MEXICANAS AND CHICANAS    Elena Poniatowska, Mexico's leading woman writer and journalist, gave    the following lecture at Hampshire College in the fall of 1991, when    she was writer-in-residence at the Five Colleges in Western    Massachusetts. Her admiration for Chicana writers has not lessened in    the intervening five years, and, as usual, she has put her money where    her mouth is by translating Sandra Cisneros's now-canonical early    novel, The House on Mango Street (1989), into Spanish (New York:    Vintage, 1994; Mexico City: Alfaguara Literaturas, 1995 [with Juan    Antonio Ascencio]. The novel was previously translated and published    in Spain in 1992.).    I met Sandra Cisneros in 1991 as well, when she gave a memorable    reading of Woman Hollering Creek at Mount Holyoke College. Both women    have immense charm and humor, and I had the good fortune to coincide    with both of them in Mexico City in January of 1994, just when Elena    was finishing her translation of The House on Mango Street. We spent    two and a half hours in the lobby of Sandra's hotel, laughing until    our sides ached. It was a rare privilege.    Elena Poniatowska gave MELUS permission to publish this lecture. It is    good to see that some of her remarks then are now out of date,    especially when she referred to the fact that no Chicana writer had    ever been published in Mexico. She herself has seen to that.    Nina M. Scott    University of Massachusetts at Amherst    Chicanos and Chicanas have always been in New Mexico, Texas,    California, Colorado, Illinois and other North American states. The    Gonzalezes, the Dominguezes, the Garcias, the Fernandezes have lived    in these states ever since they can remember. Their great, great    grandmother had a house in San Antonio, or in San Diego, or in Sante    Fe, long before 1836 and 1848 when these territories became American.    Land usually characterizes people and gives them their major traits.    Argentinians feed themselves on meat like we Mexicans eat beans and    corn; corn tortillas are our daily bread. Western culture can be    called the culture of wheat, while Spanish-speaking America is the    culture of corn.    The story of the border between the United States and Mexico has been    a long and painful one. Even when Santa Ana sold half of our country,    territories were already in the hands of many North American pioneers    who worked the land. When a land is depopulated, or unpopulated, it is    the country that settles it that becomes the owner. Texas was never    integrated into Mexico. Tijuana only integrated itself during the time    of ex-President Echeverria, twenty-four years ago, when his government    finished the road that crossed the whole peninsula of Baja California.    If one country does not populate a region, and another one does, the    one who loses it is the one who has no settlements. Now the limits    between our two countries are recognized internationally. Two small    islands off the coast of San Diego will never be given back to Mexico,    especially because on one of these islands there are military    installations. In the nineteenth century, Mexicans living in the    northern territories complained that, when the American government    took over the land, they felt abandoned by Mexico. Mexico had never    done anything for them, and, in the years in which the United States    appropriated these lands, Mexico was a country that had been defeated    by America. How could Mexico help or protect anyone if it could not    even control the rest of the Mexican Republic which was torn apart?    Texans of Latin origin, or Hispanics as they are called now, had no    time to become Mexicans, and Juan Rulfo used to say that the    territories that were lost were the ones that had no bishops.    Catholicism as an institution was very strong at keeping a people    together. As there were no bishops and no practice of this faith in    these lands, adventurers like Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone were the    lawmakers.    To say that Mexico abandoned its people would not be false, because    Mexico abandons all poor Mexicans. The poor choose the American dream    and the American way of life on the other side of the border, because    they don't see a future for themselves in their own country. The word    Chicano, although its origin is not exactly known, probably comes from    Mexica, and Mexicans from Mexico City, from Monterrey, Puebla,    Guadalajara, and other big cities, consider Chicanos either to be    undocumented workers and manual laborers or Mexicans who only care to    imitate the Americans. "You are a traitor, you are not Mexican, you    chose the United States." "Pocho, pocha, go back to your own country,    you can't even speak Spanish well." If Mexicans want to be really    aggressive, they become racists: "Chicanos are dark and short; they    are pickers." "All that Chicanos want is to marry a blond." Or they    say in Spanish: "Te crees la muy, muy" ("You think you're so    special"), because they mingle with Americans. So Chicanos are caught    between two worlds that reject them: Mexicans who consider them    traitors, and Americans who want them only as cheap labor. No one ever    seems to remember that they belonged to Texas, New Mexico and    California. In a Mexican university, a Chicano student was once    advised not to say that she was one, because she would not be    accepted.    Another aspect of this rejection of Chicanos could be envy; Mexicans    yearn for the American way of life, most of all American clothes and    fashions. T-shirts are diamonds. Oh, to have ten dollars in order to    buy a T-shirt! Mexico is a racist country; we are racists against    ourselves; out of thirty-two states, only one, Oaxaca, has an Indian    governor: Heladio Ramirez. As for our skin color, we usually say that    we are "cafe con leche," coffee with milk, or "apinonadito," which is    the color of a pine nut. The amount of coffee and milk is the degree    of segregation. Milk with only a little coffee is best for the    Chicano's health. Half and half is "moreno," which is brown, and more    coffee than milk is "prieto." Strong, strong black coffee in a    steaming cup is a disaster and we comment: "color de piano," (black as    a piano), or "Ese negro tan feo," (that ugly black). We still have no    use for decaffeinated coffee, but we certainly haven't yet qualified    as a delicious, richer and smoother blend for a taster's choice. So    you Chicanos and Chicanas have a lot to do with the way you like your    100% freeze-dried coffee.    Fifteen years ago, with Luis Valdez's movie "Zoot Suit," Mexicans    discovered the extraordinary strength, the overwhelming freshness, and    the real meaning of the word "Chicano." Chicano not only designated    people of Mexican ancestry living in the United States, but also the    social and racial discrimination, the economic exploitation of a    migrant working class which crossed the Rio Grande looking for a    better life. With "Zoot Suit," Mexicans also became aware of the    contribution that the Chicano theater movement had made to the    Chicano's search for identity, as the "Campesino Theater" was not only    the starting point for Valdez's movie, but also for the Chicano's    assertiveness, the Chicano's fight for recognition, the Chicano's    human and political struggle towards liberation. As for the movie,    "Zoot Suit," it gave a vision of Chicanos that Mexicans did not even    suspect, for Chicanos were, and still are, not considered part of our    culture.    Even now, very few Mexican writers care for Chicano writers and poets,    and even fewer women writers take Chicana writers into account. Carlos    Monsivais, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Jose Agustin and Gustavo Sainz--who    has been in contact with Chicanos while working in Albuquerque--are    the only ones who have promoted Chicano literature. (Jose Agustin    prides himself of the fact that his novel Ciudades Desiertas [Deserted    Cities] is considered a Chicano novel.) In 1987, the Colegio de la    Frontera Notre and the Colegio de Mexico founded the Chicano-Mexican    Writers Congress that was also held in Tijuana in May 1989. Just last    year, 1990, a Chicano movie festival took place in Mexico City.    These last two years there has also been a campaign to welcome    "Paisanos" in Mexico, and the airport was filled with posters of the    Mexican idea of a Chicano: a migrant worker with a happy smile and a    straw hat. "Give your hand to a Chicano." But Chicanos with American    passports are still considered aliens, and women especially are seen    as continuing the tradition of la Malinche,[1] the ultimate traitor,    although Cortes is not the Conqueror anymore. Americans are now the    Conquerors.    That is why, to many of us, the movie "Zoot Suit" was so important.    For more than ten years it filled the emptiness. Not only did it show    us what it meant to be Chicano, but it proved that Chicanos had    mastered the Anglos' filmmaking craftsmanship and technique, and that    they had not lost time: they had something to say and they knew how to    say it. "Zoot Suit" was sociologically valuable, a better and more    expressive film than what Mexican cinema itself had achieved in our    country in the last thirty years, after Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio    "El Indio" Fernandez concluded the Golden Era of great Mexican movie    making. We have not been able to see ourselves with the same sharpness    as the Chicanos, and we are learning only now to be critical of    ourselves.    Why did "Zoot Suit" have such an impact on us? Because it summarized    all that Chicanos had gone through in the borderlands: their fight for    the land and for an identity everyone was ready to deny them. The    images gave us not only the generation gap between the traditional    parents (who continued living in the United States as they would have    lived in their provincial and cautious Guanajuato) and their children    (who spoke English and dreamt the American Dream), but the social,    economic and political gap between them and the United States. "Zoot    Suit" managed to portray the intimate feelings of Mexicans who had    been discriminated against for years, and who continue being    segregated today. Why were they discriminated against? Because they    were poor. Poverty is always an offense. Because they were Indians,    mestizos, not white like the Anglos, and, even if they were, they were    not Anglos, for they did not know that life could be conceived of as    one great big business. Suddenly they discovered that time is money--a    philosophical contribution that Americans have made to the world--that    technology was as sacred as any religion, and that their Catholic    religion did not have the same importance in the States as it had in    Mexico. In other words, they had lost their sense of belonging.    German Valdez popularized "Tin Tan" in Mexico, a character who could    very well be considered the first living image of the Chicano    struggle, the "Pachuco." The Pachuco's aspiration was to look exactly    like Clark Gable in the movie "Gone With the Wind." With his baggy    pants tightly tied to his skinny waist, laughing at himself, Tin Tan    almost disappeared under his super, extra-large coat with very large    shoulder pads, a southern smile, a gold chain so long that it dangled    to his knees, a wide hat with a huge feather, shoes too big for him, a    mustache (Mexicans have always been crazy about mustaches), and a    white shirt. Of course Clark Cable looked gorgeous, but the same could    hardly be said of the Pachuco, whose exaggerated pants, hat, chain and    jacket floated in the chilly winds of our dusty border towns. Pachucos    moved in a no man's land: they were second-hand Mexicans and    fifth-class Americans. Neither Tin Tan nor the Pachucos achieved    social recognition. On the contrary. In Mexico, Tin Tan was criticized    for popularizing a song in vaudeville night clubs and theaters that    said "Este es el Pachuco, un sujeto singular" [This is the Pachuco, an    outstanding fellow]. The same went for movies like "Frontera Norte"    [The North Frontier] and "El Hijo Desobediente" [The Disobedient Son].    There was a press campaign saying Tin Tan offended the language;    consequently he was stripped of his clothes and speech and destroyed    by another comedian, Cantinflas.    Nevertheless, the Pachucos remain in our minds not as grotesque    figures, but as very daring and lonely ones; they were in search of an    identity that both countries denied them; they were very bold in a    society that rejected them; and they wanted to live among Americans    who denied them political participation and human rights. Mexico,    their country of origin, had not been capable of feeding them, much    less giving them an identity. The United States cast them aside and    blamed them for all their social ills: robberies, rapes, vandalism.    They had to be the responsible ones, because they were poor, and the    Pachucos lived in junk yards among abandoned cars and used    refrigerators, creating their own subculture with their own Spanglish,    their own music, and their own way of life.    The Pachucos' challenge to society is still a valid one, even if at    the time it had little to do with Reies Lopez Tijerina or Cesar    Chavez's fight for the land. It is only fair to emphasize that the    majority of the workers immersed in the struggle for the land are    women, for they are the ones who pick the lemons, the tomatoes, the    grapes, and other fruits that need delicate hands. Curiously, the old    saying remains true: man plants, woman harvests.    In Cesar Chavez's childhood there were signs saying "No dogs and    Mexicans allowed." There was also an assistant sheriff who said, and    it was published in the Department of Labor Bulletin no. 836 (1945):    "We protect our farmers here in Kern County. They are our best people.    They are always with us. They keep the country going. They put us in    here and they can put us out again, so we serve them. But the Mexicans    are trash. They have no standards of living. We herd them like pigs."    Chavez's fight with his National Farm Workers Association still    continues, ever since his first strike in 1965. The Union's newspaper    is called "El Malcriado," the one who doesn't behave and is rude.    Filipinos were brought to the United States to work before Mexicans    and they were also spoken of as "the most worthless, unscrupulous,    shiftless, diseased, semi-barbarian that has ever come to our shores."    After the Philippine independence act of 1934, further importation of    Filipinos came to an end, but Mexican braceros and day laborers were    brought into California and the Southwest at harvest time and trucked    out again when the harvest was over. The bracero program was a very    popular one: they harvested cotton, sugar beets, oranges, lemons, and    other crops. Americans would not do the hard, stooping labor    strawberries required. The Mexicans' poverty was desperate. In 1959    they worked hard for sixty cents an hour. But Mexicans like to work on    the earth. In the cities, even the most miserable shack has its flower    pot, its "geranios," its herbs for teas. It would be impossible to    separate the word Chicano from the word earth. Chicanos are linked to    the earth. Migrant workers who come to the valleys of California love    lemon and orange trees. They call them "los arbolitos," worry about    them, think about them, and when there is a frost, "una helada," and    they freeze, they pity and mourn them: "Se quemaron los arbolitos, tan    bonitos que venian. Ya se murieron los pobrecitos" [Our poor little    trees were killed by the frost and they were growing so beautifully].    Gaspar Rivera, who lives in the Mexican peasant town in Watsonville,    California, is now one of the best students at the University of    California at Santa Cruz. He is getting his Master's degree in Latin    American Studies. He lived in Ciudad Nezalhualcoyotl, home to five    million Mexicans. Born in Oaxaca, he is mixteco. The Mixteca is a    mountain range in Mexico where it hardly rains; it used to, but the    climate has changed, and now the earth only gives stones. The wind    sweeps the good earth away. He came as a field worker to the Valley of    Santa Cruz, to the Valley of San Joaquin and says the earth in these    lands is wonderful because there is water. He admires what Americans    have done, turning a desert into a cultivated field by bringing water    from lakes, from the north.    These lands are little jewels. No lands like these exist in Mexico,    where we are always waiting for rain. The only state that gets all the    attention and the money from the Mexican Government is Sinaloa, where    there are enormous dams, and the Valley of San Quintin in Baja    California. All those very fertile valleys produce the tomatoes that    we sell to the United States in December. We Mexicans, who are    producers of com, import cota from the United States, and the com we    buy is not the one used for human consumption but for fattening pigs.    Tortillas made with this cota are yellow.[2]    In order to avoid dying of hunger, many workers come to the States,    even if they have to work like slaves. Gaspar Rivera says,    After being a cook, dishwasher, picker in the fields (broccoli,    strawberries, artichokes), garbage man, the best-paid job I had was    picking mushrooms, $7.30 an hour. I could never dream of earning    anything like that in Mexico. The other one was in a factory started    by the hip-pies for natural chocolate with no artificial ingredients.    After three years I became a gardener at the University of California    at Santa Cruz. That is how I entered the University. Chicanos, as you    can see, have been peasants. Most of the Chicanos who now attend    school and get a higher education and go to the University are sons    and daughters of men and women who never had the opportunity for a    university career.    For many years, the Chicanos were to Mexicans a forgotten people in a    no-man's land, in ghost towns, in cities that we in Mexico called,    "ciudades de paso," or "walk-through cities," cities where no one    set-ties, bad cities for bad people, just as Cuernavaca is called "a    sunny place for shady people."[3]    Tijuana in 1926 had nothing but slums. The Casino "Agua Caliente"    (owned by an American company) started by giving work to the poorest    Mexicans who became waiters, janitors, errand or bell boys,    dishwashers, bed-makers in whore houses, cheap singers and guitar    players. Because of Prohibition, stars like Douglas Fairbanks and    Clark Gable came from Hollywood, and it was in "Agua Caliente,"    Tijuana (today a public school), that Rita Hayworth began her singing    career under her real name: Lola Cansino.    Even if "Agua Caliente" was considered a first class Casino and    frequently compared to Monte Carlo, it was run and visited by low    class Americans. The designation first class, second class, and fifth    class has always been characteristic of the border language. Eulalio    Gonzalez, "Piporro," epitomized the new inhabitant of the North, a    real macho dressed as a cowboy; he called himself a second class    Mexican who was lucky enough to get a first class girl, first class    because she was a gringa. Chicanos tried to grasp their roots, roots    that floated in the air and drifted around in the barren winds and    were taken by the waters of the Rio Bravo and the Rio Grande. They did    not speak English, and their Spanish became weaker day by day. English    words were mexicanized: truck became troca, yard became yarda, from    Tiajuana we in Mexico, D.F. inherited words like "si, man" instead of    si, yes, "migra," "pason," "parquear," "friquearse" "alivianado,"    "buena vibra" [good vibes], and others, that belong to jail language.    The Chicanos created a new language. There are many examples given by    the poet Alurista, as, for instance: El sarape de mi personalidad comes in fantastic colors    or Tino Villanueva: Tu como te llamas, mexicano, latino, Meskin, skin, Mex-guy, Mex-Am, Latin-American, Chicano.    or Once upon a time a little mariposita was flying in the jardin, when de repente she fell cayo and then she dijo: "Ay, what brute am I, I forgot to open my alitas."    It was not only the language. Chicanos were living "on standby,"    always in "transit," always in a "meantime land," like "maripositas"    waiting to settle down, fluttering their "alitas" before getting their    green card, before becoming residents. Rejected by both Mexicans and    Americans, they had no one to turn to except themselves, their backs    always wet (that is why Gloria Anzaldua's book's title, This Bridge    Called My Back, is so good), their back or neck always hurt, and their    ribs, over which the bridge can be built, is also a passage across the    border. These Mexicans finally reached a new shore, the shore of their    awareness, their active participation, their fight for their land, the    same land that the same Gloria Anzaldua describes in these words:    Yes, the Chicano and the Chicana have always taken care of growing    things and the land. Again I see the four of us kids getting off the    school bus, changing into our work clothes, walking into the field    with Papi and Mami, all six of us bending to the ground. Below our    feet, under the earth lie the watermelon seeds. We cover them with    paper plates, putting "terremotes" on top of the plates to keep them    from being blown away by the wind. The paper plates keep the frost    away. Next day or the day after, we remove the plates, bare the tiny    green shoots to the elements. They survive and grow, give fruits    hundreds of times the size of the seed. We water them and hoe them, we    harvest them. The vines dry, rot, are ploughed under. Growth, death,    decay, birth. The soil prepared again and again, impregnated, worked    on. A constant changing of forms, renacimiento de la tierra madre.    If the whole Mexican family, even the children, worked heavily in the    picking of fruit, of cotton, of beans (that is why they are called    beaners), women worked even harder, because long after the others had    finished, they had to cook and feed their family, put their Aztec    sweethearts to bed and clean up. As they were peasant women, they did    not fear hard work. In Mexico they had done the same, but for less.    Still, their journey was the longest of them all, and, as women, they    were subject to sex, race, and class discrimination, to the ill    treatment of machos because they are female, to the inferiority    complex that accompanies every woman in a patriarchal society, and in    which the sex roles are established since birth: machito, little man,    mujercita, little doll. Man's potential is enormous, woman's potential    doesn't exist. Even without knowing it, they nurtured in their    daughters a feeling of worthlessness, of self-hatred for what it means    to be a woman and a Chicana.    A field where women work is lovely just to look at, because women wear    colored scarves on their heads or blouses or aprons. Now women have    chosen to work in the "maquiladoras" [assembly lines] that started in    1965 on our side of the border. They are in demand because they are    cheaper and more docile. Most of them are young, single mothers. More    and more they become responsible for themselves, and by becoming    economically independent in a country like Mexico, where women only    know restrictions, they also become the owners of their lives and    bodies.    To be a Chicano is not easy, but to be a Chicana is even harder. To be    a writer in Mexico is not easy, but to be a woman writer sometimes    makes no sense at all. A Chicana writer in the United States gets the    worst of both conditions: being a woman and a Chicana aspiring to    become a writer. Just one glance at the names of the publishers of    Chicana women writers gives us an idea of their marginality:    "Spinster/Aunt Lute," "Bilingual Press," "Kitchen Table/Women of Color    Press," "The Feminist Press," "Shameless Hussie Press," "Third Woman    Press," "El Fuego de Aztlan Press." In Mexico, the work of Chicano    writers like Tomas Rivera, Tino Villanueva, Rudolfo Anaya, Miguel    Mendez has been published, but no Chicana can make the same claim.    Just as in the fields, her working day has been twice as hard.    When man or woman reaches the bottom of the pit, his and her efforts    in coming out are priceless. This is what has happened to Chicanas.    For many years they lived at the bottom of their pits, not only the    extreme border but on the borders of their own landscape, the limits    of their own bodies, the length of their hair and their ideas, and    they decided for themselves what women can do and must do; they    abolished once and for all the unwritten Mexican law inscribed at    birth on all our foreheads: "Not you, you are a woman." They    discovered their sexuality, accepted it, they pushed aside their    mothers who had slowed down the pace, and they achieved what Rosario    Castellanos asked for in one of her most beautiful poems: a new way of    being human and free. They knew they had to accept and love themselves    for others to love them, to love themselves out of negation. Without    having decided it beforehand, but in a very explicit manner, they won    over class and racial prejudices, social and economic segregation and    even won over their own poor feelings of self-esteem. From this    devastating battle they came out stronger, and have lived in twenty    years what has taken Mexican women a hundred years. They are way ahead    of us. They have asserted themselves, and through brutal    discrimination they have opened a path to and for themselves. Brutal    has also been their journey. Their literature has a lot in common with    Frida Kahlo's painting, the portrait of the Indian nana [nanny] who    gives her breast covered with tiny white milk brooks to the    child-woman who clings to her great obscure nipple. Mexicans and    Chicanas drank Indian milk and now they drink low fat 1% milk or skim    milk. They still consider themselves daughters of rape. As Lucha Corpi    puts it in her "Marina poems": Tu no la querias y el la negaba y aquel que cuando nino [This character cannot be represented into ASCII text]mama! le gritaba cuando crecio le puso por nombre "la chingada."    And Sylvia Gonzalez is specific: I am Chicana Waiting for the return of la Malinche, to negate her guilt, and cleanse her flesh of a confused Mexican wrath which seeks reason to the displaced power of Indian deities. I am Chicana Waiting for the coming of a Malinche to sacrifice herself on an Aztec altar and Catholic cross in redemption of all her forsaken daughters.    No Mexican woman writer has ever seemed to care about her Chicana    counterpart. Why? The reason is mere ignorance and an official    dismissal of a culture split in two: the Chicana and the Mexican. This    whole feeling of superiority will quickly change into an inferiority    complex when Mexican women writers find out who Gloria Anzaldua or    Cherrie Moraga are, or Ana Castillo in her wonderful The Mixquiahuala    Letters, Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street or My Wicked,    Wicked Ways, with that provocative picture of hers, throwing at our    faces like a siap her red mouth and her lotus position, and now Woman    Hollering Creek, that has been well received and has had a review in    the New York Times Book Review, or Helena Maria Viramontes, consumed    and refreshing author of The Moths, and the wonderful stories about    the ones who work during various months of the year over the border,    or "You cramp my style, baby," a poem by Lorna Dee Cervantes that    addresses the Chicano male movement which perpetuates the Chicana's    role as servant and sex object, slaves of their lord and master. Lorna    Dee Cervantes expresses the need to dominate the written word in order    to destroy stereotypes about Mexicans and rewrite history from the    perspective of the oppressed. As Juan Bruce-Novoa says it, Sheila    Ortiz Taylor is the best Chicana novelist and in Mexico she hasn't    been translated. In her play Amory Libertad [Love and Freedom], Rosa    Carrillo writes a dialogue between father and daughter in which    traditional family values clash with the Chicana changing self-image    and desire for independence. She wants to be free, but her father has    never been free, so he cannot understand. Reading Chicana literature,    I cannot help but think about this marvelous Puerto Rican writer,    author of "Pollito Chicken," one of the most creative writers, the    happiest in her skin, the freest of all writers, Ana Lydia Vega. How    can I judge the grade of freedom of a writer? By the happiness it    communicates, because he or she knows how to make others laugh,    because he or she has a sense of humor, because he or she makes fun of    him or herself, because, like Groucho Marx, he or she can declare:    "Outside of a dog, books are man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's    too dark to read."    Chicanas rub their liberty in our faces; provocative, their thighs    stand in the air; shameless, their body-battles take us by assault,    and take heaven by assault the way Marx (not Groucho) would have    wanted. A Chicana in T-shirt and mini-skirt challenges the world. This    openness, this absolute will of self-assertion: the Chicana obtains it    from her environment. Chicanas who imitate American, white, Anglo    Saxon girls do it with great innocence, and sometimes a lack of self    criticism is a form of liberation. (Read Mary Helen Ponce and her    "Color Red.") To put shoes on the Virgin of Guadalupe and throw her    into the streets in her high heels, in a short skirt, is a lesson for    us who do not let loose the reins.    There are a few reasons for this. Our religiousness has nothing in    common with that of the United States. Over there, Catholics are a    minority; here the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who go to Tepeyac    to pay tribute to their little Virgin exercise an influence so    powerful over Mexicans that, like it or not, it has to be considered    both politically and socially.    In Mexico, every day I look more like my mother, as Rosario    Castellanos looked like hers, Angeles Mastretta like hers, Beatriz    Espejo like hers, Barbara Jacobs like hers. In the United States, the    difference between parents and children is enormous. In the case of    Chicanos, parents do not agree with what children do. Meekly they    continue living in the United States as they would in Mexico, letting    everyone step on their feet, while Chicano children desire to find a    place among the Anglos.    Freshness, spontaneity, sense of humor, freedom, are on the side of    the Chicanas; on our side (except for the case of Angeles Mastretta in    her novel Mexican Tango, Kyra Galvan and Silvia Tomasa Rivera in their    poetry) is nostalgia, traditions, laments and lack of self-love, as in    Rosario Castellanos. Our ignorance of Chicano women writers is    particularly unfair when we Mexican women writers always complain that    no one takes us seriously. What is done to us, we do.    With Chicanos, the problem is also a class problem. Mexican women    writers do not come from the working classes and do not have an    immediate relationship with the fields and factories the way Chicanas    do. Even though Nellie Campobello was born in the country and can well    be considered the only woman writer of the Revolution, she belongs to    the bourgeoisie. For the Mexican woman writer, writing is an under    product of her social situation. For the Chicanas, writing is a means    to overcome their social situation. It is the confrontation of two    classes. We come from the Mexican middle class that can travel and    settle in the United States under optimum conditions. Money, let us    remember it, has no fatherland. Money has no fatherland, but the way    of spending it does. There is a culture of waste that is the result of    excessive riches.    The knowledge of Chicano literature could enrich us in more ways than    one, and teach us what it means to fight for freedom, break down    stereotypes, demystify, to know God in a land of indios, to rescue the    Virgin of Guadalupe in the land of gringos.    The liberty with which Chicanas write is an example to Mexican women    writers. Chicana intellect and will power have benefited from the    American Way of Life and Mexican Tradition. They are richer than we    are. We are still bent over under the weight of religion, of social    status, of tradition. It is still a prowess in Mexico to be a writer.    Not even Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz can be considered really    subversive, and if she was, three hundred years ago, she was only    subversive in her writing, because out of her own disposition she was    a courtesan. And Sor Juana went to the very limit of what she could    do. Society was hostile to her and it is still hostile to women. How    hostile the magazine Plural was to Castellanos, who, according to the    Editorial Board, had badly translated St. John Perse, Claudel and    Emily Dickinson. In a literature like ours, which had no Emily    Dickinson, no Marianne Moore, no Edna St. Vincent Millay, writing and    publishing is a subversive action. The publication of Nellie    Campobello's Cartuchos [Cartridges] and My Mother's Hands [Las manos    de Mama] was in its way a battle siege. A story like Elena Garro's "La    Culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas" [The Tlaxcaltecas' Guilt] is profoundly    subversive, as is "The Monologues of the Spinster" in poetry by    Rosario Castellanos. Of Mexican women writers who do not belong to the    petite bourgeoisie, only two could be called proletarian: Benita    Galeana, who is not a professional writer, and Sylvia Tomasa Rivera,    who accompanies the reading of her poems with beer bottles, bangs on    the table and shouts that she is a peasant. She is not anymore. The    writer who will shatter our nostalgia to pieces and pulverize our    customs is still to be born.    Women fought the Revolution in a subsidiary way. They were the basis    of the daily life of the revolutionary army. This women's movement has    not been taken into account, even though there has been a slow    recognition, as in the case of Carmen Serdan, Josefa Ortiz de    Dominguez, Juana Gutierrez de Mendoza, and others who took their gun    and defended their country. As yet, Mexican literature still lacks    great feminine figures; they do not exist or simply they are not    allowed to become figures.    We live in a patriarchal society in which women are the servants of    the lord, the abnegadas cabecitas blancas [devoted little white    heads]. Mother's Day is incredible in Mexico City: stores earn more    money than in the Christmas season. The worst son, the worst daughter,    gets his or her mother a blender, a microwave, a salad mixer. The    Chicanas are still bent over under the weight of their mother's    misfortune, or the memory of their mother's misfortune, their Mamacita    who is also the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Malinche who gave herself to    Cortes, the Llorona who weeps for her dead children, the Chingada, the    legendary violated mother, who has given birth to the whole of "La    Raza." The Chicanas love and rebel against their devoted mother who    fears her husband and accepts his beatings. Never in any literature    have there been so many references to the Malinche. In Rosario    Castellanos and Elena Garro's novels, in the stories of Ines Arredondo    and Maria Luisa Puga, the Virgin of Guadalupe or the Malinche are    hardly mentioned. For Chicanas, the Virgin of Guadalupe is an    obsession, and no one knows it better than the painter Esther    Fernandez, who tattoos the Virgin on backs and stomachs. In the United    States it would not have been a scandal to put the face of Marilyn    Monroe instead of the face of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as it wasn't a    scandal to put Mao Tse Tung's face instead of the Mona Lisa's, but    when a Mexican painter did it in Mexico everyone was outraged. In the    United States, Catholicism is not the main religion. Every year Sandra    Cisneros comes to Mexico on December 12 in order to walk on her knees    with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to honor the Virgin of    Guadalupe, who is a strong social and political force. We would never    think of a Mexican nun becoming anything but the superior of the    Convent in church hierarchy, but in the United States there is a    Protestant woman who has become a bishop. The picture on the feminist    magazine Fem. of the Virgin of Guadalupe walking into the streets with    high heels surprised us, but there were no further consequences,    because the painter was a Chicana and Fem. magazine does not have a    big circulation. No Mexican painter would have done it. Mexicans    usually say that before anything else they are "guadalupanos," sons of    the Virgin. Breaking religious canons in Mexico is breaking cultural    canons. And political ones.    Mexican women are so profoundly marked by religion, the weight of    religion is so paralyzing, that the Chicana's absolute will for    self-respect and self-assertiveness would be hard for us to accept:    "[This character cannot be represented into ASCII text]Mira, que    barbaras, mira que locas, como se atreven, son unas sinverguenzas!"    ["Look how uncouth, look how crazy, how dare they, they're    shameless!"].    In the Chicanas' literature, it is their Mexican past that rules.    "Abuelita, make me a tea." And the curandera grandmother takes her    yerbabuena [mint] "and fixes a hot drink" because she knows the    secrets of medical plants. Many Chicano and Chicana writers go back to    their childhood memories, and there stands their grandmother, to whom    they speak in Spanish because she never learned English, and wants    them to remember Mexican palabras, Mexican prayers, Mexican cooking,    chile and tostadas, and customs like the Dia de los Muertos. If her    children tell her: "Now, abuelita, we kids are Americans," Grandmother    will remind them: "No ninos, no, don't forget su abuelita es    mexicana." The generation gap between fathers and mothers and sons and    daughters is wider than the generation gap between parents and    children in Mexico. Mexican parents in the United States continue    thinking the same way they would in Mexico, and their patterns of    conduct have not changed, while their children want to be considered    Anglos.    In her book Loving in the War Years, Cherrie Moraga writes in her    autobiographical essay "La Guera":    I had no choice but to enter into the life of my mother, I had no    choice. I took her life into my heart but managed to keep a lid on it    as long as I feigned being the happy, upwardly mobile heterosexual.    When I finally lifted the lid to my lesbianism, a profound connection    with my mother reawakened in me. It wasn't until I had acknowledged    and confronted my own lesbianism in the flesh that my heartfelt    identification with and empathy for my mother's oppression--due to    being poor, uneducated and Chicana--was realized. My lesbianism is the    avenue through which I have learned the most about silence and    oppression and it continues to be the most tactile reminder to me that    we are not free human beings.    What I am saying is that the joys of looking like a white girl ain't    so great since I realized I could be beaten on the street for being a    dyke.    Nevertheless, after reading their work, Chicana women writers seem    freer human beings than Mexican women writers in both their work and    their life. The freedom of expression in the United States started    years ago, and the process of assimilating women in any movement was    natural. That is why a sort of feminine Henry Miller could spring out:    Erica Jong in her Fear of Flying. Mexican women found out about    American women's emancipation as late as 1988. With the exception of    Rosa Maria Roffiel, no woman writer on this side of the Bravo River    has talked about her vagina. Our language is still the language of the    nineteenth century. Maria Luisa Erreguerena, the one with the best    sense of humor (let us remember her delightful "The day that God got    into my bed"), does not write any more because she practices medicine    full time.    It is not that I believe that only the description of the sexual act    is liberating, and that sexuality is a synonym of literary    achievement, but I believe that choosing one's own sexual option    freely is a first step of men and women towards freedom.    Alexandra Kolontai, the Russian revolutionary and Lenin's friend,    wrote in 1911 about women and moral sexuality and said that a woman is    worthwhile when she values her individuality and defends her right to    be what she is. She wrote: "I am myself, and everything I am, I owe to    my effort." For Alexandra Kolontai, a modern woman was    self-disciplined and presented herself not just as the shadow of man    but as an individual woman.    Today we should add: "and not as the shadow of another woman." Or "and    not as the shadow of a patriarchal culture." Or also, "Not as the    shadow of oneself but as an individual shaped through the years by    various decisions."    Mexican women writers have a lot to learn from the freshness and    aggressiveness in Chicana writings. Their imagination and their    sensuality go much farther than ours. They neither forgive nor feel    guilty. Despite, or because of, the Virgin of Guadalupe they are    sacrilegious and blasphemous. Good! More than we, they identify    themselves with La Chingada. We are also Chingadas, but prefer not to    recognize it.    The borderland is spreading quickly, and with it all the agitation,    problems and political weaknesses of a poor society of men, women, and    children brought together by necessity in the most conflicting fringe    between our two countries. The land is fertile and creative, and    Cherrie Moraga is right when she says: "There resides in her, as in    me, a woman far greater than our bodies can inhabit."    To know that we can be greater than our bodies, that we can go farther    than our limits, that we can overflow ourselves, are lessons that    Chicanas have taught us with their life and literature, and we have    not yet known how to thank them.    Notes    1.Malinche was the Aztec noblewoman who was given to Cortes early in    his campaign to conquer the Aztec empire. She was both his interpreter    and his mistress, and in Mexico, largely due to Octavio Paz's The    Labryinth of Solitude (1950), she is considered by many a traitor to    her people. She is often referred to as "La Chingada," the raped one.    2. White corn is preferred in Mexico for making tortillas.    3.Cuernavaca has been a favorite vacation spot for the wealthy of    Mexico City since the days of Cortes. The city is about one hour's    drive south of the capital.    ~~~~~~~~    By Elena Poniatowska, Mexico City                              _________________    Copyright of MELUS is the property of MELUS and its content may not be    copied without the copyright holder's express written permission    except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval    software used for access. This content is intended solely for the use    of the individual user.    Source: MELUS, Fall96, Vol. 21 Issue 3, p35, 17p.    Item Number: 9703215474