Ivan Briceno
Professor Gaspar de Alba
Chicano Studies 10A
12 December 2018
Part I – Verde, Blanco, y Rojo
Dear Caliban,
If someone would’ve told me I’d be taking a Chicanx Studies class in college, I would not have believed them. That’s mainly because I had no idea what a “Chicano/a” was and definitely knew nothing about my culture. What’s ironic is that I grew up with parents who were born in Mexico; however, I can assure you that they don’t know much about their own roots because their highest level of education was 5th grade. I remember walking in to the first lecture of my Chicanx Studies class feeling uninterested, but I walked out that day excited for what was to come. Despite living in a predominantly Latino community, school never taught us the history of our people but that’s not surprising because it wouldn’t benefit those in higher power. The more I mature and become more knowledgeable, the more I realize that our country’s power hasn’t been earned through hard work. It is known as the land of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” but we don’t really know the true versions of the stories we are told in grade school. As Elizabeth Martinez calls it, the “Great White Origin Myth.” This has definitely changed the way I look at, not only our history, but the history of other countries with great reign. Our history books give us only one perspective, which depicts us as brave and honest, but that is to make ourselves look better. Never will a country recount the stories of genocide, enslavement, and imperialism they enacted on other less powerful countries. Therefore Caliban, I will tell you how this class has helped me reach a level of concientización—a transformation from being an object of colonialism to a decolonized subject capable of taking back their own power. In other words, I have transitioned from a colonized mind to a decolonized mind.
The first time I read The Tempest by Shakespeare, I didn’t really understand the theme behind it, so I reread it, and I wasn’t sure what the symbolism of your role in the play was. However, I learned that you, Caliban, were in fact a victim of the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically known as colonialism. As a result, you gained a colonized mind—the state of mentality where one serves the colonizer and desires to assimilate. Assimilation is the process of wanting to become something or someone else despite losing your own culture and tradition. Prospero is what I call, the colonizer, because he inhabited your land and claimed it his own. As a result of this, you were forced to serve him in order to avoid being mistreated, and because of this relationship you gained with Prospero, you eventually learned his language. Albert Memmi, author of The Colonizer and the Colonized, claims that “If [the colonized] wants to obtain a job, make a place for himself, exist in the community and the world, he must first bow to the language of his masters. In the linguistic conflict within the colonized, his mother tongue is that which is crushed. He himself sets about discarding this infirm language, hiding it from the sight of strangers” (151). This, Caliban, illustrates that you suffered two of the ten attributes of a colonized mind; a desire to assimilate and linguistic terrorism.
Linguistic terrorism can be seen as repeated attacks on a person’s native tongue by the dominant culture and, and it can also mean the censuring or silencing of a people or culture group. In her book Borderlands: La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua writes, “Ethnic Identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (81). Albert Memmi states that there are only two options for someone to reach a decolonized mind; you must assimilate or revolt. However, when you saw that you could not assimilate, you revolted Caliban. Like Gloria Anzaldua, you gained a feeling of self-determination, the process by which a person gains controls of their own life and fights to gain back their own power, and revolted. You gained a decolonized mind and you cursed Prospero with his own language. In The Tempest by William Shakespeare, you stated “You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you” (Act I, Line 517). The tables turned and you used his colonialism against him. There is a saying that goes “El pueblo que pierde su memoria, pierde su destino,” but you certainly stood for your rights and never lost sight of who you are.
Historically, my people have suffered through what is called the double colonization. The double colonization refers to the 16th and 19th century conquest of the people of Aztec blood and the Mexican territory by the Spaniards in the 16th century and Anglo-Settlers in the 19th. The first conquest of the 16th century had to do with the Spaniards taking over Tenochitlan, empire of the Aztecs. In Song of the Hummingbird by Graciela Limon, Huitzitzilin’s “confession” to Father Benito provided a different perspective of the European conquest because she gave the real story. It begins with her recounting how Moctezuma thought Hernan Cortez was a god that the Aztecs were waiting for based off of a prophecy. With Cortes’ arrival, they celebrated with joy and Moctezuma handed over the Aztec Empire to Hernan Cortes; however, the people of Tenochitlan were furious, yet they could not go against their ruler’s decision. On one hand, Huitzitzilin, a member of the once Aztec Empire, recounted the history of her people to Father Benito. On the other hand, Father Benito, a Spanish priest, only knew the “Great White Origin Theory” version of the 16th century conquest because in his view, Huitzitzilin and her people were evil and wanted to kill the Spaniards. Little did he know, it was the other way around. Father Benito learned the true colonial racism of what happened because they took the Aztec’s empire and made it their own.
The Spaniards incorporated the 3 pillars of colonization: enslavement, genocide, and imperialism. Through enslavement, Huitzitzilin recounts that the Spaniards raped the women of Tenochitlan, including herself. As a result, the Spaniards created the Sistema de Castas—racial categories and hierarchies developed to socially structure people—and from the raping of the women came to light what is known as mestizaje—a person of combined Spanish and Native American descent, regardless of where the person was born. After learning through Huitzitzilin’s “confession” that his people, the Spaniards, were in fact the enemies, Father Benito gained concientización and changed his state of mentality from the colonizer to the decolonized just like you, Caliban. At one point in the book, Father Benito asks Huitzitzilin for her Christian name but she responds with, ““Ma-rí-a-a-a!” [as] She shouted the word. Its vibration crackled with irritation as it echoed through the silent cloister halls. Father Benito jerked back, nearly losing his balance, but after a few seconds, when he regained his composure, he was at least satisfied that she was a baptized Christian and that she had a suitable name” (62). Huitzitzilin also used the imposed language by the Spaniards and in a way cursed at her “Prospero” and showed that she did not respect the imposed religion either because it wasn’t what she believed in. Even though Huitzitzilin’s and my people experienced dispossession—the action of depriving someone of their land, culture, tradition, religion, native tongue, and identity—she never let this bring her down. In the end, Father Benito learned to see Huitzitzilin as a human being and not what the Spaniards portrayed her as.
The second conquest of the 19th century, Caliban, is what sparked the Chicano Movement as we know it. Coined by John O’Sullivan, the term Manifest Destiny, the ideology that the Anglo-Settlers held that it was a God given right to expand into the west, is what sparked what we know as the US-Mexico War of 1846-1848. Beginning with the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, the Anglo settlers fought for the Mexican owned Republic of Texas and won in 1845. However, James Polk, the US President, was not satisfied with this amount of land only, so he crossed the Nueces River, and abused his power to make everyone believe that “blood was shed” on American soil to spark war, when in reality, they were on Mexican territory. In the year 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the document that ended the US-Mexico was, was signed. However, there were four major impacts of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The first is that half of Mexico, my home land, was conquered. The second is that 115,000 people were left with no citizenship. The third is that the creation of the idea of “La Reconquista” and Myth of Aztlan—the idea that Chicanx people coined that called the land south of the border Aztlan, home of the Chicanos, and that they wanted to reclaim that land. Lastly, the fourth impact of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is that the Mexican American identity was created.
In Laura Gomez’s Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race, it is explained that with the signing of the treaty, a new identity was created; however, Mexican Elites became new historical figures that oppressed Native Americans of New Mexico and owned black slaves since they couldn’t in Mexico. In Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race, Laura Gomez writes how the “Mexican Americans [were seen] as an American racial group that was uniquely situated as “off-white”’ (2) because they were still inferior in the eyes of the Anglos. This new Mexican American identity created the fantasy heritage—an attribute of the colonized mind that denies any native or Mexican blood, claiming that they’re blood is only Spaniard. As a result, these new people perpetuated the Pyramid of Petty Tyrants— the oppression of those in a lower “rank” than them to feel less oppressed by those above them—and obtained a feeling of internalized racism.
According to Albert Memmi, there are only two options to gain a decolonized mind; to assimilate or revolt. However, assimilation is not possible and it can never happen because it doesn’t benefit the colonizer. Caliban, I’m sure that at one point you also tried to assimilate with Prospero, but you did not succeed. Similarly, those that went against the evil ways of the Mexican Elite from New Mexico, decided to create a revolution. This revolution against colonialism became known as the Chicano Movement, Caliban. Maceo Montoya’s book Chicano Movement for Beginners brings up important historical figures that obtained decolonized minds like Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Jose Angel Gutierrez, Reies Tijerina, Luis Valdez, Corky Gonzales. These 7 branches known as the political, land, UFW Farmworker, Floricanto, Feminists, Student, and Nationalist branches made way for the freedom of expression for Chicano and Chicanas globally. In Chicano Movement for Beginners, Maceo Montoya explains that “before the Chicano Movement, Mexican Americans were made to feel ashamed of who they were. Their language, culture, and history were denigrated, and the only possibility of escaping a lifetime of indignity was to shed these markers of difference. Being proud of who you are doesn’t seem like a radical statement, but for Mexican Americans it is one of the Chicano Movement’s most important legacies” (328).
Caliban, you, as well as this Chicanx Studies class has helped me understand the true meaning of the proverb “El Pueblo Que Pierde Su Memoria, Pierde Su Destino.” A person who forgets their past loses sight of who they are, and they definitely give up their future. Despite being colonized by the Spaniards and Anglos, not once did we forget who we were and where we came from. We might have died physically, but spiritually, we are stronger than ever. Learning from the point of view of the colonized has really showed me just how colonized I was. I used to be ashamed for being brown, having immigrant parents, and not having blue eyes because I remember all my history books from grade school always portraying the person of color as the criminal. I had all ten attributes of a colonized subject: wanting to assimilate, historical amnesia, cultural schizophrenia, perpetuating the Pyramid of Petty Tyrants, a fantasy heritage, I desired the privileges of the colonizer, I began forgetting my native tongue, I served the colonizer, did not make trouble for the colonizer, and most sadly, had internalized homophobia, racism, and sexism. I have obtained concientización, and I am tired of trying to avoid who I really am. I am no longer going to be quiet, I am going to be louder now. I will show who I am with pride. You and I are very similar Caliban. We are both dark skinned, speak the language of the colonizer, we are both savages, border citizens, and most importantly, we are both decolonized. Like you, I curse Prospero. Prospero might think that he has colonized me with his imposed religion, culture, tradition, and language, but he is very wrong because I will use this against him. I am not my sister, the Ariel, in my life. She still tries to serve Prospero, and she continues to expect that Prospero will embrace her into his culture and tradition. My sister has this fantasy heritage where she thinks that by bleaching her hair, lightening her skin, and wearing contacts, she will fit in and be “white.” I am no longer afraid to speak my native tongue. I am not falling in line with the rest of the colonized individuals. Me llamo Ivan Briceño Díaz, y yo soy Chicano, Caliban.
Con Cariño,
Ivan Briceño Díaz
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 4th ed., Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
Gómez, Laura E. Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race. New York Univ. Press, 2008.
Limon, Graciela. Song of the Hummingbird. Arte Publico Press, 1996.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Beacon Press, 1991.
Montoya, Maceo. Chicano Movement for Beginners. Red Wheel/Weiser, 2016.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. George Mason University, 2003.
Part II: The Maquiladora Femicides
In my 18 years of living, not once did I hear about the maquiladora femicides occurring in Juarez, Chihuahua until I read Profe Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders and watched Señorita Extraviada, the documentary. A femicide is the murder/homicide of a woman or a girl by a man because of their sex; it is a sex-hate crime. The Juarez murders or Maquiladora murders began around the year 1993 and have continually been happening since then. No one is sure why or who they are happening, and only the remains of those young women that were raped, beaten, killed, and discarded in the desert can tell us. However, they are eternally silenced and we can only speculate. Ivon, the main protagonist from Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders, states, it is not in the interests of either the U.S. or the Mexican governments to solve the Juárez femicides, and that the silence that has surrounded the crimes for all these years is “meant to protect . . . a bilateral assembly line of perpetrators,” (335). Similar to Ivon’s conclusions that the femicides are happening because of the bilateral assembly of perpetuators, the documentary holds the same conclusions.
In most crime shows, the common beginning to solving a crime begins with finding who the killer(s) is/are. Therefore, I believe it is important to list all the culprits involved with the murders in Juarez, starting with Desert Blood. In the novel, the videographer from Mujeres Sin Fronteras, Walter Luna is a culprit because the film he gave to Ivon is a “Lone Range Production” snuff film called “Doris Meets El Diablo” masked by the Mujeres Sin Fronterars episode. It shows J.W. raping a 15-year-old girl and killing her in his car, and the last scene is Doris in the desert, rotting. Walter filmed Doris at the Rastreo, and he produced that snuff. J.W. (The Longe Ranger) is the main culprit because he is a corrupt Border Patrol Agent who attempts to illegally arrest and kill Ivon. J.W. is the man organizing the kidnappings, killings, and productions of the films. This shows how even the authorities are culprits in the Juarez Femicides because they know it is happening, but they keep quiet.
Amen Hakim Hassan is another perpetuator because he is the other man ordering the kidnappings and killings of the women from the Maquiladoras. He would regularly monitor the reproduction of the maquiladora women, and he experimented on those women by inseminating to get them pregnant. The police are another culprit because they arrest those who are asking too many questions, and they are capable of sentencing those asking too many questions for years. In the book, the officers plant marijuana in Ivon’s backpack and try to arrest them for it. That was the cops attempt to silence William and Ivon from asking too much. Ariel is another culprit because she works for J.W. and kidnaps girls. Dracula, the one that wanted to suck Irene’s blood, Cancer, the one who wanted to chop her up, Armando, the one who wanted poop on her, Turi, who wanted to stick a knife in her butt, and Junior, the rich guy from the Juarez fair and the medical examiner’s assistant from the amphitheater (morgue) were all workers of J.W. as well and they recorded themselves with the young girls. In the documentary, there is an Egyptian chemist named Sharif who is accused of killing 7 women and is sent to jail. Sharif paid off Los Rebeldes, a gang, to do the killing for him and provide him with the women’s panties as proof. The maquiladora bus drivers were also perpetuators because Sharif paid them to drive them out to the desert into the hands of the Rebeldes gang. The media is another wrongdoer because they avoid making the Juarez murders a relevant topic and ignore it rather than making the killings public. The authorities such as the police rape the women and wrongfully arrest people to silence them. In the documentary, one of the women recounts a female officer attempting to rape her in the bathroom and another officer raping her in fron of her husband. State officials like Francisco Barrio are also at fault because they made it publicly known that they believed it was the women’s faults they were being raped, beaten, and killed.
The novel and the documentary share several things in common. Both emphasize the fact that the murders are a binational conflict. Not only that, they both explain how the North American Free Trade Agreement is the reason why these femicides began because of the American corporations in Mexico like Coca Cola and Walmart. The novel and the documentary show that the victims have the same characteristics; they are poor, slim, dark, have shoulder long hair, and are young. While most of the officials are corrupt, there is at least one protagonist investigator. In the novel, there is Peter McCuts and he helps Ivon find Irene and rescues her when she is kidnapped by J.W. In the documentary, Robert Wesler is the investigator helping solve the murders. Lastly, there are groups that go out in rastreos to help find missing victims in the desert. In the novel, there is Voces Sin Eco and in the documentary, there is the Women’s Homicides group that receives donations of gloves, paper bags, and flashlights to use when searching for bodies.
Both the novel and the documentary provide different perspective about the femicides. The novel, written by Profe Gaspar de Alba, is written in the third person limited point-of-view because the readers are given the thoughts and feelings of only Ivon. The novel’s perspective is different from the documentary because it is written to show the first-hand experience of what it feels like when a loved one falls victim to the femicides of Juarez. On the other hand, the documentary is more informational, and although it includes interviews of family members who lost their loved ones, the viewers like me would find it difficult to connect with them because it hasn’t happened to us. I was merely a spectator learning about other’s losses. I felt that the perspective of the novel was more personal and the film showed a perspective in which the authority and people themselves blamed the women for being victims.According to Carlos Cortes, a film’s celluloid curriculum has the power to create, reinforce and modify public images about ethnic groups, in other words, it creates stereotypes about certain peoples. This curriculum provides information about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. It then organizes that information and then influences values and attitudes. The curriculum then shapes audience expectations about that organized group and it provides models for actions by popularizing certain clothing styles, ways of talking, or ways of walking. In this case, the documentary shows that women are targeted for being nontraditional by working and climbing up the social ladder and not providing for their families by living two lives. In one they are pure and innocent, but by night they are sinful. There is victim blaming and sexism in the Jaurez society. The second lesson taught is that these femicides are a state-sanctioned violence fueled with corruption because the government is not protecting the women or doing anything about it because the more women that are exploited, the more money received by both Mexico and the US. Therefore, it does not benefit either side to advocate for these women if they will lose money.
The stereotype of “La Vida Loca” is that women in Juarez have two images. The first image is the one they show their family, which consists of them working during the week in the maquiladoras. The second image they hide is them working as prostitutes in the weekends. This stereotype has prevented a resolution for the crimes because there is form of hostile sexism. The people of Juarez show disapproval because the women are working in maquiladoras rather than staying home, and to add on, if the people assume that these women are also working as prostitutes, they will have a blame-the-victim ideology for being killed or raped because they were dressing too provocatively. In the film, Francisco Barrio states that women are at fault because they affiliate with the wrong people, and this encompasses the beliefs of most people of Juarez as well. The “Vida Loca” stereotype makes people feel no empathy for the victims, therefore, they don’t have a sense of obligation to help make a resolution. Nothing is done unless their own are going through it. There are two main reasons why stereotypes function as cultural weapons. The first reason is that they lead to the culturally accepted persecution of the group being stereotyped. The stereotype of women living “La Vida Loca” makes it okay for the people of Juarez to blame them for men killing them and persecute them for not envisioning two of the expected Marias women should be; women are expected to be a either a Virgin or Madre. However, because they are viewed as Putas, they are viewed as inferior women. This ties in with the second reason of why stereotypes function as cultural weapons. The stereotypes contribute to the perpetuation of internalized racism, sexism, and homophobia within members of that stereotyped group. The own members of Juarez have internalized sexism toward their women.
After reading Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders, I realized that the femicides brought Ivan Villa face to face with her own Shadow Beast. According to Gloria Anzaldua, the Shadow Beast “. . . is a rebel in me . . . that refuses to take orders from outside authorities . . . it is a part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed" (38). There are 2 phases of the Shadow Beast. Phase 1 is the monster of self-hatred (internalized sexism, racism, and homophobia) and phase 2 is the rebel in us that talks back, disobeys, refuses to submit to stereotypes, and rebels against cultural tyranny. Ivon had a “a fear of going home: homophobia” and she went against this self-hatred when she decided to come home, regardless of her mom’s opinion, and she put this self-hatred aside to look for her sister Irene. Ivon also learned to accept the rebel in her. Ivon refused to assimilate and ran away from the tyrannical culture that she lived in where the women are expected to fit into being a virgin, a mother, or a nun. She learned to accept those faults in her own culture. Looking for her little sister in Juárez put her back in touch with her identity as a border citizen, as well as with her responsibility to her community on the border because she experienced the borderlands crime herself when she had to look for her own sister. This made her realize that she needs to use her knowledge and platform to advocate for the people in her community, especially the women, and expose the corruption that people ignored that she knew existed. Ivon was Her community and the border were a part of her as well as all the other families who lost a love one to the bilateral assembly of perpetuators. Gloria Anzaldua’s defines the border as “una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms, it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture” (25). This relates to the issues of the femicides in Juarez because they did not begin until the North American Free Trade Agreement and the placement of American corporations in Mexico. In this case, the First World has imposed itself into the Third World to create even more of an injury on the women residing there. It has created a femicide culture where the government itself ignores it and takes advantage of the exploitation of labor by women. There is no border to divide the conflict. Instead, it creates an opening where the issue lies in both the First and the Third World.