Reflections on the Other "You"

                                                                                   

Ideas on colonized people

     What do we mean when we use the term “Latino” or “Latina,” probably the most widely used term for people of Indo-Spanish descent? I suppose a direct translation of “Latino” is “Latin,” which indicates a descendent of Rome, as in Italian, even though the preferred word for people from Latin America, collectively, is “Latino,” as in “Latino Americano;” though, usually their first response, if asked, would more likely be: “Guatemalteco, Peruano, Chileno, Colombiano, Mejicano,” etc. So, how did “Latino” get into the lexicon and what does it really mean?

     To some people, words of identification, like “Latino,” are more a “state of being,” even if the dictionary says “Latino” is “Latin—of or relating to Latium, its people or its culture, or relating to ancient Rome, or places and peoples using Romance languages.” That’s complex, and a little unsettling when I hear John Leguizamo say, “Latin” instead of Latino, which I suspect comes from an inferiority which many of us have when pronouncing words in Spanish to Anglo listeners.

     It took a quick google search to learn it was a Frenchman, Michel Chevelier, who, in the 1830s, began calling the countries south of the United States, from Mexico to Argentina “Latino America.” And, indeed, he did want France to form an alliance with countries whose people spoke Romance languages versus those European countries whose people spoke Anglo-Germanic languages. He used the name,Latin America, officially, at a conference in Paris in 1856.

      So, are Americans of Mexican descent “Latino?” That’s different from, say, “Hispanic” or "Hispano," coined for the 1970s census, with input from activist organizations, like the National Council of La Raza. The term means “of or relating to the language, culture, and people of Spain, or Spanish speaking countries, especially Latin America.” My guess is some of those early organizations cringed when non-speaking Spanish people mispronounced, “Latino.” Maybe they thought “Hispanic” a better alternative. It kind of rolls off the English tongue.

     A child of the WWII, Zoot Suit generation, my father, with no malice, whatsoever, saw no contradiction in calling Mexicans from south of the border “Wetbacks,” yet, he wouldn’t stand for anyone to refer to him, his parents, or his friends with that word. His friends he called “Chicanos” or “Hispanics,” which he pronounced, “High-spanic.” I think an accent he picked from his neighbors, many who came from Oklahoma to L.A.'s Westside "slums" during the 1930s Dust Bowl, where they took up residence among poor Mexicans and Japanese. I think my father's generation was the first Mexican generation to see themselves as having "Brown skin, White Masts." They knew they were Mexican and spoke Spanish, but the dominant culture educated them to believe they were "American," so that's how they saw themselves, maybe even "White." They didn't question it, the meaning of "American" or "Whiteness," like those of us in my generation, especially when ordered to go to an "unpopular" and, possibly, "illegal" war.

     When I graduated college in the late ‘70s, ethnic studies professors began using “Chicano” and “Latino,” interchangeably, saying “Chicano” is more specific to a politically aware Mexican American, where “Latino” is a person of Spanish descent, collectively, including mestizos and indigenous people of Latin America.

     “Hispanic” is a person of pure Spanish descent, no hint of Indian blood. That can get confusing in a U.S. census meant to count all people of Indo-Spanish descent. I do know there are some people in parts of New Mexico and Colorado who refer to themselves as “Puro Hispano.” They say they can trace their bloodlines back to the Spaniards who conquered the Southwest in the 1600s. It’s difficult to imagine no mixing of the blood in such small communities for more than four-hundred years.

     So, what about Spanish actors, say, Antonio Banderas, who has played Mexican roles, like in Zorro and Desperado -- Latino or Hispanic, or both? Though, one might argue it doesn’t really matter since Zorro was a fictitious Disney creation about a Spaniard, Don Diego Vega, living in 1800s Los Angeles, before the Anglos arrived. By 1800, the Spanish had been in Mexico 280 years, a long time, and probably few pure-blooded Spaniards among the pobladores, so Zorro was probably more Mexican than Spanish, even if the actor, Guy Williams, who played Zorro in the original 1960’s television series was really Armando Catalano, an Italian American, close, right, technically “Latino,” if we go by Chevalier’s definition.

     What about Julio Iglesias or his American-son, Enrique, or Shakira, Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny, Rocio Durcal, Fidel Castro, Che, Jorge Luis Borges, Selma Hayek, Jorge Bardem, or Penelope Cruz, Latinos or Hispanics? My guess is if you asked, they’d identify with their country of origin; though Hayek is proud of her Mexican-Lebanese ancestry as is Shakira about her Colombian-Spanish-Lebanese ancestry. There a lot of different flavors in the punch.

     Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes didn’t like being pigeon-holed and saw himself as a citizen of the world and, even, referred to himself a “Chicano,” a person straddling borders, both Mexican and American. And, he was right, if he saw “Chicano” as a “state of being” more than an official moniker. Actually, nobody really knows where the word “Chicano” originated, not 100% anyway. One older friend told me when she was a child, she remembered her Californio parents calling Mexican peasants in the U.S., “Cholos,” so she wasn't enthusiastic about the word "Chicano."

     Some argue ethnic labeling is limiting? Psychologically, attaching one’s identity to a particular ethnic term could determine the way the person sees himself or herself. I have a Chicano friend who grew up “Mexican,” like the rest of us. When he heard his family had Native American blood, the next thing we know he had a ponytail and wore turquoise, leather, and feathers.

     Truthfully, I can barely remember the last time anyone asked me my ethnicity. I think int was in the 1970s. My friend’s Anglo wife asked me if I was Italian. I answered, “No. I’m Mexican,” and left it at that. It is strange, though, when I write or if I’m asked to talk on a “Chicano” topic, that’s about the only time I use the word or concepts that have to do with “Chicanismo.” If I don’t know a person’s specific nationality, I refer to him or her as Latino, which might be right or wrong. They may not even see themselves as Latinos.

     Yet, what we call ourselves or how we see ourselves has to affect our identities as individuals, like my friend who learned he was Native American and changed many of his cultural behaviors, except he didn’t give up his Mercedes or home in the suburbs. That would have gone too far.

     Does identifying ourselves as something other than “American” make “less than”? Are Mexicans born (or raised) in the U.S. a colonized people, since Mexcio lost the war with the U.S.? Some of us are the children of refugees, our ancestors fleeing the violence and famine in their own country during revolution and civil war. Yet, like my father's generation, aren’t we all educated to see ourselves as Americans, from a very early age, which raises the question: what is an American?

     If you went to school in say, East L.A., or along the border, where the student body was as 90% “Mexican American,” or higher, the U.S. education system taught you to be an American. So, you look around at all your friends and think, “Yes, we’re American.” So, you see yourself and your friends a certain way – the culture of your community. That is American, even if many people speak Spanish and there are taco and fruit vendors everywhere.

     What happens the first time you leave your neighborhood and travel to, say, play football against Beverly Hills High School, or any wealthier, predominately White school? You enter an entirely different “America.” You might see students who have the best of everything. The students themselves are “beautiful,” like you see in the movies and on television. The guys on their team are gargantuan. They’ve had the best training. They get the best coaches and teachers. How does this affect a person’s psyche. Does it cause one to question what it means to be American? Or, you attend a university, say, like in the Ivy League, and you don’t look like the others, don’t have their money, their privilege, or their prestige, or your first job is with a prominent corporation, and you’re the only “Juan” or “Juana” in the room?

     Black Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, one of the first people of color to study the effects of colonialism, using Blacks raised in French Martinique as his subjects, might say:  to get through successfully you draw on the Mexican “you,” the American “you,” and the human “you,” the one who made it this far already?” You don’t dwell on the past but focus on the present and the future, not on how others see you but on how you see yourself.

     Fanon suggests that the problem is many of us our caught up in studying who we were, and often the past is an illusion, we forget about studying who we are, now, as humans, apart from the group, each of us unique and different in our own ways, regardless of racial or ethnic identification.