Life in the Hyphen STAVANS

I

Enn

Lrf, in the llyphen

What ifyo were you andtiJuuas I, Mister?Bom in 1885 in Jalisco, Mexico, the painter Martin Ramirez spent mN ot

his life in a Califomia madhouse, in a pavilion reserved for incurable pa$nts.Since his death in 1960 he has become a syrnbol in Hispanic imm4rantexperience and is considered today a leading painter with a permanentplacein Chicano visual art. As a young man, Ramfrez worked first in the fieidlandthen in a laundry; he later worked as a migrant railroad worker, reloounSacross the Rio Grande in search o[ a better life and to escape the dang$ofthe violent upheaval sweeping his native land. He lost the power t6ulkaround I9I5, at the age of thirry, and wandered for many years, until thrlosAngeles police picked him up and sent him to Pershing Square, a sheltirlorthe homeless. Diagnosed by doctors as a "deteriorated paranoid sclruo-phrenic" and sent to the Dewitt Hospital, Ramirez never recoveredhisspeech. But in 1945, some fifteen years before his death, he began to daw'Ramirez was fortunate to be discovered by a psychiatrist, Dr. Tarmo Pasto,otthe Universiry of Califomia, Sacramento, who, as the legend .lui-t, rur *ir-

ing the hospital one day with a few pupils when Ramirez approached hlrn'offering a bunch of rolled-up paintings. The doctor was so impressed rlth

Ramirez's work that he made sure the anist had plenry of drawrng matenalsro use. Soon Pasto began collecting Ramirez's work and showed it to a riln-ber of artists, includingJim Nutt, who arranged an exhibit of Ramirez's pilt-ings with an art deaier in Sacramento. Other exhibits soon followed-in \ew

York, Chicago, Sweden, Denmark, Houston, among other places-lnd

T H E H I S P A N I C C O N D I T I O N

Ramirez, the perfect outsider, rvas a dazzling revelation at the exposition"Outsiders" in London's Hayward Gallery.

ln a conrroversial text written ln June I986 to commemorate an exhibit,

"Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and

Sculptors," at the Corcoran Gailery in Washington, D C ' Octavio Paz, the

lgg0 winner of rhe Nobel Prize in lirerature, claimed that Ramirez's pencit-

and-crayon drawings are evocarions of what Ramirez lived and dreamed dur-

ing and alrer the Mexican Revolution. Paz compared the artist to fuchard

Dadd, a ninereenth-cehrury painrer who lost his mind at the end of his life.

As Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist and diplomat, claimed in his book

The Buned Miwor, the mute painrer drew his muteness, making it graphic

And Roger Cardinal, the Brirish author of Figures of Reality, argued that the

arrisr's achievements should not be minimized as psychotic rambling and

categorized him as "a nay' painter." To make sense of Ramirez's odyssey' Dr'pasro concluded that Ramfrez's psychological disrurbances were the result of

a difficuk process of adapurion ro a foreign culture. Ramirez had left Mexico

at a rurbulent, riotous time and arrived in a place where everything was unfa-

miliar and strange to him

Ramirez's plight is representative of the entire Hispanic cuitural expen-

ence in the United states. Neirher a diluted Mexican 10st in a no-man'sland

nor a fully rounded cirizen, Ramirez symbolizes the voyage of millions of

silenr itineranrbraceros and legal middle-class immigrants bewildered by their

sudden mobility, furiously rrylng ro make sense of an altogether different

environmenr. Bur Hispanics are now leaving his frustrated silence behind.

Society is beginning ro embrace Larinos, from rejects ro fashion setters, from

outcasts to insider traders. New generations of Spanish speakers are feeling at

home in Gringolandia. (Etymologically, gringo' according to Webster's

Dicrionary, is derived from gnego, stranger, but it may have been derived

from the Spanish pronunciation of a slang word meaning fast-spender, green-

go). Suddenly the crossroad where white and brown meet, where "yo soy"

meets "l am," a lile in the Spanglish hyphen, is being transformed. Many of

us Latinos already have a Yankee look: We either make a conscious effort to

look gringo, or we're simply absorbed by the cuhure's fashion and manners.

And what is more exciting is that Anglos are beginning to look just like us-

enamored as they are o[ our bright colors and tropical rhythms, our suffering

Frida lQhlo, our legendary Emesto "Che" Guevara. Martin Ramfrez's silence

is giving way to a revaluation o[ things Hispanic. No more silence, no more

isolation. Spanish accents, ovr mqners pecultar de ser, have emerged as

L IFE IN THE HYPHEN

exotic, fashionable, and even envrabie and in{luential in mainsrreamAmerican culture.

However, just as Ramirez's art took decades to be understood and appre-ciated, it will take years ro understand the multifaceted and far-reachingimplications of this cuhural rransformarion, the move o[ Hispanics fromperiphery to cenrer stage. I believe rhat we are currently wirnessing a double,faceted phenomenon: Hispanizarion of the United States, and Anglocizarionof Hispanics. Adventurers in Hyphenland, explorers of El Dorado, we His-panics have deliberately and cautiously infiltrared the enemy, and now go bythe rubric of Latinos in the rerritories norrh of the Rio Grande. Delaing fulladaptadon, our objective is ro assimilare Anglos slowly ro ourselves.

Indeed, a refreshingly modern concepr has emerged before Americaneyes-to live in the hyphen, to inhabir rhe borderland, ro exist inside theDominican-American expression entre Lucas y Juan Mejia-and nowhere isthe debate sunounding ir more candid, more historically enlighrening, rhanamong Hispanics. The American Dream has nor yer fully opened its arms rous; the melting por is still roc cold, too uninviring, for a total meltdown.Aithough the coliective characrer of rhose immigraring from the Caribbeanarchipelago and south of rhe border remains foreign to a large segment of rheheterogeneous nation, as "native strangers" within the Anglo-Saxon soil, ourimpact will prevail sooner, rarher lhan later. Alrhough srereorypes remaincommonplace and vices get easily confused with habits, a number of factors,from population growrh to a rerarded acquisition o[ a second language and apassionate retenriveness of our original cuhure, actuaily suggest that His-panics in the United States shall nor, will nor, cannor, and ought nor fo]lowpaths opened up by prer,rous immigranrs.

According to various Chicano legends recounred by the scholar GurierreTib6n, Aztlan Azrlarlan, rhe archetypal region where Aztecs, speakers ofNahuarl, originated before their itinerant joumey in the founeenrh century insearch of a iand to setrle, was somewhere in the area of New Mexico, Califor-nia, Nevada, Uuh, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, and the Mexicanstates of Durango and Nayarir, quite far from Tenochtitldn, known roday asMexico City. Once a nomadic tribe, the Aztecs settled and became powerful,subjugating rhe Haustec to the north and the Mixrec and Zapotec to thesouth, achieving a composire civilizarion. Larinos with these mixed ances,tries, at ieast six in every ren in the United Stares, beiieve they have an abo-riginal claim to the land north of the border. As native Americans, we were inthese areas before the Pilgrims of the Mayflower and undersrandably keep a


tellunc atachment to the land. Our retum by sequential waves of immigra-

rion as wetbacks and middie-income entrepreneurs to the lost Canaan, rhe

Promised Land of Milk and Honey, ought be seen as the closing of a histori-

cal cycle. lronically, the revenge of Motecuhzoma II (in modem Spanish:

Moctezuma; in its English misspelling: Montezuma) is understood differently

in Spanish and English. For Anglos, it refers to the diarrhea a tourist gets

afrer drinking unpurified water or eating chile and arroz con pollo in Latin

America and the West Indies; for Hispanics, it describes the unhurried

process o[ the penetrat ion of and exert ion of inf luence on the United

States-la reconquista, the oppressor's final defeat. Yesterday's vrctim and

tomorrow's conquistadors, we Hispanics, tired of a history full of traumas

and undemocratic intemrptions, have decided to regain what was uken away

from us.

There is no doubt that the attempt to ponray Latinos as a homogenous

minority and,/or ethnic group is rather recent. Within the various minorities,

forces have always pulled unionists apart. As Bemardo Vega, a Puerto Rican

social activist ln New York Cirv. wrote in his Memoirs in the 1940s:

When l came to [NewYork] in I916 there was little interest in Hispanic

culture. For the average citizen, Spain was a country ofbullfighten and fla-

menco dancers. As for Latin America, no one could care less. And Cuba

and Puerto Rico were just two islands inhabited by savages whom the

Americans had beneficially saved from the clutches of the lberian lion.

Once in a while a Spanish theater company would make an appearance in

New York. Their audiences never amounted to more than the small cluster

of Spaniards and Latin Americans, along with some universiry professors

, who had been crary enough to leam Spanish. That was it!

I fhe constant growth of the Puerto Rican communiry gave nse to riots,

j contro,rersy, hatred. But there is one fact that stands out: a! a time when

I there -ere no more than half a million of us, our impact on cultural life in

I the United States was far stronger than that of the 4 million Mexican-

Americans. And the reason is clear: though they shared with us the same

cultural origins, people of Mexican extraction, involved as they were in

agricultural labor, found themselves scattered throughout the American

-Sourhwest. The Puerto Ricans, on lhe other hand, settled in the large

urban centers, especialiy New York, where in spite of everything the cir-

cumsunces were more conducive to cultural interaction and enrichment,

whether we wanted it that way or not.

L I F E I N T H E H Y P H E N

Und] the early eighties, Mexicans, Puerro Ricans, Cubans, Central andSouth Americans, and even spaniards were considered independent unirs rnthe United srares, never parr o[ a unified whole. If culture is defined as rhefabric of iife of a community, rhe way its members reacr in a sociar conrexr,then Hispanic culture in rhe United States is many cultures, as many asnational groups from Latin America and rhe Caribbean, Iinguistically riedtogether-wirh Antonio de Nebrija, the first grammarian of the Spanish lan-guage, as a patemal figure. After rhe 1990 U.S. Census, whlch counted morerhan 22 million Hispanics-9 percenr of the overall population (arthough atleast 3 million wandering illegal immigrans should probabry be added tothat count)-we emerged as a soiid polirical and social force. At rhar rimethe median income per Hispanic family was $23,446, whereas a white, non-Hispanic family eamed an average of $35,975. The census also showed largeconcenrations of Hispanics in Califomia and Texas, where l2 million or overhalf (53.8 percent) of ail U.S. Hispanics live, followed by New york andFlorida, where nearly 4 million, or about I7 percent, live. To put things inroperspective, in 1980 Hispanics totaled 6.4 percenr of the popularion, inl99C 9 percenr of the population, and it is esrimated thar by rhe year 2000Hispanics will exceed 31.2 million or ll.6 percenr of the roral U.S. popuia-tion. Before the eighties our polidcal struggles and social behavior were ofrenassociated, in rhe view of Congress and in govemmenral offices, wirh animage of some monstrous creature, inchoate, formless, inconstant, whosemetabolism was difficult to define. Assimilation was analyzed according toour independent nadonalities: For instance, many Cubans who came to thecountry after the 1959 communisr Revolurion and before rhe Mariel boat lifrin 1980 were educated upper- and middle-class people; consequenrly, rheiradapration acquired a different rhyrhm from rhar of puerto Ricans, who,mosrly as jtbaros from rural areas near san Juan and elsewhere on their nativewest Indian island, arrived in the United stares illiterare and without apenny. Although not all Cubans were well-off nor all puerto Ricans miser-able, many rhought the two subgoups needed ro be approached separatelyand as autonomous uni$. Things indeed have been reversed. Today rhe van-ous pans making rhe Hispanic whole are approached by scholars more orless uniformly, as interdependent screws adding up ro a sophrsticated, serf-contained machinery: Latinos are seen as an assembly of forces, rn close con-tact with their Hispanic siblings under rhe border.

The discussion on how Hispanics have been assimilated has been greatlyinfluenced by, among others, Juan G6mez-euiflones, the dean of Chicano

l 0 I I


history; he wrote the groundbreaking 1977 essay on ethniciry and resistance

entitled "On Culture," as well as studies of Chicano politics and the radical

politics of the Mexican anarchist and anticlericalist Ricardo Flores Mag6n. This

discussion has been centered lor decades on what theoreticians called "nega-

tive assimilation." Immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries-anthro-

pologists, sociologists, and historians believed-were ready to retain their

ancestral heritage against all odds and costs; their daily existence in an alien,

aggressive milieu provoked a painful chain of beiligerent acts against Anglo-

Saxon domination. According to this view, Mexicans in East Los Angeles,

Puerto Ricans in Upper Manhattan's El Barrio, or Cubans in Key West and

Miami's Little Havana silently yet forcefully engaged in a battle against the

environment's imposing values. The Anglo, always the enemy, was seen as

colonizing and enslaving, a view shared by many south of the Rro Grande

since the time o[ the Spanish-American War. In a tantaiizing poem, Loma

Dee Cervantes, a Chicana in Califomia, author of Emplumada, wrote about

the pilgrimage to a paradise without complete freedom: "l see in the minor /my reflection: bronzed skin, black hair. /I feel I am a captive aboard the

refugee ship. / The ship that will never dock."At the end of the 1960s, a confronmtional, bold, politically charged era

emerged. The Chicano movement, led by C6sar ChAvez and the intellectually

sophisdcated Rodolfo "Corlcy" Gonz6lez,* which was intimately linked to

the Vietnam War and the civii rights era, was, according to many, the apex of

such social strife. The term chicano embodied the effort to overtum the dire

conditions existing within the Chicano communities during the postwar

period. And in their activism, Chicanos were joined by Puerto Rican revolu-

tionary nationalists to form such organizations as the Young Lords, who

fought for the independence and self-determination of Puerto Rico, equality

for women, an end to racism, and better education in Afro-lndian and

Spanish cultures. To oppose, to affirm one's own coliective tradition, to

remain loyal to the immigrant's culture, was considered essential and coher-

ent with the Hispanic nature north of the Rio Grande. Such an attitude

would often incorporate apocalyptic overtones. On the aesthetics of resis-

tance, G6mez-Quiflones once wrote: "The forms and ethos of one art must

be broken-the art of domination; another art must be rescued and fash-

*Unfortunately, when Anglicized, Spanish appellations and words often drop their accentsThe explanation may be technological: Typewriters and word processors that are used in the

United States either exclude them or have complex, labonous commands to bring them forth.

L IFE IN THE HYPHEN

ioned-the art of resistance. . . . It is arr that is not afraid ro love or play dueto its sense of history and future. It negates rhe exploitarion of the many bythe few, art as the expression of the degeneration of values for the few, thecorruption o[ human life, rhe destrucrion of the world. At that poinr art is atthe threshold of enrering the dimension of politics "

Led by feminists such as Gloria Anzaldfa and Cherrie Moraga, whosework is devoted ro analyzing "the mestizo world view" (rhe term mestizo,from the Latin misctre, to mix, refers to people of combtned European andAmerican Indian ancestry), interprerers today are engaged in an altogerherdifferent frame of discussion. They suggest rhat l-atinos, living in a universeof cultural contradictions and fragmentary realities, have ceased to be bel-ligerent in the way they rypically were during the antiestablishmenr decade.It is not that combar has disappeared or ceased to be compelling; ir has sim-ply acquired a diiferent slant. The fight is no longer from the outside in, butfrom the inside our. We Latinos in the United States have decided ro con-sciously embrace an ambiguous, labyrinrhine identity as a cultural signature,and what is ironic is thar, in the need ro reinvenr our self-image, we seem robe thoroughly enjoy'rng our culrural rransacrions with the Anglo environ-ment, elhnically hererogeneous as rhey are. Resisrance ro rhe English-speak-ing environment has been replaced by the notions of transcreation and trans-culturation, to exist in constant confusion, to be a hybrid, in constantchange, etemally divided, much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a bit like rheAnglos and a bit not. Such a charaa.eizarion, ir is not surprising, firs theway in which Hispanics are porrrayed by intellectuals in Larin America.Octavio Paz and Julio Corriizar once offered the axolotl-a rype oi Mexicansalamander, a lizardlike amphibian with porous skin and four legs rhar areoften weak or rudimentary-as the ad hoc spnbol of rhe Hispanic psyche,always in profound mutarion, not the myrhical crearure capable of with,standing fire, but an etemal muranr. And this metaphor, needless to say, fitsperfectly what can be called "the New Latino": a collecrive image whosereflection is built as the sum of its parts in unrestrained and dynamic meta-morphosis, a splrir of acculturation and perperual translarion, linguistic andspiritual, a dense popular identiry shaped like one of those perfect spheresimagined by Blaise Pascal: with its diameter everywhere and irs centernowhere. We are all to become Latinos agingados and/or gnngos hispaniza-dos; we will never be the owners of a pure, crystalline collective individualityJbecause we are the product of a five-hundred-year-old fiesta o[ miscegena-rion that began with our 6rst encounrer with the gnngo in i49)mls

t 3


applauded in today's multicultural age is a life happily lost and found in

Spangiish, which the southem writer and scholar Rolando Hinojosa, theChicano author of the Klail City saga, calls el cal6 pachuco: a round trip fromone linguistic territory and cultural dimension to another, a perpetual bar-gaining. Bil ingual education, which began in the 1960s in Florida inresponse to a request from Cubans who wished to allow their children touse Spanish in public schools, has reinforced the importance of our first lan-guage among Latinos. The tongue of Spain's Gold Age poets Luis deG6ngora and Francisco de Quevedo, rather than fading away, is alive andchanging, a crucial player in our bifocal idendry. The hyphen as an accept-able in-between is now in fashion; monolingualism, people in the barrios ofthe Southwest enjoy sayrng, is curable. One of the best portrayals of Ladnoassimilation into the melting pot that I know of is found in Tom Shlamme's1991 television film Mambo Mouth, in which the performance artist JohnLeguizamo (who wrote the original play as well) impersonates a Japaneseexecutive trying to teach Latinos the art of "ethnic crossover." He claimsthat in corporate America there's no room for "Spiks," and thus elaborates amethod by which Latinos can look and become Oriental. In the uadition ofsatirical comedy, Leguizamo ridicules Hispanic features: dietary and dress-ing manners, ways of speaking and walking, etc. As the monologue devel-ops, we leam that the Japanese executive himseif was once a Latino andthat, occasionally, he longs for the sabor hispano of his past. Slowly, as inChekhov's dramatic digressions-indeed, Leguizamo's piece is remarkablysimilar to Chekhov's tragicomic monologue "On Smoking and Its Dangers"-the character loses his integnry; while speaklng, his feet suddenly run wild,dancing a fast-paced salsa rhythm. Obviously, the method for "ethnic

crossover" has failed: Wherever we go, as Latinos we will always carry ouridiosyncratic self with us.

Even before the publication of Oscar Hijuelos's dazzling novel The MamboKings Plays Songs oJ Love rn 1989 and its subsequent receipt of the PuliverPrize, an explosion o[ Latino arts was overwhelming the country. Young andold, dead and alive-from William Carlos Williams to Joan Baez and TitoRodriguez, from Gloria Estefan, Piri Thomas, Diego Rivera, Anthony Quinn,and Oscar Lewis to Maria Conchita Alonso, Celia Cruz, and Cortijo-novel-ists, poes, filmmakers, painters, and salsa, merengue, plena, rumba, mambo,and cumbia musicians are being reevaluated, and a different approach to theLatino metabolism has been happily promoted. The concept of negativeassimilation has been replaced by the idea of a cuitural war in which Larinos


are soldiers in rhe battie to change America from wirhin, ro reinvenr i$ innercore. Take the fever surrounding Ladn America's magical realism, what theCuban musicologist and novelist Alejo Carpenrier first called lo real marayillosoafter a trip to Hairi in 1943, and what has been used to describe, obtusely,Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez's ficrional coastal town Macondo, with irs rain ofbuuer{lies and epidemic of insomnia. Incredibly markemble, magical rearismexploited the tropics-largely forgotren in the inremational arristic scene,aside from the surrealist curiosiry abour primidvism, unril after world war II-as an exrrinsic geography, full of picturesque landscapes, a banana republico[ magisterial proporrions where rreacherous arrny officials tortured heroicrebels. Foreigners' obsession with such images quickly transformed rheregion into a huge picture postcard, a kimch stage where everybody waseither a dreamer, a harlor, or a corrupr official. Afrer intense ,bur" ani o,ur-sive commercialization, where Evita per6n was patti Lupone singing anAndrew Lloyd webber meiody, rhe image has finaily rosr its .ugi.,L-,eclipsed by a focus on anorher scene: barrio nightclubs and alien urba., urf.You don't need to travel to Buenos Aires or Bogotii anymore to feel theLatino beat. Miami, once a retreat for retirees, is now a laboratory whereL-arinizarion, as Joan Didion and David Rieff have borh argued, is aiready afact, and where, as the xenophobic media claims, "foreigners," especiallyCubans and Brazilians, have taken over. It is the fronrier ciry par."..11.r,..,It has incorporated 300,000 refugees flrom Larin America who seem ro havecome wirh a vengeance; bilingualism is rhe rule, rhere's little pressure robecome a citizen of the unired srates; rourists are besieged and rhrearenedand unhappy Anglos have fled; and huge invesrmens pour in from weahhyenrrepreneurs in Venezuela and Argentina, among other places.

Akhough some srubbomly persist in thinking thar the so-cailed Thirdworld begins and ends in Ciudad Juarez and, Maramoros, rhe neighboringcities south of the Rio Grande, the fact is that Los Angeles, first visited byspaniards in 1769 and flounded as a rown a few years larer, is Mexico,s sec-ond capiral, a ciry with more Mexicans than Guadal ajara andMonterrey com,bined. And New York City, originally a Dutch settlemenr called New Amsrer-dam, has tumed inro a huge frying pan, where, since the 1970s, the puertoRican idenrity has been acrively revamped inro Nuyoricanness, a uniqueblend of Puerto Ricanness and New yorkese, and where .u,n".o* orh..Latino groups have proliferared since rhe l9g0s. welcome home, gringo!Claude Ldvi-strauss's tistes tropique.s have just been relocared: Hispanics arenow ln the background, while Ladnos, with their Jerome Robbins-choreo-

I 4I 5


graphed, Stephen Sondheim-lyncized Wesc Side stories, have come forth as

protagoniss in vogue.

Tonight, tonight,

The world is full of light,

With suns and moons all over the place.

Tonight, tonight,

The world is wild and bright,

Going mad, shooting sparks into space.

Today the world was just an address,

A place for me to live in,

No better than all right,

But here you are,

And what was just a world is a star

Tonight!

ln qualiry and quantity, a different collective spint is emerging, seasoned

with south-of-the border flavors. The new Latino's ideological agenda is per-

sonifred in the breathtaking prose of Sandra Cisneros and made commercial

in the Madonna-like mercandle curiosiry, in the Anglo arena, toward veteran

musicians Tito Puente and Ddmaso P6rez Prado. Again, the objective !s to

use the mass media, the enemy's tools, to infiltrate the system and to pro-

mote a revaluation of things Hispanic. For Hispanics Anglo-Saxon culture is,

no doubt, sdll very much the villain, but the attitude is more condescending,

even apologetic. As the poet Tato Laviera wrote in AmeRican, a poem from

which I quote rwo segments:

We gave birth to a new generation,

AmeRican, broader than lost gold

never touched, hidden inside the

puerto rican mountains.

we gave birth to a new generation,

AmeRican, it includes everything

imaginable you-name-it-we-got-it

sociery.

we gave birth to a new generation,

AmeRican salutes all folkiores,


european, indlan, black, spanish,and anyrhing else compatible:

AmeRican, defining rhe new America, humaneamerica, admired america, lovedamerica, harmonious america, theworld in peace, our energrescollectively invested to find othercivilizations, to rouch God, furrherand further, ro dwell in the soirit ofdivinity!

AmeRican, yes, for now, for i love this, mysecond land, and i dream to rakethe accenr from the altercadon, andbe proud to call myself american,in the u.s. sense of the word,AmeRican, Americar

our understanding of the evasive concept of borderland-a never-neverIand near rhe rim and ragged edge we call fronder, an uncerrain, indetermi-nate, adjacent area that everybody can recognize and thar, more rhan everbefore, many call our horne-has been adapred, reformulated, and reconsid-ered. Hyphenated identities become naural in a muldethnic sociery. After all,democracy, what Felipe Alfau called the ryranny of the many, asks for a con-stant revaiuadon of rhe narion's hisrory and convivialiry. And yet, a border rsno ionger only a globally accepted, intemationally defined edge, the legalboundary dividing rwo or more narions; it is first and foremosr a mental stat.,an abyss, a cuhural hallucination, a fabrication. Larinos, as frontier dwellers,immersed in the multicultural banquet, can no ronger afford ro iive quietly onthe margins, parasites of a bygone pasr. For roday's newly arrived immigrant,la patia, one's home narion, whar yiddish-speaking immigrans once calledder aker heim, is, as Tato Laviera claimed, wharever one makes of today'sUnited srares. Animosiry and resenrmenr are pur on hold, the semiburiedpast is left behind while the presenr is seized. our generation is triumphantlyready ro reflecr on is immediate and far-reaching assimiladon proceis, andthis inevitably leads to a parh of divided loyalry. Indeed, divided we srand,without a sense of guilt. Gringolandia, after all, is our ambivalenr. schizo-

t 7


phrenic hogar. We are reconsidering the joumey, looking back while wonder-

ing: Who are we? Where did we come [rom? What have we achieved? Overall,

the resulting hybnd, a mix of English and Spanish, of the iand of lersure and

futuristic technology and the Third World, has ceased ro be an elusive utopia.

latin America has invaded the United States and reversed the process of colo-

nization highlighted by the Treary of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Spanish-American War. Suddenly, and without much fanfare, the First World has

became a conglomeration of tourists, refugees, and 6migr€s from what Waldo

Frank once called la Ameicahispana, a sopa de razas e identidodes, where those

who are fuily adapted and happily functional are looked down on.This metamorphosis includes many iosses, of course, for all of us, from

alien citizens to fuil-sratus citizens: the loss of language; the loss of idendty;

the loss of self-esteem; and, more important, the loss of tradition. Some are

left behind en route, whereas others forget the flavor of home. But less is

more, and confusion is being tumed into enlightenment. ln this nation of

imagination and plenty, where 4ewcomers are welcome to reinvent their

past, loss quickly becomes an asset. The vanishing of a collective identiry-

Hispanics as eternally oppressed-necessarily implies the creation of a

refreshingly different self. Confusion, once recycled, becomes elfusion and

revision. Among many, Guillermo G6mez-Pefla has verbalized this type of

cultural hodgepodge, this convoluted sum of parts making up today's

Hispanic condition. "l am a child of crisis and cultural syncretism," he

argued, "half hippie and half punk."

My generation grew up watching movies about cowboys and science fic-

tion, lisrening to cumbias and tunes from the Moody Blues, constructing

altars and filming in Super-8, reading rhe Como Emplumado and Artforum,

traveiing to Tepoztldn and San Francisco, creating and de-creating myths.We wenr to Cuba in search of political illumination, to Spain to visit the

crazy grandmother and to the U.S. in search of the instantaneous musico-

sexual Paradise. We found nothing. Our dreams wound up Setting caughtin the webs of rhe border.

Our generation belongs to the world's biggest floating population: the

weary travelers, the dislocated, those o[ us who left because we didn't fit

anymore, those o[ us who still haven't arrived because we don't know

where to arrive at, or because we can't go back anyrnore.Our deepest generational emotion is that of loss, which comes from our

havrng left. Our ioss is total and occurs at multiple levels.


Loss of land and self. By accommodaring ourselves ro rhe AmericanDream, by forcing the United Srates to acknowledge us as parr of its uterus,we are transforming ourselves inside El Dorado and, simultaneously, reevalu-ating the culture and environment we left behind. Not since rhe abolition ofslavery and the waves of Jewish immigrarion from Easrem Europe has agroup been so capable of tuming everybody upside down. If, as W. E. B. DuBois once claimed, the problem of the rwentieth cenrury was meanr ro be rheproblem of the color line, the nexr hundred years will have accuhuration andmiscegenarion as rheir leirmotif and strife. Mulricuhuralism will sooner orlater fade away and will rake with it the need for Latinos to inhabit thehyphen and exist in constanr conrradiction as eremal ax6lotk. By then theUnited Sutes will be a radically different counrry. Meanwhile, we are experi-encing a rebinh and are having a fesrive dme deciding ro be undecided.

How can one undersund rhe hyphen, the encounrer berween Angios andHispanics, the mix berween George Washington and Sim6n Bolivar? Has thecultural impact of south-of-rhe-border immigranrc in a country that pridesirelf on is Eurocenrric lineage and consmndy rries ro minimize, even hide,its Spanish and Portuguese backgrounds, been properly analyzed? Where canone begin expioring the Ladno hybrid and its multiple linls to HispanicAmerica? To what exrenr is rhe barde inside ladnos berween rwo conflicdngworldviews, one obsessed with immediare sarisfacrion and success, the othertraumatized by a painful, unresolved pasr, evidenr in our an and letters?Should the opposition to the English Oniy movement, Chicano acrivism,Cuban exile polirics, and the Nuyorican existential dilemma be approachedas manifestations of a collecrive, more-orless homogeneous psyche? AreBrazilians, Jamaicans, and Haidans-all non-Spanish speakers-our siblings?ls oscar Hr.luelos possible withourJosd Lezama Lima and Guillermo cabreraInfante? Or is he only a child of Donald Barthelme and Susan Sonug? Whatdoes he as a Cuban-American share with Chicana Sandra Cisneros andDominican-American novelisr Julia Alvarez, aurhor of How the Garcia GirlsI-ost Their Accents, orher than an amorphous and evasive erhnic background?Are Cdsar Chavez and rwenrieth-cenrury Mexican anarchist Ricardo FroresMag6n ideologrcal cousins? Is Edward Rivera, aurhor of the memoir FamilyInstallments and an English wrirer and professor ar Ciry College of New york,in any way related ro Eugenio Maria de Hosros, Ren6 Marqu6s, andJosd LuisGoruAlez, Puerro Rico's literary comersrones in rhe wenrierh cenrury? Is theMexican-American writer Rudolfo A. Anaya, responsible for Bless Me, IJltima,a successor ofJuan Rulfo and Wiiliam Faulkner? Ought Richard Rodriguez be

l 8 i 9


seen as a result of a mlxed marriage berween Alfonso Reyes and John Stuart

Mill? Is Arthur Allonso Schomburg-the so-called Sherlock Holmes of Negro

History, whose collection of book on African-Amencan heritage forms the

core o[ the New York Public Library's present-day Schomburg Center for

Research on Black Culture-our ancestor, in spite of his disenchanlment

with his Puerto Ricanness? How do Latinos perceive the odd link berween

the clock and the crucifix? Is there such a thing as Latin time? Is there a

branch of Salvadoran literature in English? What makes gay Latinos unique?

What is the role played by Spanish-language television and printed media in

the shaping of a new Latlno ldendry?

These are urgent questions in need of comprehensive answers and deserv-

ing many independent volumes. My objective in the following pages is to set

what I.;udge to be an appropriate intellectual framework to begin discussing

them. I shall therefore address the tensions within the minority group, our

differences and our similaritles, as well as the role played by popular and

high-brow culture in and beyond the community. My approach, I should

wam, isn't chronological. This, after all, is not a history of Hispanics in the

United States but a set of reflections on our plural culture. (A chronology at

the end of rhe volume offers a sequence of historical and cultural highlights.)

Juxtaposing, when pertinent, some biographical information to enlighten the

unaware, I shall comment on politics, race, sex, and the spiritual realm; dis-

cuss stereot)?es; and consider the effects of a handful of writers, pictorial

artists, folk musicians, and media luminaries on culture in the United States.

I titled the book flre Hispanic Condition because I am eager to show the mul-

tiple links berween Latinos and their siblings south of the Rio Grande, a jour-

ney from Spanish into English, the northward odyssey of the omnipresent

bracero worker, jibaro immigrant, and Cuban refugee. In the fashion of the

lifelong attempts by Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, and the

black artists and scholars during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, who

fought to disprove once and for all the common misconception that "Negros

have no history," my overall hope is to demonstrate that we Latinos have an

abundance of histories, linked to a common root but with decisively different

traditions. At each and every moment, these ancestral histories determine

who we are and what we think. As I am sure it can already be perceived, my

personal interest is not in the purely political, demographic, and sociological

dimensions, but, rather, in the Hispanic American and Latino intellectual

and artistic legacies. What attracts me more than actual events are worl<s o[

fiction and visual art, hlstoriography as a cradle where cultural artifacts are

L I F E I N ] ' H E H Y P H E N

nurtured. Idiosy,ncratic differences puzzle me: What distinguishes us from

Anglo-Saxons and other European immigrants as well as from other minori-

ties (such as blacks and Asians) in the Unired States? Is there such a thing as

a Latino identiry? OughtJosd Martf and Eugenio Maria de Hostos be consid-

ered the forefathers of Ladno politics and culture? Need one rerum ro rhe

Alamo to come to terms with the clash berween two essentially different psy-

ches, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Hispanic Catholic? The voyage ro what

William H. Gass called "the heart of the heart of the counrry" needs to begin

by addressing a crucial issue: the diversiry factor. Latinos, no quesrion, are a

most difficult communiry to describe: Is the Cuban from Holguin similar in

att i tude and culture to someone from Managua, San Salvador, or Sanro

Domingo? Is the Spanish we all speak, our lingua t'ranca, rhe only uni$nng

factor? How do the various Hispanic subgroups understand the complexities

of what it means to be part of the same minoriry goup? Or do we perceive

ourselves as a unified whole?

Culture and identiry are a parade of anachronistlc q.rynbols, larger-than-life

abstractions, less a shared set of beliefs and values than the collective strate-

gies by which we organize and make sense of our experience, a complex yet

tightly integrated construction in a state of perpetual flux. To begin, it is

utterly impossible to examine Latinos without regard to the geography we

come from. We. are, we recognize ourseives to be, an extremity of Latin

America, a diaspora alive and well north of the Rio Grande. For the Yiddish

writer Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the milkman, for instance, America was a

slrron).{n o[ redemption, the end of pogoms, the solution to eanh]y marrers.

Russia, Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe were lands of suffering.

lmmigrating to America, where gold grew on trees and could easily be found

on sidewalk, was synonymous with entering Paradise. To leave, never to

look back and retum, was an imperative. Many miles, almost impossible to

breach again, divrded the old land from the new. We, on the orher hand, arejust around lhe corner: Oaxaca, Mexico; Varadero, Cuba; and Sanrurce,

Puerto Rico, are literally next door. We can spend every other month, even

every other week, either north or south. lndeed, some among us swear to

return home when mil i tary dictatorships are f inal ly deposed and more

benign regimes come to li[e, or simply when enough money is saved in a

bank account. Meanwhile, we inhabit a home divided, multiplied, neither in

the barrio or the besieged ghetto nor across the river or the Gulf o[ Mexico, a

home either here or within hours'distance. Jos6 Antonio Villaneal's 1959

novel Pocho, for example, called by some critics "a foundational texr" and

2 l


believed to be the first English-written novel by a Chicano, is precisely about

the etemal need to retum among Chicanos: a retum to source, a retum to

the self. And Pablo Medina's meticulous Cuban-American autobiographyFxrled Memoies, along the same lines, is about the impossibility of retuming

to childhood, to the mother's soil, to happiness. But retum is indeed possi-

ble in most cases. Cheap labor comes and goes back and forth to Puebla and

SanJuan.One ought never to forget that Hispanics and their siblings north of the

border have an intimate, long-standing, love-hate reladonship. Latinos are a

major source of income for the families they left behind. In Mexico, for

instance, money wired by relatives working as pizza delivery boys, domestic

servants, and construction workers amounm to a third of the nation's overallrevenues. Is this nothing new, when one ponders previous waves of immigra-

tion? Perhaps. Others have dreamed of America as paradise on earth, but our

arrival in the Promised Land with strings attached underscores troublesomepattems of assimilation. Whereas Germans, Irish, Chinese, and others may

have evidenced a certain ambiguiry and lack of commitment during their first

stage of assimilation in the United States, the proximiry of our original soil,

both in the geographic and metaphorical sense, is tempting. This thought

brings to mind a claim by the lberian philosopher Josd Ortega y Gasset,aurhor of Rebellion oJ the Masses, among many other titles, in a 1939 lecrure

delivered in Buenos Aires. Onega y Gasset stated that Spaniards assumed the

role of the New Man the moment they settled in the New World. Their atti-

tude was the result not of a centuriesJong process, but of an immediate and

sudden transformation. To this idea the Colombian writer Antonio Sanin

Cano once mistakenly added that Hispanics, vis-)-vis other settlers, have a

brilliant capaciry to assimilate; unlike the British, for instance, who can live

for years in a foreign land and never become part of it, we do. What he forgot

to add is that we achieve total adaptation at a huge cost to ourselves and oth-

ers. We become the New Man and Woman carry4ng along our former envi-

ronment. Add the fact that we are often approached as traitors in the place

once called home: We left, we betrayed our patriotism, we rejected and were

rejected by the milieu, we aborted ourselves and spat on the ulerus. Cubansin exile are known as gusanos, worms in Havana's eyes. Mainland Puerto

Ricans often complain of the lack of support from their original families in

the Caribbean and find their cultural ties tenuous and thin. Mexicans have

mixed feelings toward Pachucos, Pochos, and other rlpes of Chicanos; when

possible, Mexico ignores our politics and cultural manifesmtions, only taking

LIFE IN THE HYPHEN

them into account when diplomatic relations with the White House are atstake.

Once in the United States, we are seen in unequal terms. AlthoughEngland, France, and Spain were the chief nations to establish colonies thisside of the Atlantic, the legacy of lberian conquerors and explorers remainsunattended, quasi-forgotten, almost deleted from the nation's memory. Thefrrst permanent European settlement in the New World was St. Augustine,Florida, founded by the Spanish in 1565, over forry years before the BritishestablishedJamestown in Virgrnia. Or simply consider things from an onomas.tic point of view: Los Angeles, Sausalito, San Luis Obispo, and San Diego areall Hispanic names. People know that during the U.S. Civil War, black, freedin 1863 from slavery as pan of the Emancipation hoclamadon (which coveredonly states in the Confederacy), fought on both sides; what is unknown orprehaps even silenced, what is left unrecognized, is that Hispanics were alsoacdve soldiers on the battlefield. When the warbegan in 1861, more than10,000 Mexican-Americans sewed in both the Union and the Confederatearmed forces. Indeed, when it comes to l-atino history, the official chronol-ogy of the United States, from its birth unti l after World War II, is asequence o[ omissions. Between l9l0 and 1912, for instance, U.S. railroadcompanies recruited thousands of Hispanic workers, and nearly 2,000braceros crossed the border every month to work for the railways. Also,Hispanic workers' unions are not a recent invention, and Cdsar ChAvez wasno sudden hero. Many Puerto Rican and Chicano rebellions occurred in theearly stages of World War I, and organizers like Bemardo Vega and JesrisCol6n were instrumental in shaping a new consciousness before the mythicLa Causa movement took shape. For instance, after miners went on strike inLudlow, Colorado, around the time that the Archduke Francis Ferdinand,heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo,more than fifry people, many who were Mexican-Americans, were killed bythe Nadonal Guard. Puerto Rican and Chicano soldiers fought in World WarII, and many more participated in the Korean War. Furthermore, Martf, Dr.Ram6n Emetrio Betances. Hostos. and other revolutionaries were active inNew York and elsewhere in the United States in the late nineteenth century,especially in the wake of the Spanish-American War. Bur very few areacquainted with these [acs.

Flowing some 1,880 miles from southwestem Colorado to the Gulf ofMexico, the Rio Grande, rhe Rio Turbio, is rhe dividing iine, the end and thebeginning, of the United Sntes and Latin America. The river not only sepa-

22 L )


rates the twin cities of El Paso and Ciudad Judrez and of Brownsville andMatamores, but also, and more essentially, is an abyss, a wound, a border-line, a symbolic dividing line between whar Alan Riding once forcefullydescribed as "distant neighbors." The flow of water has had different namesduring several periods and along several different reaches of its course. Anincomplete list, offered by Paul Horgan in his monumenral Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Great River: The Rto Grande in North Amencan History, follows:Gran River, P'osoge, Rio Bravo, Rio Bravo del Norte, Rio Caudaloso, Rio de laConcepci6n, Rio de las Palmas, Rio de Nuestra Sefrora, Rio de Buenaventuradel Norte, Rio del Norte, Rio del Norte y de Nuevo M€xico, Rio Grande, RioGrande del Norte, Rio Guadalquivir, River of May, Tiguex fuver, and Gyextension) the Tortilla Curtain. What's in a name? South facing nonh thinkof it as a stream carrying poisonous water; north facing south prefers to see iras an obstacle to illegal espaldas mojadas, a service door to one's baclcyard.The name game pertains to our deceitfui, equivocal, and evasive collectiveappellation: What are we: Hispanics,hispanos, Latinos (and Larinas), larins,iberoatnencanos, Spanish, Spanish-speaking people, Hispanic Americans (vis-

i-vis the Latin Americans lrom across the Rio Grande), mesrizos (and mesti-zas), or simply, Mexrcan-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Dominican-Amen-cans, Puerto Ricans on the Mainland, and so forth? And should I add Spihsto the list? (PedroJuan Soto, who taught at the Universidad de Puerto Rico,once tried to trace the word's origins and mutant spelling to Spigs, used until1915 to describe ltalians, lovers o[ spiggory, nor spaghettr, and from I no spihingl is ; the term then evolved to Spics, Spichs, and currenr ly Spihs)Encyclopedias, at least until recently, described us as Hispanic Ameicans is-i-vis the Latin Ameicans from south of the border. The confusion evidendyrecalls the fashion in which Black, Nigger, Negro, Afro-American, and African-American have been used from before Abraham Lincoln's abolition of slaveryto the present. Nowadays the general feeling is that one unifying termaddressing everybody is better and less confusing; but would anybody referto Italian, German, French, and Spanish writers as a single category o[European writers? The United States, a mosaic of races and cultures, alwaysneeds to speak of its social quilt in generally stereotlpical ways. Aren'tAsians, black, andJews also seen as homogeneous groups, regardless of theongin of their various members? Nevertheless, in the pnnted media, on rele-vision, out in the streets, and in rhe privacy of their homes, people hesirarebetween a couple of favontes: Hispanic andlttino.

Although these terms may seem interchangeable, an arrenrive ear senses a


difference. Preferred by conservatives, rhe former is used when rhe talk isdemographics, education, urban developmenr, drugs, and health; rhe latter,on the other hand, is the choice of liberals and is frequently used ro refer roartists, musicians, and movie stars. Ana Castillo is Latina and Jos6 Felicianois Latino, as is Andres Serrano, rhe conrroversial photographer, author of PlssChnst, who, alongside Roberr Mapplerhorpe, prompted conservarive SenarorJesse Helms and others, in the late 1980s, ro consolidate the so-called cul-ture war against obscenity in modem arr. Former New York City SchoolsChancellorJoseph Femandez is Hispanic, as are CongressmanJos6 Senanoand Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. A sharper difference:Hispanic is used by the federal govemment to describe the hererogeneousethnic minority with ancestors across rhe Rio Grande and in the Caribbeanarchipelago, but since rhese citizens are latinoamencanos, Latino is acknowl-edged by liberals in rhe communiry as correcr. The issue, less rransitory thanit seems, invites us to travel far and away to wonder what's behind the nameLatin America, where the misunderstanding apparently began. Dunng the1940s and even earlier, Spanish was a favorite term used by English speakersto name those from the lberian peninsula and across the border: RicardoMontalban was Spanish, as were Pedro Flores, Pedro Carrasquillo, and PonchoSanchez, although one was Mexican and the orhers were Cuban and PuerroRican. In Anglo-Saxon eyes, all were Larin lovers, mambo kings, and spirfireshomogenized by a mother ronflue. It goes without saying that from rhe six-teenth to the early nineteenth cenrury, the part o[ the New Wor]d (a termcoined by Peter Marryr, an early biographer of Columbus) * known today asLatin America was called Spanish America (and, ro some, lberian America);linguistically, the geography exciuded Brazil and the rhree Guyanas. Theterm Hispanic Amencan (Hispanic meaning "cttizen of Hispania," rhe wayRomans addressed Spaniards) caprured the spotlighr in the I960s, whenwaves o[ Iegal and undocumented immigrants began pouring in fromMexico, Central America, Puerro Rico, and other Third World counrries.(The term Third World is the abominable crearion of Frantz Fanon and waslargely promoted by Luis Echeverria Alvarez, a simpleminded Mexican presr,dent. Carlos Fuentes, in his volume on Spain and the Americas, The BuiedMirror, prefers the term developing, rarher rhan Third World or underdeveloped.)When nationalism emerged as a cohesive force in l-atin America, Spanish-

* See my book Imagrning Columhus: The Literary Voyage (Neu'York: Twa;.ne-Macmillan, 1993),where I discuss the birth of rhe Americas in Europe's collective rmagrnauon.

24 25


Ameican lost its value because of its reference to Spain, now considered aforeign, imperialist invader. The Spanish conquistadors were loudiydenounced as criminals, a trend inaugurated by Fray Bartolom6 de Las Casascenturies before, but until then not legldmized by the powers that be.

As Spanish speakers became a political and economic force, the termHispanic was appropriated by the govemment and the media. It describespeople on the basis of their cultural and verbal herimge. Placed alongside cat-egories like Caucasian, fuian, and black, it proves inaccurate simply becausea person (me, for instance) is Hispanic and Caucasian, Hispanic and black; irignores a reference to race. After years in circulation, it has aiready become aweapon, a stereoryping machine. Its synonl,rns are drug addict, criminal,prison inmate, and out-of-wedlock family. Latino has then become theopdon, a sign of rebellion, the choice of intellectuals and artists, because itemerges from within this ethnic goup and because im eqrmology simulune-ously denounces Anglo and Iberian oppression. But what is truly Latin(Roman, Hellenistic) in it? Nothing, or very little. Columbus and his crewcalled Cuba, Juana and Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (the latter's capital was San

Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico). One of the first West Indies islands theyencountered, now divided into the Dominican Republic and Haiti, wasknown as Espafrola 0ater, Saint Domingue and Hispaniola). During colonialdmes, the region was called Spanish America because of its linguistic prepon-derance, and then, by the mid-nineteenth cenury-with Paris the world'scultural center and romanticism at is herght-a group of educated Chileanssuggested the name I'Amtique latine, which, sadly to say, was favored overSpanish America. The sense of homogeneity that came from a global embraceof Roman constiturional law and the identity shared through the RomanceIanguages (mainly Spanish, but also Portuguese and French) were crucial tothe decision. Sim6n Bolivar, the region's uitimate hero, who was bom inVenezuela and fought an ambitious revolution for independence from Iberiandominion in Boyacd in 1819, saw the terrn as contribudng to the unificationof the endre southem hemisphere. Much later, in the late 1930s and early1940s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy also embracedand promoted it. Yet historians and esthetes like Pedro Henriquez Urefta andLuis Alberto Sdnchez railed against the designation: perhaps HispanicAmerica and Portuguese America, but please, never Latin America. Much likethe name America is a historical misconception that is used to describe theentire continent-one that originated from the explorer Amerigo Vespucci(after all, Erik the Red, a Viking voyager who set foot on this side of the


Atlandc around the year 1000, and even poor, disoriented Crist6bal Col6n,arrived firs0-Latino makes little sense even if Romance languages in LadnAmerica are true equalizers that resulted from the so-called 1492 discovery.This idea brings to mind a statement made by Aaron Copland after a 1941tour of nine South American countries. "Latin America as a whole does notexist," he said. "lt is a collecrion of separate counrries, each with differenttraditions. Only as I traveled from country ro counrry did I realize that youmust be willing to split the continent up in your mind."

ln mammoth urban centers (Los Angeles, Miami, New York), the Spanish-language media-newspapers and television srarions-address rheir con-stituenry as los hispanos. but hardly ever as los latinos. The deformed adjectivehispano is used instead of hispdnico, which is rhe correct Spanish word; thereason: hispdnico is too pedantic, too academic, too lberian. When salsa,meringue, and other rhythms are referred to, latino is used. Again, the dis-tinction, artificial and difficult to sustain, is unclear; the Manhauan daily ElDiaio, for example, calls itself the champion of Hispanics, whereas Impacto,a national publication rhat is proud of its sensationalism, has as its subtitle"The Latin News" (notice: I-atin, not Latino). lnevitably, rhe whole discus-sion reminds me of the Gershwin song performed on roller skates by FredAstaire and Ginger Rogers in ShallWe Dance'. I say ro-may-ro and you say to-mah-to.

From Labrador to the Pampas, from Cape Hom ro the lberian peninsula,from Garcilaso de Ia Vega and Count Lucanor ro Sor Juana Inds de la Cruzand Andr€s Bello, the scope of Hispanic cMlization-which began in thecaves of Altamira, Buxo, and Tito Bustillo some 25,000 or 30,000 years ago("the ribs of Spain," as Miguel de Unamuno would call them)-is indeedoutstanding. Although I honesdy prefer Hispanic as a composite rerm andwould rather not use L-atino, is there value in opposing a consensus? Or, asFranz Kafka would ask, Is there any hope in a kingdom where cats chaseafter a mouse? I herewith suggest using Latinos to refer ro rhose citizens fromthe Spanish-speahng world lMng in rhe United States and Hispanics to referto those living elsewhere. Which means that, by any account, a Latino is alsoan Hispanic, but not necessarily vice versa.

As for the pertinent art of Martin Ramfrez, rhe mute Chicano artistwhose drawings were shown at the Corcoran Gallery in the late 1980s, anOliver Sacks-like "disoriented mariner" in an ever-changing galaxy, hisquiet vicissitude in Gringolandia's labynnthine mirrors will become myleitmotif. I am attracted to the striking coherence and color of his 300-

26


some painrings. Although produced by a schizophrenic, these imases man-age ro constmct a well-rounded, lanrasric universe, wirh figures l ik'e trains,beasts, auromobiles, women, leopards, deer, bandi.do.s, ani rhe u*" O.Guadalupe; rhey are characterized by heroism and a mystical appro-ach tolife He is a rrue original, a visionary we cannor afford ro ignore.'rndeed, interml of authenticity, Ramirez, it seems to me, reverses the syndrome ofso-called unreal realism, of which rhe best, mosr enlightening examples arechester selzer, who took the Hispanic name Amado Muro and prerendedto write realist accounts of growing up Latino, and rhe .ro.' ' infamousDanny Sanriago.

.When Sanriago's admirable first novel, Famous All Over lown (propherr_cally called, while in manuscripr form and until its uncorrecred gaiteyp.oorstage, My Name Will Follow you Home) appeared in 19g3, reviews f,r"ir"i it u,wonderful and hilarious. chato Medina, irc courageous hero, was a denizenof an unlivable barrio in East Los Angeres, rhe product of a disinregradngfamily who had a bunch of disorienied friends. The novel ,"..i rJd theRichard and Hilda Rosenrhar Award of the American Academy and InsritureofArcs a'd Letters and was described as a stunning debut about adorescenrrnitiation among Latinos. The author's biography on rhe back cover, whichappeared wirhout a phorograph, smred thar ne naa been raised in Califomraand thar many of his stories had appeared in nationar magazines. The arrivalof a ralenred writer was universaily accraimed. Nevertheless, success soontumed sour' A joumalisr and ex-friend of santiago, morrvated by personalrevenge, announced santiago's rrue identiry in a piece published in AugustI984 in rhe New yorh Rwiew oJ Boohs.

Ir tumed out rhat Daniel Lewis James, the author,s real name, was nor ayoung chicano, bur a septuagenanan Anglo, who was bom in lgll into awell-to-do family in l(ansas City, Missouri. A friend of John Sreinbeck, Ja;eswas educared ar Andover and graduated from yale in Ig33. H. morr.d tuHollywood and loined rhe Communist parry, togerher with his wife Lilith, aballerina. He worked with Charlie ct-rupiin, Jolraboraring on The GreatDictator, and wrore, rogether wirh Sid Herzig and Fred Sariiy, a Broadwaymusical, Bloomer Girl, which opened in I94+. During the 1950s, he devoredhimself to wridng horror movies. He was blacklisted during the Mccarrhyera, when the House Committee on Un-American AcrMties rJas investigadngleft-wing infiltrarion of the movie indusrry. The Lewises began a solid friend-ship with the East Los Angeles Chicano community, artending fiesms andrnviting scores of chicanos to their carmel Highlands cliffside niansion. As a


resuh of thar relarionship, James began ro feel close to the Latino psyche,digesting its linguisric and idiosyncrai. rvuur.subsequentry. Farher Albeno Huerra, a scholar who teaches at rhe Univer-

i3:::ff i:;T:T::,,T:,i:",T.J.':.ff S;::i*;:,",1,::J***the beleaguered wrirer.in rhc joumal Tfu CaltJomwns, accusing rrendy Ladnowriters and New york inreilecruars of "brown-risting,, a genius. Farher Huertahad

-kepr a four-year-long correspondence with santiago. It originated afrerthe future aurhor of Famous ArI over Town reacted ro one of H.irta,s essayson Murrieta. They met at Santiago,s Carmel Highlands home in f Sg+,-*abecame friends. Father Huerra r"Lains Santiago's mosr ardent defender. Heis adamant abour rhe unrair trearment the wriier has been subjected ,", .rayh.rl I wrore critically of the conrroversiar nover in 1993, he senr me a cor,dial but strong letrer inviring me ro change my oplnlons.

Afrer the scandal erupted, an open ,!_poriu., sponsored by the Berk_eley-based Before Columbus Foundarion, entirled ..ornny sun,i'.g",'a".,

".Fraud," rook place in Modem Times Booktore in san Francisco. The partici_panrs were Gary Soto,. Rudolfo A. Anaya, and Ishmael n".a.-luniJr, ofcourse' is a paradigm. Like the scandalous idenrity of Foresr crrr..,ih" *hir.supremacisr responsible for the best-se|er The Education of Little Tree, and rikeother authors of buried background, it was an interesting career move to goirom being a writer of low-budger movies ro rhe darling of Larino lerrers. Inspite of rhe aestheric power of Famous A, (her'rown, Leuis personifres theleverish need in a nation consumed by rhe wars for idendties ,o.r*rrgr"r,Aurhenricity and histrionics, in essence, Ramirez's silence and Danny santi_ago's theatrical voice are-opposites. They are rhe bookends of Latino culture.Which brings me back to rhe cukure irsell In a s]rmbolic poem byJudirhortiz Cofer dtled "The Larin Deli" and pubrished in book form in ]gg3,Hispanics north of the border are seen ,, "n

..o.phous hybrid. sr,.,.,ng-r,.,-erogeneous backgrounds, rhey are summed up by an archetlpal mrtu..iudy.The poet reduces the universe to a kind of .u.",irr. store, a bodega in whrchcusromers look for a medicine to their disheartened spirir. This patroness ofExiles,."a woman of no-age whl was never prerry, who spends her days sellingcanned memories," listens to puerto Ricans complain about airfares to sanJuan' to cubans "per'ecdng rheir speech o[ a 'glorious rerum, ro Havana-where no one has been allowed rodie and no?nr.rg to change unril then,,,and_to Mexicans "who pass through, ralking lyr_icall y of d*lares to be made inEl None-all waiting rhe comforr of rpot ."niprnrsh.,, Ortiz Cof.r,, *.g;,


incredibly inviting, is perfect to conclude this chapter. L-atinos, while racially

diverse and historically heterogeneous, an ajiaco (Cuban stew) made of

diverse ingrediens, by chance or destiny have all been summed up in the

same grocery store called America. America, where exile becomes home,

where memory is reshaped, reinvented. In the eyes of strangers, our hopes

and mghtmares, our energy and desperation, our libido, add up to a magnl-

fied whole. But who are we really? What do we want? Why are we here? And

for how long will thebodega be owned by somebody else?

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Blood and Wtle

ln The Repeating Island, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, the exiled Cuban-Americannovelist and critic, ciaimed that the Caribbean, a basin pretty much unifredby sugar and cacao plantations, is an archipelago made up o[ one singlearcherypal isiand, an island-of-islands, whose virtue is not lessened by its het-erogeneity, a realiry incorporating everyone in the region while allowing forindMdualities to persist. Something along the same lines ought to be saidabout Hispanic America: Syncretistic, essentially Indian, African, and Euro-pean, and with el sabor mestizo y mulato, it is a result of the original misce-genation, the slave trade-what is known as the planmtion economy in theCaribbean and cacique feudal systems elsewhere-as Sim6n Bolivar dreamedit, a nation of nations.

A handful of scholars and aficionados, the majority of them non-Hispanic,have rried with various degrees of success to tackle the collecdve Ladno his-torical, political, and social minutiae. Most authors compare us to previousminorities to estimate our degree of adaptability and assimilation to themainstream, fromJoan W. Moore and Harry Pachon's 1985 sociological vol-ume, Hispanics in the United States, as well as L. H. Gann and PeterJ.Duigan's history of Hispanics north of the border, which appeared a yearafter, to Thomas Weyr's sociological study on breaking the melting pot,Linda Chavez's consewative treaty Out oJ the Barrio: The Politics of HispanicAssimilation, and Earl Shorris's excessive, grandiloquent, overwritten, andunfriendly collective biography Latinos. What these authors frequently lack,first and foremost, is an insightful view of our cultural manifestations, so theyat times confuse anthropoiogy and folklore with art; second, they lack a

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Life in the Hyphen STAVANS