CULTURAL TWINS AND NATIONAL OTHERS: ALLEGORIES OF INTRALATINO SUBJECTIVITIES IN U.S. LATINO/A LITERATURE

Abstract

This essay traces various literary and scholarly articulations of what I call intralatino subjectivities. First, I examine the power dynamics, identifications and divergences in the interactions and encounters between two latinos of different national origin, and secondly, the identity negotiations and complexities of the intralatino/a subject, that is, the subject that has two or more different Latino national identities, such as the MexiRican. By tracing these discourses of representation in various scholarly texts, I examine the way in which these intralatino/a sites have been represented both as utopian cultural spaces and as sites of complicated and contradictory cultural borrowings and influences. A detailed reading of two novels, Memory Mambo by Achy Obejas, and Mothertongue by Demetria Martinez, proposes that these two fictional texts are allegorical explorations of intralatino/a relations. A reading of these two novels from the point of view of the colonial analogies between groups serves well in understanding the potential that Latinos have as a pan-identity to create points of solidarity and convergence while still maintaining respect for each other's differences and specificities.

Key Words:

• Hybrid identities
• national identities
• US Latino/a literatures
• colonialism

To Gabriela, Camila, and Alejandro, future intralatino subjects.

Notes

1. My choice of the term “intralatino” stems from the prefix “intra,” which refers to “within” and “inside,” thus foregrounding the heterogeneity within the ethnic label of “Latino/a” and the diverse tensions, conflicts, and transformations that take place within this community. While in many ways the focus is on the space signified by the prefix “inter,” the term “interlatino” seems more redundant than helpful. To add to the semantic and social complexity of the terms, many mixed Latinos prefer to use the term “Latino/a” to identify themselves as it “resolves the dilemmas of not being able to claim complete membership in one national group, or of having to choose one side over the other” (Flores-González 1999: 25).

2. Latinization is analogous to the concept of “hegemonic tropicalizations” proposed by Susana Chávez-Silverman and Frances R. Aparicio in Tropicalizations (1997). It is defined very differently by Agustín Laó –Montes in Mambo Montage (2001) as “the processes by which discourses of latinidad are coined and enacted in time and space” (5). For Laó, latinization can be produced both by dominant society as it others Latino/as, as well as by Latinos themselves as a subordinate minority constructing itself (17).

3. For instance, around 2000–2001, Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican elected official in New York, made public statements about the recent Mexican immigrants to the city that racialized and offended them. He referred to them in terms of their short height, indigenous features, and straight, black hair as deficiencies. For a more thorough analysis of the tensions between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in New York, see Sonia Fritz's (2003) documentary entitled American Dream: Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in New York.

4. For a more detailed analysis of intralatino tensions, particularly between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, see Nicholas De Genova's and Ana Yolanda Ramos Zayas's book Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (2003). This book, based on ethnographic work done in Chicago, identifies a number of conflicts and differences between both groups—from citizenship status to differences in the use of Spanish—that have triggered mutual tensions and forms of racialization between both groups.

5. The privilege of U.S. citizenship among U.S. Latino/as has been a source of conflict and resentment for noncitizens, and it has led to power hierarchies based on residence and even nativism. However, the Puerto Rican case is significant in that citizenship itself was imposed as an act of colonialism on the Puerto Rican peoples. While it has offered Puerto Ricans a higher degree of mobility between the United States and the Island, it has nonetheless continued to be defined as a second-class citizenship by the dominant sector and used for purposes of recruitment of cheap labor. The fact that political figures such as Juan Mari Bras renounced their U.S. citizenship reveals the very contested nature of this so-called privilege.