Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” really made me think of the inseparable bond between language and identity. Perhaps this is not surprising as it is one of the main topics of the excerpt – and it is even reflected at the linguistic level of the text itself; English is interspersed with Spanish and concrete examples flood the pages (“The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word ‘nosotras,’ I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use ‘nosotros’ whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural” 1023).
I really think that Anzaldua’s argument about language as a foundational tenet of identity is spot-on; and her discussion of the colonial past in North and Latin America immediately made me think of Orwell’s famous point that if one really wants to oppress a people, then you oppress their language. There are many examples of this in history, in all parts of the world – although obviously no two situations are the same and cannot be compared at face value, but some of the ones that immediately come to my mind is the censure of euskera under the Franco dictatorship in Spain, (1939 to 1965) the banning (and subsequent corporal punishment if it was spoken) of First Nations languages in the Canadian Residential System, the prohibition of speaking the Welsh language in schools in Wales, etc. To this end, the portion of Anzaldua’s text that most stands out to me as I’m thinking about the intrinsic connection between language and identity is the following:
Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something happened to the Chicano soul – we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. (1029)
I find this section of the essay to be very important because it nicely sums up the connection between a lot of the cultural elements that Anzaldua discusses at other points in her essay, namely literature and music and the way that language is such an integral part of identity; following Anzaldua’s writing in this section, it can be inferred that once this consciousness of the distinct Chicano identity developed, what was crucial in cementing it was to acquire a name and a language that reflected the reality of the people (and the concept of a name is, of course, inherently dependent on the concept of language, underscoring the significance of language once again).
Maybe I still have last week on my mind, but as I was reading this article, I kept thinking back to one of the best movies that I have seen recently on the question of Latino identities in the United States; in this case the movie touches on the specific issues of immigration. Rather than give the plotline away, I instead leave you with the trailer and highly recommend that you watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaLSBdL-zCY