From the Archives

Beyond Borders: Culture, Movement and Bedlam on Both Sides of the Rubén Martinez

n keeping with our efforts to maintain a They sit in the living room, turn on the Samsung healthy connection with our past, NACLA has TV hooked up to a satellite dish on the roof, and they I inaugurated this “From the Archives” section to bring spend a couple of hours wachando MTV, CNN and the to our readers some of the best and most interesting material soap opera “De pura sangre.” that we have published over our first 46 years. In this issue Meanwhile, back in Los : I know a we put the spotlight on the Salvadoran- journalist young Chicano whose folks emigrated from that very Rubén Martínez who, some 16 years ago, in a Report on same Purépecha Plateau 20 years ago following the , wrote of the ambiguities of trans-border identities lettuce harvest in Watsonville, , the water- in what quickly became a NACLA classic: “Beyond Borders.” melon harvest in Kentucky, the tobacco harvest in Read and enjoy. North Carolina and the orange harvest in Florida. After working a bit on the railroad in Nebraska and GOSPEL: From “The Acts of the Apostles”: ... there appeared as room cleaners in a Dallas hotel, the family settled unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each down in Southern California where they straightened of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and out their papers and bought a modest home in a San began to speak with other tongues... Fernando Valley neighborhood affectionately rebap- tized “North Hollywood, Michoacán.” Three genera- A from the Purépecha Plateau in Michoacán strolls tions ago, picked oranges here and it was down the main street of Nahuatzen, pushing past neither North Hollywood nor Michoacán. grandmothers in shawls and peasants in muddy boots. This young man was an outstanding student in He’s wearing his Oakland Raiders cap backwards and high school, loves biology and is now a sophomore his head is shaved East-L.A. style. He’s got his Nikes at UCLA. He speaks English and Spanish perfectly on and his baggy pants. He’s wearing a sleeveless T- and can even say a few words in Tarasco. He used shirt to display the tragicomic mask tattooed on his to be a fan of Death Metal and Trash, but today he shoulder with the slogan la vida loca. belongs to the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de He goes into a video arcade with his buddies Aztlán (MEChA). He spends every weekend deep in and spends an hour killing ninjas, blacks and Arabs. the woods of the Los Padres National Forest, a moun- Each time he kills a bad guy he screams: “En la madre, tainous area north of Los Angeles where an old Indian motherfucker!” Then he climbs into his ranfla, a bro- from the Chumash tribe teaches Indian traditions to ken-down ‘79 Datsun with North Carolina plates, and young Chicano radicals and preaches about a spiritual he goes cruiseando through town singing the refrain war in which the bronze race will recover its dignity. from a golden oldie: “My angel baby, my angel baby/ This Purépecha and very Chicano postrocker goes oooh I love you, yes I do....” At eight o’clock, with the back home after the sweatlodge ritual and spends a church bells ringing, he heads home, where his grand- couple of hours with his parents and brothers and sis- mother in long traditional braids awaits him. She ters watching a bit of MTV, CNN and the soap opera. greets him in Tarasco, the Purépecha language, and “De pura sangre.” this postborder tough guy, with the utmost respect, an- GOSPEL: Words from “The Adventures of La Gaby” swers in his ancestral language. (scandalously suppressed by Cardinal Ratzinger), the hot- test Jalisco transvestite at El Plaza, a gay club in Rubén Martinez is an editor at Pacific News Service. Hollywood, California:

SPRING 2013 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 85 My love live in cities than in the country- identity crisis as tragic. But those we’re always departing side, and an enormous number of who see a “loss of Mexicanness” splitting ourselves in two tearing Mexican Indians live on the north- in don’t know much ourselves apart departing; it’s a nev- ern side of the border. In other about themselves. In many ways er-ending I-leave-we-leave leaving words, the Indians frozen in di- Chicanos are more “Mexican” that takes us nowhere and oramas in ’s Museum than the Mexico City middle class, everywhere of Anthropology and History that whose gaze is ever fixed on New oh sweetie !but you’re so cute. so admire, are more in- York and Paris. If we observed the present quisitive, more on-the-move and Middle-class Mestizos have set through the lens of the bullshit more in touch with modernity than up a false dynamic. They believe past, we Mexicans the future lies in the would say that our North (in the United national identity is States or Europe) and once more under at- the past lies in the tack by free-trading Purépecha Plateau yanqui invaders and (or the Lacandón that each satellite dish Jungle or the is a direct challenge Sierra Tarahumara). to the kingdom of her The truth is that time holiness the Virgin of and space no longer Guadalupe. We’d say obey such primitive Chicanos are a bunch borders. The future of stupid pochos with lies on both sides of no right to call them- the border, as does selves Mexicans, and the past, and the pres- that the narco- ent is everywhere: of Michoacán are satellite dishes and threatening the na- cholos in Michoacán, tionalist spirit of our neo-Indians and beloved Mexico. We’d Mixteca soccer say, “What a shame teams in California. Purépechas watch Everything moves, MTV, CNN and ‘De everything changes, pura sangre’ instead everything remains. of cultivating their It seems that the patch of corn in bare only ones who feel feet with the tools of comfortable in these antiquity.” rough seas are Indians For those who per- and Chicanos, who sist in thinking that understand that the a linear border sepa- future and the past rates what it means to coexist in the present. be Mexican, Indian, More than a loss , Chicano, etc., history the Mestizos themselves. Indians of identity, what is happening is has passed you by. Those who still are the people who work on “the a continuation of the process of cling to the notion of “the spiri- other side” and come back with mestizaje in which Indians and tual Indian” deny the Indian pres- a new television set and VCR to Chicanos can put together a cul- ent: that Indians can be and are enjoy the movies of Steven Seagal. tural package of their own choos- as modern as the “postmoderns” Just as Mestizos lament the sup- ing. Culture is an organism that from any of the planet’s great ur- posed loss of their Indian past, they must adapt to new surroundings ban centers. In fact, more Indians see Chicanos and their supposed to stay alive and continue growing.

86 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS VOL. 46, NO. 1 Hence the young Mixtec who lives said excitedly. Indians live au na- The problem is lack of tolerance, in Fresno, California and who no turel. How cool! and the fact that the state, the longer speaks his native language Similarly, because of their infe- and other social is still a Mixtec. At the same time, riority complex vis-a-vis gringos and economic powers encourage as philosopher Oswald Spengler and Europeans, Mestizos from the intolerance by promoting the false noted, the landscape also continu- capital invent myths about Indians image of a homogeneous nation. ally adapts to new organisms that in order to feel that they themselves The problem is not street vending emerge: today, gringos consume are modern. When a Mexico City or prostitution or drug addiction. more salsa than ketchup, to men- Mestizo turns nationalist and takes The problem is neoliberalism, tion a superficial gastronomical a neo-indigenist stance in front of which leaves many people without fact rather than enumerate the ob- foreigners, it is the height of hypoc- any chance to participate economi- vious ways in which gringo society risy. When I first came to Mexico cally or culturally in the process of depends economically and socially City as an adult over ten years ago, globalization, while it benefits the on Latinos in the United States. college teachers and leftists in gen- middle classes of the United States The future won’t necessarily eral treated me paternalistically. and Europe who so like to dance annihilate the past: tradition and Poor Chicano, they told me. In your salsa, eat Thai food and attend the novelty can cohabit in the pres- country you suffer from the scourge performances of Guillermo G6mez ent. In the towns of the Purépecha of racism. Here in Mexico we have Pefia. Plateau, the same house that has a no identity crisis. Give me a fuck- GOSPEL: From “The Book of La satellite dish pointed at the heavens ing break! Licuadora (The Blender)” (also scan- may belong to a bruja, or witch, We Chicanos (or in my case dalously suppressed by Cardinal who cures “evil diseases” with Chicano-Salvadorans born in Los Ratzinger), the biggest and toughest herbs and Tarot, or by a trilingual Angeles who now live in Mexico of the people smugglers in the town of teenager—Spanish, English and City) know, a bit like Buddhists, Cherán, Michoacán: Tarasco—who loves the hard-core that stability is a state of move- They screwed us once those assholes rock band Transmetal as much as ment. To put it simply, these days from the gringos’ Migra. But pirecuas, the region’s traditional people who don’t move die. Which watch out next time ‘cause now music. happens to be the opposite of the we’re armed with more than the water To view this process as damag- motto of the latest operation of the on our backs. ing to cultural health is to proj- Border Patrol: “Stay out, stay alive” They don’t call me The Blender for ect an image of Indians as passive (rhetorically displaying on the bor- nothing. victims of history. And that is pre- der fence the bodies of those ille- In the United States, homog- cisely the worst stereotype created gals who drown in the Rio Bravo or enizing untruths are promoted by by Mestizos about Indian identity. die of thirst in the desert). But there the conservative and liberal estab- A few months ago a young activ- are many Mexicans who know that lishments (Republicans as well as ist woman from los United whose to stay alive is to move economical- Democrats) and by the marginal- parents had emigrated from India ly, culturally, linguistically, sexu- ized left. It has been said, for exam- arrived in Mexico City. She had ally. Given what we have affirmed ple, that with Latino majorities in one of those strange backpacks here, we offer: several U.S. cities, will final- that gringos and Europeans like THE PLATFORM OF THE ly be able to exercise some political to carry when they go to the Third WETBACK PARTY power to counter xenophobic mea- World (as if they were heading off The problem is not the language sures like California’s Proposition on safari in search of elephants and we speak nor the accent with 187, or the infamous welfare re- aborigines). She thought the capital which we speak it. form signed by President Clinton. was awful. “So many people,” The problem here is the Border Indeed, in the November 1996 elec- she said. So much noise, so many Patrol. tions, California’s new Latino citi- lights, so many buildings, so many The problem is not being gay, zens ousted Representative “B-I” cars. Of course she left the city to straight, bi or transvestite. Bob Dornan, a Republican nativ- find the Tzotziles in Chiapas. They The problem is AIDS. ist, with young Democrat—and, have no need for electricity, televi- The problem is not whether we’re need we mention, Latina—Loretta sion sets, or shoes or books, she Catholics or Pentecostals or Sufis. Sanchez.

SPRING 2013 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 87 But we Latinos in los United aren’t southern California. “Pinches may- who bust each other’s heads in the least bit homogeneous. We’re ates,”—fucking niggers—say the St. Louis, or the Mexican “18 Salvadorans and Guatemalans, Mexicans of the Blacks. “Fuckin’ Street” gang and the Salvadoran Cubans and , wetbacks,” say the Blacks of the “Mara Salvatrucha” gang who battle Hondurans and Colombians and Mexicans. over Los Angeles’s Pico Union. Nicaraguans, and among the Yet, out of this seemingly apoca- Political unity among Latinos, Mexicans you’ve got to distinguish lyptic situation emerge new possi- if it ever happens, will be only between recent arrivals, second- bilities. Two years ago in Compton momentary. The struggle against and third- generation Chicanos, High School, a young Salvadoran Proposition 187 in California was and the of was elected president of the stu- a classic example. In 1994, days whose roots in the Southwest dent council. He won votes from before the vote that approved the reach back centuries. What’s more, both Blacks and Latinos. Because anti-immigrant measure, more we’re middle class and working the kid speaks English and Spanish. than 100,000 people marched in class, white and black and Indian, Because he listens to rap and old- Los Angeles, including plenty of Catholic and Pentecostal and ies and boleros and rock. Because Chicanos and Salvadorans, from Jewish. We’re everything we are his girlfriend is Black. Because he recent arrivals to third-generation on the other side (that is, in Latin was practically born in the barrio . After losing the vote, America). (he came from his country of birth however, the movement fell apart. It’s hard to imagine the Miami when he was six) and he can talk Desperation and frustration can Cubans always agreeing with African- and bring people together, but it can the California Chicanos, or the Spanish equally well. also accelerate fragmentation. Zacatecas migrants always getting We have two presents, two con- Today we are more fragmented along with those from Michoacán tradictory futures: the chaos of a than ever, which is terrible, which (just remember the rumbles be- modern Tower of Babel, or a new is beautiful. When the false ho- tween those two in St. Louis, Pentecost in which all will un- mogenizing constructs of the past which left several dozen dead or derstand each other even though break up, awareness of our diver- wounded). On both sides of the we end up speaking different lan- sity—and tolerance of that diver- Rio Grande we are immersed in a guages. What threatens us with a sity, I hope—will increase along rapid process of mestizaje: cultures new Babel is the economic rupture with a sort of existential anguish. and subcultures bloom like the that pits “marginal” groups against If “essential” Mexico doesn’t exist, thousand flowers of Mao. For us, one another over the crumbs of what can we use to fill the void? If this process creates new utopias the new economic order, an order the melting pot doesn’t exist, how and new apocalypses simultane- which clearly will not offer the can we reconstruct the American ously. For example, in the barrio of majority access to the American Dream? This is not a time for un- Compton in South L.A.—famous dream. earthing old bullshit or for hanging all over the world for its African- As the dream of a better life is your head. It is a time for expand- American gangs and rappers like Ice thwarted for Mexicans in New York, ing our concept of identity, of toler- Cube and Niggers With Attitude African-Americans in Chicago, ance, of democracy. (NWA)—the Latino population Turks in France, Nigerians in What’s crucial is finding a way to (most of them recent arrivals from England and Purépechas in connect our processes of cultural Mexico and Central America) is Michoacán, desperation grows, and social migration with our eco- threatening to displace the African- and with it, desperate attempts nomic situation, and forming alli- American community. As this de- to survive: crossing the border in ances across lines of race and eth- mographic change occurs, two op- and risking dying of thirst nicity to confront class inequity posing realities confront each other in the desert; getting into drug traf- head-on. Because by now we all on the streets of Compton. On the ficking, prostitution, street vend- know, as they say in Chiapas, that one hand is a racial and class con- ing; the thousand ways you can where there is hunger there can be flict between Blacks and Latinos: live off the black market. Or unbur- no democracy. Or as any of the the appearance if not the real- dening yourself through violence postborder Purépecha kids would ity of competition between the two aimed at people like yourself, like say: if there ain’t no job, let’s head for the few poorly paid jobs left in the Zacatecans and Michoacaners for the other side!

88 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS VOL. 46, NO. 1