuban Jew, and, as Gustavo gnizes the butterfly effect the Pacific theater in WW Pérez Firmat argues, it also defines life for Cuban II has on Cuban identity. As was previously noted, Americans. As is made clear in Ruins, this hyphe- Usnavy’s name is a result of his mother admiring nated sense of identity reflects not only those who “the powerful U.S. ships, their sides emblazoned with have left the island, but also defines Cuban identity the military trademark,” (17) and her wish “to project itself, a crypto-transnational identity that reflects the onto him their sense of possibility and optimism” island’s negotiated place between exile and home. that challenges the despair Cuban Jews experienced To Jacques Derrida, the crypt exists in contradictory only a year previous to Usnavy’s birth with the SS St. terms as both present to the public as well as hidden, Louis (18). His naming reflects the growing build-up and it is this double meaning that underscores not of American naval forces in Guantánamo as a means only the experience of the Cuban Jew, but also of of protecting both the Caribbean and the Gulf of the modern-day Cuban who lives in exile either on Mexico, as well as continued U.S. involvement in or off the island. 13 To Obejas, Cuban national iden- Cuban affairs as represented by their leasing of tity is to be understood in these terms, either tempo- Guantánamo Bay and the future embargo of Cuba. 14 rally as a waiting for a future change or spatially in This imperial context complicates his nationalist terms of the world beyond, as individuals in the novel leanings and it foregrounds the text’s attention to the are either seen as actively (albeit secretively) prepa- ways in which the transnational creates a sense of ring to depart or are linked through remittances to Cuban identity as unresolved. Usnavy is in a sense on family members or friends who have already left. the island and yet beyond it. It is an image that chal- The crypto-Jew informs Cuban identity in this text, lenges contemporary notions of an isolated Cuba, emphasizing not just a sense of individual departure cut off from the world, as Usnavy comes to repre- and exile, but hemispheric involvement, where the sent his mother’s sense of possibility and optimism call to Cuban Jews “to make their America in Cuba” in terms of a larger hemispheric presence. becomes all too prescient. Though Usnavy is born into this more cosmopo- When first introduced, though, Usnavy seems to litan context, he spends much of his life resisting disrupt this image, since he does his best to support these connections, bristling at friends who call him the revolution to the point of not selling his lamp, his “El Yanqui” and unknowingly repressing his Jewish prized possession, which as his friend Obdulio notes ancestry. His focus instead is on Africa through the might bring him 1,000 dollars and allow him the leonine-like figures on his lamp and his father’s Jamaican history, which he reads in terms of the 12. This refers specifically to the policy in 1960s Cuba to stamp the passports Black Atlantic rather than of the Jewish diaspora. of Jews leaving Cuba for Israel with the term Repatriated while refugees to the U.S. and to other countries were stamped salida definitive, meaning This divided self is underscored by the many refe- either “definitive departure” or the more telling “no return.” (Behar, 12) 13. Derrida states in his foreword to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok´s The Wolf Man´s Magic Word, “What is a crypt? No crypt presents itself. The 14. The United States held only two other two bases in the Caribbean during grounds […] are so disposed as to disguise and to hide: something, always the World War years: a base at the Panama Canal and a small base at a body in some way. But also to disguise the act of hiding and to hide the Kingston, St. Thomas. See Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History disguise: the crypt hides as it holds.” (xiv) of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps: 1940-1946.
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 Kevin Concannon rences in the text to the appearance of doubles in his own sense of separation from Cuban society, his life. His male friend Reynaldo, for instance, reap- because if his daughter now is an outsider, how is pears one day as the female Reina, and he finds to his he to understand himself ? Nena has been rendered horror that his wife has begun to repurpose blanket as “unfamiliar” to the nation by the simple act of a strips as meat for sandwiches. Also, one day while burn hole in a government document, underscoring participating in a domino game he finds he has a her exiled position as present yet without an authen- hand mostly of doubles, which he realizes too late tic sense of presence. to call for a new game. To underscore the linkage to To Freud, the uncanny (unheimlich) is defined as his own doubled sense of self he connects the domi- “nothing else than a hidden, familiar thing that has noes to his lamp’s cat-like nature, as he believes the undergone repression and then returned from it.” tiles “stared up at him, as beautiful and ineffable as (15) This repression can be understood in psychoana- feline eyes.” (32) Since they limit his play and lead lytic terms as a repression of the castration complex, to him losing, he is nicknamed a salao (unlucky) by but it can also be understood in aesthetic terms, as his friends, and the name sticks with him throughout an “intellectual uncertainty” that is generated from the novel. The term emphasizes Usnavy’s sense of aesthetic objects: the uncertainty that is generated, estrangement from others, of his difference, and for instance, in a text from a character coming back develops the sense that his Cuban revolutionary from the dead. These examples of uncertainty are identity is linked paradoxically to his own sense of tied, as Homi K. Bhabha argues, to a sense of limi- foreignness. His friend Obdulio emphasizes this by nality, since they focus on navigating a temporal in- connecting Usnavy’s unluckiness to his remaining in betweenness, as it were. Usnavy’s pride in his Cuban Cuba: “Anything’s better than here! You don’t have citizenship, for instance, is underscored by his refusal to be a salao forever.” (39) To no longer be a salao to flee, even as his American and Jewish background means to leave Cuba, a commentary on how unlucky highlights his sense of historical difference. This it is to be in Cuba during this time, as well as a remin- sense of unheimlich is understood, as Freud argues, as der that Usnavy’s bad luck is defined by his refusal to “unhomeliness”, the sense that he is without a home, consider exile, a thought so uncommon as to empha- an exile on the island, caught between the United size Usnavy’s foreignness to others. States and Cuba even as he has never left (4). This This foreignness is underscored in the text by the sense of unheimlich develops for Freud through the lin- nearly slapstick events Usnavy has to experience to king of two different temporal events, the castration confirm his daughter’s Cuban citizenship. After Nena complex and the present-day experience, emphasi- loses her identity card, Usnavy is sent from govern- zing a temporal rather than solely spatial understan- ment office to government office hearing the simi- ding of the unfamiliar. Bhabha adapts this discussion lar refrain that they have “no record at all of her.” of repression to the development of national narra- (23). His own copy of her birth certificate has been tives, emphasizing that their homogeneity is belied by ruined and when he goes to the hospital to search the heterogeneous experience of the uncanny. The their records he finds a hole in the page where Nena’s presence of the uncanny, in other words, helps to name and number would have been (151). It is only suggest the political structuring of these narratives by bribing a clerk with dollars that Usnavy is able and the ways in which race, gender and sexuality are to have a new identity number established for his mediated. Bhabha writes: daughter. By paying with American currency to create his daughter’s Cuban identity, Usnavy’s expe- Such an apprehension of the ‘double and split’ rience highlights how national belonging has become time of national representation, as I am proposing, defined in terms of the Freudian uncanny, as a rende- leads us to question the homogenous and horizon- ring of the familiar in unfamiliar terms. 15 To Usnavy, tal view associated with the nation’s imagined com- Nena is a Cuban citizen and has always been one, munity. (144) but now there is no proof. His search symbolizes Ruins underlines this politicization of the uncanny through the doubled figure of Usnavy as both forei- 15. See Esther Whitfield’sCuban Currency for a developed discussion of the role gner and citizen. Through Usnavy, Obejas highlights played by American currency in Cuban fiction during the Special Period.
8 The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Politics of Waiting the problematic Cuban revolutionary narrative that actually designed the lamps but did not receive any hinges its new society on the repression of dissent credit. As a result, his grandfather, along with other or difference, by highlighting a Cuban history that Cuban Jews including Virgilio, flooded the market constructed Cuban Jews as foreigners. This sense of with phony Tiffany’s. The story raises questions repetition or doubleness is figured through Usnavy’s concerning the authenticity of Usnavy’s lamp, but, inheritance of his mother’s lamp as it becomes both more importantly, by complicating what the Tiffany a sign of his nationalist pride and his historical sense name defines, Virgilio is questioning how identity is of otherness as a Jew. Early in the text, he connects to be determined in the text. By developing Usnavy’s his inheritance directly to his support of Castro, clai- identity through the act of forging, Virgilio recreates ming that he accepted the lamp “like a reward for the history of the crypto-Jew, emphasizing the play exemplary revolutionary work.” (19) The lamp holds of authenticity and inauthenticity that defined the this significance for Usnavy throughout much of the experience of the Cuban Jew in the 20th century. By text, as he is unwilling to sell it, emphasizing his and unsettling how this identity is to be defined, Virgilio his family’s need to sacrifice as a means of maintai- complicates what it means to be Cuban. The authen- ning a bond with other members of the community. tic can only be proven by reference to the inauthen- His very fascination with the lamp, however, also tic, a problematic that encourages one to question becomes a sign of his interest in the surface rather how the difference between citizen and foreigner can than depth; he is not interested in the light the lamp be maintained. emits but only by its glass panels. His focus, in other This paradoxical construction of identity is empha- words, is on how the light is distorted by the panels, a sized by the location of Virgilio’s studio outside of sign of his own self-distortion, as this light is connec- the one-time American Embassy, now the American ted throughout the text to images of difference, to the Interests Section, where Cubans line up each day lights of the Florida Keys and to religion. in the hope of getting a visa. As Virgilio remarks This significance of the lamp as both a means of to Usnavy, “there hasn’t been a day since 1951 – distortion and a source of personal understanding is that’s when I first moved here – without a line out evident through Usnavy’s many conversations with there.” (144) The transnational context of the former the aptly named Virgilio, a glass worker. Through embassy becomes a means of redefining the Cuban these discussions, it becomes clear that the lack of experience of waiting in line for limited supplies. At knowledge Usnavy has concerning the manufacturer once considered a sign of support for the revolution, of his lamp mirrors his lack of awareness concer- waiting now becomes understood as the means to an ning his true heritage. Both are linked in Virgilio’s end of leaving the island. Overseen from Virgilio’s mind, as he identifies the lamp as a Tiffany, and after window, the departure also symbolically re-enacts questioning Usnavy about his ownership of the lamp, the historical migration of Jews from Cuba in the about his last name and whether his mother went early 20th century, who were also waiting for their to church, identifies him as Jewish. To Usnavy this number to come up, and by doing so underscores a other history comes as a shock. He thinks “He was sense of perceived inauthenticity as a repressed part Jamaican – Jamaican, descendant of Africans and of Cuban national identity. Usnavy’s discovery of his Englishmen, not Turks and Poles.” (173) His iden- lineage becomes understood as a marker of this lar- tification of Cuban Jews as coming from Eastern ger uncertainty over a homogenous construction of Europe highlights the common euphemisms by revolutionary identity. Much as Homi Bhabha sees Cubans for Jews as polacos and turcos, and his own the Freudian uncanny in temporal terms, as a jux- acceptance of Jews as foreigners in the Cuban natio- taposition of two different temporalities, it becomes nal imaginary. “Me, a Jew?” he says to himself at one understood in this text as a form of waiting, an point (174, original italics), emphasizing the sense of emergence that is connected to a repressed sense of his familiar self suddenly being rendered unfamiliar. a hemispheric or transnational identity. Virgilio helps to confirm his Jewish heritage by The novel’s pessimistic title underscores that this revealing to Usnavy the roles played by Cuban Jews sense of waiting in Cuba continues. It carries an in the manufacturing of Tiffany lamps. Usnavy is told important double meaning as it highlights the phy- that Virgilio’s grandfather worked for Tiffany and sical breakdown of Cuban buildings as well a res-
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 Kevin Concannon pect for the past, its preservation being a means to dissimilar. Belonging in the nation is not be defined understand the present. In the concluding pages of along a purity scale, therefore, but becomes unders- the novel, Usnavy navigates these two different defi- tood in terms of “falseness” or in terms of the very nitions as he trolls for buildings that have fallen in circulation of capital that created a market for “false” on themselves in the hope of discovering another Tiffanys. Usnavy’s recovery of his repressed past priceless, historic lamp. The novel struggles with this emphasizes how the seemingly authentic is always question of memory and the fragility of defining a meshed with the inauthentic, emphasizing the role of past that is threatened by destruction and oversight. the exile in Cuban society. If Cuba is falling apart at the seams, what are the To respond to Fishkin’s question then, the exile “ruins” it will leave behind? In other words, what is it is understood along the liminal line defining the that defines Cuba, if staying is only to be understood included and the excluded within the nation. But in terms of departure? It is a question of stability that this sense of liminality is not to be understood only has haunted Usnavy as he notices, early in the novel, in spatial terms, but in temporal terms as well, as that his neighborhood is inhabited by strangers, a marker of individual and national repression that that seemingly everyone he has known has left the seeks to mediate difference through constructing, as island (21). This sense of loss not only speaks to the Homi Bhabha argues, homogeneous national nar- experiences in the Special Period but to the personal ratives. As such, the exilic figure exists in terms of a experiences of Usnavy, both in terms of the loss of crypto-identity at the heart of the nation, remaining knowledge about his father but also his lack of awa- hidden within public view, present and yet absent. It reness of his family’s Jewish lineage. Unfortunately, in is this uncertainty that challenges Fishkin’s attempt to his search for a lamp to sell he has participated in the center the transnational, since through Ruins, move- very repression of the past that his family has, hoping ment across borders can also be defined in terms of that in the misery and despair of broken down buil- stasis and time, highlighting the repression of the dings there can also be found a profit. In other words, transnational within the nation. The sense of waiting for Usnavy there is no reason to focus on the change that defines life in Cuba can be seen as a politics of posed by history, when one can discover value in its stasis in this way, as it symbolizes a larger awareness temporal passing. It is this myopic view that threa- of the repression of the uncanny within national nar- tens a Cuban revolutionary philosophy that depends ratives. The act of waiting itself becomes a marker on success as always being in the future. As one of of the heterogeneity that remains the unheimlich part Usnavy’s friends tellingly states, “All this sacrificing of the nation, a temporality that poses the challenge for tomorrow […] and tomorrow never comes.” (27) of belonging. The text challenges this approach by foregrounding the struggles and change created in the past. These ruins of the past are brought to the fore in this text, Bibliography and, by doing so, Obejas is able to question a natio- nalism that is focused inward and on the future, not ANDERSON Benedict, Imagined Communities, London: Verso recognizing the larger historical and global context Books, 2006. BEHAR Ruth, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, New of Cuban identity. By re-focusing attention onto the Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers UP, 2007. past, Obejas explores not what Cuba will possibly BENÍTEZ-ROJO Antonio, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean become, but what it has been. In doing so, the “new” and the Postmodern Perspective, trans. James Maraniss, Durham Cuba is discovered in what had previously been over- (NC): Duke UP, 1992. looked, outlawed, or marginalized, emphasizing for BHABHA Homi K, The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, 1994. Usnavy not only the significance of Judaism, but “Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of the also the larger hemispheric context emphasized by a Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps: history of immigration. The making new, therefore, 1940-1946,” vol 1, Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: results not from a sense of isolation or difference, as History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer symbolized by the embargo, but from an understan- Corps: 1940-1946, Department of the Navy Bureau of Yards ding of a more fluid sense of connection, where iden- and Docks. n.d. Web, 7 July 2011. tity is built upon an edifice of inauthenticity or the
10 The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Politics of Waiting
CASEY Calvert, Calvert Casey: The Collected Stories, trans. John H. R. Polt, ed. and with an introduction, by Ilan Stavans, Durham (NC): Duke UP, 1998. CORRALES Maritza, The Chosen Island: Jews in Cuba. Chicago: Salsedo P, 2005. CURIEL Barbara Brinson, et al., “Introduction,” in John Carlos Rowe (ed.), Post-Nationalist American Studies, Berkeley: U of California P, 2007. DERRIDA Jacques, “Foreword: The Wolf Man’s Magic Word,” in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok (eds.), The Wolf Man’s Magic Word, trans. Nicholas Rand, Minneapolis: U of Min- nesota P, 1986. DEVANTE Marilyn, The Island of One People: An Account of the History of the Jews of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle P, 2007. ECKSTEIN Susan, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro, Prince- ton: Princeton UP, 1994. EDWARDS Brent Hayes, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Trans- lation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism, Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 2003. FISHKIN Shelley Fisher, “Crossroads of Cultures: The Trans- national Turn in American Studies – Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 12, 2004,” American Quarterly 57.1, 2005: 17-57. FREUD Sigmund, The Uncanny, [1919], trans. Alix Strachey. Web, 7 July 2011. GILMAN Susan, “Afterword: The Times of Hemispheric Stu- dies,” in Caroline F. Levander and Robert S. Levine (eds.), Hemispheric American Studies, New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers UP, 2008. GILROY Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 1993. KRISTEVA Julia, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia UP, 1991. LEVINE Robert M., Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba, Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2010. LEVINSON Jay, Jewish Community of Cuba: The Golden Age, 1906- 1958, Nashville: Westview Publishing Co., 2006. LUIS-BROWN David, Waves of Decolonization, Durham (NC): Duke UP, 2008. OBEJAS Achy, Days of Awe, New York: Ballantine Books, 2001. ――――――, Memory Mambo, Berkeley: Cleis P, 1996. ――――――, Ruins, New York: Akashic Books, 2009. PÉREZ-FIRMAT Gustavo, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way, Austin: U of Texas P, 1994. QUIROGA José, Cuban Palimpsests, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005. SAID Edward, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 2002. WHITFIELD Esther, Cuban Currency: The Dollar and “Special Period” Fiction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 2008.
The Politics of Waiting, Concannon, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 11 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba La Cubanité à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de Cuba
Mica Garrett
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5332 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
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Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba La Cubanité à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de Cuba
Mica Garrett
Mica Garrett received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1995. She has published articles on Juan de Mena and Spanish Golden Age poets Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera, and Luis de Góngora. She has also published an article on Cuban exile Chely Lima’s novel Confesiones nocturnas. In addition, Dr. Garrett co-edited a feminist revisionary book He Said, She Says: An RSVP to the Male Text (Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2001). Dr. Garrett has been teaching at Murray State University in Kentucky since 1995.
Abstract: To define Cubanness inside and outside of Cuba is a difficult task. From Taínos to wave after wave of immigrants, Cubans have struggled with their identity. Whether under colonial rule or under a dictatorship, Cubans have been defined by others, forcing them to conform or be punished for it. Under Castro, the island’s dream of independence from Spanish colonial rule and American imperialism finally came true, but at a price. Many argue that there are two Cubas: the one that Castro would have us see, a romantic, idealized view of the Revolution, and the other side of Cuba that he and his followers deny. In addition, there is a very large Cuban constituency in the United States, including Mini Havana in Miami. There, Cubans have retained their language and culture, in part due to their resistance to assimilation and strong need to retain their identity as Cubans. In any case, Cuba is in transition and is slowly opening up to old ways of doing business, including tourism and private enterprise.
Résumé : Définir la « Cubanité » à Cuba ou en dehors de Cuba est une tâche complexe. Des origines amérindiennes des Taïnos, issus de différentes vagues d’immi- gration, les Cubains sont en quête d’identité. Que ce soit sous domination coloniale ou dictatoriale, les Cubains ont été définis par les autres, ceux qui les contraignaient à se conformer ou qui les punissaient en cas de résistance. Sous Castro, le rêve d’indépendance de l’île face au régime colonial espagnol ou à l’impérialisme américain est enfin devenu réalité, mais à quel prix. Beaucoup disent qu’il y a deux Cuba : celui projetant une vision romantique, idéalisant la Révolution et prônée par Castro, et l’autre Cuba que le dictateur et ses sympathisants ne reconnaissent pas. De plus, il y a une très grande communauté cubaine aux États-Unis, notamment Mini Havana à Miami. Là, les Cubains ont gardé leur langue et leur culture, car ils ont résisté à l’assimilation dans leur besoin de préserver leur identité cubaine. Quoi qu’il en soit, Cuba est dans une phase de transition et s’ouvre doucement aux anciennes pratiques commerciales parmi lesquelles figurent le tourisme et l’entreprenariat privé.
Keywords: Cuba, Cubanness, identity, hybridity, Castro. Mots-clés : Cuba, Cubanité, identité, hybridité, Castro.
Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Mica Garrett nn The origin of the word Cuba is unclear, however, is nothing new; racism in José de Martí’s time was many scholars would agree that it comes from the palpable in that “anti-Negro feeling among suppor- Taíno word cubao which signifies ‘abundant land’. ters of independence was one of Martí’s greatest dif- The Taínos, as the original inhabitants were called, ficulties.” (McGaffey and Barnett, 32) As recently as were peaceful compared to their neighboring Caribs the 1950s, Afro-Cubans were banned from many of who inhabited the Lesser Antilles, nevertheless they the high-class hotels and beaches, but still had their were oppressive. They enslaved a few siboneyes, cave- own exclusive clubs where they could go. Racism was dwelling inhabitants and the others were “restricted also present within the African races: “In some dis- to the modern province of Pinar del Río and seve- tricts mulatto societies excluded persons considered ral offshore islands.” (McGaffey and Barnett, 33) too dark.” (ibid., 33) By 1492, at the time of Spanish arrival, there were One of the more important African legacies in approximately 200,000 inhabitants on the island Cuba is religion. It is noteworthy because it has played and they welcomed Columbus with food, dance, an important role in the development and change and games. While at first they embraced the Spanish, of Cuban culture and identity over time. Before they soon found themselves being victimized. 1959, Cubans were mostly Catholic and a smaller Within a short time those that resisted conversion to percentage practiced santería, a mixture of African Christianity were enslaved and sent to work in gold (mostly Yoruba) and Catholic religions. Shortly after mines. Harsh working conditions and disease wiped the Revolution, however, Castro’s relationship with out many Taínos and led to the virtual disappearance the Church became more strained. Castro accused of their society. Although very little of Taíno ethni- the Church of caring more about the imperialists city remains in Cuba today, there is still evidence of than following Christ’s examples of feeding the poor it today. The Taíno people were freed in the sixteenth and righting social injustices. He claimed that the century and went on to form their own small reser- Church was out of line with his new ideological plan vations which remained in geographic isolation for for Cuba. According to Castro, the Church’s “super- a long period of time. By then, only a few thousand ficial” views were “simply incompatible with the dra- Indians remained. In the twentieth century Antonio matic revolutionary process on which the country Núñez Jiménez discovered a group of Taínos that had embarked.” (Kirk, 107) Under Castro, the prac- had been living in Oriente province. Some of the tice of any religion was considered subversive and Taíno contributions still in evidence are the herbal many had to practice their worship in private without remedies, bohíos, which are dome homes built with attracting too much attention to themselves because, thatched roofs and many words in the Spanish and if caught, it could mean jail. For Castro, suppressing English languages. 1 religious practices meant that Cubans could spend Due to the demise of native laborers, the Spanish their time and energy worshiping the Revolution were left with a shortfall of manpower and thus instead. As a result, many Cubans came to identify brought in African slaves to work in the mines and themselves more closely with political vs. religious plantation agriculture. Although statistics vary, some ideology. What Castro wanted was for the people to sources say that by the mid-nineteenth century, put their faith in the State instead of God and make African slaves and mulatoes comprised almost fifty the nation their priority. This would help form a new per cent of the Cuban population. For that reason, public collective consciousness which previously had African influence in Cuba is significant and has not been a governing practice. Whereas Taínos and contributed to its many traditions, including religion, Africans had been forced into a new religious belief food, music, and language (Yoruba, Fon, and Efik system, post-revolutionary Cubans were forced to not mostly). Percentages of people from African ancestry practice any religion in order to give themselves fully are higher in rural areas in Cuba, and although to the new revolutionary state. Since the economic Cubans have not been very racist by American stan- crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, religious practices have dards, black Cubans have experienced racism. This increased and have even permeated Cuban media (Hansing, l7). Not only has Cubans’ religious ideology been 1. Some examples of words that can be traced to their Taíno roots are huracán, hamaca, canoa, barbacoa, tatuaje and tuna. manipulated over centuries, but practically every
2 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba aspect of their lives has been turned upside down saw no future because the job market was satura- by each power that has ruled the island, starting ted and what good was it to get a degree if there with the Spanish colonization, continuing with the were no jobs to be found? The second group was imperialist control over the Cuban people by the frustrated with Cuba’s lack of industrialization and Americans, and, ultimately, ending with the oppres- overdependence on foreign markets for raw material sion by the Castro Revolution. As a whole, Cuban processing. In any case, a large part of the middle collective consciousness has been closely connected class put their faith in Castro to solve their problems. to Otherness. For over 500 years Cubans have been His message cut across classes and the poor as well dominated and controlled directly or indirectly by as the middle class joined forces. Castro always had foreigners. Throughout history, Cubans and their a soft spot for the poor and it was their plight that, predecessors have experienced marginalization, in part, motivated him. He promised that poverty suppression and oppression, whether from Spanish would be eliminated after his takeover. One of the conquerors, American imperialism, dictatorships first things he did was to help poor children or beca- or finally under the rule of Fidel Castro. Although rios, the children of the peasants and the lower classes Cubans had gained their independence from Spain, that, from an early age, were moved to Havana, fed the American Platt Amendment ensured that the and housed and would become the future generation United States would keep tight control of many that he could count on for support. aspects of Cuban life, including economic, mili- Castro’s proposal for a new Cuba was not only an tary, and political control. During the first period of economic one. It was a much larger vision whose goal North American regulation (1898-1928), “expan- was ultimately freedom. It was a dream that Cubans sion of North American economic forms and poli- had been subconsciously holding onto for centuries. tical structures […] acted in decisive ways to shape According to Antoni Kapcia, the character of the nation.” (Ibarra, 2) The United States made tremendous efforts to achieve homoge- Cuban history since the late eighteenth century neity on the island. American dollars and businesses can justifiably be seen as the trajectory of the pur- contributed in large part to the cultural, political suit of a ‘dream’ – of true independence (political, and economic identity of the country. As a result of economic, social, cultural, intellectual or whatever). these changes, a large middle class arose in Cuba (XIV) that benefited from, enjoyed and appreciated its ties The term “Sierra Madre Complex” was coi- to the United States. In addition, Cuba became a ned by Theodore Draper and describes how Fidel playground for the rich and famous and was referred Castro was able to create unconditional support in to as the Caribbean Riviera. The young Republic his followers, a “revolutionary will” for which they seemed to have it all. would give themselves totally and fully to the idea It became apparent, however, during the period of revolution without expecting any material gain. between 1929 and 1958 that the honeymoon was Revolutionaries committed to Castro’s call were told over. During this period Cuba suffered from econo- to adopt a moral stand rather than a materialistic mic contraction ending in “economic crisis, politi- one. Some would argue that it was Castro’s charm cal tumult, and social unrest” (Ibarra, 2). In order and not his political expertise and know-how that hel- to understand how such a large part of the middle ped him gain control over Cuban will. He established class would want to join forces with Castro and over- a “direct, personal, almost mystical relationship with turn their government, one must take a closer look the masses that free[d] him from dependence on at their mentality at that time. In the short period classes.” (Draper, 133) Accordingly, Rafael Rojas leading up to the Revolution, the young adult chil- claims that the “official Cuban ideology, which his- dren of the new middle class had become disillusio- torically has lacked a theoretical vocation, has to do ned. They were divided into “professional-political” some symbolic juggling to legitimize a totalitarian and “industrial-commercial” groups (Draper, 112). order in the midst of the twenty-first century.” (59) Fidel Castro himself is considered to be one of the The idea of freedom and self-government was a former, his father being a self-made man and having powerful concept and desire long held by the Cuban himself attended Law School in Havana. This group
Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Mica Garrett collective consciousness. In order to gain support, mised would bring wealth to everyone. Cubans trus- Castro had created an ‘us-against-them’ mentality ted Castro and quickly rallied around his romantic and promised that the destruction of American vision. Excitement grew as Cubans felt they could imperialist capitalism would pave the way to a suc- trust Castro and that for the first time there was a real cessful socialist government. As Del Aguila notes: chance for fundamental change. At first, Castro’s pro- mise of public ownership as in a true socialist society, Appealing to nationalism [meant] calling for instead of the land being owned by the few and not sacrifices in order to defeat internal or external the many, would be the answer to the problem of enemies, [and] invoking memories of previous capitalism, which had created a large-scale poverty, struggles in heroic and mythical terms, and tap- and to all of the other problems and challenges ping the moral, physical, and intellectual reserves Cubans were facing. As time passed, it was soon of the nation. (69) obvious that socialism was no panacea. Problems The concept of nation, or patria, is of utmost with the United States’ embargo, as well as internal importance in Cuba, a very macho nation in the conflicts and pressures, meant that it was necessary stereotypical sense of the word. According to Ruth for the State to take control of the economy. Without Behar, Cuban “manhood and nationhood were fused workers’ control there would be no socialism. Castro and confused in the figure of the revolutionary hero.” then looked to Russia’s 1961 model and the official (xiv) Communist party was created in 1965. José Martí is one of the more important national Cuba itself became a visual platform for heroes in Cuba. He was a martyr, a revolutionary Communist ideology: hammer and sickle images hero, and he suffered persecution due to political appeared everywhere, as well as portraits and sta- beliefs. There are statues and monuments in his tues of Lenin, Stalin, and local independence hero honor that are nicely maintained and are occasio- José Martí. Revolutionary imagery appeared and has nally places where Fidel Castro chose to give speeches remained everywhere in Cuba. In this way, Cubans and to hold political ceremonies. Castro, like Martí, came to identify more closely with the Revolution was born in Cuba of Spanish parents and studied through its reflection in the Cuban landscape. In law; they shared the same goal of helping the poor, Arjun Appadurai’s terms, Cuba became an “ideos- and both fought to gain independence for Cuba: cape” which contains images that are “often directly Martí from the Spanish colonizers and Castro from political or ideological in that they represent the the Fulgencio Batista American imperialists. Some power of the state.” (Staring et al., 12) “Three Faces argue that Castro and Martí are kindred spirits and of Cuba,” a post-Revolution documentary released have been instrumental in achieving Cuban libera- in 1962, shows how Cubans were not only bom- tion, while others would say that Martí would not barded with visual ideological elements, but with approve of Castro and what he has accomplished. In audio input as well, in the form of song, music, and any case, just as it always is, public opinion will argue chanting anti-American slogans. These political one way or another based on personal views, which refrains sung by Cubans cut across all age groups. Cubans will likely have no problem sharing. One of the examples is that of children singing the Anti-American sentiment was also used by Castro following: “Fidel, Fidel, campeón, te comiste el tiburón, en to unite Cubans in that without America in their las playas de Girón,” [in reference to the Bay of Pigs] lives, there could be no tyranny and subjugation. (Hunter et al., 85) and also “Lo dicen en Manila y en According to Russell H. Fitzgibbon, there was a Corea, en Panamá, en Turquía y en Japón, el clamor es lo sense of psychological inferiority felt by Cubans that mismo en todas partes: Yanqui go home.” (ibid., 81). played a more than significant role in an anti-U.S. Literature and propaganda played a crucial role in attitude: “It has colored practically all and distorted the process of re-inventing Cuba as a socialist nation. many of the Cuban reactions to matters of mutual ccording to Salván this has concern to Cuba and the United States.” (254) With contributed to the intellectual formation of Fidel at the helm, Cubans would be free to create artists and writers and to the production of an their own independent nation; one that Castro pro- extensive body of laudatory literature. Many wri-
4 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba
ters who supported the revolutionary project conti- become more dream-like (‘dream’ as illusion), nue to do so in spite of the present economic and as an imagined and even illusory reality, projected political circumstances.(6) on to a possibly unattainable future and stored in a collective folk memory, but that has always remai- Cuban men and women saw themselves joining ned as a shared vision (‘dream’ as envisaged future), organizations devoted to the Revolution. Militias to inspire, guide and protect. (Kapcia, xiv) and watchdog organizations, such as the CDRs (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution), were For fidelistas, any limitations or impediments to formed and any Cuban who speaks poorly of Castro achieving Castro’s goals might be blamed on the or any aspect of the government will be punished. U.S. embargo. Whether it is putting the blame on Many prisons and behavioral modification sites have the Americans or the collapse of the Soviet Union, been set across the island in order to handle the large Cubans can always find a scapegoat. In this way, number of dissidents. they can talk about the triumph of the Revolution In the early years, woman’s role in the Revolution and at the same time experience the great stress that was very empowering. She identified, like other pro- Cuban society endured during the Special Period of revolutionary loyalists, with a struggle that meant not the early nineties: only personal sacrifice, but also conflict on a grand scale, giving her a large sense of importance within The shortages and the black market, the de the social construct of the new system. Historically, facto unemployment, the deterioration of social women had already gained equality with men within services, the rationing [; … t]he complaints about the home, as reflected in the 1940 constitution. As food shortages, poor quality, and lack of variety Jorge Ibarra illustrated, “Cuban legislation on are becoming fears about real hunger. (Judson, 28) women’s rights (divorce, maternity, and equal civil Twenty years later, things have not changed much rights) was among the most advanced in the Western for most Cubans. According to a New York Times world.” (138) After Fidel Castro came to power, article in 2011, Vilma Espín, a revolutionary and veteran who fought alongside him in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Bartenders, with access to dollars, earn wages organized the Federation of Cuban Women and the many times that of physicians […] Many roads state provided “all women with free education, health in Havana have been repaired. Microwave ovens, care, birth control, access to abortion, nutritional DVD players and cellphones are now in stores, but support for pregnant mothers and young children, most Cubans cannot afford them. (Urbina) day care, the freedom to divorce […].” (Behar, x) The family unit suffered, however, owing to a high In Cuba there have always been two Cubas: the divorce rate and less births due to free access to abor- mainstream and the marginalized, the colonial and tion. Furthermore, women’s role within the family imperial dominating forces against the oppressed. At was replaced by a role on a grander scale. In the late present, again, Cuba is at odds. Currently there are seventies, families became even more divided when those that identify with the success of the Revolution “the only way to instill new values, to create the new and those who see themselves as victims of it. Some man and woman, was to distance children from would argue that there is the Cuba that Castro likes parents, grandmothers, uncles, and other retrograde to present to the world and the other that he likes influences.” (Smith and Padula, 146) The nation to hide. For example, socialized medicine has been intended on replacing the traditional family with “a one of Cuba’s success stories, as narrated by those socialist family united not by blood, but by affection, who defend it and documentaries, such as Michael friendship, and convenience.” (ibid.,145) Moore’s Sicko, have presented a good case for Cuba’s When the plan for socialism failed and Cuba set its healthcare system. According to others, however, it is a good story but only fiction. In ABC’s episodes sights on Communism, many on the island became th disillusioned, but even so have remained faithful to of 20/20, aired on September 7 in 2007, John Castro, even to this day. Their life-long dream has Stossel questioned Michael Moore about his docu- mentary and its positive portrayal of Cuban health-
Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Mica Garrett care. Stossel showed pictures and video clips of the al., 12) The success or failure of the Revolution is a hospitals that were in ghastly shape and explained matter of perspective and there are clearly two sides that these were the facilities that most Cubans used. to the story. Many Cubans have been discouraged; Stossel pointed out that the hospitals which Moore this was especially true with the collapse of the Soviet visited were the facilities used only by foreigners Union whereupon Cuba experienced a Special and privileged Cubans who could afford them. In Period of severe economic crisis. Stratification within the same film by Stossel, Dr. José Carro, a human Cuban society became clear: rights activist from Miami confirmed that Moore’s claims were lies and that there were two categories […] the apartheid quality of the relationship of hospitals in Cuba, some for the elite and others for between tourist and Cuban citizen [is one of the the general population. The Hannity and Colmes show most] grinding and demoralizing aspects of daily that aired on October 10th 2007 on Fox News showed life. [... ] Perhaps more serious in the long-term additional pictures so damaging, (crumbling walls, political sense are the degrees of cynicism, the dis- insect infestations, and no soap or towels, to name solution of social solidarity, the justified concern just a few of the problems), that ABC had refused to about violent crime, delinquency, and alienation. air them on Stossel’s show. (Judson, 28) Another example of the side of Cuba that revo- With the Revolution have come many sacrifices, lucionarios like to boast about is education. Literacy not only for those that side with Castro, but also for has shot up to over 90 % but, whereas normally this those that oppose him. Tens of thousands of Cubans would be good, others would argue that education is have died trying to escape the Revolution. Others just another tool used to control the people, and that have successfully escaped through emigration. One censorship is so severe that Cubans are not allowed to of the first waves of migration coincided with the study or read anything at all that is not pro Castro. In early years of the Revolution and involved mostly addition, they would claim that education is a dead the middle- and upper middle-class professionals who end because there are not enough jobs to go around understood that they were going to lose everything once you graduate from school. Since the collapse of by staying. Many who migrated in 1959 have wai- Russia and most of the Communist states, Cubans ted, hoped and prayed for the day when they could have .plunged into an economic crisis that has had return to their homeland. They have been in a state a profound impact on their character and resilience. of limbo and, unfortunately now, many have either According to Katrine Hansing, died or given up the hope of returning to the island. apathy, depression, and migration are some of For those opposing the Revolution, both within and the more dramatic consequences of this, [however,] outside of Cuba, Castro’s dream represents what many if not most Cubans have been responding by identity theory critic Patrick Taylor calls a “mythic carving out their own spaces, whether economic, narrative”, a communication in “falsely universal social, or cultural, that are independent or at least terms” (Matibag, 208). It is a narrative in opposition parallel to the state. (l6) to reality and based on a story used to explain how a society might perform best for everyone. Many Cubans are deeply divided on the subject The United States, a long-time “melting pot”, of the Revolution and many families have been torn has been the recipient of wave after wave of Cuban apart physically and emotionally because of it. Some immigration. Sometimes living in groups and some- speak of el triunfo de la Revolución and others of el fra- times in isolation, they have become a part of the caso. You are either “for it or against it” and there “local human landscape”, in the ever-changing glo- is nothing in-between. Cuba has become a “social bal ethnoscape, which is according to Appadurai’s movement” framework as defined by social anthro- definition, pologist Ulf Hannerz 2 wherein lie “ideological battles between ‘converted’ and ‘non-converted.’” (Staring et [a] landscape of group identity, the lands- cape of persons who make up the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, 2. Ulf Hannerz is a leading specialist in urban anthropology and local, trans- national, and cultural processes as well as globalization. exiles, guestworkers, and other moving groups and
6 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba
persons who can affect the politics of and between to keep and what to forget, keeping enough in order nations. (qtd. in Staring, 12). not to lose one’s own identity while opening up to new experiences and a new culture.” (Romero, 397) Many Cubans who live in Miami consider them- In a study on angst as a theoretical approach to selves to be Miamians. Miami houses most of the identity, Callejo-Pérez claims that “although attempts Cuban and Cuban Americans that live in the United are made to bridge the separation, the question of States, around 700,000 of the one million that live defining Cuban remains a pervasive issue.” (2l5) stateside. These Cubans, like many other immigrants Sometimes Cubanness can be defined in terms of have made an enclave which helps to promote and which wave of immigration one belongs to, or as preserve their culture. The first wave of Cuban Rothe and Pumariega put it, like the turning on migration into Miami happened in the early years and shutting off of a water faucet, depending on after Castro’s takeover. The elite, upper and middle the political climate or “confrontations” between class left Cuba and settled elsewhere, including the United States and Cuba. Those that left the Miami. This Cuban community allows for the pre- island early during and after the Revolution have servation of much of the Cuban culture with which assimilated the most into American culture. Their they have come to identify. There they can promote enclave has allowed them strength in numbers as their food and other material items that remind them well as upward mobility. They also tend to be more of home. Many are very conservative Republicans ‘white’. The next big wave of immigration was from who would like to see the island return to the way it the Mariel Boatlift in 1980 that brought the working was: one that they either had experienced as young class who were disillusioned with the Revolution and children, or pictured in their minds by way of their a few political unwanted. An estimated 71% of the parents and grandparents who had lived there. 124,000 that left were blue-collar workers. After the According to Callejo-Pérez, after the Revolution, collapse of the USSR and the end of its support for the older generations’ re-telling of the Cuban story Cuba, many left on makeshift rafts in order to escape led the young to believe that “Cuba was no longer the economic crisis. Known as balseros, these were Cuban,” and “fostered a love of place for the young mainly the poor, black or mulatto that the Revolution 20-year-olds who sought a connection to the island had tried to help. It is estimated that 37,000 Cubans and its culture.” (7) These Cubans did not fight assi- left the island in this way. Since then, Cuba and milation; instead they injected Cuban identity and the United States have negotiated a quota allowing culture into it. 20,000 Cubans to immigrate each year (Rothe and The Cuban diaspora has assimilated to varying Pumariega). degrees into the dominant culture in which they live. What is Cubanness? What is it to be Cuban? For some Cubans, visibility and identification as such Oftentimes it is not a choice. Cubans have always is much more noticeable than for others, especially been victims in that they have never had the oppor- for first generation Cubans who have not lost their tunity to choose for themselves. Since the Spanish accents and other daily habits. If Cuban identity is colonization/invasion, Cubans have been forced to determined by everything cultural, then they must conform to one way of life or another. First, Cubans choose what part of their language, food, and other were forced into Christianity. Early Cuban religious items they will keep with them and what they want identity was chosen for them and not by them. to leave behind. These Cubans will always be hybrid. Second, they were forced into slavery meaning that Many Cubans outside of Cuba have had to freedom was taken from them. In both cases they struggle with the sense of homeland. Some second- were not free to choose their own way of life. After and third- generation Cuban Americans have felt a the Spanish experience came American manipula- sense of identity crisis or in-betweenness, especially tion management and Cubans were forced to become as the distance between them and their Cuban roots Westernized. Lastly, Cuban life has been influenced, has become greater. For some of these children of directed, and molded by Castro and his ideologies. Cuban immigrants and their children, the experience Enduring slavery, Americanization, and Castroism becomes a painful process that Romero describes as has not been so much a choice but rather a neces- a transformation which “requires choices about what sity to survive and/or become part of mainstream
Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 Mica Garrett
Cuban society. In Cuba, in essence, Cubanness could Generational Change in an Exile Community,” Journal of be defined as submission and conformity. While in Immigrant & Refugee Studies 6.2, 2008: 247-266. Cuba, Cubans have not been given a chance to SALVÁN Marta Hernández, “Out of History: The Cuban Postrevolution,” Revista Hispánica Moderna 64.1, 2011: 81-96. express themselves freely or been allowed to invent SMITH Lois M. and Alfred PADULA, Sex and Revolution: Women their own identity. Outside of Cuba, Cubanness has in Socialist Cuba, New York: Oxford UP, 1996. means a form of assimilation and hybridity. Either STARING Richard, Marco VAN DER LAND, Herman TAK way, they have been forced once again to adopt cha- and Don KALB, “Localizing Cultural Identity,” Focaal racteristics of the dominant culture. Cubanness, sim- 30/31, 1997: 7-21. ply stated, is Otherness. URBINA Ian, “In Cuba, Change Means More of the Same, With Control at the Top,” New York Times, 5 Apr. 2009, sec. Americas: A6.
Bibliography APPARUDAI Arjun, Modernity at Large, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, l996. BEHAR Ruth, “Foreword,” in Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women, Boston: Beacon P, 1998. CALLEJO-PÉREZ David, “Enacted Curriculum and the Search for Identity: Angst and the Cuban Search for Meaning after the Cuban Revolution,” Curriculum & Teaching Dialogue 10.1-2, 2008: 213-231. DEL AGUILA Juan M, Cuba, Dilemmas of a Revolution, Boulder (CO): Westview P, 1994. DRAPER Theodore, Castroism: Theory and Practice, New York: Praeger, 1965. FITZGIBBON Russell H., Cuba and the United States: 1900-1935, New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1964. HANSING Katrine, “Changes From Below: New Dynamics, Spaces, and Attitudes in Cuban Society,” NACLA Report on the Americas 44.4, 2011: 16-42. HUNTER Edward, Karl BAARSLAG and Oliver CARLSON, An Expose of the Insidious Film “Three Faces of Cuba”, Miami: The Truth About Cuba Committee, Inc., 1965. IBARRA Jorge, Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1998. JUDSON Fred, “Cuba and the New World Order,” Monthly Review, 1992. KAPCIA Antoni, Cuba: Island of Dreams, Oxford: Berg, 2000. KIRK John M., Between God and the Party: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Cuba, Tampa: U of South Florida P, 1989. MATIBAG Eugenio, Afro-Cuban Religious Experience: Cultural Reflec- tions in Narrative, Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1996. McGAFFEY Wyatt and Clifford R. BARNETT, Twentieth Century Cuba: The Background to the Cuban Revolution, New York: Dou- bleday Anchor, 1965. ROJAS Rafel, “The Content of Socialism in Cuba Today,” Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 12.1, 2010: 57-63. ROMERO Héctor R., “Hispanic Literatures in the United States: Differences and Similarities,” in Proceedings from the National Association of African American Studies and Literature Monograph Series, Houston: February 21-26, 2000, 1-18. ROTHE Eugenio M. and Andrés J. PUMARIEGA, “The New Face of Cubans in the United States: Cultural Process and
8 Cubanness Within and Outside of Cuba, Garrett, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post- Borderlands Imaginer la communauté homosexuelle des Chican@s au-delà des frontières
T. Jackie Cuevas
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5262 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
Brought to you by Université Rennes 2
Electronic reference T. Jackie Cuevas, « Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http:// lisa.revues.org/5262 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5262
The text is a facsimile of the print edition.
Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands Imaginer la communauté homosexuelle des Chican@s au-delà des frontières
T. Jackie Cuevas
T. Jackie Cuevas, originally from South Texas, is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. She earned her Ph.D. in English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the co-founder of Evelyn Street Press and a member of Macondo, the creative writing collective founded by Sandra Cisneros. Cuevas’s writing has appeared in the Tanto Tinto Press Chapbook Series, Ixua Review, Sinister Wisdom, Stone Canoe, Nakum, and in the introduction to the third edition of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute, 2007).
Abstract : This paper reveals how the tension of choosing between ethnic solidarity and non-normative gender/sexual identity continues to trouble Chican@/Latin@ writers, as evidenced in Felicia Luna Lemus’ novel Like Son (2007). Lemus’s fiction serves as a prime example of how queer and genderqueer literary figures struggle — and often fail —to imagine themselves as desirable subjects of an emerging Latinotopia. Even as Latina/o presence further permeates the U.S. popular imaginary, queer Latin@ texts such as Lemus’s remain attentive to the ongoing marginalization of non-normative genders and sexualities within Latinidad.
Résumé: Cet article révèle comment les tensions alimentant le choix entre une solidarité ethnique et une identité sexuelle/genrée non normative continuent de troubler les écrivains Chican@/Latin@, comme le démontre le roman de Luna Lemus, Like Son (2007). La fiction de Lemus illustre magnifiquement comment les personnages littéraires queer et genderqueer peinent à s’imaginer – et parfois ils n’y arrivent pas – comme des objets de désir dans un Latinotopia émergent. Même si la présence Latina/o imprègne de plus en plus l’imaginaire populaire américain, les textes queer Latin@ tels ceux de Lemus prêtent une attention particulière à une marginalisation permanente des genres et des sexualités non normatives au sein de la Latinidad.
Keywords: Chicano/Latino literature, queer, gender, theory, Felicia Luna Lemus. Mots-clés : Littérature Chicano/Latino, queer, genre, théorie, Felicia Luna Lemus.
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 T. Jackie Cuevas
The brown body’s ambiguity is endlessly generative. Anzaldúa’s generational cohort as to demand a more Hiram Pérez, “You Can Have My Brown Body and Eat expansive critical vocabulary in order to construct It, Too!” an account of the interplay among race, gender, and sexuality. For twentieth-first century queer Chicana nn In her seminal 1993 essay “Queer Aztlán,” acclai- writers such as Lemus, psychosocial identity struggles med U.S. Chicana lesbian author Cherríe Moraga tend to coalesce around issues of non-normative gen- articulated a vision for a homeland that embraces der expression or gender identity. Genderqueer sub- 1 queer Chican@s and Latin@s. Moraga’s vision jects in Lemus’s post-borderlands partially disidentify imagined a place where queer Latinas/os would no with both Chicanidad (Chicana-ness) and queerness by longer feel forced to choose between Latin@ and reconfiguring the relation between the two categories queer community. This tension of choosing between at the intersection of genderqueerness. 2 ethnic belonging and non-normative sexuality has “Queer Aztlán” appeared in The Last Generation, continued to trouble U.S. Chican@ and Latin@ in which Moraga pits loss against hope, working writers. Contemporary texts such as the novels of against her fears that she is the last of a dying breed Felicia Luna Lemus examine the plight of the queer of queer Chican@ mestizos. In “Queer Aztlán: The – and particularly the queerly gendered queer – Re-formation of the Chicano Tribe,” Moraga pro- Latin@ as they traverse dystopic pasts and futures. poses a vision for a future homeland for Chican@ In Lemus’s edgy contemporary novels, queer and queers. For Moraga, re-invoking the lost, mythical genderqueer figures struggle – and often fail – to ima- homeland of the ancient Mexica or Aztec indige- gine themselves as desirable subjects of an emerging nous peoples means envisioning a future for queer world. Even as Latina/o presence further permeates mestizaje, where Latinotopic and homophilic spaces the U.S. popular imaginary, queer Chican@ and would converge. Drawing on the rhetoric of the Latin@ texts such as Lemus’s remain attentive to the Chicano civil rights movement, Moraga proffers a ongoing marginalization of non-normative genders queer version of the myth. Of the usage of Aztlán in and sexualities within Chicanidad/Latinidad and within the Chicano movimiento, Lázaro Lima writes, the U.S. The late twentieth century era of queer Chican@ [I]t was the paucity of narrative models that cultural production was marked by the ground- made the Chicano movement found a public iden- breaking Anzaldúan notion of a borderlands theory tity centered on Mexico’s indigenous heritage and of subjectivity for queer Chican@s trying to thrive the greatness of Aztec civilization through the on the metaphorical border between multiple invocation of Aztlán. […] Aztlán created a logic cultures that threaten to split them apart. So, then, of presence that grounded Chicano experience and what might be gleaned from turning to the next being in the United States. (17) generation of queer Chicana writers? As a voice of this next generation, Lemus draws on and extends Significantly, Moraga first presented a version of the cultural work of the borderlands generation. For the “Queer Aztlán” essay at the first national confe- rence of LLEGO, the Latino/a Lesbian and Gay Lemus, in what I call the ‘post-borderlands’, sub- 3 jectivities may be suggested as being Chican@ but Organization, held in Houston in 1992. LLEGO, do not struggle with what that may mean to them which has subsequently disbanded, formed as an offshoot of ALLGO, the Austin Latino/a Lesbian as an identity formation. They are also queer but 4 do not necessarily struggle significantly with their and Gay Organization. The place and impetus for sense of sexuality either. Their experience of exis- Moraga’s proposing a “Queer Aztlán” occurred, ting in a third space between two or more cultures manifests so differently than the likes of Moraga and 2. Here I draw on José E. Muñoz’s “disidentification” theory in which queer people of color refashion codes of dominative culture for their own purposes. 1. Following Domino Renee Pérez and other contemporary Chican@ Studies 3. I am grateful to Ana Ixchel Rosal for compiling an archive of ALLGO’s his- scholars, I use the hybrid term Chican@, shifting away from the use of the tory, to Priscilla Hale for maintaining the archive, and to the many people slash or the more cumbersome spelling out of both words, as in “Chicana involved with ALLGO over the years who contributed archival materials and Chicano”. See D. R. Pérez, There Was a Woman…, 210. I sometimes important for preserving and documenting queer Chican@ histories. use Chican@, Mexican American, and Latin@ interchangeably in order 4. ALLGO has since expanded into the first statewide queer organization in to trouble the geopolitical distinctions between the terms. Texas and is now called ALLGO: A Queer People of Color Organization.
2 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands then, within the context of the first nationally orga- gard, censure, and erasure. The Last Generation nized gathering of queer Chican@s and Latin@s in emerges from those ashes. I write it against time, the U.S. out of a sense of urgency that Chicanos are a Moraga’s conception of a “Queer Aztlán” offers disappearing tribe, out of a sense of this disappea- an alternative vision to the fear of cultural des- rance in my own familia. (2) truction expressed throughout much of The Last Generation. It also serves as a mixed retort to the Moraga’s fear of Chican@s disappearing from radical Queer Nation, a New York based group for- within her own family is partly borne of her own med in 1990 to mobilize controversial direct actions mixed race identity of Chicana and Anglo. The fear against homophobia; the group was criticized by of losing Chicanidad or Chican@-ness within her own mainstream media for their daring tactics, such as family extends outward to a globalized fear of total outing public figures. Groups such as Queer Nation assimilation and erasure of Chican@s by absorp- were also criticized by U.S. queer people of color for tion into the dominant Anglo culture. This fear of not doing more to include them. Arguing from the destruction or conquest is compounded by rejection get-go for another way of making change, Moraga by potential community allies, as Moraga details her opens The Last Generation with an epigraph quoting own personal rejection as a Chicana lesbian by tradi- Mexican novelist Rosario Castellanos: Debe haber otro tional Chican@s as well as by white lesbian feminists. modo… / Otro modo de ser humano y libre / Otro modo Furthermore, she connects the struggles of Chicana de ser (“There must be another way…/ Another lesbians to those of gay Chicanos, particularly around way of being human and free/ Another way of the impacts of HIV and AIDS: “The AIDS epidemic being”). Moraga dedicates her collection of prose has seriously shaken the foundation of the Chicano and poetry “To honor the legacies of Audre Lorde gay community.” (162) As a result, argues Moraga, and César Chávez” and “For the yet unborn” [original “[Chicano] gay men seem more willing than ever emphasis]. Thus, Moraga cites multiple legacies of to explore those areas of political change that will social movements. She calls upon the legacies of the ensure their survival.” (162) According to Moraga, renowned Black Caribbean American lesbian writer [i]n their fight against AIDS, they have been Audre Lorde, who died in 1992, and the Chicano rejected and neglected by both the white gay male Movement labor organizer César Chávez, who died establishment and the Latino heterosexual health- in 1993. Moraga simultaneously suggests that she care community. They have also witnessed direct does indeed imagine and hope for a next generation support by Latina lesbians. (163) to come in “the yet unborn”. Despite this initial glimmer of hope, Moraga makes Moraga claims that the ultimate struggle for les- it clear that her work emanates from her fear of the bian and gay Chican@s and for Chican@s in general finality of imperial conquest. She writes, is aligned with the struggles of native peoples across the globe, citing the fight for self-sovereignty as a In 1524, just three years after the Spanish shared struggle. Yet, in her estimation, the dilemma Conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Náhuatl sages, of Chican@s is exacerbated by the fact that many the tlamatinime, came before the missionary friars Chican@s have turned away from or ignored the in defense of their religion. ‘Our gods are already knowledge of their indigenous elders. Moraga ends dead,’ they stated. ‘Let us perish now.’ Their her manifesto of The Last Generation by urging a codices lay smoldering in heaps of ash. (2) “new Chicano nationalism” and by naming queer Moraga thus identifies herself as operating within Chicanas as inheritors of La Causa Chicana as a form this legacy of the conquered Aztecs: of hope for Chican@s to survive into the next millen- nium (174). She herself attempts to pursue this vision I write with the same knowledge, the same for a potentially queer Aztlán. In The Hungry Woman: sadness, recognizing the full impact of the colonial Mexican Medea (2001), one of her dramatic plays, ‘experiment’ on the lives of Chicanos, mestizos, Moraga imagines what might happen if the indige- and Native Americans. Our codices – dead leaves nous peoples banded together with other margina- unwritten – lie smoldering in the ashes of disre- lized groups of the Southwest U.S. to reclaim lands.
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 T. Jackie Cuevas
But the future envisioned for queers in the recovered some of her predecessors, Lemus does share some homeland disintegrates into a dystopia. Rather than concerns around imagining a place for lesbians and a liberatory dream, the people of the new Aztlán queers in Chican@ and Latin@ community. While re-appropriate indigenous lands and identities, impri- Moraga explores some aspects of gender expression son rebels, and drive freedom fighters to despair and and gender identity in terms of butchness and female auto-genocide. The Hungry Woman reveals how the masculinity, particularly in Loving in the War Years, intersectional contours of racist and homophobic Lemus extends this cultural work to a new level by structures can be deployed as horizontal oppressions writing genderqueerness and non-normative genders by people of color and queers against each other. into the picture. In Lemus’s work, it is not just queer For both Moraga and Anzaldúa, the lesbian in the sexuality but genderqueerness that becomes the borderlands has no home and must make her own next borderlands of Chican@ identity to be crossed, psychic and cultural home out of the remains of her entered, negotiated, constructed, interrogated, and loss and out of what Anzaldúa refers to as her “own imagined. Genderqueerness, because of its unreada- feminist architecture” (Borderlands/La Frontera, 44). In bility, poses a bigger threat to a Chican@ imaginary the final passage of Cherríe Moraga’s mixed-genre than same-sex desire. In Lemus’s first novel, Trace text, Loving in the War Years – a collection of essays, Elements of Random Tea Parties (2003), a Chicana dyke poems, and vignettes – the butch Chicana lesbian named Leti navigates adventures in love and family narrator says: “En el sueño mi amor pregunta ‘Dónde está while being haunted by Weeping Woman, la Llorona tu río?’ And I point to the middle of my chest.” (145). of Mexican folk legend. Lemus’s second novel, Like When her lover asks her in a dream, “Where is your Son (2007) tells the story of Frank, born Francisca, river?” (145) and the lesbiana points to the middle who negotiates similar adventures in love and family of her chest, to her body’s core or her corazón, she is as a female-to-male transgendered person. Both responding in a similar vein to the narrator of Gloria of Lemus’s narratives explore how non-normative Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera faced with a simi- genders push the boundaries of sexuality beyond a lar dilemma of navigating borders and notions of straight/queer binary to include questions of gender home. Anzaldúa’s voice of the new mestiza responds expression. that her home is “a vague and undetermined place.” Lemus’s fiction considers the possibilities and “Wherever I go,” she says, “I carry home on my binds of genderqueerness for Chicanas and opens back.” (43) Anzaldua and Moraga’s contemporaries up a space for talking about the shifting and complex echoed this shared sense of feeling lost in between dynamics between race and ethnicity and gender and a neither here nor there of the borderlands. In the sexuality in ways not necessarily taken up by many 1991 essay “Chicana Lesbians: Fear and Loathing of her literary Chicana predecessors. Lemus’s fiction in the Chicano Community,” in Chicana Lesbians: complicates the issues of gender identity, gender The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, Carla Trujillo expression, gender variance, and genderqueerness, suggests that Chican@s have historically perceived recognizing a range of what queer theorist Judith lesbians as threats. This lament has been widely (Jack) Halberstam calls “female masculinities” (48) expressed by Trujillo’s literary peers, such as Cherríe and paying particular attention to how her charac- Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Emma Pérez, and other ter’s female masculinities negotiate Chicanidad or late twentieth-century Chicana authors whose works Chican@ identity. Lemus’s texts are not concerned navigate a borderland between Latinidad and same- with naming or locating themselves within a geopo- sex love. litical, ethnic, psychological, or spiritual borderland, As a Chicana lesbian text of the current mille- as tended to occur in Chicana lesbian texts of the nium, Lemus’s fiction suggests that it is not lesbia- 1980s and 1990s. While much Chican@ literature nism, same-sex desire, or even sexuality in general, has explored the oppositional dynamics of Chicano but instead genderqueerness that poses greater chal- versus Anglo, citizen versus immigrant-as-foreigner, lenges to the coherence of Chican@ community and working versus middle and owning class, female ver- a shared Chican@ and Latin@ imaginary. Lemus’s sus male, queer versus straight, Lemus adds to the fiction signals a shift away from indexing same-sex matrices of identity and power by exploring what desire as the ultimate Latin@ cultural taboo. Like it means to be genderqueer versus normative as
4 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands well as punkera/punk versus mainstream. Lemus’s In an interview with Lemus conducted by Michelle fiction considers the possibilities and binds of gen- Tea, the author describes her project of representing derqueerness for Chican@s. Her work suggests that and imagining genderqueer Chican@s. Tea says that genderqueerness disrupts a sense of unified cultural when she first read Lemus’s novel, she was confused wholeness in the Chican@ imaginary. But Lemus’s by all of the gender fluidity. In Trace Elements…, the work is not just about rupture; it is also about recla- protagonist Leti does not assume or adopt either a mation and recovery in that for Lemus’s characters feminine or masculine gender expression and stick genderqueerness allows for reclaiming lost history with it as though it were a fixed identity. Lemus offers and coming to terms with a collective Chican@ sense that representing gender fluidity “was important to of lost wholeness. Some Chicana lesbian works prior [her] also in terms of being Chicana,” before going to Lemus’s use the term “lesbian”. 5 Lemus, howe- on to say: ver, eschews the label “lesbian” altogether and tends to use “dyke” and “queer” interchangeably in her I don’t know many androgynous Chicanas or novels. Lemus’s usage enacts a shift away from “les- anyone who plays that line quite like I see people of bian” and “gay” toward “queer” as a signifier within different ethnicities play it. People who are still very Latin@ fiction. While Lemus does not use terms such much in touch with their culture, who aren’t more as genderqueer, transsexual, or transgendered, her assimilated, they still play by the kind of old school work nonetheless takes up these issues and identi- rules of butch/femme. And I respect that. There’s ties as inherently bound up in queer Chican@ expe- something about it culturally that works. (178) rience. Notably, Lemus relegates butch-femme to the past, In GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary, where “old school rules” are at work. Lemus also co-editor Riki Wilchins offers a definition of gen- associates butch-femme in Chicana culture with the derqueerness that encompasses sex, gender, and lack of assimilation into mainstream white culture. sexuality: “In a society where femininity is feared The old school rules of butch-femme, then, become and loathed, all women are genderqueer. In a for Lemus markers of an ethnic authenticity, a sense culture where masculinity is defined by having sex of being “in touch” with one’s culture. This posi- with women and femininity by having sex with men, tions butch-femme as traditional in Chican@ culture, all gay people are gender queers” (12). She further which potentially opens a way for anything outside observes that “whenever gender is mentioned, it is the butch-femme paradigm to seem more assimila- inevitably written down – and too often written off ted, and hence, less Chican@. Leti’’s gender fluidity – as only transgender.” (15) Drawing on Wilchins’s challenges gender norms among Chicanas, queer generalized definition, I am using “genderqueer” and straight. Tea’s confusion about the text speaks to to denote gender variant identities and expressions how the narrative enacts gender fluidity by disrupting that seek to disrupt or transcend the female/male any expectations or assumptions of a gender binary. gender binary or to resist gender norms but do not This shifting terrain of gender expressions makes the necessarily coincide with contemporary uses of the main character’s gender unpredictable and unrea- term “transgender”. On the relationship between dable. the terms “genderqueer” and “transgender”, David In her fiction, Lemus explores what happens Valentine writes, for Chicanas outside of the butch-femme binary. As the meanings around genderqueer evolve, Lemus’s challenge of the Chicana butch-femme it will be essential to think about how this cate- binary emphasizes how butch-femme has become gory works not only against the solidity of identity a marked point of reference for Chicana lesbians. categories but against the solidity of the broader Indeed, Moraga’s autobiographical writings, par- categories of social experience which it describes: ticularly Loving in the War Years, contributed to the gender, sexuality, sex, race, class, and so on. (254) construction of butch-femme as a prevalent form of gender identities among Chicana lesbians. Moraga’s literary persona as a Chicana butch looms large 5. E.g. Juanita Ramos (ed.), Compañeras: Latina Lesbians, New York: Routledge, 1994; Lourdes Torres & Inmaculada Pertusa (eds.), Tortilleras: Hispanic and among the representative body of Chicana lesbian U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression, Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003.
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 T. Jackie Cuevas literature. Given such a literary legacy, Lemus’s texts dered socially acceptable, excluding the masculine can be read as laments as well as celebratory repre- woman, the butch, from what is allowed to be seen or sentations of the (im)possibility of genderqueerness expressed. Lemus’s novels incisively get at the reality beyond butch-femme in Chicanidad. The unreadabi- yet impossibility of female masculinity among queer lity of gendered subjects in Lemus’s novels makes Chicanas. certain kinds of genderqueerness more out of place The novel Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties pri- in Chican@ culture than other kinds of lesbian gen- vileges a working-class, genderqueer Chicana dyke ders. By focusing on versions of genderqueerness subjectivity, attempting to write this subject into an that do not work culturally, Lemus exposes how the empowered position in the Chican@ imaginary. Yet, cultural signs and systems that work and do not work the text ultimately renders this Chicana dyke sub- get read, misread, or not read according to Chican@ ject unreadable by mainstream Chican@s, leaving her understandings of normative genders. with alliances outside Chican@ culture but without If butch-femme, as Lemus claims, “works” cultu- a Chican@ community. This move to position the rally, it is because it is to some extent accepted, or genderqueer Chicana as liberated only outside of acceptable, in Chican@ culture. Lemus’s comment Chicano community addresses the problematic of reveals how butch-femme can be viewed as homo- genderqueer subjectivity in relation to Chicanidad. normative among queers yet heteronormative within The text uses two queer Chicana characters, Leti the context of traditional Chican@ culture. But this and Edith, to show how Chicana lesbians negotiate acceptability of butch-femme can be at the expense aspects of their identity and can make radically of allowing other gender identities or expressions different choices around them. Leti, as the central to flourish; butch-femme can, unfortunately, render figure in the text, becomes the focal point for the other forms of genderqueerness unreadable or unal- development of a particular kind of Chicana dyke lowable. The idea that butch-femme entirely works identity deemed authentic; Edith’s Chicana lesbian in Chican@ culture breaks down in Lemus’s novels, identity becomes discounted around the issue of however, in that the butch or genderqueer lesbians class. Identity in this text is highly performative and are rejected by or cast out of their families. How centers around shared sexuality, gender expression, does butch-femme work if, in Lemus’s texts, the butch and class in ways that may privilege those aspects or masculine woman or genderqueer is cast out of of identity over ethnicity, calling into question the Chican@ family and community? How does butch- notion that one’s ethnicity is always central to one’s femme work, if the butch part of the equation is not identity. Furthermore, Lemus’s narrative configures accepted on its own? There is an elision that occurs Chicana dyke identity as so extremely performative culturally between the lesbian frame of reference and and fluid as to become constantly in transition, and a genderqueerness frame of reference. Butch-Femme hence, indefinable. is a lesbian gender system that is recognizable within Leti is a college-educated Chicana lesbian with a Chican@ context either because of its assumed a working-class background who does not fret over resemblance to heterosexual gender paradigms or what it means to be a Chicana. And once her cha- perhaps because of lesbian cultural work to assert racter outs herself as a lesbian early on in the novel, its meaning. But a butch alone, without being cou- she does not have any notable identity struggles pled with or associated as paired with a femme, is over her sexuality. It is Leti’s genderqueerness that typically read as genderqueer before she is read as a becomes the central aspect of her character’s iden- lesbian or dyke. That is, a Chicana butch gets read tity struggles. Leti, and other characters in the novel, as gender variant before she gets read as a lesbian. push at the boundaries of traditional gender expres- Any genderqueerness is suspect or rejectable because sion. Leti plays with gender expression by mixing it is presumed unacceptable and unreadable. Lemus’s feminine and masculine clothing and by referring to genderqueer protagonists are unreadable as either herself alternately as dyke, boy, boy-girl, femme, or femme or butch, the only readable or discernible princess At one moment, Leti is wearing pearls and categories of gender expression deemed allowable insists on calling herself “princess” (35). Later, she for Chicana lesbians. And even within the tolera- dresses herself in what she refers to as “boy style” ted binary of butch-femme, the feminine is consi- (235). In the narrative, Leti and her friends play with
6 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands gender. This may involve dressing masculine or femi- families around issues of sexuality, particularly les- nine, or being androgynous, or combining these attri- bianism. Leti does not go through a process in which butes. They move seemingly randomly along a gen- she is wracked with indecision about whether she is der expression continuum, engaging in what critic a lesbian or not; she realizes her lesbian identity in Judith Halberstam describes in Female Masculinity as college without so much as a second thought. Thus, “layering”, the practice of donning a layer of outer she does not seem to have an identity crisis over her attire that signifies one’s so-called opposite gender sexuality, and she does not seem to be faced with any (261). Drag performers, for example, often engage desire to announce her newfound sexual identity to in layering that does not try to fully “hide” the biolo- Nana. Whether Nana makes any assumptions about gical gender of the body underneath. According to Leti’s sexuality is never hinted at in the text, and so Halberstram, one who engages in this type of gender we can presume that this was either passed over in play through dress does not hide but instead reveals – silence or simply a non-issue. by allowing all of the layers to show at once – making What does become an issue, however, is Leti’s a genderqueer performance a way of exposing the gender performance. When her Nana visits her on ludicrous limitations of a binaristic gender system. Mother’s Day, Leti dons masculine attire for the For Leti, this type of gender play becomes an inte- occasion. She carefully irons one of her “grown-up gral part of how she moves through her queer world. dress shirts”, a “new skinny navy blue tie”, and a pair Before going out to Crystal’s, her favorite dyke bar, of “new dark brown slacks” (166). This is radically she carefully chooses her attire, pointing out that she different than how she has dressed before. Although wears her pearl choker “especially if [she] was going she has occasionally chosen a single marker of mas- to Crystal’s.” (56) Leti indeed engages in this type of culinity to accent her attire, such as an ex-lover’s layering gender play and seems to revel in queering pair of “Italian zippered boots” (43), she is typically her gender not just by occasionally dressing mascu- depicted as feminine, wearing short dresses, her favo- line but also by mixing elements of masculine and rite pearl choker, and on one occasion, a cat suit. Yet, feminine dress, causing all of her layers of gender she claims to want to “get dressed proper for Nana” expression to show at once. and likens herself to a chemistry “experiment” (165). By situating Leti as the central figure in the text, Leti also radically alters her hairstyle for the occa- Lemus privileges a working-class, genderqueer sion, losing her “sharp-edged bob hairdo” (typically Chicana dyke subjectivity in a way that few Chicana coded as feminine), claiming it “dragged [her] down texts have attempted. These intersecting identity into a funk and put [her] in tears,” despite the fact issues have been theorized by Anzaldúa and Moraga, that we have not been shown any such evidence of for instance, but they have not, for the most part, her unhappiness with her previous appearance. She been addressed in very many Chicana novels. What opts for a “cropped barbershop clean-cut boy hair- Lemus does with this subjectivity, however, raises cut.” She changes her appearance in this manner, a host of questions about how queerness figures “hoping that the elements would meld without too in Chican@ identity, particularly in terms of how harsh an explosion.” (165) Thus, she expects some genderqueer is situated as opposed to, or outside the type of eruption from Nana’s reaction but hopes only boundaries of, Chicanidad. that it will not be too harsh. When Nana arrives at Leti’s grandmother (Nana) becomes a significant Leti’s house and sees her dressed in a manly man- player in Leti’s identity struggle. Significantly, it is ner, Nana reacts strongly to her gender expression by around gender expression – not sexuality – that their exclaiming, “Dear Mother of God. Is that a boy or relationship becomes threatened. Nana and Leti do a girl?” (167) Nana’s reaction is especially significant not explicitly discuss Leti’s sexuality, her dyke iden- because she does not say that Leti looks like a boy tity, or her desire for other women. Throughout the or man; she appears to not understand which sex or text, Leti has a series of girlfriends but she never has gender is being presented. Additionally, she does not a “coming out” moment in which she declares her refer to Leti by name or speak directly to her; she sexuality to Nana, who is her mother figure. This uses the word “that” as though Leti is not a person is a curious absence in a lesbian novel but perhaps but an indecipherable object. Thus, Nana makes it speaks to the silence that pervades many Chican@ clear that it is not Leti’s choice to express a ‘female
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 T. Jackie Cuevas masculinity’ that is a problem. It is the ambiguity her actions call into question her choice to force the of her gender performance that is not readable or issue in this manner. After this scene in which the tolerated. grandmother is shocked by Leti’s masculine gender In grandmother’s reaction, by making an appeal expression, the grandmother suddenly dies. It is as to the Virgin Mary (“Mother of God”), is typically though Leti’s gender ambiguity – her unreadability evoked when one is making a request in prayer (167). – has killed her Mexican grandmother. Thus, the Opening such an appeal with “Dear”, however, novel engages in what I call the ‘killing-the-Mexi- increases the urgency, making the utterance either a can-syndrome,’ in which the feminist protagonist direct appeal to the Virgin Mary or an epithet, doubly can live fully only once the text kills off her Mexican blasphemous in Chican@ Catholic culture because past. Leti also breaks off her relationship with Edith, it curses both the holy figure and the sacred figure the other Chicana lesbian in the novel, because she of the mother. The use of the word “that”, because learns that Edith is from an economically privileged it is a generic, not a gendered pronoun, emphasizes background. This severs Leti’s only other connection the volatility associated with upsetting traditional to her Chican@ community. gender categories. Leti, here, is spoken about as an Leti forms a friendship with a fellow genderqueer, object, unidentifiable in terms of specific gender. The working-class white dyke, Nolan. In the novel’s final generic “that” also distances the two subjects from scene, Leti and Nolan, Chicana dyke and white each other (that over there versus me here). In the dyke, sit together, while Leti waxes nostalgic about absence of a gendered pronoun, the grandmother stories Nana has shared with her of her Mexican calls attention to the ubiquitousness of fixed ideas heritage. In the end Leti is left with two things: her of gender; the grandmother has only the traditional Chicana stories and her alliance with Nolan. On the gender binary to understand Leti: that Leti must be one hand, Leti’s alliance with Nolan can be seen as either a boy or a girl. The question is also infantili- transformative because it crosses ethnic borders, even zing; the grandmother does not ask whether Leti is as it leaves the Chicana without her Chicana com- a man or a woman but asks instead whether Leti is munity. To read this ending, one might be tempted a boy or a girl. She also does not speak directly to to look to Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory to provide Leti, instead calling on her higher spiritual power to a framework for reading the racialized genderqueer explain “that” which she sees before her. Chicana and her predicament around gender, sexua- While we can interpret the grandmother’s reaction lity, class, race, and nation. In Borderlands/La Frontera, as shock, disgust, or dismay at the loss of the possibi- Anzaldúa argues that the Chicana lesbian has no lity of gender normativity, we can also see it simply as race or nation (102). And Lemus’s novel seems to a moment of utter confusion. In that moment of her demonstrate this, in that if Leti wants to be a gender- exclamation, the grandmother fails (whether feigning queer queer person, she can do so only after escaping or not) to read Leti because Leti does not register the boundaries of Chican@ family and community. clearly as either female or male. This moment of un- But in Anzaldúa’s vision of the new mestiza, the readability according to the traditional gender binary Chicana lesbian (and Chicana in general) emerges is also a disavowal, a distancing, and ultimately a de- from the crucible that is the borderlands with a trans- humanizing move that leaves Leti’s very personhood cendent consciousness and radicalized politic organi- in doubt. That Nana does not ever have such an zed around social activism. In Lemus’s narrative, the outburst around Leti’s sexuality suggests that silence Chicana lesbian is without a nation. She is neither or denial is the mode of operating around that issue. envisioned back into her Chican@ nation nor envi- Leti does not ever specifically “come out” (in the sioned as altering that nation so that it will accept her. sense of a discrete declarative event rather than a On the one hand, Lemus may seem to tread on long-term process) to her grandmother, who serves as familiar ground here, implying a forced choice – Leti’s connection to Chicana culture. However, this between Chican@ community and queer community scene of unreadable gender performance is a type – for Chicanas who, like Gloria Anzaldúa, choose to of coming out, one of genderqueerness, and Nana be queer. But Lemus combines an Anzaldúan facultad, essentially rejects her. Although we may sympathize a capacious facility for borderlands metamorphosis, with Leti’s rejection during her coming-out moment, with Moraga’s concept of creating a queer Aztlán, in
8 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands which genderqueer Chican@s reconfigureChicanidad not just part of the characters’ vernacular but also into their own potentially transformative cultural the descriptive and expressive linguistic style that space. This capacity for transformation by the gen- characterizes the entire narrative. This could also be derqueer Chican@ operates through non-normative compared to the queer Black vernacular strategies gender expression as well as at the level of self-repre- of Sharon Bridgforth’s work, with slashes and rena- sentation through language. Lemus portrays this ming that create an expansiveness of description, fluidity of gender via the fluidity of language in the using expansiveness as a method for approaching novel. Lemus’s peculiar use of repetitive descriptions specificity or the intensity of emotion: “Our sex evokes a poetic device employed by the Mexica, or wasn’t exhibitionism, it was public service of a kind ancient Aztecs. In Náhuatl poetry, renaming through and it made me feel high and mighty and sleepy- repetition is common, as is the use of compound eyed just-been-loved.” (104) The compound words words and phrases, such as in the term in xochi in here serve as stylistic antics and experimentations to cuícatl which translates to the compound “flower- do descriptive justice to the playful, hedonistic, and song” or flor y canto, or poetry (Leon-Portilla, 103). erotic lesbian social scene depicted. At the end of This repetition for emphasis is also a poetic strategy this bar scene, Leti’s lover K calls her a “rebel girl” used by seventeenth-century Mexican poet Sor Juana (104), a type of compound in itself, which conveys Inés de la Cruz, known for her outspoken feminist how Leti is not just a rebellious youth but specifically critiques of Mexican social and religious institutions. a rebel against the traditional idea of a what a girl In Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities, Alfred should act like. Arteaga associates Sor Juana’s use of inverted repe- Lemus also deploys this linguistic play with hyphe- titive phrases as a gendered chiasmus, a rhetorical nated compound verbs that capture action that device illustrative of the feminist resistance expressed incorporates or falls between two specific verbs. For in her work. In the case of Lemus, the redundant example, when Leti first meets K, she tries to sound phrases occasionally use a part to describe a whole in smooth and flirtatious after her best friend embar- the form of a metonymy or synecdoche but are more rasses her by mentioning that she works as a dog often simply descriptive or stylistic excess for effect. groomer. Attempting to recover from the embarras- For example, when Leti and her friends get thrown sing career revelation, Leti says, “I kind of laugh- out of a San Francisco gay men’s bar because it is for breathed.” (64) The compound construction suggests gay men only, Leti describes the dive they wind up not quite a laugh and not quite a full breath but both at as “an old movie-house balcony with seats so sun- simultaneously, stressing a sense of in-betweenness or ken-down broken-springs that we might as well have too muchness, a sense of not fitting in or of feeling sat on the sticky floor.” (104) Then when they find a too much discomfort for common language to hold lively dyke venue, Leti describes the scene thus: “[t] or express. Lemus resorts to compound or repeti- he place was wall-to-wall delicious dykes and good tive adjectives to express a single complex idea. She ambience,” (104) where she and her lover “messed describes a group of boys trying to appear tough as around in a curtained caboose seat” while being exhibiting “gangster-proud expressions they copied observed by “[t]wo tired corporate-tower types who from their older brothers.” (77) When describing a were totally out of place in the tough vibe of the lover’s mouth, she says that she has “luscious orange bar.” (104). lipstick lips” (105), using excessive detail to capture The repetitive, tiered descriptions align with the the hyper-feminine seductive excess associated with conversational tone of the novel. For example, the femme femininity. The flowing adjectives are imita- narrator engages in many asides, such as claiming tive or expressive of a flowing feminine speech as well that every word of the story is true or asking the rea- as a resourceful inventiveness resonant of the do-it- der not to laugh at a particularly salacious or embar- yourself attitude or aesthetic of the queer punk scene rassing detail. After a tangential explanation, the also being depicted. The windy descriptions and tan- narrator returns to the main narrative thread with gled phrasings make it sometimes difficult to follow a conversational and improvisational sounding, “So the logic or action or sentence structure, contributing anyway […]” (52) or “I’ll be honest […].” (55) This is further to the text’s ‘unreadable’ sensibility. Lemus’s a regular feature throughout the book that becomes linguistic play amounts to an articulation and crea-
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 T. Jackie Cuevas tion of a vocabulary that can adequately express gen- ders of racialized dis/ability, the in/visibility of the derqueer experience where singular, straightforward undocumented im/migrant, the radical alterity of wording does not suffice. as-of-yet unrecognized or identified subjectivities In Lemus’s first work of queer Chicana fiction, and bodies that will reveal more fissures and destabi- it is clearly the unreadability of genderqueerness, lize yet another constrictive binary of Anglo-centric rather than queer desire, that causes disconnec- Occidental dominance. The fiction of Felicia Luna tions between the young Chicana protagonist and Lemus suggests that the notion of a Latinotopia, for her Mexican American culture and family. Lemus’s non-normatively gendered queer Latin@ subjects, representations of genderqueerness pose questions need not be exclusive. It may be a rather queer future about what it means to be seen, to be visible, or to be indeed, one that is seemingly impossible yet a poten- unseen. In Unexplained Presence, poet and critic Tisa tiality worth seeking. Bryant extends the work of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination to explore Bibliography how black presences in Eurocentric literatures have been used to construct ideas of whiteness. Bryant asks, “What if we grew uncomfortable with mere ALLGO [Austin Latino/a Lesbian and Gay Organization], visibility and found power in being unseen?” Bryant’s ALLGO History & Future, Austin: ALLGO Queer People of question reminds us that for minoritarian subjects, Color Archive, 1985. seeking visibility does not necessarily result in power, ANZALDÚA Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, justice, or positive social change. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Lemus’s novel makes genderqueerness visible ARTEAGA Alfred, Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities, Cam- within a Chican@ frame yet remains uncomfortable bridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. with mere visibility. Lemus’s text provokes an explo- BRIDGFORTH Sharon, The Bull-Jean Stories, Austin: Redbone ration of how and why queers continue to figure P, 1998. BRYANT Tisa, Unexplained Presence, Providence: Leon Works, as unreadable to other Chican@s even in the new 2007. worlds imagined by contemporary Chican@s. It HALBERSTAM Judith, Female Masculinity, Durham: Duke UP, causes us to ask how moments of unreadabiliity of 1998. the other may be interpreted not as a disavowal but LEMUS Felicia Luna, Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties, Eme- as an opportunity for self-construction. In a time of ryville: Seal P, 2003. renewed anti-Latin@ and anti-queer fervor in the ――――――, Like Son: A Novel, New York: Akashic Books, 2007. LEON-PORTILLO Miguel, Aztec Thought and Culture, Norman: U.S., Lemus’s fictive imaginings suggest that illegibi- U of Oklahoma P, 1990. lity in the form of genderqueerness does not have to LIMA Lázaro, The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in Literary and Cultu- result in the loss of community and does not have to ral Memory, New York: New York UP, 2007. be redeemed by a rendering invisible. It can become MORAGA Cherríe, Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por a productive, generative site for constituting pleasu- Sus Labios, Boston: South End P, 1983. rable queer Chican@ lives in unknown futures. ――――――, The Hungry Woman, 1st ed., Albuquerque: West End P, 2001. Lemus’s queer lifeworlds insightfully exemplify ――――――, The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry, Cambridge (MA): how bodies may shift, cultures may transform, and South End Press, 1993. structures of being may transform in the process. MORRISON Toni, Playing in the Dark, Cambridge (MA): Har- When the racialized queer Chican@ body eludes vard UP, 1992. recognition among other Chican@s, it serves as a MUñOZ José Esteban, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Per- reminder that, as Hiram Pérez observes, “The brown formance of Politics, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. NESTLE Joan, Clare HOWELL & Riki Anne WILCHINS body’s ambiguity is endlessly generative.” (You Can (eds.), GenderQueer, Boston: Alyson Books, 2002. Have …, 185) While one may wish to avoid impo- PÉREZ Domino Renee, There Was a Woman: La Llorona from sing a model of linear progression or multicultural Folklore to Popular Culture, Austin: U of Texas P, 2008. additive approach to understanding difference, it PÉREZ Emma, “Sexuality and Discourse: Notes from a Chicana is difficult not to observe how Lemus indeed shows Survivor,” in Carla Trujillo (ed.), Chicana Lesbians: The Girls there are always more boundaries to cross. Examples Our Mothers Warned Us About, Berkeley: Third Woman P, 1991, 159-184. might include the less examined conceptual bor-
10 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands
PÉREZ Hiram, “You Can Have My Brown Body and Eat It, Too!” Social Text 23.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2005): 171-191. TEA Michelle, “Michelle Tea Talks with Felicia Luna Lemus,” in Vida Vendela (ed.), The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers, San Francisco: Believer Books, 2005, 171-191. TRUJILLO Carla (ed.), Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, Berkeley: Third Woman P, 1991. VALENTINE David, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category, Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
Imagining Queer Chican@s in the Post-Borderlands, Cuevas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 11 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities: The Creation of Latinos in the United States Identités panethniques et création des Latinos étasuniens
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5279 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
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Electronic reference Ramón A. Gutiérrez, « Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities: The Creation of Latinos in the United States », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/5279 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5279
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Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities: The Creation of Latinos in the United States Identités panethniques et création des Latinos étasu- niens
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Historian Ramón Gutiérrez is the Preston & Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He first established his reputation with an ambitious chronicle of the Spanish conquest of New Mexico in the book, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. He has authored numerous publications on race and ethnicity in American life, Latino Studies, Mexican immigration and Indian-White relations in the Americas and has received many academic awards, including the John Hope Franklin Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize. He was an associate vice chancellor in the University of California system and a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Ethnic Studies Department in 1989. In addition, Gutiérrez served as founding director of University of California San Diego’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Abstract: This article delves into the complexity of ethnic identities in different national spaces and explores the emergence of panethnicity in the United States, which has become a phenomenon of significant sociological importance since the early 1970s. Specifically, it explores how individuals from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central America and South America came to think of themselves as tied politically as Latinos. This essay argues that such panethnicity can come from above, from state action to gather distinct national and ethnic identities, or it can come from below, from communities that band together for a common purpose.
Résumé : Cet article examine la complexité des identités ethniques dans différents espaces nationaux et explore l’émergence de la panethnicité aux États-Unis, qui est devenue un phénomène d’une importance sociologique significative depuis le début des années 1970. Il explore, plus précisément, comment les personnes originaires du Mexique, de Puerto Rico, de Cuba, d’Amérique Centrale ou du Sud, en tant que Latinos, se considèrent comme partie intégrante d’une unité politique. Cet essai s’appuie sur le postulat qu’une telle panethnicité peut émaner d’une instance supérieure, d’une action étatique visant à réunir les identités nationales et ethniques dis- tinctives ou peut être issue de la base, des communautés qui se regroupent autour d’un objectif commun.
Keyords: Latinos, panethnicity, ethnicity, nationality, Mexican Americans. Mots-clés : Latinos, panethnicité, ethnicité, nationalité, Mexicain Américain.
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Ramón A. Gutiérrez nn There is an anecdote of recent vintage that cir- broader levels of interaction among their different culates along the border dividing Mexico and national groups, but also a heightened sense of oppo- United States. It tells of an act of miscommunica- sitional consciousness. tion between a Mexican immigrant traveling north The rise of such new nationalisms is not an enti- and a U.S. Border Patrol officer trying to stem that rely unique sociological process. Historian Eric flow. The immigrant is a woman named Molly, who Hobsbawm vividly explains in Nations and Nationalism is waiting to cross to the American side. After waiting since 1870, how emerging nation-states, through a many hours, her interview moment with the U.S. process he calls “nationalism from above”, transfor- Border Patrol agent finally arrives. The officer asks med the local residents of the ancient kingdoms of in a gruff voice, “Are you Latina?” She replies: “No, Castile, Aragon, Austurias and León into Spaniards no, no señor. Yo no soy la Tina. Yo soy la Molly. La Tina ya through mandatory language instruction, schooling cruzó.” (No, no, no sir. I am not Tina. I am Molly. and military service, just as the United States for- Tina already crossed.) The border agent was asking ged Polish, Italian, and German immigrants into the woman about her ethnicity as a Latina. The Americans using the same institutions and tech- woman was clearly unfamiliar with ethnic categories niques. What is new and distinct about panethnici- in the United States, had no idea who a “Latina” ties is that they have emerged from below, as acts was, and accordingly interpreted the question as of popular mobilization and consciousness, not as a best she could. She heard Latina not as one word result of direct state action, but nevertheless, often in but as two – la and Tina – and interpreting “la” which opposition to it. means “the” and “Tina” as a person’s name. She was To illuminate this process we will focus in this essay most certainly not the person people knew as la Tina. on the emergence of Latino as a panethnic identity I use this story to delve into the complexity of that brings together Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, ethnic identities in different national spaces and to and a range of Latin American-origin immigrants explore the emergence of panethnicity in the United in the United States. The Oxford English Dictionary States, which has become a phenomenon of signifi- (OED) defines a Latino as “A Latin-American inha- cant sociological importance since the early 1970s. bitant of the United States”. The etymology of the Panethnicities are identities created when several word is latinoamericano, Spanish for Latin American. ethnic groups forge an alliance for social, economic The OED offers several historical uses for the word or cultural advantage, thereby augmenting their starting in 1945 and running to 1974, when Latino numeric power and influence around the issues that entered popular parlance in the English-speaking bring them together. During the late 1960s and early world. The first recorded use of the word Latino in 1970s, movements that sought to gain civil rights in print appeared in 1946, in a book entitled San Antonio, the United States gave rise to this new form of natio- in which mention is made of a group of Latin nalism. Indigenous tribes, such as the Cherokee, the American exchange students who were scheduled Apache, and the Menominee, for example, came to offer a musical performance at the University of to see themselves collectively as Native Americans Texas. The book’s author, G. Peyton, snidely remarks: because of their common experiences of genocide, “That in itself would be a fresh intellectual expe- their similar structural relationship to the federal rience for Texas, where Latinos are usually looked government, and their long histories of collective on as sinister specimens of an inferior race.” Lady plight. Immigrants and long-time residents who Bird Johnson’s White House Diary, contained an entry hailed from such divergent places as Mexico, Puerto dated April 2, 1970, in which she noted that “Six Rico, and the Dominican Republic began celebra- young girls, all Latinos, had encased themselves in ting their unity as Latinos in the 1970s, much as cardboard boxes” during a party on the White House persons from China, Japan and Korea came to see lawn hosting the diplomatic corps. Finally, The Black themselves in the United States as Asian Americans. Panther, the newspaper of the Black Panther Party, As new panethnic groups they protested their mar- reported in its March 17, 1973 issue, “A program was ginalization and the toxic legacies of racism, milita- ted for political recognition, and petitioned the state for compensatory remedies, demonstrating not only
2 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities drawn up […] by an […] action group composed of groups that hail from Latin America and who call Blacks, Latinos, and Whites.” 1 themselves Latinos. They are now the largest ethnic The first recorded references to Latinos were tied group in the United States, having surpassed African geographically to ethnic understandings in Texas, Americans in number and proportion. According to where calling a person a “Mexican” in the 1940s the 2010 Census of the United States, the country’s was an extreme insult. In polite English-speaking total population numbers 310.2 million, of whom company, Mexican Americans were called Latin 32 million are of Mexican ancestry. Their presence Americans when one wanted to praise them in in areas that were eventually incorporated into the positive terms; they were simply Mexicans if one United States dates back to 1598 and the establish- intended to insult. The first Mexican American civil ment of a Spanish colony in what became New rights organization in the United States, which was Mexico. In the two centuries that followed, Spanish begun in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1929, was named settlements were established in Texas, Arizona, accordingly the League of United Latin American Colorado, and California, which became Mexican Citizens, or LULAC for short (see Márquez). What territory in 1821 when the country gained its inde- we also see in the above-cited passages from G. pendence from Spain. But these provinces quickly Peyton and The Black Panther is that the word Latino changed hands again and were annexed into the was racialized and referred to a group of people dee- United States as a result of the Texas Revolution med to be of an “inferior race”. In the late 1960s, (1836) and the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48). From members of minority communities began recogni- this initial group of settlers, the Mexican population zing three races – black, white, Latino – to affirm of the United States again grew rapidly between that American society had moved beyond its simple 1910 and 1917, when a revolution in Mexico sent black/white racial dichotomy, which no longer hundreds of thousands packing north fleeing vio- adequately described the racism persons of Latin lence at home. And the numbers were further com- American origin experienced in the United States. pounded when Mexico and the United States nego- tiated a guest worker program in 1942 to supply Panethnicity among Latinos emerged from a cheap labor to industries deemed essential to World complex combination of cultural and structural War II. The Bracero Program, as it was called, out- factors that together became the basis for a reactive lived the war, lasting until 1964 because it was an identity that was intentionally organized to coun- easy way for business interests in the United States to ter hostile, demeaning and discriminatory acts by secure an abundant supply of cheap labor regulated the dominant society while projecting a defensive by the state. communal dignity. Sociologists tell us that reactive The majority of Mexican Americans are relega- immigrant identities are not foreign imports but ted to the lowest rungs of the economy, working as quite distinctly American. They have sprouted unskilled labor in service industries, agriculture and in local contexts, in places with long histories of construction. The history of discrimination against discrimination toward persons of African, Asian, them is extensively chronicled. Their work has been indigenous, and Latin American origin. Emerging valued differentially at lower rates; they are afforded first in cities like Chicago and New York, largely to few legal protections, and in cases of exploitation, left advance political agendas not easily achievable by with little remedy or recourse. Their social segrega- small, isolated ethnic groups, Latino identity was tion in barrios, or ghettoes, has been marked by subs- championed next by regional civil rights organi- tandard housing with little access to public transport zations seeking nation-wide clout, and finally dif- and commerce, and even fewer bridging ties to ear- fused more broadly through advertising targeted ning and learning opportunities. Historically, their at a group’s ethnic consumption patterns (Portes & children have been systematically denied quality Rumbaut, 248). education by restricting their access to those schools Mexican Americans are the largest, best documen- reserved for whites, by refusing to employ bilingual ted, and most regionally dispersed of the immigrant and bicultural instructors to facilitate the transition to English-language mastery, by tracking them into 1. Oxford English Dictionary, accessed on line on 9.2.2010 at www.oed.com. low paid trades rather than college preparatory
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Ramón A. Gutiérrez sequences, and by assigning under-prepared or dere- rity of Latinos were Mexican. Many had entered lict teachers to their dilapidated and under-funded the country illegally, were reproducing more rapidly schools. Despite the fact that the majority of ethnic than Whites or Blacks, by about a ratio of 5 to 1. Mexicans in the United States were born here, were They spoke Spanish at home and at work, refused naturalized as citizens or are here legally on work to learn English, were leading highly segregated visas, most of them nevertheless suffer the stigma of lives, and were largely confined to society’s lowest “illegality”, not worthy of equal protection. When economic rungs. These facts portended anarchy, accused of crimes in past times they rarely have racial war, and separatist sentiments comparable been judged by a jury of their peers, have often been to those of the Quebecois, Huntington warned. handed harsher sentences than their fellow white citi- Others made similar points both from conserva- zens, and have been constantly surveilled and subjec- tive and liberal perspectives. Peter Brimelow’s Alien ted to unwarranted police harassment (see López). Nation, Lawrence Auster’s The Path to National Suicide: Since the early 1920s, white patriotic societies and An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, Richard D. eugenicist organizations have been clamoring for Lamm and Gary Imhoff ’s The Immigration Time Bomb, Mexican immigration to be stopped because their and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s, The Disuniting of America: presence was leading to the mongrelization of the Reflections on a Multicultural Society were but some of the white race, to fornication and sexual debauchery, and most shrill anti-Mexican immigrant books. to a “hatred of the gringo”, or so claimed Vanderbilt Such academic tracts gave grist to nativist mills, University sociologist Roy L. Garis in testimony which soon found their way into policy-making before the United States Congress in 1930. 2 Though and state action. In 1994, California’s voters passed the actual metaphors of contagion and reaction have Proposition 187, hailed as a referendum to “Save changed slightly over the decades, for at least 40 Our State”, barring state agencies from providing years now Mexicans have been feared as a tsunami unauthorized immigrants with basic social services in of sorts, described either as a “wave”, a rapidly rising health, education. Two years later, Proposition 209, “tide”, or as an “explosion” signaling “seismic popu- promoted as “California’s Civil Rights Initiative”, lation shifts”, with California as “ground zero” (see was approved by voters prohibiting California’s Santa Ana and Chavez). state agencies from considering race, sex, or ethni- Such rhetoric of reaction suffuses not only popular city in the distribution of work opportunities, state journalism in its radio, print and television forms, but contracts, access to education, or housing benefits. In scholarly representations as well. Dale Maharidge, 1998, Proposition 227 was similarly passed, ending a 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner, recently penned The most bilingual education programs in the state. Most Coming White Minority: California’s Eruption and America’s of these initiatives in California were explicitly aimed Future, in which he ignorantly declared that “No at ethnic Mexicans, curtailing many of the hard-won white society in the industrial world has ever evolved victories and ameliorative changes wrought by the into a mixed society,” predicting cultural explosions civil rights movement of the late 1960s (Martínez that required whites to arm themselves for the dif- Hosang). ficult fight ahead. Similar alarmist tones were arti- Of course, California was not alone in its anti- culated by the late Samuel P. Huntington in Who Mexican state actions. In 2010, Arizona’s governor Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, in signed into law Senate Bill 1070, which ordered local which he argued that the cultural division between police to identify, prosecute and deport individuals Latinos and Anglos would soon replace the racial suspected of being in the country illegally. Mexican division between Blacks and Whites. The vast majo- American civil rights organizations have argued that the legislation is racist and will result in racial profi- ling, an argument with which the administration of 2. Garis claimed that Mexican minds “run to nothing higher than animal functions – eat, sleep, and sexual debauchery. In every huddle of Mexican President Barack Obama concurs, noting that immi- shacks one meets the same idleness, hoards of hungry dogs, and filthy chil- gration regulation is solely a federal responsibility, not dren with faces plastered with flies, disease, lice, human filth, stench, pro- miscuous fornication, bastardy, lounging, apathetic peons and lazy squaws, one granted to individual states. Arizona’s governor, beans and dried chili, liquor, general squalor, and envy and hatred of the Jan Brewer, further intensified the state’s attack on gringo [...] Yet there are Americans clamoring for more of this human swine to be brought over from Mexico.” (Mexican Immigration… , 436). ethnic Mexicans, signing into law House Bill 2281
4 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities making it illegal for Arizona’s publicly funded schools lar bids. Though there had been plenty of sentiment to teach courses that “promote resentment of a parti- and activity for the proclamation of Puerto Rican cular race or class of people, are designed primarily independence since 1868, it was repeatedly thwarted for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate by Spain and the United States. The U.S. had long ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as coveted the island as a way of achieving its own lar- individuals.” (See “Arizona Bill …”) Weeks later, the ger geo-political visions of hemispheric empire and Arizona Department of Education ordered school repeatedly asserted its claim, various times offering districts to remove teachers with heavily accented to buy the island from Spain. In 1898 the United or ungrammatical English from contact with stu- States provoked war with Spain over the Philippines dents still learning the language, and moved to cur- that quickly spread to the Caribbean as well, engul- tail Mexican American Studies classes (see “Arizona fing Puerto Rico and Cuba. When the United States Grades …”). emerged the victor, it quickly took Cuba and Puerto The attack on Mexican immigrants and Mexican Rico. When the Spanish-American War was ended Americans in recent years has come not only from with the Treaty of Paris in 1898, the United States states like California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, rapidly smashed the local independence movement but also from cities and municipalities like Hazelton, on Puerto Rico, with the 1900 Foraker Act esta- Pennsylvania, Carpentersville, Illinois, Farmers blished American rule over the island, and with the Branch, Texas, and Prince William County, Virginia, Jones Act of 1917 declared Puerto Ricans citizens of through a variety of actions. Some cities have orde- the United States. red landlords to determine the immigrant status Puerto Rico’s population remained largely confi- of anyone seeking rental housing under pain of ned to the island between 1900 and 1930, with punishment and fines. Others have prohibited the approximately 1,800 individuals migrating to the congregation at particular street corners of unem- mainland yearly during this period. This trend began ployed men seeking low wage day labor in housing to accelerate in the years leading to World War II, construction and gardening. Still others have ordered when increasing numbers migrated to New York local police to demand full identification from anyone City to fill that city’s jobs and to enlist in the mili- stopped for minor traffic infractions and if the driver tary. In 1940 there were 69,967 Puerto Ricans living or passengers are found to be unauthorized immi- on the mainland, the vast majority of them in New grants, to turn them over to the U.S. Department York City. By 1950 that number had increased to of Homeland Security for deportation. The purpose 226,110, by 1970 to 1,391,464, by 2000 to 3.4 mil- of all of these actions is to create a hostile environ- lion, and by 2010 to 4.5 million. While in 1940 88 ment for ethnic Mexicans, with the hope of propel- percent of all Puerto Ricans on the mainland lived ling those unauthorized to be in the United States to in the state of New York, by 1980 there was more leave (see Varsanyi). regional dispersion, with 49 percent in New York, A very similar story of discrimination and margi- 12 percent in New Jersey, 6.4 percent in Illinois, nalization can be told about the 4.5 million Puerto and with approximately 4.5 percent in each of the Ricans who currently live on the mainland of the following states: California, Florida, Pennsylvania, United States. They are the second largest Latino and Connecticut. By 2010, only about 20 percent of group and together with Mexican Americans account mainland Puerto Ricans resided in New York City for 75 percent of all Latinos. Puerto Rico was origi- (Whalen & Vásquez-Hernández, 2-3). nally discovered by Christopher Columbus on his The problems Puerto Ricans faced in the United second voyage to the Americas in 1493 and was States were not unlike those suffered by Mexican settled by Spanish colonists soon after. For most of Americas. While the citizenship status of ethnic its Spanish colonial history, Puerto Rico was largely Mexicans had long been suspect and stigmatized by a military fort and entrepot for commerce between the suspicion of illegality, Puerto Ricans have been de Mexico and the port of Europe. In the early part of jure citizens since 1917. But rarely were they treated as the nineteenth century, as Spanish America’s various such. Their life chances on the mainland were limi- regions sought and won their independence, only ted, despite repeated sociological studies proclaiming Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, failed in simi- that they too would eventually be assimilated into the
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Ramón A. Gutiérrez
American body politic as other immigrants before of Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Aztecs. No them had. If they learned English, took American one now really knows where exactly it is or ever was; brides, accepted the Protestant ethic of hard work, it could have been pure mythology. But it has long persevered in school, they too would move out of been suspected to be in Mexico’s north whence the their ethnic enclaves, gain political representation nomadic Indians that ultimately came to be known and the fruits of upward mobility. In 1976 the United as the Mexica first emerged. And it was in Mexico’s States Commission on Civil Rights issued a report north or what became the American Southwest that that attempted to assess and understand the problems Chicanos asserted claims to a homeland (see Anaya and progress Puerto Ricans had experienced since & Lomelí). the 1940s. Entitled Puerto Ricans in the Continental United Puerto Rican radicals conjured up a very similar States: An Uncertain Future, the report noted that Puerto territorial design, arguing that Puerto Ricans living Ricans were living in substandard housing, the majo- on the island and mainland were a “divided nation”. rity led lives of poverty and underemployment, had If liberation was to occur for mainland Puerto poor access to education and quality health services, Ricans, they first had to bring national liberation to and suffered inordinately from racial discrimination. the island. In early 1971 the Young Lords began their As the report noted, they were still living in utter Ofensiva Rompecadenas (“Break-the-Chains Offensive”), poverty ten years after the United States had waged calling for unity in their attempt to gain indepen- “War on Poverty” (U. S. Commission on Civil Rights dence for Puerto Rico. Though this vision had been …, 5). militantly pursued since the 1950s, its embrace by the I cite this long history of structural inequalities Young Lords ultimately weakened the organization, suffered by Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans spread their resources thin, and caused a fair amount to explain what led these groups, in the late 1960s, of factionalism between themselves and groups on to abandon older forms of activism rooted in self- the island. By late 1972, the Young Lords repudia- help associations, in mutual aid societies, in labor ted this strategy, arguing instead that Puerto Ricans unions and in ethnic churches, and to turn to a mili- were an “oppressed national minority” in the United tant and reactive nationalism. In the early 1960s States, that Puerto Rico was a nation, and that main- Mexican Americans demanded self-determination, land Puerto Ricans had to focus their energies and national autonomy, and invented a reactive ethnicity resources on their compatriots in the United States as Chicanos and Chicanas, much as Puerto Ricans (Morales, 221-22). on the mainland and island proclaimed themselves Besides such dreams of national autonomy and self- Boricuas. They eschewed any association with whi- determination, Chicanos and Boricuas both espoused teness, which civil rights organizations since the 1920s an ideology of self-help and sought the improvement had long invoked to avoid equation with the stigma of of their fellow ethnics in material and psychic ways. blackness. The Black Power movement of the 1960s Under the leadership of César Chávez they sought offered inspiration to both Chicanos and Boricuas better wages and work conditions for farm workers and gave form to their organizational structures. of every nationality – Mexican, Filipino, Japanese, Chicanos founded the Brown Berets and Boricuas Puerto Rican. Under the banner of Reies López started the Young Lords, heralding their racialized Tijerina, Chicanos militated to regain lands fraudu- identities as brown and black. Chicanos and Boricuas lently stolen in New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. In alike gave very specific territorial designs to their places like New York City, Denver, Albuquerque and national sentiments and ambitions, seeking seces- Los Angeles they protested against police brutality. sion and national sovereignty as a remedy for their In New York, Texas, New Mexico and California, histories of segregation and marginalization in the the states with the densest Mexican American and United States. Chicanos proclaimed that they wan- Puerto Rican populations, they launched legal chal- ted to unite the states of California, Arizona, Texas, lenges against discriminatory schooling, housing and New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, those territories employment practices. taken by the United States when it annexed Texas Equally important to both Chicanos and Boricuas in 1845 and won the U.S.-Mexico War in 1848, and was an assault on racism, both in its material and to proclaim these lands as the autonomous nation psychological dimensions. Heralding a need to affirm
6 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities their personal beauty and their pride, both move- perdido en un mundo de confusión: ments emphasized that it was high time to abandon their sense of shame rooted in poverty and color, and I am Joaquín, to affirm in its broadest terms the beauty of their art, their language, and their culture. Pedro Pietri captured this sense of pride in his now famous book lost in a world of confusion, of poems, Puerto Rican Obituary. In a poem that has the same title Pietri wrote: caught up in the whirl of a gringo society, Here lies Juan confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes,
Here lies Miguel suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society… Here lies Olga in all the fertile farmlands, Here lies Manuel the barren plains, Who died yesterday today the mountain villages, And will die again tomorrow smoke-smeared cities, Always broke we start to MOVE. Always owing La raza! Never knowing Mejicano! That they are beautiful people Español! Never knowing Latino! The geography of their complexion Chicano! PUERTO RICO IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE Or whatever I call myself, PUERTORIQUEÑOS ARE A BEAUTIFUL RACE (3) I look the same Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s poem “I Am Joaquín,” which was eventually made into a short movie that I feel the same was shown at many high schools, was similarly meant to incite Chicano rebellion and cultural pride. The I cry poem, which is long and only excerpted here, begins and ends as follows: And Yo soy Joaquín,
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Sing the same. of cultural incorporation and membership in a body politic, challenged unbridled capitalism, framing the I am the masses of my people and local in relationship to the global, simultaneously linking local struggles for self-determination with global anti-imperialist ones. It also created organiza- I refuse to be absorbed. tions for community policing, food cooperatives, and educational campaigns for a safer food and healthier I am Joaquín. bodies. The thirteen-point platform of the Puerto Rican Young Lords made almost identical demands: The odds are great We want community control of our institutions and land. We want control of our communities by But my spirit is strong, our people and programs to guarantee that all ins- titutions serve the needs of our people. People’s My faith unbreakable, control of police, health services, churches, scho- ols, housing, transportation, and welfare are nee- ded. We want an end to attacks on our land by My blood is pure. urban renewal, highway destruction, and university corporations. LAND BELONGS TO ALL THE I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ. PEOPLE! (qtd. in Beltrán, 33-34)
I SHALL ENDURE! By now, attentive readers may be wondering about the place of Cuban immigrants in this history of the radicalization of Mexican Americans and Puerto I WILL ENDURE! Ricans in the United States. Recall that the Cuban El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, the 1969 document that Revolution occurred in 1959 and it was not until the birthed the Chicano movement spelled out a capa- early 1960s that significant numbers of Cubans left cious notion about how national unity and political the island for residence ninety miles away in Florida. empowerment could be achieved. It called for natio- The Cubans who arrived as political refugees in nal unity among all racially oppressed groups, for the United States were of much higher class origin community control of local institutions and commu- (mostly elites and middle class professionals), carried nitarian management of their resources through res- immensely more money and cultural capital with ponsible capitalism, for culturally relevant educatio- them, often already had homes and businesses in nal curricula with community control of schools, for the United States, and quickly became beneficiaries the development of institutions that protected ethnic of Affirmative Action programs meant for persons Chicano civil and human rights and guaranteed fair who had had lesser privileges and opportunities in wages, for community self-defense through huma- American life. What radicalism Cuban refugees did nitarianism, for a contestational cultural policy “to express was focused on the regime of Fidel Castro defeat the gringo dollar value system,” and for the on their return to Cuba to overthrow of the Cuban rejection of the two party system for a more equi- Revolution, and was almost entirely anti-Communist table pluralist politics (see Rosales). in nature. As we will see below, the Cubans who took In the 42 years since the Plan was issued many refuge in the United States were instrumental in craf- have repudiated it as vulgar nationalism, its fractu- ting “Latino” into an identity of consumption, but to ring of the liberal civil rights coalition, the culture this topic we will turn shortly below. of violence and hyper-masculinity it celebrated, and Once oppositional consciousness and militant natio- the homophobia and gender politics that structu- nalism had developed among Chicanos and Boricuas red the personal behavior of those who espoused in the United States, three other factors contributed Chicanismo, both in boardrooms and in bedrooms. to the development of Latino panethnicity in very The Plan nevertheless created an alternative vision specific places: demography, language, and residen-
8 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities tial patterns. As far as I have been able to surmise, The initial successes through direct action intensi- Chicago was the first place an explicit Latino identity fied the Coalition’s sense of unity and on March 16, emerged. It did so among Mexican Americans and 1973, it convened a “Latino Strategies for the 70s” Puerto Ricans, who despite their respective small conference. Their press release for the event proclai- numbers and dispersion in different parts of the med: “The brown skin Latino has awakened and he city understood that if they were to enhance their will never be the same again […] he will never be material lives they had to come together for collective the same again because he knows that to live is to gains. In the early 1970s this took the form of the La enjoy freedom. He has learned that to be a Latino Coalición Latinoamericana de Empleos, which instead of is good.” 3 Among the many outcomes of the confe- literally translating the Spanish name of their asso- rence was the formation of the “Latino Institute” ciation as “The Latinamerican Coalition for Jobs”, in 1973 to function as an organization and a space chose “The Spanish Coalition for Jobs”. The prin- that would gather all the initial Coalition’s consti- cipal goal was to demand that companies such as tuent groups. The Latino Institute took as its major Illinois Bell Telephone and Jewel Tea Company goal the education of Latino parents about bilingual honor affirmative action policies put in place by the education. They would teach parents how to advo- federal government. Composed of 23 Puerto Rican cate for it, the range of bilingual education models to and Mexican American community organizations, choose from, and how to evaluate a school’s progress the Coalition explicitly militated for the improvement on educating their children. of “Latinos”. As the Coalition’s foundational docu- Since the emergence of a Latino panethnic ment explained, they had united because “the racist consciousness in Chicago in the early 1970s, a attitude of employers triggered us into utilizing our number of studies have been published that chro- consumer power as a tool or bargaining device […] nicle different aspects of Latino identity in other to compete in the job market.” (qtd. in Padilla, 89-90) cities of the United States. What makes it difficult Illinois Bell was their first target. In 1971 Coalition to compare these works is that when they speak of representatives repeatedly met with the company’s Latino panethnicity they have very different aspects management to question why its workforce of 44,000 of Latinidad in mind. To help pinpoint exactly what individuals included only 300 Latinos. The Coalition is being spoken about, it is important to categorize demanded that this number be increased by 1,000 per Latino panethnicity into four types, of course fully year for a three-year period, or the addition of 3,000 cognizant that behavior does not always fit nicely into new Latino workers. When Illinois Bell offered only these ideal categories and that these distinctions often 115 jobs in response to the demand, the Coalition overlap. For purposes of analysis it is important to staged its first mass action for and by Latinos, picke- think of Latinidad as being ideological, institutional, ting the company’s headquarters in Chicago starting experiential and categorical. The first two forms, in mid-September 1971. On June 14, 1972, a settle- ideological and institutional, were already mentio- ment agreement was reached. Illinois Bell would hire ned above with concrete examples when we noted 1,323 more Latinos by the end of 1976, including two that the oppression Mexican Americans and Puerto top-level executives, and would form a community Ricans experienced in Chicago was so intense that review committee to chart the company’s progress leaders of community organizations came together toward this goal (Padilla, 96-97). Chicago’s Jewel to form the Spanish Coalition for Jobs and shortly Tea Company was the Coalition’s next target and thereafter began calling themselves Latinos ins- presented it with similar demands in March 1972. tead of Chicanos, Boricuas, Mexican Americans or The company had received more than a quarter of Puerto Ricans. a million dollars from the federal government to train The interplay of similar ideological and institu- minority workers, yet only 140 Latinos had been so tional forms of Latino panethnicity are evident in prepared. The Coalition cited statistics about Jewel’s the descriptions Cristina Mora’s dissertation, “De workforce and the under-representation of Latinos. Muchos, Uno: The Institutionalization of Latino After almost a year of picketing, in the summer of Panethnicity, 1960-1990,” offers of the transforma- 1973, Jewel agreed to hire more Latinos through an independent job placement agency (idem). 3. “Latino Strategies for the 70’s – Report,” as quoted in Padilla, 105.
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 Ramón A. Gutiérrez tion of the Southwest Council of La Raza. This orga- identity by social movement activists and transfor- nization, which was founded in 1968 as a Mexican ming it into a broader depoliticized category meant American civil rights organization with a very speci- primarily to target the consumption of ethnic pro- fic regional focus on Texas and California, in the late ducts by a particular group of people. In the 1950s 1970s evolved into a national organization modeled much of the advertising by American firms that after the NAACP. Hoping to serve as the interlocutor took place in Latin America was based in Havana, for the entire Latino population of the United States, Miami and New York. After the Cuban Revolution, it changed its name to the National Council of La many of the Cuban advertising executives that had Raza, opened a headquarters office in Washington, once worked in Havana emigrated to New York and D.C., and began to advocate not only for Mexican Miami, whence they resumed their activities. In the Americans, but on behalf of all the social, politi- 1970s and 1980s, these mostly Cuban Americans cal and economic concerns of Latinos as a whole. started lumping together and homogenizing Latin As Mora argues, the organization’s transformation American national identities into a larger marke- occurred by first recognizing and harnessing popu- ting sector, which they also called Latino. If they lar identification with “Latino”, developing a natio- could create a clearly identifiable “Latino” market, nal vision and mission that included the issues that identifying its needs and desires, they stood to pro- affected all immigrants in the United States of Latin fit enormously as the individuals and ad firms that American origin. With an organization, a national knew how to sell to this group. They were then in office, and an emergent political identity the National the position to persuade the large corporations that Council of La Raza created the infrastructure and produced food, beverages, and a host of domestic authority to get philanthropic groups, such as the goods that Latinos constituted a significant mass Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, to recognize them market that needed special ad campaigns and that as the interlocutors for the Spanish-speaking popu- only their advertising agencies were expertly pre- lation of the United States, and accordingly gene- pared to address. This is exactly what happened, rously fund their work. Finally, with such national argues Arlene Dávila in Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and visibility and economic support, it became logical for Making of a People. They began educating the manu- the federal government to seek their advice as well, facturers of products about what the Latino market calling upon them to help the U.S. Census Bureau to wanted and would consume. These producers then craft the ethnic and racial categories that would be purchased advertising campaigns targeted to the used in subsequent decennial counts. Mora argues Latino market the ad agencies had invented. Quickly, that for Latino to emerge as a national panethnic then, beer, soda pop, cooking oil, even bleach came identity, it needed not only an ideological and insti- to embody lo Latino, that unique Latino essence that tutional foundation, which it quickly harnessed, but only the Coors Brewing, PepsiCo, General Foods and it also needed a source of diffusion, which it got in Clorox could deliver to this group. the form of Univision, a Spanish-language televi- The imposition of a categorical identity from sion network in the United States, which generated above, that is, an invented Latino unity that then it own programming aimed to appeal to American got disseminated broadly throughout the Americas Latinos, which supplemented the shows the network because of the power of the advertising dollar and purchased for broadcast from other countries in the the reach of the global media, was no different than Spanish-speaking world. what the state itself did when it created Hispanics Earlier we noted that in most local contexts in and Latinos as official United States government which a Latino panethnic consciousness emerged, categories of analysis and data-gathering. Thus, even Cubans did not participate in this identity prima- though immigrants may hail from Guatemala, Peru, rily because of their class positions and their laser- Argentina or the Dominican Republic, and think of like focus on the overthrow of the Castro regime in themselves as nationals from these places, in the eyes Cuba. Cuban refugees active in advertising were of census takers and data keepers, they are Latinos, nevertheless instrumental in domesticating and neu- pure and simple (see Rodríguez). Thus, when one tralizing the use of the category “Latino”, which applies for a job, seeks admission into a university, or had first been used as a reactive and oppositional obtains medical care in the United States, the pape-
10 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities rwork that one must fill for these usually asks for eth- the entire hue of complexions. Nothing specifically nic classification. When the forms give one only the unites these groups as Latinos, except their use of option of Latino or Hispanic, the government has the Spanish language, and in the past, a Roman imposed a categorical identity from above, which it Catholicism that is being supplanted in many places hopes individuals will embrace in time. by Protestant evangelical religions. In areas where the Two rather well regarded studies of Latino iden- two largest Latino groups – Mexican Americans and tity give experiences of daily social interaction in Puerto Ricans – have been in close contact for long places of residence, markets, houses of worship and periods of time, relationships of affiliation and trust, workplaces a great amount of importance in crea- as of chauvinism and antagonism exist. As Nicholas ting a sense of commonality and Latinidad among de Genova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas make clear in immigrants from many Latin American countries. their study of relations between Mexicans and Puerto Both Carol Hardy-Fanta’s Latina Politics, Latino Ricans in Chicago during the late 1990s, which Politics: Gender, Culture, and Political Participation in focuses on a period twenty years after the exuberance Boston, which focuses on language politics surroun- of Latino cooperation in the 1970s chronicled above, ding bilingual education and campaigns to elect relations between the two groups were tense, marked Latino candidates there, and Milagros Ricourt and by suspicion and antagonism. Mexicans resented Ruby Danta’s Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity Puerto Ricans because of their citizenship, which in a New York City Neighborhood, which studies how entitled them to welfare and government assistance women in Corona and Queens interact, maintain and thus constantly demonized them as lazy, welfare that women are the active agents that diffuse and dependent and abusers of state benefits for the poor. cement Latino experiential identity. When women Mexicans suffered the stigma of illegality, of being gather in the stairwells of their apartment buildings unauthorized immigrants in the United States and to gossip about local affairs, when women commise- thus Puerto Ricans saw them as persons who allowed rate about the poor education their children receive themselves to be easily exploited, accepting uncom- when they gather at the local laundromat, when they petitive wages and operating in an underworld of wrangle over the price of tomatoes and potatoes with illicit drugs, prostitution, and gangs to make their a local vender and then chat about their respective way in the United States. Thus, whatever unity and worlds, they enter into interactions in the Spanish political cohesion Latinidad provided these two groups language, connect with Latin Americans from diffe- in Chicago in the 1970s, by 2000 that sentiment had rent places and by so doing give a tangible experience evaporated. to Latinidad. Of course, immigrants from Ecuador, The scholarly literature concludes that for paneth- the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Guatemala do nicity to emerge, one first needs a population that not quickly or easily lose their natal national identi- is significantly marginalized and exploited and that ties, but by constantly interacting, or so these female comes to see itself as such, in opposition to majo- authors contend, women are creating the tangible rity white identities. Once such a reactive ethnicity is foundation for Latino identity. in place, demography and geographic isolation has Open up any newspaper, listen to any talk radio brought together ethnic groups that previously had show, or turn on the television pundits, what they no common history. Much of the world’s ethnic poli- repeatedly announce is that Latinos are an emerging tics are language politics; that Mexican Americans majority that everyday is becoming more potent in and Puerto Ricans, or for that matter any other politics, commerce and the very racial make up of combinations of Latin American national groups the United States. But how much unity exists among shared a common language and sometimes also a Latinos? How operative and decisive is Latino common religious culture, made it easy for paneth- identity in the lives of people who claim it or are nicity to emerge and channeled into an oppositional denominated by it? The simple demographic fact, consciousness. But as the evidence from Chicago as discussed above, is that the Latino population of over a period of forty years also shows, state action, the United States is large and diverse, encompas- a changing demographic balance, more intense com- sing over 20 national identities, spanning various petition between national/ethnic groups of local class positions, and racial make up that includes resources can just as easily breed antagonisms and
Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 11 Ramón A. Gutiérrez hatreds, where once mutuality was deemed the poli- MÁRQUEZ Benjamín, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican Ameri- tical necessity for communal advancement. can Political Organization, Austin: U of Texas P, 1993. MARTÍNEZ HOSANG Daniel, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initia- tives and the Making of Postwar California, Berkeley: U of Cali- fornia P 2010. Bibliography MORA Cristina, “De Muchos, Uno: The Institutionalization of Latino Panethnicity, 1960-1990,” (doctoral dissertation in Sociology, Princeton University, 2009). “Arizona Bill Targeting Ethnic Studies Signed into Law,” The MORALES Iris, “¡Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2010. Online at
12 Reactive Ethnic Formations and Panethnic Identities, Gutiérrez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
So Close and Yet so Foreign: Trans-Border relations in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (2001) Si proche et cependant si étranger : les relations transfrontalières dans Along the Border Lies (2001) de Paul S. Flores
Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5298 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
Brought to you by Université Rennes 2
Electronic reference Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger, « So Close and Yet so Foreign: Trans-Border relations in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (2001) », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/5298 ; DOI : 10.4000/ lisa.5298
The text is a facsimile of the print edition.
Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org So Close and Yet so Foreign: Trans-Border relations in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (2001) Si proche et cependant si étranger : les relations transfrontalières dans Along the Border Lies (2001) de Paul S. Flores Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger
Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger is an Associate Professor at the Humanities Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) where she teaches courses on English and American literature and Hispanic Cultures in the United States. Her main research interest is Chican@ Literature with a particular focus on gender and, more recently, on the impact of border crossings on the construction of subjectivity. Her publi- cations include the essays “Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderless Theory in Spain,” (Signs, 37, 1, 2011), “Travel, Autoethnography and Oppositional Consciousness in Juan Felipe Herrera’s Mayan Drifter,” Imagined Transnationalism, 2009, and the award-winning book Battlegrounds and Crossroads: Social and Imaginary Space in Writings by Chicanas (2003).
Abstract: Part of the research conducted for preparing this essay was done thanks to a Fulbright/Generalitat de Catalunya Grant. A grateful acknowledgment is made to both institutions. Partially based on autobiographical experience, Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies looks at the northern and southern sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border region from a Chicano, postcolonial, postmodern perspective that considers class, status, and national origin as factors determining the way one relates to this place, the extent to which the border can be crossed in one direction or another, and the chances one has on the U.S and Mexican sides respectively. The discussion contextualizes Flores’ critique of trans-border socio-economic interactions in the region in the context of the 1990s anti-immigrant legislation in the United States, the militarization of the border, the freer circulation of goods across from the South, and the impact of the increase of drug consumption in the United States on both sides of the border. In Flores’ novel, the San Diego-Tijuana area is rendered as a war and illegal trade zone that has a psychological impact upon its inhabitants and determines the power imbalances between people of Mexican and Mexican American origin who interact across borders. Overall, Along the Border Lies offers a critique of the spaces Mexicans and Mexican Americans call home and of the values of the communities inhabiting them.
Résumé : En partie basé sur une expérience autobiographique, Along the Border Lies de Paul S. Flores examine les côtés nord et sud de la région frontalière de San Diego-Tijuana à la fois d’un point de vue chicano et selon une perspective postcoloniale et postmoderne qui voit dans la classe, le statut et les origines nationales des facteurs déterminant le rapport à ce lieu, les limites du franchissement de cette frontière de part et d’autre et les opportunités qui sont offertes respectivement du côté étasunien ou mexicain. La discussion contextualise la critique de Flores quant aux interactions transfrontalières et socio-économiques dans la région au vu des lois anti-immigration américaines des années 1990, de la militarisation de la frontière, de la plus grande circulation des marchandises venant du Sud et de l’impact, des deux côtés de la frontière, de la hausse de la consommation de drogue aux États-Unis. Dans le roman de Flores, la région San Diego-Tijuana est présentée comme une zone de guerre et de commerce illégal ayant un impact psychologique sur ses habitants et qui détermine les déséquilibres du pouvoir entre les gens d’origine mexicaine et américano-mexicaine qui interagissent de part et d’autre de la frontière. Dans l’ensemble, Along the Border Lies offre une critique sur les espaces que les Mexicains et les Américano-Mexicains voient comme leur chez soi et sur les valeurs des communautés qui y vivent.
Keywords: NarconovelaTijuana-San DiegoMexicansMexican Americanstrans-border relations Mots-clés : NarconovelaTijuana-San DiegoMexicainsMexicain Americainrapports transfrontaliers
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Olivier-Rotger
“They are coming by the millions and they are all pre- “diasporic” consciousness necessarily faces the chal- gnant!” lenge of coming to grips with the disparate nature of Video by former head of the White Aryan Resistance transnational conflicts. If the border is a metaphor Tom Metzger, of Mexican American bicultural identity and hybri- dization, the socio-economic divisions marked by this qtd. by Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times. geopolitical space for people of Mexican origin can “The denial of what is happening on the other side of be felt in the north and in the south with different the United States degrees of intensity and with site-specific dynamics is the reason why we have such an insane society.” that cannot be overlooked. In his essay “Millennial Anxieties …,” Arturo Paul S. Flores, unpublished interview with M. Antònia Oliver-Rotger, 2003. Aldama classifies the ways in which the U.S.-Mexico border affects the experience of Mexicans migrating “Tijuana and San Diego are closer than they appear; north according to four propositions that I summa- they share an economic horizon.” rize briefly: Sebastian Rotella, Twilight on the Line. The border as “free zone” for U.S. citizens and corporations Tijuana in Chicano Border Literature The border as a free zone of violence and res- trictions for those who try to cross In Chicano literature and culture the border has become the focus of attention as a trope of a bicul- tural identity, as a geopolitical space of cultural inte- The border as a discursive barrier that renders raction, a potential destination for Mexicans – and inferior poor Mexicans and Latinos, mainly those other Latinos – wishing to cross into the United coming from rural areas States, and a site where the power differences caused by a globalized economy and American imperialism The border as an elastic barrier, a zone of dis- are strikingly visible. The interest in the border on crimination and marginalization that prevails even the part of many post-movement Chicano/a writers if Mexicans have crossed into the U.S. has resulted from a poetics of diaspora, which, in the light of de-colonial thought, locates the plight Aldama acknowledges that these classifications of Mexicans in the United States within a broa- exclude the Mexican bourgeois elite who can der historical understanding of political economies demonstrate to their local embassies that they have and the role of nation-states. 1 The thematic shifts sufficient economic ties to Mexico and may thus in Chicano/a writing are in keeping with the shift freely cross into the U.S. (45), but he overlooks the in Chicano Studies toward a trans-geographical fact that these elites have sufficient economic ties to emphasis that looks on Chicano history and culture the United States as well, and that they also benefit as entangled with a history that necessarily takes into from a free trade zone by being able to do transna- account international relations and empire. Within tional business. The free circulation of goods enabled this shift from cultural nationalism to an accent on by market liberalization has opened the border to the American trans-hemispheric cultural and geopoliti- smuggling of drugs and people from the south into cal relations, the Chicano “mestizo/a”, “migrant”, or the north. The border is here the conduit of sup- ply-demand dynamics of clandestine migrant labor 1. The poetics of diaspora emerges from a consciousness or mode of percep- and drugs and a source of income for the north as tion – which critics have respectively termed “borderlands” or “mestiza” consciousness (Anzaldúa), “border thinking” (Mignolo), “postcolonial mesti- well as for the south, all of which are generated by zaje” (Pérez-Torres), and “oppositional consciousness” (Sandoval). De-colo- free market deregulation. Aldama also fails to notice nial delinking (e.g. desprendimiento) was proposed by Aníbal Quijano in his significant article “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality” to highlight the fact that the very discursive barrier that exists the restrictive power of Eurocentric structures of knowledge. The epistemic for the migrant at the moment of crossing the bor- resistance of de-colonialist begins with a detailed understanding of colo- niality, one that includes an understanding of the imposition of the deeply der may not only be one between Anglos and poor heterosexualist modern/colonial gender system.
2 So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 So Close and Yet so Foreign
Mexican migrants, but also one between established It’s not Chicanization but anti-Chicanism or and newly arrived Mexican migrants. South of the Chicano-phobia that is one of the main identity border this barrier exists between high-class and low- traits of the inhabitant of the border. Since in class Mexicans. Mexico all of us seem to be traumatized by mesti- Scholars such as Edgar Cota Torres, Rolando zaje, we are appalled by everything that intensifies Romero, Socorro Tabuenca, Santiago Vaquera- that bad hybridization. In the atrophied psyche of Vázquez, and Pablo Vila among others have obser- the Mexican, Chicanos play the role of the mes- ved that we should make explicit the local nuances tizos that went beyond the pale […]. In Tijuana of the border, their different kinds of material reali- anything that is in touch with the gringo or with ties and the imaginary, symbolic dimensions asso- the Chicano is tainted. We even discriminate the ciated with them. Indeed, the social inscription of Mexicans that work there [the U.S.], have family writers, critics, and artists is going to deeply affect or live part time in USAlandia: they are “Pochos” their perception of the border or borders and the or “immigrated”, words that are derogatory. We ways they are affected by them. As Pablo Vila says, invented the figure of the despicable Chicano, from in the context of the border, “writing about home” movies to jokes, in order to feel more pure, not as becomes complicated because “us” and “them” col- “jumbled” as they are. 3 (“Todos contra todos”) lide in many different ways (xix). The fact that both Mexican fronterizos and Mexican Americans share the The emphasis on “cultural purity” in the north same culture does not mean that they construct their may be the result of what Edgar Cota Torres terms identities in the same way. As he points out: the leyenda negra (black legend) about the border cor- responding to stereotypes of the Mexican border My criticism here […] is that it is quite pos- generated both in the United States and Mexico as sible to share aspects of the same culture while corrupt, of loose morality, chaotic, and culturally developing quite different narrative identities, to impure (Cota Torres, 13). It is because of this dero- the point, in some instances, of constructing the gatory image that Mexican cultural institutions have ‘other kind of Mexican’ as the abject ‘other’. In in turn marginalized Tijuana writers and later trea- this process, the existence of a division between ‘us’ ted them as “barbarians” to be “domesticated” and and ‘them’ is much more important than the actual integrated into national culture (Tabuenca, 155-156). location of the dividing line. (329) Though some Tijuanense writers and intellectuals may reject any connection with Chicanos, the oppo- The division between peoples that share aspects site has occurred in the case of north of the border. of the same culture and analogous experiences is The 1990s saw the publication of several pieces on perceptible in the disclaimer by Tijuana writer Luis Tijuana by Chicano or Mexican American writers Humberto Crosthwaite that his work has nothing whose fascination with the border town had little to do with that by Chicano/a writers. “The lite- to do with the black legend. Instead, they sought to rary production from the Mexican side of the bor- locate the particular predicament of the town within der, and [my] own literary works in particular,” he debates about globalization from the viewpoint of the says, “bespeak a very different reality and cultural afore-mentioned Chicano/a diasporic consciousness. 2 tradition.” Tijuana writer Heriberto Yépez, howe- In their writings, Tijuana emblematizes the effects ver, claims that, in spite of themselves, “Tijuanenses of global, postcolonial postmodernity from several are Chicanos in national territory.” In a passage that perspectives. echoes Octavio Paz’s argument about the Mexican psyche, he explains that Tijuanenses rebuke anything 3. My translation of No es la chicanización sino el antichicanismo o chicano- Chicano as “exaggerated mestizaje”, which can only fobia, uno de los rasgos identitarios del fronterizo. Debido a que en México todos parecemos estar traumados por el mestizaje, nos da asco todo lo que be understood in the context of a psyche traumatized aumenta esa mala hibridación. En la atrofiada psique del mexicano, los by a negative view of mestizaje: chicanos cumplen el papel de los mestizos que se pasaron de la raya. […] En Tijuana todo lo que tenga contacto con lo gringo o chicano se ensucia: se discrimina incluso a los mexicanos que trabajan allá, tienen parientes 2. Comment made by Crosthwaite in the question-answer period in the ses- o viven part time en USAlandia: son “Pochos” o “inmigrados”, vocablos sion El context social com eix del món literari within the framework of the festival Fet que son peyorativos. Se inventó la figura deplorable del Chicano, desde a Amèrica, festival internacional de novel·la contemporània en llengua castellana, Casa las películas hasta los chistes, para sentirnos más puros, no tan “revueltos” Amèrica, Barcelona, 18 – 23 October, 2010. como ellos.
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Olivier-Rotger
Across the Wire (1993) and By the Lake of the Sleeping his diasporic cultural self by linking the multiple tra- Children (1996) by Luis Alberto Urrea are auto-eth- jectories of his identity to actual physical journeys to nographic observations of the daily tribulations of potential homelands (El Salvador, Tijuana, Mexico Mexican garbage pickers, living in the most destitute D.F., L.A.). Martínez is not only a border crosser but area in the border town of Tijuana. While Across the presents himself as a kind of embodiment of a cultu- Wire was, according to José Saldívar, a “struggle to ral border as a Latino related to experiences of dis- make sense” of the helpless lives of the dump dwel- placement and as a someone involved in the globali- lers (138), displaying an inability to articulate the eco- zation of Latino cultural resistance. In this context, nomic forces at work that shape those lives (136), By Martínez’s Tijuana is both the site of postmodern, the Lake of the Sleeping Children shows Urrea to be per- deterritorializing artistic languages and sensibilities fectly in the know of what is going on at the border. from different parts of Latin America and a mixture If in his previous book Urrea could not explain that of a myriad of cultural influences: “nebulous all-pervasive it” at the heart of the lives of those he helps, in By the Lake of the Sleeping Children “it” First, it’s a bar where the disco pulses and a has several names: “It’s called agribusiness, multina- naked woman writhes under the red spotlight on tional free enterprise, and if for no other reason than the stage. She leans down before a tourist, who that, the border will never be closed.” (15) Urrea pro- buries his face in her breasts. On the next block, vides endless lists of all the commodities, advantages, a young longhair croons pop songs in English to riches, possibilities that the immigrants may enjoy; the Americanized Tijuana bourgeoisie. That’s not lists of illnesses, catastrophes, plagues that are attri- it either. Then we’re out on the street again, pas- buted to the south and the immigrants; lists of all sing by the taco stands next to the hotdog stands, the benefits Americans enjoy thanks to illegal immi- the indígenas proffering their Guatemalan-style grants; and lists of the sources of revenue of migrant “friendship bracelets” and lizards of colored foam. labor. The effect is to establish a correlation between (101) massive, abundant capitalist production and benefit For his part, Richard Rodríguez, in Days of in the north, and massive, abundant migration and Obligation, offers an insightful but distant and some- poverty in the south. Yet, in the end, the Tijuana how apprehensive representation of Tijuana as a garbage dump becomes a universal metaphor to talk threat to his American individuality. But Tijuana about the suffering of the human condition, an alle- is also “the future” in its challenge to the border gory of the spiritual wasteland on earth when hope between identities, its ambition for American dollars, is missing from our lives: its acknowledgement of its dependence on “American Everyone, no matter who, no matter how rich pop culture, its drugs, its disrespect, its despair.” (90) or poor, has lived in the Tijuana garbage dump. Interestingly, and in tune with Guillermo Gómez- One’s type of suffering does not rate, in my book, Peña’s coining of the area as “Sandiejuana” (50), above or below anyone else’s. You can be as impo- Rodríguez views the Tijuana-San Diego border as a verished as a trash-picker driving your 240 SL place where the inequalities created by global capital down the Garden State Parkway to your yacht at are made evident: “Taken together as one, Tijuana Cape May. (6) and San Diego form the most fascinating new city in the world, a city of world-class irony.” (106) In line with Christian parables or fables, Urrea’s is The idea of the border as “one place” is pervasive an adventure into the Christian spirit, an epic test of in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (2002), which, the soul in the face of material deprivation and suf- unlike the previous three works, captures how this fering, that, like all moral tales, is followed by a lesson particular geographical area determines the life or exhortation: heroism lies in “solitary moral cou- and psychology of several Mexican and Mexican rage”, in “being untainted by the world” (33) when American citizens of different backgrounds. Flores, one is in the harshest conditions. a writer and performance artist now living and In contrast with Urrea, in The Other Side (1992) jour- working in the San Francisco Bay Area, was born nalist Rubén Martínez spells out for us the sources of in Chula Vista to a family of migrant workers and
4 So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 So Close and Yet so Foreign went to school in San Diego with the sons and sed under the influence of propaganda about drugs, daughters of rich families from Tijuana. Like many immigration and the military who organize a group other American teenagers from the border, Flores of vigilantes to patrol the border and ends up shoo- often crossed over for the more permissive nightlife ting a group of clandestine Mexican immigrants. of Tijuana. He married a woman from Tijuana and The Mexican story from south of the border fea- became very familiar with the life of the Tijuanense tures Miranda, a young woman from a rich family upper class. The plot and characters in his work are in Tijuana who becomes a drug dealer to escape inescapably shaped by racism, social inequality, state the constraints and obligations placed on women by violence, bi-national economic relations, and drug upper-class Tijuanense society. The two stories are tied dealing and consumption. In alluding to the histo- together by a set of young people of Mexican and rical circumstances of its production, Along the Border Mexican American origin with different economic Lies offers the critic the possibility of tracing a “cogni- and cultural ties to the two countries. tive mapping” of the border, that is, the relationship between social reality and imaginary interpretations The Patrolled (Post)colonial 4 of space (Jameson, 353). As Flores himself has said Border in his unpublished interview, [A]ll of these people’s identities within that “The U.S.-Mexican border is indeed a place in space are already determined by virtue of where which (post)colonial spaces are historically connec- they live and so I felt the discovery of that exis- ted.” tence, that you are always going to be affected by your surroundings or the level of cultural context Socorro Tabuenca, “Viewing the Border: that you are engaged in. Perspectives from the Open Wound.” My discussion of the novel intends to contribute to “If you live on the border you are going to see a move beyond the symbolic emphasis on the border the military, the army, the airforce, the marines, often prevalent in Chicano Studies towards a spa- the FBI, the DEA, the border patrol, special forces tial analysis that is present in the scholarly work of units, nine or ten military operation administra- critics from both sides of the border such as Mary tions within such a close proximity that this is Pat Brady, Socorro Tabuenca, Debra Castillo, Édgar what you are going to see, and this is the way the Cota Torres, José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, and state makes itself present to an eighteen year old Claudia Sadowski-Smith. In Along the Border Lies, iden- boy and so this has real effects: ‘OK, yes, young tities are unequally shaped by capitalist notions of man you have the opportunity to become part of power and prosperity and are articulated differently the American Dream by joining the military. Go depending on the racial and social status of inhabi- in four years, and we’ll pay for your college and you can integrate and go right back into society. tants and their possibilities of social mobility. The But, no, they don’t integrate into society. That shit characters’ status and opportunities in relation to the changes you. And then once you begin to identify dominant national cultures and normative views of with that as the principal way in which not only the identity also condition their relationship to others. United States conducts his life but that the indivi- Interaction between the peoples on both sides of the dual should, you have murderers.” border does not necessarily lead to communication or real engagement with the other side but to further Flores, unpublished interview. distance and foreignness. In order to draw attention to the discrepant but intertwined realities of the U.S. Flores has stated that he views the border as a (post) and Mexican sides of the border, the writer creates colonial space because most of the territories on the two story lines that become interwoven in the second United States side of the border were occupied by half of the novel. The U.S. or Mexican American story is that of Alfredo, a young insecure working- 4. In this essay I have used Tabuenca’s spelling “(post)colonial” to distinguish class Mexican American from a broken home rai- it from “postcolonial”, a term that for some may imply that the “fight is over and the oppressed have won.” (L. Romero, 247)
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Olivier-Rotger this country in 1848 and came under its cultural and national borders generated by the illegal smuggling political dominance. For people of Mexican origin of drugs and clandestine immigration (7). Andreas this political hegemony resulted in racial, cultural, argues that the dominant narrative on a chaotic economic and political grievances whose conse- border put forth by politicians, the media, and law- quences are still in place today. Viewed from a bina- enforcement agencies shaped public perception and tional perspective the border is also (post)colonial in created a sense of anxiety and alarm. The domestic the sense that it bears witness to how “imperialism as pressure that resulted in increasing border policing a political or economic process abroad is inseparable drew attention away from the enormous demand from the social relations and cultural discourses of for drugs and clandestine migrant labor in the U.S., race, gender, ethnicity and class at home.” (Kaplan as well as from the ways in which NAFTA encou- & Pease, 16) raged the migration of peasants displaced by market Along the Border Lies needs to be contextualized in the reforms and facilitated smuggling and the laundering moments of highest border tensions in the United of its profits. At the same time, official policy debates States during the 1990s. Although these tensions are focusing on the fortification and control of borders also present today in the post 9/11 era, Flores’ novel glossed over the mutual dependence of the U.S. and is set in the mid-1990s, right after the fortification Mexico on the cheap labor of Mexican workers and militarization of the border in 1994 during Bill (106). Andreas documents proposals by officials and Clinton’s presidency and the almost simultaneous military voices for increasing high-tech militarized implementation of the North American Free Trade forms of border control (150) that still continue and Agreement (NAFTA). Several sociologists, political have been implemented in the twenty-first century. scientists and activists have examined the ways in Alfredo, the young teenager in a high-school Junior which the rampant militarization and fortification ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) program of the border is a sign of the repressive power of the and protagonist of the story line set on the American state and results in the constant violation of human side of the border makes his first appearance in rights of migrants and border residents. 5 For the the first chapter of the novel openly displaying a purposes of this study I am mainly drawing on two Remington gun, set on leading and accomplishing a of the most significant scholarly works on border vigilante mission with his Anglo and Filipino friends to militarization and the related state propaganda in the catch illegal immigrants in a San Ysidro canyon after context of a global economy: Peter Andreas’ Border they have crossed from Tijuana, a city whose “dank Games (2000) and Joseph Nevins’ Operation Gatekeeper smell of sewer and waste, […] scattered poverty, (2002). Without meaning to engage in the possible chaos, and virtual namelessness” he hates as much flaws of Peter Andreas’ argument (10-11) that border as he hates his own Mexican inheritance (13). The enforcement is mainly audience-directed – an end in story, Flores has said, is based on a group of young itself rather than a means to an end – I am benefiting men that went to his high-school who were in the from his insights about the particular nature of the Junior ROTC program: escalation of state control of the U.S.-Mexico bor- derline throughout the 1990s. Andreas states that the A lot of these working-class kids from broken transformation of border control from a low-inten- homes enrolled in ROTC high-school programs sity to a high-intensity campaign in the busiest border in order to have some sense of power, uniformity, in the world where sharp criminalization and market belonging, team work. (Unpublished interview) liberalization come together has resulted from the Notably neglected by his alcoholic mother and need of the state to reaffirm its territorial authority not close at all to a non-involved step-father, he (x). The escalation of the American border policy in constructs a sense of identity based on the “positive” the nineties – evidenced by Operation Gatekeeper, role model provided by the story of a dead father he Operation Hold the Line and Operation Hard Line never got to know. Alfredo’s shooting at the clandes- – was a response to a sense of “loss of control” over tine immigrants is informed by a patriotic sense of identity embodied by the heroic figure of his blue- 5. It is beyond of the scope of this essay to review all such literature. An excellent review is provided by José Palafox in his essay “Opening Up Bor- eyed father, Corporal Peterson, who, according to derland Studies… .”
6 So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 So Close and Yet so Foreign his mother, never returned from an evacuation mis- associates with the larger context of boundary sion in Vietnam. Only later will he learn that his construction during the economic recession of the mother invented the story to hide her shame: he was early 1990s and the increasingly globalized economy. conceived when she was raped by a “drunk gringo The “war on illegals” reached its climax in California sailor” (80). Following the “patriotic” steps of his when “[o]pportunistic politicians and nativist orga- “father” Corporal Paterson Alfredo seeks his own nizations presented the ‘illegal’ immigrant not only place in the hegemonic white power structure of the as a lawbreaker, but more importantly as a threat state. The boy’s expedition and shooting against the to national sovereignty and the American social and migrants is a way for him to consolidate his identity economic fabric.” (11) Nevins further adds that as a white American based on a sense of power and superiority over those he believes are inferior and [g]lobalization’s challenges to national bounda- find themselves in a weaker position. Alfredo views ries lead efforts to protect the uniqueness of the the border and its Mexican inhabitants as potentially nation against alien forces. Gatekeeper is but one dirty, “barbarous”, “fugitives, border-crossing crimi- such effort. Therefore, the globalized state – apart nals”, “invaders” bringing “poverty, corruption and from being a gatekeeper – is also a political territo- chaos”, a “health hazard” to the “welfare system”, rial entity whose principal functions are to provide and transporters of “illegal substances and diseases.” security, largely against real and imagined alien (41-42) forces. (177) Bullied by his Anglo-American classmates who Alfredo views his “mission” (15) as analogous to the have nicknamed him “Mexican jumping bin”, Vietnam War his father heroically fought and died Alfredo is both victim and agent of the racialized in. With this comparison, Flores implicitly establishes hatred against Mexicans. He has internalized a well- a parallelism between American domestic border established image of everything that comes from policy and direct military intervention in Vietnam Mexico as negative and contaminating. The success during the Cold War, and hints at the connections of immigrant-hating language has its antecedents in between U.S patriotic discourse and exceptionalist the development of what Norma Klahn, drawing on ideologies that justify both imperial expansion and Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, has called the policing and militarization of national borders. “South of the Borderism”. Klahn defines the term Through the figure of Alfredo, the author explores as “the ways in which since the mid- nineteenth cen- the psychological effects of the adoption by the colo- tury American writers and filmmakers have construc- nized subject of the colonizer’s culture and of the ted the Mexican ‘other’ as disorganized, lazy, violent adoption by the racialized subject of a self-denying and uncivilized.” This construction enabled Anglo- “white” mask, as Franz Fanon would put it. (Post) Americans to defend and define their own image as colonial critique applies to Alfredo in the sense that “morally superior and with a great capacity to work he has internalized the American white supremacist as well as prosperous.” (7, my translation) rhetoric through which he justifies the extermination As a member of a Junior ROTC program, Alfredo of “all the brutes” (Conrad, 87). The Conradian refe- has also imbibed the alarmist propaganda and rheto- rence is not accidental here as Flores uses Heart of ric about the need to militarize and control the bor- Darkness, one of the most emblematic texts in the field der against drug smuggling and illegal immigration. of postcolonial studies, as a meta-literary device that He is then out to heroically safeguard and keep the besides drawing attention to the border as a (post) borders of his American nation and identity, to purge colonial space, highlights the interdependence of them both of unwanted, foreign, “illegal” Mexican space and psychology. Both Conrad’s text and Francis traces. He describes himself as a “gatekeeper” defen- Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now are somewhat forcedly ding “the American tradition of courage, destiny and introduced by Flores as narratives whose particular power” (23) thus becoming a proxy agent of Manifest interpretation enables Alfredo to view his journey Destiny and the state border control Operation into the San Ysidro canyon allegorically as Marlow’s Gatekeeper. His view of Mexicans as alien replicates search for Kurtz: his own search for meaning is the the state’s emphasis on the illegality of clandestine re-enactment of his father’s patriotic heroism. migrants that Joseph Nevins in Operation Gatekeeper
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 Olivier-Rotger
Narco Juniors’ Transnational Deals her to congressman, “businessman” and owner of the Tijuana racetrack, Don Bardo Reyes, Miranda “Drug dealing is an activity, a way to escape. That is retorts that “people never say who they are.” (82) prevalent in both cultures but for different reasons. They Ironically, however, drugs provided by the Reyes car- both abuse the same thing but differently.” tel will be the most comfortable way for her to escape Flores, unpublished interview. the world she detests and to feel strong and indepen- Miranda Cascabel, the daughter of a well-known dent from her family. In the end, she will need the family of business people in Tijuana, embodies a support of this family to take care of the daughter very different type of drug dealer from the powerful she has had with a drug dealer and will become so drug lords involved in local and national business and intimately involved in the drug business to the point politics, such as Jorge Hank Rhon or the Arellano of endangering both her daughter’s and her own life. Félix Brothers (Rotella, Twilight…, 14-16) or lower- The story of Miranda develops like a thriller in class drug dealers in popular Mexican narconovelas which her affair with Platón, an employee of Los (Palaversich, 102). She takes up dealing as a job or Reyes and friend of her cousin Julián, leads her first trade that allows her to break away from the role to become a drug consumer and eventually a dealer. assigned to upper-class women in Tijuana: being a The corruption and power of the Mexican govern- housewife, having babies, having lunch and cocktails ment is seen in the story of Platón, whose father’s and going shopping in San Diego. Diana Palaversich company built the racetrack, but was never paid by explains the characteristics of these “narco juniors” the government that then handed it over to one of drawing on the homonymous corrido by the nor- its officials, Congressman Bardo Reyes. Platón plans teño band Los Tucanes de Tijuana: “Young urban to recover his own racetrack from Los Reyes, but he Mexicans raised with money who got involved in the is charged with possession of drugs and imprisoned business out of boredom and greed.” Unlike “unpo- for ten years – after a trial in which both the prose- lished” Sinaloan lower-class narcos, narco juniors cution and defense attorneys are on the Reyes’ pay- are sophisticated, have an education, and have direct roll (83). Flores also shows how the white skin and connections to powerful bosses (102). privileged status of narco juniors Julián, Rudi and Through the character of Miranda Cascabel, Miranda allow them to cross the border freely to do Flores explores and critiques the links between poli- illegal business. They have a “commercial pass” or tics, business and drug dealing in Mexico. Miranda “NAFTA badge” as alleged “members of the Board gets involved in the drug business run by her cou- of International Commerce Committee of San sin Julián who is directly connected to Los Reyes, Diego.” (101) Julián begins to cut the drug supply he a narco clan that not only enjoys impunity but gets from Los Reyes and to double deal by selling it also has links to the central Mexican government. to his own connections in San Diego, then launde- Palaversich states that “those who know Tijuana well ring large sums of money by using the supermarket will recognize in the figure of Reyes the eccentric chain owned by his family on both sides of the bor- multimillionaire Jorge Hank Rhon, son of one of der. After the deaths of Julián and Rudi and under the wealthiest Mexican politicians and a close colla- the threat of Los Reyes, Miranda has no other option borator of president Carlos Salinas and his brother but to take refuge in the United States, where she Raúl.” (103) Despite their well-known connections to sells Julián’s drug to Gabe, an ex-convict of Chicano big drug money, Los Reyes, originally from Mexico origin who is a friend of Jesse’s brother, Tavo. In City, are immediately welcomed into the circle of exchange, the very money Gabe uses for buying the Tijuana high society. The cartel owners can offer drug comes from his selling guns to Alfredo and his further revenues to the upper class while also provi- friends from the ROTC program Jesse, Erica and ding a way into a more exciting lifestyle to the rich, Gil. In a microcosmic simulation of the intertwining spoiled young fresas 6 who depend on their family’s of drug trade and the military control of national money. When Miranda’s father, who is looking for borders in the United States, the money from sel- a good marriage match for her daughter, introduces ling arms for the vigilantes’ policing of the borders is used for drug consumption and the preservation 6. Fresa is a Mexican slang word to refer to rich, spoiled young people. of transnational illegal drug business. The exchange
8 So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 So Close and Yet so Foreign also demonstrates that, as Peter Andreas asserts, the Mexican American border patrol agent and impec- existence of a demand for drugs in American society cable upholder of the law. Criminality and law enfor- and free market de-regulation facilitate illegal drug cement coexist in the same family where children trade in spite of heavy investment in militarization. have been educated ‘by the book’ but have no real emotional connection to their father. Gabe’s media- ting role in the exchange of guns, money, and drugs Chicano/Mexican Relations across will lead his own father to arrest him and to witness the Border DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) operatives’ killing Paul Flores’ main interest in this novel is not the of his son at home when he resists arrest. Edgar, clash between cultures and ways of perceiving the perhaps the alter ego of the Chicano writer, is pro- world across the border, or the hybridization of iden- ven right when he says that “the ultimate victims of tity that occurs in border areas, but in depicting the the huge drug market the United States had created ways in which state power, corruption and the inter- were the lower-class blacks and browns of the border twining of two economies deeply affect the lives of towns of Tijuana and San Diego, Nogales, El Paso, those living on the Tijuana-San Diego border. The and Juárez.” (55) class and racial spectrum he depicts is varied and On the Mexican side of the border, drugs become marked by conflict and exclusion. On the American the way in which the protagonist, Miranda, can rein- side of the border, Alfredo’s friends involved in the vent herself and change identities without actually vigilante mission are also members of the ROTC pro- being nobody. She is described by Edgar as a “master gram: Gil, the son of a Filipino family whose father of manipulating her own self-image.” (88) Indeed, is a naval officer; Jesse, a rich Mexican from Tijuana when drug-dealing she engages in constant self-reifi- whose parents own maquiladoras (assembly plants) in cation to the point of becoming “nobody”: Mexico; and Erica, a young Anglo-American girl. Like Alfredo and in spite of his money, Jesse has also Not just consuming it, but dealing it was a been subject to abuse by Anglo students in the aca- happening underground culture. You were always demy. Flores foregrounds the distance between Jesse changing identities, like clothing, for whatever occa- and Alfredo’s disaffection and vindictiveness against sion or situation you found yourself in. Because poor Mexican immigrants and the civil-rights-based a dealer has to recognize the potential client, the sense of identity of their self-proclaimed Chicano potential to make money off everyone she meets. Spanish teacher, who dresses cholo style, teaches And then choose the correct mask to wear. You can Spanglish and enjoys the popularity of Hispanic never present yourself as who you are. You have to students in the program. Jesse’s brother, Tavo, “a forget about whatever person you thought you were 26-year-old unemployed drug fiend, who was either before. Because that was the whole reason you got always stoned or hanging out all night at the clubs on into the drug business to begin with: You’re really Revolution Avenue in Tijuana,” (27) his friend Edgar, nobody. But drugs make you feel somebody. (71) a Chicano artist, and his connection in the United For her family, Miranda becomes a failure and States, Gabe, a working-class Mexican American the embodiment of everything that is wrong ex-convict, are the links to the plot line taking place with Tijuana, also blamed for its proximity to the on the other side of the border. Through Gabe and United States: “Drugs and promiscuity. Agringada. Tavo the guns sold to shoot the migrant workers help Americanized” (96). It is not clear, however, whether pay for the drugs they buy from Miranda. Tavo’s Miranda’s prejudice that Chicanos are insecure, connections to upper-class Tijuana dealers and his rootless and have a low self-esteem changes as she links to low-class criminals like Gabe shed light on meets Edgar, who is concerned with social issues how mistaken Alfredo is in seeing migrant workers as and seeking to understand the origins of his own responsible for drug smuggling. self-hatred (121). The voice of the Chicano painter, In a further exploration of the effects of state bor- full of memories of his dead sister killed in a hate der control and the emphasis on legality in Mexican crime, is certainly the most denunciatory one in the American families, the novel features the conflict novel: “Drugs only perpetuated themselves […] and between Gabe and his father, Captain Aguilar, a
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 Olivier-Rotger
led to more violence, more borders, more migra, Bibliography more hate.” (114) In spite of this, he finds Miranda’s life and trade alluring, a possible avenue into a bet- ALDAMA Arturo, “Millennial Anxieties: Borders, Violence and the Struggle for Chicano/a Subjectivity,” Arizona Journal of ter understanding of Mexico and learning about its Hispanic Cultural Studies 2,1998: 41-62. society from the inside. The fact that Miranda is a ANDREAS Peter, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide, drug dealer makes her “even more attractive” (87). Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000. While he needs to leave a trace in his painting of his ANZALDÚA Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, involvement with Miranda and Tijuana, Miranda San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. CASTILLO Debra & Socorro TABUENCA, Border Women: Wri- refuses to be portrayed or become the subject of a ting from La Frontera, Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2002. painting because, as she says, he will “only see in CONRAD Joseph, Heart of Darkness [1902], 18th ed., London: [her] what he wants to see.” (85) Mexico, Miranda Penguin Books. and the southern side of the border remain impos- COTA TORRES Edgar, La representación de la leyenda negra en la sible to appropriate and quite a mystery to Edgar frontera norte de México, Turlock, CA & Hermosillo, Sonora, in spite of his sharing aspects of the culture as a MX: Orbis P, 2007. FANON Frantz, Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove P, Chicano. 1967 [1952]. Flores’ contribution to the body of Chicano and FLORES, PAUL S., Along the Border Lies. Berkeley: Creative Arts border literature with this dark, popular narco-thriller Book Company, 2001. is to shed light on how, in spite of economic ties GARCÍA CANCLINI Néstor, “Narrativas sobre fronteras between the north and the south, or perhaps because móviles entre Estados Unidos y América Latina,” in R. Far- of them, the border continues to divide Mexicans jardo & M. Lacarrieu (eds.), La dinámica global/local, Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ciccus, 1999. and Chicanos, Chicanos and Anglos, Tijuanenses and GÓMEZ-PEÑA Guillermo. The New World Border: Prophecies, Chicanos, Tijuanenses and Mexicans. Along the Border Poems, & Loqueras for the End of the Century, San Francisco: Lies shows the complicity of the San Diego American City Lights, 1996. upper-classes, Tijuana Mexican high society, U.S. JAMESON Fredric, “Cognitive Mapping,” in Cary Nelson & border policies and Mexican government officials in Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of drug consumption and trade. At the same time, and Culture, Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1988. KAPLAN Amy & Donald E. PEASE (eds.), Cultures of United unlike one of the most reputed films on drug traffic- States Imperialism, Durham and London: Duke UP, 1993. king in the Tijuana-San Diego area, Traffic (2000), KLAHN Norma, “La frontera imaginada, inventada o de la the novel resists the stereotype that Anglos are gene- geopolítica de la literatura a la nada,” Cuadernos de Literatura rally well-meaning but naïve, while Mexicans are 33, 2000: 5-24. corrupt but astute. In Flores’ novel, young people MARTÍNEZ Rubén, The Other Side, New York: Verso, 1992. MIGNOLO Walter, Historias locales, diseños globales: colonialidad, from both sides are revealed to be victims of the conocimientos subalternos y pensamiento fronterizo, Madrid: Akal, drug-dealing business and of prejudices about the 2003. inhabitants of the other side. The end of Traffic NEVINS Joseph, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of The “Illegal Alien” offers the audience some hope through the stubborn and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, New York & Lon- pursuit of the investigation by an African American don: Routledge, 2002. police agent on the U.S. side (Don Cheadle) and the OLIVER-ROTGER Maria Antònia, “Interview with Paul Flores,” San Francisco, 3 October, 2003. Unpublished. transborder collaboration between American officials PALAFOX José, “Opening up Borderland Studies: A Review of and a Tijuana policeman (Benicio del Toro). Hope U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization Discourse,” Social Justice: is however absent from Flores’ novel, in which the A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order 27.3, 2000: 56-72. future of Mexican Americans and Chicanos seems PALAVERSICH Diana, “The Politics of Drug Trafficking in to be darker than in than most Chicano/a literary Mexican and Mexico-Related Narconovelas,” Aztlán: A Jour- works. Deterministic and gloomy as the novel may nal of Chicano Studies 31.2, 2006: 85-110. PAZ Octavio, El Laberinto De La Soledad, México: Fondo de be, its value and merit lies in its forceful critique of Cultura Económica, 1986 [1950]. cross-border state policies, drug-dealing elites, as PÉREZ-TORRES Rafael, “Ethnicity, Ethics, and Latino Aesthe- well as in its challenge to American-centered views tics,” Journal of American Literary History 12.3, 2000: 534-553. of immigration and drug-trafficking. QUIJANO Aníbal, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” trans. Sonia Therborn, in Goran Therbon (ed.), Globalizations and Modernities, Stockholm: FRN, 1999.
10 So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 So Close and Yet so Foreign
RODRÍGUEZ Richard, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, New York: Penguin Books, 1992. ROMERO Lora, “Nationalism and Internationalism: Domes- tic Differences in a Postcolonial World,” in Douglas Keller &Ann Cvetkovich (eds.), Articulating the Global and the Local: Globalization and Cultural Studies, Boulder: Westview Press, 1997. ROMERO Rolando, “Border of Fear: Border of Desire,” Border- lines: Studies in American Culture 1.1, 1993: 36-70. ROTELLA Sebastian, “Migrants Hear Buchanan Pitch a Tigh- ter Border Speech: The GOP Candidate Calls the ‘Invasion’ of Illegal Immigrants ‘a National Disgrace’ as Border-Jum- pers Wait for Him to Leave So They Can Cross,” Los Angeles Times, 13 May, 1992. Online at
So Close and Yet so Foreign, Olivier-Rotger, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 11 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/as La privatisation de l’éducation et ses implications pour les Latinos
Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5287 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
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Electronic reference Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita, « The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/ as », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/5287 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5287
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Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/as La privatisation de l’éducation et ses implications pour les Latinos
Rosaura Sánchez
Rosaura Sánchez is Professor of Latin American Literature and Chicano Literature at the University of California at San Diego. Her publications include Chicano Discourse: A Socio-Historic Perspective. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, 1983 (repr. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1994), Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995) and “Reconstructing Chicana Gender Identity,” American Literary History, 9.2 (Summer 1997): 350-363.
Abstract: The demographic growth of Latinos in the U.S. comes amidst a growing gap in access to education. Especially crucial to consider for this growing population is the neoliberal restructuring of kindergarten to university education that is leading to a growing emphasis on the privatization of higher education and the transformation of public education into a profit-driven domestic business opportunity. With rising tuition at universities and colleges and the increased technological and market aspects of schooling, only families residing in well-to-do communities will have access to what previously was deemed a civil right, the right to both a public and a first-class education.
Résumé : La croissance démographique des Latinos aux États-Unis accompagne le fossé grandissant de l’accès à l’éducation. Plus particulièrement crucial pour cette population en expansion, est la prise en compte de la restructuration néolibérale de l’éducation, de la maternelle à l’université, qui mène inéluctablement à une privatisation de l’enseignement supérieur et à la transformation de l’éducation publique en entreprise privée à but lucratif. Avec l’augmentation des frais de scolarité et l’emploi croissant des outils technologiques et commerciaux dans l’apprentissage, seules les familles issues des communautés aisées auront accès à ce qui auparavant était posé comme un droit civique incontournable, le droit à une éducation publique gratuite et de qualité.
Keywords: Accessibility, education, Latin@s in US, privatization, restructuring. Mots-clés : Accessibilité, éducation, Latin@s, privatisation, restructuration.
The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/as, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Rosaura Sánchez nn In today’s globalized world, nothing is safe from In California, for example, public education, being privatized and turned into a marketable com- whether at the college/university level or the ele- modity, not even education. In what follows we will mentary, middle and high school levels, is currently examine this phenomenon, the growing privatization being subjected to heretofore unheard of budget of education and its impact on the fast growing U.S. cutbacks. As federal funding of education ends, Latino/a population, now estimated to be over 50 students in higher education face rising costs, more million, making Latinos/as the largest ethnic mino- tuition hikes, fewer course offerings, and larger class rity group in the nation. The population has grown sizes (Wyatt). The sad irony of it all is that students not only because of immigration but because of a wishing to continue their education are facing a life- high birth rate. Latinos/as, and especially those of time of debt. While government Pell grants have Mexican origin, are a young population. 20% of increased recently, as student enrollment, especially children younger than five in the U.S. are Latino. of low-income students, rises, even these grants of For this reason, the education of Latinos/as is a cru- about $4,400 per student come nowhere near cove- cial matter, especially if one considers that the drop- ring tuition. With a decrease in state funding of insti- out rate of Latinos/as is high and that only 13% of tutions of higher education, universities and colleges 25-29-year-old Latinos have a bachelor degree as are turning not only to hikes in tuition, but also to compared to 32% of the general population (Pew private funding. This privatization of education is Hispanic Center press release). It is these children increasingly a problem at the K-12 level as well as the that will need to be equipped with the necessary skills college/university level. It is both the access to and to replace retiring older workers at every level in this the quality of education that is at stake. society in the coming years. Making education acces- Education in the U.S. has been deteriorating sible to all should thus be a priority, but what is hap- steadily in the last decade. When George W. Bush pening now, especially in California, is that higher became president he unveiled his “No Child Left education is less and less accessible and that public Behind Program” (NCLB) that called for the testing schools are under attack by private corporations. of students in every state for proficiency in reading The problems in education today, at every level, and math; schools were to be assessed for adequate elementary, middle school, high school and college, yearly progress (AYP); those not achieving AYP are unfortunately not being sufficiently discussed by would be subject to “corrective action” that required parents and educators. But others are clearly focusing changes in staff, curriculum and a longer school year; on education as a product, as an area for investment no progress would lead to handing over control of the and profit-making. As noted by John Bellamy Foster, school to private management, converting the school education is now being viewed in financial circles “as to a charter school, replacing the staff, or other major an unexploited market opportunity.” The existence restructuring (Foster, 15-16). This NCLB legislation of a private education industry that is calling for “a and restructuring had the effect of opening the doors further opening-up of the multi-trillion-dollar global to privatization of public education, the elimination public education market to capital accumulation” is of unionized teachers, and the bureaucratization of alarming, to say the least (Foster, 7). While educa- schools, with tracking and testing as mandated not tion has always served the interests of capital, deve- by educators but by “authorities”, who are not only loping a workforce for industry and an increasingly determining the pedagogy but assessing the teachers highly technological world, what is now occurring in terms of “value added”, that is, by how students’ is the commodification of instruction itself and res- scores rise or fall (Foster, 17). Foster goes on to note tructuring of the public schools along an industrial that in the 21st century era of monopoly finance and model. At institutions of higher learning, a college/ information capital, the conviction arose in higher university education is becoming a luxury available corporate circles that to those who can afford it. Conservative corporate interests, state budgetary problems, and federal edu- education could now be managed fully along cational policies are coming together in a way that scientific-technological and financial lines, making is pernicious to ethnic minority education, especially it possible to 1) gain control of the labor process of that of Latinos/as and African Americans. teachers, 2) subordinate schooling to the creation
2 The Privatization of Education, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/as
of a more differentiated and routinized labor force, Hill, Thomson, Houghton Mifflin and several and 3) privatize public education (or as much of it others (Foster, 28). What Foster calls “digital-based as could be seized without meeting serious resis- Taylorism” in education constitutes nothing other tance. (17) than a neoliberal assault on education. These new conservative education experts trained by these Much of the push for corporate school reform foundations are loath to consider social factors, like movement has been orchestrated by four big phi- poverty, racism or inequality, in assessing achieve- lanthropic foundations, headed by “leading represen- ment. They assume that businesslike principles and tatives of monopoly finance, information and retail protocols, cost-benefit analyses and charter schools, capital”: are the answer to all education ills. Geared to testing 1) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and data collection and focused on technology within a corporate model of organization, the success factor of these charter schools is however debatable, since 2) the Walton Family Foundation, students are selectively admitted. Whether we are tal- king of charter schools or the voucher system, mars- 3) the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation, haled ostensibly to save a failing education system, both are part of a project radically transforming and and 4) the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. destroying the very notion of free public education. (Foster, 17-18). The current structural crisis of the economic sys- tem in tandem with the neoliberal restructuring of Those involved in this “venture philanthropy” or schools is deeply affecting the U.S. educational sys- what others term “philanthrocapitalism” (Foster, 17) tem and especially the majority of poor and working- funnel money into chosen projects and expect quick class students who attend public schools. Teachers returns. While Foster offers several examples, one are under attack for not meeting accountability levels suffices to give an idea of what these corporations and evaluated in terms of “value added”, meaning do. The Broad Foundation, says Foster, specializes in how much improvement there is in their students’ the training of a new cadre of neoliberal capitalist test scores. These quantitative measures leave much education reformers (non-academic types) who are to be desired as they take out of consideration fac- placed in upper management and school superinten- tors impinging upon both students’ and teachers’ dent positions and whose salaries are supplemented performance. As government withholds funding of by the Broad Center for the Management of School education, the situation becomes even more critical. Systems. It should come as no surprise that schools For that reason, in California in May 2011 thousands that hire Broad graduates are fast tracked for Broad of teachers, students and supporters participated in a Foundation money. The Broad Foundation advocates “State of Emergency”, a public education protest in the privatization of education, breaking teachers’ Sacramento, reminding us that “Another Education unions, deprofessionalizing education, and unrelen- is Possible”. ting testing of students, all under the guise of “clo- The reality is that for those students whose parents sing the achievement gap” (Foster, 19), but in fact can afford a private education, there is a wide range these are moves designed to impose restructuring of of opportunities and curriculum choices, but at the the schools. poorly funded public schools, choice is often limited. What we should probably now call the educa- This becomes especially evident in barrio or ghetto tion industry has found that education is a domes- schools where required courses for admission to col- tic business opportunity in the K-12 market, with leges and universities are often not available. Even billions of dollars at stake as it markets its technology when the curriculum is offered, students unable to hardware, testing systems and instructional content take the college-track courses during the regular materials. Companies profiting from restructu- school term are further thwarted when they find ring and the expanding education industry include summer school programs have been cut in many dis- Apple, Dell, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Palm, tricts in California, also because of the budget crunch Texas Instruments, Pearson, Harcourt, McGraw (Brandt). While Pew statistics point to an increase in
The Privatization of Education, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Rosaura Sánchez the admission of Latinos/as to colleges, especially federally funded research programs,” although, for two-year community colleges, the fact remains that the most part, university-generated inventions are few Latinos/as, only 13%, complete four years of primarily licensed or contracted to private industries college. What is also the case is that such students (ibid., 218-219). University presidents and chancellors in K-12 have a high drop-out rate. The high school that sit on the boards of numerous corporations now graduation rate for Latinos/as in California is 68% function more as CEOs than as academic scholars and 56% for students who are learning English. and leaders (ibid., 216), as can be seen in the fact that This compares with an even lower 59% for African the former President of the University of California, American students, 83.4% for whites and a higher Robert Dynes, came from Bell Laboratories, rather 89.4% for Asians (Blume). than from academia. The current cohort of extre- While it is widely known that race- and class-based mely highly paid university administrators coming tracking has long been practiced in public educa- from the private sector bring, as Samuels puts it, “a tion, in addition to current cutbacks and the priva- purely corporate mentality that is in conflict with the tization of public education, Latino/a students are stated mission of educational institutions.” (“How facing problems of another order. Highly politicized America’s …”) It is not difficult to acknowledge that xenophobic measures that have been passed in seve- modern universities have always served the interests ral states, especially in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, of capital and been oriented towards particular class Indiana, South Carolina and Utah, are making it interests, that is bourgeois interests, as well as natio- difficult for parents to even send their children to nal interests and that funding for military research school. In Alabama, an anti-immigrant law slated from the federal government continues to be one to take effect on Sept. 1st, 2011, that would require of the major sources of income for science depart- school teachers to determine the immigration status ments in American universities. Miyoshi speaks to of students, led Latino parents to enroll their chil- this in citing a former President of the University of dren early, long before the term started, before the California, Richard Atkinson, who during his tenure law took effect (“Educators Say …”). Although these noted that the University of California was “an 11.5 laws are being challenged in court, they are having billion-a-year enterprise,” but that, since the state of the effect of making it difficult for Latino/a parents California only provided about two billion dollars, to send their children to school. the rest, $9.5 billion, came from other funds, private The corporatization of education is even more pro- and federal. Today, the University of California’s nounced at the university level, where private funding total budget is $20 billion including hospital reve- in the form of grants and endowments determines nue, research grants, and private donations (Gordon). research objectives and programs and consequently Although the threat of the wholesale privatization the character of education offered. The university of the university is imminent, the underlying truth is too has become part of the corporate system and that the university is already highly privatized. And, for that reason university administrators today focus as Miyoshi again makes clear, the corporations pro- heavily on “development”, that is, the bringing in fiting from university research are often multinatio- of private funds and grants. Masao Miyoshi notes nal corporations, like the Switzerland-based Sandoz that “development – that is, industrial utility – is the biotechnology multinational corporation (221-223). principal objective of the research university.” (206) To facilitate what are in effect university-industry University researchers, especially in the sciences and venture operations, universities now establish special engineering, are part of today’s entrepreneurial uni- offices of technology transfers and facilitate interac- versity that serves the interests of corporations and tion between local industries and universities (225). the marketplace. Instead of being centers of study for These university-industry venture operations have intellectual development and scientific research, uni- increasingly become the primary objective of uni- versities have become sites “dedicated to corporate versities, not education. Gone are the days of thin- research and development.” (ibidem, 208) king of public education as a public good; what holds The following example points to this clearly. The sway today in higher education are goods, products Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 enables universities to “own, and patents. In fact, as Samuel notes, “instruction is patent and retain title to inventions developed from just a small part of what these institutions do.” (“How
4 The Privatization of Education, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 The Privatization of Education and its Implications for Latinos/as
America’s …,” 4) At UCLA, where he teaches, he past. As state funding of public universities and col- finds that less than 5% of the campus total budget leges has decreased, students are facing continually is spent on undergraduate instruction. Corporate rising tuition costs. At the University of California, interests have not only led to the entrepreneurial students’ tuition and fees have risen to more than transformation of the university, but they are affec- $13,000; if one includes room and board, a public ting curriculum as well; those departments offering university education in California now costs over courses in the humanities, that do not generate grants $31,000 a year. The University of California has also and outside funding, see their funding cut or are sim- begun to increase its out-of-state admissions, as these ply discontinued at a number of campuses, with even students bring in more revenue. Nonresidents are tenured faculty encouraged to retire or depart or sub- now expected to make up about 10% of University sumed into other departments (Miyoshi, 214). Thus of California undergraduates, creating de facto com- while state funding decreases for higher education petitive bidding for UC slots. The growing number and leads to hikes in tuition, pay freezes and dises- of resident students unable to pay these increasing tablished programs, budgetary gains from private educational costs will be taking out student loans funding continue to increase yearly, although these and, as Samuels notes, these loans are often at high funds come with constraints and cannot be used for interest rates: “students are forced to take out sub- undergraduate education (Gordon, 7). In this brave prime student loans, often charging 6% interest so new world of higher education, the new departments that the University can borrow money at a reduced that are created on campuses are in engineering and rate” (“How America’s …,” 2). Ironically, the reve- science, programs oriented towards products that can nue from rising student tuition and fees is also used be patented. Along with these new university-private as collateral for construction bonds totaling billions sector programs comes an increase in the number that the University of California needs to build not of university administrators, associate and assistant teaching facilities but research venues. Samuels finds chancellors or provosts, heavily focused on revenue that to satisfy bond-raters, the University, following enhancement and the numerous fund-raising and the business model, promises “to restrain labor costs, high-tech research activities of the campuses. increase tuition, diversify revenue streams, feed the Universities are also intent on other avenues to money-making sectors, and resist the further unioni- make money and increase “efficiencies” in “pro- zation of its employees.” (idem) Samuels further notes duct delivery”, that is, in what used to be known that University of California President Yudof appeals as teaching. Many have launched “virtual univer- to the bond-raters by feeding money to the revenue- sity programs” and are now making use of internet generating areas like hospitals. The University of websites for undergraduate classes that can be taken California’s problem, as Yudof has posed it, is having online, and are heavily invested in promoting dis- to fund non-revenue-generating public areas, like tance learning as the “future of education”. What English departments, the humanities in general, or is really at stake is the bottom-line calculus of the sociology departments. That these are key academic advantage of replacing a number of faculty members areas at the core of the university’s mission is not by using one to reach thousands of students (Miyoshi, the issue for Yudof, although according to Samuels, 215), much like the University of Phoenix, a for-pro- “most humanities programs turn a huge profit that fit system that uses a few professors and numerous is then distributed to support the supposedly profit- part-time teachers to reach thousands. Clearly the making sectors.” (ibid., 3). university is now more interested in revenue-produ- The objective of what are today higher educa- cing activities, be it online instruction, distance lear- tion enterprises is clear: revenue enhancement. And ning, financial rewards from inventions and patents, the beneficiaries of the education ‘product’ being or private funding. offered are clearly to be students who can bear the California’s much touted “Master Plan” (online at: cost. The assumption that a public education is a
The Privatization of Education, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Rosaura Sánchez the University of Michigan, a public university the proffered by the American dream of upward mobi- financing of which is increasingly private (Gordon, lity through education are becoming a nightmare of 7). The rising costs of education already affect the debt and exclusion. Latino/a population in adverse ways, all the more so The 21st century is thus proving to be a most trying considering the widening wealth gap between whites time for public education, but corporations investing and minorities. Higher education is thus a two-tiered in education and in research at institutions of higher system. One tier is for Research and Development; learning are doing fine. Public universities, like the here researchers, professors and graduate students University of California, have forgotten their mission working in particular privately or federally funded to make higher education available to all residents projects will continue to operate as usual. The other at a low cost. Providing a good education to the citi- tier is that of professors and students not involved zenry is no longer of interest to corporations that see in these revenue-producing projects that will face universities and schools as sites for state subsidized cutbacks, tuition hikes, and high costs. For the lat- research and development and for investment and ter, state funding will continue to decrease, making increased profit. The impact of these new directions tuition more costly and making it difficult for low- in education will need to be addressed and challen- income families to send their children to college. ged by teachers, students and parents, especially There is, of course, another side to this madness Latino/a parents, as their children will be making and that involves unmasking what actually is going up a large percentage of the public education system on at the level of costs. When one considers instruc- population in this country. Too much is at stake. tional costs for students and what students pay in tui- tion and fees, as Samuels has done, then it appears Bibliography that most of the money coming from students and the state is not going for undergraduate instruction but for “sponsored research, graduate education, BLUME Howard, “Eighth Grade Dropout Rate 3.5%,” Los administration and extracurricular activities”, the Angeles Times, August 12, 2011, AA1, AA4. latter being seen as what “sells” and attracts students BRANDT Stacy, “Fewer than Half of 2010 Grads Had Classes Needed for College,” San Diego North County Times, August to campuses (“The Solution …”). Of course, univer- 22, 2011, A1. sities have also been affected by the global financial “Educators Say Law Not Working,” San Diego North County Times, meltdown, gambling, as university investors have August. 17, 2011, A3, unspecified author. done, with pension funds in bad investments. FOSTER John Bellamy, “Education and the Structural Crisis of Students are told that financial aid and Pell Grants Capital: The U.S. Case,” Monthly Review 63. 3, July - August 2011: 6-37. from the federal government are still available; what GORDON Larry, “A First: UC Fees Exceed State Funding,” Los is clear, however, is that a university education will Angeles Times, August 22, 2011, A1, A7. increasingly be reserved for those students whose MIYOSHI Masao, “Ivory Tower in Escrow,” in Eric Cazden families can afford it and those who are able to go (ed.), Trespasses: Selected Writings, Durham: Duke UP, 2010, into long-term six-digit debt. Other students will go 205-242. to community colleges, but even in California, in Pew Hispanic Center, “Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes, Narrowing Gaps with Other Groups,” August 25, 2011. view of the budget cuts, community colleges are offe- Press release online at
6 The Privatization of Education, Sánchez, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings Liminalités et déplacements : les rites de passage à une auto-identification des écrits chicanos
Sophia Emmanouilidou
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5321 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
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Electronic reference Sophia Emmanouilidou, « Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/5321 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5321
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Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings Liminalités et déplacements : les rites de passage à une auto-identification des écrits chicanos
Sophia Emmanouilidou
Sophia Emmanouilidoureceived her Doctorate from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece with distinctions in 2003. She has been a Fulbright grantee at the University of Texas, Austin. She has published several articles on the rites to Chicano/a identity formation. Apart from Chicano/a literature and identity- focused theories, her interests include border cultures, social studies, and ecocriticism. She has lectured at the University of the Aegean, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the University of the Peloponnese. Presently she teaches at the TEI (Technological Institution) of the Ionian Islands, Department of Technology, Ecology and the Environment, and holds a post at the Center for Environmental Education in Zakynthos.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore the hermeneutics of selfhood under conditions of excruciating socio-political injustice, and to detect the rites of passage to self-conceptualization as unravelled in two Chicano literary writings: Tomás Rivera’s “…y no se lo tragó la tierra” (1971) and Tino Villanueva’s Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993). The purpose of this approach is to show how two different literary genres, namely a collection of vignettes and a book-length poem, tackle the problems of adolescent liminalities through the prism of Chicano experience in the borderlands. The two masterful texts present truthful and shocking testimonials of the inner conflicts endured by young Mexican-Americans toiling over the soil or experiencing marginalization in the back-row seat of a movie theatre in their attempt to carve a third space of existence among migrant campesinos and barrio inhabitants. Rivera and Villanueva venture bold explorations of the self-regulatory rites to ethnic identity, and provide the readers with stunning insights into the liminal aspects of identity, as realized in the contexts of discrimination and social oppression, and en route to an esoteric understanding of life.
Résumé : L’objectif de cet article est d’explorer l’herméneutique du soi face à une douloureuse injustice socio-politique et de détecter les rites de passage vers une auto- conceptualisation dévoilés dans les écrits de deux auteurs chicanos : “…y no se lo tragó la tierra” (1971) de Tomás Rivera et Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993) de Tino Villanueva. Le but de cette approche est de montrer comment deux genres littéraires différents, à savoir un recueil de vignettes et un opus poétique, abordent la liminalité des tourments de l’adolescence à travers le prisme de l’expérience chicano dans la zone transfrontalière. Ces deux œuvres puissantes présentent des témoignages authentiques et choquants des conflits internes vécus par les jeunes Américano-Mexicains qui cultivent laborieusement leur terre et qui sont confrontés à l’expression de leur marginalisation dans des films visionnés dans les salles de cinéma alors qu’ils tentent de se tailler un troisième espace vital parmi les campesinos migrants et les habitants des barrios. Rivera et Villanueva s’aventurent dans les explorations audacieuses des rites auto-réglementés d’une identité ethnique et fournissent aux lecteurs d’étonnants aperçus de la liminalité identitaire, présente dans des contextes de discrimination et d’oppression sociale menant à une appréhension ésotérique de la vie.
Keywords: Chicano literature, liminality, theory, identity, Tomás Rivera, Tino Villanueva. Mots-clés : Littérature Chicano, liminalité, théorie, identité, Tomás Rivera,Tino Villanueva.
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Sophia Emmanouilidou
Introduction: Grappling with the forceful thrust towards the formation of new ideas, Enigmas of Identity symbols, models and beliefs. In order to pursue a freer existence, or “freedom from a whole heap of In the widely acclaimed interview with Jonathan institutional obligations,” the liminal self-identity Rutherford, “The Third Space,” Homi Bhabha undergoes a threshold phase of existence (Turner, contemplates the issue of identity formation as “a 36). This involves a tripartite process: a reconside- symbol forming, subject-constituting and interpella- ration of the past, an evaluation of the present and tive practice.” (210) Taking a post-colonial and post- a visualization of the future. Moreover, since limi- structuralist stance, Bhabha attempts to decipher nalities are attempts at self-governing, individuals identity as a “third space” in-between cultures, or as who escape a specific socio-political emplacement in a process of hybridity which “gives rise to something order to withstand a different self-representation are different, something new and unrecognisable, a new also voicing an outcry or a manifesto against autho- area of negotiation of meaning and representation.” ritarian world-affairs. And since the liminal phase (211) In line with Bhabha’s hybridization and the elu- takes place along the lines of a person’s cognition siveness of cultural identity, self-formation appears processes, then it is both a solitary attempt to define to be a fragmented and most certainly non-fossilized the self and a communal act embodying subtle poli- notion. The interventions of a multilayered daily tical dimensions. The aim of this paper is to explore experience and the matrices of difference in a socio- the hermeneutics of selfhood under conditions of culturally demarcated world (re)direct the interpre- gross socio-political injustice, and to detect the rites tation of identity to the realm of constant reconfigu- of passage to self-conceptualization as unravelled in ration. Indeed, the plethora of philosophical herme- two Chicano texts: Tomás Rivera’s “…y no se lo tragó neutics perplexes the sense of selfhood as they inter- la tierra” (1971), and Tino Villanueva’s Scene from the pret identity from various angles: temporal, spatial, Movie GIANT (1993). The purpose of this study is cultural, socio-political and/or economic. However, to show how two different literary genres, namely the theoretical residue in most queries over the notion a collection of vignettes and a book-length poem, of selfhood is that the depiction of mundane expe- tackle the same problematics of adolescent liminali- rience in literature stands as a trope of a transcen- ties through the prism of Chicano experience in the dent understanding of life. Especially in politically borderlands. The two masterful texts present truth- engagé literature or in the genre of autobiography, ful and shocking testimonials of the inner conflicts the understanding of individual identity elucidates endured by Mexican-American adolescents, who meaningful explanations of collective experience and either toil on the soil, carving out a third space of communal being. In this context, attempts at deci- existence among migrant campesinos, or experience phering the puzzles of identity formation can offer marginalization in the back-row seat of a movie thea- viable interpretations to broader social crises. And tre. Rivera and Villanueva attempt bold explorations despite the fact that politicized literary endeavours of the self-regulatory rites to ethnic identity, and also often opt for arbitrary generalizations or homoge- provide the readers with stunning insights into the nizations of collective experience, they are still bold liminal aspects of identity, as realized in contexts of contemplations of the enigmas of social being. discrimination and social oppression, and always en For the purposes of this paper, self-mutation and route to an esoteric understanding of life. the pastiche quality of behavioral norms can best be interpreted in the context of liminal identities. Liminalities arise from within interstices, displace- Individual Identity and the ments and overlappings: they thrive in the border Pilgrimage to Collective zones of existence, legitimate the praxis of mar- Consciousness in Tomás Rivera’s ginal standpoints, and allow the liminal subject to “...y no se lo tragó la tierra” merge and juggle with otherwise antithetical theo- Tomás Rivera (1935-1984) is among the best- ries of existence. Liminality is a complex notion, known Chicano intellectuals, whose work was the which entails the effects of socio-cultural syncretism, first to escape the confines of the Mexican American the means of resistance to the empowered, and a community and to receive wide critical acclaim.
2 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings
Rivera was born into a family of farm workers and and in the final one (“Under the House”). 2 Haunted raised in Texas. Consequently, his early experiences by the inability to comprehend life in the labyrinth were inextricably related to the labor migration of time, the boy protagonist finds refuge underneath of campesinos. The American Southwest is the pri- a house. Keeping an embryonic posture, where la mary locale of Rivera’s fiction, and the hardships tierra (the soil) becomes the fons et origo, the boy prota- of Chicano farm laborers provide his recurrent sub- gonist pursues a symbolic journey to self-knowledge, ject matter. Nevertheless, despite the homogeneity in while the vignettes and anecdotes of Tierra become Rivera’s choice of characters and setting, there is a frequent stops in the collective life of Chicanismo. pervasive complexity in the thematic concerns run- These stops reflect the degradation of subordinated ning through the bulk of his literary work, which has Mexican Americans across the US: el pueblo’s expe- been construed as the outcome of “an antithesis of riences in the fields, in the barrios or on the road in individualism and the affirmation of the collective search of work. But these narratives also portray a self.” (Sommers, 105) Rivera relates the individual peculiar cultural identity of Chicanismo, and subtly mind to a deep desire for collective identification, but suggest the political activism which springs out of not in the rigid politicization invested in the latter the need to comprehend the depth of one’s personal term, where one makes conscious decisions to align and collective identity. Thus, although the boy pro- with a specific peripheral group against the hege- tagonist’s isolation under the house has been inac- mony. Instead, Rivera’s sense of identity expresses curately construed as a separatist act from the com- a more philosophical insight, where the individual munity’s material reality, this paper maintains that negotiates the self through his/her contemplation of the boy’s confinement constitutes a political decision collective history and experience. This contemplation to experience a short-term detachment from organi- is interpreted as a quest for the reconceptualization zed social relations in order to re-emerge as a mighty of the self against the background of engraved tra- carrier of collective knowledge. 3 Concurrently, Tierra ditions and enforced stereotypes. Along these lines, becomes a struggle for selfhood and a the primary intention of this paper is to explore the landmark text for the nascent Chicano “literature social tensions Rivera evokes in his search for self- of liberation” (Grajeda, 113). understanding and in his pilgrimage to collective In “The Lost Year,” the boy protagonist is in a identification, as realized in the thematic concerns confused state of mind. He tries to “remember and and literary inventions of Tierra’s narrative structure. 1 just about [when] he thought everything was clea- No one can deny the impact of Tomás Rivera’s ring up some, he would be at a loss for words.” (111) award winning Tierra in the formation of the Chicano literary canon. Published in 1971 as the winner of 2. There is a notable non-uniformity in the critical response to Tierra, in the 1970 Quinto Sol prize, Tierra gave impetus and relation to the terms used to describe the structure of the text. Juan Rodrí- guez calls the fourteen chapters “stories”, and the thirteen short pieces recognition to the aesthetic and ethical concerns of preceding or following the stories “short comments”. Alfonso Rodríguez Chicano writing, constituted a major break from introduces the term “vignette” to describe the short stories, and the term “frame-piece” to discuss the introductory story “The Lost Year” and the the more common la raza protest literature of the concluding one “Under the House.” Moreover, Ralph F. Grajeda uses the 1960s, and is probably one of the texts written by word “anecdote” to discuss the short comments. Most critics, however, agree that Tierra belongs to the genre of the novel. For the purposes of this a Mexican American that has most widely evoked paper, the terms “short story” and “vignette” are used interchangeably, and so are “short comment” and “anecdote”. critical response. In an attempt to create a new form 3. My reference here is to Juan Rodríguez’s harsh and inaccurate attack on of fiction, which departs from conventional literary Rivera in the essay “The Problematic in Tomás Rivera’s ´... and the earth did not part.’”(1986) According to Rodríguez, Tierra promotes bourgeois indi- structures, Rivera compiled fourteen vignettes with vidualism and an elitist break from the simplicity and naiveté of Chicano their accompanying thirteen anecdotes, framed community. Consider the following extract: “It is our belief that Rivera’s accelerated ascension of the social-class ladder resulted in his having a false by the central character of a boy protagonist who vision of the Chicano people and their struggle, a vision that is evident in appears in the first short narrative (“The Lost Year”) his characterization of them as simple, helpless and backward, timid in the face of oppression, etc., and in his suggestion that the Chicanos’ main struggle for liberation must be against their own religiosity, that what Chica- 1. Subsequent references to “...y no se lo tragó la tierra” will be extracted from the nos need to do is to learn to think, to use words in order to create a liberated edition containing Evangelina Vigil-Piñón’s translation And the Earth Did Not world, and that all of this can be done in isolation and by ourselves alone. Devour Him (1987). I will also refer to the text as Tierra. It should be noted, Ultimately, Rivera’s false concept of the Chicano people – a concept in however, that the first English translation of Rivera’s seminal novel was ...“ harmony with the one held by the social class to which he ascended – sug- y no se lo tragó la tierra” “... And the Earth Did Not Part” (1971) by Herminio Ríos gests that Chicanos themselves are to blame for much of their condition, with the assistance of Octavio I. Romano-V. an old idea which returns to haunt us in a new more subtle form.” (138)
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 3 Sophia Emmanouilidou
This numb feeling is interpreted as a hallucinatory in a long chain (J. Rodríguez, 130). The significance or liminal state where the boy’s conscious and sub- lies in the fact that the boy protagonist’s discovery conscious intelligences fuse. True enough, the boy- can stretch across time and space. And the trium- protagonist cannot tell whether his experiences at phant identity awareness the boy hero attains in the this point are factual or just an incident in a dream- last vignette signals a sense of optimism that Mexican world. It is “almost always [like] a dream in which he Americans will reach a sense of communality upon would suddenly awaken and then realize that he was reading the final page of Tierra. really asleep. Then he wouldn’t know whether what The cathartic last vignette creates a therapeutic he was thinking had happened or not.” (111) In this effect and offers a sense of release from tension. But semi-rational state, he hears voices calling him “by the state of calmness at the denouement of “Under his name but when he turned his head to see who was the House” presupposes a rising action and a climax. calling, he would make a complete turn, and there As for the rising action, it is realized in the rapid nar- he would end up in the same place.” (idem) The boy rative succession of the stories and vignettes between undergoes a bizarre process towards a discovery of the introductory frame-piece, “The Lost Year,” and an existential nature, but every start in this direction the climactic moment in the next to the last short points to himself. In fact, everything happens in his narrative, “When We Arrive.” Each of these sto- own mind, and even the calling of his name does ries or vignettes enhances Rivera’s central thema- not come from outside. In this context, all the stories tic concerns. Put differently, each story focuses on and vignettes are essentially solitary performances of a particular theme that also appears peripherally a communal impetus, with the introductory frame- in other stories or vignettes. Rivera’s ingenious piece setting the inward mood of the book. technique is to recycle his themes, thus creating an The concluding frame-piece, “Under the House,” aura of continuity among el pueblo and promoting releases the boy protagonist from his quasi-trance of his people’s intellectual emancipation. The climac- asceticism beneath the house. The cumulative effect tic moment is recognized in the vignette “When We of Tierra culminates in a regenerative and optimistic Arrive” in which the boy protagonist synthesizes indi- realization as the boy vidual accounts of migrant campesinos into a collec- tive experience. The thoughts of the various Chicano had discovered something. To discover and to farm workers on a broken-down van form the cho- rediscover and to synthesize. To relate this entity rus in the perception of the boy protagonist, who with that entity, and that entity with still another, then transforms into an “intellectual hero,” one who and finally relating everything with everything else. grasps the “power of thought. [...] [His thoughts] That was what he had to do, that was all. And he generate further thoughts, which in turn lead to more became even happier. (177) thoughts etc.” (J. Rodríguez, 136) Thinking per se is Having paved the way for his people, the boy achie- power, and the boy protagonist resolves problems of ves the sublime knowledge he has sought and is now selfhood with a Nietzschean will-to-power. However, prepared to convey it to the world. This tentative rite the intellectual boy hero moves a step further, as he to self-awareness is a metaphor of the incubating picks up the pieces of scattered life stories in “When Chicanismo, as the self-cognizance the boy achieves We Arrive” and reassembles them into a communal can grow further or rather it can multiply and opt jigsaw. Quite similarly to the poststructuralist bricoleur, for universal transcendence. By following the para- the boy protagonist merges short monologues into a digm of the boy protagonist, who crawls out of the coherent whole. In its essence, “When We Arrive” darkness under the house, climbs a tree and waves attacks isolation and celebrates collectivization. And at someone perched on a palm tree on the horizon, the boy protagonist emulates a liberal humanist who Mexican Americans can also forge ethnic solidarity entrusts the realization of his vision for communality and a unique mode of communication. It is immate- to the power of the individual mind. rial whether the boy protagonist waves to himself in a The theme of collectivization is further enhanced self-reflexive “projection forward in time” or whether through the character of the wandering poet Bartolo. he symbolically discovers the first like-minded person Preceding the last vignette, the character of Bartolo appears in an anecdote selling poems to Mexicanos
4 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings who have returned from up north. As a vate (bard) thus extending his cultural epiphany to the past, the he is very popular “because the names of the people present and the future. The boy’s transition from of the town appeared in his poems.” (199) Bartolo is Simple Past to Simple Present is only symbolic of a a street corner philosopher: not only does he recite cultural discovery, which shatters temporal barriers the forgotten history of Mexican farm workers, but and reaches for the millenary. In a confused state of he also preaches the need to disperse the words of mind, both “disillusioned and a little brave,” the boy el pueblo’s social understanding “to read the poems heads back to his house (141). The hero’s enlighten- out loud because the spoken word is the seed of love ment prepares the readers for another revelation: on in darkness.” (199, emphasis added) In this instance, the way home he realizes that the sole presence in “darkness” is a symbolic state of loneliness or of a the woods is his own “voice”. And this is the greatest complete lack of communication, whereas the “spo- discovery he makes. In other words, he construes the ken word” is the only panacea for el pueblo’s misery. devil as a superstitious anathema, and reinvents the Bartolo serves a double intellectual function: first, he self as the sole nucleus of cognizance. The narrating represents the long-standing Mexican oral tradition, voice becomes pathetically fallacious and the boy’s in which villancicos (poetic compositions of a reli- self-confidence is so radiant that it becomes reflected gious nature) and corridos (narrative ballads) provide onto the natural surroundings. Everything now seems Chicanos with emotional impetus, folkloric identity peaceful and calm, and, at the conclusion of the and historical continuity; second, Bartolo symbolizes story, the little boy falls asleep “gazing at the moon the need to use popular poetic forms politically, since as it jumped through the clouds and the trees, as if reciting becomes a communal fiesta for downtrodden it were extremely content about something.” (142) Chicanos and a call for collective action. Through The hovering presence of demons or divine spirits is the character of Bartolo, Rivera accords oral tradi- dissolved, while only nature and the boy’s renewed tion a significant role in the formation of the com- self-awareness dominate the scenery. munity’s cultural identity. However, Rivera suggests Apart from displacing myths and superstitious that rigid cultural practices can intimidate people rituals, a recurrent theme in Tierra is the reconside- or halt the wished-for liberal definition of the self. ration of mexicano traditional religious practices, most A recurrent theme of Tierra is that the cultural past strongly elaborated in the story “And the Earth Did can retard one’s effort to exceed his/her potential, Not Devour Him.” In this vignette, a boy hero wit- and thus that culture often becomes another master nesses the deprivation of his family. First, his aunt narrative or a strategy of containment, which has dies of tuberculosis, his uncle spits blood and their to be demystified in tune with people’s attempts at children are scattered among the relatives. Then, the emancipation. In the story “A Silvery Night,” Rivera hero’s father suffers sunstroke while working in the describes a boy’s determination to summon the fields. During all this suffering, the hero feels a rush devil. The boy’s curiosity makes him bold enough of exasperation and anger, but does not know whom to step into darkness and head for the center of a to blame. Only when his parents clamor “for God’s knoll. Nature echoes the hero’s yearning for a revela- mercy” does the boy realize that “God doesn’t care tion, since “everything was clear and it even smelled about us.” (146) In a state of frustration, the child like day.” (139) The storyline unfolds at midnight, questions the very existence of a superior benevolent which is symbolic of a liminal temporal zone, when being: “Tell me, Mother, why? Why us, buried in the darkness merges with light, or a calendar day draws earth like animals with no hope for anything? You to its end and the future commences. Likewise, the know the only hope we have is coming out here every boy is just about to expel an old, conditioned iden- year. And like you yourself say, only death brings tity and attain a renewed self-awareness. All alone rest.” (147) He even reviles his mother for entrusting on top of the knoll, he curses the devil but nothing life in God and cherishing hallucinations such as “the happens. The discovery he makes of the devil’s non- poor go to heaven.” (147) The next day the boy hero existence acquires diachronic significance: “There “began the day’s labor” along with his brothers and was no devil. [...] No, there’s no devil. There isn’t.” sisters (148). After a while, his little brother, who is (141, emphasis added) The boy concocts a novel only nine years old, suffers sunstroke. Consumed by culture without the overwhelming fear of the devil,
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 5 Sophia Emmanouilidou helplessness, the boy hero asks himself “why”, and Anglo schoolboy’s racist remarks, he is expelled from this question keeps reverberating in his mind (149). school. The whole story is a retrospective account Unable to find an answer, he becomes furious and of the young hero’s recent traumatic experiences at curses God, thus committing the ultimate sin for school. It is the frantic soliloquy of a distressed child the pious, religious Mexican American community. who wants to wrestle with his turbulent thoughts and Having been subjected to cultural conditioning for resolve the tensions in his mind. Unfortunately, the years, he instantly feels that “the earth [opens] up boy gets entangled up in feelings of guilt towards his to devour him.” (149) However, he realizes that the parents: they are the ones who cherish the dream that ground stays solid, his fury becomes self-confidence he will become a telephone operator and they even and he “feels at peace as never before.” (150) The “pray God helps him finish school” for the fulfilment boy hero of “... And the Earth Did not Devour Him” of their dream. The irony is that the parents’ dual is the eldest son of a family of migrant campesinos, illusion of an escape from the fields and a job, as a and on a symbolic paradigm he occupies the liminal telephone operator, originates in Hollywood movies, ground between the broken-down older generation the ultimate industry of image-fabrication. The fic- and the younger one of confident Chicanos. In other tional world on the silver screen becomes a source words, the hero is a philosophical pioneer, one who of hope and optimism for this handful of wretched opens up the cognitive frontiers for a better future. Chicanos in “It’s That It Hurts.” In other words, And the deconstruction of a godly figure is the boy’s the boy is encouraged to pursue an education for rebellion against ignorance and passivity. Similarly to the wrong reasons. All these thoughts fluctuate in the boy protagonist in “Under the House,” this boy- his mind until halfway home he stops at a cemetery, hero considers revealing the non-existence of God to enchanted by the place’s tranquillity. The boy hero his mother. He hesitates though and decides “to keep is driven to estrangement as he gradually distances it a secret for a while.” (150) The boy in this story is himself from the rest of his family’s expectations. All another character in Tierra who resorts to philoso- alone in the cemetery, he ponders on how his family phical solitude. Yet, Rivera’s optimistic tone of voice will react to the news of his expulsion from school. implies that it is only a matter of time before the boy Fear overcomes the boy at the thought of being sent hero shares his revelations with the members of his to reform school, and he even considers lying to his community. By renouncing the godly false emblem parents and keeping everything a secret. The lie of benevolence and hope, the hero makes the first resonates in his mind: “Maybe they didn’t expel me. step into a new phase of cognition. The boy’s philo- Sure they did.” (125, original emphasis). This solilo- sophical insight is the fertile ground on which a new quy resembles a dialogue between the boy’s rebel- perception of life will evolve and then disseminate lious conscious mind and subconscious fears, which within the Chicano community. places his experience in a dream world. Thus, the Except for religiosity and superstitions that torment young hero becomes entangled in the dialectics of Rivera’s young heroes, Tierra’s children are solitary reality versus illusion, self-assertion versus self-depre- characters because of their low self-esteem amidst ciation. Nevertheless, he gradually realizes that it is the dominant socio-cultural forces. The hero in “It’s his parents’ dream he is fulfilling whereas he hates That It Hurts” undergoes a degrading experience reading to his padrino and does not tolerate submissi- when his parents encourage his schooling only to veness. The last catch phrase of the story “No, yeah” place him at the heart of Anglo racism. The school signifies the hero’s denial of the lies, not just the ones environment scars the boy with a series of traumas: spoken to himself, but also the ones imposed on him when he arrives at the building, a nurse asks him by a delusory cultural environment (128). Put diffe- to undress and then “examine[s] his behind [...] rently, it is “no” to a fallible past, and “yeah” to a ratio- and head” leaving the boy ashamed, while in class nal perception of a future self-realization. he is ostracized “when they put [him] in the corner Tierra provides a faithful insight into the everyday apart from everyone.” (124) Illiteracy becomes the life of rural Mexican Americans. The text is compri- boy’s worst nightmare since the whole class laughs sed of realistic snapshots drafted by the boy prota- at his inability to read. And when he stands up for gonist, who also serves as a thematic binding agent. himself and defends his battered dignity against an Through this character, Rivera provides Tierra with
6 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings cohesiveness: the little child frames the novel and ties most likely to perpetuate a socio-cultural legacy; and the in-between individual and seemingly unrelated second, they are the ones who can rebel against “the stories into a narrative whole of Chicano la vida. often invisible social and economic forces that govern Even though it is unclear whether the boy appears their lives, the institutions, and the physical environ- in the book outside the introductory and concluding ment in which they live.” (Grajeda, 118) Children stories, it can be claimed that whatever the nume- experience the tensions created “between the oppo- rous characters – the majority being children – expe- sing values of resignation and rebellion.” (ibidem, 119) rience in the body of the novel, the boy-protagonist In short, children can grow up to be either passive experiences as well. The young child embodies the victims or active reformers. Rivera attaches great collective consciousness of Mexican Americans and importance to childhood because he considers it the constructs a “we-identity [...] through some sort most promising phase in a person’s life cycle. Youth of psychological or conceptual coming together of has the advantage of not being burdened with years individuals, each of whom is pre-equipped with a of deprivation or cultural enforcement. Having wit- personal identity.” (Mennell, 176) In the solitude nessed the injustices of life, the children in Tierra of his mind, the boy protagonist re-enacts familiar can assume the power to react “with pride and arro- tragedies, whether personally witnessed or heard via gance, and perhaps even insolence.” (Villarreal, 167) oral tradition. The swift succession of vignettes and This handful of children undertake the demystifica- the accelerating tension created by the intervening tion of all the futile, false and repressive myths of anecdotes are two of Rivera’s ingenious techniques Chicano culture. And their determination to recover which give close-ups of the Chicano plight. More a lost selfhood turns them into ruthless or even blas- explicitly, the rapid display of the misfortunes of life phemous repudiators: they question the validity of creates a Brechtian shockwave, leaving the readers superstition, myth, religiosity and submissiveness – reflective and critical of the storyline. 4 The alienation values that have long been revered by their Chicano effect achieved by the loosely related episodes and forebears. In short, they deconstruct traditions and the interspersed enigmatic anecdotes is a warning strive for the establishment of a renewed Chicano against the mere identification with the story, and selfhood. And upon denouncing timidity, they not becomes a subtle summoning to action. Rivera seems only unravel the overpowering Anglo hegemony, but to underline that what is repeatedly experienced can more importantly they lay bare the irrationality of become a routine, no matter how tragic it initially previous Mexican American generations in enduring appears. Thus, he assumes the political role of the deprivation and embracing the wrong cultural prac- intellectual who dispels the community’s automated tices for too long. life practices in order “to uncover the causal complex in society – to unmask the dominant viewpoint as the In the Interregnum of Self- viewpoint of the rulers.” (Brecht, 424) And the inten- Awareness: Tino Villanueva’s Poetic tion of Tierra is to sow seeds of political awareness, Memory to “unmask” the causes of Chicano subordination, and to promote a sense of collective (re)action against the mainstream. An engagé poem is a call to action and a To conclude, it must be highlighted that children reminder […] that you can curse the darkness, are Rivera’s archetypal figures of resistance who but nothing nothing will change if you don’t embody a dual symbolic potential: first, they are yourself light a candle. Therefore, […] a poem is more than simply “political” for the very lines you quote: “I am free to act, but I must act to be free,” 4. A comparison is being made here between Bertolt Brecht’s social protest Epic Theatre and Rivera’s vignettes on the life of Chicanos. Epic Theatre which dramatically underscore the existential will. evolved as a reaction to age-old epic conventions which enchanted the (Villanueva “The Breath …,” 176) audience in a mythical world, populated by historical or legendary charac- ters (e.g., The Iliad, The Odyssey). Brecht emulated the epic narrative, but at the same time his aim was to prevent the audience from identifying with the MELUS Volume 35, No. 1 features Tino events on stage. Similarly, Rivera creates an epic narrative of Chicanismo, Villanueva’s response to some of the undercurrents but at the same time encourages his readers to evaluate and comprehend the social conditions that Tierra presents. For more on Epic Theatre, see in the composition of pervasively self-reflexive poetry. Bertolt Brecht, “The Popular... .”
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 7 Sophia Emmanouilidou
Villanueva’s interview with Professor A. Robert Lee consciousness, an act of knowing oneself as a product commences with a straightforward and solid iden- of historical processes that can be interrogated, inter- tification of the poet as a Chicano coming out of preted and perhaps even changed.” (Saldívar, 170) the Southwest borderlands. The questions posed Vividly reminiscent of his rite of passage to social by the interviewer trace the poet’s tentative steps to epiphany at the age of fourteen, Villanueva testifies academic education, and allow the reader to discern in verse to his personal trauma of being unexpecte- that fragile balance numerous Mexican Americans dly introduced to the unjust manifestations of racism. keep through incommensurable texts of selfhood. Villanueva recollects his exposure to the ways of a Born into two socio-culturally conflicting worlds, ruthlessly racist society, while sitting in the back-row Chicano and Anglo, Villanueva is aware of tiptoeing seat of the Holiday Theatre in 1956. The screening on treacherous social and academic grounds. Due of George Stevens’s classic movie Giant constitutes to his personal experience of living in bilingualandia, the liminal juncture in the young speaker’s passage Villanueva has learned how to juggle with two diffe- to maturity and self-awareness. And the experience rent socio-politically invested languages, and how to at the movie theatre of a café owner’s “gruff voice code-switch in his attempts at academic excellence coming with the deep-dyed colors of the screen” pro- and daily social integration. Villanueva identifies his vides the incentive for the eventual rise of the poet’s poems as “the hybridized, interlingual, bisensitive, voice (12). For Villanueva, the climactic moment of binary, mestizo, macaronic type of poems in which the film is played out in the next-to-the-end scene […] two languages contain each other and carry of the three-and-a-half hour Hollywood film, when the poems along their final conclusions.” ( “The Sarge, the Anglo owner of the roadside café in Texas, Breath…”, 170) Thus, he interprets the articulation employs unlawful physical and verbal abuse against of poetic logos as a cognizant self-positioning, and as an old vaquero and two Mexican American women. the carving out of a personal space, in which the poet The three characters enter the establishment for an is called upon to delve into his/her spatial confines innocent outing to a roadside diner, and are seemin- and cultural history. Furthermore, Villanueva glori- gly unsuspecting of the eruption of sheer animosity fies the power of conscious recollection and deems a that is about to be released. The scene at the eatery poet’s memory archives as a vibrating and powerful depicts familiar images of an old Mexican American source of inspiration. In his own words: man “stooped in the ruts of old age,” his wife and another woman “in uneventful street clothes.” (20) Make memory serve as an inspiration – memory Almost unaware of the ingrained racism in post-war as muse, and ultimately, memory as identity. […] America, the young adolescent viewer revels in the [M]emory, for me, becomes a useful device to go projection of the three Chicanos and instinctively back in time to recover a history which would othe- identifies with them. He retrieves familiar frames of rwise be lost – a personal or communal history, no hard toiling Chicanos who “Show a tired look as if matter how lacklustre or unsettling that history from a journey begun long ago/ […] A woman I might have been. (176) could be nephew/ To and a couple old enough to call For Villanueva, a poem is the outcome of solitary me grandson.” (idem) The three Mexican American reflection into collective past experiences. Far from characters are on such a recognizable cognitive aestheticizing his poetic voice, Villanueva construes a tableau to young Villanueva’s perception mechanisms poem as a hybrid genre per se because it is the artistic that “they go unnoticed.” (20) However, the womb prodigy of reminiscence into material history. of familiarity is abruptly breached with Sarge’s racist Drawing upon the memories of his adolescent intervention, which displaces the Chicano element to years in the American Southwest, Villanueva’s book- the margins of society. length poem Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993) is a As an adolescent viewer, Villanueva is consumed masterful account of the individual and collective by the character of Sarge, the White American res- anxieties endured by Chicanos/as across the USA. taurant owner who dominates the poet’s memories The poem is an autobiographic plunge into those “with too much muscle,/ Too much brawn” (37). memory plateaus which illuminate “the act of critical Rising “stout and unpleased from behind his coun- ter,” Sarge overwhelms the speaker with his sweeping
8 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings force of aggression (11). The racist Anglo character doing so, he attests to the marginality of Chicanismo, despotically patrols the polarized setting of the coun- carves a sharp borderline between Anglo citizenship ter, as if symbolically guarding a nation’s geographic and the Other, and transposes the adolescent spea- perimeters, or defending an imagined social bor- ker to the exigencies of ethnic representation in the derline between white and non-white subjectivities context of sharp racism. In its essence, the scene at within the USA. the restaurant is an enactment of a social crisis based on racial classifications. Yet, the scene’s profound On this earth where significance lies in the fact that it enables young Villanueva to make a transition to a twilight zone Animals have crawled into men, Sarge is tall betwixt and between social and/or racial categoriza- tions. In different terms, a White American’s wrath Among them, well past six-feet, oppressive exerted against peaceful Chicanos may be a thread- bare story in barrios, barbershop shops and resolana gatherings, but in Scene from The Movie GIANT it esta- Everywhere, in a white shirt, sleeves rolled blishes that turning point in Villanueva’s self-cogni- tion processes. The scene at the eatery marks that Up that declare the beefiness of his arms temporal juncture in which the adolescent viewer transgresses the confines of a segregated barrio exis- Which, if extended, could reach across bodies tence, enters liminal anxieties of racial regulation and becomes witness to the ambiguities of adult life: Of water. He stands there like God of the With orange soda and scoops of popcorn,
Plains country, heavy-footed like a troglodyte, I have taken the vague wisdom of the
And what he says he says with the weight of Body to my favourite last row seat at the
A dozen churches behind him: ‘You’re in the Movie house. It is 1956 … […]
Wrong place, amigo. Come on, let’s get out of I am fourteen and the
Here. Vamoose. Àndale. (25) Muscles come to a stop: From the spell Sarge’s exclusionary practices in the café repre- sent how “the processes of control are manifested Of too much make-believe world that is in the exclusion of those people who are judged to be deviant, imperfect or marginal.” (Sibley, xv) Real […]. (27) The owner’s eerie figure resembles a white Goliath in an uneven battle with feeble Other subjectivities The controversial scene at the eatery enables the and betrays the ferocity of his austere demeanour. young speaker to encounter some of the perplexing And strengthened with “the weight of a dozen dilemmas arising from within the hazy boundaries churches behind him,” Sarge stands almighty with between adult life and childhood. The café incident the lingering echo of institutionalized racism in the disrupts the young speaker’s utopian world view of background. an egalitarian enclave in the barrio, and introduces When Sarge defines the ethnic perimeters of his for the first time the discursive realities of institu- roadside eatery by refusing service to Chicanos, he tionalized racism. In short, the young viewer at the symbolically expels the spatial and cultural presence Holiday Theatre crosses the threshold from adoles- of Mexican Americans from mainstream society. By cent ignorance into adult ontological queries. By
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 Sophia Emmanouilidou entering the blurry liminality between naïveté and serenely grown out of something forgetful, self-cognizance, the fourteen-year-old Villanueva displaces himself from the safety net of childhood looks through me, to some of the hazardous esoteric understandings of society. Sarge’s violent reaction is an expression of deeply believing life goes on as before rooted racist assumptions, as he uninhibitedly refuses to serve the three Mexican Americans on the as I pass by. grounds of their racial difference. The discourse of difference underpins most of the Scene from The Movie The trees the houses among them GIANT, and it comprises the structural foundation of the poem’s thematic concerns. Much in accordance see me staring me in muteness; with Ramón Saldívar’s premise that the majority of the Chicano literary canon is embedded with dia- lectics of difference, Villanueva’s poetic composition from where they stand – houses, trees, “positions [itself] against both the overt and the indi- rect components of social power.” (24) The magna- neighbors – they cannot know nimity of the poem is realized in the consciousness of difference it unravels, and in the way it attempts the sudden intake of all breath, a defensive response to Anglo structures of oppres- sion. Difference ignites chain-reactions in the poem, with the first one being Sarge’s raw outburst of dis- a sigh I myself do not comprehend. (43) crimination. However, the significance of the café This fragment of the poem signifies a symbolic scene is that it triggers a profound transformation mutation caused by a transition from superficiality to in the mental processes of the “thin, flickering, hel- an in-depth perception of social being. Although the pless, light, local looking, unthought of at fourteen” young speaker retraces a familiar route back home speaker (12). Although the poem commences with a and revisits recognizable spatial and human images concise description of the poet as a plain young ado- of barrio life, his cognition is enlightened with racial lescent, it simultaneously marks the point of depar- awareness. The young boy enters a new phase of ture from ignorance towards the emergence of a new understanding because “[s]omething from the movie self-identity. screen had/dropped into life, his small shield of The end of the film screening asserts a symbolic faith/no longer with him.” (44) rebirth in the class and race consciousness of the If “deep structures of prejudice, contempt and speaker, and the rise of an awakened self. The spea- aversion characterize the response of the centre ker retraces his “journey home” in a state of limbo: to the marginal,” then Sarge’s apprehension of “my head buzzing/I arose in penumbra, vexed at the Mexican Americans in his establishment is proof of unwinding/course of truth and was now lost in my a totalitarian Anglo supremacy, which rules out the steps.” (41) Feeling numb after his introduction to presence of Mexicanos (Rutherford, 23). As a corollary, racial subordination, the fourteen-year-old speaker the shocking scene in the movie testifies to Sarge’s commences his Odyssey home. His return is marked rejection of racial difference as legitimate and righ- by the movie’s vigor in the young speaker’s psyche, teous in a white nationalistic world order. And the and by the activation of his transformation as a Anglo character’s exclusionary stance is an exem- signifying agent, one who displaces and defamilia- plary indication of the dominant consciousness in rizes opaque aspects of daily experience: post-war USA. On the other hand, the scene inspires Each neighbour, Villanueva to an award-winning poetic composition, which is notably invested with socio-political under- currents of Chicano pride. Should we recall the old in the ease of the afternoon Marxist equation of the chain reaction following
10 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Liminalities and Displacements: The Rites of Passage to Self-Identification in Chicano Writings praxis, the antipraxis to the Anglo character’s racist as a student in Boston, only to complete the poetic abuse of Mexican Americans is Villanueva’s insight- composition of Scene from the Movie GIANT in 1993. ful penetration into the incident from an ethnic stan- Villanueva’s poetic undertaking is a regression in dpoint. Thus, Sarge’s abuse stands as an emblematic temporal dimensions in order to record candidly the moment in the emergence of social mobilization and interconnected experiences of marginalization and in the synthesis of politically engaged verse: discrimination. Claiming its distinguished space in the Chicano literary canon as the recipient of the […] Never shall I American Book Award in 1994, Villanueva’s book- length poem is a narrative which provides its readers Forget, never how quickly his hand threw my significant representations of the historical dramas endured by Mexican Americans in the middle of the Breathing off – how quickly he plopped the twentieth century. Finally, as Mexican American life experiences often intersect, consciously or not, with the numerous experiences of disenfranchisement and Hat heavily askew once more on the old exploitation in the present setting of a global village, and “with the interests of what has sometimes been Man’s head, seized two fistful of shirt and referred to as the Third World,” it is safe to contend that Tino Villanueva’s masterful poetry is a dedicated Coat and lifted his slight body like nothing, and bold incursion into the lives of all peripheral peoples (Saldívar, 24). A no-thing, who could have been any of us, Conclusion Weightless nobodies bronzed by real-time far Tomás Rivera’s “… y no se lo tragó la tierra” and Tino Villanueva’s Scene from the Movie GIANT are Off somewhere […]. (34) revolutionary repudiations of fossilized doctrines and powerful literary detours into Chicano collec- Having watched the scene, the speaker enters his tive experience. They stand out as differential nar- own liminal rite to collectivization, and immerses rative statements because “difference […] is always himself in ethnic appreciation. The threshold pas- perceived as the effect of the other.” (Rutherford, sage to fully grasping the complexities of life is enac- 10) The scenes recreated in Rivera’s farm locale or ted when the silver screen makes him witness to Villanueva’s movie theater allow the two Chicano Anglo ferocity against Chicanos. literary voices to emerge potent both on a personal Tino Villanueva’s poetic diction becomes a trope and a communal level: on the one hand, the indi- of mature political awareness. Nonetheless, the cri- vidual enters the public sphere and dismantles the tical attempt to construe the personal and political hallucinations of an isolated existence; on the other rigor of the café scene should consider the temporal hand, as dedicated members of a racialized group, distance of a forty-year lapse to the present. Cultural Rivera and Villanueva resume the responsibility of values and social structures are subject to transmu- fighting the systematic subjugation of Chicanismo. tation, a fact which can account for many of the Personal change entails a transition to conditions of varied reactions Sarge’s racist outburst may launch. possibility, and these pivotal literary figures refute Differently put, the scene deploys the consistent and enforced histories of disempowerment by “breaking dominant Anglo system of values in the 1950s, whe- […] hierarchies and dismantling [the] language of reas from the present temporal prism, this societal polarity and its material structures of inequality and creed would be adamantly condemned by the majo- discrimination.” (idem, 10) When the young heroes rity of civil society. Real life instances evoke varied in “… y no se lo tragó la tierra” and Scene from the Movie reactions across a temporal line: the poet himself GIANT attest to the “second skin” growing on them, witnessed the scene at the eatery in 1956, shoved they simultaneously enter the liminality of hovering it in his subconscious mind, returned to it in 1973 between alternate phases of existence (GIANT, 27).
Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 11 Sophia Emmanouilidou
Moreover, their liminal existence introduces a pro- TURNER Victor, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of cess of defamiliarization, which includes a displace- Play, New York: Performing Arts Journal Publishers, 1982. ment of a person’s cognition from the habitual realm VILLANUEVA Tino, Scene from the Movie GIANT, Willimantic: Curbstone P, 1993. of being to novel sensations. The distinctive effect ――――――, “‘The Breath is Alive/with the Equal Girth of achieved in those characters’ attempts at defamiliari- Words’: Tino Villanueva in Interview,” in Robert A. Lee, zation is one of self-awakening to the less automated Transgressing the Borders of America, MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Lite- routines of everyday experience. Thus, the transpa- rature of the United States) 35 1, 2010: 167-183. rent elements of tradition and daily experience, as VILLARREAL José Antonio R., “Chicano Literature: Art and thematized by Rivera and Villanueva, resume their Politics from the Perspective of the Artist,” in Francisco Jimé- nez (ed.), The Identification and Analysis of Chicano Literature, New forceful social presence, and become both insightful York: Bilingual/Editorial Bilingüe, 1979. philosophical interpretations and magnets for politi- cal investment.
Bibliography
BHABHA Homi, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence, 1990.
BRECHT Bertolt, “The Popular and the Realistic,” in David Craig (ed.), Marxists on Literature: An Anthology, Har- mondsworth: Penguin, 1975. GRAJEDA Ralph F., “Tomás Rivera’s Appropriation of the Chicano Past,” in Vernon E. Lattin (ed.), Contemporary Chicano Literature, Binghamton: Bilingual/Editorial Bilingüe, 1986, 113-125. MENNELL Stephen, “The Formation of We-Images: A Process Theory,” in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, Cambridge (MA): Blackwell, 1994. RIVERA Tomás, “... y no so lo tragó la tierra” / “... And the Earth Did not Devour Him,” trans. Evangelina Vigil-Piñón, Houston: Arte Publico P, 1987. ――――――, “... y no so lo tragó la tierra”/ “... And the Earth Did not Part,” trans. Herminio Ríos and Octavio I. Romano-V., Ber- keley: Quinto Sol, 1971. RODRÍGUEZ Alfonso, “Time as a Structural Device in Tomás Rivera’s ‘... y no se lo tragó la tierra,’” in Vernon E. Lattin (ed.), Contemporary Chicano Literature, Binghamton: Bilingual/Edito- rial Bilingüe, 1986. RODRÍGUEZ Juan, “The Problematic in Tomás Rivera’s ‘...and the earth did not part,’” in Vernon E. Lattin (ed.), Contemporary Chicano Literature, Binghamton: Bilingual/Editorial Bilingüe, 1986. RUTHERFORD Jonathan, “A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of Difference,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence, 1990. SALDÍVAR Ramón, Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference, Wisconsin: The U of Wisconsin P, 1990. SIBLEY David. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West, London: Routledge, 1995. SOMMERS Joseph, “Interpreting Tomás Rivera,” in Joseph Sommers and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto (eds.), Modern Chicano Writers, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1979.
12 Liminalities and Displacements, Emmanouilidou, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Revue LISA/LISA e-journal Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World
Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013 Latinotopia-USA: International Perspectives on the Transforming USA in the 21st Century
Beyond Conflicts and Borders: Reconciliation and Latinotopia Au-delà des conflits et des frontières : réconciliation et Latinotopia
Karin Ikas
Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes
Electronic version Printed version URL: http://lisa.revues.org/5338 Date of publication: 30 juin 2013 ISSN: 1762-6153
Brought to you by Université Rennes 2
Electronic reference Karin Ikas, « Beyond Conflicts and Borders: Reconciliation and Latinotopia », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online], Vol. XI – n° 2 | 2013, Online since 30 June 2013, connection on 03 January 2017. URL : http:// lisa.revues.org/5338 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.5338
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Les contenus de la Revue LISA / LISA e-journal sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. NoXI-2 Revue en ligne : http://lisa.revues.org Beyond Conflicts and Borders: Reconciliation and Latinotopia Au-delà des conflits et des frontières : réconciliation et Latinotopia
Karin Ikas
Karin Ikas is co-editor of this volume. He is a Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures with a particular focus on North American, British and New English Literatures and Cultures and currently teaches at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen (Germany). In the summer term 2012 she held the position of an Acting Chair for British and Anglophone Literature and Culture (chair holder: Prof. Dr. Jens Gurr) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen (Germany).
Abstract: This entry sheds lights on the concept of “Reconciliation and Latinotopia” as a pressing and ever-more popular subject matter that takes us beyond conflicts and borders as well as the historical and geographical site of the Mexican American borderlands. It demons- trates that reconciliation is pivotal when discussing the United States. Historically speaking, one may go as far as to claim that reconciliation or, rather its absence, was the seed from which the Mexican American community emerged. Today, when addressing how to deal with the borderlands and how to go beyond this geographical site but also conflicts and dualities, reconciliation exerts a significant influence on the shaping of contemporary identities and the well-being of a community. Increasingly, the region is extending its influence to all parts of the United States and is gaining greater importance as an in-between space – in the sense of a glocal, geo-political and transcultural as well as aesthetic space beyond a third space – not only in the Americas but internationally. How and to what extent Latinotopia can eventually be perceived as a discursive site for reconciliation in the Third Millennium is the question this paper aims to answer by integrating socio-poli- tical, historical and literary works in an interdisciplinary manner and by suggesting considering Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s figure of the “rhizome” as an illustrative concept to capture Latinotopia theoretically and practically in further studies.
Résumé : Cet article met en lumière le concept de réconciliation associé à celui de Latinotopia, un sujet actuel et de plus en plus populaire qui transcende les conflits et les frontières et dépasse les sites historiques et géographiques de la zone transfrontalière américano-mexicaine. Cet article tente de démontrer que la réconciliation est incontournable lorsque l’on étudie les États-Unis. Historiquement, on peut aller jusqu’à dire que la réconciliation, ou plutôt son absence, est à l’origine de la communauté américano-mexicaine. Aujourd’hui, lorsque l’on aborde la question de la frontière et du comment transcender cette aire géographique mais aussi du comment passer outre les conflits et les dualités, la réconciliation induit une influence significative dans la construction des identités contemporaines et du bien-être d’une communauté. De plus en plus, cette région déborde de part et d’autre des États-Unis et gagne en influence, devenant un espace entre-deux – c’est-à-dire un espace à fois glocal, géo-politique et transculturel tout autant qu’esthétique allant au-delà d’un troisième espace – non seulement aux Amériques mais aussi à l’échelle internationale. Comment et dans quelle mesure la Latinotopia peut-elle être perçue comme un lieu discursif propice à la réconciliation dans le Troisième Millénaire est la question sur laquelle repose notre étude et à laquelle nous tentons de répondre en intégrant des travaux socio-politiques, historiques et littéraires, en adoptant une posture interdisciplinaire et en s’appuyant sur la figure du « rhizome » chère à Gilles Deleuze et à Félix Guattari et qui permet d’appréhender le concept de Latinotopia tant sur les plans théorique que pratique.
Keywords: reconciliation, Homi K. Bhabha, third space, Aztlán, Mexican-American War, literature, Gilles Deleuze, rhizome.. Mots-clés : réconciliation, Homi K. Bhabha, troisième espace, Aztlán, guerre méricano-mexicaine, littérature, Gilles Deleuze, rhizome.
Beyond Conflicts and Borders, Ikas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Karin Ikas
Introduction Coming to Terms with Reconciliation Reconciliation is a hot topic today as we advance further into the second decade of the Third Reconciliation can be defined as a committed Millennium, which ought to be perceived as the bilateral cross-cultural process with a specific his- “Global Decade of Reconciliation 2011-2020.” 1 In torical and contemporary dimension. Bain Atwood 2006, the United Nations’ General Assembly had offers a succinct description here when concep- already declared “Human Reconciliation as the tualizing reconciliation processes as efforts to cope Millennium challenge” and designated “2009 — thoroughly with the “Burden of the Past in the The International Year of Reconciliation” 2 with its Present.” Similarly, Mark Gibney, Rhoda E. Howard Proclamation GA/10536. At the beginning of this Hassmann and Jean-Marc Coicaud, in their edited same year of international reconciliation, Barack collection of 2008, relate reconciliation to specific Hussein Obama not only took office as 44th President and exceptional situations, usually linked to histo- of the United States but he made it his first official rical circumstances, to illustrate the need of Facing act as president to proclaim 20 January 2009, the day Up the Past in The Age of Apology. 4 Indeed, especially of his inauguration, a “National Day of Renewal and the long periods of external and internal colonialism Reconciliation.” 3 and imperialism around the world have shown that Obviously, reconciliation is thus also a key concept the causes of violence are rooted in various histori- not to be missed when discussing the United States cally unequal power relationships, such as between in general and Latinotopia in particular and when indigenous and non-indigenous people, resident and exploring in that context the contemporary and his- immigrant groups, whites and non-whites, Europeans torical situation of Mexican Americans in the United and non-Europeans, and, one might add, between States. Historically speaking, one may even go as far men and women and members of different beliefs as to claim that reconciliation or rather its failure was and creeds. Consequently, reconciliation after such the seed from which the Mexican American commu- experiences of violence demands also a reassessment nity originated. Today, when talking about how to of these uneven power relations. For Damien Short, pacify the borderlands and go beyond conflicts and a socio-political apology debate is thus a concomi- dualities, reconciliation exerts a significant influence tant phenomenon of a reconciliation process. In an on the shaping of contemporary identities and on attempt to capture the latter’s challenges and pros- the state of well-being of a community and region pects Short posits: that is gaining more and more influence as an in- between space – in the sense of a local, geo-political Reconciliation is closer to a social movement and cultural as well as aesthetic third space – not or process, whose character is moral rather than only in the Americas but internationally. How and to legal. For although the rule of law and the regime what extent Latinotopia can eventually be perceived of rights attached to it support the fabric of eve- as a discursive site for reconciliation in the Third ryday life in democracies, law and rights require Millennium is the question the following chapter something prior, and that is the bonds that form a aims to answer by integrating socio-political, histori- community. Those bonds are complex, but they are cal and literary works in an interdisciplinary manner. expressed in the trust and confidence of citizens in their political institutions, and in the civility with which a society conducts itself. (2001, 77) 1. Cf. “Global Decade of Reconciliation 2011-2020.” Online at
2 Beyond Conflicts and Borders, Ikas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Beyond Conflicts and Borders: Reconciliation and Latinotopia with respect to the specific Australian situation – and and corporate level, we undoubtedly will decide here he refers especially to the indigenous and non- to pursue numerous activities that will impact all indigenous reconciliation process in the aftermath spheres of American life. Although I do not believe of the Stolen Generation tragedy – his findings also we have only one purpose, I believe that Latinos offer some significant starting points for the following and Latinas are destined to serve the critical role of chapters that explore literary and cultural practices in agents of reconciliation and healing in American the Mexican American borderlands from a reconci- race relations, particularly between black and white liatory perspective. Americans. (99) While Hernández argues conclusively from a Reconciling the (Mexican contemporary perspective to request his fellow American) Borderlands “Latino-Americans” to take up the mantle of racial Mexican American reconciliation is a complex healing and reconciliation, the historical perspec- and challenging facet of national and inter-ethnic tive must not be forgotten either. It is particularly reconciliation in the United States as, among others, important not to lose sight of the fact that the specific José David Saldívar’s apt assessment reveals: Mexican American situation can be traced back to a chapter in American imperial history that has been First carved out in the midst of U.S. imperia- silenced for far too long as Chicano historian Mario lism by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) T. García points out: “[t]here is no question but that and the Gadsden Purchase (1853), the U.S. Mexico in studies of Mexicans in the United States the most borderlands have earned a reputation as a “third neglected field is history.” (34) “Indeed,” as David country” because our southern border is not simply J. Weber added confirmatively in 1973, “historians Anglocentric on one side and Mexican on the other. have been criticized more for what they have not said […] A near intercultural world unto itself, the U.S.- than for what they have said.” (2) Mexico border is dominated by two foreign powers, In recent years, Mexican American critics have in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. The U.S.- contributed to lifting the veil of silence here and chal- Mexico border changes pesos into dollars, humans lenge the homogeneity of U.S. nationalism, history into undocumented workers, cholos/as (Chicano and culture through their works in an effort to launch youth culture) into punks, people between cultures a remapping of American Cultural Studies where into people without culture. (1997, 8) particularly the border and the borderlands matter as “Nuestra América’s Borders,” as José David Saldívar As this passage shows, the protagonists who make fittingly names this glocalized site of American cross- up these borderlands suffer from various uneven roads in his significant entry to the new anthology of power hierarchies. Moreover, they have more than American Studies published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2009 one physical, ethnic and cultural background and (26). This involves as well a reassessment of those hence face the challenge of how to communicate historical accounts that used to present the Mexican more successfully in a situation in which not only the American experience in the United States in a distor- abolition of these power hierarchies is a significant ted, even wrong, way in American historiography for task but hybridity is the order of the day. For Michael so long. A telling example is David Saville Muzzey’s V. Hernández, it is this very hybridity that qualifies 1911 schoolbook American History, which was used till U.S. Latinos/as in general and Mexican Americans, the late 1940s, and contains the following historical as their biggest and most influential subgroup, to account with its again rather shallow and superficial become, in his words, “Agents of Reconciliation in utilization of the term reconciliation: Relations Between Black and White America” in the following way: We have tried every effort at reconciliation. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has Every person and racial group has a unique passed the boundary of the United States [the destiny. We Latino-Americans must discern what Rio Grande], has invaded our territory and shed our purpose is in this nation. As we undertake American blood upon the American soil. She has that discernment process on both an individual
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proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and in order to reach a treaty of “peace, boundaries that the two nations are at war. As war exists, and, and borders” with Mexico, to his wife regarding the notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vin- Just as they were about to sign the treaty [...] dicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the one of the Mexicans, Don Bernardo Couto, interests of our country. remarked to him, “This must be a proud moment for you; no less proud for you than it is humiliating The reality, of course, was much more complex, for us.” To this Mr. Trist replied, “We are making and, as always, one has to take both sides into peace, let that be our only thought.” But, said he to account. us in relating it, “Could those Mexicans have seen Jesús Velasco-Márquez’ article “A Mexican into my heart at that moment, they would have Viewpoint on the War with the United States” strikes known that my feeling of shame as an American me as one of many illuminating and useful texts for was far stronger than theirs could be as Mexicans. achieving a more balanced and thoughtful perspec- For though it would not have done for me to say tive. 5 Very insightful, for instance, are the historical so there, that was a thing for every right minded documents Velasco-Márquez includes, among them American to be ashamed of, and I was ashamed Mexican President Mariano Paredes’ enactment of of it, most cordially and intensely ashamed of it.” 7 the Congressional decree on 6 July 1846, which reads as follows: Jesús Velasco-Márquez’ conclusion reads as follows: “The armed conflict between Mexico and the United Article 1. The government, in the natural States from 1846 to 1848 was the product of delibe- defense of the nation, will repel the aggression rate aggression and should therefore be referred to initiated and sustained by the United States of as ‘The U.S. War Against Mexico.’” America against the Republic of Mexico, having Although for a long time in the past, historians in invaded and committed hostilities in a number Mexico also used the “The U.S. invasion” for that of the departments making up Mexican territory. event while U.S. historians referred to it as “The Article 3. The government will communicate to Mexican War” before the term “Mexican-American friendly nations and to the entire republic the jus- War” was introduced as a more balanced expression tifiable causes which obliged it to defend its rights, in both countries, there is nowadays a widespread left with no other choice but to repel force with consensus among scholars that what was really force, in response to the violent aggression com- intended by the United States was not reconciliation mitted by the United States. 6 but war to acquire new territory. In other words, the outbreak of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) A careful analysis of these words reveals that was not really that surprising nor was the resultant Mexico, strictly speaking, did not declare war on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. According to United States but rather emphasized merely its steely the latter, Mexico, having lost the war, had to give up determination to defend Mexico’s territorial inte- all her territory north of the Río Grande. grity and repel the U.S. invasion. Revealing in this With the subsequent U.S. annexation of this ter- regard is another historical document that renders ritory, the Mexican American borderlands and the the thoughts and comments of Nicholas Philip Trist, Mexican American people were born as Foreigners in the American diplomat who was assigned by the U.S. their Native Land as David J. Weber aptly summarized government to negotiate with Mexican authorities it in the title of his seminal historical anthology (280, see also Meier & Rivera). Yet, it did not only make 5. Jesús Velasco-Márquez, “A Mexican viewpoint on the War with the United States,” Voices of Mexico 41. Published by the Center for Research on North them foreigners and outsiders in their homeland. America (CISAN), National Autonomous University of Mexico. Reprinted Rather, the adopted “newly American and originally online at
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Mexican” residents of that territory were victims of termined place created by the emotional residue many kinds. They had experienced a wide range of of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state violence and human rights abuses in the post-war of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its years when injustice towards them and the failure of inhabitants. (3) the law to protect them had been a notorious order of the day. In his editor’s introduction to the thought- Manuel H. Peña takes a slightly different view. provoking chapter “The Rights of Citizens” of his While he aligns himself with Anzaldúa’s idea of an book of Mexican American history David J. Weber emergent third culture that is in a constant state of wrote: transition, he argues against Anzaldúa’s reduction of the border to an irreconcilable dividing line between Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo two peoples. In The Mexican American Orquesta: Music, promised that Mexicans who stayed in the Culture, and the Dialectic of Conflict, he observes that Southwest would receive “all the rights of citizens lately Mexican Americans have been increasingly of the United States,” it seems clear in retrospect striving for a reconciliation of what has often been that this promise was not fulfilled. At best, Mexican understood as two incongruent cultural modali- Americans became second-class citizens. At worst, ties, the American and the Mexican one. Over and they became victims of overt racial and ethnic pre- above their different perceptions, what Peña’s and judices. (143) Anzaldúa’s approaches share is an emphasis on creative art as a productive site for coping with the To this very day the political and social process of sorrows of the past and for stimulating processes of sustainably dealing with this infamous past and the reconciliation. crimes committed still awaits realization and despite This is in line with assessments by critics like President Obama’s pledge to support reconciliation Carmen Birkle, Monika Kaup, Maria Antònia in the United States, there has been no indication Oliver-Rotger and José David Saldívar according to whatsoever that Mexican Americans can expect him to address these past human rights violations in the whom the border is increasingly perceived as a hybrid political and public arena and offer a redress for all site of cross-fertilization where a complex process of the past injustices their forefathers had experienced inter- and transcultural relations comes to pass. José in the borderland area. David Saldívar, for example, perceives the two-thou- sand-mile-long border between the United States and Mexico as a paradigm for a “Transfrontera contact Contemporary Borders and zone” (1997, 13). For him this means a “social space Borderlands of subaltern encounters, the Janus-faced border For many Mexican Americans, therefore, the bor- line in which peoples geopolitically forced to sepa- der continues to be a sore point, even an open wound rate themselves now negotiate with one another and or rather una herida abierta, as Chicana critic and wri- manufacture new relations, hybrid cultures, and mul- ter-activist Gloria Anzaldùa calls it metaphorically. tiple-voiced aesthetics.” (13-14) Even more pointedly In the opening pages of her influential semi-auto- than Saldívar, Homi K. Bhabha acknowledges the biographical theoretical work Borderlands/La Frontera, Mexican American borderlands as a case in point for Anzaldúa dwells on the subject as follows: an alternative space where communication between The U.S.-Mexico border es una herida abierta cultures and negotiation of identities assumes new (is an open wound) where the Third World grates dimensions. In the context of Bhabha’s critique, the against the first and bleeds. And before a scab space of the borderlands is defined as a third sphere forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two of action and representation which opens up when worlds merging to form a third country – a border U.S.-American society and the Chicana/o nationa- culture. Borders are set up to define the places that lists expose their self-definition on the post-colonial are safe und unsafe, to distinguish us from them. field of tension in the borderlands. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and unde-
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The Ongoing Quest for Aztlàn somehow from the geographical and mythological site of the Mexican American borderlands. It still Nowhere in the Mexican and Mexican American functions as a symbol of cultural pride and an inspi- context is this vision more concretely expressed than ration that keeps contemporary Mexican Americans in the quest for and the myth of Aztlán, the mythical or rather Chicanos/as going to gain justice and equa- homeland of the Aztecs obtained by conquest from lity for their own people although their homeland has Mexico. Julio A. Martínez and Francisco A. Lomelí been seized by the USA (see Anaya & Lomelí; De and briefly outline Aztlán as follows: Leon & Griswold Del Castillo). In spite of everything, A term adopted from the Nahuas in Mexico then, Aztlán symbolizes the notion that the Mexican which is used by Chicanos to designate a sense American borderland will always belong to its native of mythic place and territory. In general terms, inhabitants and their mestizo descendants, that is, the it refers to the American Southwest, especially Hispanic people or La Raza, the so-called mestizo race, California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, if only in a spiritual sense. Colorado, and Texas. The Nahuas considered the same region the land of their forefathers, and Writing (and) the Emergence of Chicanos view it as the spiritual homeland of their Latinotopia ancestors. It became a key rallying concept at the peak of the Chicano movement; a symbolic place U.S. Hispanics today accordingly refuse to suc- on the map to which Chicanos could trace their cumb to any U.S. national doctrine that keeps them origins. (473) in a marginalized position and does not show any real interest in reconciling with them and with the In the context of the Chicano Civil Rights past either. Besides, given the changing demographic Movement, two historical documents became rele- data and the fact that U.S. Latinos are the most rapi- vant where Aztlán was used as a clear statement dly growing as well as the nation’s largest non-Anglo of an emergent nationalist consciousness of the group today, there is no need for them at all to act as Chicano people in the 1960s and 1970s: El Plan supplicants and petitioners in the first place. Espiritual de Aztlán (March 1969) and El Plan de Santa In her poem “Now and Then, America,” published Bárbara (April 1969). The following passage from El in Borders in 1986, Mexican American writer Pat Plan Espiritual de Aztlán has often been cited to illus- Mora coined the lines “Risk my difference, my sur- trate the nationalistic feelings of the time: prises. Grant me a little life, America.” (33) By now, at the latest, this slogan, which is not an apt descrip- In the spirit of a new people that is conscious tion of reality any longer, if it ever was, nor works not only of its proud historical heritage but also as a program, ought to be replaced by the idea that of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, “an understanding and appreciation of cultural dif- we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the ferences is as essential a skill as technological compe- northern land of Aztlan from whence came our tence,” as Pat Mora reminds us in her essay collection forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and Nepantla of 1993 (19). On the one hand, as Mora consecrating the determination of our people of continues, “this country has both the opportunity the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our and the responsibility to demonstrate to this world power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. of emerging representative governments that nurtu- (qtd. in Rosales, 184) ring variety is central, not marginal, to democracy.” Today, Aztlán remains a vivid memory and legacy (idem) On the other hand, U.S. Latinos, and here she for Mexican Americans, whether they remain at addresses especially female writers, have to take res- home in the Mexican border region or have immi- ponsibility themselves for changing these parameters grated to the United States. As an identity-making and for reimagining community. In her words: narrative for the people in this in-between land, it Special strategies will be needed to support and is a myth that stands for a spiritual vision of a desi- value ethnic diversity, rather than to deny or merely red new society of mixed-race people that originated tolerate it, and Latinas should be involved locally
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and nationally, for collectively we can make a dif- Chicano/a artists and writers such as Américo ference. (idem) Paredes, Tomás Rivera, Rudolfo A. Anaya, Arturo Islas, Cherríe Moraga, Lorna De Cervantes and Obviously, writing is such a special strategy. Ana Castillo understand their works of art as a way According to Pat Mora, the power of the pen is to contribute to the reconstruction of collective applied by many Chicana writers to pursue at least memory in and beyond the borderlands and to par- three main goals: firstly, to serve one’s own by crea- ticipate in the healing of what Anzaldúa has sketched ting and establishing an individual and collective as the open wound. In that sense the borderlands identity; secondly, “to heal cultural wounds of histo- progressively provide their inhabitants with la facultad: rical neglect by providing opportunities to remember that is “the capacity to see in surface phenomena the the past, to share and ease bitterness, to describe what meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep struc- has been viewed as unworthy of description;” thir- ture below the surface.” (Bhabha, 60) Lorna Dee dly, to cross over and “ease communication” between Cervantes provides a telling example in her award and among cultures (ibidem, 131, 128). Significantly, winning collection Emplumada. Here a preceding Gloria Anzaldúa had already theorized that in- quotation “Once a refuge for Mexican Californios” between space, which, for long, had been a forgotten, found on a “plaque outside a restaurant in Los Altos, unseen and unspoken place. Whereas Mora remains California, 1974” triggers a free association between too light and superficial when applying the Nahuatl symbol, images, language, site and memory in the concept of nepantla as simply “land in the middle” ensuing four stanza “Poema para Los Californios to see into a Mexican American writer’s possibilities Muertos” that aims at reinscribing at last the forgot- and responsibilities for negotiating the middle land’s ten memory of the territory’s indigenous population, many terrains, Anzaldúa views it more profoundly as the ancient Californios, and their fate, into the col- heterogenous concept for the ambiguous, tentative, lective memory of California and the nation in the ever-changing place we all inhabit in this fluid world, following way: space and culture of the (multiple) borderland(s). For Anzaldúa a new myth emerges from the borderlands, These older towns die / into stretches of which is, in essence, “a new story to explain the world freeway. / The high scaffolding cuts a clean cesa- and our participation in it, a new value system with rean / across belly valleys and fertile dust. / What images and symbols that connect us to each other a bastard child, this city / lost in the soft / llorando and to the planet.” (103) This, in fact, ties in with de las madres / Californios moan like husbands Homi K. Bhabha’s perception of the Mexico/U.S. of the raped, / husbands de la tierra, / tierra la border as the prolific site for a “borderline work of madre. culture” where “art does not merely recall the past as a social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the I run my fingers / across this brass plaque. / past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space Its cold stirs in me a memory / of silver buckles that innovates and interrupts the performance of and spent bullets / of embroidered shawls and dark the present. The ‘past-present’ becomes part of the rebozos. / Yo recuerdo los antepasados muertos. / necessity, not the nostalgia, of living.” (7) Lo recuerdo en la sangre, / la sangre fertile. In sum, this is what I would like to call ‘Latinotopia’ and consequently describe as a discursive space emer- gent from a diverse assortment of texts that challenge What refuge did you find here, / ancient established power structures in the United States, Californios? / Now at this restaurant nothing including the homogeneity of U.S. nationalism and remains / but this old oak and an ill-placed plaque. culture, and that try to sketch out the outlines of a / Is it true that you still live here / in the shadows new reconciled way of being. Moreover, Latinotopia of these white, high-class houses? / Soy la hija is as well a space where struggle and resistance might pobrecita / pero puedo maldecir estas fantasmas be transgressed through cultural and aesthetic works blancas. / Las fantasmas tuyas deben aquí que- and an alternative, including also a utopian space, is darse, / solas las tuyas. negotiable.
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In this place I see nothing but strangers. / On cultures and traditions (36). The difficulty, however, is the shelves there are bitter antiques, / yanqui rem- that Bhabha does not provide eloquent examples nor nants / y estos no de los Californias. A blue jay does he convincingly combine theory and practice to shrieks / above the pungent odor of crushed / illustrate the actual deployment of the third space. eucalyptus and the pure scent / of rage. (42) Moreover, his third space is too visionary and too future-oriented and not supposed to emerge in the The process of commemoration can be said to here and now. According to him, it is rather at some extend from a preliminary investigation via a cri- undetermined point in the future of the Americas tique of modern white middle-class and high-high- that the representatives of the two systems may ulti- class America’s ignorance of the past and the fate mately be in a position that enables them to speak in of the once indigenous inhabitants to accusation, a more common language and to understand each lamentation and rage. In this discursive field between other better so that reconciliation may eventually be estrangement and increasing recognition Lorna Dee achieved as well. Another problem with Bhabha’s Cervantes posits the contemporary hybrid inhabi- approach as well as with the lines of argumentation tants of the borderlands whom she urges to work on of aforementioned critics (Kaup, Oliver-Rotger, R. improving the relationships between former victims Saldívar) is that it is almost exclusively the geogra- and former perpetrators to overcome alienation and phical and imaginary site of the border and bor- bring healing to the land by reprocessing the sorrows derlands that informs their perceptions of Mexican of the past in the here and now. As Ramón Saldívar Americans and Latinas/os in the United States as aptly notes in the concluding chapter of Chicana well as the ensuing inter- and transcultural dimen- Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference: sions. This, however, is clearly outdated given the fact […] to write is preeminently a political act that the “rising dispersion of Latinos into parts of seeking to fulfill the potentialities of contempo- the country that traditionally have not had Latino rary life. It is also, ultimately, an attempt to recall population suggests that all parts of the country will the originary [sic.] myths of life on the borders feel the impact of Latino growth,” as Rogelio Sáenz 8 of power in order to fashion triumphantly a new, already emphasized in 2004. Today, this changing heterogeneous American consciousness, within the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population dialectics of difference. (218) and the growing influence and presence of Latinos are traceable in various ways. Over the last decades, Latinos have settled comfortably not only in the Southwest but in various other parts of the United Conclusion: The Transformation of States such as Colorado, New York, Illinois, New America into Latinotopia Jersey, Washington D.C., Idaho and the District of Latinotopia not only puts to a practical test but Columbia. They actively participate in the hubs of further develops and goes beyond the core of the economic momentum, social life and culture. As well, third space theory, as it has been presented by Homi they occupy leading positions at Ivy League univer- K. Bhabha. He has rightly contended that the dri- sities. All over the country, therefore, they have left ving force behind this transformation process is the their marks on the intellectual, cultural, economic eventual ability of minority speakers to detach them- and political life of America, whose identity they selves not only from the dominant national narra- have already helped to shape in the past and will tion but also from their very own position through continue to do so in the present and future. 9 performative utterance. This makes them agents of Currently, Latinos/as are courted assiduously a new hybrid national narration. While this process by various interest groups and leading politicians, is underway, an alternative dimension or an alter- including President Obama, who being well aware native sphere for the production of meaning, and that the Latino vote will decide whether he gets hence also for negotiating reconciliation, is opening another term recently acknowledged that Latinos up, which goes beyond fixed cultural identities in the relation and negotiation of two systems that them- 8. See also Humes et al.. selves are both actors in an ever-changing network of 9. See Ennis et al..
8 Beyond Conflicts and Borders, Ikas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 Beyond Conflicts and Borders: Reconciliation and Latinotopia are “Americans in their heart, in their minds, in further studies. Deleuze and Guattari give this defi- every single way.” (“Transcript …”) To me, howe- nition: ver, it seems more fitting to call Latinos not merely Americans but rather ‘the’ Americans of the Third Unlike a tree and its roots, the rhizome connects Millennium who share a vision. That is why they do any point to any other point, and its traits are not not simply integrate themselves into America but aim necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it at reshaping the very story of America in an inter- brings into play very different regimes of signs, cultural and transnational way from various angles and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible as well as geographical sites through their presence, to neither the One or the multiple. It is not the their participation and above all through their lite- One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, rature and arts. As a consequence, a Latinotopia five etc. […] It is comprised not of units but of emerges that is neither restricted to the borderlands dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has nor a mere theoretical construct but a lived practice neither beginning nor end, but always a middle of mixed belongings and states of being. At its core is (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. the idea of challenging hierarchies while negotiating [… T]he rhizome pertains to a map that must be and eventually establishing a new harmony of diver- produced, constructed, a map that is always deta- sity. Of course, a certain level of utopian vision must chable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has be acknowledged. It is, in fact, vital, because particu- multiple entranceways and exits and its own lines larly artists and writers need such utopian and visio- of flight. (223) nary incentives to invoke Latinotopia by the power As a figure that “is always in the middle between of the imagination through their works of art and things, inter-being, intermezzo and signifies the joint literature. In other words, literature has the power interaction of two different species to form a multi- to cope most innovatively with these semi-utopian plicity while rejecting hierarchies,” (27) the rhizome and semi-practical levels of Latinotopia and to work is relevant to a discussion of shifting relations and towards a transformation. The Latina/o writers, who configurations in emergent glocalized spaces with themselves are now agents of Latinotopia, might acentered and non-hierarchical systems and envi- test-drive the very concept either before or while it is sioned through new validated cultural experiences becoming a conduit and the burgeoning context that such as Latinotopia, which is a real practice as well not only permits Latinos to grow roots in their new as an enlightened domain of the imagination in and environments but to negotiate an American identity beyond a transforming America. Hence, in the end, that allows for reconciliation and a “Latino popula- Latinotopia gains greater relevance as more than an tion driving these transformations.” (Sáenz, see also in-between space – in the sense of a glocal or translo- Humes et al.) cal, geo-political and transcultural sphere – not only In sum, Latinotopia supersedes Bhabha’s third in the Americas but internationally. It is the emer- space in fundamental ways. First, it is not simply a ging intercultural and transnational mode of cultural theoretical concept but a practical, anthropologi- knowledge and a new model for greater diversity and cally and sociologically concrete one. Second, it does ultimately, reconciliation. away with the border and borderlines’ centeredness, which has been a dominant theme in previous critical approaches, and extends its perspective to obtain a coherent view of the whole from an intercultural, Bibliography cross-sectional and transnational angle. Considering further that Latinotopia is an assemblage of beco- ANAYA Rudolfo & Francisco A. LOMELÍ (eds.), Aztlán: Essays ming rather than just being and that it moves away on the Chicano Homeland, Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, from acknowledging or accepting hierarchical struc- 1991. tures, perhaps the figure and concept of a “rhizome”, as developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ANZALDÚA Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. in A Thousand Plateaus (2004), can best be used to capture Latinotopia theoretically and practically in
Beyond Conflicts and Borders, Ikas, LISA n° XI-2 / 2013 9 Karin Ikas
ATWOOD, Bain, “The Burden of the Past in the Present,” in MEIER Matt S. & Feliciano RIVERA (eds.), The Chicanos: A Michelle GRATTAN (ed.), Essays on Australian Reconciliation, History of Mexican Americans, New York: Hill & Wang, 1994 Melbourne: Bookman P, 2000. [1972]. BHABHA Homi K., The Location of Culture, London, New York: MORA Pat, Borders, Houston: Arte Público Press, 1986. Routledge, 2004 [1994]. ――――――, Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle, Albu- BIRKLE Carmen, Migration-Miscegenation-Transculturation: Wri- querque: U of New Mexico P, 1993. ting Multicultural America into the Twentieth Century, Heidelberg: MUZZEY David Saville, “The Mexican War,” in American Winter, 2004. History, Boston: Ginn Company, 1911. Available online as CERVANTES Lorna Dee, Emplumada, Pittsburgh: U of e-text at the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, Pittsburgh P, 1981.
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