There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the 35 forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my identity, to my homeland. Woodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woodsmoke perfuming my grandmother's clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hilda's hot, spicy menudo, chile colorado making it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floating on top. My brother Carito barbequing fajitas in the backyard. Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see my mother spicing the ground beef, pork and venison with chile. My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home.
Si le pregunta a mi mama, "^Que eres?"
"Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self inside."
KAUFMAN[101]
Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos' incessant clamoring so that we forget our language. Among ourselves we don't say nosotros los americanos, o nosotros los espanoles, o nosotros los hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citizens of Mexico; we do not mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del otro lado and mexicanos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul—not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.
Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres. (Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.) MEXICAN SAYING
Si le preguntas a mi mamd, "iQue eres?" te dird, "Soy mexicana." My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer "soy mexicana" and at others will say "soy Chicana" o "soy tejana." But I identified as "Raza" before I ever identified as "mexicana" or "Chicana."
As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when referring to ourselves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our predominant Indian genes. We are 70-80% Indian.[102] We call ourselves Hispanic[103] or Spanish-American or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves Mexican-American[104]to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun "American" than the adjective "Mexican" (and when copping out).
Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity—we don't identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don't totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy.
When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing, we call our- 40 selves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestry); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in the U.S.; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas.
Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul—we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the fragmented pieces began to fall together—who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to get glimpses of what we might eventually become.
Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place. In the meantime, tenemos que hacer la lucha. iQuien estd protegiendo los ranchos de mi gente?
and is a term designated by the U.S. government to make it easier to handle us on paper. 13. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created the Mexican-American in 1848.
iQuien estd tratando de cerrar la fisura entre la india y el blanco en nuestra sangre? El Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un ladron en su propia casa.
Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us.[105] We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created, lie bleached. Humildes yet proud, quietos yet wild, nosotros los mexicanos-Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What is the effect of the mixture of English and Spanish in the text? How does this style of writing reinforce Gloria Anzaldua's point?
According to Anzaldua, how do the parents and teachers of Chicano children try to convince them not to speak in their native tongues? Have you encountered pressures or arguments like this?
What does Anzaldua mean by "Chicano/a"? What geographical and political connotations does the word, as she uses it, take on?
What does Anzaldua mean by "linguistic terrorism"? Why does she consider attacks on a language similar to attacks on a person?
What role did literature play in Anzaldua's development of her Chicana identity? How might a body of literature create a separate identity for a group of people?
In what situations, according to Anzaldua, are Chicanos/as "copping out"? MAKING CONNECTIONS
Compare Anzaldua's experiences growing up in an environment hostile to her language with Alice Walker's (p. 271) story of growing up in an environment hostile to her physical appearance.
Compare the way that Anzaldua describes Chicano/a identity with the way that Octavio Paz describes Mexican identity in "The Day of the Dead" (p. 575). How are the two portrayals similar?
Both Anzaldua and Frederick Douglass (p. 24) write about the role of literacy in promoting tolerance and social justice. Where do their opinions differ?
fiction that we are Hispanic, that is Spanish, in order to accommodate ourselves to the dominant culture and its abhorrence of Indians. Chavez,
88-91.
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Write an essay in which you make an argument for the kind of educational philosophy that can be derived from "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." How should teachers respond to students who speak "borderland" languages?