To be or not to be Latino...
By Miguel Bonilla
 As
you enter the market you are awestruck by a wide array of colors,
smells, textures and sounds. Sixty thousands shoppers and shopkeepers
meet every morning to trade some of the best goods in all of
the country. Delicious tamales filled with stewed piña,
squash, wild mushrooms, and beans in a spicy mole sauce, tiny
swirled tamales and large square tamales side by side. Blue and
red corn tortillas with native gods embossed by hand, sweet tropical
fruits made into intoxicating beverages, piles of nuts, beans,
vegetables, and herbs ready to be picked and taken home for dinner.
Sounds like a fantastic
farmer's market of today, but in actuality, it's a summary of
what Cortez saw when he arrived at the market of Tlatelolco in
Mexico City-over 500 years ago! This market no longer exists,
but the rich cultural legacy that these people constructed is
uniquely ours. Yet many people don't see how preserving our cultural
heritage has any relevance to who we are now.
Many people ask themselves,
"Do we have a responsibility to celebrate, maintain, or
preserve our culture?"
Yes, but not really in
to the same degree that we are responsible to our landlords to
pay the rent, to ourselves to get some food, and to our bosses
to come to work. We have to work to survive, but we don't necessarily
have to preserve our Latino heritage or be Latino to make a living.
Yet, I feel we do have a responsibility to ourselves, our community,
and to our ancestors to preserve our culture-preserving meaning
taking an interest in and living in the culture as opposed to
taking a dogmatic approach to who we are and dictating to others.
It may not be as crucial to our lives as making a living, but
nonetheless important to our well being.
In the next few paragraphs,
I will attempt to explain why we need to preserve our Latino
culture. Before I begin, I must qualify what I write by stating
that I am not a sociologist by any means. I am just a regular
guy who has pondered this question for himself and would like
to put these thoughts on the table to discuss. So here you are-please
discuss!
After you read this, perhaps
you will see how our heritage should not be disregarded like
yesterday's paper, but genuinely revered and celebrated not unlike
our own lives.
Responsibility to Ourselves
We have a responsibility
to ourselves. We've been given a gift. We are born out of a unique
fusion of various world cultures, people, and places. Our inheritance
is a rich history of literature, music, food, and dance-spot
marked with wars, hate, and discrimination. To deny our complex
past is to deny who we are.
My experience has shown
me that people who are closeted (culturally or sexually) project
their denials in negative, hostile manners. They are not happy
people. In this country, we are conditioned to de-value our own
cultural heritage in exchange for a "wider" vision
of what the country should be-remember the Great American Melting
Pot? By playing into these conscious and subconscious messages,
we contribute to our own unhappiness.
Read a book, see a movie,
talk to a relative-do anything that will reconnect you to your
past. Discover more about who you are, and in turn, you will
challenge yourself. I assure you that your life will become richer,
more fulfilling and greater as a result of your efforts.
Responsibility to Our
Community
It's easy to forget how
much we need and depend on each other. We work 9 to 5, drive
home, turn on the TV, relax, and call some friends to see what
they are doing over the weekend. Then we go to sleep and start
the cycle over again the next day. This may seem like a normal
routine to most of us but this is, obviously, anti-social. We
don't have the same level of interaction that our parents and
their parents had with each other. We really don't have to deal
with each other very much. What implications does this have on
us?
Not seeing and dealing
with people on a regular basis is dangerous to our well-being.
Studies have shown that social isolation can have detrimental
effects physically and psychologically. Seeing people on a regular
basis is not only healthy, but also necessary for the development
of healthy well-rounded individuals. When we don't have people
who keep us in check, we get the impression we can do or say
anything to anyone without any implications. We start thinking
that our needs are more important than anyone else's. This is
dangerous. Have you ever been pushed on a nightclub's dance floor
and the person who pushed you doesn't say, "Excuse me?"
That's exactly what I mean-no concept of responsibility to each
other. It's all about me.
How does this relate to
our own culture? The less we see of each other the more likely
our culture is going to disappear. One individual hanging out
at home does not develop culture. It is an active discourse among
all of us.
And the great thing is
that, collectively, we can create great things. I am a big believer
in mixing the modern with the traditional. Our people have been
doing it for centuries. Just imagine the possibilities. Imagine
a Latino IKEA, a modern inexpensive furniture store with the
bright colors, textures, shapes reminiscent of our home countries.
Or how about a Puerto Rican vegetarian restaurant, or a Columbian
café with live tropical music, or trendy boutique with
fantastic clothes detailed with pre-Columbian motifs, colors
and textures. Reveling in our culture cannot only bring us social
satisfaction but economic satisfaction as well.
The point is that every
time we decide we don't want to speak Spanish, or educate ourselves
about our past, our cultures dies. Every one of us contributes
to our own culture's demise. When I was working for the National
Congress of American Indians in DC, a lobbyist for the organization
told a group of Native American interns, "If you don't practice
your language, you might as well be Mexican." Although we
are not culturally Native Americans, we have our own traditions,
culture, and language that we have a responsibility to maintain.
If we don't do it, no one else will.
Responsibility to Our
Ancestors
Do we owe something to
our ancestors? You damn right we do! Their hard work should not
be ignored. How would you like it if you busted your ass for
your family and they never recognized your work? You probably
wouldn't like it at all. Our people have outlived 500 years of
oppression and continue to live courageously. This may seem irrelevant
to your daily living but look at it this way-they're a part of
you. Someone who helped domesticate corn thousands of years ago,
looked a lot like you, loved like you, and hung out with friends
like you.
The point is that the blood
of those people runs through our veins and forgetting that is
like spitting in their faces. Their lives go unrecognized and
we can't allow that to happen.
Conclusion
Our lives are intricate
interactions with ourselves and others that contribute to the
amorphous thing we call culture. No one is the authority on culture,
yet we consciously and subconsciously contribute to it every
day. If at any moment we decide our cultural heritage is not
worth preserving, we will lose as individual people, as a community
and as decedents of people who have given their lives to make
us who we are. Take pride in what many generations of our own
people have struggled to preserve and create. Make an effort,
be it small or great, to preserve, contribute, or celebrate our
heritage. If not, we might as well not be Latino.
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