The first I remember, before arriving to El Paso, was the color: I have never seen the profound orange and yellow that the Chihuahuan desert showed me when I was close to the city. “Where the hell are we?” I asked my wife. “I do not know” she mumbled astonished while the desert run and run and run without end. Finally, a small city appear in middle of the desert. We arrived. A friend picked us up. I remembered when I passed the door of the airport to get to the parking lot, I felt like I was really close to hell: it was hot, probably close to 40 degrees. We arrived in August. The summer was in its peak.
After two sweaty days, I remember we went to this store to buy some groceries. I was not sure how to ask for things, I mean, I knew some English grammar, but one thing is when you are in classroom full of students practicing how to say “Can I have a Coke?” and other being in a real store where your language is not the official, is the alien one. When I was making the line, thinking in how to say the correct words, repeating in my head the small phrase, counting in my pocket the dollars, that were also a new currency that I did not understand, I asked in my “correct” English “How much is that?” and the answer was “Son diez dólares y catorce centavos”. The cashier spoke to me in Spanish! I was so relieved. I paid and thank her and then we leave the store. But after a while, walking under that shiny and eternal sun, I said to my wife: “Wait, why she did answer in Spanish?”. “She probably noticed your accent”, she replied. “My accent?! How is my accent like?” “I do not know, probably a Colombian one”. (It is funny to write this in English). And then this occurred several occasions. I asked for something and immediately I received and answer in Spanish or Spanglish (expression that Anzaldua evades, but perhaps it could be useful for describing this double condition of the language).
Later I understood that people from the border have a great hearing capacity: they can easily notice when a person is from the region, from the Southwest, is mexicano or mexicana, suramericano, American, pocho, or if is from El Chuco, the name that Chicano people call El Paso. This hearing capacity let them identify how to treat the other in order they do not seem excluded, or less excluded. It is a perceptive attitude. Perhaps is related to the form that many of immigrants were treated when they started the school, the difficulties they lived in a world that demanded the use of correct English, while in home was necessary to speak in Spanish in order your parents can understand you. They live between this two languages that can be jails, or freedoms, as Anzaldua well presented.
I also noticed in some El Pasonians the characteristics that Anzaldua mentions in her text. They spoke in several levels of the language in the Academia, in the street, with their family. I remembered some of my classmates speaking this kind of mix between a high elaborated English, that they learnt in their schools, with this “rural” Spanish, that their parents and extended family speak at home, since they were campesinos immigrants with no formal education. For me it was a new phenomena since I am a Spanish speaker, and I can understand English, but I can not switch from Spanish to English that easy. I need a moment. They do not. That moment is part of them.
And I think Anzaldua makes also a defense of this condition. They can move from one shore to the other thanks to this amphibian capacity to share different spaces, and languages. This natural bilingualism let the people of la frontera to understand two ways of thinking at the same time, and they can live with these two structures in an easy way. They also have to deal with the racism of both sides: the Mexican, that notice in their accents and expressions and “incorrect” Spanish; and the American, that emphasizes in the Mexican origin.
It is true that Chicanos and Chicanas have created a new language. I am not sure if is that rebellious as Anzaldua shows it, perhaps for her, but it is a language that is alive and, in the future, I think it will input some of its expressions to English, or at least in the spoken English in some specific places in United States. I think the forked tongue is also an advantage for a world that needs people could step in someone else’s shoes to identify, to criticize and to abolish the racism in our societies.
Extra:
Question. The book emphasizes that this Ethnic and Cultural differences are important in relation with United States… but is the same in Canada? Does Canada deal with the same racial differences? Are the Chicano or African-American or Asian-American reflections the same in Canada than in USA? What about France? What about India? China? Latin America? I am not sure if these discourses, that are questioning the white-men-American supremacy, work for all these countries in the same way. Is the Nationality part of this phenomena?
Hola, Camilo: Thank you very much for your very interesting testimony and your discussion of the text of Anzaldua. I think that this topic of the hybridity in language is very important. And I also think it has an enormous impact in the psychology and identity of the persons who are in the “frontera”. One the one hand, they forced to a “perfect” English, but at the same time, when they come back home have to switch to Spanish. One the other hand, among the people who speaks “chicano” or “spanglish” there is also some kind of discrimination if you seem to speak as a gringo. There is a lot variations, as Anzaldua points out, of this kind of linguistic discrimination. But, I think the main point is how it affects people’s identity, how deeply it impacts in their interior world.
And yes, it would be very interesting how this linguistics variations are managed here in Canada.
Hola Camilo, Your blog reminds me of the Hinglish that is a new concept developed in India where one switches from English to Hindi in the same conversation and this is how today’s youth in India converse among friends and it is generally an informal conversation.
Your question is really interesting but in India too the obsession with white color of the skin is very much visible. I do not know whether it is again to associate oneself with the dominant world or the supremacy of the white people.
¡Hola Upa! Well, after reading these postcolonial things, I think there is a strong idea in our countries that white is equal to beauty. I think also is a colonial idea that is and has been perpetuated by the mass media. If we think about Hollywood, the majority of actors are white and caucasian; if we see publicity, at least in Colombia, you always see this thin ladies with small waist, long hair, blondes or brunettes, white teeth, long nose, or this big muscle man with this beauty that is very similar to the US beauty. Why they use this strategy? Because it is important for the American or European society be the referent, I suppose. And if US or Europe are the referents, we, citizens of the third world, would want to have that kind of beauty we have to consume, dress like them, think like them and maybe, some day, get close to what they are… but that is only part of the colonial discourse that is really incept in our minds. What we can do about it? Probably try to tear off that idea and try to decolonize our mind. I am not sure that we can, but at least we can give it a try, right?
yes probably create beauty with which we can relate to and promote it. but by today’s reading we will notice that probably it is not in our hands even to promote or at least create beauty for us. The dominant culture does not allow us to do so.