DREAMING OF UTOPIA
In relation to what was left behind, Mexican barrios in the United States are ghettos of prosperity. Mexican immigrants have the basics and a little bit more. It is in the little-bit-more that the roots of exile lie.
By Carlos Monsivais
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. 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 the exodus.
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. 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. They change countries since they cannot change those things that matter most to them: family security and social mobility.
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?” In the case of Mexico, such a colonized mentality grows 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. market) and to the continuing waves of migration of Mexican workers to Texas, California and other states. Before, if rural Mexicans wanted to alter their relationship with modernity, they looked to Mexico City. 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.
Mexico has evolved from being a sedentary country to a nomadic one. Villages and towns in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Morelos, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí and Chiapas empty out every six months. Those who stay–women, children, the elderly–hold onto their identity, though it is imbued with tediousness and resignation. 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. (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.)
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. They do not ignore the mistreatment and the social exclusion, and they are quite aware of the persecution and the abuse in the workplace. But, from an immigrant perspective, arriving in the United States means their condition has changed: they may remain third-class citizens, but they are no longer anachronisms; by arriving in the United States, they have joined the future.
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. Los Angeles is not the only possible destination, but it is the place already inhabited by millions of Mexicans. It is the paradise of freeways, the patchwork of ghettos. 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 José 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.”
In Los Angeles, Mexicans, Salvadorans and Hondurans are converted into “Hispanics,” members of a minority that in the year 2000 will be the largest in the United States. According to their ideal–and idealized–projects, in Los Angeles they will obtain the jobs that their countries have denied them. There they will have a house or an apartment with modern appliances, as well as access to other contemporary conveniences unavailable in their small village or shantytown. Once established in the United States, the immigrant inimediately becomes part of the traveling Mexican nation. It may not be he or his wife who establishes relationships with the Anglo world; perhaps their children will do so, and with less difficulty still, their grandchildren.
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 immigrant accepts his or her initial, and probably permanent, destiny: fruit picker, waiter or waitress, construction worker, night guard, machine laborer at best. 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. The undocumented workers, the “wetbacks,” the illegal immigrants, convert their customs into mythologies. 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.
The 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. The definition of national identity is a process that evolves over time. It is impossible, for instance, to define Mexicanness or Peruvianness today using the cultural definitions of yesterday. 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. 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.
This “Americanization” process has multiple meanings. 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. (“To be Mexican” or “To be Latin American,” according to this logic, means assuming the psychology of the disadvantaged or excluded.) Alongside this rejection of all things Mexican is a different kind of “Americanization” which represents the search for codes to decipher the unintelligible. 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.
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. model. “American-ness,” from this perspective, popularizes certain forms of behavior and less rigid styles of family relations. It establishes the range of religious options and of expressive freedoms, and–as a result of urban culture and the dissemination of sexual information–permits greater tolerance toward previously unacceptable actions and attitudes. In the dazzling glare of what has been obtained, many prefer to ignore one central, oppressive fact. At the same time that the influence of U.S. society modifies certain rigidities and intolerances within Latin America, it also creates new divisions along the lines of race and class.
In relation to what was left behind, Mexican barrios in the United States are ghettos of prosperity. They have the basics and a little-bit-more. It is in this little-bit-more that the roots of exile lie. This little-bit-more neutralizes the psychic aggressions of racism, and dilutes the patriotic anxieties of returning. This little-bit-more–often an automobile or domestic appliances–dazzles the immigrant. One of the great tricks of “Americanization” is that it manages to make those under its influence feel contemporary, in touch with what is happening today throughout the world. This is coupled with the immigrants’ new faith: “our children will not be like us” (they won’t be workers, campesinos, or waiters). Thus it is easy to understand why the immigrants’ patriotism becomes essentialized, based on the concept of an ideal nation that consists of customs and traditions, and not of material realities.
In Mexico, the border with the United States is everywhere, and economically and culturally speaking, all of us Mexicans live along that border. The hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who go to the United States and who return every year reconstruct and diversify their country of origin. In the future, will Mexico be a nation of Chicanos, of Mexican Americans? The question is, of course, rhetorical. Nonetheless, it is true that the presence–and the mfluence–of Chicano culture in Mexico is considerable. This presence is rooted in the strength of a high-profile sector of Mexican-American painters, performance artists, playwrights and filmmakers. It can also be seen in the ties established between migrants and their hometowns in Mexico, and in the cultural exchange between traditional Mexican culture–now merely symbolic in many aspects–and the various degrees of “Americanization.”
I am not saying that Mexican Americans consider themselves studious “translators” of the “American way of life,” whatever that term means. But there is little doubt that the Chicano experience has become more and more indispensable for Mexicans. Mexicans have gained particular insight from the way in which Chicanos have learned to adapt to their new cultural milieu. 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. After just one generation, Chicanos have learned the strengths and weaknesses of their traditional customs, the advantages of English as the lingua franco, the consequences of resisting assimilation, and the expediency of assimilating entirely.
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 “Americanization” process. Examples of the persistence of Mexican culture in the United States abound: Mexican-Americans’ unyielding fertility, the time-worn decorations found in Chicano barrios, the use of bright colors to proclaim sensuality, and the image of a community made up not of individuals, but of families. The Chicano experience is thus an important factor in the reconstitution of Mexican nationalism–which persists despite everything, even if its expression is at times mythological.
This new Mexican nationalism will be bilingual. It will incorporate what is useful of the immigrant experience and retain what is most precious of the old ways and customs. While the new consumerist accoutrements may become like a “second skin” for the immigrant, loyalty to local customs, enthusiasm for traditional cuisine and music, and fidelity to religious devotions will endure. The bilingual prayer of that immigrant might sound like this:
Thank you, dear Virgin of Guadclupe, for helping me be the same as I always was. It’s true, though I’m not sure if you, my Saintly Patroness, have realized the coincidence, that along with the changes in my appearance (just look at these new clothes) came another way of thinking. I am more tolerant although I don’t always understand or agree. I have changed and I have not changed, Jefecita, but I am still faithful to you, who represents the Nation, even though now I may be Pentecostal, Jehovah’s Witness, Adventist, Baptist or Mormon. What is important is what I am, and I am still the same devoted person as always, the person who could not live without family, who still asks about the hometown and the dances, even though this huge radio that I have brought–I think they call it a ‘ghetto blaster’–plays melodies I used to hate but that now inspire me. I swear to you, dear Virgin, I am the same as I always was, even though I can’t even recognize myself in the mirror.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carlos Monsivaís is a regular columnist for the Mexican daily La Jornada, and one of Mexico’s most prominent essayists. His most recent collection of essays is Los Rituales del Caos (Era, 1995).
Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
