It’s not language that makes you Latino
September 21, 2023 11:34 AM Subscribe
The 'no sabo kids' are pushing back on Spanish-language shaming. Being Latino isn’t a monolith — some may speak Spanish, some may speak Indigenous dialects and some may only know English. Mala Muñoz, co-host of Locatora Radio (episodes): “I grew up just constantly hearing the reason dad speaks terrible Spanish is because he wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish. It was kept from him. They were being beaten at school. And that’s why he speaks his Spanglish, and that’s why we speak our hybridized Spanglish.”
My mom grew up in rural Texas in the 50s and has told us stories about how the Catholic school they were sent to used to beat her and my aunts if the nuns caught them talking in Spanish, their native tongue. If it wasn't beatings, it was withholding any sort of recreational time with classmates.
Eventually she married my dad, a white guy, and was expected to speak in English only. My late grandparents--whom I loved dearly despite their flaws--had asked her to never teach me and my sister Spanish, citing, "They won't need it; it's not useful."
It has been one of her eternal regrets that she complied. As it is, my sister and I know very little Spanish (I know more French than I do Spanish, due to immigration), and Mom has tried to amend the past by teaching my sister's kids a little Spanish. Mom tells me she really wishes she could speak regular Spanish in her everyday life with people; the only time she does when she talks with my aunts (which is predominantly Spanish). And I used to envy cousins on my mom's side, all of them in Texas with Spanish-speaking mothers. It's worth noting that those of us who had parents who are biracial barely know any, and my cousins who have dual Mexican parents are fluent. (In fact, I have at least two aunts who made it clear to my cousins that they did NOT want white men in the family.)
posted by Kitteh at 11:55 AM on September 21, 2023 [12 favorites]
Eventually she married my dad, a white guy, and was expected to speak in English only. My late grandparents--whom I loved dearly despite their flaws--had asked her to never teach me and my sister Spanish, citing, "They won't need it; it's not useful."
It has been one of her eternal regrets that she complied. As it is, my sister and I know very little Spanish (I know more French than I do Spanish, due to immigration), and Mom has tried to amend the past by teaching my sister's kids a little Spanish. Mom tells me she really wishes she could speak regular Spanish in her everyday life with people; the only time she does when she talks with my aunts (which is predominantly Spanish). And I used to envy cousins on my mom's side, all of them in Texas with Spanish-speaking mothers. It's worth noting that those of us who had parents who are biracial barely know any, and my cousins who have dual Mexican parents are fluent. (In fact, I have at least two aunts who made it clear to my cousins that they did NOT want white men in the family.)
posted by Kitteh at 11:55 AM on September 21, 2023 [12 favorites]
I am also a pocho, my mom was a second-generation Mexican-American who decided that cultural transmission was going to take a backseat to preparing her kids to be successful in the culture they were growing up in. It does feel like there's a multicultural latino identity centering people who grew up in the US and feel alienated from family history and tradition. It's different than a latino identity that centers immigrants and the experience of migration.
JP Brammer is a wonderful writer who has been exploring this for some time. I'm also reminded of the recent dustup over the Disney+ show Primos (apologies for linking to a fandom source) which seems to me to have been a battle over which experience gets treated as the normative latino experience.
I have a somewhat pessimistic outlook on this. I believe that language is one of the ways that cultures can find enough separation from the dominant culture to resist being assimilated into it. Echoes of the old caste system of peninsulares, creoles, mestizos, and mulatos will be visible in the varied experience of latinos finding a place in the dominant culture.
posted by mtthwkrl at 3:06 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
JP Brammer is a wonderful writer who has been exploring this for some time. I'm also reminded of the recent dustup over the Disney+ show Primos (apologies for linking to a fandom source) which seems to me to have been a battle over which experience gets treated as the normative latino experience.
I have a somewhat pessimistic outlook on this. I believe that language is one of the ways that cultures can find enough separation from the dominant culture to resist being assimilated into it. Echoes of the old caste system of peninsulares, creoles, mestizos, and mulatos will be visible in the varied experience of latinos finding a place in the dominant culture.
posted by mtthwkrl at 3:06 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
The concept of "Latino" is odd because it means something very different in and out of the US.
I identify as Latino (or Latinx), but as a Latinoamericano, somebody who was born and lives in Latin America, not the US idea of "Latino", which refers IMO to a marginalized immigrant identity that never felt part of my story, even though we moved to the US escaping Pinochet's dictatorship. We didn't really have the hardscrabble story and it was much harder for me to come back to Chile than it was to move to the US in the first place.
When I lived in California as an adult, I remember going once to eat at a Mexican place and deciding, on a whim, to order in Spanish, and the way the staff responded positively in contrast to how they treated people who ordered in English felt kind of fake to me, as if I were claiming an identity that wasn't really mine.
posted by signal at 5:25 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I identify as Latino (or Latinx), but as a Latinoamericano, somebody who was born and lives in Latin America, not the US idea of "Latino", which refers IMO to a marginalized immigrant identity that never felt part of my story, even though we moved to the US escaping Pinochet's dictatorship. We didn't really have the hardscrabble story and it was much harder for me to come back to Chile than it was to move to the US in the first place.
When I lived in California as an adult, I remember going once to eat at a Mexican place and deciding, on a whim, to order in Spanish, and the way the staff responded positively in contrast to how they treated people who ordered in English felt kind of fake to me, as if I were claiming an identity that wasn't really mine.
posted by signal at 5:25 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
The concept of "Latino" is odd because it means something very different in and out of the US.
Yeah, I found this article kind of....difficult? I mean I'm horrified to hear about people who had their language stolen from them and I don't want to say "well that sucks, but too bad, you're out." especially given that I don't really identify as latina. Somebody standing outside the gate has no business gatekeeping, I know.
But if it's not language then what is it? I don't identify as latina essentially because I don't feel like I have much in common with people from latin america or spain who are not my actual ethnicity...except language (and even that, iffy...I mean I have an easier time understanding some Portuguese and Italian people than understanding Cubans). That's the only commonality.
So I don't have an identiy as latina just like I don't have an identity as a Commonwealthian or Francophonie-ian for example. I mean sure I'm from a commonwealth country and a francophonie country, but commonwealth countries are pretty different from one another, Francophonie countries are pretty different from one another. I don't feel like people from Cypres (also a member of both) and I have some kind of bond. I feel the same way about latino identity. Yeah, I'm from a Latin American country, but the only thing I know about Panama is that there's a pizza hut in the airport of Panama City and I've never been to Mexico and probably never will go, and I could not find Venezuala or Costa Rica on a map. I don't feel any real bond with people from those places (other than the human brotherhood etc. etc.) But ok, there's language. We speak the same language. Sure, ok. We have that in common. But if it's not that, then what's left?
My hips? What does that even mean? Sason?? (ok here we are again not even having language in common because I don't know what that means, either). I feel like if there's anything it's language. But the article makes me see that saying that is hurtful to people who had their language stolen from them.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:15 PM on September 21, 2023
Yeah, I found this article kind of....difficult? I mean I'm horrified to hear about people who had their language stolen from them and I don't want to say "well that sucks, but too bad, you're out." especially given that I don't really identify as latina. Somebody standing outside the gate has no business gatekeeping, I know.
But if it's not language then what is it? I don't identify as latina essentially because I don't feel like I have much in common with people from latin america or spain who are not my actual ethnicity...except language (and even that, iffy...I mean I have an easier time understanding some Portuguese and Italian people than understanding Cubans). That's the only commonality.
So I don't have an identiy as latina just like I don't have an identity as a Commonwealthian or Francophonie-ian for example. I mean sure I'm from a commonwealth country and a francophonie country, but commonwealth countries are pretty different from one another, Francophonie countries are pretty different from one another. I don't feel like people from Cypres (also a member of both) and I have some kind of bond. I feel the same way about latino identity. Yeah, I'm from a Latin American country, but the only thing I know about Panama is that there's a pizza hut in the airport of Panama City and I've never been to Mexico and probably never will go, and I could not find Venezuala or Costa Rica on a map. I don't feel any real bond with people from those places (other than the human brotherhood etc. etc.) But ok, there's language. We speak the same language. Sure, ok. We have that in common. But if it's not that, then what's left?
My hips? What does that even mean? Sason?? (ok here we are again not even having language in common because I don't know what that means, either). I feel like if there's anything it's language. But the article makes me see that saying that is hurtful to people who had their language stolen from them.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:15 PM on September 21, 2023
I dunno. The fact I don't speak Spanish (or that I have white skin and am half white) doesn't take away the fact of my Mexican facial features and body type or my Mexican immigrant father and his side of the family and the ways in which that family (and there for me) have been shaped by colonialism, colorism, racism, immigration, etc etc. I am not just another white European American for the simple fact that white European Americans simply don't have the same experiences that white English-only Latinos like me do.
If I can't be Latino because I don't speak the language (something shared with some developmentally disabled latino people, I would add) then what am I? It feels important to me to hold onto an identity that includes me into the people I was born into.
posted by flamk at 7:17 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
If I can't be Latino because I don't speak the language (something shared with some developmentally disabled latino people, I would add) then what am I? It feels important to me to hold onto an identity that includes me into the people I was born into.
posted by flamk at 7:17 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
but as a Latinoamericano, somebody who was born and lives in Latin America, not the US idea of "Latino", which refers IMO to a marginalized immigrant identity that never felt part of my story. We didn't really have the hardscrabble story...
Just adding that Latino in the US doesn't necessarily have to refer to a marginalized or hardscrabble immigrant identity. There are Latinos in California and other parts of the west/southwest that have been in the "US" for longer than the US has existed, I'm guessing, and are as established as the the most old stock families in Massachusetts or whatever.
posted by flamk at 7:26 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just adding that Latino in the US doesn't necessarily have to refer to a marginalized or hardscrabble immigrant identity. There are Latinos in California and other parts of the west/southwest that have been in the "US" for longer than the US has existed, I'm guessing, and are as established as the the most old stock families in Massachusetts or whatever.
posted by flamk at 7:26 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
"I don't feel any real bond with people from those places (other than the human brotherhood etc. etc.) But ok, there's language. We speak the same language. Sure, ok. We have that in common. But if it's not that, then what's left?"
Culture and heritage are not identical with language. Having a similar culinary lingua franca; homelands that have similar colonial/political relationships to the US (and Spain or Portugal, etc.); similar cultural phenomena like preferring futbol to football, having a more expansive notion of family or having syncretic Catholicism as the main Christian denomination are all elements of culture that can be unbound from language. Yes shared language can be an important, common touchstone, but it's not the only one.
Side note: in my corner of academia "latin" means all parts of Central and South America and parts of North America (Mexico, obvs, but southern California, the Mexican border areas and S. Florida are all accepted as Latin). Latin America includes Haiti, Belize, *Brazil*, etc. where Spanish is definitely not the primary language. Spanish-speaking countries are Hispanic, for our purposes.
Back on topic: in my experience most Latines feel most Latine when we are a clear minority and we have only have each other for comfort and support. If there are enough Cubans and Colombians in an area that they don't need to depend on each other, then they will generally see themselves as just Cubans and Colombians. Put them in a dorm with one Brazilian and 97 Anglos and you'll see how fast those three adopt Latinidad as an identity.
(And of course, there are exceptions. The truth of general claims don't invalidate individual experiences that are out of step of the general trend.)
posted by oddman at 7:28 PM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]
Culture and heritage are not identical with language. Having a similar culinary lingua franca; homelands that have similar colonial/political relationships to the US (and Spain or Portugal, etc.); similar cultural phenomena like preferring futbol to football, having a more expansive notion of family or having syncretic Catholicism as the main Christian denomination are all elements of culture that can be unbound from language. Yes shared language can be an important, common touchstone, but it's not the only one.
Side note: in my corner of academia "latin" means all parts of Central and South America and parts of North America (Mexico, obvs, but southern California, the Mexican border areas and S. Florida are all accepted as Latin). Latin America includes Haiti, Belize, *Brazil*, etc. where Spanish is definitely not the primary language. Spanish-speaking countries are Hispanic, for our purposes.
Back on topic: in my experience most Latines feel most Latine when we are a clear minority and we have only have each other for comfort and support. If there are enough Cubans and Colombians in an area that they don't need to depend on each other, then they will generally see themselves as just Cubans and Colombians. Put them in a dorm with one Brazilian and 97 Anglos and you'll see how fast those three adopt Latinidad as an identity.
(And of course, there are exceptions. The truth of general claims don't invalidate individual experiences that are out of step of the general trend.)
posted by oddman at 7:28 PM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]
As someone with a cobbled together political ethnic identity (Asian American!) that is very awkward as a cultural identity (our college Asian American students association settled on "Rice" as the annual dinner theme.....) I feel like I learn a lot from how other super diverse (1st, 2nd ..... 5th generation immigrants from a dozen or more countries) communities work out some of these complexities.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:24 PM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:24 PM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
There are Latinos in California and other parts of the west/southwest that have been in the "US" for longer than the US has existed
Why Mexican Americans Say ‘The Border Crossed Us’
Why Mexican Americans Say ‘The Border Crossed Us’
More than a century and a half later, Mexican Americans continue to face claims that they don’t belong and should “go back” to where they came from. For those living in Texas—as well as California, Arizona and New Mexico—the charge is particularly ironic since the land used to be part of Mexico. As many Mexican American activists have argued: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”posted by kirkaracha at 10:46 PM on September 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
Just adding that Latino in the US doesn't necessarily have to refer to a marginalized or hardscrabble immigrant identity. There are Latinos in California and other parts of the west/southwest that have been in the "US" for longer than the US has existed, I'm guessing, and are as established as the the most old stock families in Massachusetts or whatever.
You get my aunts in Texas angry enough and they will remind you that our family was here before the white folks came. Yes, the border crossed my family, not other way around. It will never happen, but it would be good for white folks to remember that.
I dunno. The fact I don't speak Spanish (or that I have white skin and am half white) doesn't take away the fact of my Mexican facial features and body type or my Mexican immigrant father and his side of the family and the ways in which that family (and there for me) have been shaped by colonialism, colorism, racism, immigration, etc etc. I am not just another white European American for the simple fact that white European Americans simply don't have the same experiences that white English-only Latinos like me do.
I am a fully white-presenting child (my sister less so) and it sucks in that I love my mom's culture more than my dad's but I am not seen as being part of the Mexican community because I look like I do. I am too white for Mexicans, and pleasingly white for the white people. It's a liminal space you start to become more aware of as you get older and want to know more about your family. There can be a lot of gatekeeping sometimes.
posted by Kitteh at 4:13 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
You get my aunts in Texas angry enough and they will remind you that our family was here before the white folks came. Yes, the border crossed my family, not other way around. It will never happen, but it would be good for white folks to remember that.
I dunno. The fact I don't speak Spanish (or that I have white skin and am half white) doesn't take away the fact of my Mexican facial features and body type or my Mexican immigrant father and his side of the family and the ways in which that family (and there for me) have been shaped by colonialism, colorism, racism, immigration, etc etc. I am not just another white European American for the simple fact that white European Americans simply don't have the same experiences that white English-only Latinos like me do.
I am a fully white-presenting child (my sister less so) and it sucks in that I love my mom's culture more than my dad's but I am not seen as being part of the Mexican community because I look like I do. I am too white for Mexicans, and pleasingly white for the white people. It's a liminal space you start to become more aware of as you get older and want to know more about your family. There can be a lot of gatekeeping sometimes.
posted by Kitteh at 4:13 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Comment removed. Please be considerate, respectful and sensitive to context, 'cause posting a Google translated comment saying "we are all Americans" isn't helpful a thread about latino identity.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Back on topic: in my experience most Latines feel most Latine when we are a clear minority and we have only have each other for comfort and support. If there are enough Cubans and Colombians in an area that they don't need to depend on each other, then they will generally see themselves as just Cubans and Colombians. Put them in a dorm with one Brazilian and 97 Anglos and you'll see how fast those three adopt Latinidad as an identity.
I dunno...I've mostly been in contexts where my ethnicity and latin americans more generally are in the clear minority, much more so, certainly, than a place like Texas, and like I said, I've never felt any connection to latino identity. I feel strongly Ecuadorian, but not latino. According to wikipedia, 4.1% of people in the part of Toronto I grew up in are South American (yes, doesn't include Mexicans and central americans, or Spaniards, I guess). As far as I know there were two Ecuadorian kids in my high school. I was casually acquainted with one and not really the other. I wouldn't say I was friends with either. I didn't turn to them for support. We had very different interests and personalities, both being Ecuadorian wasn't really bigger than that.
Though I am aware that not every Latino person in the U.S. is a marginalized/disenfranchised etc., but it still feels like that history is a huge part of the pull for panethnic identity in the U.S. and why it is less common and quite different elsewhere. And maybe it seems like the very definition/description of what the ethnicities or the panethnicities mean is tied up with that history. Like I was watching an episode of Queer Eye where the "target" was a Mexican-American woman who identified very strongly as Mexican and Latina. She was running a non-profit and one of the things they were doing was helping her pick out a wardrobe that was appropriate for business-meeting type things. And she kept saying how like she didn't feel like a lot of those clothes fit her because they would kind of deny/hide her Mexicanness. And I was watching this thinking "well, I've never been to Mexico, but I bet that if you go to a board room in Mexico people are wearing the same outfits you'll find in a U.S. boardroom." but it seems like she's taken on the way Mexican people within her particular group of Mexican people in the U.S. dress as "Mexican" when it's just "American Mexicans in that city who are into these kinds of cars that she was into." and somehow that got labelled "Mexican" in her mind.
I don't think that outside that particular history of marginalization in the U.S. that the panethnic identity carries the same weight or that it even means the same thing.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:47 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
I dunno...I've mostly been in contexts where my ethnicity and latin americans more generally are in the clear minority, much more so, certainly, than a place like Texas, and like I said, I've never felt any connection to latino identity. I feel strongly Ecuadorian, but not latino. According to wikipedia, 4.1% of people in the part of Toronto I grew up in are South American (yes, doesn't include Mexicans and central americans, or Spaniards, I guess). As far as I know there were two Ecuadorian kids in my high school. I was casually acquainted with one and not really the other. I wouldn't say I was friends with either. I didn't turn to them for support. We had very different interests and personalities, both being Ecuadorian wasn't really bigger than that.
Though I am aware that not every Latino person in the U.S. is a marginalized/disenfranchised etc., but it still feels like that history is a huge part of the pull for panethnic identity in the U.S. and why it is less common and quite different elsewhere. And maybe it seems like the very definition/description of what the ethnicities or the panethnicities mean is tied up with that history. Like I was watching an episode of Queer Eye where the "target" was a Mexican-American woman who identified very strongly as Mexican and Latina. She was running a non-profit and one of the things they were doing was helping her pick out a wardrobe that was appropriate for business-meeting type things. And she kept saying how like she didn't feel like a lot of those clothes fit her because they would kind of deny/hide her Mexicanness. And I was watching this thinking "well, I've never been to Mexico, but I bet that if you go to a board room in Mexico people are wearing the same outfits you'll find in a U.S. boardroom." but it seems like she's taken on the way Mexican people within her particular group of Mexican people in the U.S. dress as "Mexican" when it's just "American Mexicans in that city who are into these kinds of cars that she was into." and somehow that got labelled "Mexican" in her mind.
I don't think that outside that particular history of marginalization in the U.S. that the panethnic identity carries the same weight or that it even means the same thing.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:47 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
"well, I've never been to Mexico, but I bet that if you go to a board room in Mexico people are wearing the same outfits you'll find in a U.S. boardroom." but it seems like she's taken on the way Mexican people within her particular group of Mexican people in the U.S. dress as "Mexican" when it's just "American Mexicans in that city who are into these kinds of cars that she was into." and somehow that got labelled "Mexican" in her mind.If it's any help, I'm Mexican and as far as I know we do. I tend to look at these sort of overt displays of tradition, in ways or at least forms that you wouldn't really see in the "home turf" for a given culture, as basically lifeboats people hang onto to keep a sense of identity in a society that maybe doesn't fully accept them or which is changing too fast for them; I think this is basically true of any given "national identity", for the record. A lot of "traditional" Mexican stuff is barely older than this century and came about from nation-building projects after the revolution. Italian cuisine (both in Italy itself and the Italian-American kind) is similarly recent.
posted by Galimatazo at 8:27 AM on September 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
And she kept saying how like she didn't feel like a lot of those clothes fit her because they would kind of deny/hide her Mexicanness.
Okay, I'm curious, but not enough to watch television. What did she say she'd have to add/subtract from regular corporate drag in order to manifest her Mexicanness?
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:49 AM on September 22, 2023
Okay, I'm curious, but not enough to watch television. What did she say she'd have to add/subtract from regular corporate drag in order to manifest her Mexicanness?
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:49 AM on September 22, 2023
Okay, I'm curious, but not enough to watch television. What did she say she'd have to add/subtract from regular corporate drag in order to manifest her Mexicanness?
I didn't remember off the top of my head so looked it up: Hoop earrings. thick, winged eye-liner, and big hair (though not as big as it originally was). Three things, that come to think of it, none of the women Mexicans I knew while living in the U.S. had.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:35 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I didn't remember off the top of my head so looked it up: Hoop earrings. thick, winged eye-liner, and big hair (though not as big as it originally was). Three things, that come to think of it, none of the women Mexicans I knew while living in the U.S. had.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:35 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
What a fascinating topic, thanks for sharing.
I have to admit, my first thought when I read the headline was, "Ok, wait, then what does?". Is there really that much shared history between someone from a poor and rural Mexican farming community and a banker from Santiago apart from the shared language? (Although when I was in Chile earlier this year I was reminded of how divergent Spanish dialects can be!) but reading and listening to these experiences it does make sense that they are in this kind of liminal space and trying to navigate it.
Culture and heritage are not identical with language. Having a similar culinary lingua franca; homelands that have similar colonial/political relationships to the US (and Spain or Portugal, etc.); similar cultural phenomena like preferring futbol to football, having a more expansive notion of family or having syncretic Catholicism as the main Christian denomination are all elements of culture that can be unbound from language. Yes shared language can be an important, common touchstone, but it's not the only one.
Maybe it's because most of my experience is in the Southern Cone of South America but this almost seems more of a counter-example to me. A completely different culinary lingua franca, much more traditional Catholic traditions than Mexico or Central America, very different histories with indigenous populations. Of course there's the shared colonial history with the US and yes, different sports that could be a binding factor but those are weaker ties it would seem to me.
Having spent a lot more time in South America in the last few years than I have in the US, the constant use of "white" as a term of contrast with "Latino" or "Hispanic" is a bit jarring. I understand the history is very different and I spent years living in Texas, so I don't need it explaining to me, but still! It's just a very American way of thinking. (Which is fine, this is an article about inhabitants of the US, not about people living in the rest of the Americas).
On the one hand, the core shared language kind of is the point (otherwise what is the shared identity?) on the other hand to deprive people who were forcibly stripped of that language in one way or another access to their roots and identity seems like a very bad and unpleasant kind of gatekeeping and I'm glad that people are able to re-connect with their heritage language this way.
“A language isn’t going to make me any less Latina. It’s in my blood. It’s in my hips. It’s in my sazón (seasoning) when I’m cooking.”
I can see how they feel connection to a particular heritage, whether that is Mexican or Bolivian, or Cuban or anything else but what is the shared Latino approach to seasoning? That seems more like it would be a narrower and more specific family background.
Many of my South American and Mexican friends have similar experiences, If only I had a penguin..., to be honest that sounds like there is cross-connection of class and ethnicity. I have actually been in a Mexican board room (however my experience of Mexico and of Spanish speaking America is almost exclusively with board rooms and with the kind of people that inhabit them so that isn't necessarily a broad cross section of society either.) If anything, Mexico, at least in the capital is more formal and traditional in business dress than the US. A friend owns a boutique and formerly worked for Mexican Vogue, I asked her about the wearing of hoop earrings, winged eye-liner, and big hair and she said it sounded like her cleaner.
Anyway it's nice to see people enjoying re-connecting with their roots and I wish them all the best.
posted by atrazine at 10:09 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have to admit, my first thought when I read the headline was, "Ok, wait, then what does?". Is there really that much shared history between someone from a poor and rural Mexican farming community and a banker from Santiago apart from the shared language? (Although when I was in Chile earlier this year I was reminded of how divergent Spanish dialects can be!) but reading and listening to these experiences it does make sense that they are in this kind of liminal space and trying to navigate it.
Culture and heritage are not identical with language. Having a similar culinary lingua franca; homelands that have similar colonial/political relationships to the US (and Spain or Portugal, etc.); similar cultural phenomena like preferring futbol to football, having a more expansive notion of family or having syncretic Catholicism as the main Christian denomination are all elements of culture that can be unbound from language. Yes shared language can be an important, common touchstone, but it's not the only one.
Maybe it's because most of my experience is in the Southern Cone of South America but this almost seems more of a counter-example to me. A completely different culinary lingua franca, much more traditional Catholic traditions than Mexico or Central America, very different histories with indigenous populations. Of course there's the shared colonial history with the US and yes, different sports that could be a binding factor but those are weaker ties it would seem to me.
Having spent a lot more time in South America in the last few years than I have in the US, the constant use of "white" as a term of contrast with "Latino" or "Hispanic" is a bit jarring. I understand the history is very different and I spent years living in Texas, so I don't need it explaining to me, but still! It's just a very American way of thinking. (Which is fine, this is an article about inhabitants of the US, not about people living in the rest of the Americas).
On the one hand, the core shared language kind of is the point (otherwise what is the shared identity?) on the other hand to deprive people who were forcibly stripped of that language in one way or another access to their roots and identity seems like a very bad and unpleasant kind of gatekeeping and I'm glad that people are able to re-connect with their heritage language this way.
“A language isn’t going to make me any less Latina. It’s in my blood. It’s in my hips. It’s in my sazón (seasoning) when I’m cooking.”
I can see how they feel connection to a particular heritage, whether that is Mexican or Bolivian, or Cuban or anything else but what is the shared Latino approach to seasoning? That seems more like it would be a narrower and more specific family background.
Many of my South American and Mexican friends have similar experiences, If only I had a penguin..., to be honest that sounds like there is cross-connection of class and ethnicity. I have actually been in a Mexican board room (however my experience of Mexico and of Spanish speaking America is almost exclusively with board rooms and with the kind of people that inhabit them so that isn't necessarily a broad cross section of society either.) If anything, Mexico, at least in the capital is more formal and traditional in business dress than the US. A friend owns a boutique and formerly worked for Mexican Vogue, I asked her about the wearing of hoop earrings, winged eye-liner, and big hair and she said it sounded like her cleaner.
Anyway it's nice to see people enjoying re-connecting with their roots and I wish them all the best.
posted by atrazine at 10:09 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Having spent a lot more time in South America in the last few years than I have in the US, the constant use of "white" as a term of contrast with "Latino" or "Hispanic" is a bit jarring.
Yeah, as a white person of latin-american heritage I never had any idea how I was supposed to answer those questions when I lived in the U.S.* and you have to choose one and they're basically orthogonal categories. The census at least has different questions so white/black/indiginous/asian latin-americans don't have to puzzle out your race from whether or not they're latin-american.
* I mean picture for a moment, if you will, Americans, a survey that asks you if you are White, Black, East Asian, South Asian, Indigenous, Caribbean, or American, and you're supposed to pick one. Or maybe you can pick more than one but then that gets interpreted as "mixed". See the problem?
I wonder if U.S. Latino should be more it's own pseudo-ethnicity than anything else, separate from the panethnic latino identity of some people in Latin American and of latin-americans living in other places. Maybe kind of like Cajun ethnicity, which is different from French/Acadian, and (I think) also not particularly tied to holding the language?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:44 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yeah, as a white person of latin-american heritage I never had any idea how I was supposed to answer those questions when I lived in the U.S.* and you have to choose one and they're basically orthogonal categories. The census at least has different questions so white/black/indiginous/asian latin-americans don't have to puzzle out your race from whether or not they're latin-american.
* I mean picture for a moment, if you will, Americans, a survey that asks you if you are White, Black, East Asian, South Asian, Indigenous, Caribbean, or American, and you're supposed to pick one. Or maybe you can pick more than one but then that gets interpreted as "mixed". See the problem?
I wonder if U.S. Latino should be more it's own pseudo-ethnicity than anything else, separate from the panethnic latino identity of some people in Latin American and of latin-americans living in other places. Maybe kind of like Cajun ethnicity, which is different from French/Acadian, and (I think) also not particularly tied to holding the language?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:44 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I didn't remember off the top of my head so looked it up: Hoop earrings. thick, winged eye-liner, and big hair (though not as big as it originally was). Three things, that come to think of it, none of the women Mexicans I knew while living in the U.S. had.
This description sounds like a working class esthetic as opposed to middle or upper class. I have white Anglo (well, Anglo-Scottish) working class cousins who would dress and do their make-up similarly, except with smoothed back hair (following popular Black styles).
The person's Mexican identity sounds like it is a particular mix of class and culture - and that she doesn't want to conform to what is not just Anglo, but really elite culture (which happens to norm on Anglo things, but certainly does not resemble working class Anglo culture at all).
posted by jb at 12:09 PM on September 22, 2023
This description sounds like a working class esthetic as opposed to middle or upper class. I have white Anglo (well, Anglo-Scottish) working class cousins who would dress and do their make-up similarly, except with smoothed back hair (following popular Black styles).
The person's Mexican identity sounds like it is a particular mix of class and culture - and that she doesn't want to conform to what is not just Anglo, but really elite culture (which happens to norm on Anglo things, but certainly does not resemble working class Anglo culture at all).
posted by jb at 12:09 PM on September 22, 2023
Yes, more with the "don't shame people for not speaking a language because they look like they should."
Because I resemble that, and I refuse to be shamed for not knowing Spanish because that's where my ancestors are from.
posted by luckynerd at 4:16 PM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
Because I resemble that, and I refuse to be shamed for not knowing Spanish because that's where my ancestors are from.
posted by luckynerd at 4:16 PM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
"in the Southern Cone of South America but this almost seems more of a counter-example to me. A completely different culinary lingua franca, much more traditional Catholic traditions than Mexico or Central America, "
While interesting, trading anecdotes about what the "real" experience is, gets tedious. So, I'll back out of the conversation after this post.
While you emphasize the difference (between flavors of Catholicism, etc.) in the context of this discussion it seems to me that the differences are much smaller than the similarities.
I've been on academic trips to Ukraine, China and Bolivia. I'm a Cuban by way of Miami. The rural Bolivian altoplano is, in a Latin American context, about as different from the urban Caribbean where I grew up. And yet, while the Spanish was a bit different I never felt out of place in Bolivia. Sure I was clearly different from the people around me (generally taller, fairer and with a full beard. I definitely stood out!) But no one had to explain the food on the menus to me. I knew what the proper manners were (except in the Aymara village!) and generally speaking I felt perfectly comfortable on the streets of La Paz.
In Ukraine and China I had to learn (and it wasn't easy) how to say hello (I'm not speaking about learning to say "hello" in their languages, but rather the customs associated with greeting people), share food, exchange business cards without giving offense. Every meal required an explanation (and I often had no idea what I was actually eating beyond the basic categories like fish or pasta). In Lviv and in Beijing (though more so in the latter) I was not confident that I could find my way around the city without a guide. (This is partially a language thing, of course, but I can read the Greek alphabet so I could transliterate Ukrainian well enough to surprise my hosts). The cities were laid out in a way which I just found odd.
In Bolivia while of course I was different, it was clear we were kin. In Ukraine and China, it was clear that while we were all people of good will, we were much more alien to each other.
posted by oddman at 6:24 PM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
While interesting, trading anecdotes about what the "real" experience is, gets tedious. So, I'll back out of the conversation after this post.
While you emphasize the difference (between flavors of Catholicism, etc.) in the context of this discussion it seems to me that the differences are much smaller than the similarities.
I've been on academic trips to Ukraine, China and Bolivia. I'm a Cuban by way of Miami. The rural Bolivian altoplano is, in a Latin American context, about as different from the urban Caribbean where I grew up. And yet, while the Spanish was a bit different I never felt out of place in Bolivia. Sure I was clearly different from the people around me (generally taller, fairer and with a full beard. I definitely stood out!) But no one had to explain the food on the menus to me. I knew what the proper manners were (except in the Aymara village!) and generally speaking I felt perfectly comfortable on the streets of La Paz.
In Ukraine and China I had to learn (and it wasn't easy) how to say hello (I'm not speaking about learning to say "hello" in their languages, but rather the customs associated with greeting people), share food, exchange business cards without giving offense. Every meal required an explanation (and I often had no idea what I was actually eating beyond the basic categories like fish or pasta). In Lviv and in Beijing (though more so in the latter) I was not confident that I could find my way around the city without a guide. (This is partially a language thing, of course, but I can read the Greek alphabet so I could transliterate Ukrainian well enough to surprise my hosts). The cities were laid out in a way which I just found odd.
In Bolivia while of course I was different, it was clear we were kin. In Ukraine and China, it was clear that while we were all people of good will, we were much more alien to each other.
posted by oddman at 6:24 PM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
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