So I was standing in line at a theme park, waiting to jump on a monsterously huge rollercoaster, when I noticed a swaggering young hombre in front of me. He was hanging with his girlfriend, a cute little Latina. The guy was obviously Chicano, and if anyone doubted the joven’s ethnicity, it was right there, spelled out on his t-shirt.
The words on the back of his shirt read
“Hispanic: No!
Latino: No!
Chicano: Yes!”
The wording was all-caps, for damn sakes, to minimize the danger of subtlety escaping. The front of the shirt featured the standard eagles and snakes and La Virgin imagery.
I lost sight of the guy by the time I got on the rollercoaster, and I forgot all about him for the two minutes of whiplash speed that I received in exchange for my hour in line (this was very poor ROI).
But I thought about him later, and I realized that the shirt pissed me off. This hombre was adamant, a walking billboard, in fact, for the idea that Chicanos are completely different from the rest of the Hispanic world. I had run into this mindset before, but not so explicitly. The implication, of course, is that they are better or superior to, say, Nicaraguans or Cubans or Peruvians.
I could understand if someone asked the guy if he was Bolivian or Colombian. In that case, maybe he would just want to be clear and/or take pride in his ethnicity. But instead he was performing a pre-emptive strike on anyone who would think, for a split second, that he could be part of the larger Hispanic or Latino tribe. He didn’t want to be included with me or anyone who didn’t have roots in Mexico.
What is the point of this demand for separation? Is it like the paper-thin differences emphasized by, for example, the British and the Welsh? And if so, will there be any involvement from women as hot as Catherine Zeta-Jones (she’s Welsh, not Hispanic, you know).
In any case, it was yet another example of our human capacity to emphasize differences over similarities. It’s little wonder that we get into crazed debates over larger, more ambiguous definitions (eg, who is a real American?) when we can’t even agree that Chicanos are Latino. It’s also symptomatic of Hispanic culture’s inability to coalesce, which is one reason the political power of Latinos is one notch above the lobbying strength of Idaho beet farmers.
Despite my annoyance, I wish no ill harm to the young Chicano. I hope the guy enjoyed the rollercoaster. But I also hope that at some point during the day, when he was strolling hand in hand with his girlfriend and eating cotton candy and handing stuffed animals to her, that she looked deep into his eyes and said, “You know, honey, that’s a really stupid t-shirt.”
June 22nd, 2008 on 5:20 pm
A guy wearing a t-shirt is preforming a pre-emptive on you? Are you kidding? From what you wrote here, the kid didn’t interact with you at all, he didn’t get in your face or eve talk shit to you – you just happened to notice his shirt and it threatened you. I’m gonna’ go out on a limb here and guess that you are not Chicano because if you were you wouldn’t need an explanation.
Last time I checked, we could wear whatever we wanted to and that includes, confederate flags, shamrocks, Malcolm x, flags, etc. The shirt pissed you off? Why? Examine that for a minute. Ask yourself that question. Is it because of your own cultural insecurities? Because the young “hombre” has defiantly expressed his proud heritage on a t-shirt and refused to assimilate under the “Hispanic” label that his coconate brethren so desperately want him to?
The word “Hispanic” is a government term borrowed from Ancient Rome. It was widely used to homogenize all Latin cultures in the 70’s and 80’s to draw them into the U.S Census. Nothing more, nothing less. All it does is lump everyone together, which is total bullshit because the cultures all differ greatly – not to mention Latinos are still considered “white” so far as the census is concerned.
Chicanos have nothing on common with Cubans or Puerto Ricans of even Mexicans from Mexico. And they will tell you so if you confuse the two. They all have their own differences and they are all very proud of who they are for a reason.
In this day and age, in this time of raza odiada where the middle and upper class are scared to death of Latinos taking over and “invading” the U.S. – in this day of mass deportation and hatred of anything brown – wearing the word “Chicano” on your person is a badge of courage. We are in a throwback age, akin to the Zoot Suit era where Chicanos were often caught up by violence, hatred and prejudice.
All I can tell you is that if you’re not now, you never were. And I hate to tell you this, but YOU are Hispanic. The rest of us know who the fuck we are.
October 4th, 2010 on 8:39 pm
Well, hate to do this, but… chicanos are NOT latins. Take a trip down to latin america. pick a country, any country… you will NEVER EVER see:
a latin american in a latin country driving low riders, wearing a shirt with the aztec god holding the sacrificed virgin, listening to rap music, saying “brown pride”, speaking in a weird spanish accent, pretending to dance salsa, blaming the white man for everything, etc…
compare an argentinan, peruvian, costa rican, cuban, colombian, ecuadorian, etc to a chicano… worlds apart! if a chicano went to any of these countries they would so laugh at his ass!
October 9th, 2010 on 3:15 am
I would not think of differing with anyone sporting such legends on their person (clothing ,skin or carrucha), certainly not to their face or in print, and would hope they respect my choice of self-designation, not the least because I am a chicano myself. “Mexican-American” is out of the question, since I don’t need another offficialese gringo/gringo language label on me. I date back to an era devoid of the so-finally welcome surge of my razas activism of the sixties and seventies which answered a lot of my/our questions, surfaced plenty of new ones for us AND for our denigrator/exploiter and nudged many of us with the spiritual and intellectual energy and self-determination (which grows with praxis and experience). I cannot be happy with “hispanic” since it ignores my indigenous background. Indo-Hispanico might work, since the nuclear family from which I descend happens to be about fifty-fifty in mixture, but it is a clumsy term. However much embraced by those previously calling themselves hispanic or mexican-american, latino does not seem to fit me either. Whether visiting or working here, or busy becoming “Americans”, most Latinos have their own agenda, and not a few look down raza, such as , for example Carlos Alasraqui, Argentine import and “voice of the Chihuahua dog” in commercials, who told me that we chicanos deserve our circumstance and should quit complaining about stereotypes ( his daddy instructed him to be “a good American”, proudly sez he.)I would have to immerse my self in the Mexican culture across the border to seriously think of myself in that term, however much I and they have in common, although I will not protest the expedient and shaggy thinking of those who call me that. No, chicano is what I am, however much forty-five years of serious activism in our communities has failed to rid us of the stigma which ignorance, racism, political and cultural reaction, and a truly criminal and victimising media, films , texts have attached to that word. I attended segregated kindergarten (boring), and second grade (a colonialist, hurtful and destructive, an expensive charade of education), and having been raised to respect other cultures, I was, by age fifteen, driven to the edge of madness, the system insisting on a hierarchy of culture, and mine being somewhere at the bottom. Now see that I was being “taught” by relative barbarians, yokels with credentials, because since childhood my philosophy has cultured persons respecting the cultural”other.” Where can I get a T-shirt like that vatos? Preferably in hot pink lettering. Thanks for enabling my rant. Saludos.
October 10th, 2010 on 1:32 pm
In any case, it was yet another example of our human capacity to emphasize differences over similarities. It’s little wonder that we get into crazed debates over larger, more ambiguous definitions (eg, who is a real American?) when we can’t even agree that Chicanos are Latino. It’s also symptomatic of Hispanic culture’s inability to coalesce, which is one reason the political power of Latinos is one notch above the lobbying strength of Idaho beet farmers.
This is SO true. The shirt makes me a little sad…so many divisions…but I can understand him wanting to claim his pride and his heritage in a society that chops him down at every turn.
I’m a new reader here. Love the blog and will be back. I’m one-quarter Hispanic (Costa Rican) so take heart–you’re twice as Hispanic as me (and sadly, my genes don’t even have the good sense to let me look Latina 🙁
Are you on twitter?
October 11th, 2010 on 7:57 pm
It looks to me that I have more in common with the young man in the “….Chicano. Yes!” t-shirt than was readliy noticeable to Dan Cubias as observer, and to Dan’s readers, second-hand. When I wrote of the various labels available to me, and of my choices among those labels, I was referring to my own personal views, and not necessarily of my community or of any organization to whch I belong or have belonged to, in my forty years of “involved” experience. Do yourself a favor, Robin, and find a nearby socially commited effort, whether “Mexican”; “Mexican-American”; “Hispanic”; “Chicana/o”, or even Cholos or gangbangers, and get up in front of them and point to them and wring your hands and fret to them that they belong to a culture that has an “inability to coalesce”, and be sure that you have a pencil and pad, or a tape-recoreder or video for their response. You seem to forget ( if indeed you ever knew), that there are and ever have been all kinds of efforts ranging from government institutions ( Cointelpro, FBI, cops ready to infiltrate and destroy us), to local and regional red-necks and nativists; the five-o’clock “news”; your daily corporate-produced newspaper; Tea-Party, conservatives, K.K.K. , Posse Comitatus, and many more, working very hard to denigrate us as as “ignorant”; “well-meant but misguided” “dangerous”; “radicals”; “Marxist-Leninists” ; “foreign” and etc. And so I ask: why is the responsibility strictly on US to bring about this alleged “coalescence”, if indeed that is what is lacking and needed, when we have such ubiquitous , unrelenting, often well-funded, vociferous and often violent assaults on our efforts? I’ll tell you why, it’s because we are righteously successful, and not because we are muddled and feckless losers as communities and social organisers, because we are not. I find it difficult to believe that Dan Cubias is really angry about that T-shirt, I can’t believe that he is that lame. I think he’s agitating to get a response for his blog. And forget about “being “sad” about it, educate yourself. And, by the way, just what is a Latina supposed to look like?
October 12th, 2010 on 8:24 am
I can assure you that I was not just agitating. It was a stupid shirt with a self-defeating message.
Certainly, it’s not in the same league as KKK members, or even Tea Party whackjobs, as you point out. But it’s difficult to fight those kind of people if we’re too busy creating distance between ourselves.
October 12th, 2010 on 2:02 pm
I fail to see anything ,self-defeating” about the mans T-shirt stressing his choice of self-descriptive, and I think it’s totally out of hand to apply the term “stupid” to the guy, which is where you are applying it, and not to the shirt. You don”t know where the guy is coming from, and what his experiences have been, as chicano is a term that evolved in our communities to designate ourselves, its our term as for example “pinoy” is for pilipinos You never talked to the guy to see where his head is about it; he may have been through shit about that issue, and you go home “angry” about it, which strikes me as weird. If I saw a man wearing a “Chicano. No! Latino. Yes!” T-shirt, I’d say to myself “The guy has issues with that, and it’s important that he stress his choice”, And considering the P.R. that is done for chicanos in the U.S., I would have to be understanding about it. Suppose the Latino was not simply proud of being, say, Panamanian, but felt a revulsion to being mistaken for Southwest origin raza due to our bad English AND bad Spanish language skills, and the endemic poverty and , yes, the attitudes that lack of education and generations of poverty can produce, I think that I would understand, unless he got in my face with it, and mean about it, then I would think that he is not just making a point, but has serious anger and possibly patthollogies
October 12th, 2010 on 5:00 pm
You’re correct that “stupid’ should apply to the shirt and not the person.
October 12th, 2010 on 5:28 pm
What if you went back to your home-country, and saw an indigenous person wearing a “Latino. No! (Tribal designation)..Si!” Would you blow your cool over that? Because that is pretty much how chicanos feel about it, and you are being unrealistic in feeling in any way offended by that. Native peoples from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego are rising up, not the least with weapons., in some regions, and you know damn well, with good reason. Chicanos, not a few of us, realate to our social and political circumsatnce in exactly the same way. We are proud to be from right here the man came and had pretty much his way with us as with the Lakotah; the Sioux; and etc. It looks to me as though you are clinging to some closely held politica about us which you really cannot hide. And you don’t know how to back down gracefully, and admit that you are wrong. I think you carry some confused versions and prejudices about who we are, and what our politica shouuld be. I don’t believe that your politica is a healthy or progressive one for our varrios, mainly because you don’t really seem to know what you are talking about. I just want to know what it is we should be replacing that young man’s point of view with?? The fact of your being pissed about it speaks volumes. If you don’t want me to continiue pursuing his issue, please have the testicularity to say so, publicly. Because I want from you some remedy for this “stupid” point of view which so twists your sous-vetements. Is what you bring to this issue a progressive remedy? Is it a retro-politica? I wojuld like to discern that, not. The least publicly. I think you are in too deep and have no answers. And that means that you should beware of how you handle our issues. Not simply to community activists, but the average chicano, who has been politicised for a long time, and not anyones dummy. We can read you very well, no offense meant. Do not take us for dummies.
October 12th, 2010 on 5:47 pm
I did not say that the word “stupid” should apply to the shirt and not the vato. You are putting words in my mouth. Neither the man nor his slogan is stupid.
October 12th, 2010 on 7:18 pm
It would be a really great idea if you clean up your politica and refrain from angry tirades against chicanos, because when you display anger at us publicly you are encouraging others do the same to us, which is racist and harmful and fascistic in a very real sense. To do it “unthinkngly” is bad enough, and to do it deliberately is seriously crude and inhumane. You are doing it to a long suffering element of this country; adding problems onto problems for us. You seem to have views on a lot of things, good and well, please leave off of the demonisation, because that is what it is. Your “humorous and clever” politica has a seriously shitty element to it. Lay off. I read faces as well. You look like trouble. Clean up your act. We are not the enemy. You had better refocus, if you think so. Obviously you have a problem with Chicanos. Get over it. Your early responses from Chicanos we’re right on. Do not spread your viruses, as the EEUU has enough that is arguably fascistic as it is. It is easy to rile people up against us. Do not be a demogoge. Saludos.
October 13th, 2010 on 9:57 am
Robin: Yes, I’m on twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/hispanfan)
Antonio: Let’s end on a positive note. Saludos back to you and all Chicanos.
September 10th, 2011 on 8:28 am
Latino, Hispanic… etc.. these are labels imposed by stupid USA Americans to pretend they are superior. I find laughable that mongrel people – like the USA population – calls themselves Caucasians (whatever that means) and reserve the Latino or Hispanic label for people who in many cases are whiter than them. Can’t wait till China rules the world…
November 25th, 2011 on 12:44 am
I see your point of view. Personally, I consider myself Hispanic due to my ancestry. Growing up, the word Chicano was never used at home or to be considered as a “label” because it’s slang, and it’s also less than respectful. Or how my parents and grandparents always said “Es una desigualdad”. I think a lot of people should know their family ancestry more because the ancestry should not just begin and end with the mother and father. If you don’t know Spanish too well try to improve it and find out what certain words actually do mean. The Spanish language has plenty of non-Spanish words that a lot of us Hispanics, Latinos or Chicanos or whatever you want to label yourself doesn’t know about. Within that language there is a history. Either way the Spanish language is a beautiful language. Not an indigenous one from where I’m from but it’s certainly beautiful.
And George Lopez not a fan. Some of the stuff that he says might be true and funny but he puts down the Mexican community down.
February 10th, 2012 on 5:05 pm
Your parents and grandparents were simply trying to avoid discrimination. They told you that the word Chicano was “disrespectful”, which was a roundabout way of saying that it was DISRESPECTED by Anglos and their emulators. They did not want the mistreatment. Which was visited upon Chicanos, and wished to “up-grade” themselves. Such was not the case in my family, my parents, aunts and uncles all pretty much accepted that we were not mejicanos, and certainly not Anglos, and the barrio self descriptive Chicano was us. You seem not to know much of your history. It was Chicanos who struggled valiantly in the fifties and sixties to ameliorate discimination in hiring, housing an schools, and not much “Hispanics” who sat on their hands and criticized us Chicanos for beiing “radical trouble-makers” and at he same time were willing to take advantage of the social change that WE, not they brought about. We paved the way, not they. Ask yourself, who say that you call yourself “HIspanic”, and wish to respect your heritage, why you should use this, an English language descriptive, and not a Spanish language one?? I also avoid another English language descriptive: Mexican-American, for the saeme reason. When I was young I heard my aunt say one day: “people who call themselves that (Hispanic/Mexican American) are trying to curry favor with our oppressor, the gringo”. Much truth to that, still, today.
February 13th, 2012 on 12:15 pm
And furthermore, you say that castilian (or, Spanish to you) is not an indigenous language, where you come from. Since you make no mention of the native languages of this continent, I presume that you are comparing castilian to the English language. Again, you show lack of awareness of the history of our idioma inside of what is now the geographical US. Pedro Menendez de Avilés, an outstanding Spanish marinero (from the province of Asturias, like many of my antecedents), was sent to Florida to destroy the French attempts to control that region, which he accomplished, founding San Agustin de la Florida, in 1565, some sixty five years before the Pilgrims even appeared on the eastern seaboard. And further, Cabrillo, sailing the coast of what is now California, established a colony in what is now San Diego, a castilian speaking community, in 1541, or a hundred and one years before the Pilgrims showed their faces in the “New World”. So, what you call “Spanish” was spoken here in California, my home state, some three hundred years BEFORE the violent 1849 gringo “Gold Rush” take-over, where they also busied themselves slaughtering and scattering the remaining tribes,tribelets and families of indigenous peoples not yet so graced by the Spanish and their soldiers, priests, ‘Indian hunts”, destruction of cultures and spirituality, forced labor, encarceration in church-run dens of Europen diseases, sexual abuse, and Genocide. And of course, there was don Juan de Oñate’s violently established colonies in what is now New Mexico, in the originally Pueblo indian region, in 1598. So don’t be fooled by specious gringo history which overtly or not would have you think that they founded colonies in the eastern region of what is now the USA, and rolled “inexorably and indefatigably” to the west coast, breaking treaties, and killing and dispossesing the original inhabitats, and so this country is “theirs”. The first order of respect for me and such as you, should be toward the native peoples, evrywhere, and not the violent colonizer. Go to Safeway’s where they have a “Hispanic Foods” section, which is a big lie. Chile, corn,tomatoes, beans and squash are native foods, and not of Spanish origin. Safeways marketers, also ignorant, or more likely racist becauseschoole in racist US schools, and because that is what large corporations too often are, are deprived of the grace of at least calling it an “Indo-Hispanic Food Section”. And corn was DEVELOPED by the genius of native people,from a simple grass-like plant, some six thousand years ago. Corn, for good reason sacred to many tribes, and very nutritious mixed with beans,will die unless cared for by humans, not being “wild” anymore. I have met many anglos who refuse to believe that, because of racist notions of “Indian backwardness”. Stereoypes here replacing our real history. To me,”Hispanics” are a mess. Saludos.
July 30th, 2012 on 1:43 am
Yah I agree with alot of these responses. Chicanos are a distinct group. I think it’s important to point out, that in my experience many Chicanos have a serious identity crisis, especially adolescents. Like they are kind of in limbo between cultural spheres. So the need to define ones self is important because finding a solid identity in that situation is tough. I mean look at the Chicano reality – the kids speak poor English and poor Spanish, they aren’t ‘Mexican’ but they’re certainly viewed as such. And even if they feel American, there’s a strong sentiment that they are not wanted here. I think it’s cool that kid was wearing that t-shirt. Just remember that he’s probably affirming his identity to himself as much as to the public.
We are different, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. I’m really against the whole assimilationist/nationalist perspective. We need to learn to accept cultures that do not conform to the American ideal. I mean really, if your brown, your brown – there’s no shame in that.
July 30th, 2012 on 1:56 am
Maybe it bothers you because you haven’t settled on your own identity.
July 30th, 2012 on 2:01 am
Your face is Hispanic.