What Does It Mean to Be Latino? - The Atlantic - 0 views
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The feeling of being ni de aquí, ni de allá—from neither here nor there—is the fundamental paradox of latinidad, its very essence.
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Tobar’s book should be read in the context of other works that, for more than a century, have tried to elucidate the meaning of latinidad.
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In his 1891 essay “Our America,” José Martí, a Cuban writer then living in New York, argued that Latin American identity was defined, in part, by a rejection of the racism that he believed characterized the United States.
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The Mexican author Octavio Paz, in his 1950 book, The Labyrinth of Solitude, described the pachuco (a word used to refer to young Mexican American men, many of them gang members, in the mid-1900s) as a “pariah, a man who belongs nowhere,” alienated from his Mexican roots but not quite of the United States either.
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Gloria Anzaldúa, in her 1987 classic, Borderlands/La Frontera, described Chicana identity as the product of life along the U.S.-Mexico border, “una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.”
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We need to understand that they want the same freedoms, comforts, and securities that all people have wanted since the beginning of civilization: to have a “home with a place to paint, or a big, comfortable chair to sit in and read under a lamp, with a cushion under the small of our backs.”
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offers a more intimate look into the barrios, homes, and minds of people who, he argues, have been badly, and sometimes willfully, misunderstood.
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Tobar’s main focus is on how the migrant experience has shaped Latino identity.
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More than these other works, though, it engages in contemporary debates and issues, such as how Latinos have related to Blackness and indigeneity, the question of why some Latinos choose to identify as white, and the political conservatism of certain Latino communities
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“To be Latino in the United States,” Tobar writes, “is to see yourself portrayed, again and again, as an intellectually and physically diminished subject in stories told by others.”
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Even when migrants survive the journey and settle across the United States, Tobar sees a dark thread connecting them: “Our ancestors,” he writes, “have escaped marching armies, coups d’état, secret torture rooms, Stalinist surveillance, and the outrages of rural police forces.” Tobar is referring here to the domestic conflicts, fueled by the U.S. military, in Guatemala, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other countries during the Cold War, leading to unrest and forcing civilians in those places to flee northward.
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For Tobar, this history of violence is something all Latinos have in common, no matter where in the country they live.
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He writes, “I want a theory of social revolution that begins in this kind of intimate space,” not in the symbols “appropriated by corporate America,” like the Black Lives Matter banners displayed at professional sporting events, or the CEO of JPMorgan Chase kneeling at a branch of his bank, which critics have read as virtue signaling. Mere intimacy and the recognition of common histories isn’t the same as justice, but it is a necessary starting point for healing divisions.
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there are many Latino stories that he does not, and probably cannot, tell. For one, he conceives of Latino history as the history of a people who have endured traumas because of the actions of the U.S. But this framing wouldn’t appeal to Latinos who see the United States as the country where their dreams came true, where they’ve built careers, bought homes, provided for their families.
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If the small number of conservative Latinos Tobar interviewed are anything like the Hispanic Republicans I’ve talked with over the years, they would tell him that it is the Republican Party that best represents their economic, religious, and political values.
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If our aim is to understand the full story of Latinos—assuming such a thing is possible—we should explore all of the complexities of those who live in a country that is becoming more Latino by the day. For that, we’ll need other books besides Our Migrant Souls, ones that describe the inner worlds, motives, and ambitions of Latinos who see themselves and their place in this country differently.