What were my first impressions and personal responses of the reading? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the /article/chapter? What are the major

23

THE SPACES THAT AFRO-LATINAS IN THE UNITED STATES occupy are undefined spaces that result from the ways in which race has been constructed in U.S. society. Because

of these constructions, and the institutions built around them, many Afro-Latinas are often not seen by Black Americans or by other Latinos. We must, in turn, push to be seen. The tenden- cy among those of us who occupy this space is to go to the fear that “Afro-Latinas” and “Afro-Latinidad” lack definition. The response to this fear is often a desire to generate an essential articulation of identity and place: the notion that Afro-Latinas are one thing, or come from one set of places/experiences/ histories. In this essay,1 written in the personal voice, using person-

al pronouns, I will critically analyze the construction of Afro- Latina identities in the age of globalization. I will be using my body and identity, as well as the creative works of various Afro-Latinas as examples for my analysis, which includes: defining Afro-Latina bodies, flushing out Latina identities in

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion

ana-Maurine lara

1 Parts of this essay are based on another essay entitled “A Change of Manta” published in Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience (Calaca P/RedSalmon P), 2007.

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

the United States and making connections between the place- ment and the liberation of Afro-Latina bodies.

The Language in Which I Speak

In order to discuss Afro-Latinidad, I think it is important to first understand that race and racism are constructed differ- ently in different societies, though their application may be the same (the control of colored female bodies by bodies that are not colored or female). Because we live in the age of glob- alization, and at a time where U.S. commodities, including cultural productions, are being propagated throughout the world en masse, I think it is important to lay the groundwork for my analysis on U.S. terms. There is, however, a caveat because these commodities include the sale and distribution of Afro-descendent bodies (in all forms of art and cultural pro- duction), whose distribution re-enforces already existent notions of race and belonging that reify U.S. myths around white supremacy. Simultaneously, because we are discussing Afro-Latinas, I am bringing in concepts that have shaped my particular experience as an Afro-Dominicana. These concepts have their own history, separate from the history of the Unit- ed States, though still grounded in the policies of colonization I think they are very much affected and re-enforced by U.S. racial constructs disseminated by globalized media. I live in the United States, where the myth of racial puri-

ty is based on two other myths: whiteness and the one-drop rule. I was born in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean, where the myth of racial purity is based on three other myths: hispanidad, blanqueamiento, indianismo (Hispanism, Whiten- ing, indigenous). For the purposes of this essay, I will define these terms with an understanding that I speak as someone who is based at the heart of the empire:

Race is the social and economic value ascribed to a person or group of people based on perceived shared phenotypical

24 Ana-Maurine Lara

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 25

characteristics (pigmentation, eye shape, facial form, etc). I believe this is a concept largely developed in the wake of col- onization, specifically to justify the economic practice of the exploitation of some bodies by others.2

The concept of racial purity grew out of the race-based eugenics movement of the mid-nineteenth century. This sci- entific movement based on evolution and improvement of human heredity suggested such methods as selective breeding, birth control, genetic engineering and genocide of those deemed inferior. The foundation of the myth of racial purity is that there are separate races of humans, which should not mix so as to preserve the purity of blood lines.3

The term whiteness is used to refer to the socioeconomic and political privileges and powers ascribed to people who are phenotypically European or Caucasian. Because it is a concept that has been ascribed power and meaning, it has concrete violent ramifications on the lives of people who do not par- ticipate in whiteness, directly or indirectly.4

2 In the beginning phases of Spanish colonization, there emerged several rationales for enslaving the indigenous populations. Bartolomé de las Casas, among other Catholic clergy in power at the time, wrote to the Spanish crown about the grave abuses in the treatment of indigenous peoples. The logic of the Spanish colonial leadership led to the importa- tion of ladinos, ie., Christianized Africans already working as slaves in Europe, and finally of bozales, ie., un-Christianized Africans, which Nicolás de Ovando stated, “los nacidos en Africa se mostraban más su- misos y resistentes a las duras faenas de las minas y la elaboración del azú- car” / “the Africans born in Africa seem more submissive and resistant to the harsh conditions of the mines and sugar cane plantations” (Deive 54). This is one of the first examples of the logic leading up to racist poli- cies, whereby the phenotypical characteristics of a people identified by geography are used to qualify and justify their enslavement.

3 U.S. concepts of racial purity are preceded by documents, such as the Carolina Black Codes of 1685, the edict of King Luis of France y Nava- rra, enacted in the Iberian colonies.

4 For a radical, organizing definition of whiteness, refer to the Challenging White Supremacy workshop paper: “What is White Privilege?” http://cwsworkshop.org/resources/WhitePrivilege.html.

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

26 Ana-Maurine Lara

The one-drop rule is specific to the United States and was first used unofficially in the nineteenth century to determine the status of slaves, and then later on officially established as law in the early twentieth century at the onset of the Jim Crow era. The main purpose of the one-drop rule was to enforce racial purity and whiteness.5

Hispanidad refers to societies that were once under Spanish or Portuguese colonial rule, and as such, are constructed on the moral and ethical values of Iberian humanism, Catholi- cism, the Spanish and Portuguese languages, Iberian last names and blood. It is the notion that these societies are unified under these values, without conflict or question. It has been applied in nationalist rhetoric to evoke the supremacy of the state over individual communities and bodies—specifically, bodies that evoke non-Iberian references (Indigenous, African and Asian bodies in the colonial context).6

Blanqueamiento literally means whitening. It is a social con- cept based on and upholding hispanidad as the ultimate goal of

5 For further discussion about the one-drop rule, see Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition (Penn State UP, 1999), by F. James Davis. An excerpt from this work is available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front- line/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html. Many other authors cite the one-drop rule discussion, including Naomi Zack, Neil Gotanda, Michael L. Blakey, Julie C. Lythcott-Haims, Christine Hickman, David A. Hollinger, Thomas E. Skidmore, G. Reginald Daniel, Joe R. Feagin, Ian F. Haney-López, Barbara Fields, Dinesh D’Souza, Joel Williamson, Mary C. Waters, Debra J. Dickerson among others.

6 In the Dominican Republic, Trujillo used the concept of hispanidad to jus- tify the ethnic cleansing of Haitians and to consolidate the power of the oligarchy. For further discussion of hispanidad in the Dominican Republic, refer to Joaquín Balaguer’s La Isla al Revés. In the Dominican Republic, hispanidad was a discourse that led to the development of policies on pres- entation (dress codes), identity (races on national I.D. cards) and reli- gious practice among many others (the outlawing of voudou). One of the goals of this discourse was limiting “the spread of Negro influence across the West Indies” following Dominican independence from Haiti in 1844 (Torres-Saillant 127).

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 27

individuals and families in society, placing great value on the attainment of presumed European phenotypic characteristics (blue/green eyes, straight hair, light skin, etc) in offspring.7

Indigenismo is used primarily to refer to literature, but also refers to the social construct of the “noble Indian,” an indige- nous person with a romanticized past. As such, indigenismo has been evoked in Dominican nationalist discourses as a way to erase African history and presence by replacing it with Indige- nous, Taíno8 or Spanish identity. I will be employing these very basic definitions and these

two specific sociopolitical contexts (the United States and the Dominican Republic) as the setting and frameworks for my analysis.

Defining Afro-Latina Bodies

Florinda Bryant, a self-defined Black-Mexicana, created a hip-hop theatre piece titled “Half-Breed Southern Fried Check One” that critically engages her lived experience as the

7 “Blanqueamiento refers to the processes of becoming increasingly accept- able to those classified and self-identified as ‘white.’ This is an ethnic movement—coterminous with socioeconomic advancement governed by the ideology of ‘development’—that depends upon socioeconomic and political assistance and loans from the developed (i.e., highly industrial- ized, highly energy-dependent) countries. Although not often recognized as such, the ideology of ’whitening’ is an unconscious psychological process accompanying the economic state of underdevelopment in the twentieth century. Blanqueamiento essentially accepts the implicit hege- monic rhetoric of the United States with regard to ‘white supremacy’ and often blames those people classed as black and indigenous for the worsen- ing state of the nation” (Torres and Whitten, 1998, pp. 8-9).

8 I think it is critical to note that there is a Dominican Taíno movement; exerting Afro-Dominican identity does not and should not cancel out Indigenous struggles for liberation. Unfortunately, these have been played off against each other in Dominican discourse on culture and identity. What I am referring to is the blatant omission of African descent in the discourse, replaced by a call to Indigenous identity—a political strategy which served to disenfranchise both people of African and Indigenous descent.

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

28 Ana-Maurine Lara

daughter of a Mexican/Tejana9 woman and a Black American man. In this piece, she discusses not only the complexity of her lived experience, but the reality of race relations in the South and particularly in Texas. Written in a hip-hop aesthetic, the protagonist in the

piece recalls a memory from childhood, when on the first day of fifth grade, the teacher, Ms. Butler, goes through roll call, and in the process asks for the children’s race.

Ms. Butler: Florinda Bryant? Florinda? Student 5: Here. Ms. Butler: Race? Student 5: Mixed, Black and Mexican. Ms. Butler: What? Student 5: I am mixed. My momma is Mexican and my daddy is Black.

Ms. Butler: I see, well we have to report your race. Let’s just put African American.10

This excerpt to me not only highlights the conflicts aris- ing out of “outlaw” unions, such as the marriage of Blacks and Mexicans/Blacks and whites/Blacks and Asians, etc., but also the particular dilemmas faced by Latinas who are of African heritage. On the surface, it is difficult to tell the difference between what the protagonist’s body signifies and what could be defined as her lived experience: her body is a Black Latina body that is simply read as a Black female body in the South. On a deeper level, beyond the surface, what we find is a com- plex weave of social constructs based on race and nationality.

9 The implicit assumption, within the U.S. social landscape, is that with the national/ethnic Mexican identifier, the subject/object is not of African descent.

10“Half-Breed Southern Fried Check One,” performed at UT-Austin on September 8, 2006 as part of the Center for African & African Ameri- can Studies “Performing Blackness” series.

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

In sitting with the piece, I couldn’t help but wonder how the conversation would be different had the protagonist been born of two Mexican parents, one who was Afro-Mexican and the other who was not. Of course, that would overlook the specif- ic complexity of the protagonist’s story: because of where her body is (Texas), and because of what her body is: a symbol of the union between a Black American, sharecropping, cowboy history and a Mexicana church-going/border crossing/ Spanish-speaking herstory. Later on in the piece, the protagonist enters a moment of

self-reflection, almost as if provoked by the constant assump- tions thrown onto her physical body:

Whose legs do you have? Whose hands do you have? Whose eyes are those?

I walk like my dad/whose legs do you have? Hold ciga- rettes just like my daddy/whose hands do you have? eyes like my Aunt Alice/whose eyes do you have? hair like my mom/whose hair do you have? What do you see in the mirror/all over your body. I sound like my sister/whose voice do we have? I sleep like my grandmother/drink like my grandfather/what do you see? When you look at your body. Wide hips/high cheek bones/Not sure who we don’t remember. What do you see written on your body. All this blood with so little truly our own. I walk like my dad, hold a cigarette like my dad with my mom’s hair.

What do you see? What does your body remember?

Florinda Bryant, as the writer, takes the protagonist from a space of contemplating the physical embodiment of heritage to the ephemeral recollection of ancestral memory, ending with “What does your body remember?” while simultaneously touching upon the notion of blood. “All this blood with so lit-

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 29

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

tle truly our own.” With these two statements, Bryant high- lights the rift between expectations and lived experience. What are Afro-Latina bodies supposed to experience? What do we really live? Whose children are we? What do our bodies demonstrate to the world, and what does it remember? Simul- taneously, Bryant asks us to consider notions of African and Indigenous ancestral memories and the “one-drop rule” of blood and racial purity. As Afro-Latinas in the world, we are constantly negotiat-

ing others’ assumptions about where our bodies and our mem- ories overlap, where our Blackness/negritud begins and our Latina-ness end. As Afro-Latinas in the United States, we are also negotiating the notion of blood and racial purity in a way that was obscured in most countries under Iberian coloniza- tion. In the Latin American context, rather than quantifying race by one drop, Iberian laws connoted gradations of racial categorization based on specific mixtures of blood. This simul- taneously obscured negritud and made blackness central to Criollo identity all at once, in that the official number of “negros” decreased, while the number of “mestizos, pardos, mulatos, zambos,” etc. increased. In the United States, with the one-drop rule, whiteness became central to racial identity formation, and polarized people into essential categories. It is this tension between centrality and essentialism that plays out when an Afro-Latina body walks through spaces in the Unit- ed States. This space of tension, of lack of clarity, of shifting and re-

definition is at once the most painful and one of the most lib- erating and complex areas of lived experience. Taking Florinda Bryant’s writing as a cue, and using my

own body as the location of analysis, I have laid out some of my responses to some of the questions the protagonist in “Half Breed Southern Fried Check One” asks as a segue into looking at these shadowed areas. These responses serve to complicate

30 Ana-Maurine Lara

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

the dialogue and demonstrate, en carne viva (in the flesh), the ways in which Afro-Latina identities and bodies transgress essential categorization.

Whose eyes do you have?

I don’t know what my father’s mother looked like, only that she made love with “un moreno” and my father was born a dark, mahogany brown. The implication in the floating whispers is that she herself was not morena, or dark in any way, that she transgressed. She died when my father was young. He was raised by his grandparents and everyone calls him Negri- to. This term of endearment both obscures his darkness and brings it to light. When I was eighteen and visiting my family in Santo

Domingo, as I had every year since we left, I said to my light- skinned, light-haired cousin, “My father’s negro, that’s why everyone calls him Negrito.” My cousin said, “No, he’s not. He’s moreno. They call him Negrito because they love him.” I had to insist, “Yes, that’s true. But, he is negro. And that’s not a bad thing.” My cousin shrugged his shoulder and shook his head. He thought I was crazy, insisted I was insulting my father. I thought he was crazy for missing the obvious. I think I have my father’s mother’s eyes. Nobody else has

them. Nobody else is willing to see the beauty of our darkness.

Whose hands do you have?

A Trinidadian friend of mine puts lotion on her hands and kisses each finger after she is done. She insists that it’s impor- tant that “our hands not look ashy” and that “You’ve got to love your hands.” When I was younger, white people would tell me, “You have such healing hands.” I would nod, wonder- ing if they were transferring racist implications on dark skin, or if, in truth, I was born to heal. I look down at my brown hands and wonder whose they are. At first glance, they look

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 31

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

like no one else’s in my family. They are a rich oak brown, full of lines on big, big palms. They’re callused, no matter how much lotion I put on. I have small fingers, short fingers with curves on the end of them. At second glance, I realize they are my mother’s hands. Mine are brown, hers are white. I don’t know, though, where the healing powers came from: the abil- ity to take away pain by touch or to soothe fear by holding.

Whose hair do you have?

When I was growing up, my Dominican cousins Yadira and Rosanna would spend hours “combing” my hair. Rosanna, vio- let brown and with a head of tight, kinky hair, would try to pull out as much as she could and Yadira, yellow (my tía says she’s jabao) and with pelo grueso, ie., nappy hair, would try to put back as much as she could. I would be at their mercy until my Tía D. showed up, smacking their hands with the combs and leading me into her bedroom to repair the damage. She would sit on the bed and have me stand between her legs, with a tube of Vitapointe on her thigh. She’d rub my scalp, fill her palm with the hair grease and pass it through my hair. “Niña”, she’d say, “tú tiene el pelo bueno. No deje que esas niñas te lo dañen.” (Little girl, you have good hair. Don’t let those girls damage it.) I didn’t understand what she meant by pelo bueno. When I wasn’t with her, I was in another country, with white European and American kids who made fun of the way my hair puffed up when it was dry, or the way the curls set against my head. My well-intentioned, but ill-informed, mother was taking me to white hair dressers who would giggle nervously and say, “Isn’t that sweet? She doesn’t even need a perm,” as I sat under their scissors. My father would come to my room at night and tell me, “Make sure you brush your hair a hundred times every night. That’s what Abuela does.” He, with the kinks wound tightly against his head, was proud of my “good hair.”

32 Ana-Maurine Lara

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Whose legs do you have?

My legs are the thick legs of women who grew up farming or working in the mountains. They are not necessarily femi- nine, and because they’re what I walk on, I understand that they make me seem masculine. I’m okay with that. To me, it’s part of my legacy to be a masculine woman. I come from a line of women who worked outside, and the work inside—it was necessary in order to survive. Because of class—and I mean rural poor—my female ancestors were always seen as mascu- line, because they weren’t middle class and they didn’t hold to middle-class aesthetics of femininity, because of race. I know that for me, embodying both female and male ener-

gy is necessary if I’m going to pull ahead. How else could I do my healing work: the work of healing bodies, memory and land? I am not a partera, whose feminine energy is what allows for the path between the womb and this life to be continuous. I work with my hands and my vision in a different way. I write stories, I garden, I tend to medicine plants, and I use my hands to transfer the pain into the earth. All the while, my legs hold me. My legs are strong. They’re hairy. They’re dark. I know that if I had to, these legs would carry me to the deepest recess- es of the mountains where no one could find me. I know that these legs have done that before.

What does your body remember?

I am an Afro-Dominicana, not only because my skin, eyes, hair, lips and hips say so, and therefore, indicate what every- one else will perceive. I am an Afro-Dominicana because in the context of white supremacy and in the history of my trans- national experiences, I know that to walk in the world as an Afro-Dominicana is to honor my African legacy and the strug- gle of my ancestors in working the land. My cells know this to be true. I know that the soil is a deep mahogany red because

Bodies and Memories: Afro-Latina Identities in Motion 33

Moreno, Vega, Marta. Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, edited by Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Modestin, Arte Público Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=3115218. Created from uaz on 2022-01-16 18:51:44.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

2. A

rt e

P úb

lic o

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.