Dreaming of Utopia
Monsivaís, Carlos
Even though the United States that Mexican immigrants encounter is hostile, racist and repressive, it is still so fulfilling in so many ways. The affinity between satire and reality is starkly...
...At the same time that the influence of U.S...
...In the case of Mexico, such a colonized mentality grows Carlos Monsivais is a regular columnist for the Mexican daily La Jornada, and one of Mexico's most prominent essayists...
...The affinity between satire and reality is starkly revealed in the final scene of the film Born in East L.A., as a multitude lunges from the hills of Tijuana, Mexico towards San Diego, California...
...Mormon...
...The bilingual prayer of that might sound like this: u, dear Virgin of Guadelupe, for helping me be as I always was...
...The migrants, with the wealth of their cheap labor, risk their lives on the "buses of easy death" and the trailers that ferry them over the border...
...After just one generation, Chicanos have learned the strengths and weaknesses of their traditional customs, the advantages of English as the lingua franca, the consequences of resisting assimilation, and the expediency of assimilating entirely...
...Now, induced by the mass media and the "traveler's fantasies" told by immigrants who have returned to their hometowns, they look to the United States...
...The :perience is thus an important factor in the on of Mexican nationalism-which persists erything, even if its expression is at times al...
...It is the paradise of freeways, the patchwork of ghettos...
...They do not ignore the mistreatment and the social exclusion, and they are quite aware of the persecution and the abuse in the workplace...
...Although everyone remembers the numerous incidents of undocumented workers who have died as a result of asphyxiation in these railroad boxcars or trailers, the new migrants believe they are immune from such tragedy...
...he way I see it, the forecasts of the dire cultural implications of Mexican (and eventually, Latin American) economic integration with the United States-the fear of a "Loss of Identity," the wiping out of our "Idiosyncrasy," the danger of "Forgetting our Roots"-are rather alarmist...
...One of the great tricks "American of "Americanization" is that it manages to make those tence of M under its influence feel contemporary, in touch with Mexican-A what is happening today throughout the world...
...There they will have a house or an apartment with modem appliances, as well as access to other contemporary conveniences unavailable in their small village or shantytown...
...I am not saying that Mexican Americans consider the same could not themselves studious "translators" of the "American hometown way of life," whatever that term means...
...Before, if rural Mexicans wanted to alter their relationship with modernity, xican parade in the United they looked to Mexico City...
...Yet even as Mexican barrios in the United States reveal the accumulation of ultra-modern gadgets and automobiles and other indications of a consumerist society, they also retain many characteristics, both positive and negative, that are evidence of the "nationalization" of the ization" process...
...In the dazzling glare of what has been obtained, many prefer to ignore one central, oppressive fact...
...It orate what is useful of the immigrant experetain what is most precious of the old ustoms...
...Mexicans have inspire me gained particular insight from the way in which I always v Chicanos have learned to adapt to their new cultural in the mir milieu...
...American-ness," from this perspective, popularizes certain forms of behavior and less rigid styles of family relations...
...Examples of the persisexican culture in the United States abound: mericans' unyielding fertility, the time-worn found in Chicano barrios, the use of bright roclaim sensuality, and the image of a comde up not of individuals, but of families...
...Each year, in ever-increasing numbers, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans leave behind their campesino and urban roots and set out in search of their obsessive goal: a modernity which starts with a job in the land of prosperity...
...The effort to succeed is so intense, and the obstacles so tremendous, that in the mind of the immigrant, to live in the United States becomes literally a utopia...
...Alongside this rejection of all things Mexican is a different kind of "Americanization" which represents the search for codes to decipher the unintelligible...
...In any event, the "Americanization" process in Mexico, and Latin America in general, will move inexorably forward...
...The pace with which new technologies are adopted will, no doubt, change styles and world views...
...The immigrant accepts his or her initial, and probably permanent, destiny: fruit picker, waiter or waitress, construction worker, night guard, machine laborer at best...
...between traditional Mexican culture-now merely resents ti symbolic in many aspects-and the various degrees of Pentecosti "Americanization...
...This littlebit-more-often an automobile or domestic appli40NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON IMMIGRATION Abundance in America...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...It will not, however, affect the basic values of the Mexican people: our linguistic vitality, family unity, the instinct for perspective, and the pleasure of the multitude...
...It is impossible, for instance, to define Mexicanness or Peruvianness today using the cultural definitions of yesterday...
...In their new milieu, everything is novel-and ultimately unattainable-yet it is all assimilated through the immigrant's inexorable will to work and the suspension of disbelief...
...The definition of national identity is a process that evolves over time...
...They change countries since they cannot change those things that matter most to them: family security and social mobility...
...by arriving in the United States, they have joined the future...
...ances-dazzles the immigrant...
...It may not be he or his wife who establishes relationships with the Anglo world...
...market) and to the continuing waves of migration of Mexican workers to Texas, California and other states...
...Mexican nationalism will be bilingual...
...In this less than subtle metaphor of the demographic explosion of Mexican migration northward, the multitude's joy as it falls into the United States suggests the irreversibility of Young girls participate in a IV States...
...They have the basics and a little-bit-more...
...the consumerist paradise that attracts Mexican migrants...
...Los Angeles is not the only possible destination, but it is the place already inhabited by millions of Mexicans...
...While the new consumerist accouay become like a "second skin" for the loyalty to local customs, enthusiasm for cuisine and music, and fidelity to religious will endure...
...Mexico has evolved from being a sedentary country to a nomadic one...
...To be Mexican" or "To be Latin American," according to this logic, means assuming the psychology of the disadvantaged or excluded...
...Mexican immigrants have the basics and a little-bit-more...
...According to their ideal-and idealized-projects, in Los Angeles they will obtain the jobs that their countries have denied them...
...If the meaning of "contemporary" is clearly decided in the United States-an admittedly dubious assumption-a Latin American who asks him or herself "How contemporary am I?" is, in reality, asking, "How close to or how far am I from the North American model...
...perhaps their children will do so, and with less difficulty still, their grandchildren...
...It's true, though I'm not sure y Saintly Patroness, have realized ihe coinciat along with the changes in my appearance at these new clothes) came another way of I am more tolerant although I don't always d or agree...
...Those who stay-women, children, the elderly-hold onto their identity, though it is imbued with tediousness and resignation...
...Either way, those who become "Americanized" are aware of one crucial point: what was once called "underdevelopment"-and is now contemptuously designated "Third World-ism"-is judged by its distance from the U.S...
...The question is, of course, rhetorical...
...The immigrant's repertoire consists of exhausting physical work, the condition of anonymity, a sense of personal importance obtained only through social gatherings, the construction of family as a refuge, and a nostalgia that idealizes their country of origin and the place that they once occupied there...
...In relation to what was left behind, Mexican barrios in the United States are ghettos of prosperity...
...Los Angeles is the fulfillment, according to Polish writer Ryzsard Kapucinsky, of the prophecy of the Cosmic Race, the universal miscegenation that inspired Mexican writer Jos6 Vasconcelos to write in 1925: "the diverse races of the world tend to mix more and more, until they form a new type of human, composed of parts of each existing race...
...if you, m This presence is rooted in the strength of a high-profile dence, thl sector of Mexican-American painters, performance (just look artists, playwrights and filmmakers...
...le in proportion not only to the 3,000-kilometer border with the United States, but also to Mexico's growing economic dependency on the United States (72% of all transactions are with the U.S...
...It is in this littlebit-more that the roots of exile lie...
...in this little-bit-more lie the roots of exile...
...They bravely attempt to defy the many obstacles in'their path-from police brutality to the web of hoaxes and tricks of the polleros (the "guides" of the undocumented), from the scourges of a racist society to their own feelings of insufficiency, be they cultural, linguistic or technological...
...But, from an immigrant perspective, arriving in the United States means their conVOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEc 1995 39REPORT ON IMMIGRATION dition has changed: they may remain third-class citizens, but they are no longer anachronisms...
...the exodus...
...This nev will incorp In Mexico, the border with the United States is rience and everywhere, and economically and culturally speak- ways and c ing, all of us Mexicans live along that border...
...Thus it is easy to understand Chicano ex why the immigrants' patriotism becomes essential- reconstituti ized, based on the concept of an ideal nation that con- despite eve sists of customs and traditions, and not of material mythologic realities...
...Chicanos perceive the often negative consequences of an extreme attachment to national or regional identities in a "globalized" world that considers identities to be little more than quaint leftovers from a previous era...
...In Los Angeles, Mexicans, Salvadorans and Hondurans are converted into "Hispanics," members of a minority that in the year 2,000 will be the largest in the United States...
...in the ties established between migrants and their understand hometowns in Mexico, and in the cultural exchange changed...
...But there is lit- that I ha tle doubt that the Chicano experience has become more blaster'and more indispensable for Mexicans...
...Villages and towns in the states of Michoacdn, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Morelos, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosf and Chiapas empty out every six months...
...It establishes the range of religious options and of expressive freedoms, andas a result of urban culture and the dissemination of sexual information-permits greater tolerance toward previously unacceptable actions and attitudes...
...This little-bit-more neutralizes the psychic aggressions of racism, and dilutes the patriotic anxieties of returning...
...This "Americanization" process has multiple meanings...
...This is decorations coupled with the immigrants' new faith: "our children colors to pi will not be like us" (they won't be workers, munity ma( campesinos, or waiters...
...His most recent collection of essays is Los Rituales del Caos (Era, 1995...
...The undocumented workers, the "wetbacks," the illegal immigrants, convert their customs into mythologies...
...society modifies certain rigidities and intolerances within Latin America, it also creates new divisions along the lines of race and class...
...Once established in the United States, the immigrant immediately becomes part of the traveling Mexican nation...
...In Mexican cities and towns, small and large, legions of people dream of entering the world of opportunities-arriving in the United States, and more precisely, in the city of Los Angeles...
...It can also be seen thinking...
...Nonetheless, it is true that the presence-and the influ- Thank yo the same ence-of Chicano culture in Mexico is considerable...
...The trements n hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who go to immigrant, the United States and who return every year reconstruct traditional and diversify their country of origin...
...If everything that is successful is governed by the methods and techniques of the North Americans, then to become "Americanized" is to appropriate, through imitation or assimilation, the successful strategies of that consumerist society...
...First and foremost, "Americanization" means becoming exactly the same as the gringo by expressly renouncing national traditions that stand in the way of the modernization of oneself and one's family...
...In the future, will devotions Mexico be a nation of Chicanos, of Mexican immigrant Americans...
...model...
...In that way, they can more easily distance themselves from the mental habits that undermine their sense of belonging to a place that is hostile, racist, repressive and, despite it all, so fulfilling in so many ways...
...I have changed and I have not Jefecita, but I am still faithful to you, who rephe Nation, even though now I may be al, Jehovah's Witness, Adventist, Baptist or What is important is what I am, and I am still devoted person as always, the person who live without family, who still asks about the and the dances, even though this huge radio ve brought-I think they call it a 'ghetto plays melodies I used to hate but that now . I swear to you, dear Virgin, I am the same as vas, even though I can't even recognize myself in the mirror...
Vol. 29 • November 1995 • No. 3
