Tag Archives: Latinos

Mourning & Loss: when intellectual giants become part of memory past

Ethics Latinos Theology 1 Comment

OttoDespite the news that broke yesterday concerning Dr. Otto Maduro’s passing, I begin this morning as I normally do:  get up, take the dogs out, brush my teeth, shower, dress, and walk to the bus.  What is different about this morning that impacts me tremendously is how my mind continued to think about both Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Otto Maduro.  These two folks were intellectual giants for our community and others, and I suspect that my friends and colleagues on FaceBook will highlight their memories of Otto.  That’s what I’d like to do today in this blog post, but I’d like to frame my ‘memories’ with a question:  What happens when intellectual giants become part of memory past–when stories that begin with “I remember when…” or “I’ll never forget when…?”  I can share that I’ll never forget when…this past year at AAR as I sat on the panel for Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Otto came up to me and said he loved my hair, then gave me the sweetest kiss on the cheek.  I’ll never forget that exchange, and his gentleness toward and for my queer mestizaje body.  That moment will stay with me; it is memory.  That moment is how our commitment to doing theology with one another should be:  gentle, celebratory, and lovely.

Our commitment to do theology en conjunto means that these stories shape and form our theologies and ethics.  We don’t invent a new theology; we borrow and shape what has existed before.  We live into these memories helping the memories of our intellectual giants take new shape for justice for all living things.  We don’t lay aside the very important work that Otto and Ada created, regardless of how we feel about it (we all have our critics).  We do theology together, with memories, with joy, with one another.  We mourn the loss of intellectual giants, but we do not stop there.  We celebrate their work, and we find ways to continue their intellectual patterns.

Let us remember Otto for his pioneering work in sociology.  Let us not forget his commitment to multiple communities, and his gentleness that surpassed our own.

Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies

Feminism Latinos phd No Comments

I’ll be traveling to Harvard Divinity school this fall for the ‘Ways of Knowing’ Conference.  The following panel was accepted for inclusion at the conference, a panel that two other Latina colleagues and I created.  I wanted to share it with you.

Panel Title: Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies

Panel Description: The landmark First Inter-American Symposium on Feminist Intercultural Theology gathered together scholars from across the Americas in Mexico City during the summer of 2004 to re-envision knowledge production as a liberatory, inclusive, pluralistic, and transcultural praxis. Their experience of crossing language, borders, class divisions, race, ethnicity, and position within the academy resulted in a clarion call to reclaim excluded sources of wisdom, embracing multifaceted understandings of truth. Our panel responds to their call for a contemporary intercultural dialogue that undermines hegemonic theoethical constructions by proposing a range of Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies. We seek to re-imagine wisdom through embodiment, Diaspora, and the queer(y)ing of spiritual practices.  With this in mind, this panel seeks to engage in the intersections of interculturality and epistemology.  We believe that space is a feature to understanding interculturality, and that the ways in which we produce knowledge and come to know are often dictated by the spaces in which we engage.

 

This panel creates an opening for adding voices to the existing work in Latina Feminism’s Interculturality.  The first paper seeks to theorize mestizaje as both body and place, and identifies it as the ‘cusp’ of interculturality.  The second paper looks at epistemological approaches, which include the composition of the “hard nucleus” of the Mesoamerican cosmovision, allowing for the unfolding of multivalent meanings of gender. The third paper situates the intersections of Womanist and Latina Feminist particularist approaches to theoethical epistemology in Diaspora, reclaiming AfroLatina identities as the space where our MotherWit and Sabiduría (wisdom) are united. These three papers position themselves in the company of “Latina explorations for a just world.”

Rethinking Power & Resistance: Gender & Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas

Latinos No Comments

Call for Proposals: Extended Deadline, April 1
Rethinking Power & Resistance: Gender & Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas
5-6 October : Austin, Texas


Convocatoria: Plazo Ampliado, 1 abril

Re-imaginando el Poder y la Resistencia: Género y Derechos Humanos desde Texas hasta las Américas Transnacionales

5-6 octubre 2012 : Austin, Texas

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/news/4707
 

Logo by: Toofly, 2012.

____________________________________________________________________________

 

1. Call for Proposals: Extended Deadline, April 1

Rethinking Power & Resistance: Gender & Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas

 

This conference is woven around three community-university collaborations:

* Transgender Jail Project: surveying and educating institutions on treatment of transgender folks

* Conspire Theatre: creating performance spaces with women in incarceration

* Indigenous Women Land Rights Advocacy, Guatemala: strategizing resistance against militarized displacement

 

Proposal Submission:

We are currently seeking proposals for panels and individual papers, roundtable discussions, workshops, dialogues, performances, artwork/poster sessions, storytelling, and media arts/digital media. In order to apply for participation, send your 1-page proposal and short bio to genderandhumanrights@gmail.com before April 1, 2012.

 

Proposals Due: 1 April 2012

Conference Date: 5-6 October 2012

Conference Location: Austin, Texas

 

About the Conference:

Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender and Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas is a two-day conference in which scholars, activists, community organizers, and community members will gather to collaboratively work through some of the dominant themes and tensions within contemporary engagement of human rights language and strategies.

 

We are looking for work that discusses new movement strategies for gender justice that work at the intersections of citizenship status, ethnicity, gender identity, indigeneity, nationality, race, and sexuality.

 

We are particularly interested in work that engages and reimagines human rights language (addressing the usefulness of grassroots human rights strategies and/or the harm of neoliberal human rights appropriation) regarding the following issues: Incarceration/Immigration Detention, Forced Displacement and Gentrification, and Gender Violence.

 

This is a bilingual conference in Spanish and English.

 

Featuring Conference Discussions with:

 

Women in Hip Hop: a women in hip hop evening performance will close the conference, and these performers will also be involved in a dialogue session about their work and using hip hop as an advocacy tool for gender and racial justice

 

Miss Major is a long-time activist in the transgender community. She is currently the Community Organizing Director for the Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project, whose mission is to challenge and end the human rights abuses committed against transgender, gender variant/genderqueer and intersex (TGI) people in California prisons and beyond.

 

Mayra Gómez is Co-Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a non-governmental organization which seeks to combat global poverty by strengthening the international human rights framework through creative economic, social, and cultural rights standard setting. She has worked with international mechanisms such as the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women as well as with regional bodies such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. 

 

Caoimhe McAvinchey is a lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance at Queen Mary, University of London. She investigates the relationship between prison, punishment and performance. She is particularly interested in the representation of women in prison, on stage and screen, and the documentation of prison theatre practice. She has worked with People’s Palace Projects on Staging Human Rights with Paul Heritage and Lois Weaver.

 

 

Organizers:

This conference is a project of the University of Texas at Austin Center for Women’s & Gender Studies Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative.

 

This conference work is supported and co-organized by local organizations including:

Alma de Mujer: tinyurl.com/almademujer

allgo: Statewide Queer People of Color Organization: www.allgo.org

Austin Black and Brown Alliance

Hutto Visitation Program: www.grassrootsleadership.org

Mamas of Color Rising: mamasofcolorrising.wordpress.com/

Texas after Violence Project: texasafterviolenceproject.org

 

This conference work is co-sponsored by University of Texas at Austin units including:

Center for Asian American Studies

Center for Mexican American Studies

Community Engagement Center

Department of English

Gender & Sexuality Center

Humanities Institute

Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies

Native American and Indigenous Studies

University of Texas Libraries

 

—————

 

2. Convocatoria: Plazo Ampliado

Re-imaginando el Poder y la Resistencia: Género y Derechos Humanos desde Texas hasta las Américas Transnacionales

 

Esta conferencia está organizada alrededor de tres colaboraciones entre la comunidad y la universidad:

* Transgender Jail Project / Proyecto Transgénero de la Cárcel: realizando encuestas y educando a instituciones sobre el tratamiento de personas transgénero

* Conspire Theatre / Teatro Conspiración:  creando espacios de actuación con las mujeres encarceladas

* Indigenous Women Land Rights Advocacy in Guatemala / Mujeres Indígenas en la Defensa de los Derechos a la Tierra en Guatemala: formulando estrategias contra el desplazamiento militarizado

 

La Entrega de Propuestas:

El comité de planificación de la conferencia está buscando propuestas para paneles compuestos de papeles, mesas redondas, talleres, diálogos, presentaciones, sesiones de arte / carteles, narración de cuentos, medios de las artes / medios digitales, o papeles individuales. Para participar, envíe su propuesta de una página junto con una breve biografía a genderandhumanrights@gmail.com antes del 10 de abril, 2012.

 

Fecha límite para las propuestas: 1o de abril, 2012

Fecha de la conferencia: 5-6 octubre 2012

Lugar de la conferencia: Austin, Texas

 

Sobre la Conferencia:

Re-imaginando el Poder y la Resistencia: Género y Derechos Humanos desde Texas hasta las Américas Transnacionales es una conferencia de dos días en que los académicos, activistas, organizadores comunitarios, y miembros de la comunidad se reunirán para colaborar en una discusión sobre algunos de los temas y las tensiones dominantes dentro del uso actual del lenguaje y las estrategias de los derechos humanos.

 

Buscamos trabajo que analiza nuevas estrategias de movimiento por la justicia de género que trabajan en la intersección de ciudadanía, etnia, identidad de género, indigenismo, nacionalidad, raza, y sexualidad.

 

Estamos particularmente interesad@s en el trabajo que aborda y re-imagina el discurso de los derechos humanos (hablando a la utilidad de las estrategias de base relacionadas a los derechos humanos y/o el daño de la apropiación neoliberal de los derechos humanos) con respecto a los siguientes temas: Encarcelamiento / Detención de Inmigrantes, Desplazamiento y Aburguesamiento Forzado, y Violencia de Género.

 

Esta será una conferencia bilingüe en español e inglés.

 

Presentando Discusiones de la Conferencia con:

 

Mujeres en Hip Hop: una función de mujeres en hip hop cerrará la conferencia, y estos artistas también participarán en un diálogo sobre su trabajo y el uso de hip hop como una herramienta para avanzar la justicia de género y la justicia racial.

 

Miss Major ha trabajado como activista en la comunidad transgénero por muchos años. En la actualidad es la Directora de la Organización Comunitaria para el Proyecto de Justicia para las personas Transgénero, Variante de Género, & Intersex, cuya misión es combatir y poner fin a las violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas contra personas que se identifican como transgénero, variante de género, e intersex, en las prisiones de California y más allá.

 

Mayra Gómez es la Co-Directora Ejecutiva de la Iniciativa Global para los Derechos Económicos, Sociales, y Culturales, una organización no-gubernamental que busca combatir la pobreza mundial mediante el fortalecimiento del marco internacional de los derechos humanos a través del ajuste creativo de los derechos económicos, sociales, y culturales. Ella ha trabajado con los mecanismos internacionales como el Comité de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Eliminación de Todas las Formas de Discriminación contra la Mujer, así como organismos regionales como la Comisión Africana de los Derechos Humanos y los Derechos de la Gente.

 

Caoimhe McAvinchey es profesora de Drama, Teatro, y Actuación en Queen Mary, la Universidad de Londres. Ella investiga la relación entre la prisión, el castigo, y el rendimiento. Ella está particularmente interesada en la representación de las mujeres encarceladas, en el escenario y la pantalla grande, y la documentación de la práctica del teatro dentro de las prisiones. Ella ha trabajado con los Proyectos de Palacio de la Gente en la Escenificación de los Derechos Humanos con Paul Heritage y Lois Weaver.

 

Organizadores:

Esta conferencia es un proyecto del Iniciativo Embrey de los Derechos Humanos de las Mujeres en el Centro de los Estudios de las Mujeres y el Género en la Universidad de Texas.

 

Las organizaciones locales que apoyan – y están ayudando a organizar – esta conferencia incluyen:

 

Alma de Mujer: tinyurl.com/almademujer

allgo: Statewide Queer People of Color Organization: www.allgo.org

Austin Black and Brown Alliance

Hutto Visitation Program: www.grassrootsleadership.org

Mamas of Color Rising: mamasofcolorrising.wordpress.com/

Texas after Violence Project: texasafterviolenceproject.org

 

 

El trabajo de esta conferencia es co-patrocinado por unidades dentro de la Universidad de Texas en Austin, que incluyen:

 

Center for Asian American Studies

Center for Mexican American Studies

Community Engagement Center

Department of English

Gender & Sexuality Center

Humanities Institute

Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies

Native American and Indigenous Studies

University of Texas Libraries

New Analysis Shows Startling Levels Of Discrimination Against Latino/A Transgender People

Latinos Queer No Comments
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE         
December 5, 201
CONTACT:  Paloma Zuleta
(202) 812-4477, PZuleta@LULAC.org           

 

New Analysis Shows Startling Levels Of Discrimination

Against Latino/A Transgender People

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 – Latino and Latina transgender and gender non-conforming people face some of the highest levels of discrimination of all transgender people according to a new analysis released today, Injustice at Every Turn: A Look at Latino/a Respondents in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.

This report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is a supplement to the groundbreaking national study,Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which was published in February and revealed widespread discrimination experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming people across the board. For more information on the report, please go to http://www.endtransdiscrimination.org/report.html.

A key finding of the original report was that even given the unconscionable levels of discrimination against all transgender people in the U.S., people of color including Latinos/as experienced heightened levels of discrimination and had worse outcomes than the sample overall. Additionally, the findings reveal that immigration status also plays a role in these outcomes with non-citizen Latino/a respondents often reporting even worse experiences.

“This study shows how devastating multiple discrimination is for Latino and Latina transgender people,” says LULAC Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “We are committed to ensuring that all people, regardless of race, sexual orientation and gender identity are respected and treated fairly. We call upon other Latino groups to join us as we fight for the right of transgender people to live without fear of discrimination, harassment or violence. We will not stand idly by in a society where equality is not within everyone’s reach.”

Among the key findings from the report:

  • Latino/a transgender people had a very high unemployment rate at 20 percent, higher than the overall transgender sample (14 percent) and more nearly three times the rate of the general population at the time the survey was fielded (7 percent).
  • Latino/a transgender people often live in extreme poverty with 28 percent reporting a household income of less than $10,000/year. This is nearly double the rate for transgender people of all races (15 percent), over five times the general Latino/a population rate (5 percent), and seven times the general U.S. population rate (4 percent). The rate for Latino/a non-citizen respondents was 43 percent.
  • Latino/a transgender people were affected by HIV in devastating numbers. One in twelve Latino/a respondents were HIV-positive and an additional 10 percent reported that they did not know their status.
  • Forty-seven percent of Latino/a respondents reported having attempted suicide.

“This report is a critical call to action,” says Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “The numbers make clear the way that racism, anti-immigrant and anti-transgender bias all work together, often with devastating results in the lives of Latino and Latina transgender people. We must ensure that we continue to work toward an LGBT movement that prioritizes immigration, racial and economic justice.”

Also among the findings:

  • Latino/a respondents who attended school as transgender people reported alarming rates of harassment (77 percent), physical assault (36 percent), and sexual assault (13 percent) in K-12; harassment was so severe that it led 21 percent to leave school. Nine percent were also expelled due to bias.
  • Twenty-seven percent of Latino/a respondents said they had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, nearly four times the rate of the general US population (7.4 percent).
  • Twenty-three percent of Latino/a transgender people reported being refused medical care due to bias.

“This report paints a devastating picture of the treatment of our Latino and Latina transgender brothers and sisters who, on a daily basis, endure extreme poverty, unemployment and discrimination just to live out their full lives,” says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “We have long known that race and citizenship status have a very real impact on transgender people. And for the first time, we can identify in specific terms, what these painful realities are. Documented or not, these numbers tell us that the LGBT movement must have an immigrant-inclusive agenda.”

 

About LULAC: The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest and oldest Hispanic membership organization in the country, advances the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of Hispanic Americans through community-based programs operating through 900 LULAC councils nationwide. For more information, visit www.lulac.org

NACCS TEJAS AWARD FOR FICTION

Latinos Research No Comments

ANNOUNCING

2012 NACCS TEJAS AWARD

FOR FICTION

National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies—Tejas Foco

 

Description of Award

NACCS-Tejas invites nominations and submissions for its 2012 NACCS-Tejas Fiction Award.  The 2012 NACCS Tejas Award for Fiction Committee will consider any novel or collection of short stories published in 2011 in Texas or elsewhere.  We will recognize an outstanding work of fiction that best represents a significant topic related to the Mexican American experience in Texas. The award will be presented at the NACCS-Tejas annual conference to be held at Teas State University in San Marcos, Texas in March 2012.  There are no restrictions on the number of nominations per press.  Authors may also self-nominate.  Poetry, personal narrative, autobiography, reprints, re-editions of previously published works, translations, or books previously nominated for this award, are not eligible.

 

Nominations will be reviewed by a committee of NACCS-Tejas members.

 

Procedure for Nominations

Publishers or authors wishing to submit books for consideration should send three copies of the book, one to each of the three committee members at the addresses below by the deadline of November 20, 2011.  Nominations should include a submission letter, including the name of the author, the title of the book, and the date of publication.

 

All nominations must be received (not postmarked) by November 20, 2011.

For additional information, you may contact the committee chair Marci R. McMahon atmcmahonmr@utpa.edu

 

Committee Members

 

Dr. Lorenzo García

Department of Dance and Theatre

University of North Texas

1155 Union Circle #310607

Denton, Texas 76203-5017

 

Dr. Marci R. McMahon

Department of English
University of Texas-Pan American
1201 West University Drive
Edinburg, Texas 78539

 

Dr. Marco Portales

Department of English
Texas A&M University
4227 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4227 Continue reading →

Surviving the Madness

iLife Latinos No Comments

Yo soy una queermestiz@.  I belong everywhere and nowhere.  I am her:  pierced, tatted, and metro.  I am not her:  pierced, tatted, and metro.

…Yo soy…

I can’t imagine blogging in the midst of my comprehensive exam preparation, but a conversation tonight demanded that I sit with my thoughts and feelings, asking myself:  ”what does it mean to ‘Survive the Madness?’ ”

On most days, I’m unsure on how to engage the world around me.  I live with books, stacks of them, and have conversations that are not easily translatable to the outside world, AND, I talk about how the body is morally significant in today’s world.  Not just any body, but the Mestizaje body.  I believe in hir visibility!  Yet, each day, the Mestizaje has to ‘survive the madness.’ I don’t know how he/she does it.  I really don’t.  Living in a space/place where people look at you like you don’t belong, or worse, that you’re a ‘thug.’  What a shitty reality to know that when you walk to the gym, ride your bike in your (new) neighborhood, take your kids (and partner) out to see the beauty of the mountains, that you actually are being labeled a gangster?!  This is the body that I’m interested in.  This very visible and recognizable body (on the one hand), and this completely invisible body on the other.

In many ways, I am hyper-visible today in the world.  Tattoos, piercings, and metro looking, with hair that always has to look just right.  And yet, I am hyper-invisible in today’s world, because I am not part of the machine.  And so, I seek to survive the madness–the best way I know how.  Carefully, strategically, and with (or in) relationships that compel me to live a livable life.

Hearing about the death of Christina Santiago this week reminds me that once again, we must learn how to survive the madness.  It is death that brings it all back around.  It was death this evening that reminded us that we MUST survive the madness, or the madness will kill us.  But, how do we do that.  How do we survive the madness when the madness is already taking our breath, our bodies, and perhaps even our souls (though I use that metaphorically…).

Soon I will take my comprehensive exam in Feminist Epistemologies, Queer Theories, and The Thought & Theory of Gloria Anzaldúa.  Right now, this is part of my madness, but it is only a part.  The other pieces of my madness are relative to my own being in the world:  community, politics, relationships, scholarship.  These are all pieces that engage me on fundamental levels and encourage me to be the best self I can be–livable and compelling.

But, to bring it all back around, surviving the madness means learning how to die well.  I remember Steve Hardin and Matt Chandler talking about this when they both preached at Grace.  And, as a survivor or a brain aneurism, I know just a bit about that threshold of life and death.  But, I don’t know that I know how to die well.  Cornel West, however, has some ideas, and thanks to La Mujer, I’d like to share them here:

From Cornel West:

The word philosophy really means “philosophia,” love of wisdom.

Anybody who has the audacity to embark on a quest for wisdom is really on quite an adventure because it requires a lot of courage, determination, discipline, and most importantly, humility.  You have to be open to the voice, view point and vision of others.

Anytime you talk about wrestling with the terrifying question of what it means to be human, you must begin with the Latin humando, which means “burying.”  To be human is to bury your dead, to put those beloved corpses in the grave, and somehow connect yourself to them.  To never forget.

Wrestling with death, not simply as some event that’s going to happen to you at the end of your life, but calling into question certain assumptions and presuppositions that you had before you arrived—that’s learning how to die.  That’s what Plato himself said.

Any time you surrender a prejudice or give up a presupposition, that’s a certain death.  To learn how to die in this way is to learn how to live.

Paideia means “deep education”—learning how to die to live more intensely, critically, and abundantly.  Because when you die, you give up certain assumptions and presuppositions to be reborn into a higher level of maturity.

Like falling in love—the old self dies, the new self emerges and merges into another self, grounded by the gift of grace.  Paideia is the death that signifies rebirth.   When I went to Harvard I had to be willing to die to emerge stronger—more courageous, perhaps more decent.  Because in the end, love is the force than transcends death.  All the rest is sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

Surviving the Madness means that we are all engaged with the blues (in the life of the mind) and jazz (in the world of ideas), like West talks about in The Examined Life.  Surviving the Madness takes courage, and likely more courage than it does to exist on the battlefield!

So, next time you’re out for a run, or riding your bike in our neighborhood, listen to some blues and jazz, and survive the madness with and through compelling rhythms!

XicanIndie Film Fest presents Photos of Angie

iFilm Latinos Queer No Comments

Photos of Angie

A World Premiere film by Alan Dominguez

This one-hour film tells the story of Angie Zapata, a young transgender woman brutally murdered in Greeley, Colorado in 2008. Her death and the subsequent trial received widespread coverage for its brutality.  This moving and powerful documentary chronicles the life and murder of Angie Zapata — a transgender teen who was murdered in rural Colorado in 2008.  The film includes extensive interviews with her family about her journey of self-discovery, transgender lives across the globe, hate crimes legislation, and the mysterious nature of her killer — all against the backdrop of his trial.  The film features a haunting score by Mackenzie Gault of the band The Flobots and a song from L.A.-based, Ozomatli.

 

April 9th, 2011:  Reception and fundraiser at 6 p.m. for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program.  The film starts at 7. Your donations toward CAVP’s important work proudly accepted. For the past 25 years, CAVP has been dedicated to eliminating violence within and against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities in Colorado. http://www.coavp.org/

$10 at the door – $7 in advance

Dialogue after screening

http://martinezled.com/xicanindie-film-fest-documentaries/

http://www.locolane.com/

http://www.photosofangie.com/

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/07/angie_zapata_saturday_will_mar.php

“Dislodging Identity(ies): A Mestizaje Approach” @ the 2011 Regional AAR Meeting: Rocky Mountains-Great Plains

Ethics Latinos Research No Comments

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza
2011 AAR Regional Proposal

Click here for the 2011 Program

Dislodging Identity(ies):  A Mestizaje Approach

From the Public Broadcasting Channel to the San Francisco Gate website (and everything in between) a collection of people, both scholars and the public, have sought to interrogate and address “Latino/a” Identity.  From essentializing the Latino/a Identity to highlighting idiosyncrasies of their identity and the reduction of the religious identity of Latin@s to be Institutionally Catholic (and Mexican), Latino/a Identity has been galvanized in the Public’s Imaginary.  What is missing is the epistemological component to the development of identity, which in turn (I hope) questions the ontological presuppositions of the politics of identities.

The Latino/a identity has been part of the White Imaginary and victim of U.S. Conquest and colonial expansionist agendas.  Though Latin@s of every color variance have existed and thrived in the U.S. Context, their identity has not.  I wish to “dislodge” the Latino/a identity by inserting an epistemological component to the creation or construction of the Latino/a identity.  In so doing, I seek to go beyond the politics of identity and help to create space for Latin@s to embody a way of knowing (in) themselves as a piece to their identity.  In this sense, the body becomes an epistemic mode–something that is tied to both time and space and embedded in one’s self–a constructed and complex self.

This proposal seeks both a deconstructive and constructive move within the politics of identity theories.  With a primary commitment to poststructuralist and postmodern thinking, queer theories of color help to create spaces and gaps for epistemology to become a central feature to a dislodged Latin@ identity.  I refer to this space and gap as a Mestizaje approach.

You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

Latinos love No Comments

You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

You bring out the Mexican in me.

The hunkered thick dark spiral.

The core of a heart howl.

The bitter bile.

The tequila lágrimas on Saturday all

through next weekend Sunday.

You are the one I’d let go the other loves for,

surrender my one-woman house.

Allow you red wine in bed,

even with my vintage lace linens.

Maybe. Maybe.

For you.

You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.

The Mexican spitfire in me.

The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.

The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.

The spangled sequin in me.

The eagle and serpent in me.

The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.

The Aztec love of war in me.

The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.

The berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.

The Pandora’s curiosity in me.

The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.

The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.

The fear of fascists in me.

Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

You bring out the colonizer in me.

The holocaust of desire in me.

The Mexico City ’85 earthquake in me.

The Popocatepetl/Ixtacchiuatl in me.

The tidal wave of recession in me.

The Agustín Lara hopeless romantic in me.

The barbacoa taquitos on Sunday in me.

The cover the mirrors with cloth in me.

Sweet twin. My wicked other,

I am the memory that circles your bed nights,

that tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.

I claim you all mine,

arrogant as Manifest Destiny.

I want to rattle and rent you in two.

I want to defile you and raise hell.

I want to pull out the kitchen knives,

dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.

Me sacas lo mexicana en mi,

like it or not, honey.

You bring out the Uled-Nayl in me.

The stand-back-white-bitch-in me.

The switchblade in the boot in me.

The Acapulco cliff diver in me.

The Flecha Roja mountain disaster in me.

The dengue fever in me.

The ¡Alarma! murderess in me.

I could kill in the name of you and think

it worth it. Brandish a fork and terrorize rivals,

female and male, who loiter and look at you,

languid in you light. Oh,

I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazoltéotl.

I am the swallower of sins.

The lust goddess without guilt.

The delicious debauchery. You bring out

the primordial exquisiteness in me.

The nasty obsession in me.

The corporal and venial sin in me.

The original transgression in me.

Red ocher. Yellow ocher. Indigo. Cochineal.

Piñon. Copal. Sweetgrass. Myrrh.

All you saints, blessed and terrible,

Virgen de Guadalupe, diosa Coatlicue,

I invoke you.

Quiero ser tuya. Only yours. Only you.

Quiero amarte. Aarte. Amarrarte.

Love the way a Mexican woman loves. Let

me show you. Love the only way I know how.

—Sandra Cisneros, 1994