Nov 30, 2017 |
Agnes Mondragon Celis Ochoa, PhD student, Anthropology
Photo by Toni François
Santa Muerte, a folk saint so little known before the turn of the century—in a religious landscape mostly populated by centuries-old figures—has become widely present in the Mexican public sphere in the past few years and, just as quickly, has been associated with criminality and drug violence in the media. This association has depicted Santa Muerte’s followers not only as criminals themselves, but also as engaging in illegitimate, even blasphemous, devotional practices. While this mass-mediated association resonates with old, Porfirian-age and ultimately colonial discourses linking Mexican lower classes to criminality —which of course, says more about class hierarchies in Mexican society than about Santa Muerte devotees themselves—I consider there to be, indeed, a relation between this saint and violence that remains unexplored. By examining a collective ritual that takes place in Santa Muerte’s main shrine in the downtown slum of Tepito, Mexico City, I wish to explore one of the ways in which such a relation plays out.
Tepito is a neighborhood best known for its massive informal market—where, allegedly, one can buy commodities of all imaginable kinds—but is also remarkable for its strong communal identity, which claims a pre-Hispanic past and which was able to resist gentrification efforts by the local government . It seems to have harshly felt the well-known effects of neoliberalism: unprecedented flows of money (especially of illegal trades), greater inequality, harsher capitalist competition, and the violence this brings about. The practices surrounding Santa Muerte, I argue, are means through which this violence is collectively acknowledged, evaluated and addressed, while offering a space by which the community of devotees reminds itself of such a fact and (ritually) reconstructs social bonds, which are crucial for both collective and individual survival.
Photo by Saúl Ruiz
On the first day of the month, devotees gather around the Santa Muerte shrine well before the main ceremony. Many are seen close to their Santa Muerte icons, either because they are holding them in their arms [image 1] or because they have placed them over a piece of cloth on the floor, like small, improvised shrines [image 2]. All sorts of small objects—candies, toy bills, beaded bracelets—can be seen in people’s hands or adorning their statuettes. The objects are gifts brought and distributed by devotees in return for miracles granted by Santa Muerte. As has become customary, devotees bring many such objects, which indicates the magnitude of the intended repayment. Devotees will offer them as gifts to several of the numerous Santa Muerte statuettes gathered on that day—insofar as all are equally indexes of the same Santa Muerte. While offering the saint her gratitude, however, it becomes unclear whether the recipient of the gift is Santa Muerte or (also) the devotee carrying the icon. Moreover, the gift is usually accompanied by a que te cuide y te proteja, “may she look after and protect you”, whose target is clearly a fellow devotee. In this way, the gift giver is demonstrating Santa Muerte’s efficacy to the recipient and encouraging others to engage in or maintain relations with her. As anthropologist Timothy Knowlton shows for a similar ritual, [5. Timothy Knowlton, “Inscribing the Miraculous Place: Writing and Ritual Communication in the Chapel of a Guatemalan Popular Saint”, Linguistic Anthropology, 25(3), December 2015] these individual communicative acts, superimposed on each other—as can be seen in the accumulation of gifts adorning the statuettes [image 1]—constitute and help sustain this collective devotion overtime.
But there is more to this. Gift giving, one of the classical concerns in anthropology, has been found to be at the very foundation of sociality, as acts that inaugurate (or, in our case, reestablish) social bonds and that carry the obligation to reciprocate. Following Nancy Munn, a gift may initiate a reciprocal transaction, and thus a social bond—a connection between the two persons involved where the gift giver is constituted and remembered as a generous person and her action reciprocated through a return gift sometime in the future.
This logic of reciprocity, although inverted, appears in devotional practices through which Santa Muerte followers attempt to harm others, to retaliate against others’ abuses of power or to counteract a competitor’s conspicuous economic success, situations that have become increasingly common, as mentioned, in recent years. The possibility to engage in these harmful practices, however, comes with a warning: Santa Muerte takes a loved one if a devotee fails to repay a favor. In other words, Santa Muerte takes revenge by mirroring the devotee’s harmful act, and thus breaking this devotee’s network of social bonds in the same way that she mirrors a devotee’s thankful repayment by creating a new social bond through gift giving, as the ritual above describes.
Knowledge about Santa Muerte’s revengefulness, for devotees, is thus a recurrent reminder about the perils of destroying social relations. Communal ritual practices not only result from the collective acknowledgment that a network of friends and kin is fundamental for everyday survival—especially in communities that have faced the hardships of poverty —but also that violence is ultimately unsustainable for social life. Santa Muerte followers then gather once a month in order to ritually suture back these severed bonds. In this way, the community becomes an agent that sustains itself into the future.
Oct 31, 2017 |
Franco Bavoni Escobedo, MAPSS AM’16
Chicago hosts the second largest Mexican community in the United States after Los Angeles. Between 2010–2014, 669,000 Mexican migrants resided in the metropolitan area, representing 7% of the total population and 40% of the foreign-born population. Unsurprisingly, scholars and observers alike adopted the idea of a “Mexican Chicago.” Contrary to what some might think, however, Mexican Chicago is more than the mere presence of Mexicans in Chicago. As Nicholas De Genova argues, Mexican Chicago is produced through migrants’ everyday-life practices, which tie this space irreversibly to Mexico and, at the same time, render it irretrievable for the US nation-state. This is not to say that Mexican Chicago pertains to the Mexican nation-state. Rather, says De Genova, it is the result of migrants’ particular social situation through which the meaning of “Mexican” itself comes to be reconfigured. Thus, Mexican Chicago has to be constantly reworked and reproduced through social interaction.
Few spaces are as emblematic of Mexican Chicago as the numerous Hispanic soccer leagues that exist in the city. A steady stream of new Mexican migrants after World War II, combined with soccer’s dramatic expansion south of the border, led in the 1970s to what David Trouille calls the “Latinization” of the game. The foundation of the Chicago Latin American Soccer Association (CLASA) in 1973 was followed by the exponential growth of Mexican soccer in the next decades. According to Raúl Dorantes and Febronio Zatarain, the main four leagues average 7,000 members each, but the total number of registered players in the Chicago metropolitan area is close to a quarter million.
So how does one experience Mexican Chicago through soccer? The answer is not straightforward. My fieldwork with San Rafael, a Chicago-based team founded by migrants from a rural town of the same name in Michoacán, reveals how varying sets of relationships and situational factors can alter the meaning of “Mexican” in Mexican Chicago. A very brief comparison between the summer and winter seasons proves illuminating in this regard.
Summer Season
An atmosphere largely reminiscent of rural Michoacán characterizes the summer season games. Although many players are of the 1.5 and second generations, most supporters are first-generation migrants who have lived several years in the United States. As Luis Escala-Rabadán points out, participants “reconstruct their place of origin” through the soccer experience despite being far away from it. For example, since the heat in both San Rafael and Chicago is usually intense, attendees north and south of the border congregate under the trees to seek refuge from the sun and chat. In both locations, Mexican snacks, chicharrones, are available for purchase on the sidelines of the field. Whether in Chicago or San Rafael, most participants also enjoy a few beers while watching the game, and drinking continues for hours afterwards. Moreover, soccer games in both sites pit teams that represent specific towns against each other, which reinforces a sense of pride among participants. Finally, in both Mexico and the United States conversations are in Spanish.
Besides the similarities between both sites, attendees in Chicago intensify their sense of proximity to San Rafael by talking about the town and using certain idiosyncratic references that only someone from the pueblo would understand. For instance, they often talk about belonging to los de arriba or los de abajo (those from above or from below). The dividing line is the village’s church. Those whose homes are located before it are from abajo, while those who live after it are from arriba. In Chicago the distinction is mostly used to joke around: Rodrigo, without hesitating, teasingly refused to give Óscar a ride because he was from arriba. Thus, during the summer season, “Mexican” acquires a very specific meaning for first-generation supporters: as one of them put it, “it’s all about meeting with the people from the pueblo.”
Winter Season
At la Pershing, the facilities where the San Rafael indoor soccer games take place, things are different. The first-generation supporters from the town are mostly absent, and players are predominantly of the 1.5 and second generations. Still, the space is filled with Mexican features. As one enters the premises, the booming Mexican music can be immediately heard. The majority of players wear Mexican teams’ jerseys, and the multiple screens show the Mexican soccer league on Univision, a Spanish-language television network. Next to a cash register there is an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, another conspicuous symbol of Mexicanness.
However, instead of vendors selling chicharrones, there is a fast food restaurant where customers can buy American food such as hot dogs, popcorn, and nachos. Whereas the use of English is extremely limited in the summer, the norm at la Pershing is a combination of both languages. On and off the soccer field, continuous code switching between Spanish and English soon becomes apparent. There is also a store where people can acquire sports equipment. When I walk in and ask for shin guards in Spanish, the clerk asks me to please repeat my question in English, as she cannot understand. It then dawns on me: this is just another face of Mexican Chicago, no less Mexican than the one that emerges during summer season games. As a 1.5-generation player told me, this is an opportunity to feel “more Mexican” as opposed to feeling “more American” while at work.
In sum, although the San Rafael soccer team is doubtlessly embedded in Mexican Chicago, its meaning varies significantly in different settings and according to the actors involved. However, this is just the first step of the analysis. As Lisa Wedeen argues, the importance of these practices does not reside simply in what they mean to their practitioners, but also in the ways in which they produce specific logics and generate observable political effects. That is, precisely, the goal of my research.
References
- De Genova, Nicholas. 1998. “Race, Space, and the Reinvention of Latin America in Mexican Chicago,” Latin American Perspectives, 25: 87–116.
- Dorantes, Raúl and Febronio Zatarain. 2007. …Y nos vinimos de mojados: cultura mexicana en Chicago. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México.
- Escala-Rabadán, Luis. 2012. “Migración, redes sociales y clubes de futbol de los migrantes hidalguenses en Estados Unidos.” In Offside/Fuera de lugar: futbol y migraciones en el mundo contemporáneo, edited by Guillermo Alonso Meneses and Luis Escala-Rabadán, 133–150. Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
- Trouille, David. 2008. “Association Football to Fútbol: Ethnic Succession and the History of Chicago-Area Soccer since 1920,” Soccer & Society, 10: 795–822.
- Wedeen, Lisa. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
May 3, 2017 |
Alysia Mann Carey, PhD Student, Political Science
“To be a mother is a gift from God. A child is inside you and there is pain when they are born, but you are happy and you kiss their arms and legs. But when this happens, when you lose your child in such a tragic way, it is a pain and sadness that is unexplainable. You carry it with you. And more so when it is like my case, or Ana’s case, which is about a people and about security and those people that are supposed to give security are creating more misery and death for human beings, it is hard. When I heard pa-pa-pa-pa I looked around for my son. Where is My Son! It was then that I felt the hand of the government in my womb. And it is still there.” (Dona. Santana, Mother of one of the victims/Militant—React or Die! Campaign)
“The pilgrimage from the Police Station-Hospital-morgue, or Police Station-Hospital-morgue-Child and Adolescent Foundation (FUNDAC), or Police Station-Hospital-Morgue-Cemetery, has been the routine for Black families headed by Black women.” (Andreia Beatriz dos Santos, Coordinator/Militant—React or Die! Campaign)
The above quotes from Dona. Santana (pseudonym), a mother-activist who lost her son in what has come to be known as the Cabula Massacre, and Andreia Beatriz, coordinator/militant for the React or Die Campaign, represent important starting points for theorizing state violence against Black women. This is a theme that my research directly engages. Both of these women’s narratives demonstrate that state violence penetrates intimate spaces for Black women: the body (through the womb, through the cries over the death of a child, through walking to and from various sites that signify death and violence) and the family (through no longer being able to mother a child, or young children growing up without a loved one). It is in this context that my research takes a Black feminist approach (i.) to understanding how state violence impacts Black women in intimate ways. Thus, using ethnographic approaches, I examine how Black women describe, understand, and navigate state violence, and other forms of violence in their daily lives. Further, I investigate how Black women also lead movements that connect and confront different forms of violence in their lives and communities.
Five months after the Cabula massacre, I traveled to Salvador, Bahia for the second time to conduct pre-dissertation fieldwork in June 2015. During this time, I met with organizers from the React or Die Campaign as well as the mothers or partners of those who were killed in the massacre. On Friday, February 6, 2015 military police officers from RONDESP (Special Military Operations Forces (ii) raided the working class, majority Black neighborhood of Cabula in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil. The officers maintained that they entered into a gun battle with 30 men who were hoarding arms and criminal paraphernalia. However, witnesses claimed that they were unarmed. In the end, police killed 12 Black boys and young men between the ages of 16 and 27. A separate investigation found that the police entered the community, rounded up the boys on a small plot of land, used as a soccer field by neighborhood youth, and executed them one by one (iii).
On Monday, August 24, 2015, React or Die held its 3rd Annual (Inter)National March against the Genocide of Black People. The March represented a culmination of yearlong organizing efforts, community work, and familial support for victims killed by state violence. The march was scheduled to commence in front of the Public Security Building downtown, but early on that Monday morning, around 9 a.m. I watched over 200 people gather outside of the State University of Bahia, located in Cabula. Organizers, supporters, mothers, family members, and loved ones were to walk through the streets of Cabula, to the community of Villa Moisés, where a memorial service was held for the victims of the Cabula Massacre, on the very plot of land that their lives were taken.
Preparations for the memorial stone in Villa Moisés, August 24, 2015. Activists from the React or Die Campaign took these photos. I was given permission to include them in this blog post.
Forming two lines, organizers, mothers, friends, and other family members walked through the street chanting, “Against the Genocide of Black People, no step back” and “We want Justice.” Upon arrival in Villa Moisés, we stopped just before descending into the community. Around us, there were many two-story townhome-like structures. Hearing the chants for Black life and the demands for justice, an older woman came out and stood on her patio, looking over the rail. At that time, one of the coordinators of the React or Die Campaign took the megaphone to greet the community members: “Good Morning Villa Moisés. We are here in memory of the dead. We are marching today for our lives. Villa Moisés will not be forgotten.” The woman who stood out on her patio responded by raising her fist in support, giving us a blessing to enter.
The procession proceeded down into Villa Moisés. Upon arriving at the site where the 12 boys and young men were killed, four straight lines were formed. Mothers, sisters, aunts, fathers, supporters, organizers came to the front to present themselves and to speak the names of those killed. After each person was named the galera (crowd) in unison yelled “presente (present):”
Ricardo Matos, Presente! Júnior, Presente! Anjos, Presente! Adailton, Presente! Alessandra, Presente ! Fatima, Presente! Amarildo, Presente! Maria Vitoria, Presente!
One by one, family members, mothers, partners spoke up about their fight
“As we gather, we encounter our force, our power, our ability to live. We have become the voices for our sons and daughters, and we won’t allow the continued murder of young Blacks to destroy our lives. Their blood is not so cheap that we allow their murders.”
“We cannot go one step back! We can’t let this tragedy continue. Every single day, we encounter another mother grieving, another body laying dead in the street — we will not let this happen any longer. We have to fight, we have to react…While there is even one little voice screaming deep down there, in the end, that voice will be representing all of our dead.“ (Ana Paula)
The words of Ana Paula resonated with me, and reminded me of the first time I read Audre Lorde’s poem “A Litany of Survival” in Lyndon Gill’s course on Erotic Subjectivities. As a Black Caribbean Feminist, Lorde tells Black women throughout the diaspora that we must speak, “remembering we were never meant to survive.” The words of Ana Paula and Audre Lorde speak to the transnational dimension of Black women’s power: Ana Paula’s words were a response to the poem, a continuation of a conversation across space and time. Andreia echoed the same conversation: “Our pain is transnational. Our fight is transnational…Joquielson, Presente! Jonathan, Presente! Rakia Boyd, Presente! Tony Robinson, Presente! Aiyana Jones, Presente! Everson, Presente! Kaique, Presente! Sandra Bland, Presente! Jackson Cavalho, Presente! Trayvon Martin, Presente! Mike Brown, Presente!”
The mothers and family members who spoke are experts in their own right—they have searched for children when they were disappeared, unidentified in city morgues, or located in clandestine graves in the outskirts of the city. These Black mother activists vocalized their criticisms of governmental impunity and necropolitics throughout Brazil. They exposed the particular experiences of Black mothers, a theme explored in the literature on gendered racial violence in the Americas (v.).
For me, it became clear that even in the face of government indifference and attacks, these women created a network of support and autonomous organizing, creating a grassroots organization fighting against a genocidal state responsible for the deaths of their children and thousands of others. At the end of the memorial, people gathered around a plaque in memory of victims of state violence. The memorial stone read “’We continue to live and fight for Black people in the diaspora’ Campaign React or Die!” This inscription reminded me of Patricia Hill Collins’ words: “motherhood can serve as a site where Black women express and learn the power of self-definition, the importance of valuing and respecting [themselves], the necessity of self-reliance and independence, and a belief in Black women’s empowerment.” (vi).
As the memorial came to an end, everyone walked to Engomadeira, a nearby community where some of the surviving family members of the Cabula massacre lived, to have lunch. Around two o’clock in the afternoon, we made our way to the headquarters of the Military Police, where the march itself would commence. More than 5,000 people gathered on the street. The march would end outside of the Office of the Secretary of Public Security for the State of Bahia. The beginning and end of this march were significant for many reasons. The women of Reaja directly confronted the state and the “official story,” not only of Cabula, but of other cases of anti-Black violence across Brazil, and throughout the African diaspora. Their physical presence in front of the Military Police Headquarters and the Public Security office was a practice of unveiling the intimate violence and suffering perpetrated against them, their families, their sisters, and their communities. Their presence highlights the central place that Black women occupy in the history of organizing, (vii.) making visible the pain, suffering, and violence that the state, reporting, and news media ridiculed and made to be a spectacle. Mothers were holding large signs depicting their slain children. Women spoke the names that the state tried to erase. Shouts erupted from the crowd, such as “They try to deny our humanity,” and “the dead too have a voice.”
Mothers marching in front of the Military Police Headquarters, August 24, 2015
Just like the land upon which the young people were killed in Cabula, the streets in front of the buildings were transformed into spaces of resistance against genocide. Through occupation of the streets, the courtrooms, government offices, Black women disrupted these spaces, reconfiguring them as sites for collective grieving. Their activism disrupts a narrative of “what (whose) life is worth, a narrative that says that Black life is worth less and that life itself can be valued based on race, economic status, gender, etc. (viii.) During the memorial ceremony, one of the family members said, “Their blood is not so cheap that we allow their murders.” “As we gather, we encounter our force, our power, our ability to live.” The acts of re-membering their loved ones, collective grieving and making public the pain and suffering at the hands of the state, provide a language (whether verbal, emotional, or embodied) for these women to articulate their experiences and to take political action. Organizing, activism, re/memory and grief are engaged as central, pivotal, and diasporic sites for theorizing Black politics and liberation (ix.).
Footnotes
i. This approach draws on and contributes to scholarship that situates Black women’s organizing as key sites for the production of theory and knowledge. See for example, Cardoso, Cláudia Pons. “Amefricanizando o feminismo: o pensamento de Lélia Gonzalez.” Revista Estudos Feministas 22, no. 3 (2014): 965-986; Perry, Keisha-Khan Y. Black Women against the Land Grab. University of Minnesota Press, 2013; Smith, Christen A. “Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas.” Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 31-48; Collective, Combahee River. ‘A Black Feminist Statement’. na, 1982.
ii. Similar to S.W.A.T in the US.
iii. Data released by the prosecutors in an interview to the press, published on May 12, 2015. (http://www.correio24horas.com.br/detalhe/noticia/morte-de-12-homens-no-cabula-foi-execucao-diz-mp-policiais-serao-denunciados/?cHash=9cc0567b569bdbe83b2aa06242ec07f5). Also see http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2015/05/18/politica/1431971338_499756.html; According to Bahia’s Government article (http://www.secom.ba.gov.br/2015/07/126443/Caso-Cabula-inquerito-conclui-que-PMs-agiram-em-legitima-defesa.html) Information released exclusively by El Pais newspaper (http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2015/07/25/politica/1437834347_077854.html)
iv. Activists from the React or Die Campaign took these photos. I was given permission to include them in this blog post.
v. Perry, Keisha-Khan Y. Black Women against the Land Grab; Smith, Christen A. “Facing the Dragon; Rocha, Luciane de Oliveira. “Outraged mothering: black women, racial violence, and the power of emotions in Rio de Janeiro’s African Diaspora.” PhD diss., 2014; Rocha, Luciane de Oliveira. “Black mothers’ experiences of violence in Rio de Janeiro.” Cultural Dynamics 24, no. 1 (2012): 59-73; Smith, Christen A. Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil. University of Illinois Press, 2016.; Also see the Transforming Anthropology special edition (24, no. 1) “Sorrow as Artifact: Radical Black Mothering in Times of Terror.
vi. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge, 2002.
vii. James, Joy. Shadowboxing: Representations of Black feminist politics. St. Martin’s Press, 1999; Perry, Keisha-Khan Y. Black Women against the Land Grab;
viii. Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. “We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2010, 50
ix. Cardoso, Cláudia Pons. Amefricanizando o feminismo; Perry, Keisha-Khan Y. Black Women against the Land Grab; Smith, Christen A. “Facing the Dragon; Collective, Combahee River. ‘A Black Feminist Statement’; Rocha, Luciane de Oliveira. “Outraged mothering”
On May 25, CLAS will cosponsor “Grief as Resistance: Racialized State Violence and the Politics of Black Motherhood in the Americas,” a transnational conversation with Black mothers who have lost children to state violence. Mother-activists from the US, Brazil, and Colombia share their struggles and strategies of resistance against police violence, mass incarceration, and the unrelenting injustices facing Black communities around the world.
For more information please visit: http://events.uchicago.edu/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Mar 9, 2017 |
Laura Horton, PhD Candidate, Comparative Human Development and Linguistics
As I make my way down the precipitously steep hill from the parque central towards the Xolacul neighborhood, I am grateful that the municipial government of Nebaj has seen fit to extend the concrete pavement this far. I jump out of the street, over the deep gutter, to avoid the tuk-tuks that race around a large truck unloading cases of Guatemala’s signature beer, “El Gallo,” at a local cantina. I hurry on, past where the pavement ends, to a deeply rutted gravel and dirt street up the hill and further away from the center of town.
I pass tiendas and tortilleras, opening up for business, as kids make their way to school in matching uniforms. I arrive at La Escuela Oficial para Educacion Especiál de Nebaj (EOEE), the local school for special education, around 8:30. The early-arriving students are sweeping up the courtyard and classrooms, sprinkling water on the covered porch to keep the dust down, and picking up trash from the road in front of the school. Older students lean on the front gate, catching up on yesterday’s news—their hands waving and pointing and gesturing fluidly, occasionally punctuated by headshakes, pushing, shoving and chasing. These students are deaf, and while some have deaf relatives at home, others only interact with other deaf people when they are at school, with other deaf peers.
The school enrolls students from the age of three with a wide range of disabilities including physical handicaps, learning disabilities and Downs syndrome. There are also 5–8 deaf students who attend, depending on the year. None of the deaf students at the school has enough residual hearing to learn Ixhil, the Mayan language spoken in the community, or Spanish, the language children learn when they begin attending school. None of the teachers at the school knows LENSEGUA, the official sign language of Guatemala, used primarily in Guatemala City, nine hours south of Nebaj.
The deaf students thus invent their own gestural systems to communicate—with their hearing family members, with their teachers and with each other. These gestural systems, called homesign systems , have been studied in many countries around the world where, like Nebaj, there are deaf children and adults who cannot hear the spoken language in their environment, and who are not part of a community that uses a national sign language . These studies have established that homesign systems created by individual deaf children and adults are often internally consistent and share many properties with established languages . When individual deaf homesigners are brought together in a community or institutional setting, like a school, they can converge on a shared sign language within a few age-cohort “generations.” The daily contact between homesigners, combined with transmission of the manual communication system to a new age-cohort generation of deaf children who enter into the community, gives rise to a new sign language, significantly insulated from contact with the surrounding spoken language(s) .
After school finishes for the day, I go to Ana and Emilio’s house to try a new elicitation task with them. I arrive with my video cameras, tripod and backpack full of toys and books. I chat briefly with their mom, who is headed out to the market, and then set up the cameras opposite to three plastic chairs dragged out onto the covered porch from inside the house. Ana sits at a table across from Emilio with a book of photos of familiar objects and places, including animals, vehicles, tools and food. Emilio sits next to his younger brother, Marco, who is hearing. They are facing Ana and Emilio holds a paper with a grid of 16 pictures. Ana describes each photo to Emilio and he then tries to select the correct picture from his array of photos.
This game helps me document and understand Ana and Emilio’s homesign systems in two ways. First, I am recording the signs that Ana uses to describe everyday things in her world. I will take this data back to Chicago and code it for features like handshape and movement to understand how his signs are similar or different from other homesigners in Nebaj, as well as other established and emergent sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL) or Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). Second, this “matcher” task allows me to observe Ana and Emilio interacting with each other, to observe how they resolve miscommunications and negotiate their homesign systems when there is confusion.
Ana turns to a page with a photo of a horse. She uses a gesture that many hearing people employ when talking about animals across Latin America, a flat hand extended from her body, with the palm facing inwards. She then gestures with her hands at her shoulders, a common description of a person or animal carrying a heavy load. Emilio looks up from the array, having missed this sequence, and Ana repeats only the carry gesture. Emilio points out a photo of a pile of firewood, often carried in the way that Ana demonstrated. She looks down, indicating that he has not selected the correct photo based on her description so he searches the array again. His little brother Marco taps him on the shoulder and gestures to indicate large ears, similar to a horse, then waves his hand in front of his mouth, a common gestural emblem to mean “eating” used by both hearing people and the deaf homesigners in Nebaj. Emilio looks back at the array of photos and points out a photo of a dog. Ana, frustrated, turns her book around to show Emilio the photo of the horse. He finds the matching picture in his array and points to it repeatedly.
This missed communicative exchange is interesting to me for a lot of reasons, not least because Ana had trouble picking out the same photo of a horse from the same array, moments earlier when Emilio was the one describing the photos to her. It may seem surprising that these siblings, the only two deaf children in a family of eight, do not share the same sign for an animal that they see every day in the roads and fields around their home. It is possible that, had Emilio seen Ana make the animal gesture before the carry gesture, he could have selected the correct photo from his array. It is also interesting that, when Emilio did not select the correct photo on the first try, Marco, his brother who is not deaf, recognizes the structure of the task and the fact that he must sign to Emilio to communicate a piece of missing information to him. Even when Marco supplies the information that Emilio missed when Ana described the horse the first time (that it was an animal and that it was eating) Emilio chooses a different animal from the array. Ana does not attempt to clarify for Emilio, instead showing him her photo of the horse after he has incorrectly chosen photos of firewood and a dog.
View of one of the main roads through Nebaj, Guatemala
This brief interaction illustrates the fragility and contingent nature of communication for homesigners in Nebaj. They navigate their world trying to communicate with a variety of people who do not share their modality of communicating (visual-manual homesign versus oral-aural spoken language), much less their particular communicative system. Sometimes, it seems that even a sibling who is also deaf, and also a homesigner, does not automatically entail comprehension between homesigners. The question I seek to answer with my data is how these kinds of interaction, between siblings who are both homesigners, between siblings who are deaf and hearing, between homesigning children and their homesigning parents, and between homesigning peers at school, affect the structure and stability of emergent communication systems.
The front gate of the Escuela Oficial para Educación Especial (Official School for Special Education, Nebaj)
Students play a game in the courtyard of the Official School for Special Education, Nebaj, Guatemala
References
Coppola, M. & Newport, E. (2005). Grammatical Subjects in home sign: Abstract linguistic structure in adult primary gesture systems without linguistic input. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(52), 19249-19253.
Frishberg, N. (1987). Home sign. In J. Van Cleve (ed.), Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness (Vol. 3) New York: McGraw Hill. 128–131.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York, N.Y.: Psychology Press.
Goldin-Meadow, S., Özyürek, A., Sancar, B., & Mylander, C. (2009). Making language around the globe: A cross-linguistic study of homesign in the United States, China, and Turkey. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig & S. Ervin-Tripp (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin. N.Y.: Taylor & Francis, 27-39.
Kegl, J., Senghas, A., Coppola, M. (1999) Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In M. DeGraff (ed.), Language creation and language change: Creolization diachrony, and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 179–237.
Kegl, J. & Iwata, G. (1989). Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense: A Pidgin Sheds Light on the “Creole?” ASL. In Carlson, R., S. DeLancey, S. Gildea, D. Payne, and A. Saxena, (eds.). Proceedings of the Fourth Meetings of the Pacific Linguistics Conference. Eugene, Oregon: Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon, pp. 266–294.
Polich, L. (2005). The Emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua: “With sign language you can learn so much.” Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Senghas, R., Senghas, A., & Pyers, J. (2004). The emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In S. T. Parker, J. Langer, & C. Milbrath (Eds.), Biology and Knowledge revisited: From neurogenesis to psychogenesis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 287-306.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Feb 1, 2017 |
Alexander Slater Johnson, LACS MA’14
When I stepped onto the University of Chicago campus back in the fall of 2013, I was ready to greet it and its atmosphere as if it were an old friend. The well-trimmed gardens, the tree-lined paths; all of the UC campus immediately reminded me of my years at the University of Oregon. The similarities, however, ended there. I had returned to Academia after a three-year absence; an indulgent sabbatical where I worked and traveled around Spain, teaching the English language while improving my own knowledge of Spanish. I decided to accept the University of Chicago’s offer to do a one-year Master’s program through the Center for Latin American Studies, otherwise known as CLAS, to continue my research interests in Latin American history. I had completed my undergraduate thesis under professor Carlos Aguirre, who helped me in my writing on the role declassification has had on the official histories of the tumultuous and violent decades of authoritarianism in the Southern Cone.
When you spend time outside of the walls of the academy, its realities begin to take on a rather different, even romanticized look. The razor-sharp, competitive edges are smoothed-over into a warm, inviting bear hug where everyone dives into their intellectual passions and research in an environment of a collaborative love of knowledge. Or maybe that was just the University of Oregon. The truth is, the University of Chicago was a different beast altogether. The initial nine months (which invariably extended into my first sweltering Chicago summer), saw incredible mental stress, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree shift in my research interests, and a game I played with the undergraduates rest of the master’s students called “catch up.”
I entered the CLAS Master’s program with a History degree and left one year later with an unbridled passion for Literature. Indeed, it was Mario Vargas Llosa’s book The War of the End of the World and subsequently Brazilian history at the turn of the twentieth century that motivated me to apply in the first place. I was hesitant to focus on literature, however, due to my undergraduate background and a lack of confidence in my ability to assimilate into the world of literary studies. But all of that fades away on a campus, and here is where that cold intellectual bubble began to warm up a bit. It was post-doctoral lecturer Rosario Granados-Salinas as well as historian Dain Borges who encouraged my interest in literature, and supported what would become my rather arabesque thesis project.
Studying the Humanities is a daunting proposition these days. Unless you are sure about that PhD, about entering the tenure-track race, about conference circuits, and about the viability of your research interests, studying literature can raise not a few eyebrows —especially if you’re footing most of the bill for that Master’s degree. Nevertheless, literature became my new field of study, and (as with any discipline) there are centuries of writers, theorists and academics you must have read or at least “know” in some ambiguous, head-nodding way. This is when “catch up” began in earnest. I took a variety of courses and checked out piles of books from the library. And I had to learn Portuguese. It wasn’t my best idea.
Immediately the difficulty set in. I felt inferior in almost every sense of the word, and while such a feeling is as isolating as it gets, the staff and professors associated with Latin American and Caribbean Studies, as well as a few generous souls in the English department, helped me settle in. With their encouragement, I discovered new avenues of research and slowly gained confidence in working in the Humanities, a field constantly battling the forces of darkness, otherwise known as the social and hard sciences.
My research eventually led me to a small field called Inter-American Studies, which studies connections across all disciplines between the North, Central and South America. Vargas Llosa’s novel introduced me to the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha, whose monumental text Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands) is a generic anomaly on the War of Canudos. As chance would have it, I took a course called “Marx and Melville in the Global Nineteenth Century,” and to this day I am not sure if it was the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or my love of Moby-Dick, but before I knew it I was finding connections between these two works and the historical moments that drew Euclides da Cunha and Herman Melville to write their “Great Pan-American Novels.” That was what I said, at least, to my adviser, whose response will stay in my mind forever: “Far out.”
A Melville and da Cunha enthusiast himself, my adviser’s encouragement and his willingness to talk about role Herm and Euclides for hours in his office were invaluable to my year at University of Chicago and to my life outside of academia. The excitement I felt and the inhuman amount of stress I put upon myself in writing my thesis are things I will never forget. From within higher education, the passionate research you do seems like the most important thing you could possibly be doing. Advisors and professors take issue for every argument you make and challenge you to articulate, research and think like you never have before. The minute you step beyond those walls, however, the rigors of your daily life can easily relegate what was once so important to the backburner of your mind.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. What might seem opaque in the moment becomes lucid in hindsight. Although I still teach during the day, at night I put on my academic spandex and fight the criminal banality of daily life. I have started a podcast called “The Casual Academic.” At first, it was very challenging to put a show together from scratch and discuss literature for a wider audience. But preparing each episode is a chance for me to do what rigorous research Google permits me, articulate my ideas both verbally and on paper, and feel more and more that my master’s was worth it. There is an incredible amount of academic literature available on authors like Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and W.G. Sebald, and those discussions are always fruitful. When we do episodes on authors that are not household names (Venedikt Erofeev, Shirley Jackson, Clarice Lispector), I hear the voice of my adviser telling me to remember my training, and I get to work. Will I someday go back and pursue my dreams of a PhD? An open question, up for interpretation and discussion. For now, there are many ways to follow my interests, and I have my year at the University of Chicago to thank for showing me how.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Jan 19, 2017 |
Valeria López Fadul, Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar, History
There was once in Mexico City a painter named Baltasar de Echave. It was a time (the early seventeenth century) when the city’s Basque community was thriving. Echave, a man of distinction, grew increasingly concerned with what he believed to be the demise of the Basque language. The New World and its promises of gold and never-ending wealth lured many young people into perpetual exile from their ancestral homelands in the Iberian Peninsula, causing them to abandon their ancient estates. When these men and women reached the Indies their descendants adopted Castilian for convenience and abandoned Basque. In the same way that the disappearance of the Taínos of Hispaniola brought about a formal end to their spoken tongues, Echave feared that Basque too would fade away.[i]
The languages of the Caribbean were declining, their only vestiges the islands’ place names. But the situation of Basque could still be reversed. This compelled Echave to publish a treatise entitled the Discursos de la antigüedad de la lengua Cántabra-Bascongada in 1607. In it he celebrated his language’s nobility and expressive qualities.
Above all, however, Echave’s treatise stressed the antiquity of Basque. Like many other early modern thinkers, Echave believed that Basque had been the primordial and most widespread tongue of Spain and that it held a special place amongst the languages of mankind, including those spoken in the Americas. Furthermore, Echave trusted that the rapidly changing linguistic situation of the Indies could illuminate many of the forces that had acted upon Basque before histories were recorded. It could help show how this once general tongue was now spoken only by a few.
In other words, an understanding of the history and development of ancient indigenous societies like those of Mesoamerica or the Andes region together with the many demographic, political, economic, and environmental transformations brought about by one hundred years of Spanish rule could serve scholars like Echave “as examples and live portraits of what it was once like in the Old World.” Language and its transformations represented a way to stream back to the unrecorded past, to gain insight into the experiences of previous generations, to learn about people’s origins and the histories of the regions they inhabited. Language was an archive of knowledge.
The early modern Hispanic territories, like all pre-modern societies, were multilingual. The Spanish king viewed this polyglossia as a necessary corollary of ruling over the wide array of lands, climates, and natures that made up his vast composite realms. Writers of all genres were invested in studying languages and considered the knowledge that words contained as central to resolving a great variety of questions. Etymology, or the study of names, had the capacity to reveal great amounts of information about the objects that words signified and could be approached in diverse ways. These ranged from the exegetical to the mystical, to the historical, to the philosophical. Place names contained traces of their founders. The names of plants and animals revealed traces of those who had named them. The words used to designate objects and rituals betrayed clues about their purposes and functions.
Pages upon pages of etymological discussions abound in the writings of the first chroniclers of the Indies. Throughout the course of my research on the philosophy of language in early Latin America I came to appreciate the significance of these extensive linguistic digressions. They offer a window into the ways in which native authorities explained the foundation of their towns, their genealogies, and the order of the flora and fauna that surrounded them.
The island of Hispaniola, only recently known by its Hispanic appellation, was actually, and more meaningfully, called Haití. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (1457–1526), like most sixteenth-century chroniclers of the Indies, began his history of the Caribbean by presenting the etymology of the words that the natives used to designate their homeland. He distinguished between their ancient language and their current one and attempted to explain the reasoning behind the toponyms. The primitive inhabitants of those islands had given first the name of Quizqueia and then Haití to Hispaniola. These denominations, he warned, “were not the children of fickleness, but of the meaning that they had.” Quizqueia is “a big thing that does not have an equal.” This word signified “vastness, universe, everything.” Martire compared this name to the word Pan (all) that the Greeks used to refer to their islands, since, like the Caribbean Indians, they believed that their “magnitude was the whole orb, and that the sun does not warm anything else [but theirs] and the neighboring islands.”
Haití was equally expressive. It signified, in the ancient language of the islanders, roughness. The natives of Haití applied the designation to the whole territory, through metonymy. In many parts of Haití “expanses of steep mounts can be found, thick and terrifying jungles, and fearful and dark valleys given the altitude of its mounts, and in other parts it is very pleasant.” In their use of metonymy, Martire reflected that the Indians resembled the poets that sometimes referred to all of Italy as Lazio (Latium), which was formally the name of one central region. Quizqueia contained clues as to the native’s worldview and Haití information about the physical landscape of the island.[ii]
Martire’s intellectual rival Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557) used the study of names to convey his authoritative eyewitness status when describing countless plants and animals previously unknown to Europeans. The iguanas that lived throughout the islands and on the mainland were not, as Martire had claimed, similar to the crocodiles of the Egyptian Nile. These new world “dragons” were much smaller than those creatures. It was unclear to Oviedo whether they were aquatic or terrestrial and whether they could be consumed during Lent. That was best for each to decide.
Despite his uncertainties, Oviedo could attest to their size, since he had seen many of them and even kept a few in his home. The “yuana,” he explained meticulously, “is pronounced y and after a short interval u and then the three subsequent letters ana are uttered together, and in this way in the whole name [one] makes two stops in the manner in which it has been described.”[iii] Oviedo went to great pains to replicate the sounds of the animal’s native name.
When Echave published his book 50 years after the death of Oviedo, his friend Fernándo de Ojeda composed a short prologue to exalt the treatise’s accomplishments. Thinking about the linguistic change that had ensued since the arrival of the first Spaniards as a consequence of conquest and population demise, Ojeda challenged the notion that the spread of empire is always accompanied by the complete linguistic assimilation of those defeated. “Even though it is true,” Ojeda conceded, “that, as it has always been said, conquerors and their languages consume the speeches of vanquished peoples: This does not apply to the names of provinces, mountains, rivers, and springs, even if they are a bit altered, as we experience in the infinite provinces of these Indies, which still conserve with little variation its ancient names, because even though we renamed many of them in the Spanish fashion: these have been forgotten or have fallen out of use altogether and the old names of the Indians prevail, even after all of them have died-out in some parts.” Ojeda presented the case of the Caribbean islands and other regions in the mainland, like “Cuba, which the Spaniards named in the beginning Fernandina,” and also “in Habana, Bayamo, Jamayca, Yucatan, Chapultepec, Campeche, Mexico, Mechuacan, Tezcuco, Tlaxcala and Cholula, which are all Indian words.”[iv] The omnipresence of long-winded and excruciatingly detailed etymological discussions, despite seeming fantastical and naive to a modern reader, reveals just how central they were to the early modern scholar in ascertaining and presenting to a distant audience reliable and authoritative local knowledge.
Detail from Abraham Ortelius’ map of Cuba and surrounding islands showing the names Hispaniola and “Ayti.” Abraham Ortelius, “Hispaniolae, Cubae, aliarumque insularum circumiacientium, delineatio,” Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp: Plantin Press, 1598). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Detail from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias. 1a. parte (Sevilla: En la emprenta de Juana Cromberg, 1535). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Footnotes
[i] Baltasar de Echave, Discursos de la antiguedad de la lengua Cántabra-Bascongada compuestos por Balthasar de Echave, natural de la Villa de Çumaya en la Provincia de Guipuzcoa, y vezino de Mexico.(Mexico : Henrrico Martínez, 1607), 83r.-84v.
[ii] Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, trans. by Edmundo O’Gorman (México: J. Porrúa, 1964), 2 vols., Decade III, Book VII, p. 351.
[iii] Gonzalo Fernández Oviedo, Historia General de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar océano (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1851), Book XII, Cap. VII, pp. 392-396, p. 393.
[iv] Fray Hernando de Ojeda, “ Fray Hernando de Ojeda de la orden de Santo Domingo a su amigo, Balthasar de Echave en loor de esta obra,” in Echave, Discursos de la antiguedad de la lengua Cántabra-Bascongada.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Dec 8, 2016 |
Mollie McFee, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature
When I began taking Haitian Creole[1] in my second year of graduate school at the University of Chicago, one of the first proverbs I learned was “Pale franse pa di lespri.” The language is rich in word play exemplified by its proverbs, pithy encapsulations of social truths used to tease, admonish, or celebrate the listener. This particular phrase condenses Haiti’s social and political history into a curt utterance. It means, “Speaking French doesn’t make you smart.” Ever since Haiti’s formal independence from France in 1805, French has been the dominant language of the government, business, and the intellectual elite. However, most linguists estimate that only 5–10% of Haitians speak fluent French. Haitian Creole, on the other hand, is spoken and understood by all Haitians. The proverb serves as a reminder that though French has served as a gatekeeper to social mobility in Haiti, the language itself is only a system of symbols. True intelligence is in the content. To me, the proverb exemplifies Haiti’s remarkable history. When Haiti’s French colonizers failed to live up to the revolutionary ideals of equality by ensuring the freedom of slaves in its colony, the Haitian revolutionaries fought for those radical ideals despite a lack of resources or a trained army. I always interpreted the proverb as a reminder that the marginalized can outwit and outfight the elite, and that words are meaningless without action.
The Haitian army’s victory over its French colonizer did not end French culture’s dominant role in Haitian life. Despite the fact that only the very privileged and educated few spoke French, government affairs and services were conducted in the language of the former colonizer. The effects of this linguistic divide are staggering. Haitian children have been expected to learn in a foreign tongue, making education an enormous challenge. Adults, too, have not had access to politicians’ speeches, court proceedings, or virtually any of the fundamental tools for participation in democratic life. Over the past forty years the Haitian government has passed significant legislation addressing this problem. In 1979, the Reform Bernard required schools to provide students with education in Haitian Creole. In 1987, after the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was removed from power in a popular revolution, the country approved a new constitution that, for the first time in Haitian history, declared Haitian Creole one of the country’s two official languages (the second being French).
Even these major policy decisions have not significantly advanced the role of Haitian Creole in public life. Recently, the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen (AKA), or the Haitian Creole Academy, was formed to take on the mantle of remedying the immediate problems and deep social history of Haiti’s linguistic divide. My current research centers on the efforts of this institution. When the 1987 constitution declared Haitian Creole one of the country’s official languages, it also called for the creation of an Academy to ensure “li bay lang Kreyòl la jarèt pou li fikse epi pou li ba li tout mwayen lasyans pou li devlope nòmal.” [it supports the Haitian language by codifying it and giving it all manner of scientific support so that it might become standardized.][2] The Haitian parliament and president approved legislation to establish the AKA in 2014. The AKA nominally resembles the French language academy, the Académie Française (AF), but the AKA’s mission and social context differs significantly from this French antecedent. Founded in 1635, the AF has been the official arbiter of the French language. The AF symbolically recognizes the most refined use of the French language by publishing a well-respected dictionary and awarding literary prizes. In its early days, the AF helped standardize French and establish its status in public life as Latin became increasingly less dominant. When I first learned of the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen’s existence, I was shocked that Haiti had implemented this eminently staid model from its former colonizer. Didn’t Haitian Creole embody the spirit of the maroon, the escaped slave that carved out new forms of life on the margins to resist European hegemony? How was it that a language I associated with creativity, play, and subversive resistance of authority was now to be subject to an official and regulating body?
As I dove into my research on the extremely young organization, its unique role in Haitian society became clearer to me. While the AF served to reinforce the French government’s power at home and abroad by establishing linguistic and literary prestige, the AKA endeavors to use language as a tool to ensure that the Haitian state serves its people. Regulating the language is instrumental to this process. Establishing rules that settle a diversity of linguistic practices, for instance the notation of abbreviated words, makes it easier for people to write, read, and teach in Haitian Creole. The AKA also works in collaboration with the government to ensure that laws on the books for decades like the Reform Bernard actually get carried out. The AKA currently works with the Ministry of Education and Professional Development (MENFP) to promote pedagogical training for educators to teach in Haitian Creole. Rather than focusing on the forms that symbolize intelligence, like literary prizes, the AKA turned its attention to cultivating the minds of Haitians in their native language, reinforcing what all Haitians know: Pale franse pa di lespri.
The Akademi’s official logo is an image of the Nèg Mawon with a pen in his hand, signifiying the Akademi’s commitment to cultivating cultural practices that will preserve Haiti’s history and empower its people.
A recent photograph of the Akademi’s members, including prominent linguists, social activists, and cultural figures.
Footnotes
(1) I have chosen to write Haitian Creole in its English orthography here. I frequently see “Creole” written in its Haitian orthography (Kreyòl), which to me is akin to referring to French as français in an English language text. Some linguists argue that Haitian Creole should simply be called Haitian, as it is the language of Haiti.
(2) Atik 213, Konstitisyon Repiblik Ayiti 1987.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Nov 14, 2016 |
R. Sandy Hunter, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
Peru’s ‘Sacred Valley,’ the drainage of the Urubamba River, is flooded with foreign tourists daily. They flock to its many famous archaeological sites, and use it as a jumping off point for treks and trains to Machu Picchu. By contrast, the Patacancha Valley, which is immediately adjacent, sees very few foreign visitors. Most gringos who visit the Patacancha Valley go for a specific purpose: to visit the archaeological ruins of Pumamarka, an immense Inka settlement surrounded by an impressive wall that sits on a ridge above the valley floor. A few continue beyond Pumamarka, passing by another archaeological site—Marca Cocha—to visit the Quechua speaking community of Huilloc. In Huilloc they have the opportunity to spend the night with local families, witnessing first hand the lives of agriculturalists living in the Andes Mountains. In Huilloc, tourists might, for instance, accompany local herders as they care for the alpaca and sheep that provide the raw wool for the incredibly intricate textiles produced by hand in the community.
Like those tourists, I am an outsider in Huilloc. I am in the village to speak with community members about the possibility of collaborating on an archaeology project. I am interested in the lesser known of the major archaeological sites in the Patacancha Valley. Marca Cocha, I think, would be an ideal site for my dissertation research on the social and ecological changes that accompanied Spanish Colonialism in the region. Having visited the site numerous times, I know that there is evidence of occupation at the site during both the Inka and the Colonial periods. I want to begin an archaeological project investigating the transition from Inka to Colonial administration, but I must first speak with the community of Huilloc—will they support a project as collaborators?
Each month, the entire community meets to discuss issues that impact them all: land and water rights, the election of community officials, and the administration of community buildings. The meeting is conducted in Quechua. I only know a few words so I am only able to follow along at certain moments, taking my cues from the body language and quick translations whispered to me by other Spanish speakers. The first speakers are not from Huilloc. They came from a larger town within the same municipality to speak against the mayor of the region, they claim corruption and malfeasance, and make their point over the course of almost an hour. An hour up, they are followed by the very official they are speaking against. The mayor had arrived midway through the speeches against him in order to have the opportunity to defend himself—word does travel fast.
A property dispute is settled, the leader of the community watch ‘ronda’ is elected, and finally it is my turn to speak. As I get up, it is immediately clear that only a few of the several hundred people at the meeting have any interest in what I have to say. I introduce myself and my intentions: I want to initiate a collaborative relationship with community members, wherein we can together investigate the past of the region. There is little reaction. The possibility of a future collaboration with an archaeology project not yet even established is of little relevance compared to the immediate importance of land rights and political corruption.
I am initially disappointed by the lack of lack of interest in my project. Having been unable to catch a car back out of the Valley, I am forced to walk the twelve kilometers. During this walk I reflect upon the meeting and my perspective changes. The meeting reminds me that as much as the landscapes and ruins of the Patacancha Valley fascinate me as historical artifacts and as much as I can see the past through them, these remnants are more than historical reminders of the past in the present. These ruins connect that past to the present, and act in it. They have a contemporary existence that is embroiled in local politics—they are managed by the community and occasionally bring tourists—however, they do not take precedence over the pressing affairs of day to day life. My concerns—those of a hypothetical archaeological project, a year away—are not important. As an archaeologist I had been concentrating on the past of the Patacancha Valley, the Inka and Colonial ruins that initially drew me to the area. While studying the site of Marca Cocha—its seventeenth-century chapel, Inka buildings, and the ruins of pre-Inka structures—the contemporary Patacancha Valley had faded from prominence. My reception at the community meeting reminded me that an archaeology project based in the Patacancha Valley will only be a success if it both informs on the historical past and contributes tangibly to the lives of the people who live in the Valley.
A group of classic Inka elite structures at the archaeological site of Marca Cocha, in Peru’s Patacancha Valley.
A colonial chapel at the site of Marca Cochca, this chapel has been in use for at least 250 years.
A woman weaving in the community of Huilloc. In Huilloc textile manufacturing begins with herding sheep and llamas, and includes each step of the process: dying, spinning, and weaving are all tasks completed in the community.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Oct 27, 2016 |
Enrique Dávila, PhD Candidate, Department of History, BA Preceptor in Latin American Studies
What is the Latino Vote? This was the question posed to a panel of experts sitting in front of an audience at the University of Chicago’s Quadrangle Club on October 6, 2016 (1). The panel moderator, History Professor Emilio Kourí, wasted no time getting to the point when he asked:
How good is the category [Latino] at putting together collective political behavior? Is there a Latino voting bloc? Or is that an aspiration?
Each of the three panelists—Cook County Commissioner, Jesus “Chuy” García, Professor of Sociology, G. Cristina Mora, and Professor of History, Geraldo L. Cadava—offered different perspectives on the existence of, and possibilities for, a Latino vote. Below, I will describe three perspectives, or lenses, that they prompted me to adopt when thinking about the future of the Latino vote.
A Generational Lens
“How did I become Chicano if I was born in Mexico?”- Cook County Commissioner, Jesus “Chuy” García
First I realized the importance of a generational lens capable of panning across time to see the gradual differentiations between Latinos over a given period. Currently, the average eligible Latino voter is 28 years old (2). This voter came of age in a world with a much different relationship to ethnic and racial categories than previous generations. This generational difference was made apparent when Commissioner García recounted to the audience his first encounter with US racial and ethnic categories. In the late sixties, García moved from Durango, Mexico to Chicago. Upon his arrival, he was encouraged to identify, first, as Mexican-American, then later, as Chicano. In response, García asked his friends and family, “How did I become Chicano if I was born in Mexico? How can I be Chicano if my passport and birth-certificate say Mexicano?” His stance changed over time, in part due to his activism. As an activist, García’s categorical affiliations became more flexible and he found value in searching for “a sense of common purpose” amongst Latinos (3).
“Younger Latinos have grown up in a society where the terms ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ are ubiquitous.” -G. Cristina Mora, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Commissioner Garcia’s first encounter with ethnic and racial categories compared tellingly with the way in which Latinos interact with these categories today. Professor Mora pointed out that younger Latinos have grown up in a society where the terms “‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ are ubiquitous.” These younger Latinos have grown up using these categories on college applications, census forms, and have seen them attached to the names of their after-school clubs and organizations. And while García grew up using Latino as a category to help politically mobilize his peers, Mora explained that the current generation thinks of politics as just one aspect of their Latinidad existing alongside music, art, and other “cultural [and] emotional expressions of solidarity.” A generational lens allows one to see the subtle differences in how Latinos from different age groups engage with the Latino category.
A Particularity/Similarity Lens
The issue of Latino and Hispanic political categories “relates to questions about similarities and particularities.”- Geraldo L. Cadava, Professor of History, Northwestern University
In addition to a generational lens, I realized we need a lens that can zoom in and out of the category to see the particularities and similarities of the Latino community. Professor Cadava explained how a zoomed-out historical perspective revealed that Latinos, as a whole, have had similar experiences with “issues of race, immigration, empire, and[/or] labor.” Conversely, a zooming in brings into focus the particular issues that have affected the Latino subgroups more directly, e.g. Mexican-Americans and the border, Puerto Ricans and statehood, and Cuban-Americans and their relationship to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Only by understanding when differences matter—as obstacles to collective political action—and when they can be replaced by larger identities and shared interests, will we be able to imagine the possibilities for a unified Latino vote.
“Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos”
While the panelists offered different perspectives with which to view the Latino electorate, they all seemed to agree that political and electoral engagement had yet to produce positive national results for the Latino community. For García, the 2006 national immigration marches should have led to higher Latino political participation. “Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos,” he said, echoing the chant marchers used in 2006. But while many marched, far less voted. Latino voter participation remained largely unchanged in the 2006 midterm elections (4).
An Emotional Lens
“Well-earned cynicism”
The lack of political participation (and representation) explains the need for a third lens—sensitive to the full emotional spectrum that might influence the Latino electorate. Mora explained that, “as much as we talk about hope and optimism when elections come around, I think we should also, really, seriously talk about cynicism.” For Mora, Latinos may be expressing some “well-earned cynicism,” an understandable response for a group that has been heralded as the future of the country since the 2000s (and earlier), yet still remains underrepresented in institutions of higher learning and politics (5). Hope, cynicism, and apathy affect politics as much as “harder” economic and legal factors. Only by accounting for such emotions can we understand the limits and possibilities of the Latino vote.
Conclusion: A Case for Multiple Viewpoints
Only by adopting the different lenses proposed in this seminar can we begin to think about how Latinos will shape the upcoming election: one lens that can see the subtle differences between the generational experiences of Latinos; another lens that can zoom in and out to see the similarities and capture the particularities of the different Latino subgroups; and finally, a lens that recognizes the full spectrum of emotions that can influence Latino voting patterns.
Undoubtedly, the future of Latino politics will rest upon decisions made by Latino millennials. As each of the panelists stated, millennials are the future of the Latino vote. But will future scholars be able to detect how this young and dynamic constituency is affecting electoral politics? If the Latino vote exists, will we have the multiple lenses needed to view it? Perhaps the 2016 presidential election will provide insight. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Footnotes
(1) The seminar was sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Katz Center for Mexican Studies, Institute of Politics, and Center for Latin American Studies.
(2) Eileen Patten, “The Nation’s Latino Population is Defined by Its Youth,” Pew Research Center (April 20, 2016). http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/04/20/the-nations-latino-population-is-defined-by-its-youth/(accessed October 16, 2016).
(3) Commissioner García’s ideas became so flexible that he even admitted to later identifying as Chicano in certain settings.
(4) “The Latino Electorate: An Analysis of the 2006 Election,” (July 24, 2007) http://www.pewhispanic.org/2007/07/24/the-latino-electorate-an-analysis-of-the-2006-election/(accessed October 16, 2016).
(5) For more recent statistics on representation see “Latino Victory Project Releases First Interactive Mapping Tool Illustrating Latino Demographics and Political Representation Following 2014 Elections” (July 28, 2015) http://latinovictory.us/latino-victory-project-releases-first-interactive-mapping-tool-illustrating-latino-demographics-and-political-representation-following-2014-elections/ (accessed October 16, 2016).
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
Jun 23, 2016 |
Keshia L. Harris, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Human Development
Traveling to Brazil to begin my dissertation reminded me a lot of skydiving. Before arriving here, I was anxious because I didn’t know exactly what to expect in terms of data collection. As often as I embark on these journeys, I always find it challenging to leave home for an extended period of time. As I began to reflect on how things have progressed since I arrived in Brazil, I remembered ascending into the sky on the small plane to go skydiving a few years ago. Similar to having been in Brazil before but this time starting my dissertation, I was accustomed to flying in an airplane but had never experienced jumping out of one. I was so nervous before making the jump that I was sure my heart would explode out of my chest. Then we jumped and it was the most amazing experience I’d ever had in my life. Starting my dissertation in Brazil has surpassed that experience.
Taken at a Saturday English Learning Course in Itacaranha (suburb of Salvador)
As I write this, I am in Salvador, a city with a population of approximately 3 million residents, located in Northeast Brazil. During this productive and life-inspiring 10 weeks, I’ve been fortunate to conduct research at five high schools located throughout the city of Salvador.
The goal of my dissertation is to answer the following questions: (1) how do postsecondary goals and perceptions of educational equality vary by skin color and socioeconomic status among Brazilian and Colombian adolescents, and (2) what role does perceived discrimination play in shaping postsecondary goals? To respond to these questions, I am conducting a mixed methods study in Salvador, Brazil and Cartagena, Colombia. The mixed methods approach includes quantified survey questions and qualitative interview questions. The survey responses will be analyzed by quantitative regression analyses to measure effects of factors such as perceived discrimination and skin tone differences on academic achievement and postsecondary goals. Interviews provide the opportunity to explore reasons why adolescents are choosing future educational paths and what factors have contributed to their decisions.
Why these two cities? Besides the fact that they’re absolutely beautiful places to conduct research, they have similar histories of political and economic influence within their countries and illustrate divergent conceptions of what it means to be of African descent in their nations.
Salvador is located in the poorest region of Brazil, the Northeast. The city was founded as the first capital of Brazil in 1549. The city’s location on the coast of the northeast region made it a prime port of entry for the importation of African slaves during the colonial period (1500-1822). The city flourished as the country’s economic center due to slave work on tobacco and sugar plantations in the 1800s. It was the country’s richest and most highly populated city. Salvador remained the capital of Brazil until 1763, when the nation’s wealth shifted to a new capital, Rio de Janeiro. Salvador is the present capital of the state of Bahia and is currently the third largest city in Brazil with a population of 2.9 million (2013 census). Although Salvador has the highest population of the country’s African descendants, Brazilians with European physical features make up the city’s elite population (Perry, 2013).
Cartagena is also situated in one of the nation’s poorest regions, located on the northern coast of Colombia. The city was founded on June 1, 1553. Cartagena was the first Colombian city authorized for the trade of African slaves. During its colonial era from 1533–1717, the city’s coastal location made it a primary trading port for gold, silver, and African slaves; hence, its current high population of African descendants (Telles, 2014). It is currently the fifth largest city in Colombia with a population of 988,000 (2011 Census). Cartagena is the capital of the Bolívar state of Colombia.
While Cartagena and Salvador have similar colonial pasts, present day discourses of multiculturalism are quite distinct. The political language of African descent culture is more dominant in Salvador than any other Brazilian city (Perry, 2013; Pinho 2008). Residents of Salvador associate pride with African heritage while still appreciating the country’s multiethnic national discourse (Pinho, 2015). However, many Cartagena residents who are physically representative of African-descended populations frequently identify as mulatto or mixed race despite having one of the highest African descent populations in the nation (Lasso, 2006; Streicker 1995). Thus, I explore how social inequalities and skin color stratification in education are understood differently among youth in two cities with similar histories and economic inequalities, but with divergent discourses of racial difference.
Thus far, in Salvador, I’ve administered 338 surveys and conducted 40 interviews with high school seniors attending schools in working, middle, and upper class neighborhoods in order to obtain a variety of socioeconomic experiences. My research mentor here, who is a professor of psychology at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), connected me with some of his graduate students who have either taught or done volunteer work at high schools throughout the city. Additionally, I established contact with the principal of the private school in my sample through my host mother’s son, who is a former student. Networking has been a huge contribution to my progress. After I contact the high school principals or coordinators, I enter the schools, meet the staff, get a tour of the school, and either schedule the start date for data collection or immediately enter the classrooms to administer surveys (interviews come after I’ve spent more than one week in the schools, in order to build rapport with students). For the most part the data collection process has been a more positive experience than challenging. However, some of the challenges that I have experienced were not being allowed to collect data at a few private schools and having to reschedule data collection periods due to weekly school administrative strikes in all of the public schools in my sample.
There is absolutely no way that I could discuss the progress of my research without mentioning the current state of the country. Since I arrived, the nation has voted to impeach its first female president, multiple protests have erupted all over the country, the prices of oil and food products have drastically increased, and job loss and business closings are at an all time high. This is all occurring in the midst of economic recovery from the 2014 World Cup and preparation for the 2016 Olympics. On a positive note, I’ve been able to incorporate these topics into my interviews, which the participants have been more than willing and enthusiastic to discuss. While many Brazilians with whom I’ve spoken, including those of various ages not participating in my study, have expressed feelings of discouragement, distrust, and demoralization, a remarkable number remain hopeful that their country will improve with time. I end with an expression that I learned from one of the girls who participated in my study: “A esperança é a última que morre” (Hope is the last to die).
Taken at Two of the Five Research Sites
References
Perry, K-K. Y. (2013). Black women against the land grab: The fight for racial justice in brazil. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
Pinho, P. (2015). Bahia is a closer africa: Brazilian slavery and heritage in african american roots tourism. In African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World. Cambria Press.
Pinho, P. (2008). African-American roots tourism in brazil. Latin American Perspectives, 35(3), 70-86.
Streicker, J. (1995). Policing boundaries: Race, class, and gender in Cartagena, Colombia. American Ethologist, 22, 54-74.
Telles, E. (2014). Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
The contents of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Latin American Studies or the University of Chicago.
