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In the message below from Victoriano, he takes issue with certain labels we descendants of Mexicans here in this country use. One issue was the use of the term "Mexican-American", which he found "redundant", and he states that when he lived here he knew only people from Africa and Asia who did not use hyphens to describe their ethnicity. So, he was talking about those that had been born in foreign countries, not those who had been born here for generations, who do use Asian-American, and African-American, Native-American. The United States' statistical systems placed those labels on us, and we have to accept them in order to have some kind of identity since we are still minorities.
Amongst ourselves we are simply "Mexicans" even if we have never been to Mexico and know very little about it. Then there are the "political" labels, such as Mexicas or Aztlan or Chicano. Some of those groups claim to speak for all of us, but others of us reserve the right to speak for ourselves. We want to assimilate, but not lose our ethnic identity completely. So we compromise. I am not an Indian, not having been born in India. I am not Mexican, not having been born in Mexico. I am American, because that is what all native-born US residents call themselves, whether our ancestors came from England, Asia, Africa, etc. Only our darker colors, surnames and language identify us as not the majority American. My nephews' father was Black-American. His ancestry can be traced to the first slave ships that landed on "American" shores hundreds of years ago. They get asked all the time if they are "Hawaiian" and they answer that they are "Black". They know nothing about Afr
ica and
never will. If you happen to be white, you do not have to identify yourself as English-American, Italian American, though sometimes a Latin surname raises questions. Many Italian-Americans have changed their surnames to make them sound more "American".
Because the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture holds sway here, those of us who do not fit the profile become hyphenated Americans. My husband is a white "Mexican" with roots in Mexico going back to the 1500s. His great-grandfather immigrated here in 1895. The WASP people that meet him for the first time decide that he cannot possibly be Mexican, he must be "Spanish", or "Castillian". "No", he says, "there is Spain and there is Mexico, and my people came from Mexico".
I am small, very dark, and have an Asian cast to my eyes. People who meet me up here in the Northwest where there are few people of Mexican descent think I am Filipino, or ask if I speak English. My husband's great-niece, whose parents and grandparents are all white (in family gatherings, I am the only raisin in the vanilla pudding), kept staring at me one day. She finally blurted out, "Aunt Emilie, what are you?" I was taken aback for a second, then I said, "Oh, you mean my ethnicity!". I told her I was "Mexican" like her great-uncle and his sister, her grandmother, but that unlike them, I had indigent blood and they had none, or it was very diluted, thus my dark skin vs. their fair skin. I told her my father had Mexican indigent blood (and I found in records also "mulatto" blood), and my mother descended from the Pueblos of New Mexico. I could take the time to explain to the great-niece why I look different than other members of her family, but when strangers ask, all
I can s
ay is "Mexican-American---I was born in Colorado, my father in Mexico....".
I think, Victoriano, you would be surprised at what we Mexican-Americans think about the labels placed on people in Mexico, and about the language they speak. The predominant language there at one time might have been Nahuatl, so why is that not the national language of Mexico? I guess because all indigent people have to assimilate and speak the language of the conqueror and adapt to his customs, same as in the US. I found the label "morena" and "guera" to identify people in Mexico very strange. We don't call people in the US "whitey" or "brownie" to their faces.
I was in a beauty shop in Mexico one day when the beautician asked me my husband's ethnicity. I told her, then she wanted to know if he was "norteno". I asked her what she meant. She said he was tall and white, like the "nortenos" in Jalisco. Now I know that he also could be referred to as Alteno, or guero. When we were in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta one time, my husband was walking down from the swimming pool in next to nothing with his white skin red from the sun, and one maid said to the other, "Hay viene un calsonudo!" He whirled around and told her in Spanish that he, the "calsonudo", was paying her salary. I also saw a blue-eyed, very pink man at the swimming pool get very angry when a waiter walked up and asked him in English if he wanted a drink. The man said, "No soy gringo! Soy espanol!" And so it went.
I was shopping in Mexico one day, when a young boy asked me, "De donde eres?" I said, "Porque?" He said, "Porque hablas espanol, pero tienes un accento muy raro", and that was about the most polite exchange I had. I told him I was EstadoUnidense, the way my husband's aunts taught me to respond, but it was a while before I could get my tongue around that word. Due to my accent and poor Spanish, I was mostly treated in a very sarcastic manner, asked why, since it could be seen in my face that I was Mexican, why didn't I speak better Spanish. They said I should be proud of my "patria", but I wasn't born there. I just said I was not espanola, and the language of my native country is English. Labels are redundant, maybe, but when you look different or sound different from the majority, they have to suffice, you are forced to identify yourself, and so far only in the US is everyone that is born there identified as just plain American. We have a song, "God Bless America", no
t "God B
less the United States". Mexico is also the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
Emilie
---Original Message---
victorianonavarro | 11 May, 2007 - 2:23pm
Hi Arturo,
I guess the way we divide continents has more to do with geography, history and culture than with geology. I remember learning in school that Europe and Asia formed the Eaurasian continent, and if you even add Africa it was the Eurasianafrican continent. So, I do consider the British and Irish islands as part of Europe (even Iceland), and Cuba and Caribbean islands as part of America. I even learned about a whole continent made just of islands (Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, etc.).
Even not all the citizens of the USA would de truly geographically American, mainly all Hawaiians.
As for American Football, I know it is derived from Rugby and Football Soccer; however the sport the way we know it is American, it was developed at Yale University in New England (Go Bulldogs!!!), even though some people form Harvard may not agree.
Going back to racial designations, I also have issues with the term Native American as used in the USA, since it seems to me it only refers to tribes form the USA, excluding the rest of the continent. I reckon I once described myself as part White Hispanic and part Native American (I have no problem with the tem Indian) in a USA census form, and in the section of "Tribe" I just wrote "Mexican" since I don't know from which of the many local Indian tribes I descend (chances are, from many different ones). Now thanks to DNA testing I know I'm not just part White and part American Indian, but also part Jew, part Middle Eastern-Mediterranean, and who knows what else. It is hard to describe your race when you are the product of centuries if not millennia of race mixing.
I am a citizen of Mexico, not a citizen of the USA, and I am very proud of being Mexican, and of being American, and again I think the term Mexican-American is as redundant as Kenian-Afican, Chinese-Asian or Italian-European.
I would tell all so-called Mexican-Americans, you ARE 100% AMERICAN, don't feel excluded, don't let them take away your American heritage, your ancestors have been in this American Continent for over 10 thousand years. All Mexicans are Americans, and you are TWICE American if you were born in the USA. By the way, I am thrice Mexican, since I was born in Mexico City and raised in the State of Mexico (before some governor changed our name from Mexican to Mexiquenses).
Just my two cents ;)
VN
Mexican-American, Chican, Native American labels
Well said Emilie!
Like you when I visited family for the first time in Mexico I was not considered Mexican enough for them. Since my Spanish is very poor they felt free to say things amongst themselves but I did catch the inferences. I'm not dark but I'm not light skinned either and people seem to feel free to ask me my ethnicity and like you I found that most expected "Mexicans" to be dark or only look like Indios. This melting pot of ours won't be happy until we all look alike, stateside that means light skinned.
I have already seen the lose of our history and identity in my family. Most of my generation did not marry within our ethnic origins. The need to save our personal history for a generation down the road who may wonder about their ancestors has become my calling.
I'm the last generation who has heard the stories from the grandfathers long gone. My father is 85 and forgetting many things as are his brothers and sister. I hope to preserve and share a history for those to come. This fuels my hours of work put into finding and preserving the records of my personal family who came to the United States to have a better, safer life for the people they loved. They gave up a Mexico they loved for the safety of their families which no longer existed because of the revolution. Because of their sacrifices I have a life in a country I love and know my children will probably have it even easier since they have assimilated, given up their racial indentity if you will. Sad but a fact in my family.
In our family we still have family reunions so the younger ones get to hear and experience our heritage but they for the most part don't live it on a daily basis. Life is not easy just different for them now. The faces are changing but we are still family. At the last reunion we came in so many colors we wondered if some even belonged in our group but they did! A senior Uncle tried to send a black child to the family next to us but he was one of ours, a new face he had not met before! We still laugh at Uncle for that one. My blue-eyed blond son worked at a hospital doing birth and death records and saw our Castanon surname on the list so rushed up to see who in the family it was. When he entered the room he found a Vietnamese woman and a Filopino man so he explained he was looking for family and they said they were not his family. At the next reunion there they were and we had a good laugh at our preconcieved ideas of what our family looks like today. That young
mans gr-grandfather is brother to my father! His son had married while in the service a woman from the Philipines and his son married a Vietnamese woman explaining our diverse looks.
While shopping here in Everett Wa. I saw a lady buying a pinata at a grocery store. The two senior Anglo ladies in front of me were watching and one asked the other what that thing was? Her friend told her it was a pinata, a California tradition! and life goes on....
Linda in Everett
Emilie Garcia wrote:
In the message below from Victoriano, he takes issue with certain labels we descendants of Mexicans here in this country use. One issue was the use of the term "Mexican-American", which he found "redundant", and he states that when he lived here he knew only people from Africa and Asia who did not use hyphens to describe their ethnicity. So, he was talking about those that had been born in foreign countries, not those who had been born here for generations, who do use Asian-American, and African-American, Native-American. The United States' statistical systems placed those labels on us, and we have to accept them in order to have some kind of identity since we are still minorities.
Amongst ourselves we are simply "Mexicans" even if we have never been to Mexico and know very little about it. Then there are the "political" labels, such as Mexicas or Aztlan or Chicano. Some of those groups claim to speak for all of us, but others of us reserve the right to speak for ourselves. We want to assimilate, but not lose our ethnic identity completely. So we compromise. I am not an Indian, not having been born in India. I am not Mexican, not having been born in Mexico. I am American, because that is what all native-born US residents call themselves, whether our ancestors came from England, Asia, Africa, etc. Only our darker colors, surnames and language identify us as not the majority American. My nephews' father was Black-American. His ancestry can be traced to the first slave ships that landed on "American" shores hundreds of years ago. They get asked all the time if they are "Hawaiian" and they answer that they are "Black". They know nothing about Afr
ica and
never will. If you happen to be white, you do not have to identify yourself as English-American, Italian American, though sometimes a Latin surname raises questions. Many Italian-Americans have changed their surnames to make them sound more "American".
Because the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture holds sway here, those of us who do not fit the profile become hyphenated Americans. My husband is a white "Mexican" with roots in Mexico going back to the 1500s. His great-grandfather immigrated here in 1895. The WASP people that meet him for the first time decide that he cannot possibly be Mexican, he must be "Spanish", or "Castillian". "No", he says, "there is Spain and there is Mexico, and my people came from Mexico".
I am small, very dark, and have an Asian cast to my eyes. People who meet me up here in the Northwest where there are few people of Mexican descent think I am Filipino, or ask if I speak English. My husband's great-niece, whose parents and grandparents are all white (in family gatherings, I am the only raisin in the vanilla pudding), kept staring at me one day. She finally blurted out, "Aunt Emilie, what are you?" I was taken aback for a second, then I said, "Oh, you mean my ethnicity!". I told her I was "Mexican" like her great-uncle and his sister, her grandmother, but that unlike them, I had indigent blood and they had none, or it was very diluted, thus my dark skin vs. their fair skin. I told her my father had Mexican indigent blood (and I found in records also "mulatto" blood), and my mother descended from the Pueblos of New Mexico. I could take the time to explain to the great-niece why I look different than other members of her family, but when strangers ask, all
I can s
ay is "Mexican-American---I was born in Colorado, my father in Mexico....".
I think, Victoriano, you would be surprised at what we Mexican-Americans think about the labels placed on people in Mexico, and about the language they speak. The predominant language there at one time might have been Nahuatl, so why is that not the national language of Mexico? I guess because all indigent people have to assimilate and speak the language of the conqueror and adapt to his customs, same as in the US. I found the label "morena" and "guera" to identify people in Mexico very strange. We don't call people in the US "whitey" or "brownie" to their faces.
I was in a beauty shop in Mexico one day when the beautician asked me my husband's ethnicity. I told her, then she wanted to know if he was "norteno". I asked her what she meant. She said he was tall and white, like the "nortenos" in Jalisco. Now I know that he also could be referred to as Alteno, or guero. When we were in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta one time, my husband was walking down from the swimming pool in next to nothing with his white skin red from the sun, and one maid said to the other, "Hay viene un calsonudo!" He whirled around and told her in Spanish that he, the "calsonudo", was paying her salary. I also saw a blue-eyed, very pink man at the swimming pool get very angry when a waiter walked up and asked him in English if he wanted a drink. The man said, "No soy gringo! Soy espanol!" And so it went.
I was shopping in Mexico one day, when a young boy asked me, "De donde eres?" I said, "Porque?" He said, "Porque hablas espanol, pero tienes un accento muy raro", and that was about the most polite exchange I had. I told him I was EstadoUnidense, the way my husband's aunts taught me to respond, but it was a while before I could get my tongue around that word. Due to my accent and poor Spanish, I was mostly treated in a very sarcastic manner, asked why, since it could be seen in my face that I was Mexican, why didn't I speak better Spanish. They said I should be proud of my "patria", but I wasn't born there. I just said I was not espanola, and the language of my native country is English. Labels are redundant, maybe, but when you look different or sound different from the majority, they have to suffice, you are forced to identify yourself, and so far only in the US is everyone that is born there identified as just plain American. We have a song, "God Bless America", no
t "God B
less the United States". Mexico is also the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
Emilie
---------------------------------
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Mexican-American, Chican, Native American labels
Dear, beautiful Emilie,
I thoroughly enjoyed your dissertation and the beauty of the "human" values
meaning that ingrain it. A tip of my hat to you!
For my part, can I say truthfully but very much tongue-in-cheek that ...
I am an American that was born in California of Spanish-Mexican parents.
Did that make me a Spanish-Mexican-American?
Then I moved to Mexico when I was a toddler but I do not remember, while in
Mexico, being called a Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican. I was called
Efrain.
When I moved back to California as a teenager (and to serve in my country's
Armed Forces), did I become a decorated
Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican-American Navy-man?
And what about my children? ...and their children?
Why don't we just drop this ridiculous subject and go on being "humans"?
.... with personal dignity and mutual respect towards each other?
Efrain
San Diego, California
> [Original Message]
> From: Emilie Garcia
> To:
> Date: 5/12/2007 11:07:12 AM
> Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] Mexican-American, Chican, Native American
labels
>
> In the message below from Victoriano, he takes issue with certain labels
we descendants of Mexicans here in this country use. One issue was the use
of the term "Mexican-American", which he found "redundant", and he states
that when he lived here he knew only people from Africa and Asia who did
not use hyphens to describe their ethnicity. So, he was talking about those
that had been born in foreign countries, not those who had been born here
for generations, who do use Asian-American, and African-American,
Native-American. The United States' statistical systems placed those
labels on us, and we have to accept them in order to have some kind of
identity since we are still minorities.
>
> Amongst ourselves we are simply "Mexicans" even if we have never been to
Mexico and know very little about it. Then there are the "political"
labels, such as Mexicas or Aztlan or Chicano. Some of those groups claim
to speak for all of us, but others of us reserve the right to speak for
ourselves. We want to assimilate, but not lose our ethnic identity
completely. So we compromise. I am not an Indian, not having been born in
India. I am not Mexican, not having been born in Mexico. I am American,
because that is what all native-born US residents call themselves, whether
our ancestors came from England, Asia, Africa, etc. Only our darker
colors, surnames and language identify us as not the majority American. My
nephews' father was Black-American. His ancestry can be traced to the first
slave ships that landed on "American" shores hundreds of years ago. They
get asked all the time if they are "Hawaiian" and they answer that they are
"Black". They know nothing about Afr
> ica and
> never will. If you happen to be white, you do not have to identify
yourself as English-American, Italian American, though sometimes a Latin
surname raises questions. Many Italian-Americans have changed their
surnames to make them sound more "American".
>
> Because the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture holds sway here, those
of us who do not fit the profile become hyphenated Americans. My husband
is a white "Mexican" with roots in Mexico going back to the 1500s. His
great-grandfather immigrated here in 1895. The WASP people that meet him
for the first time decide that he cannot possibly be Mexican, he must be
"Spanish", or "Castillian". "No", he says, "there is Spain and there is
Mexico, and my people came from Mexico".
>
> I am small, very dark, and have an Asian cast to my eyes. People who
meet me up here in the Northwest where there are few people of Mexican
descent think I am Filipino, or ask if I speak English. My husband's
great-niece, whose parents and grandparents are all white (in family
gatherings, I am the only raisin in the vanilla pudding), kept staring at
me one day. She finally blurted out, "Aunt Emilie, what are you?" I was
taken aback for a second, then I said, "Oh, you mean my ethnicity!". I
told her I was "Mexican" like her great-uncle and his sister, her
grandmother, but that unlike them, I had indigent blood and they had none,
or it was very diluted, thus my dark skin vs. their fair skin. I told her
my father had Mexican indigent blood (and I found in records also "mulatto"
blood), and my mother descended from the Pueblos of New Mexico. I could
take the time to explain to the great-niece why I look different than other
members of her family, but when strangers ask, all
> I can s
> ay is "Mexican-American---I was born in Colorado, my father in
Mexico....".
>
> I think, Victoriano, you would be surprised at what we Mexican-Americans
think about the labels placed on people in Mexico, and about the language
they speak. The predominant language there at one time might have been
Nahuatl, so why is that not the national language of Mexico? I guess
because all indigent people have to assimilate and speak the language of
the conqueror and adapt to his customs, same as in the US. I found the
label "morena" and "guera" to identify people in Mexico very strange. We
don't call people in the US "whitey" or "brownie" to their faces.
>
> I was in a beauty shop in Mexico one day when the beautician asked me my
husband's ethnicity. I told her, then she wanted to know if he was
"norteno". I asked her what she meant. She said he was tall and white,
like the "nortenos" in Jalisco. Now I know that he also could be referred
to as Alteno, or guero. When we were in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta one
time, my husband was walking down from the swimming pool in next to nothing
with his white skin red from the sun, and one maid said to the other, "Hay
viene un calsonudo!" He whirled around and told her in Spanish that he,
the "calsonudo", was paying her salary. I also saw a blue-eyed, very pink
man at the swimming pool get very angry when a waiter walked up and asked
him in English if he wanted a drink. The man said, "No soy gringo! Soy
espanol!" And so it went.
>
> I was shopping in Mexico one day, when a young boy asked me, "De donde
eres?" I said, "Porque?" He said, "Porque hablas espanol, pero tienes un
accento muy raro", and that was about the most polite exchange I had. I
told him I was EstadoUnidense, the way my husband's aunts taught me to
respond, but it was a while before I could get my tongue around that word.
Due to my accent and poor Spanish, I was mostly treated in a very sarcastic
manner, asked why, since it could be seen in my face that I was Mexican,
why didn't I speak better Spanish. They said I should be proud of my
"patria", but I wasn't born there. I just said I was not espanola, and the
language of my native country is English. Labels are redundant, maybe, but
when you look different or sound different from the majority, they have to
suffice, you are forced to identify yourself, and so far only in the US is
everyone that is born there identified as just plain American. We have a
song, "God Bless America", no
> t "God B
> less the United States". Mexico is also the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
>
> Emilie
>
> ---Original Message---
> victorianonavarro | 11 May, 2007 - 2:23pm
>
> Hi Arturo,
> I guess the way we divide continents has more to do with geography,
history and culture than with geology. I remember learning in school that
Europe and Asia formed the Eaurasian continent, and if you even add Africa
it was the Eurasianafrican continent. So, I do consider the British and
Irish islands as part of Europe (even Iceland), and Cuba and Caribbean
islands as part of America. I even learned about a whole continent made
just of islands (Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, etc.).
> Even not all the citizens of the USA would de truly geographically
American, mainly all Hawaiians.
> As for American Football, I know it is derived from Rugby and Football
Soccer; however the sport the way we know it is American, it was developed
at Yale University in New England (Go Bulldogs!!!), even though some people
form Harvard may not agree.
> Going back to racial designations, I also have issues with the term
Native American as used in the USA, since it seems to me it only refers to
tribes form the USA, excluding the rest of the continent. I reckon I once
described myself as part White Hispanic and part Native American (I have no
problem with the tem Indian) in a USA census form, and in the section of
"Tribe" I just wrote "Mexican" since I don't know from which of the many
local Indian tribes I descend (chances are, from many different ones). Now
thanks to DNA testing I know I'm not just part White and part American
Indian, but also part Jew, part Middle Eastern-Mediterranean, and who knows
what else. It is hard to describe your race when you are the product of
centuries if not millennia of race mixing.
> I am a citizen of Mexico, not a citizen of the USA, and I am very proud
of being Mexican, and of being American, and again I think the term
Mexican-American is as redundant as Kenian-Afican, Chinese-Asian or
Italian-European.
> I would tell all so-called Mexican-Americans, you ARE 100% AMERICAN,
don't feel excluded, don't let them take away your American heritage, your
ancestors have been in this American Continent for over 10 thousand years.
All Mexicans are Americans, and you are TWICE American if you were born in
the USA. By the way, I am thrice Mexican, since I was born in Mexico City
and raised in the State of Mexico (before some governor changed our name
from Mexican to Mexiquenses).
> Just my two cents ;)
> VN
Mexican-American, Chican, Native American labels
Efrain,
I just noticed I used the word "indigent" instead of "indigenous" in my "dissertation" as you call it. Shame on me. As for dropping this subject you find "ridiculous", it will pass for now. It crops up in this group every once in a while, since many of us have been confronted with questions about our ethnicity by strangers and even by some in our own families or by our experiences in Mexico, and we feel drawn to comment on it. In a perfect world there would be "personal dignity and mutual respect" always, but it is not a perfect world, and we have to confront it. We can't always ignore it, and it helps some of us to talk about it.
Emilie
----- Original Message -----
From: Efrain Conrique
To: research@nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Mexican-American, Chican,Native American labels
Dear, beautiful Emilie,
I thoroughly enjoyed your dissertation and the beauty of the "human" values
meaning that ingrain it. A tip of my hat to you!
For my part, can I say truthfully but very much tongue-in-cheek that ...
I am an American that was born in California of Spanish-Mexican parents.
Did that make me a Spanish-Mexican-American?
Then I moved to Mexico when I was a toddler but I do not remember, while in
Mexico, being called a Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican. I was called
Efrain.
When I moved back to California as a teenager (and to serve in my country's
Armed Forces), did I become a decorated
Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican-American Navy-man?
And what about my children? ...and their children?
Why don't we just drop this ridiculous subject and go on being "humans"?
.... with personal dignity and mutual respect towards each other?
Efrain
San Diego, California
> [Original Message]
> From: Emilie Garcia >
> To: >
> Date: 5/12/2007 11:07:12 AM
> Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] Mexican-American, Chican, Native American
labels
>
> In the message below from Victoriano, he takes issue with certain labels
we descendants of Mexicans here in this country use. One issue was the use
of the term "Mexican-American", which he found "redundant", and he states
that when he lived here he knew only people from Africa and Asia who did
not use hyphens to describe their ethnicity. So, he was talking about those
that had been born in foreign countries, not those who had been born here
for generations, who do use Asian-American, and African-American,
Native-American. The United States' statistical systems placed those
labels on us, and we have to accept them in order to have some kind of
identity since we are still minorities.
>
> Amongst ourselves we are simply "Mexicans" even if we have never been to
Mexico and know very little about it. Then there are the "political"
labels, such as Mexicas or Aztlan or Chicano. Some of those groups claim
to speak for all of us, but others of us reserve the right to speak for
ourselves. We want to assimilate, but not lose our ethnic identity
completely. So we compromise. I am not an Indian, not having been born in
India. I am not Mexican, not having been born in Mexico. I am American,
because that is what all native-born US residents call themselves, whether
our ancestors came from England, Asia, Africa, etc. Only our darker
colors, surnames and language identify us as not the majority American. My
nephews' father was Black-American. His ancestry can be traced to the first
slave ships that landed on "American" shores hundreds of years ago. They
get asked all the time if they are "Hawaiian" and they answer that they are
"Black". They know nothing about Afr
> ica and
> never will. If you happen to be white, you do not have to identify
yourself as English-American, Italian American, though sometimes a Latin
surname raises questions. Many Italian-Americans have changed their
surnames to make them sound more "American".
>
> Because the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture holds sway here, those
of us who do not fit the profile become hyphenated Americans. My husband
is a white "Mexican" with roots in Mexico going back to the 1500s. His
great-grandfather immigrated here in 1895. The WASP people that meet him
for the first time decide that he cannot possibly be Mexican, he must be
"Spanish", or "Castillian". "No", he says, "there is Spain and there is
Mexico, and my people came from Mexico".
>
> I am small, very dark, and have an Asian cast to my eyes. People who
meet me up here in the Northwest where there are few people of Mexican
descent think I am Filipino, or ask if I speak English. My husband's
great-niece, whose parents and grandparents are all white (in family
gatherings, I am the only raisin in the vanilla pudding), kept staring at
me one day. She finally blurted out, "Aunt Emilie, what are you?" I was
taken aback for a second, then I said, "Oh, you mean my ethnicity!". I
told her I was "Mexican" like her great-uncle and his sister, her
grandmother, but that unlike them, I had indigent blood and they had none,
or it was very diluted, thus my dark skin vs. their fair skin. I told her
my father had Mexican indigent blood (and I found in records also "mulatto"
blood), and my mother descended from the Pueblos of New Mexico. I could
take the time to explain to the great-niece why I look different than other
members of her family, but when strangers ask, all
> I can s
> ay is "Mexican-American---I was born in Colorado, my father in
Mexico....".
>
> I think, Victoriano, you would be surprised at what we Mexican-Americans
think about the labels placed on people in Mexico, and about the language
they speak. The predominant language there at one time might have been
Nahuatl, so why is that not the national language of Mexico? I guess
because all indigent people have to assimilate and speak the language of
the conqueror and adapt to his customs, same as in the US. I found the
label "morena" and "guera" to identify people in Mexico very strange. We
don't call people in the US "whitey" or "brownie" to their faces.
>
> I was in a beauty shop in Mexico one day when the beautician asked me my
husband's ethnicity. I told her, then she wanted to know if he was
"norteno". I asked her what she meant. She said he was tall and white,
like the "nortenos" in Jalisco. Now I know that he also could be referred
to as Alteno, or guero. When we were in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta one
time, my husband was walking down from the swimming pool in next to nothing
with his white skin red from the sun, and one maid said to the other, "Hay
viene un calsonudo!" He whirled around and told her in Spanish that he,
the "calsonudo", was paying her salary. I also saw a blue-eyed, very pink
man at the swimming pool get very angry when a waiter walked up and asked
him in English if he wanted a drink. The man said, "No soy gringo! Soy
espanol!" And so it went.
>
> I was shopping in Mexico one day, when a young boy asked me, "De donde
eres?" I said, "Porque?" He said, "Porque hablas espanol, pero tienes un
accento muy raro", and that was about the most polite exchange I had. I
told him I was EstadoUnidense, the way my husband's aunts taught me to
respond, but it was a while before I could get my tongue around that word.
Due to my accent and poor Spanish, I was mostly treated in a very sarcastic
manner, asked why, since it could be seen in my face that I was Mexican,
why didn't I speak better Spanish. They said I should be proud of my
"patria", but I wasn't born there. I just said I was not espanola, and the
language of my native country is English. Labels are redundant, maybe, but
when you look different or sound different from the majority, they have to
suffice, you are forced to identify yourself, and so far only in the US is
everyone that is born there identified as just plain American. We have a
song, "God Bless America", no
> t "God B
> less the United States". Mexico is also the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
>
> Emilie
>
> ---Original Message---
> victorianonavarro | 11 May, 2007 - 2:23pm
>
> Hi Arturo,
> I guess the way we divide continents has more to do with geography,
history and culture than with geology. I remember learning in school that
Europe and Asia formed the Eaurasian continent, and if you even add Africa
it was the Eurasianafrican continent. So, I do consider the British and
Irish islands as part of Europe (even Iceland), and Cuba and Caribbean
islands as part of America. I even learned about a whole continent made
just of islands (Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, etc.).
> Even not all the citizens of the USA would de truly geographically
American, mainly all Hawaiians.
> As for American Football, I know it is derived from Rugby and Football
Soccer; however the sport the way we know it is American, it was developed
at Yale University in New England (Go Bulldogs!!!), even though some people
form Harvard may not agree.
> Going back to racial designations, I also have issues with the term
Native American as used in the USA, since it seems to me it only refers to
tribes form the USA, excluding the rest of the continent. I reckon I once
described myself as part White Hispanic and part Native American (I have no
problem with the tem Indian) in a USA census form, and in the section of
"Tribe" I just wrote "Mexican" since I don't know from which of the many
local Indian tribes I descend (chances are, from many different ones). Now
thanks to DNA testing I know I'm not just part White and part American
Indian, but also part Jew, part Middle Eastern-Mediterranean, and who knows
what else. It is hard to describe your race when you are the product of
centuries if not millennia of race mixing.
> I am a citizen of Mexico, not a citizen of the USA, and I am very proud
of being Mexican, and of being American, and again I think the term
Mexican-American is as redundant as Kenian-Afican, Chinese-Asian or
Italian-European.
> I would tell all so-called Mexican-Americans, you ARE 100% AMERICAN,
don't feel excluded, don't let them take away your American heritage, your
ancestors have been in this American Continent for over 10 thousand years.
All Mexicans are Americans, and you are TWICE American if you were born in
the USA. By the way, I am thrice Mexican, since I was born in Mexico City
and raised in the State of Mexico (before some governor changed our name
from Mexican to Mexiquenses).
> Just my two cents ;)
> VN
Mexican-American, Chican, Native American labels
Hi Emilie, Linda, Efrain;
A few thoughts on your messages.
I'll have to say when I was living in the USA I felt l was part of the most unwelcome group in América:
For Blacks I was White; for Whites I was Latino; for Latinos I was Mexican; for Mexicans I was Chilango; and for Chilangos I was, well... another Chilango.
Part of my problem with US racial designations is why should I use the "politically correct" term "African-American" to describe black people when most of my black fiends and my roomate were not American at all. I remember I once saw somebody on a TV program (I think it was Jay Leno's wife, at Jay Leno's Tonight Show, NBC) who was talking about Human Rigths violations, and she mentioned the apartheid against "African-Americans" in South Africa, I could not believe what I was listening to! (black Africans are NOT African-American).
I do know many US citizens of Mexican descent, a big chunk of my family has lived in the US for over a century and we stay in touch and see each other whenever possible.
Náhuatl was just one of the many languages spoken in what we now call Mexico, and if it happened to be predominant it was only because it was the language of the Mexica Conquerors, later it ws replaced by the Spanish of the Spaniard Conquerors. Eventually the whole identity of the country focused in the Mexicas since the name of the country itself and our national flag have Aztec origins, but sometimes we forget the Aztecs were defeated thanks to the help of the Tlaxcaltecas and other local tribes who fought with the Spaniards against against the Aztec Conquerors.
Yes, the official name of our coutry is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", part of the fad of naming everithing "United" just like the original US of A: United Kingdom, Unted Arab Emirates, United Nations, USSR. In many official documents it is also called República Mexicana, and strangely in international affairs the government doesn't use the official name of the country, but just México instead: in the United Nations, Olympics, Football World Cup, etc.
I like to sing in English "Oh beautiful, for precious skies, for amber waves of grain...!", but when I sing it, I sing it to my whole América, of which I am very proud. And I take offense when people form other continets speak aginst Americans, for although I know they are talking about the US for whatever reason, as a Mexican I feel American.
It seem to me our "Americanicity" has been taken hostage by the USA, and for me the term Mexican-American is not just redundant, but another way to keep it so. For we Mexicans, are Americans, and being the first one automatically means you are the second one.
I once read that the border is a culture between two cultures. I guess within a family of Mexican descent i the US some may feel like they live in this cultural border. Some closer to one side, some closer to the other, some just stuck in between. As far as I am concerned, you are always welcome in my side of the cultural border
Saludos cordiales.
VN
Mexican-American, Chican, Native American labels
I am computer illiterate, so it was a bit tricky becoming a part of this group. I had great hopes of possibly-finally tracing my mothers' fathers' family. So far all I learned is prejudice does run through all races and a lot of it we bring on ourselves. I have been to Mexico beau coup times and have NEVER been asked my heritage, treated rudely because of my color or lack of color or the inability to speak spanish. My hair used to be blue/black and my skin ( as my husband calls it ) is glow in the dark white--I am proud to say I have my mothers' black eyes and hair and my fathers' skin color and chest.My eyes were almond shaped and I was never offended when I was asked if I was Hawaiian, Italian or Greek.When I was growing up --to be called chicano would get you popped in the mouth.Another word I hear is the word that rhymes with coal and it is being used like--hey buddy.That word also would have gotten you decked out real pretty in that box.
I don't understand-why it is so important to label ourselves and be put into a certain little box, and even then we are not happy--someone speaks differently, their skin is too dark, to light etc. I love finding from whence I come--who they were, what they did for a living and what kind of people they were. So far I have learned I have conquistadors, farmers, ranchers ( yes, I have learned there is a difference--who knew) store clerks, horseman, moonshiners and even one horse thief in my background. I am proud of the different bits that make me who I am ( I am truly a citizen of the world )---I am Paula Wakefield nee Trujillo--My parents were Basque- If asked that is how I answer, and sometimes I do have to give a small geography lesson. I was taught to be proud of who and what I am.
Genealogy is not--what you and I are called--it is learning from whence you came.
Paula
----- Original Message -----
From: Efrain Conrique
To: research@nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Mexican-American, Chican,Native American labels
Dear, beautiful Emilie,
I thoroughly enjoyed your dissertation and the beauty of the "human" values
meaning that ingrain it. A tip of my hat to you!
For my part, can I say truthfully but very much tongue-in-cheek that ..
I am an American that was born in California of Spanish-Mexican parents.
Did that make me a Spanish-Mexican-American?
Then I moved to Mexico when I was a toddler but I do not remember, while in
Mexico, being called a Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican. I was called
Efrain.
When I moved back to California as a teenager (and to serve in my country's
Armed Forces), did I become a decorated
Spanish-Mexican-American-Mexican-American Navy-man?
And what about my children? ...and their children?
Why don't we just drop this ridiculous subject and go on being "humans"?
.... with personal dignity and mutual respect towards each other?
Efrain
San Diego, California
> [Original Message]
> From: Emilie Garcia >
> To: >
> Date: 5/12/2007 11:07:12 AM
> Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] Mexican-American, Chican, Native American
labels
>
> In the message below from Victoriano, he takes issue with certain labels
we descendants of Mexicans here in this country use. One issue was the use
of the term "Mexican-American", which he found "redundant", and he states
that when he lived here he knew only people from Africa and Asia who did
not use hyphens to describe their ethnicity. So, he was talking about those
that had been born in foreign countries, not those who had been born here
for generations, who do use Asian-American, and African-American,
Native-American. The United States' statistical systems placed those
labels on us, and we have to accept them in order to have some kind of
identity since we are still minorities.
>
> Amongst ourselves we are simply "Mexicans" even if we have never been to
Mexico and know very little about it. Then there are the "political"
labels, such as Mexicas or Aztlan or Chicano. Some of those groups claim
to speak for all of us, but others of us reserve the right to speak for
ourselves. We want to assimilate, but not lose our ethnic identity
completely. So we compromise. I am not an Indian, not having been born in
India. I am not Mexican, not having been born in Mexico. I am American,
because that is what all native-born US residents call themselves, whether
our ancestors came from England, Asia, Africa, etc. Only our darker
colors, surnames and language identify us as not the majority American. My
nephews' father was Black-American. His ancestry can be traced to the first
slave ships that landed on "American" shores hundreds of years ago. They
get asked all the time if they are "Hawaiian" and they answer that they are
"Black". They know nothing about Afr
> ica and
> never will. If you happen to be white, you do not have to identify
yourself as English-American, Italian American, though sometimes a Latin
surname raises questions. Many Italian-Americans have changed their
surnames to make them sound more "American".
>
> Because the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture holds sway here, those
of us who do not fit the profile become hyphenated Americans. My husband
is a white "Mexican" with roots in Mexico going back to the 1500s. His
great-grandfather immigrated here in 1895. The WASP people that meet him
for the first time decide that he cannot possibly be Mexican, he must be
"Spanish", or "Castillian". "No", he says, "there is Spain and there is
Mexico, and my people came from Mexico".
>
> I am small, very dark, and have an Asian cast to my eyes. People who
meet me up here in the Northwest where there are few people of Mexican
descent think I am Filipino, or ask if I speak English. My husband's
great-niece, whose parents and grandparents are all white (in family
gatherings, I am the only raisin in the vanilla pudding), kept staring at
me one day. She finally blurted out, "Aunt Emilie, what are you?" I was
taken aback for a second, then I said, "Oh, you mean my ethnicity!". I
told her I was "Mexican" like her great-uncle and his sister, her
grandmother, but that unlike them, I had indigent blood and they had none,
or it was very diluted, thus my dark skin vs. their fair skin. I told her
my father had Mexican indigent blood (and I found in records also "mulatto"
blood), and my mother descended from the Pueblos of New Mexico. I could
take the time to explain to the great-niece why I look different than other
members of her family, but when strangers ask, all
> I can s
> ay is "Mexican-American---I was born in Colorado, my father in
Mexico....".
>
> I think, Victoriano, you would be surprised at what we Mexican-Americans
think about the labels placed on people in Mexico, and about the language
they speak. The predominant language there at one time might have been
Nahuatl, so why is that not the national language of Mexico? I guess
because all indigent people have to assimilate and speak the language of
the conqueror and adapt to his customs, same as in the US. I found the
label "morena" and "guera" to identify people in Mexico very strange. We
don't call people in the US "whitey" or "brownie" to their faces.
>
> I was in a beauty shop in Mexico one day when the beautician asked me my
husband's ethnicity. I told her, then she wanted to know if he was
"norteno". I asked her what she meant. She said he was tall and white,
like the "nortenos" in Jalisco. Now I know that he also could be referred
to as Alteno, or guero. When we were in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta one
time, my husband was walking down from the swimming pool in next to nothing
with his white skin red from the sun, and one maid said to the other, "Hay
viene un calsonudo!" He whirled around and told her in Spanish that he,
the "calsonudo", was paying her salary. I also saw a blue-eyed, very pink
man at the swimming pool get very angry when a waiter walked up and asked
him in English if he wanted a drink. The man said, "No soy gringo! Soy
espanol!" And so it went.
>
> I was shopping in Mexico one day, when a young boy asked me, "De donde
eres?" I said, "Porque?" He said, "Porque hablas espanol, pero tienes un
accento muy raro", and that was about the most polite exchange I had. I
told him I was EstadoUnidense, the way my husband's aunts taught me to
respond, but it was a while before I could get my tongue around that word.
Due to my accent and poor Spanish, I was mostly treated in a very sarcastic
manner, asked why, since it could be seen in my face that I was Mexican,
why didn't I speak better Spanish. They said I should be proud of my
"patria", but I wasn't born there. I just said I was not espanola, and the
language of my native country is English. Labels are redundant, maybe, but
when you look different or sound different from the majority, they have to
suffice, you are forced to identify yourself, and so far only in the US is
everyone that is born there identified as just plain American. We have a
song, "God Bless America", no
> t "God B
> less the United States". Mexico is also the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
>
> Emilie
>
> ---Original Message---
> victorianonavarro | 11 May, 2007 - 2:23pm
>
> Hi Arturo,
> I guess the way we divide continents has more to do with geography,
history and culture than with geology. I remember learning in school that
Europe and Asia formed the Eaurasian continent, and if you even add Africa
it was the Eurasianafrican continent. So, I do consider the British and
Irish islands as part of Europe (even Iceland), and Cuba and Caribbean
islands as part of America. I even learned about a whole continent made
just of islands (Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, etc.).
> Even not all the citizens of the USA would de truly geographically
American, mainly all Hawaiians.
> As for American Football, I know it is derived from Rugby and Football
Soccer; however the sport the way we know it is American, it was developed
at Yale University in New England (Go Bulldogs!!!), even though some people
form Harvard may not agree.
> Going back to racial designations, I also have issues with the term
Native American as used in the USA, since it seems to me it only refers to
tribes form the USA, excluding the rest of the continent. I reckon I once
described myself as part White Hispanic and part Native American (I have no
problem with the tem Indian) in a USA census form, and in the section of
"Tribe" I just wrote "Mexican" since I don't know from which of the many
local Indian tribes I descend (chances are, from many different ones). Now
thanks to DNA testing I know I'm not just part White and part American
Indian, but also part Jew, part Middle Eastern-Mediterranean, and who knows
what else. It is hard to describe your race when you are the product of
centuries if not millennia of race mixing.
> I am a citizen of Mexico, not a citizen of the USA, and I am very proud
of being Mexican, and of being American, and again I think the term
Mexican-American is as redundant as Kenian-Afican, Chinese-Asian or
Italian-European.
> I would tell all so-called Mexican-Americans, you ARE 100% AMERICAN,
don't feel excluded, don't let them take away your American heritage, your
ancestors have been in this American Continent for over 10 thousand years.
All Mexicans are Americans, and you are TWICE American if you were born in
the USA. By the way, I am thrice Mexican, since I was born in Mexico City
and raised in the State of Mexico (before some governor changed our name
from Mexican to Mexiquenses).
> Just my two cents ;)
> VN
... labels
What means "moonshiners"?
PaulaJ TRUJILLO escribió: I am computer illiterate, so it was a bit tricky becoming a part of this group. ...I So far I have learned I have conquistadors, farmers, ranchers ( yes, I have learned there is a difference--who knew) store clerks, horseman, moonshiners and even one horse thief in my background. I am proud of the different bits that make me who I am ( I am truly a citizen of the world )---I am Paula Wakefield nee Trujillo--My parents were Basque- If asked that is how I answer, and sometimes I do have to give a small geography lesson. I was taught to be proud of who and what I am.
Genealogy is not--what you and I are called--it is learning from whence you came.
Paula
---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!? La mejor conexión a Internet y 2GB extra a tu correo por $100 al mes. http://net.yahoo.com.mx
... labels
The making of illegal liguor called white lightening. There are few other names but that is the most famous.
Paula
----- Original Message -----
From: Leticia Leon
To: research@nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] ... labels
What means "moonshiners"?
PaulaJ TRUJILLO > escribió: I am computer illiterate, so it was a bit tricky becoming a part of this group. ...I So far I have learned I have conquistadors, farmers, ranchers ( yes, I have learned there is a difference--who knew) store clerks, horseman, moonshiners and even one horse thief in my background. I am proud of the different bits that make me who I am ( I am truly a citizen of the world )---I am Paula Wakefield nee Trujillo--My parents were Basque- If asked that is how I answer, and sometimes I do have to give a small geography lesson. I was taught to be proud of who and what I am.
Genealogy is not--what you and I are called--it is learning from whence you came.
Paula
---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!? La mejor conexión a Internet y 2GB extra a tu correo por $100 al mes. http://net.yahoo.com.mx