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 speak with other tongues…
cholo from the Pur6pecha Plateau in Michoacdin
strolls down the main street of Nahuatzen, push-
ing past grandmothers in shawls and peasants in
muddy boots. He’s wearing his Oakland Raiders cap
backwards and his head is shaved East-L.A. style. He’s
got his Nikes on and his baggy pants. He’s wearing a
sleeveless T-shirt to display the tragicomic mask tat-
tooed on his shoulder with the slogan la vida loca.
He goes into a video arcade with his buddies and
spends an hour killing ninjas, blacks and Arabs. Each
time he kills a bad guy he screams: “En la madre, moth-
erfucker!” Then he climbs into his ranfla, a broken-
down ’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….” At eight o’clock, with the church
bells ringing, he heads home, where his grandmother in
long traditional braids awaits him. She greets him in
Tarasco, the Pur6pecha language, and this postborder
tough guy, with the utmost respect, answers in his ances-
tral language.
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.”
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 let-
tuce harvest in Watsonville, California, the watermelon
harvest in Kentucky, the tobacco harvest in North
Carolina and the orange harvest in Florida. After work-
ing a bit on the railroad in Nebraska and as room clean-
ers 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 neigh-
borhood affectionately rebaptized “North Hollywood,
Michoacin.” Three generations ago, Mexicans picked
oranges here and it was neither North Hollywood nor
Michoacin.
This young man was an outstanding student in high
school, loves biology and is now a sophomore at UCLA.
He speaks English and Spanish perfectly and can even
say a few words in Tarasco. He used to be a fan of Death
Metal and Trash, but today he belongs to the
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de AztlIn (MEChA).
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.
This Pur6pecha and very Chicano postrocker goes
back home after the sweatlodge ritual and spends a cou-
ple of hours with his parents and brothers and sisters
watching a bit of MTV, CNN and the soap opera “De
pura sangre.”
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;
it’s a never-ending I-leave-we-leave leaving
that takes us nowhere and everywhere
oh sweetie! but you’re so cute.
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 free-
trading 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.
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.
Virgin of Guadalupe. 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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 them-
selves. 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. Just as Mestizos
lament the supposed loss of their Indian past, they see
Chicanos and their supposed identity crisis as tragic. But
those who see a “loss of Mexicanness” in Chicanos don’t
know much about themselves. In many ways Chicanos
are more “Mexican” than the Mexico City middle class,
whose gaze is ever fixed on New York and Paris.
Middle-class Mestizos have set up a false dynamic.
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). The truth is that time and space no longer
obey such primitive borders. 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.
Everything moves, everything changes, everything
remains. It seems that the only ones who feel comfort-
able in these rough seas are Indians and Chicanos, who
A young cholo in Mexico City.
understand that the future and the past coexist in the pre-
sent.
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 pack-
age of their own choosing. Culture is an organism that
must adapt to new surroundings to stay alive and con-
tinue growing. Hence the young Mixtec who lives in
Fresno, California and who no longer speaks his native
language is still a Mixtec. At the same time, as philoso-
pher Oswald Spengler noted, the landscape also contin-
ually adapts to new organisms that emerge: today, grin-
gos consume more salsa than ketchup, to mention a
superficial gastronomical fact rather than enumerate the
obvious ways in which gringo society depends econom-
ically and socially on Latinos in the United States.
The future won’t necessarily annihilate the past: tradi-
tion and novelty can cohabit in the present. In the towns
of the Pur6pecha Plateau, the same house that has a satel-
lite 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.
To view this process as damaging to cultural health is
to project an image of Indians as passive victims of his-
tory. And that is precisely the worst stereotype created
Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 37REPORT ON MEXICO
by Mestizos about Indian identity. A few months ago a
young activist woman from los United whose parents
had emigrated from India arrived in Mexico City. 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 ele-
phants and aborigines). She thought the capital was
awful. “So many white people,” she said. So much
noise, so many lights, so many buildings, so many cars.
Of course she left the city
to find the Tzotziles in
Chiapas. They have no We have two need for electricity, tele-
presents, two vision sets, or shoes or
books, she said excitedly.
contradictory Indians live au naturel.
futures: the chaos How cool! 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. 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 foreign-
ers, it is the height of
languages, hypocrisy. When I first
came to Mexico City as
an adult over ten years
ago, college teachers and leftists in general treated me
paternalistically. Poor Chicano, they told me. In your
country you suffer from the scourge of racism. Here in
Mexico we have no identity crisis. Give me a fucking
break!
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. To put it simply, these days people who
don’t move die. 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). But there are many
Mexicans who know that to stay alive is to move-eco-
nomically, culturally, linguistically, sexually. 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. The problem here is the Border Patrol. The problem is not being gay, straight, bi or transvestite.
The problem is AIDS.
The problem is not whether we’re Catholics or
Pentecostals or Sufis.
The problem is lack of tolerance, and the fact that the
state, the Catholic Church and other social and eco-
nomic powers encourage intolerance by promoting the false image of a homogeneous nation.
The problem is not street vending or prostitution or drug
addiction. 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 per-
formances of Guillermo G6mez Pefia.
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. But
watch out next time ’cause now
we’re armed with more than the water
on our backs.
They don’t call me The Blender for nothing.
n the United States, homogenizing untruths are pro-
moted by the conservative and liberal establish-
ments (Republicans as well as Democrats) and by
the marginalized left. It has been said, for example, that
with Latino majorities in several U.S. 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. 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.
But we Latinos in los United aren’t the least bit homo-
geneous. 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 third-
generation Chicanos, and the Hispanos of New Mexico
whose roots in the Southwest reach back centuries.
What’s more, we’re middle class and working class,
white and black and Indian, Catholic and Pentecostal
and Jewish. We’re everything we are on the other side
(that is, in Latin America).
It’s hard to imagine the Miami Cubans always agree-
ing 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. Louis, which left several dozen dead or
wounded). 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. For
us, this process creates new utopias and new apoca-
lypses simultaneously. 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 popula-
tion (most of them recent arrivals from Mexico and
Central America) is threatening to displace the African-
American community. As this demographic change
occurs, two opposing realities confront each other on the
streets of Compton. 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. They are or
the fence.
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.
“Pinches mayates,”-fucking niggers-say the
Mexicans of the Blacks. “Fuckin’ wetbacks,” say the
Blacks of the Mexicans.
Yet, out of this seemingly apocalyptic situation emerge
new possibilities. Two years ago in Compton High
School, a young Salvadoran was elected president of the
student council. He won votes from both Blacks and
Latinos. Because the kid speaks English and Spanish.
Because he listens to rap and oldies and boleros and rock.
Because his girlfriend is Black. Because he was practi-
cally 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.
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. What threatens us
with a new Babel is the economic rupture that pits “mar-
ginal” 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. 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; getting into drug trafficking,
prostitution, street vending; the thousand ways you can
live off the black market. Or unburdening yourself
through violence aimed at people like yourself, like the
Zacatecans and Michoacaners
who bust each other’s heads in St.
Louis, or the Mexican “18 Street”
gang and the Salvadoran “Mara
Salvatrucha” gang who battle
over Los Angeles’s Pico Union.
Political unity among Latinos, if
it ever happens, will be only
momentary. The struggle against
Proposition 187 in California was
a classic example. 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. After losing the vote,
however, the movement fell
rough their hoside in theapart. Desperation and frustration
can bring people together, but it
can also accelerate fragmenta-
tion. Today we are more fragmented than ever, which is
terrible, which is beautiful. When the false homogeniz-
ing 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. If
“essential” Mexico doesn’t exist, what can we use to fill
the void? If the melting pot doesn’t exist, how can we
reconstruct the American Dream? This is not a time for
unearthing old bullshit or for hanging your head. It is a
time for expanding our concept of identity, of tolerance,
of democracy.
What’s crucial is finding a way to connect our
processes of cultural and social migration with our eco-
nomic situation, and forming alliances across lines of
race and ethnicity to confront class inequity head-on.
Because by now we all know, as they say in Chiapas,
that where there is hunger there can be no democracy.
Or as any of the postborder Pur6pecha kids would say:
if there ain’t no job, let’s head for the other side!
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