El tú como un “mask”: Voseo and Salvadoran and Honduran Identity in the United States

Author(s):  
Michael R. Woods ◽  
Susana V. Rivera-Mills

AbstractThis sociolinguistic study explores linguistic attitudes of Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the United States towards the use of voseo, a distinguishing feature of Central American Spanish. Using sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic observations, the Central American experience in Oregon and Washington is examined regarding linguistic attitudes toward voseo and tuteo and how these influence Salvadoran and Honduran identity in U.S. communities that are primarily Mexican-American. Initial findings point to participants developing ethnolinguistic masks and an expanded use of tú as a strategic approach to integration into the established Mexican-American community, while at the same time maintaining a sense of Central American identity.

Author(s):  
Francisco A. Lomelí

Eusebio Chacón was a Mexican American (sometimes referred to as Chicano) figure who straddled the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is someone who was forgotten and overlooked for about eighty years within the annals of Southwestern literature. He resurfaced in the mid-1970s as a key missing link in what is now called Chicano literature, at a time when its literary lineage was blurry and unknown. He was, therefore, instrumental in allowing critics to look back into the dusty shelves of libraries to identify writers who embodied the Mexican American experience within specific moments in history. Both his person and his writings provide an important window into subjects that interfaced with identity, literary formation and aesthetics, and social conditions, as well as how such early writers negotiated a new sense of Americanism while retaining some of their cultural background. Eusebio Chacón stands out as an outstanding example of turn-of-the-century intelligence, sensibility, versatility, and historical conscience in his attempts to educate people of Mexican descent about their rightful place in the United States as writers, social activists, and cultural beings. He fills a significant void that had remained up to the mid-1970s, which reveals how writings by such Mexican American writers were considered marginal.


1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Hidalgo

SUMMARY Mexican Spanish and Chicano Spanish: Fundamental Problems and Proposals The first sections of this article discuss the historical circumstances that intervened in the emergence of Mexican Spanish as an independent variety of Mexican Spanish; it also describes the geographic and social dialects of contemporary Mexican Spanish in the light of the studies carried out or directed by J. M. Lope Blanch. The second part compares the phonological and morphosyntactic phenomena that characterize Mexican and Chicano or Mexican American Spanish, the variety spoken in the southwestern part of the United States. Although the language data presented herein evidence countless similarities between the two varieties, the author assumes that the varíability of Mexican Spanish is greater than that of Chicano Spanish inasmuch as the demographic explosion, the intense internal migration, and the growth of the mass media in Mexico have caused speakers of diverse geographic and social backgrounds to be in close contact. Finally, since Chicano Spanish is very similar to and less varíable than Mexican Spanish, the author proposes a possible language planning based on a Chicano variety with salient Mexican features. RESUMO Meksika hispana lingvo kaj cikana hispana: Fundamentaj problemoj kaj proponoj. La unuaj sekcioj de tiu ci artikolo traktas la historiajn cirkonstancojn, kiuj intervenis en la ekapero de la meksika hispana kiel sendependa varíanto de la duoninsula hispana lingvo. Ĝi ankaǔ priskribas la geografiajn kaj sociajn dialektojn de la nuntempa mek-sika hispana en la kunteksto de la studoj faritaj aǔ direktitaj de J. M. Lope Blanch. La dua parto komparas la fonologiajn kaj morfosintaksajn fenomenojn, kiuj karak-terizas meksikan kaj ĉikanan aǔ meksik-amerikan hispanan lingvon, do tiun varíanton parolatan en la sudokcidenta parto de Usono. Kvankam la lingvaj informoj donataj ĉi tie montras sennombrajn similecojn inter la du varíanto], la aǔtoro supozas, ke la va-riemo de la meksik-hispana estas pli granda ol tiu de la ĉikan-hispana pro tio, ke la demografia eksplodo, la intensa interna migrado kaj la kresko de la amaskomunikiloj en Meksiko metis en proksiman kontakton parolantojn el diversaj fonoj geografiaj kaj sociaj. Fine, ĉar la ĉikan-hispana estas tre simila al la meksik-hispana, kaj malpli va-riema, la aǔtoro proponas eblan lingvoplanan procedon bazitan sur ĉikana varíanto kun evidentaj meksikaj elementoj.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis E. Murillo

AbstractThis article traces the significant yet largely unexplored experience of transnationalism in the lived religious experiences of Mexican and Mexican American Catholics by focusing on the parish as a central unit of analysis. Within this analysis, the parish unit is rethought as an analytical unit in two important regards. First, the way in which parish life in rural Mexico has been predominately conceptualized as one whose rhythm revolves around a traditional ritual calendar centered on community celebrations of particular religious holidays and localized votive devotions needs to be replaced. Based on research from an ongoing historical case study (1890-present) of a central Mexican parish, Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Coeneo, Michoacán, and on other parishes, the rhythm of parish life has clearly shifted to celebrations of marriages and baptisms. These religious celebrations of marriages and baptisms in Mexico have become the focal point of identity and community in this transnational Mexican and Mexican American experience. These sacraments of baptism and marriage have multiple meanings that not only include universal Catholic doctrines but also notions of family, community, and a particular appreciation for the sacralized landscape of their Mexican parish. Second, notions of parish boundaries as fixed and parish affiliation as singular must be reconsidered because many Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States consider themselves to be active members in at least two parishes: one in Mexico and one or more in the United States.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Dagmawi Woubshet

This essay draws on James Baldwin’s ideas on race, immigration, and American identity to examine the experience of contemporary African immigrants in the United States. More Africans have come to the U.S. since 1965 than through the Middle Passage, and only now is their experience gaining the full creative and critical attention it merits. Since becoming American entails adopting the racial norms and sentiments of the U.S., I explore how African immigrants contend with the process of racialization that is part and parcel of the American experience. Drawing on Baldwin’s idea of blackness as an ethical category, I also consider the limits of the concept of Afropolitanism to characterize the new wave of African immigrants in the U.S.


Author(s):  
Gabriela González

The concluding chapter explains how race had served defenders of slavery by providing them with an excuse to hold men and women in bondage. For their inhumane treatment of Africans during the Age of Enlightenment to be justified, their humanity needed to be ideologically stripped away—scientific racism served that purpose. Racist theories also kept other groups in subaltern positions. Mexicans with mestizo, mulatto, and Indian genealogies experienced racialization in the United States. Simply put, Americans, proud of their liberal political heritage and their democratic institutions, needed to see oppressed groups as somehow sub-human in order to reconcile their political beliefs with the nation’s less than egalitarian realities. It is for this reason that the politics of redemption practiced by Mexican immigrant and Mexican American activists merits attention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
KRISTINA F. NIELSEN

Abstract (Spanish/English)Forjando el Aztecanismo: Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano del Siglo XX en el siglo XXI en Los ÁngelesHoy en día, un creciente número de músicos mexico-americanos en los Estados Unidos tocan instrumentos indígenas mesoamericanos y réplicas arqueológicas, lo que se conoce como “Música Azteca.” En este artículo, doy a conocer cómo los músicos contemporáneos de Los Ángeles, California, recurren a los legados de la investigación musical nacionalista mexicana e integran modelos antropológicos y arqueológicos aplicados. Al combinar el trabajo de campo etnográfico con el análisis histórico, sugiero que los marcos musicales y culturales que alguna vez sirvieron para unir al México pos-revolucionario han adquirido una nuevo significado para contrarrestar la desaparición del legado indígena mexicano en los Estados Unidos.Today a growing number of Mexican-American musicians in the United States perform on Indigenous Mesoamerican instruments and archaeological replicas in what is widely referred to as “Aztec music.” In this article, I explore how contemporary musicians in Los Angeles, California, draw on legacies of Mexican nationalist music research and integrate applied anthropological and archeological models. Pairing ethnographic fieldwork with historical analysis, I suggest that musical and cultural frameworks that once served to unite post-revolutionary Mexico have gained new significance in countering Mexican Indigenous erasure in the United States.


Polar Record ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (104) ◽  
pp. 701-705
Author(s):  
Daniel Wilkes

The T-3 ice island case involved two trials in the United States of a Mexican-American, Mario Escamilla, for allegedly causing the death of a Negro coworker, Bennie Lightsey, on an ice island then at lat 84°45.8'N, long 106°24.4'W, on the High Seas, about 240 km north of Ellesmere Island on 16 July 1970. A federal judge in Virginia allowed Escamilla's first trail to proceed without definitively deciding on objections to jurisdiction, for he expected a ruling on this point on appeal. Issues raised by that trial are covered elsewhere (Pharand, 1971; Wilkes, 1972).


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