Comment
Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Immigration I...
...My second reaction was sadness...
...Philip Russell Director Mexico Resource Center Austin, TX...
...It was helpful, I think, to novelists and poets, but I erred in not talking about writers of nonfiction...
...1) The article in Report on theAmericas was a digest of a book of more than 500 pages...
...XXVI, No...
...He is correct...
...in the great human, democratic tradition he advised his young followers to read Aristotle...
...For those of us who work in the inner cities, racism, discrimination andEnglish-only activities are among our major concerns...
...Working together as writers and intel- lectuals, not as gabachos and chicanos, we are now more able to find literary agents and mainstream publishers for Puerto Rican, Cuban-American and Mexican-American writers of non-fic- tion as well as fiction and poetry...
...Primitivo Rodriguez Director Mexico-U.S...
...Perhaps it's not Shorris' problem that he failed, but that your magazine really expected to find such an article...
...It still has the same effect...
...Rodriguez does not believe that is the situation in which minorities, particularly new immigrants, in the United States find themselves, what is the impetus for her "political activism...
...Border Program American Friends Service Committee My gut reaction to Earl Shorris' essay, "The Complexity of Identity," was anger at its infantile matrix...
...A minority condition and a minority mentality is oppression...
...Remember, I thought of myself as a Mexican, a proud Mexican from Mexico, always in the process of buying a one-way ticket to my querida patria...
...That is pluralism...
...The Rodriguez Rule is the last vestige of docility...
...then together, wearing our different faces, we can be political activists, citizens, tough-minded singers of the human chorale...
...In fact, the problem is that we don't want to be seen and treated as a minority, no matter how large or significant...
...Cuban Photo The photograph of a nineteenth-century Cuban dwelling which appeared in the February 1992 Report, "The Black Americas" [Vol...
...Enough of the Establishment's selfserving We Will Be the Largest Minority by the End of This Minute...
...Why the love of education is offensive to her is impossible to under- stand, but the Mexican-American community is surely not in need of political activists who are offended by such love...
...After 15 years in Gringolandia, when nobody, except my mama, hopes I'll return to Mexico, what is my identity...
...he was equal to, part of, as good as, different from and yet alike...
...People who do not possess power are left to infer, to divine the often secret or unspoken wishes of those in power, and ultimately to trust to luck that they will be able to survive in a difficult, even hostile environment...
...Let's look in the mirror with our own eyes to re-discover that we carry in our skin the colors of the rainbow, and in our history, everybody's cultures, struggles and aspirations...
...Those are the opinions of del Portillo and Estrada, as reported by me...
...I came to the United States to get married and to receive a Ph.D...
...XXV, No...
...In Europe, the Serbs are killing the Bosnians...
...Perhaps the issue is not so much that Latinos do not fit a precise political mold, but that Shorris' mold is shallow and traditionally racist...
...Rodriguez' letter, which is that an Anglo is ipsofacto a racist and therefore incapable of writing about Latinos, is a danger to civilized society...
...Finally, I thought I'd better do it...
...From a conservative Catholic, I became a well-organized anarchist, moving later on to more accepted sanctuaries of the political Left: socialism and liberation theology with a touch of Zapata and Cardenismo...
...After I moved to the United States from Mexico in 1977, it took me-the radical, the open-minded one, the internationalist-more than five years to recognize and accept that I was a "Latino" in this country...
...2], and the book from which the article was excerpted, Latinos: A Biography of a People, are a unique trip into a labyrinth of contradictions and mixed feelings...
...If Ms...
...Much of what reviewers have described as a "celebration" of Latinos had to be left out...
...Regardless of his personal upbringing and background, Shorris remains a typical gringo...
...Perhaps this was the result of a search for a succinct analysis of "Latinos" a la United States Census...
...I share her concern for the poor reception given by the mainstream press to Latino writers...
...She may have read my essay in The New York Times Book Review on the subject...
...Under the Rodriguez rule, they could argue that Latinos are incapable of writing about Anglos or blacks...
...Jack Hamilton Somerville, MA Latino Politics Earl Shorris' article, "Latinos: The Complexity of Identity" in your September Report [Vol...
...The response will be in four parts, beginning with three brief comments on her letter and concluding with some thoughts on the more serious question...
...What else could I be, being a Latino...
...from the University of Chicago (which I didn't get), and in the meantime, to fight Milton Friedman's "Chicago Boys" (which I did almost on a full-time basis...
...What else can we be, being Latinos and Latinas...
...Cecilia Rodriguez New York, NY Earl Shorris responds: I would like to take the occasion to respond here, in a magazine of good and serious intentions, to Cecilia Rodriguez' version of the tragic misunderstanding of human diversity...
...Earl Shorris corroborated a universal suspicion: we are La Raza Cosmica, we are Latinos...
...In Somalia, where people are of the same race and speak the same language, the members of one clan are killing and starving the members of another clan...
...As Andrew Hernindez of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Program said, "Latinos must now learn how to govern...
...In this socially balkanized country, let's have the privilege of showing to ourselves and everyone else our true identity: we are working women and men from everywhere, we are human beings, indeed...
...Rodriguez is welcome to complain to them...
...Raymond del Portillo spoke of the "steadfastness and loyalty" he had observed and then said "their docility is sometimes disappointing...
...XXV, No...
...Rodriguez is clear on the point: "Regardless of his personal upbringing and background, Shorris remains a typical gringo...
...XXVI, No...
...I hope, however, that you raise this concern with your writers from time to time...
...Most Cuban homes of that period were not made of cement nor equipped with gun ports, as the home in the photo was...
...In greater Boston, Brazilians represent the largest newcomer group...
...So I would ask Cecilia Rodriguez to rescind her iron rule, to tear down the ethnic wall, to imagine me as I imagine her...
...4) The thrust of Ms...
...Racist because it analyzes a complex historical and political reality through the prism of white culture, and develops broad generalizations and judgments from verbal snapshots of individuals and organizations...
...When we were reporters together on The El Paso Herald-Post, Rub6n had saved my life...
...If he couldn't write the book, at least I could do it and dedicate it to him...
...And vote...
...imperialism...
...Still in the realm of practicality, the Rodriguez Rule is anachronistic...
...Velasquez was not docile...
...Her view embraces the very essence of racism...
...William (Willie) Velasquez founded SVREP to participate, to take power, to hide no longer in the ghetto of separatism...
...If Henry Cisneros and Federico Pefia were to accept the consequences of her thesis, they would have to resign from the Clinton cabinet...
...This is unfortunate since Brazil represents half the area and half the population of South America...
...Here in Somerville, they outnumber both Haitians and Central Americans...
...And if Latinos cannot even write about Anglos, there is no possibility that Latinos can govern them...
...Immigration I am writing to congratulate you on your generally excellent July Report, "Coming North: Latino & Caribbean Immigration" [Vol...
...The old separatist views are not useful for people whose numbers and voter participation have begun to bring them political power...
...While the editors did a remarkable job of choosing paragraphs from various parts of the book and weaving them into a coherent piece, the compression necessarily asks a lot of the reader...
...I intended only to learn a few secrets about "The Monster," and then to return to Mexico to fight the good war against the PRI, the Mexican bourgeoisie and U.S...
...4], for example, had excellent material on Brazil...
...It is the hope of each of us and all of us...
...We need to disappear as a minority A.S.A.P...
...Neither justice nor mercy has any other beginning in a complex world...
...history...
...2) Of the four notions that "offend" Cecilia Rodriguez, two are quotations from leading Latino intellectuals, one is simply a truism of immigration, and she has misread the other...
...l am saddened by the fact that almost 20 years have passed since the beginning of my political activism and that a publication such as yours still believes it is appropriate to print such an article...
...Therefore, Shorris shouldn't be concerned about Latinos becoming the largest insignificant minority in U.S...
...ProfessorLeobardo Estrada spoke of the "reverence for education" he found among Mexican Americans...
...If Anglos cannot write about Latinos, then surely Latinos cannot write about Anglos...
...To breach the wall, to be success- fully human, one must first concede the existence of others and then perform the glorious act of mind, which is to imagine them, to imagine how it is to be them...
...Sure, from my Mexican trench I would support the struggle of Latinos and Latinas for self-determination, but it was their fight, not mine...
...3) Had Cecilia Rodriguez looked at the book, Latinos, from which the article was digested, she would have found that, in the late 1960s, I asked my friend Rub6n Salazar to write a series of articles, ultimately a book, about Latinos in the United States...
...Consider the practical consequences of the adoption of Rodriguez' thesis by the general society...
...4], should be further identified...
...That is, in fact, the exact opposite of the central thesis of my work...
...As a third-generation Chicana born and raised in El Paso, Texas, I take offense at the notion that 1) Mexicans are docile, 2) they live by inference, divination and luck, 3) they are enamored of education, and 4) their political power depends upon a homogenous identity or assimilation, with no other alternative on their horizon...
...I suspect that with the exception of Mexico, more people have immigrated to the United States (with or without documentation) from Brazil in the last 10 years than from any other country in Central or South America...
...and the Young Lord from youknow-where, the community advocate, the mulatto trade unionist, the mestizo comecuras, me the merengue king, the undocumented immigrant murdered by la Migra, the homeless person beaten by the skinheads, me the Sandinista, and the registered unregistered...
...His article and book are an authentic portrayal of my new life, of my revealing Latino existence as poor Salvadoran refugee, wealthy Cuban in exile, black painter and Chicano organizer, Protestant Asian and Catholic Lebanese, the Jew with some poems, the Puerto Rican with a couple of dreams, the ever-resisting Indian, the out-of-place Spaniard, thePachuco from L.A...
...The theory of the ethnic wall is very old...
...I have, however, a major criticism of the issue: nothing was said about either emigration from Brazil or Brazilian immigration to this country...
...One has only to look at Germany today, where strangers are being killed by the ethnic purists, or Germany yesterday, where Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, all those who were different were killed...
...the United States would have to return to the brutal majority that existed prior to the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act...
...Shallow because it reduces the process of building politi - cal power to the simplistic and singularly North American formula of potential voting blocs...
...I waited for nearly 20 years, expecting every year that someone would produce such a book...
...Had Rub6n written the book, it would have been better...
...Rub6n was shot to death by aLos Angeles County Sheriff s Deputy before he could do the work...
...Neither the book nor the article suggests a "homogeneous" identity for Latinos...
...A complete literature, not merely a litera- ture of curiosities-gangsters and drug addicts, etc.-is developing...
...Under the Cecilia Rodriguez rule of the ethnic wall, only Anglos could govern Anglos...
...In ancient Greece and all through the Middle East xenophobia allowed those in power to hold slaves and make war...
...The photo shows a fortification located on the Spanish precursor of the Maginot Line, built in a futile attempt to contain pro-independence forces on the eastern end of the island...
...There would be no exceptions...
...Ask Shorris...
...Son of peasant parents, I have had the fortune to study for free the most pretentious theories at the most elitist institutions: the Jesuits' seminary and El Colegio de Mexico...
...People in power imply...
...All he can see and smell is the jalapefio, and all he can think about is how to package it for the North American market...
...In the beginning, it was xenophobia, and it was then, as now, useful to the xenophobes...
...I often find that people talking and writing about Latin America are in fact talking about Hispanic America...
...Very simple: I am a radical, openminded, internationalist muchacho...
...I can't imagine what Report on the Americas hoped to accomplish by publishing this piece...
...Newspapers and television stations could limit their employment of Latino writers and editors to those needed to cover the Latino community...
...I am saddened as well that the political and social panorama still does not allow Latino intellectuals and academics to speak for their own people...
...In Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholics make war...
...The bigger picture presented by this issue will prove helpful...
...On the other hand, Rodriguez is cor- rect...
...Changes are coming, however...
...As Iread, Ithought: you'reright, Shorris, no way, Jos6, who told you that?, brilliant, off-target, poetic, that's bull..., can't you, Earl, understand ourpeople?, not bad for a non-Latino, basta!, Latinos of the world, unite, bravo, Earl, you did it...
...I don't think NACLA falls into this trap-yourissue on "The B lack Americas" [Vol...
Vol. 26 • February 1993 • No. 4
