A lecture shared at Russel Sage College as part of their Critical Conversations series,
and in celebration of Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month in October of 2022
The history of persons of Latin American descent in the United States is, of course, longer than the 50 years or so of Hispanic Heritage Month. On the European tell-all, it would take some 100 years after the first Spanish colony in the Western Hemisphere for the British to do likewise. Perhaps a more fascinating area of research is one seeking to ascertain that indigenous peoples of North and Central America had a deeper network and connection than thought before. Agricultural and human-made products from civilization in Central Mexico have been found across the Great Plains of North America, and even further east. Corn, which is ubiquitous in our region, a part of the lore of how the purported first Thanksgiving happened, and an integral component to the originating stories of some of the peoples that integrated the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is a domesticated agricultural product of the Mexican southwest.
Today we gather to commemorate the historic and contemporary presence of Latin Americans in the United States. Like me, those who self-identify as Hispanic or Latine make up 6.6% of Albany County (where I live), 5.4% of Rensselaer County, and 9.8% in Troy (where we gather), and 7.8% in Schenectady County (where I serve). That is about 40,000 Latine individuals in the tri-county area. I moved from Central New Jersey to the Capital Region 5 years ago. One of the aspects of social and political engagement in the greater capital area and of Upstate NY is the apparent small visibility of people of Latin American descent. Of course, in the Central Jersey communities where I lived, the Latine population was between 20 and 35% of the population of a densely populated region. But that apparent lack of visibility should sway no one of our presence in this community.
For me, the two anecdotal, purely unscientific markers of a more permanent Latin American community are the growth of restaurants that cater consistent and financially accessible regional cuisine, and the establishment of communities of faith. The latter is, perhaps, because I am a Christian minister. In the three counties mentioned above, there is a growing presence of Latine Christian communities, mostly in the Roman Catholic and Pentecostal traditions. There is also a relatively small lucumí or santería community. Although I don’t have anecdotal data, I would not be surprised to learn that there is a significant Latine presence in Mormon and Muslim communities. I have also had the experience of multiethnic families who are also seeking to facilitate a multi-religious experience for their children. The most recent encounter is a family that just moved from downstate. I met them at one of our local Reform synagogues for the celebration of Rosh Hashanah because Mom is Jewish. They contacted me after services to because they wanted a reference for a Roman Catholic church, hopefully, one that worshipped in Spanish.
On the restaurant side of things, I have been much surprised. In the almost 6 years since moving to the Capital Region, I have found in the tri-county area Mexican, Spanish Caribbean, Venezuelan, Colombian, Peruvian, and Guatemalan restaurants operated by persons from said regions and countries. Now, cuisine, much as culture, is not a national thing. Although national and nationalistic metanarratives exist, these metanarratives cannot contain the expression of culture. Same with cuisine. There is no such thing as Mexican food. The millennial history of food in Mexico has provided the world with a cultural and historic heritage that is as vast and diverse as the country itself. In the Capital Region, you can find Mexican food prepared and served in the tradition of Puebla, in Central Mexico, and Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. The Colombian food I have found is typical of that of the highlands. The Venezuelan cuisine is typical of Caracas, and the Guatemalan and Peruvian food I have experienced is a typical street food you’ll find in a major city of each country.
As for the Spanish Caribbean, some will say rice and beans are rice and beans. But if you are from the Antilles, no matter the language spoken on your island, you know that habichuelas in Puerto Rico are not quite the same as in the Dominican Republic. And what is more, in Cuba they may not even understand what a habichuela is. Frijoles might be what you are seeking. However, both because of migration and the shared histories of these Antillean countries, we have come to understand, by and large, what any one of us is ordering (and perhaps yearning) – stewed pink beans for Puerto Ricans, candied red beans for Dominicans, and black beans stewed with cumin for Cubans. What is more, we have come to find comfort in each other’s cuisine. A la postre, after all, we are far more intertwined – culturally, historically, and dare I say politically – than the imperial powers that want us to know, understand, and embrace.
It is that intertwined historical, political, and cultural traits that make the ser latinoamericano, the Latin American a complex being, fascinating (if I may say so myself), and challenging. Where white supremacy has encouraged the formation of nationalist narratives of superiority based on violence, capitalism, and empire, Latin American leaders of thought, art, and freedom have articulated a somewhat loose yet powerful identity of the land and its inhabitants as the Patria Grande, the Greater Motherland. This idea of América Latina as the Patria Grande is in contrast and a clear challenge to the colonializing teaching that Spain is the Madre Patria, the Mother Homeland. The central problem of the Madre Patria concept is that it affirms that Spain is the parent and fundamental ancestor of all that resulted from its 400-year history of violent evangelization, pillage, and genocide. The concept of the Patria Grande, I think, is an affirmation and a holding in the tension of the multifaceted (and sometimes seemingly contradictory) realities of Latin Americans. There are two concepts I want to propose to you for our conversation: Raza Cósmica and Boderland/Fronteras.
José Vasconcelos Calderón was a Mexican politician, educator, and philosopher of the early 20th century. In 1925 he published an essay, La Raza Cósmica, The Cosmic Race. Challenging Charles Darwin’s scientific theories as excuses for racial superiority and repression, he articulates a more ideological concept of Latin America as the incubator of a race made up of the intermingling and mixing of all human races, the raza cósmica, a race that has ushered the age of a new civilization – the Universópolis. I will caution you: this is a man writing in the 1920s. Whether you read it in Spanish or a translation, some of his language will be objectionable to our late 20th and early 21st-century understanding. However, Vasconcelos’ proposal had a radical impact on the Mexican and Latin American social and political imagination of the 20th century, an impact Latin Americans continue to grapple with as a challenge and an opportunity.
The two major challenges of Vasconcelos’ proposal are diversity and solidarity. In speaking of a completely mixed race, Vasconcelos was not naïve. I believe his argument was not about an issue of equality in the mix, but one of equity in considering what each one of us and our origins bring to the constant formation of a larger body politic. The difference, of course, between equality and equity is that of quantity and quality. The challenge and opportunity of diversity are to seize it as an opportunity to improve and deepen quality that leads to a robust, resilient experience of life that can truly move an individual and whole community from the oppression of survival to the beauty of living and being. And this move from survival to living can only be sustained if diversity and equity are met by solidarity and inclusion. (Now, this is me interpreting Vasconcelos interpreting Darwin) in nature’s engagement and in human politics, the aim should never be to tolerate. Toleration is a lazy social norm. As it relates to human interaction and engagement, especially if we believe political posturing like “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Competition, such as proposed in Darwinism and Capitalism, will intend for the elimination of many for the survival of some. The raza cósmica can only survive from an intentional care for each other and the environment, a true altruism. Inclusion is not to tolerate. Solidarity opens the spaces for diversity to emerge and become apparent.
That difference between tolerance and inclusion, and the invitation of solidarity (again, my interpretation of Vasconcelos) leads me to the other concept of Borderland/Frontera. Gloria Anzaldúa, a Chicana scholar from Texas, published her somewhat autobiographical and most impactful book, “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza” in 1987. The fifth edition as printed in March of this year. I first encountered Anzaldúa in seminary, taking courses of religion and society. By the last third of the 20th century, North American and Western European theological education – especially that of the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions – found itself in an identity crisis of lagging behind the swift secularization of society. The main crisis point was that organized religion, especially the Western Christian kind, was not the social center for moral and ethical leadership. Gloria Anzaldúa’s pointed criticism to colonialism and heteronormativity came with a very intentional social and spirituality. The latter made the methodologies and proposals of her book (and scholarship) essential to the liberal and progressive Christian thinkers and practitioners in their pursuit of a relevant presence.
The two main concepts from her scholarship that I want to highlight are borderlands and neplantismo. As she explains it, the borderlands are not simply spaces for forced encounters and differentiation. They are also a social, cultural (and even spiritual) space with their traits. She materializes that borderland identity in her intentionally confusing way in which she mixes English and Spanish in her book. It’s not simply about bringing words or expressions that are relevant to how she constructs her methods and arguments. In and of itself, it is a way to have her audience experience life in and of the borderlands. I believe her argument, in short, is that the vida fronteriza is a social, political, and cultural reality of those who live in political borders, and of those who are found on another side of what society has dubbed as the norm, most likely white, male, heteronormative, and Christian. Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is a somewhat autobiographical book because Anzaldúa uses her own life as, both, a method and example of living in such political and social borders. She unapologetically brings herself to bear as a Chicana, feminist, and queer person who practices those identities in her scholarship.
Nepantlismo is the other concept she coins. With nepantlismo, Anzaldúa articulates her life experience and that of other people, especially women, who stand in the middle of multiple experiences and identities. The word “nepantla” is a Naualt term that means in the middle. For Anzaldúa, there are many people who, living in multiple borders, are at once standing in multiple borders. What I find fascinating about the concept is that this middle is not a center. This middle is an intersection of multiple identities and experiences, often conflicting. The people who live in this middle (she calls them “nepantleras”) refuse to identify one way or another their inhabited intersection pushes or pulls them to. That embrace of the multiple and conflicting identities provides for a certain kind of power that may well describe the multiple and often conflicting identities and stories of the Latin American being.
