Remapping Latinidad: A Performance Cartography of Latina/o Identity in Rural Nebraska

Abstract

This essay argues that the cartography of latinidad generally locates US Latinas/os in either urban or border regions. In order to disrupt that spatial placing, this essay proposes “performance cartography,” a method that relies on storytelling, to disrupt the dominant configuration of latinidad. Through a series of family stories about being Latina/o in rural Nebraska, this essay shifts understandings of Latina/o performativity by emphasizing the importance space makes in producing different kinds of subjects. Although the author notes connections between urban, border, and rural conceptions of latinidad, this essay urges a more careful consideration of alternative spaces.

Keywords:

• Theory of the flesh
• Storytelling
• Assimilation
• Disidentification
• Space

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the blind reviewers, Shane Moreman, Bernadette Calafell, Sara McKinnon, Kimberlee Pérez, and Jennifer Linde for help preparing this manuscript. The author also thanks her cousins Diane, Mae, Delores, Marcella and Phyllis, her Grandpa Art, Grandma Ruth, her father, and many other family members for providing the stories found in this essay. All mistakes are my own.

Notes

1. Historical cartographers David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis have identified “performance cartography” as one of the three main kinds of cartography cultures use across the world. They argue that in some cultures, performances such as rituals, songs, poetry, and dance function as maps when their expressed purpose is to describe some sort of spatial knowledge. My use of the term is related to Woodward and Lewis, but as a communication scholar instead of a cartographer, my version of performance cartography is far less literal.

2. I haven't been able to confirm that he was in fact the first Mexican to own land in Western Nebraska; this is the story my cousins, his daughters, tell. It is clear based on the time period that he was absolutely one of the first.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karma R. Chávez

Karma R. Chávez (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque