The Pastness of the Past, or the Past in the Present?

Among my professional responsibilities is teaching a methods course for aspiring secondary history teachers.  I customarily use the opening weeks of each semester to engage my students with open-ended, abstract questions, including “What is history?” and “Why study history?” believing that unless my students can answer these questions for themselves, they cannot help others – especially their own students – answer them.  To that end, I assign particular theoretical pieces for my students to read, helping them formulate their own responses to these abstract questions.  In preparing this semester’s syllabus, I was surprised to discover that this month marks the 80^th anniversary of the publication of a piece that has had a great influenced my own thinking about these questions.

Charles Beard’s essay, “Written History as an Act of Faith” appeared in the American Historical Review in January 1934.  Granted, this was the published version of his Presidential Address to the American Historical Association from the year before, but it is highly unlikely that any of today’s practicing historians heard that original speech, and so I choose to mark the anniversary of the essay's publication (AHR, 39:2, pp. 219-231.)  Despite the milestone, it seems that the 80^th anniversary of the publication of “Written History as an Act of Faith” seems to have passed with little fanfare.  That is too bad given the essay’s importance, which rests not only in Beard’s observations about the nature of history for the professional historian, but also for the layperson.  Beard successfully demystifies history to some degree and in so doing makes the discipline accessible to more than trained academics.

Charles A. Beard
(Image from Wikipedia)

In his essay, Beard argues for, “History as past actually [which] includes, to be sure, all that has been done, said, felt, and thought by human beings on this planet since humanity began its long career.”  Beard deconstructs that totality of the past first as “record…the monuments, documents, and symbols which provide such knowledge as we have or can find respecting past actuality,” and then “history as thought…thought about past actuality instructed and delimited by history as record and knowledge.”

In understanding the relationship between record and thought, Beard argues for three broad conceptions of history.  “The first is that history as total actuality is chaos,” Beard writes, suggesting further that people may not be able to understand or interpret that chaos, either objectively or subjectively.  “The second is that history as actually is part of some order of nature and revolves in cycles eternally,” such as the season of the year, election cycles, or similar rotating occurrences.  “The third is that history as actually is moving in some direction away from the low level of primitive beginnings, on an upward gradient toward a more ideal order...”

Beard qualifies each of these constructions, writing:

“The hypothesis of chaos admits of no ordering at all; hence those who operate under it cannot write history, although they may comment on history [original emphasis].  The second admits of an ordering of events only by arbitrarily leaving out of account all contradictions in evidence.  The third admits of an ordering of events, also by leaving contradictions out of consideration.  The historian who writes history, therefore, consciously or unconsciously performs an act of faith, as to order and movement, for certainty as to order and movement is denied to him by knowledge of the actuality with which he is concerned.… His faith is at bottom a conviction that something true can be known about the movement of history and his conviction is a subjective decision, not purely objective discovery.”

For Beard, then, “any selection and arrangement of facts pertaining to any large area of history…is controlled inexorably by the frame of reference in the mind of the selector and arranger,” or as he had stated earlier in his essay, “any written history inevitably reflects the thought of the author in his time and cultural setting.”

Such an assertion has led critics to accuse Beard of being a relativist.  I think this is an unfair characterization.  To demonstrate this point for my students, I use the example of U.S. history textbooks.  One could chart the development of such tome though their treatment of blacks, Hispanics, women, or other historically marginalized groups within their pages.  Clearly such texts provide evidence of how written history is informed by its authors' cultural times and settings.  (Two worthwhile defenses against charges of Beard as a relativist that I encountered recently are Jack W. Meiland’s “The Historical Relativism of Charles A. Beard,” History and Theory, 12:4 [1974], pp. 405-413; and Ellen Nore’s “Charles A. Beard’s Act of Faith: Context and Content,” Journal of American History, 66:4 [March 1980], pp. 850-866.)

For as much as I appreciate “Written History as an Act of Faith,” I am embarrassed to admit that I did not encounter Beard’s essay until my first semester of graduate school, in the Fall of 2001.  Such an admission suggests that I had graduated from Loyola with a history major and had been teaching high school history devoid of this fundamental understanding of the nature of history.  I have a better understanding now, however; and while I cannot change the past, I can use it to better inform the present for my students and their students yet to come.

Obama, School Discipline, Demanding the Back Door No More

This summer I had the privilege of teaching a course for our university’s summer bridge program. This program aims to help entering freshman successfully make the transition to college by spending six weeks prior to the start of the academic year taking workshops on writing, reading, study skills, and personal well being. The students also enroll in a tuition-free academic course for credit. Students receive the help of tutors, peer mentors, program staff and faculty during their time with us.

Students ultimately enroll on a voluntary basis, although they are recruited from a pool of students who did not place at the college level in either math or reading on their placement exams. Many of the students who are identified as candidates for the summer program come from Chicago Public Schools, which is roughly 90% Black and Latino, with a majority of students receiving free or reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty. While our urban high school system has made some improvements in recent years, increasing graduation and college-going rates, a significant number of CPS graduates still arrive to college not fully prepared to engage in college-level work. The students themselves are motivated and hardworking, but they are often simultaneously working to deal with numerous challenges that are personal, familial, cultural, and societal. All of these combined make doing well in school quite hard. This is fairly typical of most large urban school districts-I’ve lived and worked in schools in New York City, Boston, and Oakland, and the story is similar across them all. 

While these deeply engrained patterns across many locales suggest that something systematic and structural is happening that prevents young people from getting the academic preparation they require to successfully attend college, the cultural narrative to which we hold on as Americans is individualistic. If someone is not doing well in school, the responsibility rests squarely on his or her shoulders. Sometimes, when we are in a generous mood, we will lay blame on the individual skills of parents or the individual dedication or intelligence of teachers. Rarely do we acknowledge broader patterns and societal problems such as the unequal funding of schools that makes teachers’ jobs harder, the lack of job opportunities in certain neighborhoods that force parents to send their children to school hungry, or the disproportionate policing and incarceration of certain groups that ultimately change how families look and what they can accomplish. And the looming cloud that hovers above all of this is race, as it is largely Blacks and Latinos who are affected by limited resources and chances.

During my summer bridge class, which was an Introduction to Latino Studies, I introduced the idea that social policies, capitalism, and international politics have a lot to do with who migrates to the U.S. and how they fare once here. If we as a nation had economic interests, like bananas, in a Latin American country such as Guatemala, we might protect those interests with military force, which in turn would destabilize a country by damaging infrastructure and also affecting work opportunities. This would lead people to leave the country to a place with more stability and opportunity, such as the U.S. Depending upon how these already damaged individuals were received by the U.S., either as legal migrants or refugees, or as undocumented individuals without legal status, would be how they fared once here.

Given that these were freshman, I stepped away from this large political and historical discussion for a moment. I tried to make an analogy to show how structural issues affect individual behavior. I turned to the issue of dropouts among Latinos in this class where 13 of the 14 students were Latino. My hope was to connect them to the idea of structuralism more directly. I noted how many Chicago Public Schools high schools have metal detectors, armed security guards or police, and very strict disciplinary policies. I asked the students whether these felt welcoming or whether in some ways those policies and practices could even encourage dropout rather than discourage disruptive behavior. After all, who would want to be in a place so unwelcoming, so prison-like? Better to be at home or on the street, where you could feel free. I brought my point home by arguing that education should be liberating and that it was ironic that schools could be so limiting. I then told them that I hoped college could be a place where they could regain a sense of freedom through learning. Inspiring, I thought.

A student in the front row seemed to be taking what I was saying in and then shared an epiphany she had while I was talking. “You know you’re right. They don’t have metal detectors or guards here.” “Exactly,” I said, thinking that I had helped facilitate that connection for her, but then she continued. “That is really crazy. How can they just allow us to wander around here without checking us?” An interesting piece of our cultural narrative of meritocracy, “you get what you deserve,” is that at the end of the day, we all believe it, even if we are on the receiving end of inequality.

Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech on disciplinary policies in schools. He emphasized that zero-tolerance policies, the use of police, and expulsions and suspensions are not effective means to deal with student misbehavior. He then called for approaches to discipline that are more in line with what is needed in schools, that would restore a sense of justice and fairness for students. I agree that when student behavior is problematic that it should be dealt with in this constructive way; however, I disagree with the premise that a primary focus of schools should remain about behavioral discipline and control. Keeping the focus of schools on exerting power, even soft power, over students does little to create schools that are places for true growth, learning, and enlightenment.  This will not create a space where inequalities that exist outside the school can be addressed.

When I was studying social work in California I did my internship at a special public school in Oakland for children identified as having behavioral problems. In my social work classes I was learning about the power of providing unconditional positive regard to clients, about redressing disparities in resources, and about using my knowledge and skills as a way of giving power to others. One day, a young African American boy who was nine years old refused to sit in his chair after feeling that a teacher had treated him unfairly. While I don’t remember the details, I do remember feeling that perhaps he was overlooked for whatever recognition he initially wanted. In a span of less than five minutes, two special education teachers, three master’s level social workers, and the principal were called into the room, all because he would not sit down. Once the principal arrived, he shouted at her, probably used an expletive or two, which I can’t remember for sure, but at no point did he threaten harm or raise a hand or object toward anyone. The principal had a two-way radio and commanded that her secretary call the police. Literally within seconds, a police officer arrived, barked some orders at this nine-year old, twisted his arm behind his back and handcuffed him to a chair. 

I remember being fairly new at this time and standing by feeling inept as an intern during this whole incident. In our social worker meeting later that day I mustered the courage to say that what I saw was not right that it just foretold the life that this young black person would have in West Oakland; that the behavior did not justify that type of force. We were social workers, after all, who should have been working against such an injustice. I was met with some sheepish stares, but the ultimate response from my supervisor, was that sometimes these things just happened this way.

I think my worry about the fanfare around Obama’s speech and the accompanying paper that was put out by the Department of Education and Secretary Arne Duncan, is that it takes for granted that behavioral problems in school “just happen” as a regular occurrence. They don’t rethink the stresses such as poverty, joblessness, homelessness and racism that might contribute to behavior problems. The paper and the speech really just say, “don’t be so harsh.”

An area for hope is that when you really engage students and offer them an understanding and caring environment with plenty of resources, you can remove all of the metal detectors and security guards and have no problems at all. As a matter of fact, with the right types of resources you can overcome huge challenges. Our summer bridge program does just that as it has retention and graduation rates that beat our averages for our general student body. And this is not only true at our school. Likely, it would not be only true for college students either. After all, our students were once CPS students, and treating them more human and with more respect, along with providing them a great education helps them achieve great things.

New Year's Resolution and Roberto Clemente

Last night, New Year's Eve, after the kids were asleep, I found myself sitting with my in-laws watching the Times Square countdown coverage on Television. My two children and nephew, all under seven years old, had run the adults in the family pretty ragged over the few days prior. We settled in on the couch, having had a couple of drinks each during dinner, but rather than the typical reveling afterward, we took the opportunity to enjoy the calm of the house. Each settling in with our respective electronic devices on our bellies, we tuned in and out of the performances by Pitbull and Miley Cyrus and the commentary by Ryan Seacrest. We had already resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not be venturing out, but we initially prepared to be more social by stocking the house with beer, wine and champagne. After a very nice dinner cooked by my mother-in-law, and great conversation with my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, we found ourselves winding down and it was only ten o'clock. Thinking about how I wanted to begin the New Year, I resolved to not waste time mindlessly trolling the internet on my iPad or standing in front of the glow of a television program that did not interest me in the least. Entering the year that I will turn forty, I thought that the best thing I could do was get a good night's sleep. Not so much because I felt older, but because I am slowly settling into the increasingly present responsibilities that I have as a full-fledged adult to think ahead and about my responsibilities to others; my wife and I planned already to return to Chicago from the suburbs of Virginia on January first, so I knew that I would feel much better traveling in our car if I were well-rested. So, I bid everyone goodnight, and by 11:00 on the East Coast, I was in bed.

I am not one to remember my dreams, but on the first day of the year I remembered a pretty vivid scene from the night before. I was walking through the corridor of a baseball stadium, under the stands, where vendors had their souvenirs spread out on the floor, much like you might find at an open-air artisan market in Mexico or South America. Their goods were still mass-produced, rather than the handmade items you would find in a market, but it was a unique setup given the hyper-commercialized nature of ballparks in today's era. One vendor's goods immediately caught my eye. The bright yellow and black hats were unmistakeably memorabilia from the Pittsburgh Pirates. I began trying on some of the hats. I wasn't sure that I was even in Pittsburgh or my home, Chicago, for that matter, but the Pirates' attire seemed naturally in place. The seller approached me and asked which hat I would like, as they had a whole variety, and the one I quickly chose, was the pillbox Pirates' cap that the players wore during their 1979 championship season. It was famous for it's unique design, the pinstripes around the hat, and the stars that adorned it, given as marks of recognition for great plays by Pirate player Willie Stargell. It was probably because of their World Series win that this became my first baseball cap as a five-year old. I was only ever vaguely aware of this connection until I began writing this post. The hat simply became something that I remember wearing frequently for a summer or two and then that sat in our Chicagoland home for years after without a clear reason. Back in the dream, I purchased the hat, feeling very satisfied, and remember nothing else.

So, when I awoke, I naturally thought the only connection was nostalgia for the hat. I lay in bed for a few minutes pondering the dream, which sat with me despite seeming pretty mundane; being that I rarely remember dreams, why this one?

I then found myself on my iPad, on Facebook, despite my previous night's hope to curtail my use in the New Year. A friend posted a photograph of Roberto Clemente, reminding us of the anniversary of his death 40 years ago on December 31st. At the tail end of an incredible career, the Puerto Rican superstar, in his late thirties, boarded a plane to Nicaragua, carrying supplies that he was donating to victims of an earthquake. The residents of Managua, Nicaragua were still recovering from its effects despite its taking place a full year before. Clemente decided to accompany the supplies because he had heard that previous donations he sent were intercepted by the corrupt Somoza government and never reached those that they were intended to help. As it approached its destination, the plane crashed and killed all those aboard.

Clemente is remembered as an excellent baseball player, with fifteen All Star seasons. But in my view he was more memorable as a man who broke barriers for Latinos and Latin American and gave to others to the end. In Chicago, his name has become synonymous with a high school in a neighborhood with a large Puerto Rican population and I sometimes wonder if the students there are fully aware of the pride that should be associated with their school's namesake.

As we enter the new year, a time when we make resolutions for ourselves to lose weight, drink less, or exercise more, I am going to resolve to follow the lead of Roberto Clemente, to focus on giving all I can to others; 40 years ago, ending his thirties, in a year that I turn 40, I resolve to willingly and happily give to others because I have been given so much; much more than my share. Perhaps it is an elusive dream, but it is one to remember.

Presumed Entitled: Mexican Soccer and the Mexican Middle Class

This morning I woke up at 5am because I could not sleep any longer. I think I was excited to find out the result of Mexico’s soccer match against New Zealand. The game was played on the Kiwis’ home turf, so the game occurred live at midnight local time. My excitement came from the fact that this would be the final opportunity for the Mexican Men’s National Team to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The Mexican team was playing the second of a two-game playoff to decide which of these national teams would advance to the finals next summer. Mexico has long been a soccer powerhouse in the North American region, qualifying easily at the top of the list of its competitors. The expectation at the beginning of the qualifying stage for the upcoming World Cup was no different. The Mexican Under-17 team won the World Cup for that age group in 2011 and in 2012 the Mexican Men beat Brazil with authority at the London Olympics, enabling them to bring home a gold medal. Given that some of the very same players who brought home these championships would be playing for Mexico in the lead up to the tournament for the ultimate soccer prize, hopes were justifiably high. But the team seemed to implode, scoring infrequently, losing numerous matches, and most notably for true fans, playing really ugly soccer; the game after all is known as the “beautiful game,” as just as much credit is given to teams who play artfully and tie or even lose, as is given to victors.

Mexico’s biggest soccer embarrassments this year related to the United States. First, they lost twice to the United States at Azteca Stadium, a location where the Mexican team had never lost before to ANY team. The embarrassment was compounded by several facts. The U.S. team has historically been very weak at soccer, although in the past 20 years, since the U.S. hosted the World Cup, the team has slowly but surely improved, giving many world soccer powers a run for their money. Within the past 10 years they emerged as Mexico’s main competitors in the North American soccer region, also known as CONCACAF. This rivalry, like many in soccer, had lots to do with politics and history off the field. Mexico has had to live in the shadow of the United States since half of its territory was taken during the Mexican-American War. Many Mexicans see its poverty, corruption, drug problems, and the outmigration of its citizens as more than a little bit related to American imperialism.  The one area where Mexico has been able to maintain supremacy has been on the soccer pitch; however, that all changed this year with the U.S. qualifying at the top of the region. And to add further insult, Mexico was all but eliminated from the tournament with a resounding loss to Costa Rica, and was only saved in the very last minutes by the fact that the Americans beat Panama. The U.S. win did not allow Mexico to qualify, but only to play New Zealand in the playoff for an at-large spot at the World Cup.

So, in the wee hours of the morning, before work and before the kids woke up, I watched as Mexico regained its footing, albeit against an opponent that had very little chance of winning. After a first game win of 5-1, Mexico won again with a score of 4-2, thus sending them to Brazil. In the post game analysis, one of the ESPN announcers noted that a big part of Mexico’s lackluster effort appeared to be psychological. Having tasted recent high profile victories, Mexico lost one of its greatest attributes: hard work.

Many of the players who played on the national team for most of the tournament were remarkable because they represented a truly elite level of play measured by their club teams. Mexican players usually play only in Mexico’s league. The Mexican Soccer League (La Liga MX) is one of the better leagues in the world, but it is not among the elite. The elite leagues include the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, and the Italian Serie A. These leagues pay in the tens of millions of dollars for the best players from around the world to play in their countries. Mexican players only recently have been represented at this level on sizable scale. The Mexican coach for most of the qualifying round understandably relied on these players as the backbone of his team. While these players had immense natural talent, they seemed to sleep on the field, indifferent and dispassionate to the reality that they were regularly losing. This ultimately cost the players a space on the roster and the two coaches who stood steadfastly by them their jobs.

The ESPN analyst said that the iteration of the team that existed prior to the New Zealand matches surely had skill, but suffered from what he called, “entitlement.” They thought that they didn’t have to work to get to the finals. They had become accustomed to being winners and no longer had the hunger to strive or struggle.

In Spanish, a term that is used to characterize the affluent is “presumido,” which literally means presumed. More figuratively it means arrogant or conceited. But, to presume that one is great before having put in the work is fitting here.

It is interesting to me that this recent success has had a paradoxical effect. The soccer team also seems to be a microcosm of Mexican society as a whole. The use of soccer as a metaphor for a country’s collective character and identity is not new; just this Saturday the New York Times profiled prominent Mexican author, Juan Villoro, who is known for using soccer as a metaphor to explain Mexico. The New York Times then ran a piece on Tuesday that focused on Mexico’s emerging, yet fragile middle class. This topic has been in the news quite a bit over the past year. It runs counter to the long-held narrative that Mexico is a completely poor, third world country; rather, now it is truly an emerging economy. But much like its soccer team, there are paradoxical effects, such as increased obesity, a sense of anomie and despair, and quite frankly some frivolous laziness, as was seen in the hit film about a Mexican upper class family, “We are the Nobles.” In that film a self-made father tricks his insolent children into getting jobs, so they can reconnect with the value of self-reliance and work. I hope that Mexico will take this lesson to heart if it is ever to achieve the greatness that seems to always elude it. But based on a recent trip to Mexico, I fear that classism and arrogance may rise, for I witnessed it firsthand, and Mexico will only have achieved a devil’s bargain.

Learning How to Die Through Education

In October 2002, public intellectual, philosophy professor, and activist, Cornel West made his public return to Harvard University after a feud with the then president of Harvard, Larry Summers. Summers had accused West of weak scholarship and strongly suggested in a one on one meeting that he be a more productive scholar. This type of admonition might not be unusual for a colleague or a chair to give to a newly minted Ph.D. at the assistant professor rank; however, West was a University Professor at Harvard, the highest possible rank one could achieve as a faculty member there. He had also published numerous academic books on the serious scholarly topics of philosophy, religion, politics, and race. Summers seemed to believe that West’s forays into rap and poetry, as well as his numerous media appearances (and acting in two of The Matrix films), belittled his, and by extension Harvard’s, esteem in the academy. West did not see it that way. He believed that he had rightfully earned the respect of the highest levels of academia, and had shaped entire fields, particularly African American studies, and that he would now turn to spreading his intellectual gospel to the public, rather than keeping knowledge in the isolated tower of the university. West, rather than endure what he perceived to be an insult and lack of respect that would likely be ongoing during Summer’s tenure, decided to leave for a professorship at Princeton. This October evening in 2002 would be his defiant return, arranged by Harvard colleagues, and I happened to have the good fortune of being present.

The occasion for his return was the monthly “Saturday School” at Harvard Law School. Harvard Law Professor, Charles Ogletree, who is African American, started the Saturday School years before. Law students of color sought Mr. Ogletree out for mentorship and solace at a time when the student body and curriculum of Harvard Law School, and pretty much any law school, for that matter, did not represent the diversity of the country at the time; in other words, there were virtually no black folk to be found in the classrooms or the texts. In an effort to provide solace, camaraderie, and enriching knowledge that celebrated the contributions of minority scholars, Ogletree held these regular Saturday meetings. They eventually became institutionalized and supported by the institution, but they nonetheless maintained their radical flair. The main speaker on this Saturday was Cornel West.

The Saturday School had grown enormously over the years. On this particular night there was much anticipation and an overflowing crowd in one of Harvard Law School’s lecture halls buzzed with anticipation of the return of Professor West. There were easily 200 people crammed into a space not meant to accommodate that many, with people lining the walls and the aisles. When West entered the room from the rear, climbing over people in the aisles, giving high fives and shaking students’ hands along the way, the excitement in the crowd rose and then descended into a dramatic hush as Professor West approached the podium. West spoke in poetic verse, as if he were preaching on a Sunday morning. His tone descended and rose as he emphasized his points. About five minutes into his talk, he began to get very quiet as he meditated on the purpose of education and learning. With emphasis he then said, “Education is learning how to die. It is a setting loose, a giving up.” This is a thought that has strongly resonated with me to this day. That evening and that thought in particular is a very fond memory I have of my time in Massachusetts.

Having been through a great deal of formal education, I sometimes feel that I have died a thousand times. Coming from a Mexican immigrant family with parents who had high school degrees, who had limited familiarity with American colleges, who while middle class in income, were still pretty working class in their trades, a hairdresser and phone repair supervisor, university life was a bit different from the intellectual life I had at home.  Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, reflected on his own working class roots in Southern France and the acculturation process he had to go through as a student at the University of Paris. A brilliant scholar, he likely was intellectually equal if not superior to his classmates, yet he struggled at times because he did not possess the insider knowledge, values and practices that were the implicit currency of the most favored students. He termed this knowledge of how to be, of what to value, and how it is tied to status, power, and perceived intelligence, as much as raw individual abilities, "cultural capital." In other words, knowing the secret rules of the game can help you win, even if you are not a naturally good player. Cultural capital along with social capital, the social connections that generate status and power (who you know, not what you know), dictate a lot of success in life. We could probably easily point to more than a few politicians with limited individual intelligence, but who know the rules and have the social connections that have taken them to the highest levels.

There are rules of the game that students need to learn. It does not mean that they are rules that work well for all games or that this particular game is better than other games. To speak directly to culture, no particular culture is better than another, necessarily, but in certain contexts, it is good to know the particular practices of the culture you are in. When in Rome, do as the Romans.

Some misinterpret this though. They take it to mean that a culture that is useful in a certain context is useful in all contexts. Basically, one culture is better than others. And those who believe this have taken this idea to a logical extreme. If one culture is best, then the other cultures are pretty useless. One notable person who made that argument is Richard Rodriguez in his memoir on his own education, “Hunger of Memory.” In that book Rodriguez argues that language minority children should discard their native tongues, or at best hide them, kept at home in private. This is the only place they are useful, communicating with the otherwise useless and ignorant ways of family.

This is point that I certainly don’t agree with, although I must admit at times that it seemed easier to just join the crowd and never look back. And the pull to give up one's own culture is strong in the United States. One must be conscientious about maintaing culture in the face of a school system that typically does not value diversity in its curriculum, in its staff, or in the way that it allocates resources. Being intentional about maintaining culture thus means going against the institutional tide, which is hard.

But, a recent article in Inside Higher Education notes that knowing the dominant culture relates to success in college. So, why would we not give that powerful knowledge to students? They may gain a lot. But, the fear is probably about what they might lose.

There is much to be lost in terms of family connections, traditions, wisdom and knowledge by giving up one culture for another. But there is a danger in reifying what we are familiar with as well. Coming from an immigrant family and having spoken with hundreds of children in immigrant families, especially Mexican, one of the most frequent admonitions I hear parents tell their children is “don’t be like me.” They say to aspire to something better, something different, something more. Isn’t that the nature of being an immigrant? To move? To change? And likewise, isn’t that the nature of education? To move beyond the past self. To die and be reborn anew.

Talent More Important than Looks? Not if You're Latina

“Naya Rivera Sizzles On Rolling Stone Flip Cover Featuring The Latin Hot List 2013” blared the headline on the Huffington Post’s "Latino Voices" section, followed by the lead “Naya Rivera is hot - if you had any doubts just check out the latest issue of Rolling Stone.”  Both the Rolling Stone cover story and the HuffPost’s coverage of it seem aimed at celebrating Rivera’s success borne from her singing talents.  Unfortunately, neither accomplishes this and it is bad for Hispanic and Latino women.


For those unfamiliar with her, Rivera is one of the many stars of the Fox network's dramedy/musical “Glee,” which centers on the lives of current and former members of a high school glee club.  Rivera portrays Santana, a former cheerleader, glee club member, mean girl starting her post-high school life in New York City with other former classmates.  Rivera’s success on “Glee” has enabled her to start the musical recording career that Rolling Stone seems to want to discuss.

Yet, the talent most on display that HuffPost celebrates is Rivera’s ability to dress scantily and pose provocatively, noting, “The 26-year-old strikes a seductive pose as the queen of Rolling Stone’s Latin Hot List…”

Image from Rolling Stone
available at
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/naya-rivera-leads-rolling-stones-latin-hot-list-2013-20131106

This is sad state of affairs for Hispanic and Latino female artists, one that does not seemed to have improved much during the past 30 to 40 years.  Linda Ronstadt, for example, famously has complained about her portrayal on the cover of Time magazine in 1977.  Ronstadt was the most famous and the highest paid woman in rock-and-roll during the 1970s, yet the Time cover seemed concerned only with the seductive image Ronstadt could project under the headline “Torchy Rock.”

Time, 28 February 1977
available at
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19770228,00.html

That the music and magazine industries have done little to in the way of celebrating Hispanic and Latino female artists for their talents instead of their looks is shameful.  That these industry’s business structures compel women to think they need to use their looks to attract attention to their careers is equally so.  It has been over 30 years since Ronstadt's appearance on the cover of time.  Will it take still another 30 years before the conditions change?

Rise Up and Sing Mexico

This weekend I saw the Mexican band Cafe Tacuba, here in the Mexican capital of the Midwest, Chicago. It is a band I have long loved and it was my second time seeing them, the first being over a decade ago at Slim's in San Francisco.

About 18 years ago while in college I discovered the band. While going through a bit of discovery around my ethnic identity, embracing my Latinidad and Mexicanidad—I still feel strongly for both and for my American-ness, too—and also while going through a very rough break-up, a friend who lived in the residence hall next to mine suggested that the drama I was experiencing reminded her of Café Tacuba’s song, Esa Noche.

The song tells of love lost, but how ironically enough, as you lose your love you find a new one, and just as the old love returns realizing what she had given up, you find that you have moved on.  The song ends on an ambiguous note because it is not clear whether the newfound love is actually a person or whether it is loneliness and solitude that the singer has embraced.

The band Café Tacuba, started in the late 80s as Mexico slowly emerged from financial crisis, is itself a band of ambiguity: from its androgynous lead singer, and his lovingly insulting identity-Pinche Juan (Fucking Juan-among other names that Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega has gone by such as Cosmé and Anonymous), its mixture of genres and eras in music, to its embracing of both street culture and slang and high poetry.

There is a whole list of bands from Mexico that are simultaneously modern and traditional. Distinctively Mexican (rancheras, cumbia, mariachi), hip hop, metal, and rock and roll all at once: Lila Downs, Julieta Venegas, Café Tacuba, Rodrigo and Gabriela, to name just a few.

To me this mixture can be seen on other parts of Mexican culture. Daniel Hernandez, the editor of the Mexico City edition of the fashion, art, and music magazine, Vice, describes in great detail the raging Mexican cultural evolution in his book about youth in Mexico, “Down and Delirious in Mexico City.” He describes a fashion scene that rivals Paris, tribes of urban youth with creativity that rivals youth in Los Angeles and New York City, and how this explosion of cultural production is related to Mexico’s struggle to break through into the first world with its growing middle class.

One of the best chapters in the book is about Emo culture. Emos can roughly be described as somewhat effeminate, depressed, youth who perform their emotions through their clothes and taking over of public spaces where other youth hang out such as plazas and malls. There is a strong reaction against them, to the point that they are attacked and beaten. Hernandez struggles to figure out what this reaction is about. He concludes that it is that much of who they are is self-centered and superficial; they are suburban and middle-class, and while they are described as a tribe of their own, there is not much that unifies them at all other than their own existential angst about the banal. Other groups who define themselves more substantively deride them for this shallow attempt at trying to occupy a social space in Mexico. Other groups see them as insincere, as standing for nothing, as copying the styles of others without truly understanding the underlying meaning of those styles. What Hernandez notes most of all is that Emos seem to be representing the emptiness that often comes after all of your basic needs are met—he has a bit of an epiphany when he realizes that many of these youth come from middle class homes and are dropped off at the Zócalo in cars or that they hang out at affluent malls.

Mexicans love their suffering. It is integral to their identity. They rightfully own this privilege as they have long had much to suffer about. They certainly still do, as we saw a weekend where teachers have protested the capitalistic reforms that the government is imposing on schools, a year where students from upper-middle class backgrounds have demonstrated against government corruption and rigged politics in the “Yo Soy 132” movement, where the return of the PRI makes one wonder if the country will ever be able to move to a more democratic system, to the continued drug violence that has ensnarled parts of the country for nearly a decade.

That said, Mexico has experienced steady economic growth for several years now, despite the larger downturn worldwide. It has slowed as of late, but it is healthy nonetheless. But there is the ever-present worry of moving backward, and perhaps even scarier is the worry of moving forward into the unknown. This is especially true when that future has its own set of downsides. Suddenly having money, or democracy, or “high art” may seem glamorous, but it comes with a fight to find meaning and purpose or to be faced with no meaning at all.

The crowd at the concert was interesting because it represented many sides of Mexico. There were recent immigrants wearing cowboy boots and leather belts, women with strong indigenous features wearing mini-skirts and high heels, incongruent with what is typically worn at a rock concert. There were children as young as five and some pre-teens there with their parents (at a concert taking place at 9pm on a Friday). There were hipsters with ear gauges, piercings and tattoos, some who appeared and sounded like they had only recently arrived from Mexico and others who spoke only English.  I can only imagine the various social classes from where people came, paying for $50 tickets and $7 beers, for some just another night out, for others their only night out this year.

It was really unclear for a moment what the individuals in this motley crew had in common. But then the music blared-a techno march, a polka, in Spanish, in Chicago, and the crowd heaved up in down, in unison, sweaty, all Mexican, and something yet to be determined. Like the song, love was lost, and a new one has been found, but it is lonely and unknown.

"Mi Soledad siempre he pertenecido a ti
Ay Soledad! siempre he pertenecido a ti"

Que Viva.