by Ernest Hogan
Gotta love it. La Gente/La Raza ain’t just one thing. And La Cultura is a complex of intersecting, recombining cultures, bubbling away, constantly giving birth to new lifestyles, new identities, new civilizations.
Hang on your Chicanonaut helmet, we’re heading for the Intergalactic Barrio. . .
I call myself a Chicano. It’s the most accurate and honest term that allows me to tell where and when I’m from without having to do a quick, complicated bio.
Chicano wasn’t always a term of pride. It was once an insult, very much like the N-word (that is now more offensive than the good ol’ F-bomb). I lived through the transition that happened a few years after black went from insult to a word of pride and power that for a while was capitalized.
Political correctness changes with shifting timespace coordinates. In Mexico, people don’t understand what Chicanos keep getting worked up about. In some Mayan ruins, I once failed miserably to explain what a Chicano was. I’m not sure if I could do better today trying to explain Latinx.
I was happy when the term Hispanic came along when I was in college. Before that there was no box for me to check on the forms. We were in every classroom, but the bureaucracy didn’t recognize our existence. In protest, I put myself down as something different each time—I was Black, Oriental, anything but a White, or Other.
Then the census changed it to Hispanic (Spanish-surname only) ruining it for me.
Believers in Puro Mexicano (which doesn’t exist, Mexico was multicultural since before Teotihuacán) don't like Hispanic, even though a lot of our beloved Mexican traditions can be traced back to Spain--just ask the Hispanos in New Mexico. Then it is also still used by law enforcement to describe brown suspects.
Latino, on the other hand, got picked up by showbiz. It’s used to describe sexy celebrities, marketable commodities.
Latino always sounded funny to me, like an awkward contrivance made-up to deal with an uneasy, cross-cultural situation. Latin by itself never quite seems to be enough. I’ve suggested Latinoid, and R. Ch. Garcia recommends Latine, but they haven’t caught on.
Then came Latinx, that sounds like a laxative, but was actually created by trans Brazilians, to adjust the gender complexities of the Romance languages to their situation.
Before that there was Latino/a, but it couldn’t be decided if the o or the a should go first, so Latin@ came along, and word processing programs kept trying to make it into an email address.
My story “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails” sold to an anthology called Latino/a Rising in the Kickstarter campaign. When it came out, the book was called Latin@ Rising. Recently, a new edition was called Latinx Rising. A follow-up volume, with my story “ Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” has just come out, under the title Speculative Fiction For Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology.
Some of my fellow Chicanos have criticized me for being associated with anything Latinx. The whole point of my being a writer is to get published and have my work read. The Latinxes (see how it messed up English, too) have connections with publishing and academia. I’m not going to turn my back on a chance to be published--and paid--because of a label. See, as a Chicano I’m all about sneaking across borders into places where people don’t think I belong.
Just check out my story “Skin Dragons Talk” in Mothership: Tales From Afrofuturism and Beyond.
It also looks like Latinx is coming to mean futuristic, which I like.
And I’m soon going to be in Porvenir Ya!, Chicano science fiction anthology, and Nuestra Realidad Creativa / Our Creative Reality, Chicano nonfiction anthology.
Meanwhile, I'm surfing the distortion waves into the future.
Ernest Hogan wrote High Aztech. May Tezcatlipoca have mercy on his soul.
3 comments:
Enjoyed this lively and fun read. I am all those labels, and more. Call me whatever your think works; I know who I am. It's all good. Nicki De Necochea
Love your take on what has transpired since the late ‘60’s when we decided that the label we would be known by is Chicano to which I still adhere. I can see where it has become more problematic when we have to account for people from other countries in Latino America. I was telling somebody that I had nicaragüense friend in college in the early 70’s who considered themselves Chicano. It was about being socially aware and wanting to improve the lot of people from Mexico and all of centro America. Thank you for your efforts to clarify something that has been divisive rather than unifying.
Love your take on what has transpired since the late ‘60’s when we decided that the label we would be known by is Chicano to which I still adhere. I can see where it has become more problematic when we have to account for people from other countries in Latino America. I was telling somebody that I had nicaragüense friend in college in the early 70’s who considered themselves Chicano. It was about being socially aware and wanting to improve the lot of people from Mexico and all of centro America. Thank you for your efforts to clarify something that has been divisive rather than unifying.
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