identities

WomenWarriors-BodiesandMemoriesofAfro-LatinaIdentities.pdf

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Management homework help >identities

THE SPACES THAT AFRO-LATINAS IN THE UNITED STATES occupy are undefined spaces that result from the ways in which race has been constructed in U.S. society. Because

of these constructions, and the institutions built around them, many Afro-Latinas are often not seen by Black Americans or by other Latinos. We must, in turn, push to be seen. The tenden- cy among those of us who occupy this space is to go to the fear that “Afro-Latinas” and “Afro-Latinidad” lack definition. The response to this fear is often a desire to generate an essential articulation of identity and place: the notion that Afro-Latinas are one thing, or come from one set of places/experiences/ histories. In this essay,1 written in the personal voice, using person-

al pronouns, I will critically analyze the construction of Afro- Latina identities in the age of globalization. I will be using my body and identity, as well as the creative works of various Afro-Latinas as examples for my analysis, which includes: defining Afro-Latina bodies, flushing out Latina identities in

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion

ana-Maurine lara

1 Parts of this essay are based on another essay entitled “A Change of Manta” published in Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience (Calaca P/RedSalmon P), 2007.

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

the United States and making connections between the place- ment and the liberation of Afro-Latina bodies.

The Language in Which I Speak

In order to discuss Afro-Latinidad, I think it is important to first understand that race and racism are constructed differ- ently in different societies, though their application may be the same (the control of colored female bodies by bodies that are not colored or female). Because we live in the age of glob- alization, and at a time where U.S. commodities, including cultural productions, are being propagated throughout the world en masse, I think it is important to lay the groundwork for my analysis on U.S. terms. There is, however, a caveat because these commodities include the sale and distribution of Afro-descendent bodies (in all forms of art and cultural pro- duction), whose distribution re-enforces already existent notions of race and belonging that reify U.S. myths around white supremacy. Simultaneously, because we are discussing Afro-Latinas, I am bringing in concepts that have shaped my particular experience as an Afro-Dominicana. These concepts have their own history, separate from the history of the Unit- ed States, though still grounded in the policies of colonization I think they are very much affected and re-enforced by U.S. racial constructs disseminated by globalized media. I live in the United States, where the myth of racial puri-

ty is based on two other myths: whiteness and the one-drop rule. I was born in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean, where the myth of racial purity is based on three other myths: hispanidad, blanqueamiento, indianismo (Hispanism, Whiten- ing, indigenous). For the purposes of this essay, I will define these terms with an understanding that I speak as someone who is based at the heart of the empire:

Race is the social and economic value ascribed to a person or group of people based on perceived shared phenotypical

24 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 25

characteristics (pigmentation, eye shape, facial form, etc). I believe this is a concept largely developed in the wake of col- onization, specifically to justify the economic practice of the exploitation of some bodies by others.2

The concept of racial purity grew out of the race-based eugenics movement of the mid-nineteenth century. This sci- entific movement based on evolution and improvement of human heredity suggested such methods as selective breeding, birth control, genetic engineering and genocide of those deemed inferior. The foundation of the myth of racial purity is that there are separate races of humans, which should not mix so as to preserve the purity of blood lines.3

The term whiteness is used to refer to the socioeconomic and political privileges and powers ascribed to people who are phenotypically European or Caucasian. Because it is a concept that has been ascribed power and meaning, it has concrete violent ramifications on the lives of people who do not par- ticipate in whiteness, directly or indirectly.4

2 In the beginning phases of Spanish colonization, there emerged several rationales for enslaving the indigenous populations. Bartolomé de las Casas, among other Catholic clergy in power at the time, wrote to the Spanish crown about the grave abuses in the treatment of indigenous peoples. The logic of the Spanish colonial leadership led to the importa- tion of ladinos, ie., Christianized Africans already working as slaves in Europe, and finally of bozales, ie., un-Christianized Africans, which Nicolás de Ovando stated, “los nacidos en Africa se mostraban más su- misos y resistentes a las duras faenas de las minas y la elaboración del azú- car” / “the Africans born in Africa seem more submissive and resistant to the harsh conditions of the mines and sugar cane plantations” (Deive 54). This is one of the first examples of the logic leading up to racist poli- cies, whereby the phenotypical characteristics of a people identified by geography are used to qualify and justify their enslavement.

3 U.S. concepts of racial purity are preceded by documents, such as the Carolina Black Codes of 1685, the edict of King Luis of France y Nava- rra, enacted in the Iberian colonies.

4 For a radical, organizing definition of whiteness, refer to the Challenging White Supremacy workshop paper: “What is White Privilege?” http://cwsworkshop.org/resources/WhitePrivilege.html.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

26 Ana-Maurine Lara

The one-drop rule is specific to the United States and was first used unofficially in the nineteenth century to determine the status of slaves, and then later on officially established as law in the early twentieth century at the onset of the Jim Crow era. The main purpose of the one-drop rule was to enforce racial purity and whiteness.5

Hispanidad refers to societies that were once under Spanish or Portuguese colonial rule, and as such, are constructed on the moral and ethical values of Iberian humanism, Catholi- cism, the Spanish and Portuguese languages, Iberian last names and blood. It is the notion that these societies are unified under these values, without conflict or question. It has been applied in nationalist rhetoric to evoke the supremacy of the state over individual communities and bodies—specifically, bodies that evoke non-Iberian references (Indigenous, African and Asian bodies in the colonial context).6

Blanqueamiento literally means whitening. It is a social con- cept based on and upholding hispanidad as the ultimate goal of

5 For further discussion about the one-drop rule, see Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition (Penn State UP, 1999), by F. James Davis. An excerpt from this work is available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front- line/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html. Many other authors cite the one-drop rule discussion, including Naomi Zack, Neil Gotanda, Michael L. Blakey, Julie C. Lythcott-Haims, Christine Hickman, David A. Hollinger, Thomas E. Skidmore, G. Reginald Daniel, Joe R. Feagin, Ian F. Haney-López, Barbara Fields, Dinesh D’Souza, Joel Williamson, Mary C. Waters, Debra J. Dickerson among others.

6 In the Dominican Republic, Trujillo used the concept of hispanidad to jus- tify the ethnic cleansing of Haitians and to consolidate the power of the oligarchy. For further discussion of hispanidad in the Dominican Republic, refer to Joaquín Balaguer’s La Isla al Revés. In the Dominican Republic, hispanidad was a discourse that led to the development of policies on pres- entation (dress codes), identity (races on national I.D. cards) and reli- gious practice among many others (the outlawing of voudou). One of the goals of this discourse was limiting “the spread of Negro influence across the West Indies” following Dominican independence from Haiti in 1844 (Torres-Saillant 127).

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 27

individuals and families in society, placing great value on the attainment of presumed European phenotypic characteristics (blue/green eyes, straight hair, light skin, etc) in offspring.7

Indigenismo is used primarily to refer to literature, but also refers to the social construct of the “noble Indian,” an indige- nous person with a romanticized past. As such, indigenismo has been evoked in Dominican nationalist discourses as a way to erase African history and presence by replacing it with Indige- nous, Taíno8 or Spanish identity. I will be employing these very basic definitions and these

two specific sociopolitical contexts (the United States and the Dominican Republic) as the setting and frameworks for my analysis.

Defining Afro-Latina Bodies

Florinda Bryant, a self-defined Black-Mexicana, created a hip-hop theatre piece titled “Half-Breed Southern Fried Check One” that critically engages her lived experience as the

7 “Blanqueamiento refers to the processes of becoming increasingly accept- able to those classified and self-identified as ‘white.’ This is an ethnic movement—coterminous with socioeconomic advancement governed by the ideology of ‘development’—that depends upon socioeconomic and political assistance and loans from the developed (i.e., highly industrial- ized, highly energy-dependent) countries. Although not often recognized as such, the ideology of ’whitening’ is an unconscious psychological process accompanying the economic state of underdevelopment in the twentieth century. Blanqueamiento essentially accepts the implicit hege- monic rhetoric of the United States with regard to ‘white supremacy’ and often blames those people classed as black and indigenous for the worsen- ing state of the nation” (Torres and Whitten, 1998, pp. 8-9).

8 I think it is critical to note that there is a Dominican Taíno movement; exerting Afro-Dominican identity does not and should not cancel out Indigenous struggles for liberation. Unfortunately, these have been played off against each other in Dominican discourse on culture and identity. What I am referring to is the blatant omission of African descent in the discourse, replaced by a call to Indigenous identity—a political strategy which served to disenfranchise both people of African and Indigenous descent.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

28 Ana-Maurine Lara

daughter of a Mexican/Tejana9 woman and a Black American man. In this piece, she discusses not only the complexity of her lived experience, but the reality of race relations in the South and particularly in Texas. Written in a hip-hop aesthetic, the protagonist in the

piece recalls a memory from childhood, when on the first day of fifth grade, the teacher, Ms. Butler, goes through roll call, and in the process asks for the children’s race.

Ms. Butler: Florinda Bryant? Florinda? Student 5: Here. Ms. Butler: Race? Student 5: Mixed, Black and Mexican. Ms. Butler: What? Student 5: I am mixed. My momma is Mexican and my daddy is Black.

Ms. Butler: I see, well we have to report your race. Let’s just put African American.10

This excerpt to me not only highlights the conflicts aris- ing out of “outlaw” unions, such as the marriage of Blacks and Mexicans/Blacks and whites/Blacks and Asians, etc., but also the particular dilemmas faced by Latinas who are of African heritage. On the surface, it is difficult to tell the difference between what the protagonist’s body signifies and what could be defined as her lived experience: her body is a Black Latina body that is simply read as a Black female body in the South. On a deeper level, beyond the surface, what we find is a com- plex weave of social constructs based on race and nationality.

9 The implicit assumption, within the U.S. social landscape, is that with the national/ethnic Mexican identifier, the subject/object is not of African descent.

10“Half-Breed Southern Fried Check One,” performed at UT-Austin on September 8, 2006 as part of the Center for African & African Ameri- can Studies “Performing Blackness” series.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

In sitting with the piece, I couldn’t help but wonder how the conversation would be different had the protagonist been born of two Mexican parents, one who was Afro-Mexican and the other who was not. Of course, that would overlook the specif- ic complexity of the protagonist’s story: because of where her body is (Texas), and because of what her body is: a symbol of the union between a Black American, sharecropping, cowboy history and a Mexicana church-going/border crossing/ Spanish-speaking herstory. Later on in the piece, the protagonist enters a moment of

self-reflection, almost as if provoked by the constant assump- tions thrown onto her physical body:

Whose legs do you have? Whose hands do you have? Whose eyes are those?

I walk like my dad/whose legs do you have? Hold ciga- rettes just like my daddy/whose hands do you have? eyes like my Aunt Alice/whose eyes do you have? hair like my mom/whose hair do you have? What do you see in the mirror/all over your body. I sound like my sister/whose voice do we have? I sleep like my grandmother/drink like my grandfather/what do you see? When you look at your body. Wide hips/high cheek bones/Not sure who we don’t remember. What do you see written on your body. All this blood with so little truly our own. I walk like my dad, hold a cigarette like my dad with my mom’s hair.

What do you see? What does your body remember?

Florinda Bryant, as the writer, takes the protagonist from a space of contemplating the physical embodiment of heritage to the ephemeral recollection of ancestral memory, ending with “What does your body remember?” while simultaneously touching upon the notion of blood. “All this blood with so lit-

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 29

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

tle truly our own.” With these two statements, Bryant high- lights the rift between expectations and lived experience. What are Afro-Latina bodies supposed to experience? What do we really live? Whose children are we? What do our bodies demonstrate to the world, and what does it remember? Simul- taneously, Bryant asks us to consider notions of African and Indigenous ancestral memories and the “one-drop rule” of blood and racial purity. As Afro-Latinas in the world, we are constantly negotiat-

ing others’ assumptions about where our bodies and our mem- ories overlap, where our Blackness/negritud begins and our Latina-ness end. As Afro-Latinas in the United States, we are also negotiating the notion of blood and racial purity in a way that was obscured in most countries under Iberian coloniza- tion. In the Latin American context, rather than quantifying race by one drop, Iberian laws connoted gradations of racial categorization based on specific mixtures of blood. This simul- taneously obscured negritud and made blackness central to Criollo identity all at once, in that the official number of “negros” decreased, while the number of “mestizos, pardos, mulatos, zambos,” etc. increased. In the United States, with the one-drop rule, whiteness became central to racial identity formation, and polarized people into essential categories. It is this tension between centrality and essentialism that plays out when an Afro-Latina body walks through spaces in the Unit- ed States. This space of tension, of lack of clarity, of shifting and re-

definition is at once the most painful and one of the most lib- erating and complex areas of lived experience. Taking Florinda Bryant’s writing as a cue, and using my

own body as the location of analysis, I have laid out some of my responses to some of the questions the protagonist in “Half Breed Southern Fried Check One” asks as a segue into looking at these shadowed areas. These responses serve to complicate

30 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

the dialogue and demonstrate, en carne viva (in the flesh), the ways in which Afro-Latina identities and bodies transgress essential categorization.

Whose eyes do you have?

I don’t know what my father’s mother looked like, only that she made love with “un moreno” and my father was born a dark, mahogany brown. The implication in the floating whispers is that she herself was not morena, or dark in any way, that she transgressed. She died when my father was young. He was raised by his grandparents and everyone calls him Negri- to. This term of endearment both obscures his darkness and brings it to light. When I was eighteen and visiting my family in Santo

Domingo, as I had every year since we left, I said to my light- skinned, light-haired cousin, “My father’s negro, that’s why everyone calls him Negrito.” My cousin said, “No, he’s not. He’s moreno. They call him Negrito because they love him.” I had to insist, “Yes, that’s true. But, he is negro. And that’s not a bad thing.” My cousin shrugged his shoulder and shook his head. He thought I was crazy, insisted I was insulting my father. I thought he was crazy for missing the obvious. I think I have my father’s mother’s eyes. Nobody else has

them. Nobody else is willing to see the beauty of our darkness.

Whose hands do you have?

A Trinidadian friend of mine puts lotion on her hands and kisses each finger after she is done. She insists that it’s impor- tant that “our hands not look ashy” and that “You’ve got to love your hands.” When I was younger, white people would tell me, “You have such healing hands.” I would nod, wonder- ing if they were transferring racist implications on dark skin, or if, in truth, I was born to heal. I look down at my brown hands and wonder whose they are. At first glance, they look

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 31

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

like no one else’s in my family. They are a rich oak brown, full of lines on big, big palms. They’re callused, no matter how much lotion I put on. I have small fingers, short fingers with curves on the end of them. At second glance, I realize they are my mother’s hands. Mine are brown, hers are white. I don’t know, though, where the healing powers came from: the abil- ity to take away pain by touch or to soothe fear by holding.

Whose hair do you have?

When I was growing up, my Dominican cousins Yadira and Rosanna would spend hours “combing” my hair. Rosanna, vio- let brown and with a head of tight, kinky hair, would try to pull out as much as she could and Yadira, yellow (my tía says she’s jabao) and with pelo grueso, ie., nappy hair, would try to put back as much as she could. I would be at their mercy until my Tía D. showed up, smacking their hands with the combs and leading me into her bedroom to repair the damage. She would sit on the bed and have me stand between her legs, with a tube of Vitapointe on her thigh. She’d rub my scalp, fill her palm with the hair grease and pass it through my hair. “Niña”, she’d say, “tú tiene el pelo bueno. No deje que esas niñas te lo dañen.” (Little girl, you have good hair. Don’t let those girls damage it.) I didn’t understand what she meant by pelo bueno. When I wasn’t with her, I was in another country, with white European and American kids who made fun of the way my hair puffed up when it was dry, or the way the curls set against my head. My well-intentioned, but ill-informed, mother was taking me to white hair dressers who would giggle nervously and say, “Isn’t that sweet? She doesn’t even need a perm,” as I sat under their scissors. My father would come to my room at night and tell me, “Make sure you brush your hair a hundred times every night. That’s what Abuela does.” He, with the kinks wound tightly against his head, was proud of my “good hair.”

32 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Whose legs do you have?

My legs are the thick legs of women who grew up farming or working in the mountains. They are not necessarily femi- nine, and because they’re what I walk on, I understand that they make me seem masculine. I’m okay with that. To me, it’s part of my legacy to be a masculine woman. I come from a line of women who worked outside, and the work inside—it was necessary in order to survive. Because of class—and I mean rural poor—my female ancestors were always seen as mascu- line, because they weren’t middle class and they didn’t hold to middle-class aesthetics of femininity, because of race. I know that for me, embodying both female and male ener-

gy is necessary if I’m going to pull ahead. How else could I do my healing work: the work of healing bodies, memory and land? I am not a partera, whose feminine energy is what allows for the path between the womb and this life to be continuous. I work with my hands and my vision in a different way. I write stories, I garden, I tend to medicine plants, and I use my hands to transfer the pain into the earth. All the while, my legs hold me. My legs are strong. They’re hairy. They’re dark. I know that if I had to, these legs would carry me to the deepest recess- es of the mountains where no one could find me. I know that these legs have done that before.

What does your body remember?

I am an Afro-Dominicana, not only because my skin, eyes, hair, lips and hips say so, and therefore, indicate what every- one else will perceive. I am an Afro-Dominicana because in the context of white supremacy and in the history of my trans- national experiences, I know that to walk in the world as an Afro-Dominicana is to honor my African legacy and the strug- gle of my ancestors in working the land. My cells know this to be true. I know that the soil is a deep mahogany red because

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 33

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

of my ancestors’ blood. Here, on this mainland, at the heart of empire, my body remembers the taste/feel/smell/sight of soil from the land where I was born, and everything that happened from the moment of my first breath until now. My body is the place where people’s expectations, fears, desires and assump- tions are constantly negotiated. My body remembers its jour- ney and its ancestors.

Walking with Ancestors

I didn’t always know about my ancestors. They were hid- den in layers of family secrets, or stored away in my aunt’s basement waiting for the dust to be blown off of their captured images. Some of them have no graves to speak of, and others are set in beds of stone, concrete and steel. What I do know is that part of my family was forced to this hemisphere under the conditions of slavery, and that the other part of my family bought people and forced them to work as slaves. I first learned about my ancestors through my name, Ana-

Maurine Higginbotham Lara. It is an ancestral name, of sorts. Ana, I was told, was given to me because it is easy to pro- nounce; Maurine is my maternal grandmother’s name; Hig- ginbotham, the name of my maternal grandfather, is the name that connects me to the legacy of slaveowners and freed blacks in the United States; and Lara is the name of my paternal great-grandfather, a farmer, a mulatto, a descendent of faceless Spanish men and unnamed, faceless black women. I then learned about my ancestors through storytelling

—over the dinner table, at family gatherings, through the laughter of familial jokes and memories, through the tears raised by death. I learned that Aunt Mattie was a painter and that Don Enrique won the lottery. I learned that after we had been here for several hundred years, working the land that belonged to others, my family squatted on some land that they called their own.

34 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 35

I wrap myself in my ancestor’s stories. I look at their pho- tographs, I search for compassion in myself to forgive them for whatever harm they may have done. I listen for their guid- ance. They have made it possible for me to be here today, and in recognition of this, I use their lives as lessons. My ancestors are necessary to my work as a healer. Because

my role is to heal those who come to me, regardless of where they have been, social constructs have no relevance. In deal- ing with peoples’ bodies, spirits and emotional and intellectu- al vulnerabilities, I have to exercise the highest discipline to do the healing work. Because my ancestor’s stories are com- plex, and because their stories are realized in my flesh—my lips, my eyes, my skin, my laugh, my ears, my walk, my ill- nesses and my gifts—I am often called to understand that my present body is an amalgam of theirs. The only answer I have for sure is in their stories.

Afro-Latina Identities—The Story of Califas11

It took me leaving the Atlantic Coast to understand the profound importance and significance of the Middle Passage in my life. When I moved to California in 2000, I lost my Latina identity: that is, the people I thought were my people, didn’t see me as their people. It was the first time in my life I had been stripped of something that I thought was so thoroughly and collectively inherent. The Califas Latinos/Xicanos/Mexi- canos took one look at my black skin, my mulatta features, my curly hair, they listened to me speak, a funny kinda speak . . .

11Califas is the Chicana/Xicana term for the current state of California. It is a play on language originated by pachucos in the early twentieth cen- tury, as well as a reference to California having been a part of Aztlán. My choice to use the word “Califas” to designate California is a signifier of the ways in which my own Latina identity(ies) have been shaped by Chi- cana/Xicana consciousness. For more on the use of the word Califas, refer to “Calafia/Califas: A Brief History of Chicana California” by Amalia Mesa-Bains or Manuel Cantú’s Pachuco Dictionary.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

36 Ana-Maurine Lara

like that of somewhere else, and figured I was an African- American woman who had learned to speak Spanish. I mean, I know there are people of African descent in

Mexico!! Even if Univision doesn’t “find” them, portray them, etc. (unless of course we are maids in a Venezuelan telenovela). However, everybody and their abuelas watches Sábado Gigante,12 and even if Don Francisco insists on hiring the whitest,13 skinniest women he can find to dance and enter- tain, he would be nowhere without the colored audiences. One would think that with the large number of Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Califas, that perhaps invisibility wouldn’t hap- pen so much, but I was very shocked to find that it did. Again, and again, and again. Even though everyone and their moth- ers was dancing salsa and merengue, and drinking mojitos, I was invisible. I was no longer Latina in other peoples’ eyes, which ended up having real consequences. I went to a Latino caucus at a U.S. national conference of

organizers held in the Bay Area. A black Panamanian friend and I were almost barred from entering. Here is the transcript:

12Sábado Gigante, a show that is broadcast on local stations from the tip of Chile to the cold riverbanks of Montreal, is the most far-reaching and longest running TV program in the Western hemisphere. Just by virtue of visiting family, I am often subjected to it. Every time I go to my sister’s house on a Saturday, it’s on. Nobody’s watching, but it’s on anyway.

13Contrary to popular dialogue about race in Latin America, I do purport that there is a class of white people in Latin America who are invested in their whiteness. It is not whiteness as we understand it to be in the United States, but one that is based on notions of “purity” of Spanish/European blood that is deeply tied into the history of the ruling colonial master class. As U.S. television reaches deeper into peoples’ homes, this notion of “hispanidad” is also being conflated with U.S. notions of beauty based in Anglo-Saxon ideals of whiteness. In other words, the more “Spanish” you are, and the more you “look Ameri- can”/“act American” while still not being American, the higher social status you are accorded.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 37

Woman at the Door: You are in the wrong place, this is the Latino caucus.

Me and Friend: Yes, we’re Latino. Woman: But, the caucus is in Spanish. Me: I speak Spanish. (My friend stood silent, he doesn’t speak Spanish.)

Woman (visibly annoyed): Well, come in.

We walked in among the stares and whispers and sat down on the floor. Two Mexican jornaleros (day laborers), were talk- ing about working as farm laborers and the issues raised by lack of documentation, changes in California laws and such. I knew about their struggle because I could see everyday how jornaleros stood in desperate lines on César Chávez Boulevard, waiting for a pickup truck to take them somewhere to work, often vulnerable to police or INS harassment. I had worked to overturn some of the California anti-immigrant proposi- tions,14 and had seen those efforts fail. As they spoke, I couldn’t help but think about the con-

nections between the jornalero struggle and the struggle of female garment workers on the East Coast, a struggle that was very close to home. I raised my hand: “What about the NYC garment workers?” The women in the room stayed silent. The conversation continued without addressing the connection. I raised my hand again, “I understand what we’re talking about, and I think we need to connect it to the struggles of the gar-

14Specifically Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, dis- mantled state-level affirmative action when it passed in November 1996 affecting thousands of people of color. This was passed after Proposition 187 (1994; overturned 1995) had already limited immigrants’ rights to health and education, and right before Proposition 227 (1998), which eliminated bilingual education. The language and spin of each of these propositions ended up pitting Black Americans against Latina/os. MALDEF and other civic and political leadership organizations led strong state-wide organizing initiatives to educate Latino voters, who in the end, voted overwhelmingly against Proposition 209.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

ment workers on the East Coast.” At this point, everyone was annoyed. I was told I was out of place. “For what,” I asked. “¿Ser mujer, negra, caribeña o joven?” The caucus leaders, men, stopped looking in my direction. I was given the stares. People whispered to each other. It was so painful. Here I was thinking it was a “national” gathering, only to find out that national Latino agendas meant that some issues, experiences, language, sex, gender, struggles, ways of being in the world superceded others, and that radical women, people of color, were partici- pating in these patterns. Yes, I was naïve. But rightfully so. I was from the East

Coast. I had been organizing in Boston for six years, where Latina/o DID encompass everything from the farm workers, to the jornaleros, to the garment workers, to the families that had arrived by boat, plane, foot, train, etc., to the women, the men, the queers and the professors, where Latina meant Dominicana, Salvadoreña, Mexicana, Xicana, Boricua, etc. I was naïve and shocked. I realized, in that moment, that I was going to have to figure out how to connect with people in Cal- ifas on completely different terms. I understand that in that space I am an Afro-Latina first and foremost, and could there- fore be systematically excluded from Latina/o conversations and initiatives because of racism. Years before, back in the mid-1990s, when I was twenty

years old and was in San Francisco for a summer internship, I got into a huge argument with my friend, Tia. Tia was African American, from the islands off the coast of Texas. All her life, she had grown up around Black people and had never inter- acted with people who weren’t Black until she left the island at the age of twenty-four to go to San Francisco. Even then, she made family with other Black folks. We had become friends through work, and often hung out together in the afternoons playing pool or drinking a beer. That afternoon, I was winning (at least I’d like to think I was) our game. I can’t

38 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

recall how we started our conversation about race, but pretty soon, the game was over and we were into it, the IT being a discussion about Latino-ness and Black-ness.

Tia: I don’t understand Latinos. Me: What do you mean? Tia: I don’t understand why Latinos insist on wanting to

be white. Me: I don’t think that’s true. Tia: Well, take you for example. How do you identify? Me: I’m mixed, but as a Latina, I’m of African descent. Tia: So you’re Black. Me: No, I’m not Black. I’m of African descent. Tia: But you’re BLACK! Me: I’m Latina of African descent. Tia: But you are Black. Me: I’m not! I’m of African descent, but my blackness is

not about being from the United States. Tia: But you’re BLACK. I’m Black, you’re Black. She’s

Black, she’s Black. Black! (Tia pointed out the window at two sistahs walking by. I shrugged my shoulders.)

Me: I’m not denying that I’m of African descent, but I’m not Black. My history of blackness is not a U.S. American history. On my American side, my moth- er’s white, a descendent of slave owners. And I’m a Latina of African descent—my peoples lived through slavery in the Dominican Republic, not the U.S. It’s different.

Tia: I don’t care what you say. You still Black. Me: Well, fine, if that makes you feel better. But don’t get

mad at me when I start speaking to you in español and dancing salsa, or if I’m asking for morro and not rice and peas.

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 39

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

This entire interaction was not only a spat about internal- ized racism, it was also an evocation of very real, very palpable tensions between people born in the United States and those born outside the United States who are of African descent. I know now that as a twenty-year-old, I was relying on my expe- rience of race up until that point in time, and what I thought I knew was that “Black,” as an identity, belonged to people of African descent born in the United States, and that that iden- tity evoked specific cultural values, norms and points of view that were different from the ones I was familiar with. If we had discussed whether or not I was negra, there would not have been a discussion. I would have said, yes, I’m negra. If we could agree that to be of African descent included divergent experi- ences, then yes, I could be Black. Tia could not know that I was sitting in the midst of tensions between Black Americans, black English-speaking Caribbeans, Haitians, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Every Black American I had come into contact with, until that day with Tia, had insisted I was not Black; or, just as intensely, embraced me as Black American until they realized that I was from the Dominican Republic. So for me, my response was in recognition of my lived experience—that to call myself Black American was false, because my connec- tion to the Middle Passage is through the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. All that changed when I actually moved, five years later, to

Califas to live. After I realized that many of the Latinas and Latinos around me were not trying to even create connections between genocidal histories, in all honesty, I had to stop and question my Latina identity. I ended up landing in the space of Afro-Latinidad on a whole new level: spaces of Africanity and U.S. Blackness became my home away from home. Even though the experiences and ancestral memories were different for myself and people from the United States, there was an unspoken understanding that in the white supremacist world

40 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 41

we were all moving as black bodies. This commitment to my identity took on an additional level of meaning when I moved to the Dominican Republic in 2003.

Afro-Latina Identities—Moving Across Borders—the Story of Santo Domingo

In 2003, I moved to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to live. I thought I was going to be there for the rest of my life. I was never going to live in the United States again. I ended up there for only nine months, mostly because I couldn’t get a job. That piece had everything to do with my perceived race and class. At the time, I had dreadlocks. They were thick and swung around my head like snakes. They held a ton of power, and I could feel my crown and my third eye pulsing under their weight. They were spectacular for healing work. As a woman, they set me apart from other women. In Santo Domingo, they set me apart from everyone. I couldn’t go into businesses or banks without setting off suspicions; no one would hire me because of my “appearance”; I was constantly harassed by the police.15

The most ironic moment came to me in an entirely unex- pected way. I was taking a class at a private institution. By default, most of my peers were young, upper and middle class. Because I was older, but also because of my appearance, no one spoke to me. I knew my experience was not unique. A close friend of mine, who is slightly older than me and darker than me, also had that same problem in the classes she was taking. So, taking her experiences into account, I went about my day without paying the students much mind. One day, during break, I sat down in the courtyard. This

young dark-skinned woman sat down next to me and struck up

15The police are always harassing people; however, they were harassing me because they thought I was a black man.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

42 Ana-Maurine Lara

a conversation. She directly asked me about my locks. After I explained to her that I had locked my hair for spiritual rea- sons, and in solidarity with Black people around the world, I watched her eyebrows go up as she exclaimed, “But you’re not negra!” I looked at her carefully, noting that she was darker than me, with straightened hair that was streaked with blonde highlights. I shook my head, thinking about whether to inter- cept with some consciousness-raising, or to listen to what she was thinking. I listened. She said to me, “Look, we’re descen- dents of Spaniards and Africans, por cierto. There’s very little Indian. So we’re mostly Spanish and African.” I nodded. She continued, “But, I’m racist. Against Haitians, that is.” This statement, unfortunately, did not surprise me. Having

studied Dominican concepts of race and ethnicity, I had come to understand that in hegemonic discourses “blackness” in the Dominican context is equated with Haitian-ness, and that Haitian-ness is equated with numerous assumptions about the social value and worth of dark-skinned people. These assump- tions are embedded in the social, political and economic struc- tures of the nation, and limit the livelihoods of dark-skinned people across the country. The discourse of anti-haitianismo, as it is known, originated at the end of the nineteenth century, and became deeply conflated with notions of Dominican iden- tity, across several generations, in the twentieth century. Race became embedded in national identity, thus making it possible for an admission of African ancestry and of racism against those who represent the reason for that African ancestry. I asked her, “Why?” She said, “Well, I wasn’t alive for those twenty-two years

of occupation,16 but I am angry that they occupied this coun- try. I think they are trying to take over the island. They are

16The island of St Domingue/Santo Domingo was unified under Dessalines’ rule between 1822 and 1844.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 43

trying to take over our country. And I don’t like the way they walk.”17

At this point, I decided to do an intervention. I pointed out gently that Haiti lacks the resources for a takeover, and that Haitian franchises and billboards weren’t the ones pop- ping up all over the country; that is unless Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Wendy’s, McDonalds, Burger King, Baskin Rob- bins, Haagen Dazs, Hilton, Verizon, Hollywood Cinemas, Outback Grill and all the “free trade zones” are Haitian and I just didn’t know. She nodded her head, trying to understand what I had suggested. I promptly excused myself and left. This entire scenario was only possible because I reeked of

U.S. American privileges, both in the way I looked and in the way I walked. It doesn’t matter that I was born in the Domini- can Republic and that I claim connection to the land. The fact that my body had transgressed national boundaries and settled for some time on U.S. soil meant that I was inherently different—something about me was changed. What was changed was my deep consciousness of race. Not only had I learned about U.S. racism while in the United States, I had learned about Dominican forms of racism as well, and this was only possible because I was an Afro-Latina body that was shift- ed by global market forces: my family moved to where the jobs were. As a result, I had lived in the United States and became politicized and acculturated here. So, it was ironic that I, dreadlocks and all U.S. privilege, was sitting with someone who had to straighten her hair in order to get employment, in a place where I was being ignored because of my presentation.

17I’m often struck between the similarity in discourses around Latina/o immigration in the United States and Haitian immigration in the Dominican Republic. Both discourses use nationalism to perpetrate racist ideologies of humanity and nationalist ideologies of race, but in vastly different ways.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

44 Ana-Maurine Lara

I could afford to be indignant because I could leave to get a job elsewhere.

Defining Liberation from One Afro-Latina Context

I believe it is a political imperative to tell our stories and to construct as varied a definition of our existence as possible, in as many ways as possible. Only then can we be free in the world. Years ago I set about writing a novel, Erzulie’s Skirt. I want-

ed to write Erzulie’s Skirt not only because the characters were pestering me day and night, but also because I knew that it would unlock an internal dialogue in Latina/o and U.S. African-American communities around, defining liberation on Afro-Caribeña terms: What does freedom and liberation mean for me as an Afro-Dominicana, but also what kinds of terms could I define, in a creative body, for the liberation of Afro-Caribeñas in general? I knew that in order to entertain that dialogue, the con-

text of the story would be incredibly important: Where are Afro-Latina bodies found? For me, we are found everywhere, but most importantly, we are still mostly found in places of labor, especially in the Dominican Republic, where “appear- ance” and class go hand in hand.18 Secondly, because of glob- alized political and economic forces, our bodies are also found

18“Ser negra es no tener ‘buena presencia’; por tanto, será difícil para noso- tras encontrar espacios de trabajo que sean valorados socialmente. Nunca les pasará por la mente la presencia de una negra en trenza, o el pelo sin desrizar, al frente de una empresa, de un banco, recepcionista, secretaria o en mostradores de líneas aéreas, por ejemplo. Por nuestras condiciones fenotípicas, sencillamente no somos aptas para estos puestos.” (Curiel, 1996, p.117) [Being black is not having “good presence”; therefore, it will be difficult for us to find employment that is socially acceptable. People never imagine a black woman with braids, or with hair that has not been relaxed, as a CEO of a company or a bank, as a receptionist, secretary or as a customer service representative for an airline, for example. Because our phenotype simply disqualifies us from such positions.]

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 45

in transition from place to place—between islands, between homes, between the past and the present, between dreams and the waking world. We leave the conucos (small family farms) and go to the garment factories—either in the city of our homeland or across the water in the United States—in search of a better life for ourselves and our children. We also go to New York, Massachusetts, Texas and California. We also go to college. We also go back “home”. I also decided that in order for me to explore the world view

of the characters, I had to understand their histories, ancestries and dreams. Erzulie’s Skirt is clearly a work of the African Dias- pora. It dares to create an African baseline in the story, thereby creating a direct link between Dominican Africanity and the slave trade, a link that has long been obscured by discourses on Haitian-ness as Blackness. I wanted to uncover the cimarrón his- tory in my country of birth, to uncover the spaces of Black pride and strength, to give them validity within a fictional world in order to create room for an analysis in the non-fictional lived reality of the everyday. I wanted to allow the characters to be unflinching in their truths. I am definitely not the first Dominican American novelist

to embed the characters in an Afro-Dominican worldview. Nelly Rosario does so in Song of the Water Saints,19 Loida Mar- itza Pérez does so in Geographies of Home.20 I am also not the first writer to utilize her lived experience to explore the power of language to shape our worldview. Florinda Bryant did so in “Half Breed Southern Fried Check One.” Together, our works span an unessential definition of Afro-Dominicanness, specif- ically as experienced in female bodies. In Geographies of Home, a young woman is changed by her

departure from her home in Brooklyn, inasmuch as her family has been changed by their departure from the island. In Song

19New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. 20New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

of the Water Saints, daughters and mothers struggle with their personal freedoms as the world around them shifts and as they shift in and out of it, transitioning from one context to the next. In “Half Breed Southern Fried Check One,” the very fact of language and memory changes what the protagonist believes to be true. What is important to me, in understanding these works

together, is that they demonstrate that Afro-Latina bodies are not constricted to a particular experience or truth, and the characters that develop in our creative productions dare to live their lives despite essential expectations. No matter where our bodies land, we can generate fluid spaces that affirm our existence and our collective memories.

Works Cited

Bryant, Florinda. “Half Breed Southern Fried Check One,” per- formed September 8, 2006 as part of the Performing Blackness Series at the University of Texas–Austin.

Curiel, Ochy (1996). “El prejuicio racial desde los derechos humanos y en una perspectiva de género”. In Memoria del foro por una Sociedad Libre de Prejuicio Racial. Santo Domingo: Casa por la Identidad de las Mujeres Afro.

Deive, C.E. (1996). Vodú y magia en Santo Domingo. Santo Domin- go: Editora Taller.

Mendoza, Louis G., and Toni Nelson Herrera (2007). Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience. Aztlán: Calaca P & RedSalmon P.

Sábado Gigante (2007, January 13). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclo- pedia. Retrieved 20:07, February 16, 2007, from http://en. wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=S%C3%A1bado_Gigante&ol did=100402533.

Tolentino-Dipp, Hugo (1992). Raza e historia en Santo Domingo: Los orígenes del prejuicio racial en América. Santo Domingo: Fun- dación Cultural Dominicana.

46 Ana-Maurine Lara

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 47

Torres, Arlene and Norman E. Whitten, Jr. (1998). “An Interpreta- tive Essay on Racism, Domination, Resistance, and Liberation”. In Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. by Arlene Torres and Norman E. Whitten, Jr. Bloomington, Indiana: Indi- ana UP: pp. 3-33.

Torres-Saillant, S. (1998). “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity.” In Latin American Perspectives. 25(3): 126-146.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed