Reviews
iAdelante Mujeres! MexicanAmerican/Chicana Women National Women's History Project, 7738 Bell Road, Windsor, CA 95492, 1992, 30 mins., $10 (preview); $49.95 (sale). "iAdelante Mujeres!" is an...
...Certain themes and concerns arise time and again: the economic straits in the country of origin, the remittances sent or promised, the loneliness and isolation of many in their new environs, and the difficulty of finding steady employment in the United States...
...P6rez Firmat never once uses the word "postmodern" in his book, but the imprint of that school of thought is everywhere...
...The video (available in both English and Spanish) is accompanied by a well-written guide for classroom use...
...Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way by Gustavo Perez Firmat, University of Texas Press, 1994, 216 pp., $30 (cloth), $12.95 (paper...
...Ironically, the links between social movements and political parties that had facilitated protest in the early 1980s became a demobilizing factor by 1990...
...Erica Polakoff Between the Lines: Letters Between Undocumented Mexican and Central American Immigrants and Their Families and Friends Translated, edited, and with an intro- duction by Larry Siems, University of Arizona Press, 1995, 311 pp., $19.95 (paper...
...government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank as proof of the magic of the marketplace, and were held up as a model for the rest of Latin America to emulate...
...In particular, the decision of the Communist Party to engage in armed struggle against the dictatorship devastated grassroots networks...
...Moreover, these 6migrds have particular class and racial affinities which affect how Cuban-American culture has evolved...
...One-anda-halfers are translation artists," P6rez Firmat writes in a typical display of his lambent, playful prose...
...Trade-union leaders were heavily targeted in the killings, firings and arrests that followed the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power...
...In this case, the reader finds herself privy to the most intimate fears, discoveries, musings, and traumas of Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants and their families and friends back home...
...Schneider also maps out the impact on the grassroots protest movement of the reemergence of Chilean political parties from 1986 through the democratic transition in 1990...
...P6rez Firmat calls his genealogy of Cuban-American culture the "Desi Chain" in a nod to Desi Arnaz's foundational role...
...Some letter writers appear only once...
...Between the Lines is a muchneeded antidote to anti-immigrant rhetoric which reduces undocumented immigrants to a faceless horde...
...In this book about Cuban-American contributions to U.S...
...More moderate parties, pursuing negotiations with the Pinochet regime to relinquish power, actively discouraged grassroots protest...
...In the most engaging part of the book, he recounts hilarious capers from old I Love Lucy episodes that reveal how Ricky gingerly negotiates the terrain of American culture...
...Starting in the 1950s, Chile's "Chicago boys" developed a critique of statist and protectionist economic models that is now hegemonic throughout Latin America...
...It may account for what is not discussed...
...According to this important and lucid book, Chile's free-market "miracle" led to two disastrous recessions, widening inequalities of wealth and income, the growth of underemployment and insecure employment, greater poverty, the plundering of natural resources, massive borrowing, a bloated military, and the neutering of the state's power to regulate and guide the economy...
...popular culture and the arts, we are treated to an intelligent, lively discussion of such figures as Desi Arnaz, Gloria Estefan, PNrez Prado and Oscar Hijuelos...
...Employers' rights to hire and fire were almost unrestricted, and seasonal and temporary workers were denied basic rights to organize...
...Cathy Schneider's recent book reminds us of those turbulent times, when ordinary Chileans took to the streets to struggle against tyranny and injustice...
...Labor was therefore kept divided and weak...
...Between 1973 and 1993, the percentage of workers in unions declined from 35% to 13% while the real value of the minimum wage plummeted...
...But what were the costs of the Chicago boys' reforms...
...Reading published collections of letters thus evokes the guilty sensation of eavesdropping...
...Although sketchy in its treatment of these forces and other obstacles that Mexican-American women have confronted, the video does an admirable job of representing their struggle to support their families and maintain their culture, values, and personal dignity...
...What emboldened some communities to protest and others to remain quiescent, Schneider argues, was the nature of community networks within the shantytowns...
...others are represented throughout the volume or dominate a particular section...
...The rebellions of the early 1980s were not the spontaneous uprisings of the dissatisfied masses, spurred to action by the economic downturn in 1983, as conventional wisdom has it...
...By the late 1980s, the reformers claimed success: Chile had a high-growth, low-inflation, export-oriented economy...
...PNrez Firmat, however, sees Ricky as the "tutelary spirit or orisha" of Cuban-American culture...
...Through careful comparison of several shantytowns in the outskirts of Santiago, Schneider observed that protest activity in some shantytowns was more intense and prolonged than in others...
...Lear and Collins' carefully-researched and persuasively-argued book provides an immense service by showing that the social costs of "actually existing neoliberalism" are unacceptably high, and that the time has come to explore alternatives...
...In the wake of the economic crisis, party activists were able to reactivate these networks-Schneider calls them the "roots of resistance"--and mobilize widespread and sustained protests against the government in shantytowns like La Victoria and Pablo Neruda...
...This characteristic, he argues, is especially true of the so-called "1.5 generation"-those Cuban Americans, now in their mid-30s to early 50s, who were born in Cuba but who came of age in the United States...
...Anthony Pereira Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile By Cathy Lisa Schneider, Temple University Press, 1995, 269 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper...
...Collins and Lear are especially attentive to the fate of workers during the so-called miracle...
...Unfortunately, the translation is a disappointment...
...He doesn't, however, ponder the connection between that orientation and the fact that Cuban Americans are exiles of a socialist revolution...
...Under the rule of Augusto Pinochet (1973-90), they put their neoliberal ideas into practice, imposing the "freedom to choose" on a nation silenced by soldiers and tanks...
...population with voice, personality, and humanity...
...In Prrez Firmat's reading, they all exemplify the CubanAmerican condition of hybridism and biculturation...
...Tradition bound but translation bent, they are sufficiently immersed in each culture to give both ends of the hyphen their due...
...From an early age, one is taught that it is wrong to read other people's private correspondence...
...The 1979 Labor Code created a highly fragmented system of collective bargaining that effectively prevented workers from organizing beyond the individual firm...
...The storm of protests that swept Chile between 1983 and 1986 in the aftermath of a harsh economic downturn is an overlooked chapter in the much-celebrated Chilean "economic success story...
...In some communities, the social and political networks built up by left-wing activism, and particularly by the Chilean Communist Party, survived the dictatorship's repression...
...An epilogue by Stephanie Rosenfeld that covers changes under the civilian Aylwin (199094) and Frei (1994-) governments, provides some grounds for optimism...
...Using archival photographs (which vary considerably in their quality and resolution), the video attempts to document how Mexican and Mexican-American women's lives have been affected by the conquest, colonization, Catholicism, the annexation of northern Mexico to the United States, the Depression, war, McCarthyism, discrimination, and U.S...
...All reviews, unless otherwise noted, are written by NACLA staff...
...The correspondence is organized in categories-letters on arrival, the situation at home, and love letters, to name a few...
...But the transition to a civilian regime took place without a fundamental revision of the economic model set in place by the Chicago boys, so social improvements are likely to be marginal in the next several years...
...The author makes only glancing reference to the fact that Cuban culture has had its blackness expunged in its American translation...
...Schneider skillfully teases out the dynamic interaction between political action and situational factors...
...Cuban-American culture, he writes, is "shamelessly materialistic and resolutely middle brow...
...Siems does a word-for-word translation which comes off sounding unnatural and stilted...
...The letters in the original Spanish appear on the left-hand page with the English translations on the right...
...The reforms were praised by the high priests of economic correctness in the U.S...
...If this sounds familiar, it should: while implemented sooner and with more ruthlessness and thoroughness in Chile, these reforms bear a broad resemblance to the Reagan/Thatcher "revolution" in the United States and the United Kingdom...
...The video highlights the ways in which Chicanas have resisted oppression, both as political activists-in labor unions, in defending their language, and in the creation of cultural associations and publications-and in their everyday lives as mothers and wives, reclaiming their cultural heritage in the preparation of foods and in the celebration of religious and cultural events...
...immigration policy...
...Since the end of military rule, labor has regained some of its lost rights, and the new governments have succeeded in reducing poverty by raising the minimum wage and introducing social programs long prohibited by free-market dogmatists...
...Continued on page 48 Vo XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEc 1995 47 VOL XXIX, NO 3 Nov/DEC 1995 47REVIEWS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47 Chile's Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look by Joseph Collins and John Lear, Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1995, 311 pp., $15.95 (paper...
...The book endows this most vulnerable sector of the U.S...
...The book is a joy to read in the Spanish, with an occasional glance to the English version for clarification of meaning...
...is an ambitious and upbeat historical survey of Mexican-American women...
...Ricky Ricardo-the character played by Arnaz in the I Love Lucy show of the 1950s-is usually dismissed as a minor "ethnic" character made palatable for middle-American TV viewers...
Vol. 29 • November 1995 • No. 3
