Author Archives: mujerestalk

Countering Hate with Knowledge, Fury, and Protest: Three Latina/o Studies Scholars Respond to Orlando Massacre

40 images of human heart

Detail from “Cortando hilos del corazón.” Mixed media, 54 x 34. ©Mortega

SIN PULSO/no pulse

By Mariana Ortega

Forty nine hearts beating in a space of defiant joy, being who they were or who they wanted to be, a being-with others in glorious, sonorous denunciation of homo-hate. Brutality and terror storm in—and pulses cede to straight lines. Many words uttered: sanctuary, prayers, peace, unity, sorrow, solidarity, safety, “love conquers all,” “we are all Orlando.”

But love does not conquer all, and we are not all Orlando. Even if love could conquer, pulses would still suddenly and cruelly stop as a ravenous hate finds its way around our schools, jobs, streets, homes—this hate being fed continuously, even by those who profess to love. We are not all Orlando. Not all of us are persecuted, undermined, mocked, bullied, beaten or killed for whom we love or desire or lust. If in the past we have followed the instant solidarity recipe, “We are all [those who have been victimized fiercely and ferociously],” today, not everyone adheres to the recipe. To say “We are all Orlando,” is to risk being thought a queer, a fag, a freak, unnatural. It is to lose the honorable shield of hetero-love.

So, no, this time not everyone is united. Not everyone mourns. The brutal massacre of Latinx bodies in the midst of pleasure has not happened here. Where is the outrage and non-stop news coverage? In social media, in the news that lives off tragedy and tears when good American citizens and children die senselessly of gun violence in middle class, white communities—in those towns where “nothing like that ever happens”?  Basketball and soccer scores, the meal at the fancy restaurant, the ubiquitous selfies, political chatter about an almost absurd but too real and sad election, day-to-day misfortunes about news that are supposedly worth our time—those remain. For many life will be as it has always been. Not for queer Latinxs, whose lives are too often questioned and disregarded even within queer spaces and within queer theory whose words still reveal absences of bodies of color. Continue reading

A Quince for My Boys: Celebrating 15 Latina Style

photo of two boys in formal dress facing audience at banquet

The Mighty Ones. Photo by John Landry, Take5ive Photography. CC BY-NC-ND.

By Sonia BasSheva Mañjon

Growing up Latina and Catholic in a large Dominican family, in Compton, California, meant, for me, that ritual was a daily occurrence and a requirement. Attending mass on Sundays and Holy Days, Baptism, Confirmation, First Holy Communion, Quinceañera, and ultimately my Wedding, were all monumental occasions. My abuela would make the extravagant white dress, the extended family gathered for mass at the church, my abuelo would dig the hole in the backyard for the lechón asado that would accompany the feast prepared by the women at my grandparents house. And finally the pachanga complete with dancing merengue with my abuela to make sure I was authentic Dominicana. I always felt my grandmother and mother went overboard with these celebrations. At times it was embarrassing because my African American friends did not share any of these particular ritual celebrations, and often did not understand what was going on and why it was so important. But deep down inside, I expected and appreciated the “Queen for a Day” celebrations. Continue reading

Stigmatized Markets: Los Angeles Street Vending Kids Working and Restoring a Dignified Self

By Emir Estrada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgbGSYmLgmQ

The video in the link above depicts the public humiliation of a child street vendor in Tabasco, Mexico. Three officials stand tall next to him as he inconsolably and powerlessly follows through on their command to dump on the street the merchandise he carried on a small straw basket. Once he empties the basket, the officials turn away and leave him on the floor to collect his merchandize. This incident took place in Mexico, but this also happens in our own backyard, here in the U.S.

When I watched this video, I was working on an academic article based on original research I conducted in 2009 to 2012 with street vending children and their families in Los Angeles, CA.  Street vending is a popular economic strategy for poor, undocumented and Spanish monolingual Latinos in Los Angeles. During my study, I spent two and a half years with various street vending families and conducted 66 interviews with children between the ages of 10-18 and their parents. I also accompanied several families while they sold goods on the streets. Continue reading

Zika and Abortion

The sign says “Stop Criminalizing Women.” The woman belongs to a protest movement in Chile, which, like El Salvador, has draconian laws that criminalize women who terminate their pregnancy. In both countries abortion is illegal under all circumstances, even if necessary to save the life of the woman. In El Salvador the exception that allowed abortion when the mother’s life is in danger was removed in 1998; in Chile it was removed under the military dictatorship in 1989.

The sign says “Stop Criminalizing Women.” The woman belongs to a protest movement in Chile, which, like El Salvador, has draconian laws that criminalize women who terminate their pregnancy. In both countries abortion is illegal under all circumstances, even if necessary to save the life of the woman. In El Salvador the exception that allowed abortion when the mother’s life is in danger was removed in 1998; in Chile it was removed under the military dictatorship in 1989.

by Ann Hibner Koblitz

(This essay was originally published on February 1, 2016 on the author’s blog:  “Sex, Abortion, and Contraception”)

The spread of the Zika virus is causing consternation and alarm in many countries. The symptoms of the mosquito-borne virus are generally quite mild, to the extent that many victims don’t even know that they are ill. Recently, however, it has become clear that, when contracted by women in the first trimester of pregnancy, Zika can cause birth defects such as microcephaly, brain damage, deafness, and paralysis. The World Health Organization has stated that as many as four million people in the Americas could be infected in 2016, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are cautioning pregnant women not to travel to certain countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where the virus outbreak is becoming severe.

The Central American country of El Salvador has been particularly hard hit, and the government has taken the unprecedented step of warning women not to become pregnant until 2018. This advice is bizarre. El Salvador is a poor country. Many women face barriers, both practical and cultural, to contraceptive use. Moreover, abortion — even when the fetus is known to be severely deformed — is illegal, and the punishments are severe.

An effective government strategy to combat the epidemic of birth defects would consist of three components: widespread sex education and cheap and easily available contraception; widely available prenatal screening for birth defects (amniocentesis); and safe, legal abortion. Since El Salvador has none of these, women in large numbers will inevitably get pregnant, and some will deliver babies with severe abnormalities.

Note that the government’s admonitions are not directed at men, as if they didn’t realize that men share responsibility for pregnancy. Rather, the clear implication is that women and women alone will be blamed for the expected public health catastrophe. A 25 January 2016 article in The New York Times about the Zika threat in El Salvador aptly describes the Salvadoran government’s pregnancy warning as “the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass that, to many here, only illustrates their government’s desperation.”

In this article the word “abortion” is conspicuous by its absence. This is a peculiar oversight by The New York Times, since the illegality of all abortion in El Salvador is one of the principal obstacles to an effective response to the public health crisis.

Also omitted from the coverage in The New York Times is any discussion of U.S. culpability for the deplorable situation in that country. During the years 1979-1992 the U.S. gave billions of dollars in financial and military aid to the right-wing government that committed large-scale atrocities during a civil war in which an estimated 80 thousand people died. After the war the huge quantity of weapons and the large number of demobilized and unemployed former soldiers set the stage for an epidemic of violent crime. In addition, in the mid-1990s the U.S. deported several thousand Salvadoran pandilleros (gang members, mainly from Southern California), who brought their criminal gangs back with them to El Salvador. Current estimates of the number of gang members in El Salvador (a country having 1/50 the population of the U.S.) range from 30 to 60 thousand. At present El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the Americas.

The pandilleros are not the only U.S. export to cause havoc in El Salvador. Over the past two decades religious fundamentalist groups based in or funded from the U.S. have given rise to anti-abortion fanaticism on a level that was virtually unknown before. In 1994 the Kovalevskaia Fund (of which I am director) and the Salvadoran Women Doctors’ Association convened an international conference in San Salvador to discuss the medical consequences of illegally induced abortion. El Salvador’s Vice-Minister of Health attended, and topics included the use of herbal abortifacients and menstrual regulators by the indigenous peoples of El Salvador, the actions of RU-486, the efficiency of vacuum aspiration as an abortion technique, the work of South American abortion clinics and their education programs for midwives and obstetricians, and so on. There was a sprinkling of anti-abortion people among the 300 doctors and medical students in attendance, but discussions were wide-ranging and respectful. Yes, that is not a misprint. The abortion opponents in El Salvador listened to the discussions of these topics with interest and respect.

Now, however, such an event would be virtually impossible to organize because religious fundamentalists have become much more visible, violent, and well-funded than they were in the mid-1990s. Medical personnel are prevented from performing abortions even in cases of ectopic pregnancy or other life-threatening conditions. In such circumstances it is not surprising that the Salvadoran government fails to mention abortion in connection with the Zika crisis. That The New York Times fails to mention abortion in its own coverage is harder to explain.

Postscript (added 4 February 2016) Although the article on the response in El Salvador to the Zika virus did not mention abortion at all, a 3 February editorial in The New York Times did: “In Latin America, where many nations outlaw abortion, some governments have advised that pregnancies be delayed, which can create only greater anxiety for women who have sadly limited control over such decisions…. Immediate responses, like increasing access to birth control and abortion, face stiff legal and cultural resistance in the affected region.” The New York Times also carried an article “Surge of Zika Virus Has Brazilians Re-examining Strict Abortion Laws”.

Second postscript (added 8 February 2016) Today’s The New York Times has an excellent op-ed on the situation in Brazil by Debora Diniz, a professor of law at the University of Brasilia.

Ann Hibner Koblitz, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, has taught at ASU since 1998. Her first book was the biography of a Russian woman mathematician, feminist and writer. Her second book examined the lives of the first group of Russian women to receive their doctorates in the sciences and medicine. Her most recent book, Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation through the Ages (Kovalevskaia Fund, 2014) received the 2015 Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award from the Institute for Humanties Research at ASU. She also directs a small non-profit foundation for women in science in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and her blog, “Sex, Abortion, and Contraception,” can be found at http://ahkoblitz.wordpress.com.

Artists in the Americas Confront the Fracturing Effects of Violence

audience on stage with actors

Audience on stage set with actors. Pequeños Territorios en Recconstrucción by Teatro Línea de Sombra. Jan 2016. Photo by T Delgadillo. CC BY-NC-NC 2.0

by Theresa Delgadillo

Strong Women?

Narratives of supposedly “strong” women who almost unwillingly enter into drug trafficking proliferate in the world of telenovelas, such as Reina del Sur, Señora Acero, and La Viuda Negra. Indeed, Telemundo advertises its television programs with the tagline: “nuestras protagonistas no se la pasan llorando” (translation: “our protagonists aren’t crybabies”). While not writing directly about these particular telenovelas, or the roles of women in them, Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez observes that a shift in telenovela narratives has occurred: the celebrated subject of these narratives is no longer the poor servant who marries the wealthy son of the household or discovers that she has been secretly wealthy all along, but instead the poor person who rises to wealth by any means necessary, drug trafficking included.[1] In contrast to these mass media representations, in two recent performances and one exhibit in Mexico City, artists engage the issues of drug violence, state violence, and gendered violence in ways that might inspire further dialogue, action, and community, and they do this by devising varied strategies for inviting the audience in to participate in a consideration of these issues.

Displaced Women Organize

Pequeños Territorios en Reconstrucción is an interactive performance that employs drama, documentary, collage, art-making to consider the effort by the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas to create not only new homes, but new societies. The play asks: under what circumstances would building a house, or, together with your peers, building a neighborhood, attract the ire, hostility, and violence of others? When and why is the act of creating a “home” for oneself an affront to others? When we say we want to do good, for whom is that good? “Pequeños Territorios en Reconstrucción” is a “fábula documental” or fictional documentary drama created by the company LAB/Teatro Línea de Sombra in Mexico City, and recently performed at Teatro Benito Juárez in that city, tells the story of the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas (The League of Women Displaced) in Colombia, and the neighborhood they constructed with their own hands to give life to themselves and their families. The title of the play might be translated to English as “Small Regions in Reconstruction,” and what the work addresses is the act of reconstructing the world one small neighborhood at a time by telling the story of a group of women – the Liga — displaced from their original homes by the combined violence of the Colombian conflict and drug trafficking, yet not resigned to marginality or the acceptance of violence.

Instead, the women joined together in the space where they found themselves, and organized to support each other, naming themselves the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas, and eventually erecting an entire neighborhood of 98 homes with cement blocks they learned to construct themselves. Their neighborhood abuts a new housing development in the area that is a kind of suburban enclave, and yet the women’s neighborhood offers a version of “improvement” and defines “good” in ways that contrast with those advertised and offered by the model of suburban living. As we learn in this performance, this difference creates tension but also inspires other women and working people to initiate their own construction efforts.

Interactive and Collective Work in Performance

Pequeños Territorios en Reconstrucción tells a collective story in a collective way, re-enacting the physicality of making and placing concrete blocks to construct a home; shifting among varied voices; working to make the collective of women present visually on stage while also acknowledging the important role of human rights lawyer and activist Patricia Guerrero in advising the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas. Many of the women in the Liga and the “City of Women” are Afro-Colombian, and on their webpage they describe themselves as a multiracial and multiethnic community, though the performance does not explicitly address the questions of race and ethnicity as these intersect with gender in the experience of the displaced women. The violence that the women flee from and then encounter again when they have the audacity to build their own homes is juxtaposed in this performance with the violence of the drug wars and a luxurious home and zoo built by Pablo Escobar.

small concrete blocks on stage made into houses

Creating block houses. Performance of Pequeños Territorios en Recconstrucciòn by Teatro Linea de Sombra. January 2016. Photo by T Delgadillo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The playwrights, actors, and director first heard about La Liga in 2010 from an article in El Proceso about heroic women that included the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and women fighting against feminicide in Juárez, Mexico. They traveled to Colombia from Mexico to meet the women of the Liga, and visited them twice more in the following years to learn about the neighborhood they were constructing and to participate in arts workshops in the newly founded “City of Women.” Out of those repeated visits, a relationship developed, one that felt to the creators of Pequeños Territorios en Reconstrucción as something they could learn from, living as they do, too, in a country beset by violence. Yet the performance resists easy comparisons between Colombia and Mexico, and this collaboratively produced and enacted interactive performance asks audiences to attend to the specific contexts of each place. Auad Atala, Alicia Laguna, Eduardo Bernal, Jorge A. Vargas, and Noé Morales collaborate to tell the story of the “City of Women,” and the threats of violence and attacks that the women experienced for their initiative. They are joined in this performance, as they are in each run of the work, by two children from the “City of Women,” who also participate in telling the story of their home, of their mothers, of their neighbors, and of their peers – with great pride and delight! The story unfolds in various modes: the actors and children speaking as they construct models of the “City of Women” on stage intermixed with documentary footage as well as real and imagined text projected on a large screen at the back of the stage. As the story unfolds, the model-sized “City of Women” is slowly constructed on stage by the actors and children, and then populated with images of the actual women who built this neighborhood, concrete block by concrete block, with their own hands. The performance ends with an invitation to the audience to visit the “City of Women” that has been reconstructed on the stage, view the pictures and layout firsthand and discuss the project with the actors and children. The audience responded with much warmth and interest to this last section of the performance, engaging in dialogue both with the creators of this performance and with other audience members.

Remembering and Enacting Feminist Action

The “City of Women” in Turbaco, Colombia, is not new; it came into being fifteen years ago, and yet this performance conveys the significance of feminist action that it represents and positions the audience to consider its relevance in contemporary contexts. In this way, it both remembers and enacts, because the conditions that gave rise to the Liga and City are conditions that women face across the Américas. This interactive performance takes a distinctly different approach to the history of feminist action against violence in the Américas than that recently taken by the Argentine government in two important actions. In January of 2016, La Jornada reported that the Argentine Minister of Health stripped the name of one of the founders of the Mothers of the Plazo de Mayo, Laura Bonaparte, from the title of public hospital. Bonaparte’s name had been added to the hospital’s name upon her death in 2013 and in homage to her work on behalf of the disappeared and tortured. In addition, María Coronel, and other employees of the Escuelita de Famaillá in Tucumán — which was the first clandestine center of detention run by the last dictatorship, and which had been transformed into a memorial space dedicated to human rights issues – were dismissed. Coronel is quoted in La Jornada saying [my translation]: “Memorial sites are not just official jobs; they are the result of years of struggle and we will continue to maintain them no matter what, they are not going to disappear us.”[2]

Intimacy and Violence

Another contemporary performance that employs and combines the techniques of documentary and those of drama is Hugo Salcedo’s Música de Balas. Salcedo’s work won the 2011 National Prize in Dramaturgy and was reprised recently by four talented young actors – three men and one woman — at Casazul in Mexico City. The cast includes Christel Klitbo, Christhian Alvarado, Quetzalli Cortés, and Raúl Rodríguez. Música de Balas, or The Music of Bullets, took place in a small black box theater, the Sala Experimental Ludwik Margules, an intimate setting, with audience members sitting on three sides of performance space. The actors make use of the small performance space to great effect, and sometimes move among the audience, and include them as “extras” in some dramatic scenes. A series of first person accounts about the experience of narco violence in Mexico fold, and through these narratives we begin to take stock of the trauma induced by this violence and the danger of it becoming an everyday state of being. These dramatic accounts are sometimes supplemented by and sometimes alternated with documentary footage or photographs of violent events and acts in the country over the past decade. In Música de Balas the victims of violence lament their loss, manifest their trauma, critique government action and inaction, question the perpetrators of violence and those of us who witness it as it ultimately conveys how we are all victims.

pink cards clothespinned to wire line

El Tendedero by Mónica Meyer. March 2016 at MUAC. Photo by T Delgadillo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The retrospective exhibit of Mexican feminist artist Monica Mayer’s work, Si tiene dudas…pregunte, or “If you have questions…ask” — now on display at the MUAC or Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, and running until July 31, 2016 — also explores the intimacy of violence in several projects, including an interactive piece titled El Tendedero or “The Clothesline,” an updated version of a 1978 installation pictured in the exhibit that questioned women about their experience of Mexico City. El Tendedero questions viewers about the experience of sexual harassment and violence. The piece asks a series of questions about when and where viewers experienced sexual harassment or violence, how they acted in response, how this changed their behavior, and what they’ve done to prevent such violence in the future. The questions and answers, written on pink cards, are attached with clothespins to wire lines, forming a wall of hanging pink cards, all seemingly the same and yet unique and distinct voices. The title of the piece explicitly challenges the sexist discourses that cast sexual violence and harassment as “private” and “intimate” dirty laundry that should not be aired (often to protect the “reputation” of perpetrators), discourses that remain prevalent throughout the world. A panel discussion linked to the exhibit, “Vocabularios contra el acoso,” offers a valuable discussion of the human rights of women in local and global contexts that begins from a consideration of this particular art project.

thumb_20160211_150644_1024

Closeup of El Tendedero by Mónica Mayer. MUAC. March 2016. Photo by T Delgadillo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In these distinct and innovative ways, Mexican artists are engaging the fictional and the documentary to invite audiences to join them in exploring a series of questions relevant not only in Latin America but throughout the  Americas. Pequeños Territorios en Reconstrucción aims to have as much of an impact on theater audiences as the women of the Liga had on those around them by critically representing the ways that their collective creative and progressive energies destabilized acceptance of violence. Música de Balas represents the terror experienced by ordinary men and women subjected to extreme forms of violence as well as uncertainty in ways that combats de-sensitization and reminds audiences of the enduring impacts of trauma. El Tendedero allows us to hear the voices of women combatting sexual harassment and abuse as it opens a path for audiences to enact their own resistance to this violence.

[1] Sergio Ramírez. “La superproducción más cara de la historia.” La Jornada. 20 enero 2016.

[2] Stella Calloni. “Retiran nombre de fundadora de Madres de Plaza de Mayo a un hospital en Argentina.” La Jornada. 20 enero 2016.

Theresa Delgadillo is a member of the Editorial Group for the Mujeres Talk website. She is an Associate Professor of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University and the author of Latina Lives in Milwaukee (Illinois, 2015) and Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Duke, 2011).

Eugenicist Views Take Center Stage in Election Season

photo of eugenics poster that warns viewers to check for supposedly defective hereditary seed

“Eugenics” by Gennie Stafford. Photo of poster in Jewish Museum. From Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

by Laura Briggs

Many have been writing in recent days about when Donald Trump started sounding like a fascist. Business Insider Australia even dug up a quote from Ivana Trump in an old Vanity Fair article that claimed that Donald kept Hitler’s speeches by his bed, a statement he didn’t deny. Political science scholar Matthew McWilliams found that the single most important characteristic that predicted Trump support was authoritarianism. Yet an influential Vox article by Dylan Matthews back in December denied that Trump’s politics were on the fascist spectrum, and seemed to halt the momentum of those who had begun raising the question after Trump argued for banning Muslims at the border (initially including U.S. citizens). But Matthews’ doubtful claims that Trump doesn’t advocate violence or overthrowing the Constitution, and his apparent ignorance of the fact that Hitler was elected notwithstanding, the answer for some of us was: we heard Trump as a fascist from the day he announced. He couched his anti-Mexican racism in eugenic terms that day, back in June. He (in)famously began his speech by saying:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Much has been said about this except the most obvious: it implies that most Mexican immigrants are men and that most of those men are rapists. Where does this notion of the “Mexican rapist” come from? Especially since it’s profoundly wrong. Rape is an overwhelmingly male crime, but he offers no proof for the outrageous claim that Mexican men are rapists and overlooks the fact that the majority of migrants from Mexico to the United States are women. Or at least have been since the 1990s. While some say that gender balance has shifted since 2008 (when net migration began to approach zero, with as many Mexicans leaving as arriving), if you add women together with children, men are still a minority of Mexican migrants.

Trump is, no doubt, aware that there are Mexican migrant women in the US—after all, they do a disproportionate amount of the cleaning in the resorts and office buildings that Trump has built his fortune on (and he recently even threw out a woman from one of his rallies, asking “Are you from Mexico?”).

But demographic accuracy wasn’t really what he was after. Trump strummed an old string in US American politics by seeming to defend a violated, victimized (white) womanhood from a racialized other, recalling the old lynching narrative (also resuscitated recently by Maine Governor LePage, complaining about “drug dealers” who go to his state and impregnate “white women”). But by changing the demon of the story from an African-American to a (foreign) Mexican rapist, he shifted it in a direction that would be familiar to fascists everywhere—a eugenic one. It was about the need to protect an imagined (white) volk and their homeland not just from foreigners, but from the wrong kind of reproduction. White women being impregnated by Mexicans. As Mary Romero and others who have been tracking groups like Mothers Against Illegal Aliens have noticed, this image of the Mexican rapist might be a new note in national politics, but it is deeply familiar one from extremist, white nativist groups in Arizona and elsewhere. As he talked about the need to shore up borders, build walls, and “make America great again,” Trump was also invoking the foreign threat to white womanhood, white reproduction, and white children in a way that many of us recognized from the frontiers of eugenic racism in places like Arizona. The Washington Post and Senators may only know about David Duke and the KKK, but Latina feminism has been tracking an account of white reproduction and the Mexican threat.

This wasn’t immediately obvious in the national conversation, though, because virtually everyone who responded to Trump last June was willing to agree with him that Mexican migrants are (all) men. The American Immigration Council (AIC) quickly released a report that responded to Trump in detail, finding that only 1.6 percent of immigrant males 18 to 39 years old were incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of native-born males. It added, “The 2010 Census data reveals that incarceration rates among the young, less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men who make up the bulk of the unauthorized population are significantly lower than the incarceration rate among native-born young men without a high-school diploma. In 2010, less-educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent—more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign-born Mexican men, and five times greater than the 1.7 percent rate among foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men.” The AIC data, in turn, were duly broadcast by the media, including the Washington Post fact checker (which gave Trump “four Pinocchios” for lying.) These figures reveal the falsity of Trump’s statements, but they also point to the problem of criminalization and incarceration of young people that the Black Lives Matter movement has again brought to the fore in our national consciousness.

While Trump merely implied that Mexican immigrants were all men, the AIC report was explicit. It looked at male crime data, and the Post and other media outlets accepted this without comment. All agreed to take it for granted that all Mexican (or Central American) immigrants are men.

While there is a white supremacist wing of the Republican Party that has been demonizing Mexicans for a long time—think of Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential run on an anti-Mexican platform—the “Mexican rapist” was from a white nativist playbook, to the right of Buchanan’s. Trump’s Hitler-isms remade the Jewish racial-religious threat to the homeland into two, the Mexican racial threat and the Muslim religious threat.

The significance of Trump’s invocation of white nativist eugenics was invisible last summer because feminism is only occasionally important to the national political debate. When he calls women “dogs” or “cows,” or complains about Megan “blood coming out of her whatever” Kelly, commentators can get a whiff of his misogyny. But the unspoken “white women” at the back of his “Mexican rapists” comment (or the complete invisibility of Mexican and Central American women to anybody) aren’t seen or heard by the media. But not only Latina feminists, but feminist scholars of Hitler, Franco, and some Latin American conservatisms have noted the importance of this foreign/national reproduction story to fascism consistently. Scholars like Leila Rupp, Gisela Bok, and Mary Nash have written about the political significance of Aryan or Spanish women having many babies, the banning of contraception and abortion, and the centrality of eugenics as a reproductive politics to fascist visions of the future and its population. (It’s telling in this regard that Trump is alone among the current leaders in the Republican field in carving out a rape exception for banning abortion.) Trump’s specifically reproductive racism, an account of the relationship of gender and race that tells a story of the appropriate white female reproduction of the nation, is a way of thinking that resonates deeply with feminist accounts of fascism and womanhood. But this hasn’t emerged in the national discussion about Trump’s candidacy because most begin from the same assumption he did: Mexicans are men.

We might say that Trump, who’s never been accused of the usual “dog whistle” subterfuges of national Republican candidates when it comes to his racist pronouncements, blew a dog whistle of his own about what we might call the race-and-gender politics of the “Mexican rapist” comment. While it’s difficult to get a handle on Trump’s politics because of a pervasive sense that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying—after all, when did Trump care about immigration or criminalizing abortion before he was running for President—it doesn’t matter whether his positions represent his deeply held beliefs or not. He is running on becoming popular—populist—with deep political cunning. He is deliberately building a new strain of American fascism in a way we haven’t seen since the 1930s and Huey Long and Father Coughlin and their Jewish threat.

While many have argued that Trump is allowing a full-throated and proud white racism to crawl out from under the rock where it has been relegated (allowing only a more genteel, less explicit racism on the national stage), I would go further and say he is building it. The 20% of South Carolina Trump supporters who have told pollsters that it was a mistake to end slavery, the Nevada supporters who rattled off a fantasy of the mass-murder of Muslims to Nation reporter Sasha Abramsky—these, I suspect, are new developments. These are flames fanned by things like Trump’s repetition of the old imperialist canard of Pershing in the Philippines at the turn of the century dipping bullets in pigs’ blood and shooting Muslim insurgents there.

The Republican Party is now in full freak-out mode that it is on the verge of selecting a nominee who plays games about whether he will denounce David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan—denouncing him one day, claiming he doesn’t know who he is the next. While the G.O.P. has certainly been racist in recent years—think of its obstructionism toward Obama, the “birther” craziness, the recent attempt to cast a shadow of illegitimacy over his nomination of a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the denunciation of Syrian and Mexican immigrants—the party has always maintained a thin veneer of deniability that allows a handful of people of color and a lot of white folks to maintain their party membership without shame. It seems genuinely to be news that Trump’s position is unapologetically racist, and arguably fascist.

It’s just possible that if they had listened to his announcement speech with feminist ears—had heard the “Mexican rapist” canard as the eugenic claim it was—Trump’s fascism would have been obvious a long time ago.

Laura J. Briggs is Professor and Chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at UMass Amherst. A widely recognized historian of reproductive politics, Briggs has published three books: Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption, (Duke University Press, 2012); Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2002); and International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children (NYU Press, 2009, o-author with Diana Marre). Briggs has also published  numerous articles on empire/transnational history of the U.S. in Latin America; reproductive politics and race and sexuality; adoption; and immigration/migration. Recent articles ahve been published in International Feminist Journal of Politics; Feminist Studies; Frontiers; Scholar and the Feminist Online; American Quarterly; American Indian Quarterly; Scripta Nova (Barcelona). In 2012 she created the academic blog site Somebody’s Children: A Blog about Adoption, ART, and Reproductive Politics, where she offers incisive commentary informed by her extensive research.  Professor Briggs has a long history of activism both within institutions and in the community, especially on issues of immigration, and is a collective member of the Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History.

Some of my Students are Leprechauns (Or Why it is Difficult for White College Students to Understand that Racism is still a Big Deal)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/. Photo by Edward Foley (CC BY-NC 2.0).

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/. Photo by Edward Foley (CC BY-NC 2.0).

By:  Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo

“The new world of monsters is where humanity has to grasp its future.”
—Hardt and Negri, Multitude

Teaching Introduction to Ethnic Studies and the Art of Asking Questions

I hate surprises in the classroom. I appreciate the potential of surprises in life. The promise they sometimes carry with them. The ability to keep me on my toes, so to speak. But to be clear, I hate surprises in the classroom. Especially when I teach lower division courses. When I teach Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies in particular, a service course we do for the university, I follow a simple, modified rule designed for lawyers in court: do not ask a question for which you do not know what the answer will be. The questions I am talking about here are not questions about class content, but rather demographic or attitudinal questions, that is to say, questions for which the answers will illustrate a particular point. This is not about students knowing the “correct” answer, but about me knowing the answer that students will give me beforehand because although I do not know each one personally, I have a certain general knowledge about who is in my classroom, and the ideas they may bring with them. Thus, I rely on both experience and “external” indicators to anticipate what their answers will be. For instance, when I ask my students in the Introduction course (like I usually do at the beginning of the semester) to stand up if they see themselves as White (to make a point about the changing definitions of “Whiteness” in our country), I know, before it happens, that 80-85% of the 100 students in the classroom will stand up (because I know the student demographics at our institution). Also, when I ask for the left handed students to raise their hand to make a point about certain predictable angles of “random populations,” I know that about 10% will do so (because they mirror the general population, and the very point I am making by asking them to raise their hand is based on that precise fact). And when I ask them to talk to me about their experiences with “diverse populations of students” at their high schools, I know what they will tell me (e.g., whether there were “lots of students of different backgrounds in their high schools” or whether they “hadn’t interacted much with students different from themselves until they stepped foot on our campus”), depending on what part of Washington they went to school.

On a carefree day, I would say that I have turned this “asking only questions for which I know what the answer will be” endeavor into a work of art. Over the years I have become accustomed to and very comfortable with this practice: I always know (at least approximately) how many students will stand up or raise their hands, or the verbal answer they will give me in response to a question I make. Like I said, I hate surprises in the classroom.

The Question that Broke my Art

A few years back in my Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies class, during a lecture on the use of American Indians as mascots in sports teams, I made two simple points: (1) the (ab)use of American Indians as mascots is tied to the (ab)use of American Indian cultures and peoples by mainstream American culture, which has a long history; and (2) the practice must be terminated. I showed them horrifying visuals depicting these practices throughout the decades, including pictures of sports teams using the American Indian mascots of other teams in violent, degrading ways. During this lecture, I lingered on a particular picture of a state college with a bull as a mascot portraying the American Indian mascot of its rival state school on its knees performing fellatio on their bull. My students thought the picture was in bad taste (which is a start), but I also asked them to think about the treatment of mascots in general, and whether it was fair to portray human beings in the same light. For instance, a tiger performing fellatio on a bulldog is still in “bad taste,” but the objections may end there. This was not the first time I had given that lecture, so I knew the point the students were going to raise in response, which they did, right on cue: American Indians are not the only “humans” portrayed as mascots, for we also have the “Vikings” and the “Fighting Irish,” they earnestly offered.

I always take this point very seriously, because I assume they bring it up in good faith, wanting to understand the difference. This time, my answers were simple but to the point: As a group of people, the Vikings (like the Trojans, and the Ancient Greeks) are gone, the American Indians are still with us. As for the Irish, I usually concede that it is a good example, because the Irish, as a people, do exist. I could have easily gone into all sorts of discussions about the positionality of the Irish as an ethnic group within U.S. culture or even within the United Kingdom, but this time I decided to take a different route: I asked my students what the mascot of the Fighting Irish was (and as with every question I ask in that class, I knew the answer). They promptly and ceremoniously responded: “a leprechaun.” Then, with the picture of the bull and the American Indian on his knees still up, I asked my students to raise their hands if they had American Indian ancestry. I saw them hesitate, so I made it clear: raise your hand if either of your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents is or was American Indian. Around 30% of the students in the classroom (regardless of how they identified ethnically or racially) raised their hands, and as always, I knew they would. So, I said, that picture right there (pointing again to the Indian on his knees) is about your relatives, which is to say, is about you. Now let me ask you this: How many of you have leprechaun relatives? I thought I knew the answer to this question. The question was supposed to be a throwaway, a joke for them to get the point. No hands were supposed to go up. Not one hand up was the answer I knew to expect. But, to my surprise (yes, a surprise in my classroom), at least three white-identified students raised their hands. Not as joke, not even as a challenge to my authority, but as a bona fide answer to my question. I am hardly ever thrown off balance in my classes, but for a fraction of a second I was, and then sternly told those students to put their hands down because although I hated to break it to them, “leprechauns, just like unicorns and mermaids, do not exist.” At least not in the corporeal sense that would prompt genealogical claims. For a moment there all I wanted was to get those hands down and erase the incomprehensibility they represented. But regardless of how fast they put their hands down (and they were extremely fast), my fail-safe system of asking students questions in class was broken. Even if momentarily.

Some of my Students are Leprechauns, Which is to Say, they Think Racism is not a Big Deal

Those hands confirmed that this generation of students is truly lacking an understanding of the historical impact and contemporary reverberations of racial formations (a la Omi and Winant) and racism. More to the point, if students do not understand the difference between “real” and mythological peoples or even how genealogy has operated in their own creation, how can they understand the difference between racial myths and racial realities, or how racism works in our society? Students suggesting that mythological leprechauns or extinct Vikings are as abused as flesh and blood American Indians should be troubling enough. But for them to actually identify with the figure of the monstrous leprechaun by seeing themselves in that figure should be beyond comprehension. Unless you understand this generation, that is. This is the first generation of White Americans raised with a societal understanding that equality between the races as a principle should not be disputed. However, this understanding has been intertwined with a convenient lie, mainly, that we have actually achieved racial equality. That lie has taken root because although their generation is buffered by my generation (Generation X), which was born after segregation and other major forms of de jure discrimination were deemed unconstitutional, studies show that buffer notwithstanding, White millennials have not transcended the history of this country. Thus, when it comes to expressing racism, Millennials are sometimes no better than their parents (Gen Exers) or their grandparents (Baby Boomers) (Clement, 2015). As Michael D. Smith argues, “the education [white Millennials] have received has left them ill-equipped to understand the nature of racism,” as they “have inherited a world in which the idea of ‘reverse racism’ has been legitimized…” (2015). Their “education” has taken place in a vacuum where discrimination against Black folks (which they equate exclusively with slavery and perhaps segregation), was something that happened in a long and terminated past, something that has no repercussions today because, as they’ve learned, we are now all equal.

And that is the crux of the matter, for if as they’ve been instructed, we are all equal today (whether we descend from American Indians or leprechauns), that means that Whites can experience as much discrimination as anybody else (hence “reverse discrimination”). So, from this perspective, Black folks, American Indians, and Latinas/os may be having a hard time in our society, but by golly, so are Whites. Their understandings of race and racism have become another mythology, where their perceived oppression is equal to that of anyone else’s. And in their mythological views about race and racism, their non-human, monster-like “leprechaun ancestors” are being abused by sport teams, just as are those of American Indians. Unfathomable to many, but if we (professors) are to help them understand their own positionality within historical and contemporary manifestations of racism, and to help humanity “grasp its future” as Hardt and Negri compel us, we must become adept slayers of mythical creatures in this new world of monsters, which irritatingly enough, seems to include a classroom surprise or two.

References:
Clement, Scott. 2015. “Millennials are just as Racist as their Parents.” The Washington Post. April 7. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/07/white-millennials-are-just-about-as-racist-as-their-parents/.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Michael D. 2015. “Millennials are Products of a Failed Lesson in Colorblindness.” PBS. March 26. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white-millennials-products-failed-lesson-colorblindness/.

Commentary on “No Más Bebés”

Photo of Madrigal plaintiffs at world premiere of No Mas Bebes in June, Getty Images. Picture provided by author.

Photo of Madrigal plaintiffs at the world premiere of No Mas Bebes in June, Getty Images. Picture provided by author.

Elena R. Gutiérrez

On February 1, 2016 PBS’ “Independent Lens” will air the critically-acclaimed documentary, No Más Bebés (No More Babies), which details the forced sterilization of Mexican-origin women at Los Angeles County Medical Center (LACMC) in the 1970s (check local channels for listings). Narrated through the recollections of patients, doctors, lawyers, activists and others directly involved, the film focuses upon the case of Madrigal v. Quilligan, the lawsuit filed by 10 forcibly-sterilized women against LACMA, Los Angeles County, the State of California, and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare for violating their right to procreate. Beyond detailing the events that occurred in the hospital birthing ward and courtroom, director/producer Renee Tajima-Peña and producer Virginia Espino take us into the streets and homes of Los Angeles, where they were also born and raised. Through on-camera testimonies from several of the women who are breaking their silence on the topic for the first time since the lawsuit, the film shows us the current realities and ruminations of the plaintiffs and their families, as well as the physician defendants and their legal teams.

It is the portrait of who are now known as the #Madrigal10 that offers the film’s most powerful contribution to our understanding of this painful, yet important, part of US history. Often characterized as poor, uneducated and powerless victims within early reproductive rights scholarship, No Más Bebés show the plaintiffs represented in the suit once again speaking out about the abuse they endured, and demanding answers to the question “why?” In recalling their experiences, the women directly dispel stereotypes of them as quiet, suffering victims who could not communicate. Instead, the viewers see them as committed, thoughtful and often humorous individuals who have insightful analyses of the events in the hospital and courtroom that impacted their lives and families so deeply. Premiering on the heels of the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, upon which their suit was based, No Más Bebés elevates the voices of the plaintiffs involved in the Madrigal trial to finally tell a national audience, in their own words, why reproductive justice necessitates to engage with so much more than legal access to abortion. Moreover, the film reminds us that women of Mexican descent have been on the forefront of struggles for the right to have children since before the term “reproductive justice” was coined.

As one of several significant episodes of sterilization abuse of Latinas in the United States, the events that occurred at LACMC are now well-documented in the academic record (Velez 1980, Espino 2000, Gutiérrez 2008, Stern 2015). Scholars in various disciplines (anthropology, history, sociology) have found that the sterilization abuse that occurred at LACMA was influenced by racial, class and gender bias. Doctors or other hospital personnel would often approach patients of Mexican-origin when they were at their most vulnerable; namely, in the midst of giving birth. Further, these doctors used coercive measures (lying, scare tactics, physical force) to get women to agree to sterilization.

Despite the fact that birthing women of Mexican descent are at the center of these events, beyond drawing from their trial testimonies and media accounts, academic scholarship has never captured the experiences of the plaintiffs who participated in the Madrigal case. In my own efforts, I was only able to locate the son of one of the women involved. A crucial part of the story that No Más Bebés portrays well is the plaintiffs’ own recollections of the events that took place. All of the women who we meet in the film share that they, themselves, believed that they were sterilized specifically because they were Latina and poor. They also share how it felt to participate in a lawsuit where the odds were clearly stacked against them because of racial and class discrimination. Despite the court’s decision on the side of the defendant doctors, a legislative decision was made ordering new protocols relative to sterilization consent forms that were written in a patient’s language and at a 6th grade reading level. A 72-hour waiting period between the consent signature and the procedure was also put into place, to help ensure that no coercion on the part of medical professionals would occur. Resulting from the testimonies of the #Madrigal10, together with the efforts of Chicana advocates, consent procedures were established that remain in place to this day.

No Más Bebés also shows that socially grounded attitudes relating to ethnicity and gender can play a role in the provision of reproductive health care services; a message that is important for us to hear today. In my own research I show that the abusive practices that occurred at LACMC were not only shaped by debates on population control, but also by concerns about increased immigration from Mexico and the stereotype that Mexican women gave birth to too many children. Through tracing newspaper articles, organizational records and scholarly research in Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-origin Women’s Reproduction, I show how these “stereotypes” about Mexican immigrant women being hyper-fertile and “having too many children” are deeply-rooted beliefs that are part and parcel of institutionalized racism and were perpetuated by the media, social science, and immigration control activists throughout the 20th century carrying into the 21st century. Beyond representations of the perpetually “pregnant pilgrim” who came to the United States purposefully to have children born on US soil so that that they could become American citizens (an idea perpetuated in both Mexican news media and popular culture), “hyperfertility” as a social construct became significantly entrenched in academia, and has thus gained legitimacy in both scholarly research and policy response. I argue that this context and the general public perception that Latina women are significantly more “fertile” than women of other races and ethnicities influenced medical practitioners’ behaviors.

A growing amount of research shows that fear about discrimination in public hospitals prevents immigrant women from seeking care. Last September, a Houston mother faced deportation after being arrested during a visit to the gynecologist’s office. Fantasies and fears of the “anchor baby” have now been institutionalized and incorporated into our national lexicon. Thus, while times have changed, these ideologies continue to persist. It is precisely because of enduring stereotypes of Mexican origin women’s hyperfertility, that we must listen carefully to the lessons that the #Madrigal10 recount, and use them to link historical events to contemporary struggles for reproductive justice within Latina/o communities.

Citations:
Virginia Espino, “‘Woman Sterilized As Gives Birth’: Forced Sterilization and Chicana Resistance in the 1970s” in Vicki L. Ruiz ed. Las Obreras: Chicana Politics of Work and Family (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 2000), 65-82.
Alyshia Galvez, Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care and the Birth Weight Paradox (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011).

Elena R. Gutiérrez, Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-origin Women’s Reproduction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).

Alexandra Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in America, second edition (University of California Press, 2015)

Carlos Velez, “’Se Me Acabo La Cancion’: An Ethnography of Non-Consenting Sterilizations among Mexican Women in Los Angeles,” in Mexican Women in the United States: Struggles Pas and Present, ed. Magdalena Mora and Adelaida Del Castillo, 71-91 (Los Angeles: Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1980).

Further Resources:
http://www.nomasbebesmovie.com/
To plan a viewing party: https://www.facebook.com/events/427368670794212/

Elena R. Gutierrez is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.  She is also co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice, which will be reprinted by Haymarket Press in April and director of the Reproductive Justice Virtual Library https://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/center-on-reproductive-rights-and-justice/crrj-reproductive-justice-virtual-library/.

“Dreaming of Utopia in a Pragmatic Present: Works by Julio Salgado and Jesús Iñíguez in Conversation with Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia”

By Ryan King

Introduction

In response to grassroots pressures and organizing by undocumented communities, various U.S. federal and state agencies are enacting new immigration policies for the first time in decades. Almost all of these recent policy changes are highly pragmatic and offer limited administrative relief.

Undocumented communities, organizations, and artists actively critique these limited forms of administrative relief. In this article, I look to how two undocumented artists, Jesús Iñíguez and Julio Salgado, demonstrate the pressing need for administrative relief while remaining critical of its troubling limitations. I situate Iñíguez’s and Salgado’s contributions with José Esteban Muñoz’s meditations on gay pragmatism and queerness as two binary approaches to politics. Muñoz offers important perspectives on dreaming, political action, and compromise. Throughout this article, I consider how Iñíguez and Salgado queer how Muñoz approaches the politics of gay pragmatism vs. queerness. Iñíguez and Salgado urge their viewers to consider what types of liberation are possible in the present moment and also highlight the need to push meanings of what can be considered possible in the present moment.

For context, let us consider two programs of administrative relief. The first program is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which has been administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security since June 2012. DACA provides temporary deportation deferral for undocumented residents who entered the country under the age of 16 and meet a lengthy list of additional criteria.[1] The second program is California Assembly Bill 60 (AB 60), which has been administered by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) since January 2015. AB 60 permits eligible undocumented residents in California to apply for driver licenses. Both of these programs provide important yet limited administrative relief for undocumented communities.[2] Neither of these programs provides a pathway to citizenship; they may be productively contrasted to attempts at broader (but still limited) legislation, such as the DREAM Act.[3]

I center my discussion on three works produced by Iñíguez and Salgado. These works visualize utopian dreaming, the pragmatic urgencies for administrative relief, and the difficulties that arise from participating in pragmatic politics from a critical standpoint. The three works are: Homoland Security, a digital drawing by Julio Salgado[4]; episode one of Undocumented and Awkward by Iñíguez and Salgado; and episode eleven of Osito, also a collaboration between Iñíguez and Salgado.

  1. Homoland Security by Julio Salgado

Homoland Security (see http://juliosalgadoart.bigcartel.com/) reshapes and re-imagines the presently-militarized U.S.-Mexico border. In this futuric border scene, programs like AB 60 and DACA are not necessary because this border privileges movement and aesthetic performances of queerness — important especially for Trans and Queer migrants of color whom are among the most marginalized by present border conditions.

As Muñoz writes, “The present is not enough […] The present must be known in relation to the alternative temporal and spatial maps provided by a perception of past and future affective worlds.”[5] The present temporal and spatial maps at the border are saturated with security and militarization, yet the absence of security culture in this drawing is striking. By depicting a border scene absent of security and militarization, Salgado takes to task Muñoz’s call that “the present is not enough” by re-imagining spatial and temporal maps in this utopic border scene. Importantly, Muñoz also links “homosexual pragmatism” with homonormativity.[6] In this drawing, Salgado rejects pragmatic immigration politics and homonormativity through the non-homonormative bodies he draws. The horizon is prominently displayed in this drawing, which can be read as a provocation to consider Muñoz’s conceptualization of “queerness as horizon.”[7]

“Homoland Security” works to represent the grassroots dreaming of undocumented and UndocuQueer, organizers, communities, and artists. This drawing is legible as a heuristic piece that reflects futuric politics which are grounded in a consciousness of the past and present; a politics that uses this consciousness to push what is possible in the present moment.

The following cultural production outlines how the day-to-day benefits of DACA and AB 60 complicate the refusal of these programs based on a political premise.

  1. “Episode 1” of Undocumented and Awkward by Julio Salgado and Jesús Iñiguez[8]

Undocumented and Awkward by Julio Salgado and Jesús Iñiguez is a comedic web series that examines how being undocumented creates uncomfortable, unsafe, and awkward moments.[9] This episode was produced in late 2011, about three years before AB 60 took effect.

Far from Homoland Security’s utopic border, the episode opens in a nondescript parking lot outside of a bar. Jesús is on the phone. It becomes clear that he is being stood up on a blind date because he could not enter the bar where they were supposed to meet (the bouncer did not accept his consular ID card as valid identification). The phone call ends when Jesús’ date cancels the date because Jesús could not enter the bar.

While Jesús is on the phone, an intoxicated couple passes in front of the camera on their way to the car. The couple communicates that they both have had too much to drink but will drive home anyway. In contrast to Jesús, the couple take for granted their privileged access to a state ID card. This scene points to the cultural, rather than simply pragmatic, need for administrative relief (such as AB 60) that would provide undocumented residents with reliable identification.

DACA and AB 60 open possibilities for Jesús to access the legitimate state ID card that he lacked in this episode. Administrative relief, a form of pragmatic politics, is a method of resolving everyday needs and desires. Importantly, Jesús rejects a normative, assimilationist desire to become like the intoxicated couple (what Muñoz characterizes pragmatic politics).[10] By maintaining that pragmatism does not inherently equate to normativity and assimilation, this episode of Undocumented and Awkward bridges gaps between gay pragmatism and queerness in Cruising Utopia.

Episode 1 of Undocumented and Awkward makes it more difficult to characterize pragmatic approaches as incongruent with futuric, utopic politics associated with queerness. The next cultural production will continue to wrestle with this uncertainty and offer insight into what it feels like to participate in pragmatic politics while maintaining a politics of queerness and utopic dreams.

  1. Concluding thoughts: “Dat DACAmented life” from Osito, by Julio Salgado and Jesús Iñíguez

The final cultural production, “Dat DACAmented Life,” is an episode of Osito. Osito is also a web series focusing on Salgado’s and Iñiguez’s experiences as undocumented Bay Area residents. This episode was published in February 2015, several years after episode one of Undocumented and Awkard. In the time that elapsed between these two cultural productions, both Salgado and Iñíguez applied for and received DACA in their personal lives. This episode offers some of their reflections on DACAmented subjectivity. This episode further complicates an easy separation between gay pragmatism and utopian queerness.

As the episode opens, Jesús and Julio are sitting on the couch in their home and talking; they are trying to reconcile their utopian dreams with their participation in DACA. Jesús and Julio communicate that DACA was won through the struggles of many undocumented organizers – the two emphasize that people are not “given papers,” but that these papers were demanded, fought for, and won. They comment that the terms of DACA are a serious disappointment when compared to the dreams and goals of undocumented residents and organizers. Both Jesús and Julio mention not wanting to participate in DACA because their parents, along with many family, friends, and community members are excluded from DACA. Jesús states that:

“A whole bunch of us, we wanted to be idealistic and revolutionary and not apply for DACA in solidarity with our parents and people over thirty and anyone else who wouldn’t be eligible.” [11]

Julio replies to say that he felt the same way, but his family did not support this point of view and urged him to apply for DACA. Jesús and Julio both express reservations and sadness about participating in DACA because the program serves the federal government’s pragmatic bottom line rather than the utopic dreams that they and so many others fearlessly fought to materialize. The collective is important in this scene and relates to Muñoz’s discussion of the “not yet conscious” in Cruising Utopia.[12] In the reading that I am proposing, Salgado and Iñíguez are expressing a deeply futuric politics that is not yet here. The potentiality of this utopia is eminent, and their melancholic state is reflective of the lack of this politics in the present. Additionally, both Jesús and Julio clearly lament their increased privilege at the exclusion of many of their loved ones.

These three works by Salgado and Iñíguez demonstrate the struggles felt by social actors whose pragmatic politics are intimately tied to the utopian. These cultural productions demonstrate that it is indeed possible to participate in pragmatic politics while understanding that, in the words of Muñoz, “queerness is always on the horizon.”[13] Salgado and Iñíguez make note that doing so is difficult, especially when the present moment offers them limited choices to do otherwise. This arc of cultural productions demands that pragmatism and queerness be viewed outside of a binary. Considering these politics as linked, rather than opposed, allows for more grounded, nuanced approaches to how communities, organizations, and artists are working toward collective approaches to liberation.

References

Iñíguez, Jesús and Julio Salgado. “Dat DACAmented Life.” Osito. 11 February 2015. Accessed via <www.youtube.com>. Also available on <www.dreamersadrift.com>.

Iñiguez, Jesús and Julio Salgado. “Episode 1.” Undocumented and Awkward. 8 November 2011. Accessed via <www.youtube.com>. Also available on <www.dreamersadrift.com>.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press (2009).

Salgado, Julio. “Homoland Security.” accessed via <https://queer170.wordpress.com/about-the-course/>.

Endnotes

[1] Information on DACA may be found here: http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/consideration-deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca

[2] Information on AB 60 may be found here: www.ab60.dmv.ca.gov

[3] Information on the DREAM Act may be found here: https://nilc.org/dreamsummary.html

[4] Homoland Security is available for purchase from the artist at: http://juliosalgadoart.bigcartel.com/

[5]Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There or Queer Futurity. New York University Press (2009). pp. 27.

[6] Ibid. Muñoz. pp. 30.

[7] Ibid. Muñoz pp. 32.

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbnTK6udQA

[9] All episodes of the web series are available online at no cost to the user. To find the videos, please search for the Dreamers Adrift channel on YouTube or visit www.dreamersadrift.com directly.

[10] Ibid. Muñoz. pp. 20.

[11] ibid. Iñíguez and Salgado. “Dat DACAmented Life.”

[12] Ibid. Muñoz. pp. 20.

[13] ibid. Muñoz pp. 11.

Ryan King is a graduate student in the Feminist Studies Department at University of California, Santa Cruz.  He is primarily interested in the politics of desirability and intimacy in virtual spaces and the politics of space and movement in contexts of neoliberalism and gentrification. He has thought through these research interests in two major research papers to date. The paper “Re-imagining Bodies, Reifying Borders: The Politics of Desirability and Space on Grindr” examines how and why GPS technologies, borders, desirability, visibility, white supremacy, transphobia, ableism, and further factors construct a “citizenship of desirability” that Grindr users participate in to access their desires. The paper “Dreaming of Queerness in a Pragmatic Present: Julio Salgado and Jesús Iñíguez Complicate the Divide Between Queerness and Gay Pragmatism in Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia” takes a look at how undocumented artists speaking for themselves offer insight into the challenges and possibilities of using their agency to access rights in a DACAmented age that distributes administrative relief unevenly within undocumented communities.

Reading Engagement: Teaching US Latino/a Literature with a Community-Based Learning Approach

coloral mural on wall with name of center Casa de Amistad

Photo by Marisel Moreno CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

By Marisel Moreno

 

I have been teaching US Latino/a literature with a Community-Based Learning (CBL) approach for the last five years. I can honestly say that after 10 consecutive semesters, 4 different courses, and more than 5,000 hours of student service hours, I can hardly imagine teaching US Latino/a literature without the CBL pedagogy. It has been that transformative; not only for me, but for my students and our community partner, La Casa de Amistad. I thought I should take a few minutes to reflect on the power of CBL to transform students’ attitudes toward literature, especially minority literatures. I decided to write this reflection to hopefully convince those considering adopting this pedagogy that it is absolutely worth it.

A few details about CBL that people should know about: there is no standard definition of the concept or standard model that can be applied to all cases. This can be both intimidating and liberating at once. I know that in my case, when I first learned about CBL about six years ago, I felt I had discovered the “missing link” to my US Latino/a literature courses. My initial excitement soon gave way to anxiety when, after scheduling the first meeting with my future community partner, I realized that I was on my own. At that point, almost nothing had been published on the application of the CBL pedagogy in upper level US Latino/a literature courses. It seemed to me that most of the scholarship was geared toward the Spanish-language curriculum. Although I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going—or where my courses were heading—I decided to take the plunge because deep inside, I was convinced that CBL would add a depth of understanding and engagement that literature alone would probably not provide for my mostly white middle/upper class students. I also found solid common ground between La Casa de Amistad’s mission and my own pedagogical goal of teaching tolerance, acceptance, and civic engagement through literature.

La Casa de Amistad is a community organization founded in 1973 in South Bend, IN, that offers a range of services to the local Latino/a community. It’s mission, according to their website, is to “empower the Latino/Hispanic community within Michiana by providing educational, cultural and advocacy services in a welcoming, bilingual environment” (website). Among the services that La Casa provides are: the bilingual pre-school program “Yo Puedo Leer,” after-school programs “Crece Conmigo” (K-6th) and “Adelante América” (7th-12th), citizenship classes, computer classes, ENL adult classes, and a food pantry, among others. For five years, my students have been tutors and mentors with “Crece Conmigo” and “Adelante América,” since these are the two programs that mostly depend on a solid number of volunteers. These programs run from Monday-Thursday for two hours each, and my students sign up to work with either Crece or Adelante once a week for a two-hour session. La Casa’s commitment to promoting literacy and academic support to its students is one of the main reasons why I found its mission to connect with the goals of my courses.

Without a specific model to follow—there are too many out there—I came to a few preliminary conclusions. First, I wanted all my students to volunteer at the same organization instead of providing a few options, as some professors do. I saw this as a way to create common ground for my students, give them an experience that they could share as a class. Second, I wanted their volunteering to extend throughout the semester in order to meet the needs of our partner. In other words, rather than telling them to complete a set amount of hours, it was made clear that they were expected to work at La Casa at least 2 hours per week for the entire semester. Third, and perhaps the hardest thing, I told myself that not everything needed to work out perfectly every time. I convinced myself that I could let go of the need to control all aspects of teaching. It was hard at first, but eventually I learned to “go with the flow” and adjust to the unexpected changes and challenges that working with a small non-profit organization brings with it. In fact, I found it absolutely vital to remind my students of this last point, especially when it became obvious at different points that some were “uncomfortable” with the element of unpredictability (changes in staff, closings due to weather, transportation issues, etc.) that is part of any CBL partnership.

After five years I can confidently say that joining forces with La Casa de Amistad has proven mutually beneficial from the beginning; every semester my students became the backbone of La Casa’s after-school tutoring programs (they provided consistency as they were less likely to miss a day of tutoring), but more importantly, the relationships they cultivated with the children opened their eyes to the issues affecting US Latino communities. Immigration, racism, sexism, transnationalism, prejudice, education gap, undocumented immigrant and migrant farm worker—these are just some of the terms and concepts that my students were exposed to in the classroom but were able to understand in greater depth thanks to their time at La Casa. Those personal bonds they established with the children (and sometimes with their families) allowed my students to become more emotionally invested in the material we were covering in class; they wanted to learn more, and they wanted to read more. Of course, there have been exceptions, but overall, most students comment on this particular point in their final course evaluations—how getting to know the kids at La Casa have made them better people and opened their eyes to the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities face in this country. We can’t underestimate the importance of this type of statement, especially when it comes from white middle/upper class students who didn’t have significant contact with US Latinos/as prior to taking my course. This may sound paradoxical, but as a professor, there’s nothing more encouraging than hearing my students’ absolute disillusionment after realizing the histories and literatures they were not taught in school. I say “encouraging” because this usually translates into motivation, not just to learn more by filling those silences in their educations, but also to act and become more engaged in their communities and fighting for the rights of those who are left at the margins of society (In fact, for academic institutions seeking to reduce the town/gown divide, CBL courses offer a socially responsible solution). There’s also hardly anything more rewarding than witnessing your students’ individual transformations as they come to learn more about themselves and gain the gift of perspective through the combination of literature and CBL. I commonly hear my students reflect on how the CBL experience has taught them about their own limits (patience, ability to work with children, their personal racial/ethnic biases and prejudices, etc.) and has opened their eyes to their own privilege (economic, social, racial, citizenship status, etc.). Above all, many make it clear in their journals and final course reflections that the CBL component has allowed them to connect with the local Latino community in ways that they would not have otherwise; and that connection in turn has enhanced their appreciation and understanding of the literature discussed in class.

I could go on and on about the personal and academic benefits I have seen when applying a CBL approach to US Latino/a literature courses, but space is limited. I do want to confess that it hasn’t always been easy; there have been plenty of moments of doubt throughout the years. Some of the challenges my students and I have faced include: conflicts organizing the volunteering schedule in order to balance their presence at La Casa; transportation issues since public transportation is not really an option in that area; unexpected site closings due to weather or maintenance, etc. For non/pre-tenured faculty especially (as I was most of the years I taught these courses), teaching CBL can be very time-consuming and therefore not encouraged by the administration. However, when I read my students’ final course reflections every semester, where they’re expected to reflect on the course as a whole (including the literature and CBL components), I usually witness the power of literature and CBL to transform lives. Many of my students state a commitment to keep learning about US Latinos/as, to help set the record straight among friends and family who display prejudices toward this population, and to serve this population in the future as lawyers, doctors, and teachers.

It is precisely because of how transformative it has been for me to teach US Latino/a literature with a CBL component, and because I can see the incredible potential we have before us, that I want to encourage (especially) faculty teaching minority literatures to consider adding CBL to their courses. When you read students’ class journal reflections where they say that “if more people could study this literature and get to know kids like those at La Casa, there would be more peace and understanding in this world,” you know that this is something worth sharing. CBL can be implemented in all disciplines, but I think those of us in literature have an advantage. We can use the stories, poems, and novels we teach to open our students’ eyes. But we can also provide them the opportunity to break out of their comfort zone and become, if only temporarily, part of the community they’re learning about. US cities and towns are replete with community centers and non-profit organizations serving US Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, the undocumented, and many other groups whose stories we teach. Let’s make those stories come alive by keeping it real—in and outside the classroom.

MARISEL MORENO, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Latino/a Literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame. Her first book, Family Matters: Puerto Rican Women Authors on the Island and the Mainland, was published in 2012. She has published articles on US Latino/a authors in Latino Studies, CENTRO, MELUS, Hispanic Review, and Afro-Hispanic Review, among other academic journals. In 2011 she received the Indiana Governor’s Award for Service-Learning.