anzaldua_gloria

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A-PDF~rger DEMO: Purchase from www.A-PD~8m+lRt~E"idf~'."Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call ?- - ItIIntellect, someone whispers.] That's it, honey. What's that got to do With

women's rights or negru's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, < l n dyours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half.measure full?Then that little man in hlack there, he says women can't have as mUch

rights asmen, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ ('olnefrom? Where did yuur Christ come from? Froin God and a woman! Man ha dnothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the worldupside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn itback, and get it right s ide up again!And now they isasking to do it, the menhetter let them.Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing

more to say.e l esplr i tu

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L a c onciencia de fa m estizaTO WARDS A NEW CONSCIO USNESS

Glo ri a An z al dua

Jose Vascocelos, Mexican philosopher, envis-aged una taza mestiza, una mezcla de r a za s c i fi n es ,una raza de color-fa p ri me ra r ar a s in et es is d elalobo. He called it a cosmic race, la raza cos-mica, a fifth race embracing the four majorraces of the wor-ld, 1 Opposite to the theory ofthe pure Aryan, and to the policy of racialpuri ty that white America practices, his the-ory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence oftwo or more genetic streams, with chromo-somes constantly "crossing over," this mixtureof races, rather than resulting in an inferiorbeing, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable,more malleable species with a rich gene pool.From this racial, ideological, cultural, andbiological cross-pollinization, an "alien" con-sciousness is presently in the.makiug-a pewmestiza consciousness. una co tl _ .( ie n ci a d e mu j er ,Itis a consciousness of the Borderlands .._

Glori a Anzaldua, "La conci cnci a (k: l a m es ti za : T owar ds a NewConsciousness." rvcan-Borderlands tl:a Frontera. The ~'~W M.e.~[j7.~J'f) '9 1l 7, R ep r in re ri w it h p erm is si on f rom Awn Lute Books .. .


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234 GLORIA ANZALDUA,

U na l ueh a d eJ ro nt er as / A 5ul1881e ~fBordCfsBecause I, a mestiza;continually walk out of one cultureand into another,because 1 am in all cultures at the same time,a lma en tr e do smundo s, t r es , [ lw tr o ,merumba fa cabeza con 1 0 comradictor io .Estoy notteada p or t od as l as rote; q ue m e h ab /a nstmu!t!meamente.

The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotionalstates of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness,The mestiza's dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness.In a constant state of mental nepantilism, an Aztec word meaning tor n

between ways, fa mestiza isa product ofthe transfer of the cultural and spir-itual values of one. group to another. Being tricultural, monulingual, bilin-gual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and in a state ofperpetual transition,the mestiza faces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectivity does thedaughter of a dark-skinned mother listen to?

E1 choque d e u n alma atrapado enrre el m un do d el espiritu v el m un do d e la de -nim a v ec as l a d ej a e tu ul la da . Cradled in one culture, sandwiched betweentwo cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems, t a m es -tiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. Likeall people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communi-cates. Like uthers haVing or living in more than one culture, we get multi-ple, often opposing me.~sages.The coming together of two sdr-comistentbut habitually incorn patible frames of reference} causes u n c ho q IJe, a cul-tural collision,Within us and within la culture cbicana , commonly held be.liefsof thewhite culture attack commonly held beliefs of the Mexi~an culture, and bothattack commonly held beliefs "ofthe indigenous culture, Subconsciously, wesee anattack on ourselves and our beliefs asa threat and we attempt to blockwith a counter-stance.But it is not enough to stand on the opposite riverhank, shouting ques

tions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counter-stance loeb oneinto a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked inmortal combat, likethe copand the criminal, both arc reduced to a common denominator of dolence.The counte-r-stance refutes the dominant culture's views and beliefs, and, for

].d conciencia de 1 0 mestiza 23S

this, it isproudly defiant. A ll reaction islimited by, and dependent on, whatit isreacting against. Because the counter-stance stems from a problem withauthority-outer as well as inner-it's a step toward liberation from cul-tural domination. But it is not a way ofl ife. At some point, on our ", 'a), to anew consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the splitbetween the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on hothshores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes, Or perhapswe will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it ofl alto-gether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new a11(1separateterritory. Or we might go another route. The possibil itics are numerous oncewe decide to act and not react.

A Tol er an ce l or AmbigUityThese numerous possibilities leave la mestiza floundering in uncharted seas.In perceiving conHicting information and points of view, she is subjected tua swamping of her psychological borders, She has discovered that she can'thold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that arcsupposed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and pat-terns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigiditymeans death. On1; byremaining flexible i~she able to stretch the psyche hor-izontal1y and vertically. La mestiza constantlv has to shift out of habitual for-mations; from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to userationality to move toward a Single goal (a Western mode), to divergentthinking, J characterized hy movement awayfrom set patterns and goals andtoward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes.The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tol-

erance for ambiguity. She learns to he an Indian in Mexican culture, to be .Mexican from anAnglo point uf view. She learns to juggle cultures. She hasa plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode::.___nothi-ngis thrustout, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Notonly does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence int... some-thing else. . She can be jarred out of ambivalence by an intense, and often painful,emotional event that inverts or resolves the ambivalence. I'm not sureexactly how.The work takes place underground-suhconsciously. It is workthat the soul performs. That focal point or fulcrum, that juncture whese thetnestiza stands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It iswhere the p o s s l h i i -

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236 GLORIA AN ZAlDUA,

ity of uniting all that isseparate occurs. This assembly isnot one where sev.creel or separated pieces merely come together. Nor is it a halancing ofopposing powers. In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added itthird element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That thirddement is a new consciousness-a mestiza consciousness-and though it isa source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motionthat keeps breaking down the unitary aspect ofeach new paradigm.

En unas pows centuries, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because thefuture depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the strad-dling of two or more cultures. Bycreating a new mvthos-s-that is, a changein the way we perceive reality, the way we sec ourselves, and the ways Webehave-fa mestiza creates a new consciousness.The work ofmestiza consciousness isto break down the subject-object dual.

ity that keeps her aprisoner and to show inthe Hem and through the imagesinher work how duality istranscended. The answer to the problem between thewhite race and the colored, between males and females, liesin healing the splitthat originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages,our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual an dcollective consciousness isthe heginning of a long struggle, but one that could,inour best hopes, bring usto the end ofrape, ofviolence, of war.

L a e nc tu ciia da / T he C ro ss ro ad sA chicken is being sacrificedat a crossroads, a simple mound ofeartha mud shrine for Eshu,}oruba god of indeterminacy,who blesses her choice of path.Shehegins her journey.

Su cucrpo es una bocacalle. La mestiza has gone from heing the sacrificial goatto becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads.

As a mestiza Ihaveno country myhomeland cast me out yet all countries arcmine because Iam every \\:~m~n 's sister or potential l(;ver. (As a lesbian. Ihave no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there ISthe queer of me in all races.) Iam cultureless because, as a feminist, I chal-lenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics andAnglos; yet r am cultured because Iam participating inthe cre-

conciencia de la mestiza 237

.tion of yet another cul ture, a new story to explain the world and our par-ticipation in it, a new value system ....ithimages and symbols that connect usto each other and to the planet. Soy un amasamiento, Iam an act of kneading,uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature ofdarkness

an d a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions ofl i g h t and dark and gives them new meanings.We arc the people who leap in the dark, we arc the people on the knees

of the gods. In our very flesh, (r)evolution works out the clash ofcultures. Itmakes us crazy constantly, but ifthe center holds, we've made some kind ofevolutionary step forward. Nue st r a a lma d t ra ba io ; the opus, the great alchem-

work; spiritual mestizaje, a"morphogenesis." an inevitable unfolding. \Vebecome the quickening serpent movement.

nous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding,designed for preservation under a variety of conditions. Like an ear ofcorn-a female seed-bearing organ-the mestiza is tenacious, tightlywrapped in the husks of her culture. Like kernels she dings to the cob; withthick stalks and strong brace roots, she holds tight to the earth-she will sur-vive the crossroads.Latando y remoiando el mail en agua del cal, despojando el pelleio. Mo/iendo, mixte-ando, amasando, hociendo torti llas de masa. ' She steeps the corn in lime, itswells, softens. With stone roller on metare, she grinds the corn, then grindsagain. She kneads and moulds the dough, pats the round balls into tortillas.We are the porous rock inthe stone metatesquatting on the ground.We are the rolling pin, el maiz J" aaua,la masa hanna. Somes el amasijo.Somas 1 0 molido en el metate.We arc the comal Sizzlinghot,the hot tortilla, the hungry mouth.Weare the coarse rock.We are the grinding motion,the mixed potion, somas el molcaiete,We are the pestle, the comino. aJo,pimienta,We are the chile colorado,the green shoot that cracks the rock.We will abide. - . .


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238 GLORIA ANZALDUA

EL CAMINO DE LA MESTIZA / THE MESTIZA WAY

Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath sucked in and the end-less space, the brown woman stands still, looks at the sky.She decides togo down, digging her way along the roots of trees. Sifting through thebones, she shakesthem to see ifthere isanymarrow in them. Then, touch-ing the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a few hones, leavesthe rest in their burial place.She goes through her backpack, keeps her journal and address book,

throws awav the muni-bart metromaps. The coins are heavy and they gonext, then the greenbacks flutter through the air. She keeps her knife, canopener and eyebrow pencil. She puts bones, pieces of bark, lnerbas, eagh:feather, snakeskin, tape recorder, the rattle and drum in her pack and shesetsout to become the complete toluca. 6

Her first step isto take inventorr Despo ia ndo , d e sq t at ia ndo , qu it a ndo pa jr J .[usrwhat did she inherit from her ancestors? This weight on her back-which isthe baggage from the Indian mother, ,vhieh the baggage from the Spanishfather, which the baggage from the Anglo?

Pero es d!ficil differentiating between 1 0 heredado, fa adquirido, 1 0 impuesto.She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks atthe forcdthatwe as a race, as women, have been a part of. LueBo bota 1 0 que no vale. losdesmien tos , los desencuetuos , el embrucecimiento.Apuarda el Ju ic i o, hondo }' e n ra i za do.de fa Bente antiqua, This step isa conscious rupture with all oppressive tradi-tions of all cultures and religions. She communicates that rupture, docu-ments the struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symhols, sheshapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives toward the dark-skinned,women, and queers. She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) foramhiguity. She is w iIling to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign waysof seeing and thinking. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar.Deconstruct, construct. She becomes a nahual ;able to transform herse If into. 1 1 " I "a tree, a coyote, into another person. She karns to transform the smainto the total Self. S e h ar e moldeadora desu alma. SeBtIn la c onc epc i on que nene des misma, a si sera.

Q ue n o .se n os o lv id e l os h omb re s"Tu no sirvcs pa' nada-you're good for nothing.Errs pura vie ja"

La conciencia de la mestiza 239"You're nothing hut a woman" means you are defective. Its opposite isto beu n ma ch o. The modern meaning ofthe word "machismo," aswell asthe con-cept, isactually an Anglo invention. For men like my father, being "macho"meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yetbeing able to show love. Todav's macho has doubts about his ability to feedan d protect his family. His "machismo" is an adaptation to oppression andpoverty and low self-esteem. It isthe result of hierarchical male dominance.The Anglo, feeling inadeq uatc and inferior and powerless, displaces or trans-fers these feelings to the Chicano by shaming him. In the Gringo world, theChicano suffers from excessive humility and self-effacement, shame of selfand self-deprecation. Around Latinos he ~uffers from a sense of languageinadequacy and its.accompanying discomfort; with N ative Amcricans he suf-fers from a racial amnesia that ignores our common blood, and from gUiltbecause the Spanish part of him took their land and oppressed them. He hasan excessive compensatory hubris when around Mexicans from the otherside. It overlays a deep sense of racial shame.The loss of a sense of dignity and respect in the macho breeds a false

machismo that leads him to put down women and even to brutalize them.Coexisting with his sexist behavior is a love for the mother which takesprecedence oyer that of all others. Devoted son, macho pig. To wash downthe shame ofhis acts, ofhis very being, and to handle the brute in the mir-ror, he takes to the bottle, the snort, the needle, and the fist.

Though we"understand" the root causes ofmale hatred and fear, and the sub-sequent wounding of women, we do not excuse, we do not condone, and wewill no longer put up with it. From the men of our race, we demand theadmission! acknow ledgment! disclosure / testimony that they wound us, vio-late us, are afraid ofus and ofour power. \Ve need them to saythey will beginto eliminate their hurtful put-down '. ..ays. But.more than the words, wedemand acts. We say to them: We will develop equal power with y,ou andthose who have shamed us.It is imperative that tnestiras support eachother in chaRging the sexist ele-

ments in the Mexican-Indian culture. As long as woman is put !luwn, the ~ ..Indian and the Black in all of us is put down. The struggle of the mestizLlt isabove all a feminist one. As long as f05 hombres think they have to chinqarmujeres and each other to be men, as long as men are taught that the), arcSuperior and therefore culturally favored over fa mvi, as long as tohe a viejois a thing of derision, there ::an be no real healing of our ps)'ches.~\;V


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240 GLOR1A ANZALDUI,

III

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step is to unlea rn the puca/virgen dichotomy and to see Coatalopeuh-Coatlictlein the Mother, Guadalupe.Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered 01 1

women with verba l abuse and blows. Men, even more than women, are fe t-tered to gender roles. Women at least have had the guts to break out ofbondage. Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to thewoman inside them and to cha llenge the cu rrent mascul ini ty. I've encoun-tered a few scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of anew breed, hut they are con fused, and entangled with sexist behavio rs tha tthey have not been able to e radicate. We need a new masculin ity and the newman needs a movement.

Lumping the males who deviate from the general norm with man, theoppressor, is a gross injustice. A somb ra p e ns a r qlle n os h em os q ue da do e n esc pozoOSCI.I(O d ond e el m un do en ciesra a las lesb ia na s. Aso mb ra p en sa r qu e h etno s, co mojemenistas y i e sb i anas , c e rrado nuestros c or az on es a l os h om b re s, a tiuestxos herttiatio:l o s j o t os , d e sberedados y ma rq in a le s c omo n o so tr os , Being the supreme crossers ofcultures, homosexuals have s trong bonds with the clueer white, Black, Asian,Nat ive American , Latino, and with the queer in It aly, Austral ia , and the restof the planet. We come from all colors, all classes, all races , all t ime per iods .Our role is to link people with each other-the Blacks with Jews withIndians with Asians with whites with extraterrestrials. Itis to transfer ideasand information from one culture to another. Colored homosexuals havemore knowledge of other cultures; have always been at the forefront(al though sometimes in the closet) of all l iberat ion s truggles in this country;have suffered more injustices and have survived them despite all odds.Chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions oftheir queer. Peop le, l isten to what you r joteria is saying.The mestizo and the queer ex ist a t th is time and point on the evolutionary

continuum for a purpose. V., reare a blending that proves that all blood is intr i-cately woven together, and that 'weare spawned out of s imilar souls.

Somos una genteHa y tantisuuosjronterasque dividen a lo gente,pew pot cadaJronteraexiste torobien un puente.-Gina Valdes

Laconciencia de Ia mestiza 241

fJivided loyalties. Many women and men of color do not want to have anydgal ings with white people. It takes too much t ime and energy to explain tothe downwardly mob ile , white middle -class women tha t i t's okay for us to"", 'ant to own "possessions," never having had any nice furniture on our dir tf loors or "luxur ies" l ike washing machines. Many feel that whites should helptheir own people r id themselves ofrace hatred and fear f irst . I , for one, choosetouse some ofmy energy to serve asmediator. I th ink we need to allow whitesto be our al lie s. Through our l it erature, art , corridos, and folktales we mustshare our history with them so when they set up committees to help BigMountain Navajos or the Chicano farmworkers or los Nicaraqiienses they won'tturn people away because of their racial fears and ignorances. They will cometo see that they are not helping us but fol lOwing our lead.Individually, but also as a racial entity, we need to voice our needs. We

Pleedto sayto white society: \Ve need you to accept the fact that Chicanos arediffe rent , to acknowledge your reject ion and nega tion of us. We need you toown the fact that you looked lip on us as less than human, that you stole ourlands , our personhood, our self- respect. 'vVeneed you to make public rest i-tution: to say that, to compensate for your own sense of defect iveness, yousfrivefor pmver over us, you erase our hi story and our experience becauseitmakes you feel guilty-you'd rather forget your brutish acts. Tosay you 'vesplit you rse lf from minority g roups, that you di sown us, tha t your dual con-sciousness splits off par ts of yourself, t ransferr ing the "negative" par ts ontous. (Where there is persecution of minorit ies, the re i s shadow project ion.'Where there is violence and war, there i s r epression o f shadow.) To say thatyeu are afraid of us, that to put distance between us, you wear the mask ofcontempt. Admit that Mexico isyOllr double, that she exists in the shadow ofthl s country, that we are i rrevocably t ied to her. Gringo , accept the doppe l-ganger in your psyche. By taking back your collect ive shadow the intracul-tur al spli t wi ll heaJ. And final ly, tel l us what you need from us.

"By Y our T rue F aces W e W ill K now Y oulam visible-v-see.this Indian face-yet r am invis ible. I both blind them withsl i l ly beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like tothink I have melted in the pot. But I haven't , we haven't .the dominant white culture iski ll ing us s lowly with i ts ignorance. By ~al t iD.g.away our self -determination, i t has made us weak and empty. Asa p~_qple ;;e


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242 GLORIA ANZALDUA.

have res is ted and we have taken expedient posi tions, hut we have never beena llowed to develop unencumbered-we have never been a llowed to be ful lourselves. The whites in power want us people of color to barricade Ollt~selves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us off one at a timewith their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash and distor-t history.Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A mis informed people isa subju_gated people.Before the Chicano and the undocumented worker and the Mexican from

the other side can come togethe r, before the Chicano can have uni ty v,,,-ithNative Americans and other groups, we need to know the history of theirstruggle and they need to know ours. Our mothers, our s is ters and brothers,the guys who hang out on stree t corners, the children in the playgrounds,each of us must know our Indian lineage, our afro-mestisaje, our history ofresistance.To the immigrant mcxicano and the recent a rrival s we must teach our hi s-

tory, The eighty million mexicatios and the Latinos from Central and SouthAmerica must know of our struggles. Each one of us must know basic fact sabout Nica ragua, Chi le, and the rest of Lat in America. The La tinoist move-ment (Chicanos , Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Spanish-speaking peopleworking together to combat racial discr imination in the marketplace) isgoodbut it is not enough. Other than a common culture we will have nothing tohold us toge ther. Vv'eneed to meet on a broader communal ground.The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, moiodo, mexiwno,immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working-class Anglo, Black, Asian-ourpsyches resemble the border towns and are populated by the same people.The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in the outer t errains.Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turncome before changes in soc iety. Nothing happens in the "real" world unlessit first happens in the images in our heads.

E 1 d la d e 1 a C hica naI will not be shamed againNor will I shame myself.

I am possessed by a vision: that we Chicanas and Chicanos have taken back oruncovered our true faces , our dignity and self- respect. I t's a validat ion vis ion.

L a c o; tl ci en ci a d e l a mestiza 243Seeing the Chicana anew in light of her history. I seek an exoneration, a

seeing through the fic tions of whi te supremacy, a seeing of ourselves in ourtrt~eguises and not as the false racial personali ty that has been given to us andthat VIlehave given to ourselves. I seek our woman's face, our true features,tmeposi tive and the negat i ve seen clearly, free of the tainted biases of maledClIJ1inance.1 seek new images of identity, new be lie fs about ourselves, ourhumanity and worth no longer in quest ion.ESta.InOS v iv ie nd o e n fa n ec he de fa Razo, un t iemp o cuando el ttaboio se hace a 1 0 qUi-e to , e n e l OSCUIO.E 1 d i a c ua nd o a ee pt dm os t al J' c omo s omo sJ' p ara e n d on de v am os J'p orq ue -es e d ia sera eI dia de l a R aw .Y o tenDO el conpxomiso de expresfll mi vision,wi sensibilidad, mi peicepcion d e 1 a tevalulacion d e l a B e nt e t ne xi ca na , s u m e ri to , esti-macion, bonta, opreoo,y v a li de z .

O n December 2 when my sun goes into m y first house, I celebrate el dia de10 Chicana y el Chicano. On that day I c lean my al tars, light my Coatalopeuh can-dle, burn sage and copal, take e l b ai io p ar a =r-v= basura , sweep m y house.On that day I bare m y soul, make myself vulnerable to friends and family by


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L cJ cOllciencia d e l a mestiza244 GLORIA ANZAlDUI\

El retornoAl l movements are accompl ished in six s tages, and the seventhbrings return,-I Ching7

Junto tiempo sin verta casa mid,m i cuna, wi hondo nido dela buerta.-"Solcdad"S

I stand at the river, watch the curving, twist ing se rpent, a serpent na iledto the fence where the mouth of the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf.r have come back. T a nt o d ol or m e c os I6 e l o le iam ie ra o, I shade my eyes andlook up. The bone beak of a hawk slowly ci rcling over me, checking me outas potential carrion. In i ts wake a lit tle bird f licker ing its wings , sV\oimmingsporadically l ike a f ish. In the distance the expressway and the s lough of traf-fi c l ike an irrit ated sow,The sudden pul l in my gut, la tierra, l o s a 8 1 1a ce ro s .Myland, el viento soplando l a a r ena , el l a 8 ar t ij o c l eba jo d e un nopal it o . /V Ieacuerdo comoera an te s " Una region de sen ic a d e va st a l l anu ra s , costeras de ba ia a l tu r a, de escasa !lu-via, de chaparrales lormados por mesquites), buizacbes. If I look real hard 1canalmost see the Spanish fathers who were called " the cavalry of Christ" enterthis valley r iding their burros, see the clash of cultures commence.Tierra natal. This is home, the small towns in the Valley, l o s pueb l it o s withchicken pens and goat s picketed to mesquite shrubs. El l las colonies on theother side of the tracks, junk cars line the front yards of hot pink and laven-der-trimmed houses-a-Chicano architecture we call it, self-consciously. Ihavemissed the TV shows where hos ts speak inhalf and half, and where awards aregiven in the category ofTex-Mex music. T have missed the Mexican cemeter-ie s blooming wi th a rtifi cia l flowers, the fields of a loe vera and red pepper,rows of sugar cane , of corn hanging on the stalks, the cloud of polvareda ill thedir t roads behind a speeding pickup truck, el s ab ot d e t am al es d e f ez J venado. Ihave missed l a Jegua colorado gnawing the wooden gate of her stall , the smel lof horse flesh from Carito's corrals. H e h ec ho m en os l as n ac he s c al ie tu es s in n ue ,neches de linternas J lechuzas making holes in the night .I still feel the old despair when Ilook at the unpa inted, di lapidated, scraplumber houses consist ing mostly ofcor rugated aluminum. Some ofthe poor-

245

est people in the U.S. l ive in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, an arid and semi-arid land of irriga ted farming) intense sunl ight and heat, cit rus groves nextto ch~parral and cactus. I w-alkthrough the elementary school I attended solong ago, which remained segregated unti l recently. I remember how thewhite teachers used to punish us for being Mexican.How I love this t ragic va lley of South Texas, as Rica rdo Sanchez call s i t;

this borderland between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. This land has sur-vived possess ion and ill-use by fivecountr ies: Spain, Mexico, the Republic ofTexaS, the U.S., the Confederacy, and the U.S. again. I t has survived Anglo-Mexican blood feuds, lynchings, burnings, rapes, pillage. '-'Today I see the va lley st ill st ruggling to survive, Whether i t does or not, i t

wil ' l never be asI remember i t.The borderlands depression that was set off bvm e 1982 peso devaluation in Mexico resulted in the closure of hundreds ;fva lley businesses. Many people lost the ir homes, cars, l and. Prior to 1982,tr.$, s tore owners thr ived on retai l sales to Mexicans who came across the bor-clerfor groceries and clothes and appliances. "Whilegoods on the U.S. side havebecome ten, one hundred, one thousand times more expensive for Mexicanbuyers, goods on the Mexican s ide have become ten, one hundred, one thou-sand times cheaper for Americans . Because the valley isheavily dependent onagr iculture and Mexican retai l t rade, i t has the highest unemployment ratesalong the entire border region; it is the valley that has been hardest hit . 9"It's been a bad year for corn," my brothe r Nune says. As he talks, J remem-ber m y father scanning the sky for a ra in tha t would end the drought, look-~)gup into the sky, day after day, while the corn withered on its stalk. My,father has been dead for twenty-nine years, having worked himself to death,Fbe life span of a Mexican farm laborer is fifty-six-he lived to he thirtv-eight. Itshocks me tha t I am older than he. I, too, search the sky for rain. Likethe ancients, I worship the rain god and the maize goddess, but unlike myfatu1erI have recovered their names . Now for rain ( ir rigation) one offers J ,lota sacrifice of blood, but of monev, j"Farming i s in a bad way,"my brother says. ~1",'0to three-thousand smallan~ big farmers went bankrupt in this country last year. Six years ag." theprnce of corn was $8.00 per hundred pounds," he goes on. "This year it is t.'$ 3.90 per hundred pounds." And, I think to myself , after taking inf lation intoaG:count, not planting anything puts you ahead.1 walk out to the back yard, stare !,t los tosoles de mama. She wants me 1:0 h ~lp- her prune the rose bushes, dig out the carpet grass that is chokingthem~'

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246 GLORIA AN2;A.ll: I' U~Mama aw nd e R am on a t am bl en t en ia r os al es , Here every Mexican grows flowers.'1fthev don't have ap iece of di rt they use car t ires, jars, cans, shoe boxes. Ro, ' , S e sare the Mexican's favorite flower. Ithink, how symbolic-thorns and al l.Yes, the Chicano and Chicana have always taken care o f growing t lU n ~

and the land. Again I see the four of us kids get ting off the school b us , c ha ng "ing into our work c lothes, walking into the field with Papi and Mamf, all stof U s bending to the ground. Below our feet, under the earth lie the "Vater.melon seeds. W e cover them. with paper plates, putting terretnotes On top ofthe pla tes to keep them from being blown away by the wind. The paper plateskeep the freeze away. Next day or the next, we remove the plates, bare t l tet iny green shoots to the elements. They survive and grow, give fruit hundred.sof t imes the size of the seed. \ lVewater them and hoe them. We harvest them.The vines dry, rot , are plowed under. Growth, death, decay, bi rth. The soi lprepared again and again, impregnated, worked on. A constant changing o fforms, renacimientos de 10 tierra madre.This land was Mexican oncewas Indian alwaysand is.And 'will be again.

NOTES

1. Jose Vasconcelos, La raza c6smica: Mis ion de la raza {bero-Americana (Ivtexico:Aguilar S.A. de Ediciones, 1961).

2, Arthur Koestler termed this "bisociation." Albert Rothenberg) Th e C r ca ti wProcess ill Art, Science, and Other Fields (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1979),p.12.3. In part, J derive my definitions for "convergent" and "divergent" thinkingfrom Rothenberg, pp. 12-13. "

4. To borrow chemist Ilya Prigogine's theory of "dissipative structures.Prigogine discovered that substances interact, not in predictable ways as it wa Staught inscience, but in different and fluctuating waysto produce new and morecomplex structures, a kind ofbirth he called "morphogenesis," whichcreated unpre-

ld V " Th ' 1~I:>[Jddictable innovations. Harold Gilliam, "Searching for a Ne1A''Nor iew, 1-'(January 1981): 23. '. h 'f r:rJl5. Tortillas de masa horuia: corn tortIllas are of two types) the smoot unr 0ones made in a tortilla press and usuallybought at a tortilla factory or supermarket,

1 Co.J1cienciade la mestiza,if 247l ind $ord.itas, made by mixing masa with lard or shortening or butter (my motherS(l , , : r!(et lmes puts in bits ofbacon or cbicharroness,

6. Gina Valdes, Puentes y fro ntem s: C op la s Chicanas (Los Angeles: CastleLifhograph, 1982), p. 2.

7. Richard Wilhelm, The { ChillS, or B ook of' Changes, trans. Carv F. Bavnes, /,(pr'iJfCeton:Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 98,8 . " So le da d' t i s sung bythe group, Hacienda Punta en Otro Son.9 .. Out of the twenty-two border counties in the four border states, Hidalgo

Gountr (named for Father Hidalgo, who was shot in 1810 after instigating Mexico'srevott against Spanish rule under the banner of 1a Virgen de Guadalupe) is, the mostfI&Vel'ty-strickcncounty in the nation as well as the largest home base (along withbnperial in California) for migrant farm-workers. It was here that I was born andI'aised.I. am amazed that both it and I have survived.

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