Too soon?

Test Day by David Fabelo

Here's a wonderful short film on the issue of race and ethnicity as it relates to Hispanics: the award-winning "Test Day" directed by David Fabelo. Make sure to check out his website as well:

www.david-fabelo.com

Label Me Latina/o's Latest Volume

The most recent edition of Label Me Latina/o features an inspiring poem by my friend Rossy Toledo.  Whenever our schedules coincide, I hope to interview her and learn about the MFA experience in NYC and Madrid...from her posts on Facebook, it appears she's having an amazing time.  Por cierto, es todo un honor being able to include Rossy's singular voice on the blog. Mil gracias!

Enjoy!

Chilancana

By R. E. Toledo


Chilanga de veinte años ¿Quién eres?

Dejaste atrás

A tu respetado padre, a tu lejana madre

Dejaste allá

Tu lengua, tus labios, tus manos

Ya no hablas, ya no escribes, ya no amas

Se quedó también tu infancia

Recuerdos de primeros pasos

Primeros besos, primeros errores, primeros amores

Dejaste atrás todo lo que eras

Para reinventarte, para crecer, para ser nueva

Dejaste atrás, tu patria, tu amada tierra

Chicana de treinta años ¿Quién eres?

Callada vagas las calles, pretendes saberlo todo

Walking with your briefcase. Segura. Tacones altos, falda negra

Timely at work with your clients

Ejecutiva plena de metas definidas

Back in the car, close the damn door

You have to make the deadline

You have to meet your quota

Recuerdas lo que dejaste

Canción de Luismi en la radio

Tears come down your cheeks

You cry, you weep –you don´t know why

Dejaste a tu padre

He´ll be fine

Dejaste a tu madre

She´s just alright

Y vuelves por tus recuerdos

Caja de cartón forrada de rosa

What the hell do I do with this stuff?

Recoges los pedazos que

En el camino se quedaron

Los moviste, los doblaste

Los rompiste, los pegaste

That was me? Oh, God!

Los quemaste, you won’t need them any way!

La nueva tú lo tiene todo

New car

Nueva casa… on the hills

Nuevo job, Senior Level Executive

Nueva lengua, finally mastered without an accent… Almost!

Pero estás muda. No hablas, solo lloras.

Chilancana de cuarenta años ¿Quién eres?

Eres la niña, la mujer, la madre

Chilanga, Mexicana, Americana, Chicana

Vuelves a ti, te reconoces

A lo tuyo

A tu pluma y tu papel

A tus cartas, tus versos, tus letras

Otra vez

Otra vez a tus dioses, tus amores, otra vez

Eres tortilla y eres taco

Eres Xochimilco y Xochicalco

Te empapas los pies en Chapala y en Xico

Eres algodón y lino

Blanca y de colores

Azul, estrellas, espuma

Buenas noches

Y tú, que dejaste todo detrás

Vuelves a ello para perdonarte

Enterraste a tu padre

Y lo lloraste

Y lo desenterraste

Y lo lloraste

Y lo trajiste de regreso con su jazz y su marimba

Con su queso Roquefort y su salsa chimichurri

Y lo escribiste

Y lo lloraste

Y lo plasmaste todo en una hoja de papel

Lo festejaste

Volviste a tu madre

Querida, lejana madre

Y la abrazaste

Y la lloraste

Amada madre

Y la festejaste

GSR, Rossy and Lori Celaya (Professor of Spanish, University of Idaho) Knoxville, TN, 2009.

R.E. Toledo was born and raised in Mexico City. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994 with a B.S. in Communications and an M.A. in Spanish from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2002. She is currently a Spanish lecturer at the Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of the University of Tennessee. Her research and writing interests lay on woman and gender issues, and socio-economic and cultural differences, racism and immigration issues in México and the U.S. She started the Cinema Club and the Creative Writing workshop in Spanish at Casa HoLa, in East Tennessee. In addition, she has contributed for the Spanish Newspaper Hola Tennessee and for Revista Esperanza in México City. In 2010 she hosted “De Todo un Poco” a Community Service Spanish radio show. She is currently pursuing a MFA in creative writing in Spanish at NYU.

Paging Captain Obvious: Latinos/Hispanics = Diverse Group

For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/for-many-latinos-race-is-more-culture-than-color.html

Ni hispano ni latino: los inmigrantes prefieren identificarse por país de origen

Redacción

BBC Mundo

Última actualización: Jueves, 5 de abril de 2012

En Estados Unidos los inmigrantes provenientes de naciones latinoamericanas de habla española parecen tener problemas a la hora de identificarse como "latinos" o "hispanos", pese a que hace ya cuarenta años que ambos términos se integraron en el ordenamiento legal estadounidense.

De acuerdo con un estudio presentado por el Centro Hispano Pew la mayoría (51%) prefieren definirse por el país de origen de sus familias frente a un 24% que usa las etiquetas étnicas con las que se busca globalizar estadísticamente a la comunidad.

En el trabajo del Pew, titulado "Cuando las etiquetas no cuadran: hispanos y su visión de la identidad", la mayoría dijo considerar que esa clasificación no atiende a la amplitud cultural de una comunidad que tiene diferentes orígenes.

Sólo el idioma, algunas creencias religiosas y sus preferencias políticas son la amalgama que cohesiona una comunidad que por la diversidad de países y razas se hace complicada de catalogar.

Comunidad diversa

En 1976 el Congreso de EE.UU., a instancias de colectivos de inmigrantes, adoptó una ley en la que ordenaba que se registrara la información estadística de los residentes de origen latinoamericano y otros países de habla española.

Un año después, una directiva de la Oficina de Manejo de Presupuesto del Congreso hizo obligatorio el uso del término "hispano" o "latino" para calificar a la comunidad en los procedimientos de recolección de datos del gobierno federal.

Tendencias hispanas

• 51% se identifica por su país de origen
• 24% usa el término hispano o latino
• 51% no tiene preferencia entre hispano o latino
• 69% no cree que haya una cultura hispana común
• 47% no se consideran "estadounidenses típicos"
• 87% cree que es necesario aprender inglés
• 95% considera importante hablar español

Fuente: Pew Research Center

Sin embargo, el estudio del Pew indica que sólo el 25% de los consultados se siente identificado con los términos ampliamente usados ahora por el Censo estadounidense, oficinas gubernamentales y hasta empresas privadas.

El resto prefiere usar el país de origen de sus familias para describirse, como los mexicano-estadounidenses en California, los cubano-estadounidenses de Florida o los puertorriqueños o dominicanos de Nueva York.

La principal razón: el 69% de los consultados aseguran que los 50 millones de latinos que se estima que viven en EE.UU. no tienen una cultura común.

"El resultado del estudio refleja la diversidad de los latinos en EE.UU." aseguró a BBC Mundo Mark López, director asociado del Centro Hispano Pew.

"Muchos de los latinos no piensan que haya una cultura común porque es una comunidad con muchos aspectos con muchas diversidad con muchos aspectos y por eso es difícil para describirla con un nombre o una cultura".

Además López estima que colabora con el rechazo a la tipificación el hecho de que sean "nombres usados por una idea que surgió del gobierno de EE.UU. A muchos no les gusta usarlo".

Problemas de clasificación

Pero incluso considerados por sus orígenes individuales, los hispanos son un colectivo amplio, como lo demuestra la existencia de importantes comunidades de asiáticos, africanos, europeos o árabes en varios de esos países.

El estudio del Pew indica que 51% de los consultados tiene problemas para encasillarse en la lista de razas que presentan los formularios del censo y responden como "otra raza", mientras un 36% se define como blancos y un 3% como negros.

"No somos una raza, como insiste en clasificarnos en el gobierno de EE.UU., sino un grupo étnico que representa una cultura", dijo a BBC Mundo Julian Teixeira, director de comunicaciones del Consejo Nacional La Raza, la mayor organización de defensa de derechos de hispanos de EE.UU.
Texeira reconoce que las etiquetas "son útiles porque necesitamos un término para identificar a toda la comunidad que vive en este país" y que "es la manera mas fácil de describir un grupo" aunque advierte que "es sólo una herramienta de clasificación".

El voto latino

El idioma unifica

La investigación del Pew Hispanic Center refleja la importancia que tiene el idioma castellano en unir a esta comunidad.

La investigación indica que el el 76% domina el español, que un 38% son bilingües y un 24% prefieren el inglés.

¿Pero si no puede hablarse de una comunidad hispana en la que muchos de sus integrantes no se reconocen como tales, tiene sentido entonces hablar de un voto latino?.La pregunta podría ser crucial a la hora de diseñar estrategias para las venideras elecciones presidenciales de noviembre en Estados Unidos.

Aparentemente las preferencias políticas son uno de los pocos puntos comunes, ya que los latinos apoyan mayoritariamente a los demócratas independientemente del país del que sean originarios.
La excepción son los cubanos de Florida, quienes se inclinan más hacia los republicanos, aunque incluso en ese colectivo pareciera haber diferencias generacionales importantes a medida que los más jóvenes se van haciendo más liberales.

"Es posible que exista un voto latino, porque en 2008 dos de cada tres votó por Obama y las encuestas dicen que ahora la brecha del presidente con Mitt Romney sería mayor que la que tuvo con McCain", aseguró Mark López, aunque dijo no poder decir con absoluta certeza que pueda usarse ese término.

Mientras tanto para los estrategas políticos las categorías hispano o latino seguirán siendo útiles. El resto deberá esperar a que surja alguna clasificación mejor, aunque es algo que ninguno de los consultados por BBC Mundo piensa que sea algo que esté a punto de suceder.

'The Very Best' Mixtape

Back in 2008 Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit (aka The Very Best) released an excellent mixtape featuring a Vampire Weekend cover and collaborations with M.I.A & Santogold and BLK JKS…

They’ve made it available again as a free (and legal) download on their soundcloud.  Check it out!!!!!!

Click here for the link to The Very Best's soundcloud.

What kind of Latino am I?

I'm a writer who grew up in the suburbs and went to an expensive private college. Why does my upbringing disappoint people?

By Daniel Alarcón

Last April I was invited to a literary fundraiser of sorts. It was a fancy affair, full of very wealthy people and well-dressed waiters carrying trays of wine and strange-looking appetizers. A couple of dozen writers had been invited, and we were plied with alcohol and dispersed into the party. I fell into a few pleasant conversations with some very kind people, all of them genuinely excited for me — You’re so young to have published a book! etc. — and then was seated at dinner next to a woman in her 60s, who spent her meal asking me about the exotic origins of my last name. I’m Peruvian, I told her. But that last name, it reminds me of a bug that bit me when I was living in Mexico! Oh, I said. Where does it come from? she asked. I explained to her at one point that most words in Spanish that begin in “Al” are Arabic in origin, that the Moorish influence transformed the language, so that my last name may have been Arcón or Arco. I’m not sure why I told her this. I’m neither Spanish nor Moorish, and certainly not a linguist, but I felt she needed something to keep her occupied for a bit.

She gave me this wide-eyed look: That is so topical, she said. Like al-Qaida.

Even in the dim light, I’m sure she sensed she had stunned me: not that I’m saying you’re one of those people.

Oh, no, I stammered. Because I’m not.

She patted me on the shoulder. I understand, she said in a conspiratorial whisper; my daughter married a Mexican.

The evening wound on, and I was mostly successful in deflecting this woman’s offensive comments. She mused at one point about my skin color vs. her daughter’s, and other such things. I ignored her as best I could. Mercifully, my table was full of intelligent men and women who had spent their adult lives doing worthwhile things in the arts, international development, education. I almost forgot about this woman sitting next to me. But then, as dessert was being served, she turned and asked me in a voice of maternal concern if my parents had been illegal immigrants.

It’s fine, she added, if they were. I have no problem with that.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Publishing a book doesn’t do much for your soul, but it is certainly an interesting experience. You learn things about yourself and even more about the ways in which you are being interpreted. One question has come up again and again in the interviews I have done in support of this book: What do your parents do? Before my evening at the fundraiser, I never thought much of it. Sure, as a 28-year-old, it grated a bit on my sense of myself as an adult, as a man who has made his own way, but I answered the question without thinking too much about it. My parents, after all, are wonderful people who surely deserve more than a brief mention in any interview, and so I’m happy to talk about them. But after my evening of being verbally assaulted by this inquisitive woman, I began to view this question in an entirely different light.

In essence I am being asked what social class I belong to. What kind of Latino I am. Now, we spend a lot of energy in this country talking about race and not enough talking about class, but is this the way to start that much-needed discussion? I have come to feel I am disappointing certain people when I say I grew up in the suburbs. That I didn’t want for much. That, though we were never ostentatious, we never had serious money problems. We always had food to eat, had safety and comfort and good schooling. These are facts: I grew up comfortably, in an American sense — which means, of course, that in a macro-global sense, I am filthy fucking rich.

At times there is a persistent and even aggressive tone to the questioning, as if I’m hiding something, keeping secret some juicy bit of the expected narrative of the Latino underclass: Did you struggle? Were you alienated? I did a live radio program in a Midwestern college town, where the host began the interview by asking what it felt like to be an outsider in two cultures. Then she badgered me to talk about my parents, and held on to the subject with such tenacity that all I could do to defend myself was break into nervous laughter. Even after I thought the topic had been exhausted, it came up again: What about your mom? the interviewer asked.

My mom, you know, she’s great.

No, I don’t know, the interviewer said, scowling. That’s why I asked.

I wonder if all writers are asked as consistently to explain their position on the socioeconomic ladder. I polled white writers I know, friends of mine, informally and unscientifically, and most were surprised I’d gotten that question so often. They hadn’t. And while it’s true that my work is not generally about the place where I grew up, given that fiction is my thing I never really thought that had much relevance. It’s about making things up, isn’t it? Don’t all writers — regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, native tongue, national identity, social class — don’t we all attempt to write about people who are not ourselves? And how boring would it be if we didn’t? Why, then, this question, over and over?

It’s not that writers of color in this country don’t have their work judged on literary merit; it’s that we are not judged exclusively on these grounds. The writer’s biography is also examined, his or her stats plugged into an authenticity equation to determine, once and for all, how real the work is. There are many reasons why this is self-defeating, and many reasons why we should not play along. When we should be judged on the basis of our ability to imagine worlds and empathize with our characters, we are instead reduced to merely representing that which we must surely know firsthand. When we allow ourselves to be praised for “being authentic,” when we traffic in biography, we are complicit in our own disenfranchisement: Suddenly we are dismissed as serious artists. It’s no longer art; it’s reportage and facsimile. It’s real.

Of course the woman at the fundraiser wouldn’t have minded if my parents had been illegal. She would have loved it. She was waiting all night to hear it. She would have thought it charming, just wonderful, all that suffering so folkloric and heart-rending and made worthwhile somehow because I had been able to write it all down. How fortunate! And what a terrific place America is! She could have gone home with my book that night and felt she was communing with something genuine, that I was whispering secrets in her ear about Peru — or was it Mexico? — or some other place she’d passed through, or thought about only occasionally, a people whose food she’d tried once and found to be tasty, if a bit spicy.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. She couldn’t hide her disappointment when I told her my terrible secrets: that my parents were legal. Worse yet: They are professionals. That I grew up in a house with indoor plumbing and basic cable and a refrigerator. Oh my. It was just awful. We had a fenced-in backyard with a dog, a front yard with a stately oak tree, and a driveway with a basketball hoop. Goodness. And I read books in English from a very young age, and my parents read books too, and worst of all: I went to a very expensive college. Oh, dear, she cries — she can hardly stand it: You poor, poor thing, and still you grew up to be a Latino writer?

www.danielalarcon.com.

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