ltI Gloriø Anzaldîrø

ÉordBrlaid_i

laTbe Nt

Frontera'ew Mestizø

Aønt Lutc Books, San Francisco

Frontera'

Preface to the First Edition

The actual physical bordedand that I'm dealing with in thisbook is theTexas-U.S Southwest/Mexican border. The psycholog-ical borderlands, the sexual bordeflands and the spiritual border-lands are not pafticular to the Southwest. In fact, theBordedands are physically present wherever two or more cul-tures edge each other, where people of different races occupyth€ same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper class-es touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks withintimacy.

f am a border woman. I grew up between two cultures, theMexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a

member of a colonized people in our own territory). I have beenstraddling tlrat tejas-Mexican border, and others, all my life. It'snot a cornfortable territory to liye in, this place of contradictions.Hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of thislandscape.

However, there have been compensations for this mestíza,and certain joys. Living on borders and in margins, keepingintact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like try-ing to swim in a new element, an "alien" element. There is anexhilaration in being a participant in the further eyolution ofhumankind, in being "worked" on. I have the sense that certain"faculties"- not iust in me but in every border resident, coloredor non-colored-and dormant areas of consciousness are beingactivated, awakened. Strange, huh? And yes, the "alien" elementhas become familiar-never comfortable, not with society'sclamor to uphold the old, to reioin the flock, to go with the herd.No, not comfortable but home.

This book, then, speaks of my existence. My preoccupationswith the inner life of the SeH, and with the struggle of that Selfamidst adversity and violation; with the confluence of primordialimages; with the unique positionings consciousness takes atthese conJluent streams; and with my almost instinctive urge tocommunicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life inthe shadows.

Books saved my sanity, knowledge opened the locked placesin me and taught me first how to suryive and then how to soar.La madre naturaleza succored me, allowed me to grow roots

that anchore¿ -. iA the earth- My love, of images-mesquit€

flowering, the wind, Ebécatt, whispering its secret knowledge,

the fleeting images of the soul in fantasy-and words, my passion

for the daily struggte to render them concrete in the world and

on paper, to render them flesh, keeps me alive.- The switching of "codes" in this book from English to

castillian Spanish to the North Mexican dialect to Tex-Mex to alan-ere;are

revitalized; they die and are born. Presently this infant language,

this bastard language, Chicano Spanish, is not approved by any

society. But we Chicanos no longer feel that we need to beg

entrance, that we need always to make the first oYerture-totranslate to Anglos, Mexicans and l¿tinos, apology blurting out

of our mouths with eYery step. Today we ask to be met halfway'

This book is our invitation to you-from the new rnestizqts'

I

Atravesanilo Fronteras

Crossinu Borders

i

The Homeland, Aztlán

El otro México

El otro Méxíco que acá bemos construíd.oel espacio es lo que ba sidoterïitorio nøcional.Este es el esfuerzo de todos nuestros berrnanosy latinoanterícanos que høn sabídoprogressax

-LosTigres del Nortel

"The Aztecas del norte . . compose the largest single tribeor -riation of Anishinàbeg Qndians) found in the United Statestoday . . Some call themselves Chicanos and see themselvesas people whose true homeland isAztlán [the U.S. Southwest]."2

Vind tugging at my sleeve. feet sinking into the sand

I stand at the edge where earth touches oceanwhere the two overlapa gentle coming togetherat other times and places a violent clash.

Across the border in Mexicostark silhouette of houses gutted by waves,

cliffs crumbling into the sea,silver waves marbled with spume

gashing a hole under the border fence.

Miro el mar atacarla cerca en Bordet Field Park

con sus bucbones de øgua,

an Easter SundaY r€surrectionof the brown blood in mY veins.

Oigo el tlorido del ma4 el respiro del aíre,

my heart surges to the beat of the sea.

Inthe grayhaze ofthe sun

the gulls' shrill cry of hunger'the tangy smell of the sea seeping into me'

I walk through the hole in the fence

to the other side-

Under my fingers I feel the gritty wirerusted bY 139 Years

of the saltY breath of the sea'

Beneath the iron sþMexican children kick their soccer ball across,

run after it, entering, the U.S.

I press my hand to the steel curtain-chainlink fence crowned with rolled barbed wire-

rippling from the sea where Tiiuana touches San Diego

unrolling over mountaifisand Plains

and deserts,

this "Tortilla Curtain" turning into el río Grønde

flowing down to the flatlandsof the MagicValleY of SouthTexas

its mouth emPtYing into the Gulf.

1,950 mile-long oPen wound I

divi<ting a Pueblo, a culture,running down the tength of mY bodY,

staking fence rods in mY flesh,splits me sPlits me

me raia me raia

24

The Homeland, Aztlí.r¡r / Et otro México

25

The Horireland, I¡ztlân / El otro Méxlco

This is my homethis thin edge of

barbwire.

But the skin of the earth is seamless'

The sea cannot be fenced,el mar does not stoP at borders.

To show the white man what she thought of hisafrogance,

Yemayá blew that wire fence down.

This land was Mexican once,was Indian alwaYs

and is.Ând will be again-

Yo so¡t un þuente tendídodel mundo gabøcbo øl del moiado,

lo pøsado nte estíra Pa"trá'sy lo Presente Pø"delante,

Que l.aVirgen de Guadalupe rne cuídeAy ay a!, sQ mexicana. d.e este lado-

The U.S.-Mexican border es una berída abierta where the

ThirdVorld grates against the first and bleeds' And before a scab

forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds mergingto form a third country-a border culture. Borders are set up todefine the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish øs fromtbern. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep

edge..A bordedand is a vague and undetermined place created bythe emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a con-

stant state of mansition. The prohibitpd and forbidden are its

inhabitants. Los øtrøuesadoslive here: the squint<yed, the per-

verse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the

half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass

over, or go through the confines of the 'normal." Gringos in the

U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the bordedands trans-

gressors, aliefrs-whether they possess documents or not,

whether they're Chicanos, Indians or Blacks. Do not enter' tres'

passers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only"legitimate" inhebitants are those in power, the whites and those

who align themselves with wtrites. Tension grþs the inhabitantsof the borderlands like a virus. Ambivalence and unrest residethere and death is no stfirnger.

In the fields, la mígra. My aunt saying, "No corran,don't run. They'll think you're del otro lao;' ln the confu-sion, Pedro ran, terrifìed of being caught. He couldn't speak

English, couldn't tell them he was fìfth generationAmerican.Sín papeles-he did not carry his birth certificate to work inthe fìelds. La rnigrø took him away while we watched. Se

lo lleuaron. He tried to smile when he looked back at us, toraise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his head down,I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his shoulders.They deported him to Guadalajara by plane. The furthesthe'd ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small border townopposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from McAllen. Pedrowalked all the way to the Valley. Se lo lleuaron sin un cen-

tauo alþobre. Se uino andøndo desde Guadalaiarø.

During the original peopling of theAmericas, the first inhab-itants migrated across the Bering Straits and walked south acrossr

the continent. The oldest evidence of humankind in the U.S.-the Chicanos' ancient Indian ancestors-was found in Texas and

has been dated to 35000 8.C.3 In the Southwest United States

archeologists have found 2o,O00-year-old campsites . of theIndians who migrated through, or Permanently occupied, theSouthwest, l¡ztlân-land of the herons, land of whiteness, theEdenic place of origin of the Lztecz.

26

The Homeland, Aztlân / El otro México

In 1000 8.C., descendants of the original Cochise peoplemigrated into what is now Mexico and Central America aàd

became the direct arìcestors of many of the Mexican people.(fhe Cochise culture of the Southwest is the párent culture ofthe Aztecs. The UtoAztecan languages stemmed from the lan-guage of the Cochise people .)a The Aztecs (the Nahuatl word forpeople ofAztlán) left the Southwest ih f 168,{.D.

Now let us go.Tíbueque, tibueque,

Vátnonos, uãmonos.Un pá.jaro cøntó.

27The Homeland, Aztlân / El otro México

i

Huítzílopochtli, tlJ'e God of tüØar, guided them to the place(that later became Mexico City) where an eagle with a writhingserpent in its beak perched on a cactus. The eagle symbolizesthe spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes thesoul (as the earth, the mother). Together, they symbolize thestruggle between the spiritual/celestial/male and the under-world/earth/feminine. The symbolic sacrifice of the serpent tothe "higher" masculine powers indicates that the patriarchalorder had already vanquished the feminine and matriarchal orderin pre-Columbian America.

At the beginning of 'the l6th century the Spaniards and

Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico and, with the help of tribes thatthe Aztecs had subjugated, conquered it. Before the Conquest,there were twenty-five million Indian people in Mexico and theYucatán. Immediately after the Conquest, the Indian populationhad been reduced to under seven million. By 1650, only one-and-a-half-million pure-blooded Indians remained. The rnestízoswho were genetically equipped to survive small pox, measles,and typhus (Old'World diseases to which the nâtives had noimmunity), founded a new hybrid race and inherited Central andSouthAmerica.s En 1521 nació una nueua. raza, el rnestizo, elmexicano (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood), a t^cethat had never existed before. Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, arethe offspring of those first matings.

. Our Spanish, Indian, and rnestízo ancestors explored andsettled parts of the U.S. Southwest as early as the sixteenth cen-tury. For every gold-hungry conquístødor and soul-hungry mis-sionary who came north from Mexico, ten to twenty Indians andmestízos went along as porters or in other capacities.ó For theIndians, this constituted a return to the place of origin, Aztlân,thus making Chicanos originally and secondarily indigenous tothe Southwest. Indians and tnestizos from central Mexico inter-married with North American Indians. The continual intermar-riage between Mexican and American Indians and Spaniardsformed an eYen greater mestízøje.

Con sus ocbo tribus salíeronde la "cueua del orígen."

los aztecas síguieron øl díosHuítzíloþocbtli.

El destíenolThe Lost Land

Entonces corre la sangreno sabe el índio que bace4le uan a quítar su tierra,la tiene que defende4el indlo se cae rnuerto,y el øfueríno d.e pie.Leuántate, Manqullef.

Arauco tlene unø penarnás negra que su cbartal,yø no son los españoleslos que le bacen lloraqltolt son los lroplos cbll.enoslos que le quítan su þan.Leu ántate, Pøll.øl¡uan.

-Violeta Pana, Arauco tlene una pena"7

In the 1800s, Anglos migrated illegally into Texas, whichwas then part of Mexico, in greater and greater numbers andgradually drove the tejønos (native Texans of Mexican descent)from their lands, committing all manner of atrocities againstthem. Thei¡ illegal invasion forced Mexico to fight a war to keepits Texas territory. The Battle of the Alamo, in which the Mexicanforces vanquished the whites, became, for the whites, the sym-bol for the cowardly and villainous character of the Mexicans. Itbecame (and still is) a symbol that legtimized the white imperi-alist takeover. W'ith the capture of SantaAnna'latèr in 1836, Texasbecame a republic. Tejanos lost their land and, overnight,became the foreigners.

Yø la rnitad del terrenoles uendíó el traldor Santa Annø,con lo que se ba becbo may rícala nøci6n amerícana.

¿Qué øcaso no se confonnancon el oro de las minas?Ustedes muy elegantesy øquí nosotros en rulnas

-from the Medcan corrido,'Del pelígro de la Interuenclón"8

2aThe Homeland, lutlin / El otro Méxíco

I

I

l

In 1846, the U.S. incited Mexico to war. U.S. troops invad-ed and occupied Mexico, forcing he¡ to give up almost half ofher nation, what,is now Texas, New Mexico, Atizona, Coloradoand California.

With the victory of the U.S. forces over the Mexican in theU.S.-Mexican tVar, los norteaffierícanos pushed the Texas borderdown 100 miles, from el río Nueces to el río Grande. SouthTexas ceased to be part of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.Separated from Mexico, the Native Mexican-Texan no longerlooked toward Mexico as home; the Southwest became ourhomeland once more. The border fencerthat divides the Mexicanpeople was born on February 2,1848 with rhe signþg of theTreaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. It left 100,000 Mexican citizens onthis side, annexed by conquest along with the land. The landestablished by the treaty as belonging to Mexicans was soonswindled away from its oy¡ners. The treaty was never honoredand restitution, to this day, has never been made.

The justice and benevolence of Godwill forbid that . . Texas should againbecome a howling wildernesstrod only by savages, or . benightedby the ignorance and superstition,the anarchy and raþine of Mexican misrule.The Anglo-American race are destinedto be foreyer the proprietors ofthis land of promise and fulfillment.Their laws will govern it,their learning will enlighten it,their enterprise will improve it.

' Their flocks mnge its boundless pastures,for them its fertile lands will yield . . .

luxuriant harvests .

The wilderness ofTexas has been redeemedbyAnglo-American blood & enterprise.

-Villiam H.Whartone

The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority,seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicansof their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con etdestíerro y el exìlio fuírnos desuñados, destroncndos, destripa-

29The Homeland, AzrlâIln / El otro Méxlco

dos-we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled,dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.Many, under the threat ofAnglo terrorism, abandoned homes andranches and went to Mexico. Some stayed and protested. But as

the courts, law enforcement officials, and government officialsnot only ignored their pleas but penalized them for their efforts,tejanos had no other recourse but armed retaliation.

After Mexican-American resisters robbed a train inBrownsville, Texas on October 18, 1915, Anglo vigilante groupsbegan lynching Chicanos. Texas Rangers would take them intothe brush and shoot them. One hundred Chicanos were killed ina matter of months, whole families lynched. Seven thousand fledto Mexico, leaving thei¡ small ranches and farms. The Anglos,afraid that tlne tnexicanoslo would seek independence from theU.S., brought in 20,000 army troops to put an end to the socialprotest morrement in South Texas. Race hatred had finallyfomented into an all out war.ll

My grandmother lost all her cattle,they stole her land.

"Drought hit South Texas," my mother tells me. "Ia tíerra se

puso bíen seca y los anitnøles colnenza.ron a tnorírse de se'. Mípaþá. se muríó de un heart attack dejando a mam.á pregnant /con oclto buercos, with eight kids and one on the way. Yo fuí larnayo4 tenía diez años. Tlre next year the drought continued/el ganado got hoof and mouth. Se cayeron in droves en løs pas-tas y el brushland, Panzas blancas ballooning to the skies. -El

síguiente año still no ¡ain Mi pobre madre uiuda perdíó two-thirds of laer ganado. A smart gabøcbo lawyer took the landaway mamá hadn't paid taxes. No bablaba inglés, she didn'tknow how to ask for time to raise the money." My father's moth-er, Mama Locha, also lost Iner terreno. for a while we got $12.50a yeaf, for the "mineral rights" of six acres of cemetery all thatwas left of the ancestral lands. Mama Locha had asked that webury her there beside her husband. El cementerío estabø cerca-do. But there was a fence around the cemetery chained and pad-locked by the ranch owners of the surrounding land. We could-n't even get in to visit the graves, much less bury her there.Today, it is still padlocked. The sign reads: "Keep out.Trespassers will be shot."

30The Homeland, Aztlân / El otro México

In the 1930s, afterAnglo agribusiness corporations cheatedthe small Chicano landowners of their land, the corporationshired gangs of tnexicanos to pull out the brush, chaparral andcactus and to irrigate the desert. The land they toiled over hadonce belonged to many of them, or had been used communallyby them. Later the Anglos brought in huge machines and rootplows and had the Mexicans scrape the land clean of natural veg-etation. In my childhood I saw the end of dryland farming. I wit-nessed the land cleared; saw the huge pipes connected to under-water sources sticking up in the ai¡. As children, we'd go fishingin some of those canals when they were full and hunt for snakesin them when they were dry. In the 1950s I saw the land, cut upinto thousands of neat rectangles and squares, constantly beingirrigated. In the 34o-day growth season, the seeds of any kind offruit or vegetable had only to be stuck in the ground in order togrow. More big land corporations came in and bought up theremaining land.

To make a living my father became a sharecropper. RioFarms Incorporated loaned him seed money and living expenses.At harvest time, my father repaid the loan and fo¡ked ove¡ 4oo/o ofthe earnings. Sometimes we earned less than we owed, butalways the corporations fared well. Some had maior holdings invegetable trucking, livestock auctions and cotton gins.Altogether we liyed on,three successive Rio farms; the secondwas adjacent to the King Ranch and included. a dury farm; thethird was a chicken farm. I remember the \ ¡hite feathers of threethousand,Leghorn chickens blanketing the land for acres around.My sister, mother and I cleaned, weighed and packaged eggs.(For years afterwards I couldn't stomach the sight of an egg.) Ifemember my mother attending some of the meetings sponsoredby well-meaning whites from Rio Farms. They talked about goodnutrition, health, and held huge barbecues. The only thing sal-vaged for my family from those years are modern techniques offood canning and, a food-stained book they Þrinred made up ofrecipes from Rio Farms' Mexican women. How proud my moth-er was to have her recipe for encbílødas coloradas in a book.

El cruzør del mojailollllegal Crossing

Abora sí ya tengo una turnba þara lloraf,'díce Concl¡ita, upoÍ being reunited with

I

3rTtre Homeland, Aztlíu:^ / El otro México

her "Y;H ;ï'ff 'J;å:å::îïii: mother dies

Nosotros los Pobresl2

La crisís. Los gringos had not stopped at the border' By the

.n¿ of tn. .rirreteenth it"tttry powerful landowners in Mexico'

in pa.tn.rrhip with U.S. colonizing companies' had dispossessed

millions of Indians of their lands' Currently' Mexico and her

eighty mitlion citizens are almost completely dependent on the

uls. mart<et. The Mexican government and wealthy growers are

in p"rtrr.rrhip with such American conglomerates as American

Uo,orr, ff*f and Du Pont which own factories called-*)quiioa*os.

one-fourth of alt Mexicans work at møquilado'

rú,.s; most are youns women' tiärlt 3,T;:K;K::ili:;ckuP lights of U'S' autos or sol-

not the Mexican waY' While the

women are in ttre maquíladorøs' the children are left on their

own. Many roam the ,t,ttt, become part of cbolo garrgs' Tlre

infusion of the values of the white culture' coupled with the

exploitation by that culture , is changing the Mexican way of life '

The devaluation of ttre Peso and Mexico's dependency on

the U.S. have brought o" *h"t the Mexicans call la crisis' No

eoPle are unemPloYed' In the

eight times what theY can ins were worth one U'S' dol-

uP inTexas how we'd cross

the border at Reynosa or Progreso to buy sugar or medicines

whenthedollarwaswoftheightpesosandfiftycentauos.

La trauesía. For many mexícanos del otro lødo' t}ae choice

is toitay in Mexico and starve or move north and live' Dícen que

cadø mexícano sietnpre sueña de la conquista en los brazos de

cuatro gringas rubiås, la conquístø del þaís poderoso del nort:'

los Estødos Unídos. En cada Cbicano y ntexicano uiue el mito

del tesoro territorial perdido' NorthAmericans call this return to

the homeland the silent invasion'

'A la cueua uoluerán"

-Et Fuma en lø canciónAmølia"

32

The Homeland, Aztlãn / El otro México

Southoftheborde¡calledNorthAmerica'srubbishdumpbyChicanos, mexicanos congregate in the plazas to talk about the

best way to cross. Smugglers, coyotes' pasa'dores' engan-

cbødorei approach these people or are sought out by them'

"¿Qué dicen-mucba'cbos a ecbársela de mojado?"

"Now among the alien gods with*.

^o ïi,,:1"i"flåiä.1"",, "r,,rrrrg-*ñ.tt going into battle'13

'W'e have a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks'

Today we are witnessing la migración d'e los pueblos mexí-

,onor, the return oOysse-y to the historical/mythological /,ztlârr'

This time, the traffic is from south to north'

El retorno to the promised land first began with the Indians

from the interior of Mãxico and the tnestizos that came with the

ionquirtoaores inthe 1500s' Immigration continued in the next

three centuries, and, in this century, it continuéd with the

braceros who helped to build our railroads and who picked our

fruit. Today thousands of Mexicans are crossing the border legal-

ly and illegally; ten million people without documents have

returned to the Southwest'Faceless, nameless, invisible, taunted with "Hey cucaracho"

(cockroach). Trembling' with fear, yet -filled

with courage' a

àour"g. born of deãperation' Barefoot and uneducated'

Mexicãns with hands like boot soles gather at night by the river

where two wodds merge creating what Reagan calls-a frontline'

^war zorre. The conveigence has created a shock culture' a bor-

der culture, a third country a closed country'rüØithout benefit of bridges' the "mojados" (wetbacks) float

on inflatable rafts across el río Grønde' or wade or swim across

naked, clutching their clothes over their heads' Holding onto

the grass, they pull themselves along the banks with a prayer to

Vir{en d'le Guadøtupe on their lips: þ uirgencita morena' mí

madrecita, dame tu bendicíón'The Border Patrol hides behind the local McDonalds on the

outskirts of Brownsville, Texas or some other border town' They

set traps around the river beds beneath the bridge'14 Hunters in

army-green uniforms stalk and track these economic refugees by

the powerful nighwision of electronic sensing devices planted

33

The Homeland, ^ztlât¡

/ El otro México

34

Ttre Homeland, l¡ztlit¡ / El otro Méxíco

helplessness. As a refugee, sh€ leaYes the familiar and safe home-

ground to ventrrre into unknown and possibly dangerous terrain'

This is her homethis thin edge of

barbwiie.

35

The Homeland,,{'ztlán / El otro México

Movimientos de rebeldíø Yløs culturas que traicionøn

Esos tnouímientos de rebeldía que tenemos en In sangte

nosotroslosnlexicønossurgencomoríosdesbocanad'osenmis uena^s. Y como m'i røza que cada en cuando deia caer

esa esclauitud de obedeceq de call'arse y a'ceptat en rni está

la rebeld'ía encirnita de mi carne. Debajo de mí bumilladamírad'a está una cara ínsolente lístø pøra etcplotar Me

costó rtuy caro rni rebeldía-øcalannbrada con desuelos ydudøs, síntíéndome ínútíL, esttipida, e irnpotente'

Me entra una rabia cuando ølguíen-sea mi mamá' la

Iglesía, la cultura de los anglos-me díce baz esto, baz eso

sín consíd.erar rnís deseosl

Re/elz. Høbte pa"tras. Fui muy ltocicona' Era índíferente

a rtucl¡os ualores d.e mi culture' No me deié de los bom-

bres. No fui buena nl obediente'

Pero be crecido. Ya no sólo paso toda mi uida hota'ndo las

indePendencía is t constant.

The Strength of MY Rebellion

I have a vivid memory of an old photograph: I am six years

old. I stand between my father and mother, head cocked to the

right, the toes of my flat feet gripping the ground' I hold my

mother's hand.

38

Mouimientos de rebeldíø y las culturas que traicionan

To this day I'm not sur€ where I found the strength to leave

the source, the mother, disengage from my famîly, mí tierta, r/rigente, and alt that picture stood for. I had to leave home so Icould find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under thepersonality that had been imposed on nle.

I was the first in six generations to leave theValley, the onlyone in my family to ever leave home. But I didn't leave all theparts of me: I kept the ground of my own being. On it I walkedaway, taking with me the land, the Valley, Texas. Gané mícamíno y me lørgué. Muy andaríega tni bíja. Because I left ofmy own accord tne dícen, "¿Córtlo te Susta la mala uída?"

At a very early age I had a strong sense of who I was and'

what I was about and what was fair. I had a stubborn will. Ittried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime, tolive tife on my own terms no matter how unsuitable to othersthey were. Tercø. Even as a child I would not obey. lwas"lazy."Instead of ironing my younger brothers' shirts or cleaning thecupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, paint-

ing, writing. Every bit of seH-faith I'd painstakingly gathered

took a beating daily. Nothing in my culture approved of me'

Había agarado malos pasos. Something was "wrohg"with me.

Estaba más allá de Ia tradícíón.There is a rebel in me-the Shadow-Beast. It is a part of me

that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses totake orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereigntyof my dership. It is that Part of me that hates constraints of any

kind, even those seH-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on

my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet' Bolts'

Cultural Tyranny

Culture forms our beliefs. Ve perceive the version of reali-ty that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined con-

cepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are trans-

mitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those inpower-men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmitthem. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, forbeing bociconas @ig mouths), for being callejeras (going tovisit and gossip with neighbors), for expecting their husbands tohelp with the rearing of children and the housework, for want-ing to be something other than housewives?

Mouimientos de rebeldía j?o, "utruros

que tra.iciona.n

The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of,and,commitment to, the value system than men. The cultureand the Church insist that women are subservient to males. If awoman rebels she is a mujer møla. lf a wóman doesn'trenounce herself in favor of the male, she is selfish. If a womanremains a uírgen until she marriês, she is a good woman. For a

woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she

could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute,or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourthchoice: entering the world by way of education and career andbecoming self-autonomous persons. A very few of us. As a work-ing class people our chief activity is to put food in our mouths,a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs. Educating ourchildren is out of reach for most of us. Educated or not, theonus is still on woman to be a wife/mother-only the nun canescape motherhood. Women are made to feel total failures ifthey don't marry and have children. "¿Y cuá.ndo te casas,

Gloria? Se te ua ø pasar el tren." Y yo les digo, "Pos sí me cqso,

no ua. ser con un bombre." Se quedan calladitas. Sí, soy bija dela Cbíngada. I've always been her daughter. No'tés cbingando.

Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the ani-mal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown,the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us).Culture and religion seek to protect us from these two forces.The female, by virtue of creating entities of flesh and blood inher stomach (she bleeds every month but does not die), byvirtue of being in tune with nature's cycles, is feared. Because,according to Christianity and most other major religions,woman is carnal, animal, and closer to the undivine, she must'be protected. Protected from herself. 'Woman is the stranger,the other. She is man's recognized nightmarish pieces, hisShadow-Beast. The sight of her sends him into a frenry of angerand fear.

La gorra, el rebozo, la mantílla are symbols of my culture's"protection" of women. Culture (read males) professes to pro-tect women. Actually it keeps women in rigidly defined roles. Itkeeps the girlchild from other men-don't poach on my pre-serves, only I can touch my child's body. Our mothers taught us

well, 'Zos ltotnbres nomás quíeren una cosø";men aren't to betrusted, they are selfish and are like children. Mothers made

;

40

Mouímientos de rebeldla y las culturas que traíclonan

sure we didn't walk into a room of brothers or fathers or uncles

in nightgowns or shorts. 'We were never alone with men, noteven those of our own familY.

Through our mothers, the culture gave us mixed riessages:

No uolt a deJar que níngún Pela.do desgrøclado maltrate a mís

ltíjos. Árrrd in the next breath it would say, La mujer tlene que

ltacer lo que te diga el bombre. Which was it to be-strong, orsubmissive, rebellious or conforming?

Tribal rights over those of the individual insured the sur-

vival of the tribe and were necessary then, and, as in the case ofall indigenous peoples in the world who are still fighting offintentional, premeditated murder (genocide), they are still nec-

essary.Much of what the culture condemns focuses on kinship

relationships. The welfare of the family, the community, and the

tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. The

individual exists first as kin-as sister, as fathe¡ as paddno-and last as self.

In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially inwomen; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is

considered a virtue. In the past, acting humble v¡ith members

outside the family ensured that you would make no one

enuídioso (envious); therefore he or she would not use witch-craft against you. Ifyou get above yourself, you're a¡ enuídíosa'

If you don't behave like everyone else, la gente will say that you

think you're better than otherq que te crees grande. With ambi-

tion (condemned in the Mexican culture and valued in the

Anglo) comes envy. Respeto carries with it a set of rules so that

social categories and hierarchies will be kept in order: resPect is

reserved fot Ia abuela, þapá, el patrón, those with power in the

community. 'Women are at the bottom of the ladder one fl'urg

above the deviants. The Chicano, meJcicano, a;nd some Indian

cultures have no tolerance for deviance. Deviance is whateveris condernned by the commurrity. Most societies try to get rid ofthei¡ deviants. Most cultures have burned and beaten theirhomosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual coìnmon'lThe queer are the mi¡ror reflecting the heterosexual tribe's fear:

being different, being other and therefore lesser, therefore subhuman, in-human, non-human'

4tMouifiielttos de rebeldíø y las culturas que ttaicionan

Half and Half

There was amucbacba who lived nearmy house. La gente

det puebto talked about her being'una de las otrøs, "of t}reOthers." They said that for six months she was a woman whohad a vagina that bled once a month, and that for the other sixmonths she was

^ mîn, had a penis and she peed standing up.

They called her hatf and half, míta'y míta', neither one nor theother but a stånge doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified,a work of nature inverted. But there is a magic aspect in abnor-

mality and socalled deformity. Maimed, mad, and sexually dif-ferent people were believ,ed to possess supernatural powers byprimal cultures' magico-religious thinking. For them, abnormal-

ity was the price a person had to pay for her or his inborn extra-

ordinary gift.There is something compelling about being both male and

female, about having an entry into both worlds. Contrary tosome psychiatric tenets, haH and halfs are not suffering from aconfusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender.

What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality thatsays we are able to be only one or the other' It claims thathuman nature is limited and cannot evolve into something bet-

ter. But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, bothmale and female . I am the embodiment of the bieros gamos: tlae

coming together of opposite qualities within.

Fear of Going Home: Homophobia

For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make

against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She

goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuali-ty. Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, Irnade tbe cboice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent).It's an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out'ofthe whit€, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, theinstincts. In and out of my head. It makes fot loquería' the cra-

zies. It is a path of knowledge-one of knowing (and of learning)the history of oppression of our raza. lt is a way of balancing, ofmitigating duality.

In a New England college where I taught, the presence of afew lesbians threw the more conservative heterosexual students

Mouimientos de rebeldíø y4?o, "ut'u'os

que traicionan

and faculty into a panic. The two lesbian students and we two

lesbian iriétructors met with them to discuss their fears' One of

the students said, "I thought homophobia meant fear of going

Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unaccept-

on its face we have uncovered th€ li€'

Intimate Terrorism: Life in the Borderlands

The world is not a safe plaçe to live in' We shiver in separde

cells in enclosed cities, shoulders hunched, barely keeping the

cal of her; when the males of all races hunt her as Prey'

Alienated from her mother culture, "alien" in th€ dominantolor does not fe€l safe within the inner

d, she can't respond, her face caught

the spaces between the different wodds

she inhabitsThe ability to respond is what is meant by responsibility' yet

our cultures take away our abitity to act-shackle us iri the name

43

Mouimientos de rebeldía 1t .las culturas que trót'icionan

of protection. Blocked, immobilized, we can't move forward'

can't move..backwards. That writhing serpent movement, 'the

very movement of life, swifter than lightning, frozen'

we do not engage fully' rtØe do not make full use of our fac-

ulties. we abnegate. And there in front of us is the crossroads

and choice: to feel a victim where someone else is in control and

blame @eing a victim and transfer-

mother, fatheç ex-lover, friend,

, or to feel strong, and, for the most

paft, in control.

My Chicana identity is grounded in the Indian woman's his-

tory of resistance. The Aztec female rites Of mourning were rites

of defiance protesting the cultural changes which disrupted the

equality and balance between female and male, and Pfotestingtheir demotion to a lesser status, their denigration' l-ike la

Llorona, the Indian woman's only means of protest was wailing.

So mamá', Raza,trow wonderful, no tener que rendir cuen-

tas a nadíe. I feel perfectly free to rebel and to rail against my

culture. I fear no betrayal on my part because, unlike Chicanas

and other women of color who grew up white or who have only

recently returned to their native cultural roots, I was totally

immersed in mine . It wasn't until I went to high school that I"saw" whites. Until I worked on my master's degree I had not

gottenwithinanarm'sdistanceofthem.Iwastotallyimmerseden lo mexícano, a rutal, Peasant, isolated, rnexícanísrno' To sep

my famiþ I had to feel comPetentcure enough inside to live life ondid not lose touch with mY originssystem. I am a turtle, wherever I

go'I carry'home" on mY back.

Not me sold out my people but they me' So yes, though

"home'l permeates every sinew and cartilage in my body' I too am

afraid oi going home. Though I,ll defend my race and culrure

when they afe attacked by non-mexica.nos, conozco el malestar

de mi cultura. I abhor some of my culture's ways, how it crip-

ples its women, ngths used against us'

Towly burras bea ty' The ability to serve'

claim the males, abhor how my culture

makes maclto caricatures of its men. No, I do not buy all the

44

Mouimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traiciona'n

myths of the tribe into which I was born. I can understand whythe more tinged with Ânglo blood, the more adamantly my col-

ored and colorless sisters gloriff their colored culture's values-to offset the extreme devaluation of it by the white culture. It'sa legitimate reaction. But I will not glorify those aspects of my

culture which have injured me and which have injured me in thename of protecting me.

So, don't give me your tenets and your laws. Don't give me

your lukewarm gods. What I want is an accounting with all th¡eecultures-white, Mexican, Indian. I want the freedom to carve

and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding v¡ith ashes, tofashion my own gods out of my entrails. And if going home is

denied me then I will have to stand and claim my spac€, making

a new culture-una cultura ruestiza'-with my own lumber, my

own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture.

The Wounding of the india-Mestiza

Estas carnes indías que despreciørnos nosotros los tnexi-czlnos asi como desprecíøruos condenøfltos a nuestra madre,

Malínali. Nos condenamos 6r nosotros mistnos. Esta raza uen'

cida, enemígo cuerþo.

Not me sold out my people but they me. Malinalí Teneþat,

or Mølintzín, has become known as Ia Cbingada-the fuckedone. She has become the bad word that passes a dozen times a

day from the lips of Chicanos. Whore, prostitute, the womanwho sold out her people to the Spaniards are epithets Chicanos

spit out with contemPt.The worst kind of betrayal lies in making us believe that the

Indian woman in us is the betrayer. We, índias y ntestízas, policethe Indian in us, brutalize and condemn her. Male culture has

done a good job on us. Son løs costumbres que traicionan. Laindia en mí es la sombra: La Cbingadø, TXazolteotl, Coatlicue.

Son ellas Que oyemos larnentando a sus bijas þerdidas.Not me sold out my people but they me. Because of the

color of my skin they betrayed me. The dark-skinned woman has

been silence d, gagged, caged, bound into servitude with mar-

riage, bludgeoned for 3O0 years, sterilized and castrated in thetwentieth century. For 30O years she has been a slave, a force ofcheap labor, colonized by the Spaniard, the Anglo, by her own

45

Mouimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan

people (and in Mesoamerica her lot under the Indian patriarchs

was not free of wounding). For 300 years she was invisible, she

was not heard. Many times she wished to speak, to act, toprotest, to challenge . The odds were heavily against her. She hid

her feelings; she hid her truths; she concealed her fire; but she

kept stokitg the inner flame. She remained faceless and voice-

less, but a light shone through her veil of silence. And though

she was unable to spread her limbs and though for her right nowthe sun has sunk under the earth and there is no moon, she con-

tinues to tend the flame. The spirit of the fire spurs her to fightfor her own skin and a piece of ground to stand on, a ground

from which to view the world-a perspective, a homegroundwhere she can plumb the rich ancestral roots into her own ample

Ínestiza. heart. she waits till the waters are not so turbulent and

the mountains not so slippery with sleet. Battered and bruisedshe waits, her bruises throwing her back upon herself and the

rhythmic pulse of the feminine . Coatlalopeub waits with her'

Aquí en tø soledad prosþera su rebeld'ía.

En Ia soledad Ella Prosþerø.

-!j

'lJ

ii

I

l

iI

I

Irl

I'i

{il

l¡

il

II

ii

:i

I

ilI

i

L

Entering Into the SerPent

Sueño con serpíentes, con serpíentes del ma4

Con cierto rna'r, a.y de serpíentes sueño yo.

Largas, transparentes, en sus banigas lleuanLo que Puedan arebatarle al amoxOLt, ob, ob, Iø mató Y aparece una n aYor

Ob, con muclto rnás infíerno en dígestión.

I dream of serpents, serPents ofthe sea,

A certain sea, oh, of serpents I dream.

Long, transparent, in their bellies they carryAll that they can snatch away from love.Oh, oh, oh, I kill one and alatger one appears'

"n' *jluîå'ifflËi:lT.#: läli',

" * í e nt e s,,,

In the predawn orange haze, the sleepy crowing of roosters

atop the trees. No uayas øl escusad.o en Io oscuro. Don't go tothe outhouse at night, Prieta, my mother would say- No se te

ua.ya. a flreter algo por øllá'. l¡snake will crawl into yout nalgøs,2

make you Pregnant. They seek warmth in the cold- Dicen que

las culebras like to suck cltícbes,3 can draw milk out of you'

En el escusad.o in the half-light spiders hang like gliders'

Under my bare buttocks and the rough planks the deep yawning

tugs at me. I can see my legs fly up to my face as my body falts

through the round hole into the sheen of swarming maggots

below. Avoiding the snakes under the porch I walk back into the

kitchen, step on a big black one slithering across the floor'

Ella tiene su tono4

Once we were chopping cottonin the fields of Jesus Maria Ranch. All around us the woods.Quelites towered above me, choking the stubby cotton thar hadoutlived the deer's teeth.

I swung el azadónó lnar:d. Etquelite barely shook, showered nettles on my arms and face.When I heard the rattle the world froze.

I barely felt its fangs. Boot gotall the ueneno.T My mother came sh¡ieking, swinging her hoehigh, cutting the earth, the writhing body.

I stood still, the sun beat down..A,fterwards I smelled where fear had been: back of ¡eck, underarms, between my legs; I felt its heat slide down my body. I swal_lowed the rock it had hardened into.

When Mama had gone down therow and was out of sight, I took out my pocketknife. I made an

followed the blood, fell onto the softover the red and sucked and spit

I picked up the pieces, placedthem end on end. Culebra de cøscøbel.8 I counted the ratflers:twelve. It would shed no more. I buried the pieces between therows of cotton.

That night I watched the win_dow sill, watched the moon dry the blood on the tail, dreamedrattler fangs filled my mouth, scales covered my body. In themorning I saw through snake eyes, felt snake blood coursethroug;h my body. The serpent, rní tono, my animal cor¡nterpaft.I was immune to its venom. Forever immune.

've sought and shunnedfear and elation flood my

older than gender. She_that's how I think of. la Víbora, Snake W.oman. Like the ancientOlmecs, I know Earth is a coiled Serpent. ,Forty years it's takenme to enter into the Serpent, to acknowledge that I have a body,that I am a body and to assimilate the animal body, the animalsoul.

4aEntering Into rhe Serpent

Coatlalopezlr, She Who Hàs Dominion Over Serpents

Mí mamagrand.e Rarnonø toda su uíd.a mantuuo un altarpequeño en la esquina del comedox Síempr9 tenía las uelasprendidas. Allí l¡øcía þromesas ø lø Virgen de Guødalupe. Myfamily, like most Chicanos, did not practice Roman Catholicismbut a folk Catholicism with many pag î elements. La Virgen deGuadaluþe's Indian name is Coatlalopeuå. She is the centraldeity connectin! us to our Indian ancestry.

Coatlalopeuå is descended from, or is an aspect of, eadierMesoamerican fertility and Earth goddesses. The earliest is Coa-tlícue, or "Serpent Skirt." She had a human skull or serpent for ahead, a necklace of human hearts, a skirt of twisted serpents andtaloned feet. As creator goddess, she was mother of the celestialdeities, and of Huitzílopoclttlí and his sister, Coyolxaubquí, SlneW-ith Golden Bells, Goddess of the Moon, who was decapitatedby her brother. Another aspect of Coatlicue is Tonantsi.g TlaeTotonacs, tired of the Aztec human sacrifices to the male god,HuítziLopoclttli, renewed, their reverence f,or Tbnantsi who pre-ferred the sacrifice of birds and small animah.l0

The male-dominated Azteca-Mexica culture drove the power-ful female deities underground by giving them monstrous attrib-utes and by substituting male deities in their place, thus splittingthe female Self and the female deities. They divided her who hadbeen complete, who possessed both upper (light) and under-world (dark) aspects. Coatlicue, the Serpent goddess, and hermore sinister aspects, TXøzolteotl and Cíbuacoatl, were "dark-ened"and disempowered much in the same manner as the IndianKaIí.

Tbnantsi-split from her dark guises, Coatlicue,'Tlazolteotl,andCíbuacoatl-became the good mother. The Nahuas, throughritual ahd prayer, sought to oblige Tonantsí to ensure their healthand the growth of their crops. It was she who gave Méxíco tlnLe

cactus plant to provide her people with milk and pulque. It wasshe who defended her children against the wrath of the ChristianGod by challenging God, her son, to produce mother's milk (asshe had done) to prove that his benevolence equaled his disci-plinary harshness.l I

A-fter the Conquest, the Spaniards and their Church con-tinued to split Tonantsí/Guadaluþe. Thèy desexed Guadalupe,taking Coøtlalopeub, tl¡e serpent/sexuality, out of her. They

49Entering Into the Serpent

completed the split begun by the Nahuas by making taVirgen deGuødalupe/Vírgen María into chaste virgins and, Tlazolteotl/Coatlicue/la Chingada into putas; inro the Beauties and theBeasts. They went even furthe¡; they made all Indian deities andreligious practices the work of the devil.

Thus Tonanfsi became Guadalupe, the chaste protectiyemother, the defender of the Mexican people.

EI nueue de dicíernbre del añ.o I53I. a las cuatro de la madrugada' un pobre indío que se llamaba tuan Díego

íba cruzando el cerro de Tepeyáccuøndo o¡tó un cønto de pájaro.Alzó la cabeza uío que Ia cirna del cerroestaba cubierta con una bríllante nube blancø.Pørada enfrente del solsobre una luna crecíentesostenidø por un ángelestaba una aztecauestída en ropa de índia.Nuestra Seííora María de Coatlalopeultse le apøreció.'luan Dieguíto, El-que-babla-como-un-águílø,"I.a Vírgen le dijo en el lenguaje aztecø."Para bacer mi øltar este cerro elíjo.Dile a tu gente que J/o solt la tnadre de Díos,a los índios yo les ayudaré|'Estó se lo contó aJuan Zumárragapero eI obíspo no le crqtó.tuan Diego uoluió, llenó su tílna12con rosas de castillacrecíendo mílagrosømente en la nieue.Se las lleuó aI obíspo,y cuøndo abrió su tilmael retrato de laVírgenabí estaba pintado.

Guadaluþe appeared on December 9; l53l, on rhe sporwhere the Aztec goddess, Tonantsi ("Our Lady Mother"), hadbeen worshipped by the Nahuas and where a temple to herhad stood. Speaking Nahuatl, she told Juan Diego, a poor Indian

50Entering Into the Serpent

crossing Tepeyác Hill, whose Indian name was Cuøutlaol¡uacand who belonged to the mazebuøl class, the humblest withinthe Chichimeca tribe, that her name wab María Coatlalopeub.CoøtI is the Nahuatl word for serpent. Lopeub means "the one

who has dominion over se{pents." I interpret this as "the one whois at one with the beasts." Some spell her name Coøtlatcopeub(pronounce{ "Cuatlasl¡upe" in Nahuatl) and say tl:la:t xopeubmeans "crushed or stepped on with disdain." Some say it means"she who crushed the serpent,"v¡ith the serpent as the symbol ofthe indigenous religion, meaning that her religion was to take theplace of the Aztec religion.l3 Because Coatlalopeub washomophonous to the Spanish Guadalupe, the Spanish identifiedher with the dark Virgin, Guødalupe, patroness of West CentralSpain.la

From that meeting, Juan Diego walked.away with the image

of ta Vírgen painted on his cloak. Soon after, Mexico ceased tobelong to Spain, and laVírgen de Guadalupebegan to eclipse allthe other male and female religious figures in Mexico, CentralAmerica and parts of the U.S. SouthwesL "Desde entonces pa'ra'

el mexicano ser Guadalupano es algo esencíal/since then forthe Mexican, to be a Guadalupano is something essential." l 5

5rEntering Into the Serpent

Mi Virgen MorenaMiVírgen RancberaEres nuestra ReínaMéxico es tu tíerraY tti su bøndera.

In 1660 the Roman Catholic Church named her Mother ofGod, considering her synonymous with la Vírgen María; slre

became I.a Santø Patrona de los mexícanos. The role of defender(or patron) has traditionally been assigned to male gods. Duringthe Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata and Miguel Hidalgoused her image to move el þueblo mexicano toward freedom.During t}ae 1965 grape strike in Delano, California and in subse-

quent Chicano farmworkers' marches trTexas and other Parts ofthe Southwest, her image on banners heralded and united thefarmworkers. Pacbucos (zoot suiters) tattoo her image on theirbodies. Today, in Texas and Mexico she is more Yenerated than

Jesus or God the Father. In the Lower Rio GrandeValley of south

- " La Vírgen Rancbera" 1 6

My brown virginmy country virginyou are ouf queenMexico is your landand you its flag.

Texas it is la Vtrgen d.e San Juan de los Lagos (an aspect ofGuødalupe) that is worshipped by thousands eYery day at hershrine in SanJuan. InTexas she is considered the patron saint ofChicanos. Cuando Caríto, mi bennøníto, was missing in actionand, later, wounded in Viet Naìn, mí rnamá' got on her knees 7te prometíó a Ella que si'su ltijito uoluía uiuo slre would crawlon her knees and light novenas in her honor.

Today, laVírgen de Guadalupe is the single most Potent reli-gious, political and cultural image of the Chicano/mexicøno. She,

like my race, is a synthesis of the old wodd and the new, of thereligion and culture of the two races in our psyche, the con-querors and the conquered. She is the symbol of the Trestizotrue tb his or her Indian'values. Ia cultura cbicana identifieswith the mother (Indian) rather than with the father (Spanish).

Our faith is rooted in indigenous attributes, images, symbols,

magic and m¡h. Because Guadaluþe took upon herself the psy-

chological and physical devastation of the conquered and

oppressed indio, slne is our spiritual, poHtical and psychologicalsymbol. As a symbol of hope and faith, she sustains and insuresour survival. The Indian, despite extreme despair, suffering and

near genocide, has survived. To Mexicans on both sides of thebordeq Guadalupe is the symbol of our rebellion against therich, upper and middleclass; against their subjugation of the poorandtlre indio.

' Guadatupe unites people of different races, religions, lan-

guag€s: Chicano protestants, ,{.merican Indians and whites.*Nuestra abogada slempre será.s,/Ottt mediøtrix you will always

be." She mediates between the Spanish and the Indian cultures(or three cultures as in the ctse of mexícanos ofAfrican or otherancestry) and between Chicanos and the white world. She medi-ates between humans and the divine, between this reality and thereality of spirit entities. La Vírgen de Guøda'lupe is the symbolof ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity thatChicanos-mexicanoq people of mixed race, people who have

Indian blood, people who cross cultures, by necessity possess.

La gente Cbicøna tiene tres rtadres Âll th¡ee are mediators:Guadalupq the virgin mothet who has not abandoned us, laCbíngada (Matincbe), the raped mother whom we have aban-

doned, and la Lloronø, the mother who seeks her lost chfdrenand is a combination of the other two.

52Entering Into the Serpent

Ambiguity surrounds the symbols of these three "Our

triothers." Guadalupe has been used by the Church to mete out

institutionalized oppression: to placate the Indians and mexí-

canos and Chicanos. In part,' the true identity of all three has

been subverted-Guadatupe to make us docile and endutlng' lø

Cbingadato make us'ashamed of our Indian side' and lø Llorona

to rrrik. us long-suffering people' This obscuring has encouraged

tJoe u í r ge n/p ut a (whot e) dichotomy'Yet we have not all embraced this dichotomy' In the U'S'

Southwest, Mexico, Central and SouthAmerica the índio andthe

n estízo continue to worship the old sPirit entities (including

Guødalupe) and their supematural power' under the guise of

Christian saints.lT

Las inuoco díosas míøs, ustedes las ittdias

sumergidas en mí carne que son mis sombras'

Usted'es que persísten mudas en sus cueuas'

tlstedes Señoras que øborø, colno yo,

están en desgracía'

\

For Waging War Is My Cosmic Duty: The Loss of the Balanced

Oppositions and the Change to Male Dominance

Therefore I decided to leave

The country (løtlân),Therefore I have com€ as one charged with a

sPecial dutY,

Because I have been given arrows and shields'

For waging war is mY dutY'

And on mY exPeditions I- Shall see all the lands,

I shatl wait for the people and meet them

In all four quarters and I shall give them

Food to e^t ^îd

drinks to quench their thirst'

For here I shall unite all the different peoples!

-HuítziloPocbtlispeaking to the Azteca-Mexical 8

Beforeth€Aztecsbecameamilitaristic,bureaucraticstatewhere male predatory warfare and conquest were based on patri-

lineal nobility, the principte of balanced opposition between the

sexes existeå.rt rtt. peãpte worshipped the Lord and Lady of

53

E-ntering Into the SerPent

L

Duality, Ott¿etecubtli and Omeciltuatl. Beforc the change to maledominance, Coatlicue, I-ady of the Serpent Skift, contained andbalanced the dualities of male and female , light and dark, life anddeath.

The changes that led to the loss of the balanced oppositionsbegan when theAzteca, one of the twentyToltec tribes, made thelast pilgrimage from a place called Aztlân. The migration sourhbegan about the year A.D. 820. Three hundred years later theadvance guard arrived near Tirla, the capital of the decliningToltec empire. By the l lrh cenrury they had joined s/ith theChichimec tribe of Mexitin (afterwards called Mexica) into on€religious and administrative organization within Aztlán, th€ Aztecterritory. The Mexitin, with their tribal god TetzaultteotlHuitziloþocbtli (Magn:ficent Humming Bird on the Left), gainedcontrol of the religious slster¡.2O (In some stories Hu¡tzítopocbtlikilled his sister, the moon goddess Malinalxocb, who used'hersupernatural power over animals to control the tribe rather thanwage war.)

HuítzìIopocbtlí assigped the ,{,zteca-Mexica the task of keeping the human race (the present cosmic age called the Fifth Sun,El Quinto So| alive. They were to guarantee the harmoniouspreservation of the human race by uniffing all the people oneafth into one social, religious and administrative organ. TheAztec people considered themselves in charge of regulating allearthly matters.2l Their instrument: controlled or regulated warto gain and exercise power.

After lO0 years in the central plateau, the Azteca-Mexicawent to Chapultepec, where they settled tn l24g (the presentsite of the park on rhe o.utskirts of Mexico Ciry). There , tà 134j,the A,zteca-Mexica chose the site of their capital, Tenochtitlán.22By 1428, they dominated the Central Mexican lake area.

The Aztec ruler, Itzcoal/, destroyed all the painted docu-ments @ooks called codices) and rewrote a mythology that vali-dated the wars of conquest and thus continued the shift from atribe based on clans to one based on ciasses. From 1429-1440,the Aztecs emerged as a militaristic stare that preyed on neigh-boring tribes for tribute and captives.23 The "wars of flowers"were encounters between local armies with a fixed number ofwarriors, operating within the^ztec World, and, according to setrules, fighting ritual battles at fixed times and on predeterminedbattlefields. The religious puq)ose of these wars was to procure

>4Entering Into the Serpent

prisoners of war who could be sacrificed to the deities of thecapturing party. For if one "fed" the gods, the human race wouldbe saved from total extinction. The social purpose was to enable

males of noble families and warriors of low descent to win honor,fame and administrative officès, and to prevent social and cultur-al decadence of the elite. The Aztec people were free to havetheir own religious faith, provided it did not conflict too muchwith the th¡ee fundamental principles of state ideology: to ful-fillthe special duty set forth by Huitzílopocbtlí of tunifying all peo-ples,,to participate in the wars of flowers, and to bring ritualofferings and do penance for the purpose 'of preventing deca-dence.24

Matrilineal descent characterized the Toltecs and perhapseadyAztec society. Women possessed Property, and were curersas well as priestesses. According to the codices, women in for-mer times had the supreme power in Ti¡la, and in the beginningof the Aztec dynasty, the royal blood ran through the female line .

A council of elders of the Calpul headed by a supreme leader, ortlactlo, called the father and mother of the people, governed thetribe. The supreme leader's vice-emperor occupied the positionof "Snake woman" or Cibuacoatl, a goddess.2s Âlthough the highposts were occupied by men, the terms referred to females, evi-dence of the exalted role of women before the A,ztec nationbecame centralized. The final break with the democratic Calpulcame when the fourAztec lords of royal lineage picked the king'ssuccessor from his siblings or male descendants.2ó.

La Llorona's wailing in the night for her lost children has an

echoing note in the wailing or mourning rites performed bywomen as they bade their sons, brothers and husbands good-bye

before they teft to go to the "flowery wars." Wailing is the Indian,Mexican and Chicana woman's feeble protest when she has noother recourse. These collective wailing rites may have been a

sign of resistance in a society which glorified the warrior and warand for whom the women of the conquered tribes were booty.27' In defiance of the Aztec rulers, tl:'e mazebuales (the com-mon people) continued to worship fertility, nourishment andagricultural female deities, those of crops and rain. They vener-

ated Cbalcltiul¡tlicue (goddess of sweet or inland water), Cbí-comecoatl (goddess of food) andHuíxtocibuatl (goddess of salt).

Nevertheless, it took less than three centuries for Aztecsociety to change from the balanced duality of their earlier times

,5Entering Into the Serpent

and from the egalitarian traditions õf a wandering tribe to thoseof a predatory state . The nobility kept the tribute, the common-er got nothing, resulting in a class split. The conquered tribeshated the Aztecs because of the rape of their women and theheavy taxes levied on them. The Tlaxcalans were the Aæecs: bit-ter enemies and it was they who helped the Spanish defeat theAztec rulers, who were by this time so unpopularwith thei¡ owncornmon people that they could not even mobilize the populaceto defend'the city. Thus the lrztec nation fell not becauseMalinalí Qø Cbingada) interpreted for and slept with Cortés,but because the ding eüte had subverted the solidarity betweenmen and women and between noble and commoner.2S

Sueño con serpientes

Coatl. fn pre-Columbian America the most notable symbolwas the serpent. The Olmecs associated womanhood with theSerpent's mouth which was guarded by rows of dangerous teeth,a sort of uagínø dentata. They considered it the most sacredplace on earth, a place of refuge, the creative womb from whichall things were born and to which all things returned. Snake peo-ple had holes, entrances to the body of the Earth Serpent; theyfollowèd the Serpent's way, identified with the Serpent deity,with the mouth, both the eater and the eaten. The destiny ofhumankind is to be devoured by the Serpent-29

Dead,the doctor by the operating table said.

I passed between the two fangs,the flickering tongue.

Having come through the mouth of the selpent,swallowed,

I found myself suddenly in the dark,sliding down a smooth wet surface

down down into an even darker darkness.Having crossed the portal, the raised hinged mouth,

having entered the serpent's belly,now there was no looking back, no going back.

Why do I cast no shadow?A¡e there lights from all sides shining on me?

Âhead, ahead.

56Entering Into the Serpent

curled up inside the serpent's coils,the damP breath of death on mY face.

I knew ît th^t instant: something must change

or I'd die.Algo tenía que cambiar.

57

Entering Into the SerPent

A.fter each of my four bouts with death I'd catch glimpses ofan oth€rworld Serpent. Once, in my bedroom, I saw a cobra the

size of the room, her hood expanding over me. When I blinked

she was gone. I realized she was, in my psyçhe, th€ mental pic-

ture and symbol of the instinctual in its collective imperçonal,

pre-human. She, the symbol of the dark sexual drive, the chthon-

ic (underworld), the feminine, the s€rpentine movement of sex-

uality, of creativity, the basis of all energy and tife'

The Presences

She appeared in white, garbed in white,standin* w.hite' PuiJåiil*o"t

On the gulf where I was raised, en el Valle del Río Grande

in SouthTexas-that triangular piece of land wedged between the

ftver y et goþ which serves as theTexas-U.S./Mexican border-is a Mexican puebtito called Hargill (at one time in the history ofthis one-grocery-stofe, twoservice-stations town thefe were thir-

teen churches and thirteen cantinas). Down the roa-d, a littleways from our house, was a deserted church' It was known

among thle rtexicanos that if you walked down the road late at

night you would see a woman dressed in white floating about,

peering out the church window. She would follow those who

had done something bad or who were afraid- Los mexicanos

called trer ta Jil.ø. Some thought she was la Llorona' She was, Itlnir¡k, Cíbuacoatl, Serpent Woman, ancient Aztec goddess of the

earth, of wü and birth, patron of midwives, and antecedett of laLlorona. covered with chalk, ciltuøcoøtl wears a white dress witha decoration half red and half black. Her hair form's two littlehorns (which the Aztecs depicted as knives) crossed on her fore-

head. The lower part of her face is a bare jawbone, signifying

death. on her back she carries a cfadle, the knife of sacrifice

swaddled as if it weîe her papoose' her child.3] Ltke ln Llorona,

cibuacoøtl howls and weeps in the night, screams as if demented.

She brings mental depression and sorrow. Long before it takesplace, she is the first to predict something is to happen.

Back then, I, an unbeliever, scoffed at these Mexican super-stitions as I was taught in Anglo school. Now, I wonder if thisstory and similar ones were the culture's attempts to "protect"members of the famil¡ especially girls, from "wandering." Storiesof the devil luring young girls away and having his way with themdiscouraged us from going out. There's an ancient Indian tradi-tion of burning the umbilical cord of an infant girl under thehouse so she will never stray from it and her domestic role.

A mis a.ncas caen los cueros de culebra,cuatro ueces þor año los arrastro,

me troþíezo y me cøígoy cøda uez que m.iro una culebra le þregunto

¿Qué traes conmígo?

Fôur years ago a red snake crossed my path as I walkedthrough the woods. The direction oi its movement, its pace, itscolors, the "mood" of the trees and the wind and the snake-theyall'spoke" to me, told me things. I look for omens everywhere,everywhere catch glimpses of the patterns and cycles of my life.Stones "speak" to Luisah Teish, a Santera; trees whisper theirsecrets to Ch¡ystos, a Native American. I remember listening tothe voices of the wind as a child and understanding its messages.Los espíritus that ride the back of the south wind. I remembertheir exhalation blowing in through the slits in the door duringthose hot Texas afternoons. A gust of wind raising the linoleumunder my feet, buffeting the house. Ever¡hing trembling.

We're not supposed to remember such otherwoddly events.'We 're supposed to ignore, forget, kill those fleeting images of thesoul's presence and of the spirit's presence. We've been taughtthat the spirit is outside our bodies of above our heads some-where up in the sþ with God. We're supposed to forget thatevery cell in our bodies, every bone and bird and worm has spir-it in it.

Like many Indians and Mexicans, I did not deem my psychicexperiences real. I denied thei¡ occurrences and let my innersenses atrophy. I allowed white rationality. to tell me that theexistence of the "other wodd" was mere. pagan supersrition. Iaccepted their reality, the "official" realtty óftne rational, reason-

58Entering Into the Serpent

ing mode wtrich is connected with external reality, the upperwodd, and is considered the most developed consciousness-theconsciousness of duality.

The other mode of consciousness facilitates images from thesoul and the unconscious through dreams and the imagination.Its work is tabeled "fiction," make-believe, wish-fulfillment-White anthropologists claim that Indians have "primitive" and

therefore deficient minds, that we cannot think in the highermode of consciousness-rationality. They are fascinated by whatthey call the "magical" mind, the "savage" mind, tlre partícípatíonmystique of the mind that says the wodd of the imagination-thewodd of the soul-and of the spirit is iust as real as physical real-

ity.32 In trying to beiome "objèctive," western culture made"obiects" of things and people when it distanced itSelf from them,

thereby losing "touch" with them. This dichotomy is the root ofall violence.

Not only was the brain split into two functions but so was

reality. Thus people who inhabit both realities are forced to livein the interface befween the two, forced to become adept at

switching modes. Such is the case with the índía attdthe mestíza.

Institutionalized religion fears trafficking with the spiritworld and stigmatizes it as witchcraft. It has strict taboos against

this kind of inner knowledge. It fears what Jung calls theShadow, the unsavory aspects of ourselves. But even more itfears the supra-human, the god in ourselves.

"The purpose of any established religion . is to glorify,sanction and bless with a superpersonal meaning all personal and

interpersonal activities. This occurs through the 'sacraments,'

and indeed through most religious rites."33 But it sanctions onlyit5 own sacraments and rites. Voodoo, Santeria, Shamanism and

other native religions are called cults and their beliefs are called

mythologies. In my own life, the Catholic Church fails to giYe

meaning to my daily acts, to my continuing encounters with the"other wodd." It and other institutionalized religions impoverishall life, beauty, pleasure.

The Catholic and Protestant religions encourage fear and dis-

trust of tife and of the body; they encourage a split between thebody and the spirit and totally ignore the soul; they encourage us

to kill off parts of ourselves. 'We are taught that the body is an

ignorant animal; intelligence dwells only in the head' But the

59Entering Into the Serpent

body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli andstimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to eventsfrom the imaginetion as it does to "real" evenß.

So I grew up in the interface trying not to give countenanceto el malthe wind,nose withsuddetr shock or fall that frightens the soul out of the body. Andgrowing up between such opposing spiritualities how could Ireconcile the two, the pagan and the Ch¡istian?

No matter to what use my people put the supranaturalworld, it is evident to tne now that the spirit wodd, whose exis_tence the whites are so adarrnst in deniing, does in fact exist.This very minute I sense the presence of the spirits of my ances-tors in my room. .And I rhink løtita is Cibuacoafl, SnakeVoman;s}"e is la llorona, Daughter of Night, traveling the dark terrainsof the unknown searching for the lost parts of herself. I remem_ber Ia lil.a followtng me once, remember her eerie lament. I'dlike to think rhat she was crying fór her lost children, /osChjcanos/mexícanos.

I-a facultad

La facultad is the capacity to see in surface phenomena themeaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below thesurface. It is an instant "sensing," a quick perception arrived æwithout conscious reasoning. It is an acute awareness mediatedby the part of the psyche that does not speak, that comrnunicatesin images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is,behind which feelings reside/hide. The one possessing this sen_sitivity is excruciatingly alive to the wodd.

Those who are pushed our of the tribe for being different are .

likely to become more sensitized (when not brutalized into insen-sitivity). Those who do not feel psychologically or physically safein the world are more apt to develoB this sense. Those who arepounced on the most have it th. ,t.orrg.st-the females, thehomosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the per_secuted, the marginalized, the foreign.

When we're up against the wall, when we have all'sorts ofoppressions coming at us, we are forced to develop this faculty

60Entering Into the Serpent

so that we'll li:now when the next person is going to slap us orlock us away. lØe'll sense the rapist when he's five blocks downthe street. Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so

we hone that radar. It's a kjnd of survival tactic that people,caught between the woilds, unknowingly cultivate. It is latent inaJl of us.

I walk into a house and I know whether it is empty or occu-pied. I feel the lingering charge in the air of a recent fight or love-making or depression. I sense the emotions someone near isemitting-whether friendly or threatening. Hate and feai-themore ifitense the emotion, the greater my reception of it. I feela tingling on my skin.when someone is staring at me or thinkingabout me. I can tell how others feel by the way they smell,where others are by the air pressure on my skin. I can spot thelove or greed or generosity lodged in the tissues of another.Often I sense the dir€ction of and my distance from people orobjects-in the dark, or with my eyes closed, withorit lookin$. Itmust be a vestige of a proximity sense, a sixth sense that's laindormant from long-ago times.

Fear develops the proximity sense aspect of. h. facultad. Butthere is a deeper sensing that is another aspect of this faculty. Itis an¡hing that breaks into one's everyday mode of perception,that causes a break in one's dèfenses and resistance, anythingthat takes one from one's habitual grounding, causes the depthsto op€n up, causes a shift in perception. This shift in perceptiondeepens the way w€ see concrete obiects and people; the senses

become so acute and piercing that vze can see through things,view events in depth, a piercing that reaches the underworld(the realm of the soul). As we plunge verticalfy, the break, withits accompanying new seeing, makes us pay attention to the soul,and wi arê thus cafried into awareness-irn experiencing of soul(SeÐ.

'We lose something in this mode of initiation, something istaken from us: our innocence, our unknowing ways, our safe andeísy ignorance. There is a prejudice and a fear of the dark,chthonic (underworld), material such as depression, illness,death and the violations that can bring on this break.Confronting anything that tears the fabric of our everyday modeof consciousness and that thrusts us into a less literal and morepsychic sense of reality increases awareness and la facultad.

6tEntering Into the Serpent

La herenciø de Coøtlicue

The Coatlicue State

dark dumb windowless no moon glidesacross the stone the nightsky alone alone

no lights just mirrorwalls obsidian smoþ in themirror she sees a woman with four heads the heads

turning round and round spokes of a wheel her neckis an axle she stares at each face each wishes theother not there the obsidian knife in the air thebuilding so high should she jump would she feelthe breeze fanning her face tumbling down the steps

of the temple heart offered up to the sun wallgrowing thin thinner she is eyeless a mole

burrowing deeper tunneling here tunneling theretunneling through tlìe air in the photograph a double

image a ghost arm alongside the flesh one inside her, head the cracks ricocheting bisectingcrisscrossing she hears the rattlesnakes stirring in

a iar being fed s¡ith her flesh she listens to theseam between dusk and dark they are talking she hears

their frozen thumpings the soul encased in blackobsidian smoking smoking she bends to catch a

protean being

feather of herself as she fallssilence of the empty air turning

at midnight turning into a wild pig how to get backall the feathers put them in rhe iar the rattling

lost in theturning

full circle and back darkglides across rhe oightsþ

Enfrentamientos con el alma

64La berencia de Coatlicue / T]f¡e Coatticue State

Vhen my father died, my mother pur blankers over the níir_rors. Consciously, she had no idea wfry. perhaps a þart of herknew that a mi¡ror js a door through which the soul may"pass" to the other side and she didn't want us to -accidentany-fottow our farher ro the prace where tne sours liin. o."i'iä

The mirror is an ambivalent symbol. Not onl¡ does it ,.pr*duce images (the twins that stand for thesis and antithesis);l l¿contains and absorbs them. In ancient times the Mexican Irrái"r^made mi¡rors of volcanic glass known as obsidian. seers wouldgaze into a mirror until they fe, inro a trance . within the black,glossy surface, they saw clöuds of smoke which would p"a ioreveal a vision concerning the future of the tribe and the will ofthe gods.2

There is another quality to the mirror and that is the act ofseeing. Seeing and being seen. Subject and obiect, I and she.The eye pins down the object of iti gîze, scrutinizes it, judges it.A glance can freeze us in place; it cãn "possess, us. It can erecta barrier against the world. But in a gince also lies awareness,knowledge. Thesê seemingly contradictory aspects_the act ofbeing seen, held immobrlized.by a glance, and "seeing through"an experience-are symbolized by the undergrounaãsp.cts"ãrCoatlícue, Cibuøcoatl, and Ilazoiteofl which clusrer in what Icall the Coatl¡cue state.

El secreto terrible y la rajadura

Shame is a wound felt from the inside, dividing- us both from ourselves and from one another.-Gershen Kaufman3

I was two or three years old the first time coatricue visitedmy psyche, the fi¡st time she .devoured, me (and I."fell" into theunderworld). By th. worried look on my parents, faces I learnedearþ that something was fundam.rrtalyïrong witt rrre. Vril;;was older I would look into the mirror, afraid of mi secreto ter_rible, the secret sin I tried to concear- ra seña, the mark of theBeast. I was afraid it was in plain sight for all to see. The secret

windowless no moonnightsþ night

I tried to conceal was that I was not normal, that I was not likethe others. I felt alien, I knew I was alien. I was the mutantstoned out of the herd, something deformed with evil inside.

65Lø berencia de Coatlicue ,/ Thre Coatlicue State

has many names that she doesn't know her names She has

She has this fear that she has no names

this fearclearing and darkening the fear that she's the dreamworkinside someone else's skull She has this fear that ifshe takes off her clothespeels off her skinvessels strips the flesli from the bone

that she's an image

the marrowreach herselflion's or witch's or serpent's headswallow her and grininto herself she won't find anyone that when she gets"there" she won't find her notches on the trees thebirds will have eaten all the crumbsthat she won't find the way back

She has this fear

that if she dr'ains

She felt shame for being abnormal. The bleeding distancedher from others. Her body had betrayed her. She could not trusther instincts, her "horses," because they stood for her core self,her dark Indian self. La consentida, la rancberita'que se auer-gonzøba de su cuerþo tried not to show pain but the kids couldread her face.

Her soft belly exposed to the sharp eyes of everyone; theysee, th€y see. Their eyes penetrate her; they slit her from headto b€lly. Rajada. She is at their mercy, she can do nothing todefend herseH. And she is ashamed that they see her so exposed,so yulnerable. She has to learn to push their eyes away. She hasto still her eyes from looking at their feelings-feelings that cancatch her in their gaze, bind her to them.

'Ob, sílencío, silencio. . en torno de mi cama

'" " : Åii:"Ki!:, :,:' : ; i:":::,ï " t t a m a "

Internada en rni cuarto con ntíintocada píel, en el oscuro uelo con la nocbe. Ernbrazada en

turns around to embrace herself a

that comes and goes

shoves her brain aside

that she

She has this fear that if she digs

that when she does

the bloodflushes out

will turn around

She has this fear

pesadíllas, escarbando el hueso d.e la ter-nura me enuejezco. yauerás, tan bajo que ,ne be cøído.

Días enteros rne la þaso atran-cad.a con candado. Esa Gloría, ¿qué estará bacíendo en sucuarto con la santa y la þeruersa? Mosquìta nuerta, ¿þor qué'tas tøn quietecítø? Por que l.a uída rue arremolina þa'ca y pa'ya corno boJa seca, rne araña y .me golpea, me desltuesa_tttî culþa por que me desd.eñ.o. þ rnàmâ, tan bajo que înel¡e caído.

Esa Gloría, la que niega, la queten e correr desenfrenada, la que tíe.ne miedo renegar at papel.de uíctima. Esa, la que uoltea su cara a Ia pared d.escascarada.Míra, tan baJo que se ba caído.

Desþierta rne encuentra la rna-drugada, unø desconocida aullando profecías entre cenizas,sangrando mi cara con, Ias uñøs, escarbando l.a desgracíadebajo de rni máscarø. Ya uez, tøn bajo que rne lte cøído.

Se enmudecen rnis ojos aI søberque la uída no se entrega. Mi pecado no es la rebeldía ní elanajamíento. Es que no ømé mucbo, que anduue índecísa y aI.ø Prísø, que tuue þoca fe y no fui dispuesta de querer ser loque soJl. Traícioné a mi cannìno.

Ya uerás, tan bajo que me becaído. Aquí nomás encettada en mí cuarto, sangrándome løcara con las uñas. Esa Gloria que recbazø entregarse a su des_tíno. Quiero contenerme, no puedo y desbordo. Vas a uer lo altoque uoy a subíti aquí uengo.

I locked the door, kept the world out; I vegetated, hibernat_ed, remained in stasis, idled. No, telephone, no television, noradio. ,{,lone with the pr€sence in the room. Who? Me, my psy_che, the Shadow-Beast?

During the dark side of rhe moon something in the mirrorcatches my gaze, I seem all eyes and nose. Inside my skull some_thing shifts. I "see"my face. Gloria, the everyday face; prieta andPrietita, my childhood faces; Gaudi, the face my mother and sis_ter and brothers know. And there in the black, obsidian mir¡or ofthe Nahuas is yet another face, a stranger's face.Simultánearrente'me miraba la cara desde distíntos ángulos.Y mi cara, co¡no La reølídad, tenía un caracter muttíþlice.

66La berencia de Coatlicue / TIte Coatlicue State

The gaping mouth slit heart from mind. Between the twoeyes in her head, the tongueless magical eye and the loquaciousrational eye, was la rqiadura, the abyss that no bridge could span.Separated, they could not visit each other and each was too faraway to hear what the other was saying. Silence rose like a riverand could not be held back, it flooded and drowned ever¡hing.

Nopøl de castilla

Soy nopal de castilla like the, spineless and thereforedefenseless cactus that Mamagrande Ramona grew in back of hershed. I have no protection. So I cultivate needles, nettles, razor-sharp spikes to protect myself from others

There ^te

many defense strategies that the self uses toescape the agony of inadequacy and I have used all of them. Ihave split from and disowned those parts of myself that othersrejected. I have used rage to drive others away arrd, to insulatemyself against exposure. I have reciprocated with contempt forthose who have roused shame in me. I have internalized rage andcontempt, one part of the self (the accusatory persecutory judg-mental) using defense strateges against another part of the self(the obiect of contempt). As a person, l, Ls a people, we,Chicanos, blame ourselves, hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves.Most of this goes on unconsciously; we only know that we arehurting, \¡¡e suspect that there is something "wrong" with us,somettring fundamentally "wrong."

In order to escape the threat of shame or fear, on€ takes ona compulsive, repetitious activity as though to busy oneself, todistract oneself, to keep awareness atb^y. One fixates on drink-ing, stnoking, popping pills, acquiring friend after friend whobetrays; repeating, repeating, to prevent oneself from "seeing."

Held in thrall by one's obsession, by the god or goddêss sym-bolizing that addiction, one is ngt empty enough to become posíessed by anything or ariyone,else. One's attention cannot becaptured by something €lse, one does not "see" and awarenessdoes not happen. One remains ignorant of the fact that one isafraid, and that it is fear that holds one petrified, frozen in stone.If we can't see the face of fear in the mirror, then fear must notbe there. The feeling is censored'¿nd erased before it registers inouf consctousness.

67La bercnclø de Coatllcue / The Coatlicue St^te

An addiction (a repetitious act) is a ritual to help one

through a trying time; its repetition safeguards the passage, itbecomes one's talisman, one's touchstone- If it sticks around

after having outlived its usefulness, we become "stuck" in it and

it takes possession of us. But we need to be arrested. Some past

experience or condition has created this need. This stopping is a

survival mechanism, but one which must vanish when it's no

longer needed if growth is to occur.W'e need Coatlicue to slow us .uP so that the psyche can

assimilate previous experiences and process the changes' If we

don't take the time, she'll lay us low with an illness, forcing us to"rest." Come, little green snake. kt the wound caused by the

serpent be cured by the serpent- The soul uses everything to

further its own making. Those activities or coatlicue states

which disrupt the smooth flow (complacency) of life are exactly

what propel the soul to do its work: make soul, increase con-

sciousness of itself. Our greatest disapPointments and painful

experiences-if we can make meaning out of them-can lead us

toward becoming more of who we are. Or they can remain

meaningless. Ttre Coatlicue state can be a way station or it can

be a way of life.

The Coatlicn¿ State

Coatlicue da luz a todo y a todo deuora' Ella es el tnon-

struo que se tragó todos los seres uiuíentes y los astros, es eI

ffionstruo que se traga al sol cada tarde y le da luz cada

mañana. Coøtlicue is a rupture in our everydây world. As the

Earth, she opens and swallows us, plunging us into the under-

woild where the soul resideò, allowing us to dwell in darkness'

Coatlícueï is one of the powerful images, or "archetypes,"ó

that inhabits, or passes through, my psyche. For me, la Coa-

tlícue is the cônsuming internal whidwind,T the symbol of the

underground aspects of the psyche. Coøtlicue is the mountain,

the Earth Mother,yho conceived all celestial beings out of her

cavernous womb.8 Goddess of birth and death, Coatlicue gives

and takes away life; she is the incarnation of cosmic processes'

Simultaneously, depending on the person, she represents:

duality in life, a synthesis of duality, and a third perspective-something mor€ than mere duality or a synthesis of duality'

68

La berencia de Coatlicae / Tl¡e Coatlicue State

I first saw the statue9 of this life-indeath and death-in-life,

headless 'monster" goddess (as the Village Voíce dubbed her) at

the Museum of Natural His¡ory in New York City. She has no

head. In its place two spurts of blood gush up, transfiguring into€normous twin rattlesnakes facing each other, which symbolize

the earth-bound character oî human life. She has no hands' In

their place are two more serpents in the form of eagle-like claws,

which are repeated at her feet: claws which symbolize the dig-

ging of gfirves into the earth as well as the sþ-bound eagle, the

masculine force. Hanging from her neck is a necklace of open

hands alternating with human hearts. The hands symbolize the

act of giving life; the hearts, the pain of Mother Earth giving birthto all her children, as well as the pain that humans suffer through-

out life in their hard struggle for existence. The hearts also represent the taking of tife through sacrifice to the gods in exchange

for their preservation of the world. In the center of the collar

hangs a human skull with living eyes in its sockets. Another iden-

rical skull is attached to her belt. These symbolize life and death

together as parts of one Process.

Coatlícue depicts the contradictory. In her figure, all the

symbols important to the religion and philosophy of the Aztecs

are integrated. Like Medusa, the Gorgon, she is a symbol of the

fusion of opposites: the eagle and the serpent' heaven and the

underworld, life and death, mobility and immobility, beauty and

horror.Wheg pain, suffering and the advent of death become intol-

erable, there ii Tlazolteotl hovering at the crossroads of life to

lure a persorr awîy from his or her seemingty appointed destina-

üon and we are treld embrujadøs, kept from our destiny, oursoularrested. ve are not living up to ouf potentialities and thereby

impeding the evolution of the soul-or worse, Coatlicue, tll.eEarth, op€ns and plunges us into its maw, devours us' By keeping

the conscious mind occupied or immobile, the germination wofktakes place in the deep, dark èarth ofthe unconscious'

Frozen in stasis, she perceives a slightmovement-a thousand slithering serPent hairs,

Coatlícue. It is activity (not immobility) at itsmost dynamic stage, but it is an undergroundmovement requiring all her energy. It brooks no

interference from the conscious rnind.

69

La berencia de Coatlicue ,/ T.þte Coatlícue State

Tlne Coatlicue State Is A Prelude To Crossing

70La berencia de Coatlicte / T}¡e Coøtlicue State

Voy cagâ.ndome de rniedo, buscando lugares acueuados' Idon't want to know, I don't want to be seen. My resistance, myrefusal to know some truth about myself brings on that paralysis,

depression-brings on the Coatlicue stat€. At first I feel exposedand opened to the depth of my dissatisfaction. Then I feel myselfclosing, hiding, holding myself together rather than allowingmyself to fall apart.

Sweating, with a headache, unwilling to communicate,frightened by sudden noises, esto)l asusta'da. ln the Mexican cul-ture it is called susto, tlae soul frightened out of the body. Theafflicted one is allowed to rest and recuperate, to withdraw into ,

the "undefwodd" without drawing condemnation.I descend into míctlá.n, the underworld. In the "place of the

dead" I wallow, sinking deeper and deeper. When I reach bot-tom, something forces me to push up, walk toward the mirror,confront the face ln the mi¡ror. But I dig in my heels and resist.I don't want to see what's behind Coatlicue's eyes, her hollowsockets. I can't confront her face to face; I must take small sips

of her face through the comers of my eyes, chip away at the icea sliver ata.time.

Behind the ice mask I see my own eyes. They will not lookat me. Míro que estoy encabronnda, níro la resístencia-resi*tance to knowing, to letting go, to that deep ocean where onceI dived into death. I am afraid of drowning. Resistance to sex,

intimate touchifig, opening myself to the alien other where I am

out of control, not on patrol. The outcome on the other side

unknown, the reins failing and the horses plunging blindly overthe crumbling path rirnming the edge of the cliff, ptunging intdits thousand foot drop.

Every increment of consciousness, every step forward is atrauesía, a crossing. I am again an alien in new territory. Andagain, and again. But if I escape conscious awareness, escape"knowing," I won't be moving. Knowledge makes me moreaware, it makes me more conscious. "Knowing" is painfulbecause after "it" happens I canlt stay in the same place and becomfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before.

No, it isn't eno¡rgh that she is fernale-a secondclass meín-ber of a conquered people who are taught to believe they are

inflrior because they have indigenous blood, believe in the

supernatural and speak a deficient language. Now she beats her:

self over the head for her "inactivity," a stage that is as necessary

as breattring. But that mqans being Mexican' All her life she's

been told that Mexicans ate laty. She has had to work twice as

hard as others to meet the standards of the dominant culture

which have,.in part, become her standards.

Why does she have to go and try to make "sense" of it all?

Every time she makes "sense" of something, she has to "cross

overi kicking a hole out of the old boundaries of the self and slip-

ping under or over, dragging the old skin-along, stumbling over

it. It h"-p.rs her movement in the new territory dragging the

ghost of the past Yith her. It is a dry birth, a breech birth' a

screaming birth, onê that fights her every inch of the way' It isonly when she is on the other side and the shell cracks open and

the lid from her eyes lifts that she sees things in a different per-

spedtive. It is only then that she makes the connections, formu-

lates the insights. It is only then that her consciousness expands

a tiny notch, another rattle appeafs on the rattlesnake tail and the

added groqth sliglitly alters the sounds she makes. Suddenly the

repressed energy rises, makes decisions, connects with con-

scious energy and a new life begins. It is her reluctance to cfoss

over, to make a hole in the fence and walk across, to cross the

river, to take that flying leap into the dark, that drives her to

escap€, that forces her into the fecund cave of her imagination

where she is bradled in the arms of Coatlícue, who will never let

her go. If she doesn't change her ways, she will remain a stone

forever. No bay má.s qlte cambíør.

The one who watches, Darkness, my night. There is dark-

ness and there is darkness. Though darkness was "present" before

the world and all things were created, it is equated with matter,

the maternal, the germinal, the potential- The dualism oflight/darkness did not arise as a symbolic formula for morality

uãtil primordial darkness had been split into tight and dark'lo

Now Darkness, my night, is identified with the negative, base

and evil forces-the masçuline order casting its dual shadow-and all these are identified with darkskinned people.

In attending to this first darkness I am led back to the mys-

tery of the Origin. The one who watches, the one who whispers

in ä stither of serpents. Something is trying to tell me. That voice

7lLa berencia. d.e Coatlicue ,/ T:he Coatlícue State

at the edge of things. But I know what I want and I stamp ahead,

arrogance edging my face. I tremble before the animal, the alien,

the sub- or suprahuman, the me that has something in common

with the wind and the trees and the rocks, that possesses a

demon determination and ruthlessness beyond the human'

ThatWhichAbides

En esta tarde gris rne siento entre d.os 6.guas, el calor d'e mícasa. y el frío de afuerø. Los dos arbitran por el cuadro de

uídrio d.e la uentana. I can sense the premonition of cold in the

way the wind stirs the leaves in the trees, in the gray slate square

of sky that frames my window. rùlinter's coming.I sit between warmth and cold never knowing which is my

territory, domesticated as I am by human warmth and the peck

peck of my keyboard. Having lived my whole life in an ignorant

shadow, under the sight of hunger shuffling its little child feet,

whimpering, lost. Pain is the way of life . Now I sense a warm

breath on my face, see the shadow of a giant bird, her huge

wings folding over me. Ella.

I spent the first half of my life learning to rule myself, togrow a will, and now at midlife I find that autonomy is a boulder

on my path that I keep crashing into. I can't seem to stay out ofmy os¡n way. I've always been aware that there is a greater

power than the conscious I. That power is my inner self, the enti-

ty that is the sum total of atl my reincarnations, the godwoman

in me I call Antigua., mi Diosa, the divine within, Coatlicue-

C i b u a c o øt t-TI a z o lt e o tl-To n an tz í n - C o atlal op e u b - G u ø d a lup e -they are one. 'When to bow down to Her and when to allow the

limited conscious mind to take over-that is the problem'Let the wound caused by the serpent be cured by the ser-

pent. For a few minutes, Antígua, mi Diosa,I'm going to give up

my control to you. I'm going to pull it out' I plunge my hands

into my solar plexus, pull. Ptop. Out comes the handle with a

dial face, dripping blood, unblinking eyes, watching' Eagle eyes,

my mother calls me. Looking, always looking, only I don't have

enough eyes. My sight is limited. Hete, Antigua, take this lever-

shaped handle with needles that measure the temperature, the

air pressure, danger. You hold it for a while. Promise to give itback. Please, Antigua.

72

Lø berencia de Coatlicue ./ Thc Coatlicue State

I'll take over now, she tells me. The alarm will go off ifyou're in danger. I imagine its shrill peel when danger walks

around the corner, the üsulating walls coming down around me.

Suddenty, I feel like I have another set of teeth in my mouth.A tremor goes through my body from my buttocks to the roof ofmy mouth. On my palate I feel a tingling ticklish sensation, thensomething seems to be falting on me, over m€, a curtain of rainor light. Shock pulls my breath out of me. The sphincter muscle

tugs itself up, uP, and the heart in my cunt starts to beat' A lightis all around me-so intense it could be white or black or at that

iuncture where extremes turn into their opposites. It passes

through my body and comes out of the other side. I collapse intomyself-a delicious caving into myself-imploding, the walls likematchsticks softly folding inward in slow motion.

I see oposícíón e insurreccíón. I see the crack growing onthe rock. I see the fine frenzy building. I see the heat ofanger orrebellion or hope split open that rock, releasing la Coatlícue.And someone iri me takes matters into our own hands, and even

tually, takes dominion over serpents-over my own body, my sex-

ual activity, my soul, my mind, my weaknesses and strengths.

Mine. Ours. Not the heterosexual white man's or the coloredman's or the state's or the culture's or the religion's or the par-

ents'-just ours, mine.And suddenly I feel everything rushing to a center, a

nucleus. All the lost pieces of myself come flying from thedesefts and the mountains and the valleys, magnetized towardthat center. ComPleta.

Something pulsates in my body, a luminous thin thing thatgrows thicker every day. Its presence never leaves me. I am

never alone. That which abides: my vigilance, my thousand

sleepless serpent eyes blinking in the night, forever open. And Iam not afratd.

73La berencia de Coatlicue / T\e Coatlicue Sta:te

How to Thme a Wild Tongue

yourronsue,"thedentisrsays,r;ffi J'"i:Trtrï.tå::'Tï:îti';mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a

motherlodeThe dentist is cleaning out my

roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. "I can't cap thattooth yet, you're still drainingi he says.

"We're going to have to do

something about your tonguei i hear the anger rising in his

voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushingback the drills, the long thin needles. 'I've never seen an¡hingas strong or as stubborn,'he says. And I think, how do you tame

a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle

it? How do you make it lie down?

. "Who is to say that robbing a people of

' ""1ff; ä#i J-,g;i than war? "

I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess-thatwas good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. Iremember being sent to the corner of the classroom for "talkingback" to theAnglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell herhow to pronounce my name. "If you want to beAmerican, speak

'American.' If you don't like it, go back to Mexico where youbelong." {

"I want you to speak English. Pa'ballar buen trabaio tienesque saber babtar et inglés bien. Qué uale tod'a tu educación sí

todauía bablas inglés con an'accent,'" rny mother would say,

mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan'AmericanUniversity, I, and all Chicano students were required to take twospeech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents.

Attacks on one's form of expression with the intent to cen-

sor are a violation of the FirstAmendment. El Anglo con cara de

inocente nos arra.ncó la lengua. Vild tonguès can't be tamed,they can only be cut out.

Overc'oming the Tradition of Silence

Abogadas, escupimos eI oscuro.Peleando con nuestrø propia sombrael sílencío nos sepulta.

En boca cerrada no entran Ínoscóts. "Flies don't enter a

closed mouth" is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child. Ser

babl.adora was to be a gossip and a liar, to talk too much.Mucbøcbitas bien críadas, well-bred girls don't answ€r back I'suna falta de resþeto to talk back to on€'s mother or father. Iremember one of the sins I d recite to the priest in the confessionbox the few times I went to confession: tatking back to my moth-er, bøblar pa"trâs, repelar Hocícona, re7elona., cbístnosa, hav-ing a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of beingrnal criada. In my culture they are all words that are derogatoryif applied to women-I've never heard them applied to men.

The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a

Cuban, say the word"nosotraq" I was shocked. I had not knownthe word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we're male orfemale. We are robbed of our female being by the masculineplural. Ianguage is a male discourse.

And our tongues have becomedry the'wilderness has

dried out our tongues and' we have forgotten speech.

-Irena Klepfisz2

Even our own people, other Spanish speakers nos quierenponer candados en lø boca.They would hold us back with theirbag of reglas de acadernía.

'76How toTame aVildTongue

Oyé como ladra: el lenguaje de Iø frontero

a" " " y,i:::::

::, ÍÍ{' u o' o

77How toTame aVildTongue

"Poclto, cultural traitor, you're speaking the oppressor's lan-guage by speaking English, you're ruining the Spanish language,"

I have been accused by various Latinos and Latinas. ChicanoSpanish is considered by the purist and by most Latinos deficient,a mutilation of Spanish.

But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developednaturally. Change, euolucíón, enríquecimiento de palabrasnueuas por ínuención o adopcíón have created variants ofChicano Spanish, un nueao lenguaJe. Un lenguaie que corre'sþonde a un rnodo de uíuír Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, itis a living language. r

For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country inwhich Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in acountry in which English is the reigning tongue but who are notAnglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either stan-

dard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, whatr€course is left to them but to create their own language? A lan-guage which'they can connect their identity to, one capable ofcommunicating the realities and values true to themselves-a lan-guage with terms th^tare neither español ni ínglés, but both. rVe

speak a patois, a forked tongue , a variation of two languages.

Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos' need to identi-fy ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a language withwhich we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language.

For some of us, language is a homeland closer than theSouthwest-for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and theEast. And because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, wespeak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are:

l. Standard English2. Working class and slang English3. Standard Spanish4. Standard Mexican SPanish

5. North Mexican SPanish dialect6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and

California have regional variations)7. Tex-Mex8. Pacbuco (called caló)

My "home" tongues are the languages I speak with my sisterand brothers, with my friends. They are the last five listed, with6 and.7 being.closest to my heart. From school, the media andiob situations, I've picked úp standard and working class English.From Mamagrande Locha and from reading Spanish and Mexicanliterature, I've picked up Standard Spanish and Standard MexicanSpanish. From /os recíén ,Mexican immigrants, andbraceros, I learned the North Mexican dialect. Il¡ith Mexicans I'lItry to speak either Standard Mexican Spanish or the NorthMexican dialect. From my parents and Chicanos living in theValley, I picked up ChicanoTexas Spanish, and I speak it with mymom, younger brother (who married a Mexican and who rarelymixes Spanish with English), aunrs and older relatives.

With Chicanas from Nueuo México or Arízonø I will speakChicano Spanish a little, but often they don't understand whatI'm saying. With most California Chicanas I speak entirety inEnglish (unless I forget). When I first moved to San Francisco, Idrattle off sorriething in Spanish, unintentionally embarrassingthem. Often it is only with another Chicana tejana that I can talkfreely.

'Words distorted by English are known as anglicisms orþochismos. The pocbo is an anglicized Mexican or American ofMexican origin who speaks Spanish with an accent characteristicof North Americans and who distorts and reconstructs the lan-guage according to the influence of Englisþ.3 Tex-Mex, orSpanglish, comes most naturally to me. I may switch back andforth from English to Spanish in the same sentence or in the sameword. With my sister and my brother Nune and with Chicanotejano contempoiaries I speak inTex-Mex.

From kids and people my own age I picked up pacltuco.Pacbuco (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language ,of rebel-lion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English. It is asecret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders ôannotunderstand it. It is made up of slang words from both Engtish andSpanish. Ruca mears girl or woman, uato me îs guy or dude,cbale means no, sírnó2, means yes, cburö is sure, talk isperiquiøt pigíonleør means petting, que gøcbo means hownerdy, þonte águil^a means watch out, death is called Ia þelona.Through lack of practice and not having others who can speak it,I've lost most of tllLe Pacbuco tongue. I

7aHow toTame aVildTongue

Çhicano Spanish

Chicanos, af¡er 25O years of Spanish"/Anglo colonization havedeveloped significant differences in the Spanish we speak. Ve col-lapse tivo adiacent vowels into a single syllable and sometimesshift the stress in certain words such as tnaíz/maiz, cobete/cuete.We leave out certain consonants when they appear betweenvowels: lado/lao, mojado,/mojao. Chicanos from SouthTexas pro

' nounced;f as j as in jue (fue). Chicanos use "archaismsiwords thatare no longer in the Spanish language, words that have beenevolved out. We szy sernos, truje, baíga, ansina, and naíden.Weretain the "archaic" j, as tnjal.ar, that derives from an eather b, (theFrench bala.r or the Germanic balon which was lost to standardSpanish in the l6th century), but which is still found in severalregional dialects such as the one spoken in South Texas. (Due togeography, Chicanos from the Valley of South Texas were cut offIinguistically from other Spanish sþeakers. We tend to use wordsthat the Spaniards brought over from Medieval Spain. The majori-ty of the Spanish colonizers in Mexico and'the Southwest camefrom Extremadura-Hernán Cortés was one of them-and.An<lelucía. Andalucians pronor¡nce ll hke a y, and their d's tend tøbe absorbed by adjacent vowels: tírado becomes tírøo. Theybrought eI lenguaje poþulaq, dialeclos y regionalísmos.4)

Chicanos and other Spanish speakers also shift ll to y andz to s.s SØe leave out initial syllables, saying tar fo¡ estat tu! forestolt, bora for abora (cubanos and puertorríqueños also leaveout initial letters of som€ words.) We also leave out the final sylla-ble such as pa for para. The intervocalic y, thLe lI as infortílla, ella,botella, gets replaced,by tortiø 01 tortiya, ea, botea. Ve add anadditional syllable at the beginning of certain words¡ øtocar fortoca4, agastàr for gasta.r Sometimes we'll say la.uaste las uacijas,ottrer times l.auates (substituting tlre atesverb endürgs forthe aste).

\Îe use anglicisms, words borrowed from English: bola fromball, carpeta from carpet, mácbína de lauør (instead of. l.aaado-ra) from washing machine. Tex-Mex argot, created by addþg aSpanish sound at the beginning or end of an English word suchas cookíør for cook, uatcbar for watch, parkiar for park, andrapiar for rape, is the result of the pressures.on Spanish speak-ers to adapt to English.

We don't use the word uosotros/as or its accompanyingverb form. Ve don't say claro (to mean yes), ímagína.te, or ne

79How toTame aVildTongue

enoclona, unless we picked up Spani'sh from I¿tinas, out of abook, or in a classroom. Other Spanish-speaking groups are goingthrough the same, or similar, development in their Spanish.

Linguistic Terrorisrn

Deslenguadas Somos los del español defícíente. W'e areyour linguistic nightmare, four linguistic aberration, yourlinguistic rnestízaJe, the subiect of your burla. Because wespeak with tongues of fire we are culturally cruci-fied.Racially, culturally and linguisticalTy sornos l¡uérfanos-wespeak an orphan tgngue.

Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have inter-nalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish., It is illegitimate, abastard language. And because we internalize how our languagehas been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our lan-guage differences against each other.

'Chicana feminists often skirt around each other with suspi-cion and hesitation: For the longest time I couldn't figure it out.Then it dawned on me. To be close to ariother Chicana is likelooking into the mi¡ror. We are afr¿id of what we'll see there.Pena. Shame. Low estimation of self. In childhood we are toldthat our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our nativetongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue through-out our lives.

Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to l¿tinas,afraid of their censure. Their language was not outlawed in theircountries. They had a whole lifetime of being imms¡ssd in theirnative tongue; generatioàs, centrries in which Spanish was afirst language, teught in school, heard on radio and1Y and readin the newspaper.

If a person, Chicana or l¿tina, has a low estimation of mynative tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with¡nexícanas y latinas we'll speak English as a neutral language.Even among Chicanas we terid to speak English at parties or con-ferences. Yet, at the same time, we'fe afraid the other will thinkwe're agringadas because úe don't speak Chicano Spanish. Weoppress each other trying to out{hicano each otheç vying to bethe "real" Chicanas, to speak Iike Chicanos. There is no oneChicano language iust as there is no one Chicano experience. A

80How toTame aVildTongue

monolingual Chicana whose first language is English or Spanishis just aç much a Chicana as one who speaks several variants ofSpanish. A Chicana from Michigan or Chicago or Detroit is just as

much a Chicana as one from the Southwest. Chicano Spanish isas diverse tinguistically as it is regionally.

By the end of this century.Spanish speakers will comprisethe biggest minority group'in the U.S., a'country where studentsin high schools and colleges are encour:rged to take French clas+es because French is considered more "cultured." But for a lan-guage to remain alive it must be used.ó By the end of this centu-

ry English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of mostChicanos and Latinos.

So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my lan-guage. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am mylanguage. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot takepride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano TexasSpanish; Tex-Mex and all the other languages I speak, I cannotaccept the legitimacy of myser. Until I am free to write bilin-gually and to switch codes without having always to translate,while I still have to'speak English or Spanish when I would ratherspeak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accoûlmodate theEnglish speakers rather than having them accommodate me, mytongue will be illegitimate.

I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of eisting. I willhave my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent'stongue-my woman's voice, my sexgal voice, my poet's voice. Iwill overcome the tradition of silence.

- My fingersmove sly against your palinLike women everywhere, we speak in code

.) Melanie K^yelKaÃtrowitizT

",Vistai," corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue

In the f960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City ofNígltt by John Rechy, a gayTexan, son of a Scottish father and aMexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned Lrnaze-ment that a Chicano could write and could get published. VhenI read I Arn toøquínï I was surprised to see a bilingual book by

8lflow to Tame a Vild Tongue

a Chicano in print. When I'saw poetry written inTex-Mex for thefirst time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like wereally existed as a people. In 1971, when I srarted teaching HighSchool English to Chicano studenrs, I tried to supplement therequired texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimandedand forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I wassupposed to teach "American" and English lirerature. At the riskof being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and slipped inChicano short stories, poems, a, play. In graduate school, whileworking toward a Ph.D., I had to "argue" with one advisor afterthe other, semester after semester, before I was allowed to makeChicano literature an

^rea of focus.

Even before I read books by Chicanos or Mexicans, it wasthe Mexican movies I saw at the drive-in-the Thursday nightspecial of $f .0O a carload-that gave me a s€nse of belonging."Vãmonos a las uistas," my mother would call out and wedall-grandmother, brothers, sister and cousins-squeeze intothe car. rVe'd wolf down cheese and bologna white bread sand-wiches while watching Pedro Infante in melodtamatic tear-jerk-ers like Nosotros los pobres, the first "real" Mexican movie (thatwas not an imitation of European ryovies). I remember seeingCuando los bìjos se uan and surmising that all Mexican moviesplayed up the love a mother has for her children and whatungrateful sons and daughters suffer when they are not devotedto their mothers. I remember the singing-type "s/esterns" ofJorge Negrete and MiguelAceves Mejía. When watching Mexicanmovies, I felt a sense of þomecoming as well as alienation.People who were to amount to something didn,t go to Mexicanmovies, or baíles or tune their radios to bolero, rancberítø, andcorrído music.

The whole time I was growing up, there was norteño musicsometimes called North Mexican border music, or Tex-Mexmusic, or Chicano music, or cøntína @ar) music. I grew up lis-tening to conjuntos, three- or four-piece bands made up of folkmusicians playing guitar, bøjo sexto, drums and button accor-dion, which Chicanos had borrowed from the German immi-grants who had come to Central Texas and Mexico to farm andbuild breweries. In the Rio Grande Valley, Steve Jordan and LittleJoe Hemández were popular, and Flaco Jiménez was the accor-dion king. The rhythms ofTex-Mex music are rhose of the polka,

82How to Tame a Wild Tongue

also adapted from the Germans, who in turn had borrowed thepolka from the Czechs and Bohemians.. I remember the hot, sultry evenings wllLen corridos-songs

of loye and death on the Texas-Mexican borderlands-reverberat-ed out of cheap ampli-fiers from the local cantinas and wafted inthrough my bedroom window.

Corridos frst became widely used along the South Texas/Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos andAnglos. The corrídos are usually about Mexican heroes who dovaliant deeds against the A,nglo oppressors. Pancho Vilta's song,"La cucarøclta," is tlae most famous one. Corridos of John EKennedy and his death are still very popular in the Valley. OlderChicanos remember Lydia Mendoz , one of the gteat bordercorrido singers who was called l.a Gloría de Tejas. Her lEl tøngonegro! sung during the Great Depression, made her a singer ofthe people. The everpresent corrído,s narrated one hundredyears of border history bringing news'of events as well as enter-taining. These folk musicians and folk songs a,re our chief culturalmythmakers, and they made our hard lives seem bearable.

I grew up feeling ambivalent about our music. Country-q¡estern and rock-and-roll had more status. In the 5Os and 60s,for the slightly educated and, agringado Chicanos, there existeda sense of shame at being caught listening to our music. yet Icouldn't stop my feet from thumping-to the music, could notstop humming the words, nor hide from myself the exhilarationI felt when I heard it.

There are more subtle ways that we internalize identifica-tion, especially in the forms of images and emotions. For mefood and certain smells are ried to my identiry, to my homeland.W'oodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; wgodsmoke per-t¡ming my grandmother's clothes, her skin. The stench of cowmanure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling ina pan, melting inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hilda's hot, spicyrnenudo, cbile colorado making it deèp red, pieces of. panza andhominy floating on tclp. My brother Carito barbècuingfajitas lnthe backyard. Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see mymother spicing the ground bee{ pork and veniçon witln cbíle. Mymouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tarnales Iwould be eating if I were home.

83How to Tame a lùlild Tongue

Si le preguntas a mi mamó,'¿Qué etes?"

Identiry is the esóential core of whowe are as individuals, the consciousexperience of the seH inside."

84How toTame aVildTongue

Nosotros /os Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one sideof us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans,on the other side we hear the,{nglos' incessant clamoring so thatwe forget our language. Among ourselves we don't say nosotrosIos ømerícanos, o nosotros los españoles, o nosotros tos ttís-panos We say nosotros los mexicanos Oy ntexícanos we do notmean citizens of Mexico; we do not mean a national identity, but'a ncial one). We distinguish between tnexicanos d.el otro lad.oand tnexicanos de este ladò. Deep in our hearts we believe thatbeing Mexican has nothing to do with which counrry one livesin. Being Mexican is a state of soul-not one of mind, not one ofcitizenship. Neither eagle nor selpent, but both. And like theocean, neither animal respects borders.

' Díme con quíen andøs y te diré quíen eres.(Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you whoto" "l'ìr.*ican saying

Si Ie preguntøs a mi rnamá, "¿8ué eres?" te dirá, 'Suymexícana." My brothers and sister say the same. I, sometimeswill answer 'soy mexicøna"and at others will say 'soy Cbicana"o "soy tejana." But I identified as "Raza" before I ever identi_fiedas "rnexícana" or "Chicana."

. As a culture, we c4ll ourselves Spanish when referring toourselves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is thenthat we forget our predominant Indian genes. We are 7O to BO%Indian.lo We call ourselves Hispanicll or Spanish-American orLatin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish-

- speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when coppingout. We call ourselves Mexican-Americanl2 to signify w,e are nei-ther Mexican norAmerican, but more the noun "American" thanthe adjective "Mexican" (and when copping out).

Chicanos and other'people of color suffer economically fornot acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienaüon makesfor psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity-we don't iden-tiff with the r{ngloAmerican çultural values and we don't totallyidentify with the Mexican cultural values. Ve are a synergy oftwo cultures with-various degrees of Mexicanness orAngloness.I have so internalized the bordërland conflict that sometimes Ifeel like oire cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, noone. A ueces,no soy nadø ní nadíe. Pero basta euando no lo so)),lo soy.

When not copping out, when we know we are more thannothing, we call ourselves Meican, referring to race and ancestry; rnestízo when affìrming both our Indian and Spanish @ut wehardly evei own our Black ancestry); Chicano when referring toa politicalty aware people born andlor raised in rhe lJ.S.; Røzawhen referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos fromTexas.

Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 whenCesar Chavez andthe farmworkers united and lAmJoaquínwaspublished and la Raza Unida paffy was formed in Texas. Viththat recognition, we became a distinct people. Somethingmomentous happened to the Chicâno soullwe became aware ofour reality and acqûred a name and ã language (ChicanoSpanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name,some of the fragmented pieces began to fall together-who wewere, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to getglimpses of what we might eventually become.

Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle bf bor-ders is our reality still. One aay ttre inner struggle will cease anda true integration take place. In thê meantime, tenernos que bac-erla lucba. ¿Quíén está protegiendo los rancbos de mí gente?¿Quíén está tratando de cerrar la fisura entre la indía y elblnnco en nuestra sangre? El Cbícanci, sí, el Cbícano que anda

,colno un lødrón en su proþiø cøsa.

Los Cbícanog how patient we seem, how very patient.There is the quiet of the Indian about us.l3 We know how to sur-vive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've keptours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of thedominant norteatnericano culture. But more than we count theblows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the

85How toT¿me aVildTgngue

eons until the white laws and'cornmerce and customs will rot inthe deserts they've created, lie bleached. Hum:íld.es yet proud,quietos yet wild, nosotros los m.exícanos{hicanos will walk bythe crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, per-severing, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability thatrenders us unbreakable, we, the tnestizas and, mestízos, wiilremain.

86How tóTame aVildTongue

The Path of the Red and Black Ink

niWi, Tlapalli

"Out of poverty, poetry;out of suffering, song."

-a Mexican saying

'When I was seven, eight, nine, fi-fteen, sixteen years old, Iwould read in bed with a flashlight under rhe covers; hidingmy self-imposed insomnia frcim my mother. I preferred theworld of the imagination to the death of sleep. My sister,Hilda, who slept in the same bed with me, would threatento tell my mother unless I told her a story

I was familiar with cuentos-my grandmother told stories,like the one about her getting on rop of the roof while downbelow rabid coyotes were ravagþgthe place and wanting toget at her. My father told stories about a phantom giant dogthat appeared out of nowhere and sped along the side of thepiçkup no marter how fast he was driving.

a story.for mystories

per night..I learned to givethe suspense with convolutedclimaxed several nights later.I decided to put stories on paper. It must have been thenthat working with images and writing became connectedto nighr.

InvokingArt

88flilli, Tlapallt / Tll.e Path of the Red and Black In-k

In the ethnGpoetics and performance of the shaman, mypeople, the Indians, did not split the artistic from the functional,the sac¡ed from the secular, aft from everyday life. The religious,social and aesthetic purposes of art were all intertwined. Beforethe Conquest, po€ts gath€red to play music, dance, sing and readpoetry in open-air places around the Xocbicuabuitl, et ÁrbolFlorldo, Tree-in-Flower. (The Coaxibuitl or morning glory iscalled the snake plant and its seeds, known as ololìubquí, arehal-lucinogenic.l) The ability of story (prose and poetry) to trans-form the storyteller and the listener into something or someoneelse is shamanistic. The writer, as shape-changer, is a nabual, ashaman.

In looking at this book that I'g almost finished writing, I seea mosaic pattern (Aztec-like) emerging, a weaving pattern, thinhere, thick there. I see a pr€occupation with the deep structur€,the underlying structure, with the gesso underpainting that is redearth, black earth. I can see the deep structure, the scaffolding.If I can get the bone strucru¡e right, then putting flesh on it prcceeds without too many hitches. The problem is that the bonesoften do not exist prior to the flesh, but are shaped after avagueand broad shadow of its form is discerned or uncovered duringbeginning, middle and final stages of the writing. Numerousoverlays of paint, rough surfaces, smooth surfaces make me real-ize I am preoccupied with texture as well. Too, I see the barelycontained color threatening to spill over the boundaries of theobject it represents and into other "obiects" and over the bordersof the frame. I see ahybndrzation of metaphor, different speciesof ideas popping up here, popping up there, full of variationsand seeming contradictions, though I believe in an ordered,structured universe where all phenomeîa aÍe interrelated aridimbued with spirit. This almost finished product seems an assem-blage, a montage, a beaded work with several leitmotifs and witha central core, now appearing, now disappearing in a crazydance. The whole thing has had a mind of its own, escaping meand insisting on putting together the pieces of its own puzz)ewith mirrimal direction from my will. It is a rebellious, willfrrlentity, a precocious girl-child forced to grow up too quickly,rough, unyielding, with piqces of feather sticking out here and

there, fuç twigs, clay. My'child, but not for much lónger. Thisfemale being is angry, sad, joyful, is Coatlícue, dove, horse, ser-pent, cactus. Though it is a flawed thing-a clumsy, complex,gropin! blind thing-for me it is alive, infused with spirir. I ralkto it; it talks to me.

I make my offerings of incense and cracked corn, light myc'andle. In my head I sometimes will say a prztyer-aLn affi¡mationand a voicing of intent. Then I run water, wash the dishes or myunderthings, take a bath, or mop the kitchen floo¡. This "induc-tion" period sometimes takes a few minutes, sometimes hours.But always I go against a resistance. Something in me does notwant to do this writing. Yet once I'm immersed in it, I can gofifteen to seventeen hours in one sitting and I don't want toleave it.

My "stories" are acts encapsulated in time, "enacted" everytime they are spoken aloud or read silently. I like to think ofthem as performances and not as inert and "dead objects (as theaesthetics of 'Western culture think qf art works). Instead, thework has an identity; it is a "who" or a "what'and contains thepresences of persons, that is, incamations of gods or ancestors ornatuál and cosmic powers. The work manifests the same needsas a person, it needs to be "fed," la tengo que bañar y uestir

When invoked in rite, the object/event is "present"; that is,enactedi it is both a physical thing and the power that infuses it.It is metaphysical in thal it "spins iis energies between gods andhumans" aäd its task is to move the gods. This type of work ded-icates itself to managing the universe and its energies. I'm notsure what it is wh€n it is at rest (not in performance). It may ormay not be a "work" then. A mask may only have the power ofpresence during a ritual dance and the rest of the time it maymerely be a "thing." Some works exist forever invoked, always inperformance. I'm thinking of totem poles, cave paintings.Invoked art is communal and speaks of everyday life. It is dedi-cated to the validation of humans; that is, it makes people hope-ful, happy, secure, and it can have negative effects as well, whichpropel one towards a search for vaüdation.2

. Ïtre aesthetic of virtuosiry, art typical of Vestern Europeancultures, attempts to manage the energies of its own internal sys-tem such as conflicts, harmonies, resolutions and balances. .It

nilu, napatti¡rn. p"tfr8?f the Red and Black Ink

bears the presences of qualities and internal meanings. It is ded-icated to the validation of itself. Its task is to move humans bymeans of achieving mastery in content, technique, feeling.'Western art is always whole and always "in power." It is individ-ual (not communal). It is "psychological" in that it spins its ener-gies between itself and,its witness.3

Western cultures behave differently toward works of art thando tribal cultures. The "sacrifices" Western cultures make are inhousing their art works in the best structures designed by thebest architects; and in servicing them with insurance, guards toprotect them, conservators to maintain them, specialists tomount and display them, and the educated and upper classes to"view" them. Tribal cultures keep art works in honored andsacred places in the home and elsewhere. They attend them bymaking sacri-fices of blood (goat or chicken)_, libations of wine.They bathe, feed, and clothe them. The works ar€ treated notiust as objects, but also as persons. The "witness" is a participantin the enactment of the work in a ritual, and not a member of theprivileged classes.4

Ethnocentrism is the tyranny of Western aestheiics. AnIndian mask in an American museum is transposed into an alienaesthetic system where what is missing is the presence of powerinvoked through performance ritual. It has become a conqueredthing, a dead "thing", separated'from nature and, therefore, itspower.

ModernVestern painters have "borrowed," copied, or other-wise extrapolated the art of tribal cultures and called it cubism,surrealism, symbolism. The music, the beat of the drum, theBlacks' jive talk. All tak€n over. Vhites, along with a good num-ber of our own people, have cut themselves off from their spiri-tual roots, and they take our spiritual art objects in an uncon-scious attempt to get them back. If they're going to do it, I'd likethem to be aware of what they are doing and to go about doingit the right way. Let's all stop importing Greek myths and theIVestern Cartesian split point of view and root'ourselyes in themythological soil and soul of this continent. White America hasonly attended to the body of the eafth in order to exploit it, neverto succor it or to be nurtured in it. Instead of surreptitiously ripping off the vital energy of people of color and putting it to com-mercial use, whites could allow themselves to share andexchange and learn from us in a respectful way. By taking up

90Tlilli, Tlaþølli / The Path of the Red and Black Ink

curanderT.smo, Santeria, shamanism, Taoism, Zen artd otherwisedelving into the spiritual life and ceremonies of multi-coloredpeople, Anglos would perhaps lose the white sterility they havein their kitchens, bathrooms, hospitals, mortuaries and missilebases. Though in the conscious mind, black and dark may beassociated with death, evil and destruction, in the subconsciousmind and in our dreams, white is associated with disease, deathand hopelessness. Let us hope that the left hand, that of dark-ness, of femaleness, of "primitiveness," can divert the indifferent,right-handed, "rational" suicidal drive that, unchecked, couldblow us into acid rain in a fraction of a millisecond.

Ni cuicani: I, the Singer

For the ancient Aztecs, tlilli, tlapalli, la tíntø negra y rojade sus c6dices (the black and red ink painted on codices) werethe colors symbolizing escrítura y sabíduría (writing and wis-dom¡.5 They believed that through metâphor and symbol, bymeans of poetry and truth, communication with the Divine couldbe attained, and topan (that which is above-the gods and spiritworld) could be bridged witlr míctlón (that which is below-theunderworld and the region of the dead).

Poet: she pours water from the mouth of the pump, lowersthe handle then üfts it, lowers, lifts. Her hands begin to feelqhe pull from the entrails, the live animal resisting. A sighrises up from the depths, the handle becomes a wild thing inher hands, the cold sweet water gushes out, splashing herface, the shock of nightlight filling the bucket.

An image is a bridge between evoked emotion and consciousknowledge; words are the cables that hold up the bridge. Imagesare more direct, more immediate than words, and closer to theunconscious. Picture language precedes thinking in words; themetaphorical mind preéedes analytical consciousness.

The Shamanic State

When I create stories in my head, that is, allow the voicesand scenes to be proiected in the inner screen of my mind, I"trance."I used to think I was going crary or that I was having hal-lucinations. But now Ireahze it is my job, my calling, to traffic in

Tliili, Ttøpattilfn. p"tflof the Red and Btack Ink

images. Some of these film-like narr¿tives I write down; most arelost, forgotten. 'When I don't write the images down for severaldays or weeks or months, I get physically ill. Because writinginvokes images from my unconscious, and because some of theimages are residues of tra tma which I theq have to reconstruct,I sometimes get sick when I do w¡ite. I can't stomach it, becomenauseous, or burn with fever, worsen. But, in reconstructing thetraumas behind the images, I make "sense" of them, and oncethey have "meaning" they are changed, transformed. It is thenthat writing heals me, brings me great ioy.

To facilitate the "movies" with soundtracks, I need to bealone, or in a sensorydeprived state. I plug up my ears withwax, put on my black cloth eye-shades, lie horizontal and unmov-ing, in a state between sleeping and waking, mind and bodylocked into my fantasy. I am held prisoner by it. My body is expe-riencing events. In the beginning ir is like being in a movie the-ater, âs pr¡re spectator. Gradually I become so engrossed withthe activities, the conyersations, that I becôme a pafticipant inthe drama. I have to struggle to "disengage" or escape from my"animated story" I have to get some sleep so I can write tomor-row. Yet I am gripped by a story which won't let me go. Outsidethe frame, t am film director, screenwriter, camera operator.Inside the frame, I am the actof,s-male and female-I am desertsand, mountaifi, I am dog, ùrosquito. I can sustain a four- to six-hour "movie." Once I am up, I can sustain several "shorts" of any-where between five and thirty minutes. Usually these "narr¿-tives" are the offspring of stories acted out in my head duringperiods of sensory deprivation.

My "awakened dreams" are about shifts. Thought shifts, real-ity shifts, gender shifts: one person metamorphoses into anotherin a world where people fÏy through the air, heal from morralwounds. I am playing-with my Self, I am playing wirh rhe world'ssoul, I am the dialogue between my Self and el esþíritu delmundo. I change myself, I change the world.

Sometimes I put the imagination to a more rare use. Ichoose words, images, and body sensations and animate them toimpress them on my consciousness, thereby making changes inmy belief system and reprogramming my consciousness. Thisinvolves looking my inner demons in the face, then decidingwhich I want in my psyche. Those I don't want, I starve; I feedthem no words, no images, no feelings. I spend no time v¡ith

Ttitt, Tlapattt lfn p^tlzofthe Red and Black Ink

them, share not m)t home,with them. Neglected, they leave. Thisis harder to do than to merely generate "stories." I can only sus-tain this activity for a few minutes.

I write the m¡hs in me, the myths I am, the myths I want tobecome. The word, the image and the feeling have a palpabteenergy, a kind of power. Con imógenes dottto mí míedo, cruzolos abísrnos que tengo. por dentro. Con palabras me bagoþíedra, pájaro, puente de serpíentes ørrastrando a røs del suelotodo lo que so)), todo lo que algún día seré.

Los que están mirando Qqtendo),l.os que cuentan (o refíeren lo que leen).

\Ios que uueluen ruídosatnente l.as bojas de los códices.Los que tíenen en su þoderl.ø tinta negra y rojø Qa sabíduríø)y lo þintødo,ellos nos lleuan, nos guían,nos dícen el cømino.6

93TXílli, Iløpalli / The Path of the Red and Black Ink

Writing Is A Sensuous Act

Thllo mi cuerþo como si estuaíerø lauando un trapo. Tocolas saltadøs uen*s de mis tnanos, mís cl¡icl¡is adorrnecidascomo þájaras al anocbecer. Estoy encoruada sobre l.a c6tn a.Las ímágenes aleteøn alrededor de tní cørnø con o nurciéla-gos, la sábana corno que tuuíese alas. EI ruído de los trenessubterráneos en mí sentído corno concbas. Parece que las pare-des del cuarto se ,ne a¡ríman cada uez más cerquitø.

Picking out images from my soul's eye, fishing for the rightwords to recreate the images. Words are blades of grass pushingpast the obstacles, sprouting on the page; the spirit of the wordsmoving in the body is as concrere as flesh and as palpable; thehunger to create is as substantial as fìngers and hand.

I look at my fingers, see plumes growing there. From thefingers, my feathers, black and red ink drips across the page.Escrlbo con Ia tínta de rní sangre. I write in red. Ink. Intimatelyknowing the smooth touch of paper, its speechlessness before Ispill myself on the insides of trees. Daily, I battle the silence and

the red. Daity, I take my throat in mV h.ands and squeeze until the

cries pour out' my T;tÁ and soul sore from the constant

nitti, napatli / Tlne'uln*the Red and Black lnk

struggle.

Something To Do With the Dark

The toad comes out of its hidi

. And there in the dark I meet

gutter, the day-old newspaPer

fluttering in the dirty rain water'

Musa bruja' uenga' Cúbrese

con una sá'bana y espante rnis d'emonios que a rempujones y

a cacbetad'a, *" 'oion lø ptuma me ro'npen el sueño' Musa'

¡misericordía! óigame' ttus¿t bruja" ¿Por qué

me desarrotta de mi caracola'con

n sus

ones-

digo, Que no Íne cornan sus

nueue dedos canîbales'Hiiø negra d'e la nocbe' car-

nala, ¿Por qué me sacas las trípa's' por qué cardas mís

entrañøs? Este ltiluanand'o palabras con tripa's me está r'/'ata'n-

*: ii" d'e la nocbe ¡uete a' la cbingøda!

Writing produces anxiety' Looking inside myself and my

exPerience, looking at

Being a writer feels ve

queer-a lot of squirming'

ór its oPPosite: nothing de

state of limbo where I kick

and wait for something to haPPen'

Quien ca'nta, sus males esqanta'

-un dicbo

Living in a state of psychic unrest'-in a Borderland' is what

makes poets write "rrå

ã'io* create' It is like a cactus needle

embedded in the fit'; ;;;;rries itself deeper and deeper' and

I keep ^ggrav^tiîgtt iV p"ni"g at it' when it begins to fester I

have ro do somethin*;å ;;; ".r".tr¿ to the¿ggfavation and to fig-

ure out why I have n' -i

äti deep down into the place where it's

rooted in mv skin ""d;il;';;"v at it' plavins it like a T"it1l

instrument-an. nrrg.,S pr.ssing, making the pain worse before

it can get better' fnt" ã"' it Ãrntt' No more discomfort' no

more ambivalence' ut'iii""ott"r needle pierces the skin' That's

what writing is for -ä, "lä¿itts cycle oi making it worse' mak-

ing it better, ¡tt "f*"Vt Laking meaning out of the experience'

whatever it maY be'

MY flowers shall not cease to liYe;

mY songs shall never end:

I, a singer' intone them;

' they uãtåt"t scattered' they are spread about'

Cantares mexicanos

To write, to be a writer' I have to trust and believe in myself

as a speake¡ "' " t'oåt io'it'" ittt"gtt' I have to believe that I can

communicate with irn^g*l"u*oî¿s an¿ that I can do it well' A

lack of belief in -y;;;o* self is a lack of belief in my total self

and vice versa-I t"t"'ã "p"rate

my writing from any part of my

life. It is all one'

When I write it feels like I'm carving bone' It feels like I m

creatin; my own rä,;ñ;" :i::;.: ìì1i::H:i,ïï#¿elf through my body' It is this learning

hat transforms living in the Bordedands

from a nightmare into a numinous experience' It is always a

pathlstate to something else'

ln Xócbílt it Cuícatl7

She writes while other PeoPle'

sleep. Something is trying to come out' She fights the words'

pushes them, down' down' a woman with morning sickness in

the middle of Û" "ig;t' How much easier it would be to carry a

Ttitti, Tlapatti /The'*ít"' the Red and Black Ink

baby for nine months and then expel it permanently. These con-

tinuous multiple pregnancies are going to kill her. She is the bat-

tlefield for the pitched fight between the inner image and thewords trying to recreate it- Lø musa bruja has no manners.

Doesn't she know, nights are for sleeping?She is getting too close to the

mouth of the abyss. She is teetering on the edge, trying to bal-

ance whjle she makes up her mind whether to iump in or to finda safer way down. That's why she makes herself sick-to post-

pone haying to iump blindfolded into the abyss of her own beingand there in the depths confront her face, the face underneaththe mask.

To be a mouth-the cost is toohigh-her whole life enslaved to that devouring moutll Todo

pasaba,Por esa boca, el uiento, el fuego, los mares y lø Tierra.

Her body, a crossroads, a fngrle bridge, cannot suPport the tons

of cargo passing through it. She wants to install "stop" and "go"

signal lights, instigat€ a curfeq police Poetry' But somethingwants to come out.

96Ttilli, IXapalli / Tfl'e Path of the Red and Black Ink

Blocks (Coatticue states) are related to my cultural identity.The painfut periods of confusion that I suffer from are symptGmatic of a larger creative process: cultural shifts. The stress of liv-ing with cultural ambiguity both compels me to write and blocks

me . It isn't until I'm almost at the end of the blocked state that Iremember and recognize it for what it is. As soon as this happens, the piercing light of awareness melts the block and I accept

the deep and,the darkness and I hear one of my voices saying, "Iam tired of fighting. I surrender. I give up, let go, let the wallsfall. On this night of the hearing of faults, Tlazolteotl, diosø de

la cøra negr*, let fall the cockroaches that live in my hair, therats thal nestle in my skull. Gouge out my lame eyes, rout my

demon from its nocturnal cave. Set torch to the tiger that stalks

me. Loosen the dead faces gnawing my cheekbones- I am tiredof resisting. I surrender. ! give up, let go, let the walls fall."

And in descending to the depths I retlize that down is up,and I rise up from and into the deep. And once againÍ recognize

that the internal tension of oppositions can propel (if it doesn'ttear ap?d|t> ttre mestlza writer out of thLe metate where she is

being ground with corn and water, eject her out as nabual, arr

agent of transformation, able to modifr and shape primordial

energy and therefore able to change herseH and others intoturkey, coyote, tfee, or human.

I sit here before my computer, Amiguíta, my altar on top ofthe monitor with the Vírgen de Coatlalopeub candle and copalincense burning My companion, a wooden serpent staff withfeathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor andsymbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. The'Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire whichis my talent does not suffer other suitors.S Daily I court it, offermy neck to its teeth. Ttris is the sacri-fice that the act of creationrequires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, throughthe pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And forimages, words, stories to have this transformative power, theymust arise from the human body-flesh and bone-and from theEarth's body-stone, sþ, liquid, soil. This work, these images,piercing tongu€ or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offer-ings, are myAztecan blood sacri-fices.

97TXìlli, Tlizpallî /The Path of the Red and Black Ink

La conciencia de la mestizø

Towards a New Consciousness

José Vasconcelos; Mexican philosopher, envisaged una razarnestlza, una tnezcla de razas afi.nes, una. razø de color-lnprímera raza síntesis del globo. He called it a cosmic rîce, La

raza cósmica; a fifth race embracing the four major races of theworld.2 Opposite to the theory of the pueÂryan, and to the pol-icy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is oneof inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic streams,with chromosomes constantþ "crossürg over," this mixture ofraces, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybridprogeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich genepool.; From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cros+pollinization, an "îlien" consciousness is presently in the mak-hg-a new mestíza consciousness, Ltna conciencía de muJex ltis a consciousness of the Borderlands.

Una lucha ile fronteras / A Struggle of Borders

Because l, a mestíza,continually walk out of one c :lture

and into another,because I am in all cultures at the same time,

' alma entre dos mundos, tres, cua.tro,me zumba la cabeza con la contradictorío.

Estoy norteadø por todas las uoces que me babl.ansítnultânean ente.

Por la mujer de rní razabablará el espíritu.l

100La conciencia de Ia mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness

The ambivalence from,the clash of voices results in mentaland emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in inse-curity and indecisiveness. TIne rnestíza's dual or multiple per-sonality is plagued by psychic restlessness.

In a constant state of mental nepantilism, an Aztec wordmeaning torn between ways, la mestiza is a product of the tranÞ-fer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another.Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speak-ing a patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, tllLe mestizafaces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectiviry doesthe daughter of a darkskinned mother listen to?

El cboque de un alma atrapado entre el mundo delesþíritu y el mundo de la técníca a ueces la dejø entulløda.Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, strad-dling all three cultures and their value systems, la ntestiza under-goes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. Likeall people, we perceive the version of reality that our culturecommunicates. Like others having or living in more than one cul-ture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The comingtogether of two self-consistent bur habitually incompatibleframes of reference3 causes un cboque, a cultural collision.

,Within us and within la cultura cbícana, commonly heldbeliefs of the white culture attack commonly held beliefs of theMexican cultuîe, and both attack commonly held beliefs of theindigenous culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack on our-selves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with acountefstance.

But it is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank,shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions.A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor andoppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the crimi-nal, both are reduced to a cofitmon denominator of violence. Thecounterstance refutes the dorninant culture's views and beliefs,and, for this, it is proudly defiant. All reacrion is limited by, anddependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counter-stance. stems from a problem with authority-outer as well asinner-it's a step towards liberation from cultural domination.But it is not a way of life. At som€ point, on our way to a newconsciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the splitbetween the two,mortal combatants somehow healed so that weare on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and

101La concienciø,de la n estiza /Towards a New Consciousness

eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from thedominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and crossthe border into a wholly new and sepafate territory. Or we mightgo ânother route. The possibilities are numerous once we decideto act and not react.

A Tolerance For Antiguity

These numerous possibili¡ies leeve la mestíza floundering inuncharted seas. In perceiving conflicting information and pointsof view, she is subjected to a swamping of her psychological bor-ders. She has discovered that she can't hold.concepts or ideas inrigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed tokeep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and pat-terns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy with-in. Rigdity means death. Only by remaining flexible is she ableto stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically. La rnestíza con-stantly has to shi_ft out of habitual formations; from convergentthinking, anal¡ical reasoning that tends to use rationality tomove toward a single goal (a Western mode), to divergent think-ing,4 charactefized by movement away from set patterns andgoals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includesrather than excludes.

The new rnestíza copes by developing a tolerance for con-tradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indianin Mexican cultur€, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view.She learns to iuggle cultures. She has a plural personality, sheoperates in a pluralistic mode-nothing is thrust out, the goodthe bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Notonly does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalenceinto something else.

She can be iarred out of ambivalence by an intense, andoften painful, emotional event which inverts or resolves theambivalence. I'm not sure exactly how. The work takes placeundérground-subconsciously. It is work that the soul perfõrms.That focal point or fulcrum, that juncture where tllre mestizastands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the pos-sibility of uniting all that is'separate occurs. This assembly is notone where seyered or separated pieces merely come together.Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to workout a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is

t02La conciencia de lø mestiza /Towa¡ds a New Consciousness

greater than the s.m of its sevefed parts. That thi¡d erement is aneq¡ consciousness-a tnestíza consciousness-and though it isa so'rce of intense pain, its energy comes from continuar cre-ative modon that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of eachnew paradigm

- E! un6ts pocc,s centurías, the future will belong to trre rnes_tiza. Becatse the future depends on rhe breaking dãwn of para_rligms, it depends on the straddting of two or more cultures. Bycreating a nev¡ mythos_that is, a change in the way we perceivereatity, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave_lø,nest¡zø creat€s a new consciousness.

The work of nestiza consciousness is to break down thesubject-object duatity that keeps her a prisoner and to show inthe flesh and through the images in her work how duality is tran_scended. Ttre ans$er to the prot em between the white race andthe colored, bet#een m¿es and females, lies in healing the splitthat originates in the very foundation of our lives, oui culture,our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualisticthinking in the individuar and coirective consciousness is thebeginning of a long struggte, but one that could, in our besthopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war.

La encrucijada I TheCrossroads

A chicken is being sacrifìcedat a crossroads, a simple mound of earth

a mud sh¡ine for Esltu,, yoruba god of indeterminacy,who blesses her choice of path.

She begins her journey.

Su cuefpo es una bocacalle. Ia mestiza has gone frombeing the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiaring friestess atthe crossroads.

As a tnestlza I have no country my homeland cast m€ out;yet all co'ntries are mine because I arn every woman,s sister orpotenüal lover. (As a lesbian I have no racè, my own people dis_claim me; but I am'all races because there is the queer of me inall races.) I am cultureless because, as a feminisì, I cfralengethe collective culturaVreligious malederived beliefs of Indo

La conciencia àe la nestiza)To-"ro, a New Consciousness

Hispanics and,{nglos; yet I am cultured because I am participat_ing in the creation of yet another culture, a new ,aory io .*pi"i'the world and our participation in it, a new value system withimages and symbols that connect us to each other and to the

, planet. Soy un amasamiento, I arn an act of kneading, of unit_ing and joining that nor only has produced both a cieature òfdarkness and a creature offight, but arso a creature that questionsthe defìnitions of light and dark înd gives them new -.^"rrirrgr.We are the people whg leap in rhe dark, we are the peãpteon the knees of the gods. [n our very flesh, (r)evolution worksout the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if thecenter holds, we,ve made some kind of evolutionary step for_ward Nuestra ølma el trøbajo, the opus, the great alchernicalwork; spiritual rnestízaje, a "morphogenesis¡s an inevitableunfolding. We have become the quickening serpent movement.

Indigenous like corn, like corn, tf¡e mestíza is a product ofcrossbreeding, designed for preservation under avanity ofcon_ditions. Like an ear of corn-a female seed_bearing organ_themestiza is renacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of hei culture.Iike kernels she ctings to the cob; with thick stalks and strongbrace roots, she holds tight to the earth-she will survive thãcrossroads.

_ Lauøndo y remojando el maíz en agua de cal, despojøndoelþellejo. Molíendo, ntixteando, o*asondq baciendo toñírbs dernasa.ó She steeps the corn in [ime, it swells, softens. With stoneroller on meta.te, she grinds the corn, then grinds again. Shekneads'and moulds the dough, pats the round ba[s into ro rflüas.

We are the porous rock in the stone metatesquatting on the ground.

, Ve a¡e the rolling pin, el rnøíz y agua,l.a masa barína. Sontos eI amasijo.Somos lo molído en el flretate.rVe are tbLe comal sizzling hot,the hot tortílla, the hungry mouth.'We are the coarse rock.We are the grinding motion, ,

the mixed potion, somos el molcajete.'We are the pestle, tbre comino, a.jo, þím¡enta,

'to4La conciencia d.e la mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness

El camino de Ia mestíza / The Mestiza Way

Caught between the'sudden contraction, the breathsucked in and the endless space, the brown woman stands5till, looks at the sky. She decides to go down, digging herway along the roots of trees. Sifting through the bones, sheshakes them to see if there is any marrow in them. Then,touching the dirt to herforehead, to hertongue, she takesafew bones, leaves the rest in their burial place.

She goes through her backpack, keeps her journal andaddress book, throws away the muni-bart metromaps. Thecoins are heavy and they go next, then the greenbacks flut-ter through the air. She keeps her knife, can opener and eye-brow pencil. She puts bones; pieces ofbark, bierbas, eaglefeather, snakeskin, tape recorder, the rattle and drum in herpack and she sets dut to become the complete tolteca.

Hei fìrst step is to take inventory. Despojando, desgranan-do, quítando paja. Jvst what did she inherit from her ancestors?This weight on her back-which is the baggage from the Indianmother, which the baggage from the Spanish father. which thebaggage from the Anglo?

Pero ei dlficíl differentiating between lo beredado, loadqulríd.o, lo lmpuesto. She puts history through a sieve,winnows out the lies; looks at the forces that we as a race, as

womçn, have been a part of. Luego bota lo que no uale, losdesmlentos, Ios desencuentos, el embrutecímlento. Aguarda eljuicío, I¡ondo y 'enraízado, de la gente antigua. This step is aconscious rupture with all oppressive traditions of all culturesand religions. She communicates that rupture, documents thestruggle. She reinterprets history and, using new sy.mbols,she shapes new myths. She adopts new persp€ctives towardthe darkskinned, women and queers. She strengthens her toler-ance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share, tomake herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking.She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct,construct. She becomes a nabual, able to transform herself into

'We are tlae cblle colorødo,the green shoot that cracks the rock.'We will abide.

La conciencia de la mestizø)oå**d, a New Consciousness

a tree, a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform thesmall "t" into the total Self. Se bøce moldeadora de su alrna.Según la concepcìón que tíene de sí ntísnta, así será.

Que no se flos olviilen los hombres

"Tú no Sirues Pa'naà.a-you're good for nothing.Eres pura uieja."

"You're nothing but a woman" means you are defective. Itsopposite is to be un rtacbo. The modern meaning of the wordlmachismoi as well as the concept, is actually an Anglo inven-tion. For men like my fathe¡ being "macho".meant being strongenough to proìect and support my mother and us, yet being ableto show lolr. Today's macho has doubts. about his ability to feedand protect his family. His "machismo"is an adaptation to oppreesion and poverty and low self-esteem. It is the result ofhierarchical male dominance . The Anglo, feeling inadequate andinferior and powerless, displaces or transfers these feelings to theChicano by shaming him. In the Gringo wodd, the Chicano suf-fers from excessive humility and self<ffacement, shame of selfand selfdeprecation. Around Latinos he suffers from a sense oflangqage inadequacy and its accompanying discomfort; withNative Americans he suffers from a racial amnesia which ignoresour cornmon blood, and from guilt because the Spanish part ofhim took their land and oppresSed them. He has an excessivecompensatory hubris when around Mexicans from the otherside. It ovedays a deep sense of racial shame.

The loss of a sense of dignity and respect in the macho,breeds a false machismo which leads him to put down womenand even to brutalize them. Coexisting with his sexist behavioris a love for the mother which takes precedence over that of allothert Devoted son, macho pig. To wash down the shame of hisacts, of his very being, and to handle the brute in the mirroç hetakes to the bottle , the snort, the needle, and the fist.

Though we "tinderstand" the root causes of male hatred andfear, and the subsequent wounding of women, we do not excuse,we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it. From

r06La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness

the men of our race, we demand the admission,/acknowledg-ment/disclosure/testimony that they wound us, violate us, areafraid of us and of our power. '$Øe need them to say they willbegin to eliminate their hurtful put-down ways. But more thanthe words, we demand acts. Ve say to them: We will developequal power with you and those who have shamed us.

It is imperatiye that mestiznts support each other in chang-ing the sexist elements in the Mexican-Indian culture. As long as

woman is put down, the Indian and the Black in all of us is putdown. The struggle of the mestizø is above all a feminist one. Aslong as los bombres think they have to cbingar mujeres and eachother to be men, as long as men are taught that they are superi-or and therefore culturally favored over Ia mujer, as long as to bea uíeja is a thing of derision, there can be no real healing of ourpsyches. We 're halfway there-we have such love of the Mother,the good mother. The first step is to unlearn t}:re þuta,/uirgendichotomy and to see Coatlalopeub-Coatlícue in the Mothe¡Guødalupe.

Tenderness, a sign of I'ulnerabiliry is so feared that it isshowered on women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, evenmore than women, are fettered to gender roles. Women at leasthave had the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men havehad the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside themand to challenge the current masculinity. I've encountered a fewscattered and isolated gentle straight men, rhe beginnings of anew breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexistbehaviors that they have not been able to eradicate. '!Øe need anew masculinity and the new man needs a movement.

Lumping the males who deviate from the general norm withman, the oppressor, is a gross injustice. Asombra pensar quenos betnos quedado en eòe pozo oscuro donde el rnundo encier-ra a las lesbianas. Asombra þensar que bemos, comofemenistas y lesbianas, cemado nuestros corazónes a los bom-bres, a nuestros bermanos los jotos, desberedados y rnarginøIescorno nosotros. Being the supreme crossers of cultures, homo-sexuals have strong bonds with the queer white, Black, Asian,Natiye American, Latino, and with the queer in Italy, Australiaand the rest of the planet. We come from all colors, all classes,all races, all time periods. Our role is to link people with eachothe¡-thê Blacks with Jews with Indians with Asians with

t07La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousne ss

whites with extraterrestrials. It is to transfer ideas and informa-tion from one culture to another. Colored homosexuals havemore knowledge of other cultures; have always been at the fore-front (although sometimes in the closet) of all liberation strugglesin this country; have suffered more injustices and have survivedthem despite all odds. Chicanos need to acknowledge the politi-cal and artistic contributions of their queer. People, listen towhat yourTbtería is saying.

The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on theevolutionary continuum for a purpose.'We are a blending thatproves that all blood is intricately woven rogether, and that weare spawned out of similar souls.

Somos una gente

Hay tøntísirnas fronterøsque diuiden a la gente,pero por cadafronteraexiste tømbién un þuente.

Gina Valdés7

Divided Loyalties. Many women and men of color do notwant to have any dealings with white people. It takes too muchtime and energy to explain to rhe downwardly mobile, whitemiddle-class women that it's okay for us to want to own "posses-sions," never having had any nice furniture on our dirt floors or"luxuriçs" like washing machines. Many feel that whites shouldhelp their own people rid themselves of race hatred and fearfirst. I, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve asmediator. I think we need to allow whites to be our allies.Through our literature, art, corridoq and folktales we must shareour history with them so when they set up committees ro helpBig Mountain Navajos or the Chicano farmworkers or /osNícaragüenses they won't turn people away because of theirracial fears and ignorances. They will come to see that they arenot helping us but following our lead.

Individually, but also as a racial entity, we need to voice ourneeds. We need to say to white society: 'We need you to acceptthe fact that Chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejec-tion and negation of us. rùl¡e need you to own the fact that youlooked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our

T

l08.La conclencia d.e la mestíza,/Towards a New Consciousness t09

La conciencia de ra mestiza /Towards a New consciousness

EI díø de la Chicanø

I will not be shamed againNor will I shame myself.

I am possessed by a vision: that we Chicanas and Chicanoshaye taken back or uncovered our true faces, our diCnity and seH_respect. It's a validation vision. ' ,

,

. 110La conclencla de lø mestlza / Towards a New Consciousness

ml uislón, mí senslbllídad, m¡þercepctón de la reaaltàactón de lagente Ìnetclcantt, stt ìtértto, estlmac-lón, bonra, aprec-lo, y aalid.ez

On December 2nd when my sun goes into my first house, Icelebrate eI díø de la Cblcana y el Cltlcano. On that day I cleanmy altars, light my Coatlalopeub candle, burn sage and copal,take el baño para espa.ntar basura, sv¡eep my house. On thatday I bare my soul, make myself vulnerable to friends and familyby expressing my feelings. On that day I affrrm who we are.

On that day I look inside ou¡ conflicts and our basic intreverted racial temperament. I identify our needs, voice them. I .

acknowledge that the self and the race have been wounded. Irecognize the need to take care of our personhood, of our racialself. On that day I gather the splintered and disowned parts of hþente rnexlcana and hold them in my arms. Tod.as l.øs partes denosotros ual.en

On that day I say, "Yes, all you people wound us when youreject us. Reiection strips us of self-worth; our vulnerabilityexposes us to shame. It is our innate identity you find wanting.Ve are ashamed that we need your good opinion, that we needyour acceptance. ,ve.can no longer camouflage our needs, canno longer let defenses and fences sprout around us. We can nolonger withdraw. To rage and look upon you with contempt is torage and be contemptuous of ourselves. We can no longer blameyou, nor disown the white parts, the male,parts, the päthologicalparts, the queer parts, the vulnerable parts. Here we areweaponless with open arms, with only our magic. Let's try it ourway, the mestiza way, the Chicana way, the woman way."

On that day, I search for our essential dignity as a people, apeople with a sense of purpose-to belong and contribute tosomething greater t'naî ovr pueblo. On t}nat day I seek to fecoverand reshape my spiritual identity. ¡Anímatel Raza, A celebrar eldíø de la Cblcana.

El retornoÂll movements are accomplished in six stages,and the seventh brings return.

-I Chings

Tanto tlernpo sln uerte cøsa rnía,*t *Ï:#Ll2i!í nído de ta buerta'

ltrLa conciencia de lø mestiza / Towards a New Consciousne ss

I stand at the river, watch the curving, tûristing serpent, aserpent nailed to the fence where the mouth of the Rio Grandeempties into the Gulf.

I have come back. Thnto dolor rne costó el alSamiento. Ishade my eyes and look up. The bone beak of a hawk slowly cir-iling over me, checking me out as potential carrion. In its wakea little bird flickering its wings, swimming sporadically like a fish.In the distancé-the expressway and the slough of traffic like anirritated sow. The sudden pull in my guq Ia fierra, los aguaceroi.My land, el píento soplnndo ln arenø, el lagørtíjo debajo d.e unnopa.líto. Me acuerdo corno era antes Una regíón desértlca deuasta llanuras, costeras de baja altura, de ,escasa lluuía, decbaþarcales forrnados por meìquítes y buizacbes. If I look realhard I can almost see the Spanish fathers who were called "thecavalry of Christ" enter this valley riding tlnerr butoq see theclash of cultures commence.

Tierrø natal.This is home , the small towns in the Valley, /ospueblitos with chicken pens and goats picketed to mesquireshrubs. En las colonias on the other side of the tracks, junk carsline the front yards of hot pink and lavender-trimmed houses-Chicano architecture we call it, self-consciously. I have missedthe TV shows where hosts speak in half and half, and whereawards are given in the category ofTex-Mex music. I have missedthe Mexican cemeteries blooming with artificial flowers, thefields of aloe vera and red pepper, rows of sugar cane, of cornhanging on the stalks, the cloud of poluareda in the dirt roadsbehind a speeding pickup truck, el søbor de tamales de rez yuenado. I have missed la yeguø colorøda gnawing the woodengate of her stall, the smell of horse flesh from Carito'.s comals.Hecl¡o menos las nocl¡es cqlíentes sín alre, nocbes de linternasy lecbuzas making holes in the night.

I still feel the old despair when I look at the unpainted, dilap-idated, scrap lumber houses consisting mostly of corrugated alu-minum. Some of the poorest people in the U.S. live in the LowerRio Grande Valley, an arid and semi-arid land of irrigated farming,intense sunlight and heat, citrus groves next to chaparral and cac-tus. I walk through the elementary school I attended so long ago,that remained segregated until recently. I remember how thewhite teachers used to punish us for being Mexican.