Beyond Borders: Culture, Movement and Bedlam on Both Sides of the Rio Grande
Martínez, Rubén
GOSPEL: From "The Acts of the Apostles": ... there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as offire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to...
...Poor Chicano, they told me...
...For those who persist in thinking that a linear border separates what it means to be Mexican, Indian, Mestizo, Chicano, etc., history has passed you by...
...and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues...
...If the melting pot doesn't exist, how can we reconstruct the American Dream...
...It's hard to imagine the Miami Cubans always agreeing with the California Chicanos, or the Zacatecas migrants always getting along with those from Michoacdn (just remember the rumbles between those NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38REPORT ON MEXICO two in St...
...But watch out next time 'cause now we're armed with more than the water on our backs...
...He's got his Nikes on and his baggy pants...
...What's more, we're middle class and working class, white and black and Indian, Catholic and Pentecostal and Jewish...
...He's wearing a sleeveless T-shirt to display the tragicomic mask tattooed on his shoulder with the slogan la vida loca...
...So much noise, so many lights, so many buildings, so many cars...
...We have two presents, two contradictory futures: the chaos of a modern Tower of Babel, or a new Pentecost in which all will understand each other even though we end up speaking different languages...
...She greets him in Tarasco, the Pur6pecha language, and this postborder tough guy, with the utmost respect, answers in his ancestral language...
...Three generations ago, Mexicans picked oranges here and it was neither North Hollywood nor Michoacin...
...He speaks English and Spanish perfectly and can even say a few words in Tarasco...
...More than a loss of identity, what is happening is a continuation of the process of mestizaje in which Indians and Chicanos can put together a cultural package of their own choosing...
...To view this process as damaging to cultural health is to project an image of Indians as passive victims of history...
...Hence the young Mixtec who lives in Fresno, California and who no longer speaks his native language is still a Mixtec...
...Because he was practically born in the barrio (he came from his country of birth when he was six) and he can talk African-American English and Spanish equally well...
...Today we are more fragmented than ever, which is terrible, which is beautiful...
...The struggle against Proposition 187 in California was a classic example...
...The problem is neoliberalism, which leaves many people without any chance to participate economically or cul- turally in the process of globalization, while it benefits the middle classes of the United States and Europe who so like to dance salsa, eat Thai food and attend the performances of Guillermo G6mez Pefia...
...In the towns of the Pur6pecha Plateau, the same house that has a satellite dish pointed at the heavens may belong to a bruja, or witch, who cures "evil diseases" with herbs and Tarot, or by a trilingual teenager-Spanish, English and Tarasco-who loves the hard-core rock band Transmetal as much as pirecuas, the region's traditional music...
...They sit in the living room, turn on the Samsung TV hooked up to a satellite dish on the roof, and they spend a couple of hours wachando MTV, CNN and the soap opera "De pura sangre...
...n the United States, homogenizing untruths are promoted by the conservative and liberal establishments (Republicans as well as Democrats) and by the marginalized left...
...We're Salvadorans and Guatemalans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, Hondurans and Colombians and Nicaraguans, and among the Mexicans you've got to distinguish between recent arrivals, second- and thirdgeneration Chicanos, and the Hispanos of New Mexico whose roots in the Southwest reach back centuries...
...Because the kid speaks English and Spanish...
...Culture is an organism that must adapt to new surroundings to stay alive and continue growing...
...Indeed, in the November 1996 elections, California's new Latino citizens ousted Representative "B-I" Bob Dornan, a Republican nativist, with young Democrat-and, need we mention, Latina-Loretta Sanchez...
...GOSPEL: Words from "The Adventures of La Gaby" (scandalously suppressed by Cardinal Ratzinger), the hottest Jalisco transvestite at El Plaza, a Latino gay club in Hollywood, California: My love we're always departing splitting ourselves in two tearing ourselves apart departing...
...GOSPEL: From "The Book of La Licuadora (The Blender)" (also scandalously suppressed by Cardinal Ratzinger), the biggest and toughest of the people smugglers in the town of Cherdn, Michoacdn: They screwed us once those assholes from the gringos'Migra...
...They believe the future lies in the North (in the United States or Europe) and the past lies in the Pur6pecha Plateau (or the Lacandon Jungle or the Sierra Tarahumara...
...At eight o'clock, with the church bells ringing, he heads home, where his grandmother in long traditional braids awaits him...
...He's wearing his Oakland Raiders cap backwards and his head is shaved East-L.A...
...The problem is not being gay, straight, bi or transvestite...
...Two years ago in Compton High School, a young Salvadoran was elected president of the student council...
...The problem is lack of tolerance, and the fact that the state, the Catholic Church and other social and economic powers encourage intolerance by promoting the false image of a homogeneous nation...
...Those who still cling to the notion of "the spiritual Indian" deny the Indian present: that Indians can be and are as modern as the "postmoderns" from any of the planet's great urban centers...
...each other even When a Mexico City though we end up Mestizo turns nationalist and takes a neo-indigenist speaking different stance in front of foreigners, it is the height of languages, hypocrisy...
...Then he climbs into his ranfla, a brokendown '79 Datsun with North Carolina plates, and he goes cruiseando through town singing the refrain from a golden oldie: "My angel baby, my angel baby/oooh I love you, yes I do...
...36REPORT ON MEXICO While some Mexicans lament a loss of national identity, what is happening is a continuation of the process of mestizaje, in which Indians and Chicanos can put together a cultural package of their own choosing...
...We'd say, "What a shame Pur6pechas watch MTV, CNN and 'De pura sangre' instead of cultivating their patch of corn in bare feet with the tools of antiquity...
...But we Latinos in los United aren't the least bit homogeneous...
...The future lies on both sides of the border, as does the past, and the present is everywhere: satellite dishes and cholos in Michoacin, neo-Indians and Mixteca soccer teams in California...
...Meanwhile, back in Los United States: I know a young Chicano whose folks emigrated from that very same Pur6pecha Plateau 20 years ago following the lettuce harvest in Watsonville, California, the watermelon harvest in Kentucky, the tobacco harvest in North Carolina and the orange harvest in Florida...
...So many white people," she said...
...f we observed the present through the lens of the bullshit past, we Mexicans would say that our national identity is once more under attack by freetrading yanqui invaders and that each satellite dish is a direct challenge to the kingdom of her holiness the NACI3A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Ruben Martinez is an editor at Pacific News Service...
...Or as any of the postborder Pur6pecha kids would say: if there ain't no job, let's head for the other side...
...What's crucial is finding a way to connect our processes of cultural and social migration with our economic situation, and forming alliances across lines of race and ethnicity to confront class inequity head-on...
...Just as Mestizos lament the supposed loss of their Indian past, they see Chicanos and their supposed identity crisis as tragic...
...It seems that the only ones who feel comfortable in these rough seas are Indians and Chicanos, who A young cholo in Mexico City...
...Similarly, because of of a modern Tower their inferiority complex vis-a-vis gringos and of Babel, or a new Europeans, Mestizos Pentecost in which from the capital invent myths about Indians in all will understand order to feel that they themselves are modern...
...When the false homogenizing constructs of the past break up, awareness of our diversity-and tolerance of that diversity, I hope-will increase along with a sort of existential anguish...
...Of course she left the city to find the Tzotziles in Chiapas...
...She had one of those strange backpacks that gringos and Europeans like to carry when they go to the Third World (as if they were heading off on safari in search of elephants and aborigines...
...In many ways Chicanos are more "Mexican" than the Mexico City middle class, whose gaze is ever fixed on New York and Paris...
...Desperation and frustration can bring people together, but it can also accelerate fragmentation...
...This Pur6pecha and very Chicano postrocker goes back home after the sweatlodge ritual and spends a couple of hours with his parents and brothers and sisters watching a bit of MTV, CNN and the soap opera "De pura sangre...
...Louis, or the Mexican "18 Street" gang and the Salvadoran "Mara Salvatrucha" gang who battle over Los Angeles's Pico Union...
...Here in Mexico we have no identity crisis...
...Because by now we all know, as they say in Chiapas, that where there is hunger there can be no democracy...
...The problem is AIDS...
...futures: the chaos How cool...
...He won votes from both Blacks and Latinos...
...cities, la raza will finally be able to exercise some political power to counter xenophobic measures like California's Proposition 187, or the infamous welfare reform signed by President Clinton...
...What threatens us with a new Babel is the economic rupture that pits "marginal" groups against one another over the crumbs of the new economic order, an order which clearly will not offer the majority access to the American dream...
...Or unburdening yourself through violence aimed at people like yourself, like the Zacatecans and Michoacaners who bust each other's heads in St...
...She thought the capital was awful...
...For us, this process creates new utopias and new apocalypses simultaneously...
...The problem is not street vending or prostitution or drug addiction...
...After working a bit on the railroad in Nebraska and as room cleaners in a Dallas hotel, the family settled down in Southern California where they straightened out their papers and bought a modest home in a San Fernando Valley neighborhood affectionately rebaptized "North Hollywood, Michoacin...
...Give me a fucking break...
...conflict between Blacks and Latinos: the appearance if not the reality of competition between the two for the few poorly paid jobs left in southern California...
...A few months ago a young activist woman from los United whose parents had emigrated from India arrived in Mexico City...
...On both sides of the Rio Grande we are immersed in a rapid process of mestizaje: cultures and subcultures bloom like the thousand flowers of Mao...
...When I first came to Mexico City as an adult over ten years ago, college teachers and leftists in general treated me paternalistically...
...Each time he kills a bad guy he screams: "En la madre, motherfucker...
...He spends every weekend deep in the woods of the Los Padres National Forest, a mountainous area north of Los Angeles where an old Indian from the Chumash tribe teaches Indian traditions to young Chicano radicals and preaches about a spiritual war in which the bronze race will recover its dignity...
...He goes into a video arcade with his buddies and spends an hour killing ninjas, blacks and Arabs...
...After losing the vote, however, the movement fell rough their hoside in theapart...
...In your country you suffer from the scourge of racism...
...but you're so cute...
...Fuckin' wetbacks," say the Blacks of the Mexicans...
...At the same time, as philosopher Oswald Spengler noted, the landscape also continually adapts to new organisms that emerge: today, gringos consume more salsa than ketchup, to mention a superficial gastronomical fact rather than enumerate the obvious ways in which gringo society depends economically and socially on Latinos in the United States...
...Virgin of Guadalupe...
...Because his girlfriend is Black...
...Yet, out of this seemingly apocalyptic situation emerge new possibilities...
...Indians are the people who work on "the other side" and come back with a new television set and VCR to enjoy the movies of Steven Seagal...
...In 1994, days before the vote that approved the anti-immigrant measure, more than 100,000 people marched in Los Angeles, including plenty of Chicanos and Salvadorans, from recent arrivals to third-generation Americans...
...contradictory Indians live au naturel...
...Political unity among Latinos, if it ever happens, will be only momentary...
...In other words, the Indians frozen in dioramas in Mexico City's Museum of Anthropology and History that Mestizos so admire, are more inquisitive, more on-the-move and more in touch with modernity than the Mestizos themselves...
...This is not a time for unearthing old bullshit or for hanging your head...
...Which happens to be the opposite of the motto of the latest operation of the Border Patrol: "Stay out, stay alive" (rhetorically displaying on the border fence the bodies of those illegals who drown in the Rio Bravo or die of thirst in the desert...
...They are or the fence...
...understand that the future and the past coexist in the present...
...In fact, more Indians live in cities than in the countryside, and an enormous number of Mexican Indians live on the northern side of the border...
...As this demographic change occurs, two opposing realities confront each other on the streets of Compton...
...We'd say Chicanos are a bunch of stupid pochos with no right to call themselves Mexicans, and that the narco-cholos of Michoacin are threatening the nationalist spirit of our beloved Mexico...
...They don't call me The Blender for nothing...
...We're everything we are on the other side (that is, in Latin America...
...To put it simply, these days people who don't move die...
...Pinches mayates,"-fucking niggers-say the Mexicans of the Blacks...
...But those who see a "loss of Mexicanness" in Chicanos don't know much about themselves...
...As the dream of a better life is thwarted for Mexicans in New York, African-Americans in Chicago, Turks in France, Nigerians in England and Pur6pechas in Michoacdin, desperation grows, and with it, desperate attempts to survive: crossing the border in Arizona and risking dying of thirst in the desert...
...He used to be a fan of Death Metal and Trash, but today he belongs to the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de AztlIn (MEChA...
...On the one hand is a racial and class A group of adolescents who exact a "toll" from migrants passing th border between Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona...
...And that is precisely the worst stereotype created Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 37REPORT ON MEXICO by Mestizos about Indian identity...
...the thousand ways you can live off the black market...
...The problem is not whether we're Catholics or Pentecostals or Sufis...
...getting into drug trafficking, prostitution, street vending...
...Given what we have affirmed here, we offer: THE PLATFORM OF THE WETBACK PARTY The problem is not the language we speak nor the accent with which we speak it...
...This young man was an outstanding student in high school, loves biology and is now a sophomore at UCLA...
...The problem here is the Border Patrol...
...The truth is that time and space no longer obey such primitive borders...
...It has been said, for example, that with Latino majorities in several U.S...
...style...
...If "essential" Mexico doesn't exist, what can we use to fill the void...
...But there are many Mexicans who know that to stay alive is to move-economically, culturally, linguistically, sexually...
...It is a time for expanding our concept of identity, of tolerance, of democracy...
...cholo from the Pur6pecha Plateau in Michoacdin strolls down the main street of Nahuatzen, pushing past grandmothers in shawls and peasants in muddy boots...
...For example, in the barrio of Compton in South L.A.-famous all over the world for its African-American gangs and rappers like Ice Cube and Niggers With Attitude (NWA)-the Latino population (most of them recent arrivals from Mexico and Central America) is threatening to displace the AfricanAmerican community...
...Because he listens to rap and oldies and boleros and rock...
...Middle-class Mestizos have set up a false dynamic...
...it's a never-ending I-leave-we-leave leaving that takes us nowhere and everywhere oh sweetie...
...We Chicanos (or in my case Chicano-Salvadorans born in Los Angeles who now live in Mexico City) know, a bit like Buddhists, that stability is a state of movement...
...They have no We have two need for electricity, telepresents, two vision sets, or shoes or books, she said excitedly...
...Everything moves, everything changes, everything remains...
...Louis, which left several dozen dead or wounded...
...The future won't necessarily annihilate the past: tradition and novelty can cohabit in the present...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 4
