Casas 2
Struggles
I grew up in a Mexican family listening to corridos, which are a type of song, due to the fact that at every party, every celebration, and every occasion, that’s what the family would play. As I became more aware and conscious, I began to realize what these songs were actually saying. Corridos are a narrative song that showcase topics such as poverty, hard times, success, immigration, social and political problems, and/or life in general. A prominent and recurring theme that I saw developing throughout several corridos is immigration. Numerous songs, were expressing strong feelings whom many many undocumented Mexicans (or now U.S. residents/citizens), including my parents and other family members shared regarding they’re citizenship status, how they were being discriminated against, and ultimately how they were feeling about this whole situation.
Feelings of anger were voiced, as they dialogue about how America was born free, how man divided it, and how essentially they too are as much as American as “real” Americans. For the reason they undoubtedly worked hard for what they accomplished with blood, sweat, and tears. In addition, even being first generation Mexican American, I too can relate to the struggle, having to work twice as hard just because I do not look a certain way. Furthermore, they talk about how they just came to America to work, to provide a better living situation for their families. Ultimately, they were running away from poverty. In
In her book, Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz describes the lives of ten busboys, she referrs to as the Lions, living and working in the Chicago area. Gomberg-Muñoz provides an insight into the lives of these undocumented Mexican workers. They share their stories of crossing the border, the affects of their absence on family back in Mexico, and the daily struggles of living in a country without the benefits of citizenship. The Lions, as well as other undocumented Mexicans, have to face Americans stereotypes every day. Probably the biggest stereotype the Lions contend with is the belief that all Mexicans are hard workers.
For my cultural activity, I watched a Spanish-language movie with English subtitles in order to better understand the film. The purpose of this paper is to express my reactions concerning the Puerto Rican film Casi Casi. In summary, Casi Casi is a high school romantic comedy about a boy who runs for Student Council President who is attracted to a girl who also decides to run against him. At the beginning of the film, my initial reaction was that the film was going to be very difficult to view and interpret due to the fact that it was produced in a foreign language that I am not fluent in.
Michael Innis Jimenez’s Steel Barrio examines the way Mexicans and Mexican Americans lived in south Chicago during the 1920’s and onward. The book provides a general idea on the lifestyle of people coming from Mexican descent; from the struggle they tried to overcome, to the ideas they developed. It seems like survival was a key part of the Mexican life during that time, especially being surrounded by their white counterparts and hate. The appropriate word for their survival in Chapter 6 of the book is resistance. After reading the chapter on Resistance, it dawned upon myself that most Mexicans living in America were prideful of where they came from even though Mexico was in poor economic shape at the time. The main point in the book is to draw an overall picture of Mexican life in south Chicago, but the main point in the chapter was to point out the will of the Mexican to resist American assimilation also referred to as “Americanization”.
The film Pelo Malo takes place in the city of Caracas, Venezuela and is about a young boy and obsession with straightening his hair. In the movie, the main characters Junior his single mother Marta and baby brother live with in an apartment complex with in the city of Caracas. This movie takes place in 2011, during the time that Hugo Chavez came down with cancer. The film’s primary themes were homophobia, and racism. The movie detailed a young boys struggle for acceptance and love from his mother and his struggle to obtain his desire of straight hair. Throughout the movie, the young child is seen living in an apartment complex that is located within a lower socioeconomic status area. When Marta, was not able to find a baby sitter to watch over her children when she worked she was forced to take the children with her on the bus through the city to her work. One of the places that she was shown to work was in a gated residence where she worked as a security guard for the area. The primary conflict in the movie revolved around the mothers fear that her son was “gay” due to his obsession with straightening his hair and his singing. Due to many of the things that the young boy does in the movie, the mother Marta fears that her child is homosexual and during one particular scene is worried that she was the cause of it. Since during the scene where she is speaking with a doctor about her son, she discussed how it was her fault because she did not ‘touch his thing’ and that she
In Casarosas’ short film “La Luna”, A young boy learns to find the balance between keeping his family's traditions and learning and discovering new ways to solve problems. In the film, the little boy learns about his family’s job from his father and his grandfather. The film makes it clear that they have been doing their job for a long time and that they each like to do it a particular way. On the boat the little boy receives a hat, the same hat that both his grandfather and father are wearing. They both tell him to wear it the way that they are wearing it but, neither look seems to fit. Then, at the end of the film the little boy discovers himself and, decides to wear it backwards, changing the tradition of how to wear the hat. The family
There cannot be a discussion about borders without also discussing the metaphors that are linked to them. When speaking about the border people know the physical borderlines between countries, but to understand borders one must look pass the physical boundaries. As a society we must be and make ourselves more aware of the cultural identity, language, and community surrounding the Latino American population.
David G Gutiérrez’s Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity discuss the deep and complex understudied relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. This relationship was a natural consequence of the mass illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States that had constantly been increasing the population of “ethnic Mexicans” and along with it brought tensions between those who were Americans of Mexican descent and had been living here for generations and those who had freshly arrived to the United States and as such did whatever they had to do to make a living.
The film La Bamba showcases one of the most important historical moments in not only music history but also Latino music history. The star Lou Diamond, portrays Ritchie Valens originally Valenzuela. Ritchie was a boy who did not grow up in a normal childhood. In the film Valens played by Lou diamond is shown working hard alongside his mother Connie trying to make an honest living. His older brother Bob finds his way to his mother and young brother convincing them both to leave the fruit fields where they were working. While Ritchie should have been at school he was working. Once they moved to Los Angeles, Ritchie started attending high school like a normal teen should. His love for music grew strong as he became fond of a young girl named Donna. Donna was from a middle class white family, while Ritchie was from a poor Latino American family. Donna’s parents wanted to keep the two apart from each other as her father did not approve of the romance because Ritchie had nothing to offer his daughter. Ritchie had nothing to offer Donna but his music and hope of someday making a name for himself. One-day Ritchie and his band mates are having a show and a man by the name of Bob Keane stops by to see the performance, while there Keane shows a great interest in Ritchie and reaches out to him. Keane soon convinces Valens that he didn’t need his band mates, that Ritchie was all the talent. Bob Keane not only manages to get Ritchie to drop his band, but he also convinces him to change
Chicanos faced another problem along with their land being taken and being treated as second class citizens. Assimilating into American culture was difficult. Do you keep in touch with the roots of your homeland or do you change and adapt to the new ways of American culture? This was a struggle for Chicanos and it was difficult to adapt. A new language and a new culture in a place they once called their home. Some people tried to fit into both cultures, putting them into somewhere else entirely. This didn’t help their sense of belonging, and ultimately casted them farther as outsiders than before.
She discusses how Mexicans identify themselves; since there are many different ways to identify culture, they make up several different cultures (Indian, Black, and Mexican). By the end she talks about the fight that Mexicans put up to stand up for their culture and their identity.
Serpico” is a film that based on the of New York City Police Officer named Frank Serpico and the difficult obstacles he had to face working for the NYPD. Serpico is a “cops cop” that had to deal with persuasive organized corruption, police crime, and ethical dilemmas etc. All these obstacles were hard for Serpico to work with on a daily basis. He refused to take bribes and his co-workers begin distrust him. Serpico informed his superiors about the corruption but they did nothing about it. The superior’s just transferred him from the Bronx. Brooklyn, and Harlem. The higher ups in the police department were more concerned if Serpico spoke to any outside private organizations about the police misconduct.
It is hard for them to seek true identity when Whites did not want to give any acceptance to their culture. Between language and culture barriers, Mexicans could not find any means to gain freedom in America. The discrimination facing them not only set them back as a society, but did not allow them to grow personally. We see this throughout The House on Mango Street and Zoot Suit. Both of these books give clear examples how Mexicans on a personal level could not keep struggling with the stereotypes being pushed on them.
The ideas of what a utopian society should look like changes when talking to different people in different parts of the world. More often than not most people would say that violence is not a part of this utopian ideal and that man has found a way to work past that and find a better solution to the violent issues we have seen in the past. Films in a sense are a way for artists to explore these utopian and dystopia ideals and present them to the public as a looking glass into what the world could look like. For many of us we live in a capitalistic society or a society with at least some forms of capitalistic ruling. Film makers in Latin America have used their position to critique and analyze the different forms of capitalism and how the
Globalization as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary is “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets” This definition fails to mention that the only nation or entity profiting from globalization are first world western nations. The ideology of globalization is more or less the exploitation of underprivileged nations for control of both the global and social economy. The films “I dream in a foreign language”, “Embrace of the Serpent”, and “El Norte” are depictions of globalization within the lives of indigenous people in Latin America. These films produce an underrepresented view on how globalization contributes to cultural destruction and inequity of wealth for indigenous people
The movie Romero portrays the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Romero (1917-1980) was assassinated because of his protests against the horrors the government did against the people of El Salvador. I enjoyed this movie because of the deep themes and meanings that were revealed throughout. There was no fluff in this movie, and it boldly showed graphic images and scenes that portrayed the reality of the situation in El Salvador. Although there were times that some of the subplots were confusing, the overall plot of the movie was straightforward and easy to understand.