THE CONCEPT OF MESTIZAJE:
Editor's Note - The following are excerpts of a presentation given by Ernesto Bustillos, a co-founder of Unión del Barrio. The presentation was given to a Chicano Studies Course titled "Chicano Art and Culture" at the University of California, San Diego, during the spring quarter of 1993.
First of all, I would like to thank Victor Ochoa [class instructor] for inviting us to share some thoughts on the question of "mestizaje" and its relationship to history, culture, and liberation.
I would like to preface my statements and comments here today by providing you with a brief personal introduction as to who I am and why I am here. We think it's important that people know some background of individuals making presentations because the experiences of those individuals is what shapes their point of view. So if you have an understanding of who they are - their experiences - you can understand more clearly where they are coming from.
I've been involved in the movement - in the Chicano movement - for about twenty years now. During these years I've been active with groups such as La Raza Unida Party, the Brown Berets, the Committee on Chicano Rights, and Unión del Barrio. I was raised here in San Diego. I lived in the Barrios of Logan, Sherman, and Lomas . . . some of you that know this area might know these neighborhoods . . . and I continue to live in the Barrio. Like Compañero Victor Ochoa said, I presently teach at a Junior High School. I've been teaching history at the Junior High School and High School level for about twelve years now.
No Matter How Talented, You Can Make Revolution As An Individual
These experiences as a person who lives in the Barrio, as a teacher, and as a political activist, is what shapes my understanding of the many issues and problems facing our people. We think that it is important that we also make it very clear, and I'm glad that Victor said it during the introduction to this presentation- that I am here as a representative of Unión del Barrio. The members of our organization, from the very get-go, right away, when we begin our presentations, we are very up front as to who we are. We don't hide the fact that we believe that organization is of primary importance in the peoples struggle for liberation. We always make it clear that we oppose individualism and anarchism [do or say your own thing, whenever you want to] as a method of struggle. In fact, not only do we oppose it, we think that it's counter-productive and counter-revolutionary for people to get up as individuals, and talk and give their opinions without getting information from the collective or being accountable to an organization.
We believe in what compañero - Ho Chi Minh - a great revolutionary in Vietnam during Vietnam's struggle against U.S. imperialism - said when he explained that "no matter how talented - how advanced the individual is, this person can get nowhere without an organization." If you look at history you will see that - that so-called individuals that have progressed or have led movements or have had an impact on history were usually people representing an organization.
We say these things, and we bring them up because we understand that you have had several speakers during this [school] quarter - expressed their views on history, culture, art, and struggle. Basically, some of these people have expressed their views from an individualistic perspective. So from the very beginning we want to distance ourselves form this type of politic and this type of expressing and raising views.
The Culture Of The Oppressor Vs. The Culture Of The Oppressed
We also believe that when we analyze things that we must always look at things logically and scientifically, taking into account the historical and material conditions in which things, or events, occur and develop. Central to the question of art and culture, since this is a class on Chicano Art and Culture- it is important that we clarify the relationship between the art of the oppressed people, and the art of the oppressor- and the culture of the oppressed people and the culture of the oppressor.
The oppressor's culture . . . we have to make this very clear . . . and that of the oppressed people's culture play -two different roles. The role of the oppressor's culture is to allow oppression to survive. We have to understand this from the very beginning. The role of culture, on the other hand, of the oppressed people is to allow people to liberate themselves. So if we take this definition of culture then we understand that the culture of the oppressor is a repressive culture, and the culture of an oppressed people has to be a liberating culture. If, and this is important again, if the culture of the oppressed people is not a liberating culture then it is not the oppressed peoples culture. I would like to repeat this - if the culture of the oppressed people is not a liberating culture, then its not the peoples culture. What we have is a facade of culture, it is an extension of the oppressors culture. It is important that we understand this.
Sometimes people when they see culture, or they see art being produced by an African or a Mexican, right away they think that that person is producing African or Chicano culture. Again, if that culture is not liberating then it is not the peoples culture. What these Africans and what these Mexicans or Chicanos are doing is mimicking the culture of the oppressed. I would like to make that clear since this is basically the thesis of my understanding and our organization's understanding of culture and mestizaje. Many people get confused when they see some African or some Mexican expressing some cultural art form. We fail to understand that a particular culture, liked a nation, has certain characteristics; and if these [characteristics] don't exist, it can't be considered part of that particular culture. We are talking about features such as history, traditions, and a collective psychology (way of thinking).
Having said that I would like to touch upon the subject that Compañero Victor asked me to talk about, which is the concept or the term of "mestizaje" and its relationship to what we understand to be history, culture, and struggle of Mexicans on this side of the border.
Defining The Mestizo And Mestizaje -From A Strictly Cultural To A Revolutionary Understanding
I would like to begin by providing you with a definition of mestizaje . . . a working or general definition of the concept and then move on as to how this concept has impacted our people and to what this concept represents or how it relates to us today.
First, the general definition of mestizaje, as put forth by most social scientists and cultural nationalists, is one that claims that during the first two to three hundred years of the occupation of the Americas by the Spanish, a process took place in which Indians and Spaniards united, had children, and this produced a new type of human being, a new race, which the Spanish colonialists called the mestizo. Central to this definition is the fact that people put a lot of emphasis on describing it as a super-phenomena, something unprecedented in history, something out of the ordinary.
During the late 1920's, immediately following the Mexican revolution this term gained popularity. It was mainly used among social scientists and culturalists in México as a way of explaining the Mexican reality. Diego Rivera in his murals; Octavio Paz and Vasconselos in their writings, etc.
During the 1960's and early 1970's, in what is known in history as the "Chicano Power Movement" many activist and progressive organizations and a large significant sector of our population and community also used this word to basically recognize their indigenous past.
Some of you who have studied the history of the Chicano Movement know that by 1975, along with the Black Power Movement, along with the Native American Movement, these movements were generally destroyed by the United States government under a program called COINTELPRO- the counter-intelligence program under the F.B.I. As a result from the defeat of our movement by 1975 liberation or self-determination type politics and activism was limited to a handful of activists and a handful of organizations. This defeat of our movement, this decline allowed for the politics or the emergence of something called the hispanic politic, or as to what historian Rudy Acuña [author of Occupied America] refers to as "the return of the Spanish boy" and what the United States government, or those who rule the United States government call the "decade of the hispanic" [an assimilationist-reformist practice]. Just by listening to the word- "hispanic," it obviously tells you that what united these people around this term had nothing to do with mestizaje or indigenismo, but it had to do with things related to Spain, especially language.
So by the late 1970's and the early 80's, the use of the term- and this is important to us who study the history of our people and the history of our movement- that in the late 1970's and early 1980's the use of the term mestizaje was limited to a very few academics, such as Chicano Studies teachers, as well as Chicano artists and cultural nationalists [those who base themselves primarily on cultural practices] who had survived the defeat of our movement in 1975.
The few community-based political activists that survived past 1975 did, on the other hand, along with a small cadre of new people that were coming into what was left of the movement, under the leadership of the few organizations such as La Raza Unida Party, who barely survived the defeat of the 70s, and new groups such as the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Mexicano, known in movement circles as the M.L.N.M., and Unión del Barrio . . . began to critically analyze our struggle and sum up questions that were important to our people. Such as the role of culture and art, the role of economics, such as the role of internationalism.
When we approached the question of how to study or how to find solutions we again used history, from a material perspective, and science -as a way to find out what was really coming down and what all these things that were happening around us in the past and present meant.
The late 1970's and early 1980's was a period marked by a real general confusion among our people because our movement was defeated and there was no longer any leadership. The hispanics and the vendidos were now the ones being pushed on television and in the newspapers, as the leaders of our community. These elements survived through grants given to them by the government, Coors, Bank of America, etc.
The Brown Berets had been destroyed. La Raza Unida Party had virtually been destroyed. The Farmworkers Union no longer had a hundred thousand members- it was down to less than ten thousand. There was no leadership, it was a period of confusion, demoralization, and what we call dis-organization. Not only were people not organized- there was a feeling of people being anti-organization. Which exists today. That's why some speakers come here [and make presentations] as individuals, not representing organizations.
Although It was a period of demoralization, there was also certain developments that were new to us. We began to get new information. We began to use new technology. We had some time to reflect on what our movement was about, what our movement had gone through. To add to this new information and technology . . . we had something very important that other people before us did not have- a small cadre of veteranos and veteranas who had survived the last period of struggle, and had some experiences to share with us.
Now we had information, technology, plus experience. Things that some of us who were involved in the 1960's did not have. In the '60s, we were new to struggle. We didn't have people explaining to us what this and that was all about. So we basically learned through trial and error. Now we have some people who could explain to us some of the things that were coming down. It was through this collective study within our organization and through what are called "encuentros and platicas" with other formations which has enabled us to come to some logical and scientific understanding of history, culture, and things like education and political struggle.
Originally Mestizaje Was Created By The Spaniards As A Tactic To Divide And Conquer Our Raza
It was this approach, this new information that we had that let us come to a certain conclusion or agreement on what we see as a real profound statement advanced by the Mexican historian, Justo Serra, in which he says in a chapter in one of his books, "México was conquered by Mexicans." We studied this and took this to its full meaning, and this led us to resolve the question of mestizaje.
Basically, what Justo Serra said was that not only was the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, captured by an overwhelmingly Indian army, composed of people who were enemies of the Aztecs, but the whole so-called "new-world" was conquered mostly by Indian armies- under the leadership of the Spaniards. So these whole one hundred- two hundred years of conquest was done basically by Indian soldiers that the Spaniards had recruited. Not only were the people indigenous who were conquering other indigenous people, but the so-called "Spanish settlers" [of lands conquered by the Spanish] were also basically indigenous people.
For example, if we look at the history of the founding of Los Angeles we find that out of the fifty or so people that founded that town, forty of them were Indians and the other ten were Africans or Spaniards . . . and this process was repeated throughout México and what we call today Aztlán. This is what we understand Justo Serra as saying. Seeing the concept of mestizaje in this manner we see that it was created by the Spaniards as a tactic [used by colonialism throughout the world] to divide the people.
There are three fundamental ways that mestizaje was used to divide La Raza. First you divide the people in order to conquer them . . . so you divide them by imposing labels upon them. Second you confuse, . . . and this is important because most Mexicans today are confused, . . . the native people as to who the land, we're talking about America, really belongs to. If you claim or accept the term mestizo then you are not Indian. If you are not Indian, then you have no right to the land. They [the Spanish] very cleverly forced people to think they were mestizo . . . if you are a mestizo means you are not an Indian- and if you are not an Indian, you have no right to this land.
This was that concept of "We are all illegal aliens," [A line advanced by the opportunist white left.] comes from. If we are all immigrants, then we all came from somewhere else. It claims that Mexicans are immigrants, that Africans are immigrants, that white people are immigrants. We understand that this is not true. Indians are not immigrants. It is white people who are immigrants. Once we are confused into thinking we are immigrants, then we have no right to this land.
This is what we see today in occupied Azania (South Africa) . . . you have these white people calling themselves Afrikaners. If you go to a Junior High School and point to Africa on the map and ask the kids what type of people live in Africa -they'll tell you Black people. Yet if you go to South Africa today, some white people say they are Africans- and that's bullshit. They can't be Africans -I don't care how long they live there. White people, no matter how long they live in America- are not Americans. They are European- Irish, English, Italian, etc. This is why the Europeans- the Spanish- tried to do to confuse us into accepting that we were not indigenous.
And thirdly . . . this is important . . . especially for white people to understand . . . that by labeling people as mestizos the United States keeps its own "citizens," which are basically white people, in some kind of psychological comfort, [by which] to get rid of the guilt of the worst genocide in history. What happened to the Jews was a picnic compared to what happened to the American Indian. I'm not belittling what happened to the Jews, I am making an analogy. So this concept was created to get rid of the guilt and responsibility for the worst genocide in human history -500 years of colonization, 500 years of the most brutal slavery- by convincing their own "citizens" to think that somehow Mexicans - who live in the barrios, who work in the fields, who work in the hotels, who clean their homes- are not Indians! Since we are not Indians we have no right to this land. We must therefore be immigrants like they are. Just like they came from Ireland or some other country . . . we must have come from somewhere else. This allows them [white colonists] to survive psychologically. This is another reason the concept of mestizaje was imposed on us. We also argue that the so-called mestizaje is nothing but an illusion made up by imperialist social scientists, social mercenaries, educators, missionaries, priests, artists, etc.
Indigenous People Have Always Been The Majority In México
We say that this is not true because first, if you look at the history of colonial México, the Spaniards never consisted of more than one thirtieth of the population. Never. And if you don't believe me you can look it up in the libraries in this university. In fact there were Indian pueblos that were never conquered by the Spanish. So, I don't give a shit if the Spaniards were human rabbits, it was impossible for them to geographically, biologically, and mathematically to convert a whole nation of millions of people into mestizos- it's impossible. Even in 1846 when the United States stole this land away from México the majority of the people still had their native culture, they still spoke their indigenous language. Only a small minority of Mexicans [north or south] in 1846 spoke Spanish. If we understand this, then we know that Mexicans are Indians and that there is no such thing as mestizaje in the way that academics and social scientists try to convince us.
Secondly, this whole thing of race mixing, that did occur, -this is important for us to understand- what did occur was generally speaking a result of rape. What we have then is a situation where the offspring -which is usually the case- have the social and human right to reject any claim of a rapist. People and societies have historically done that. It is a universal fact, that those who are products of rape have the right to reject the rapists.
Thirdly, as explained in a book that I think all of you should read, it is called Aztecas del Norte, Chicanos in Aztlán, there is no such thing as a pure race or nationality on the planet earth. Every nation of people develop as a process of merging with different groups. For example, Spaniards are a merger of North Africans and Southern Europeans, and that is what we have today, a mixture of different people who now call themselves Spanish. Russians are part German, Viking and Mongolian, Hun, Asian people; these are the Russians of today. The Arab is part European, part Asian, and part African. Yet you don't go up to a Spaniard and call him a mestizo, you don't go to a Russian and call him a mestizo, you don't go to an Arab and call him a mestizo. They call themselves what they want to call themselves. Spanish, Arab, Russian, etc.
For us to claim that we are mestizos means that somehow we are different from the rest of humanity, and for others to call us mestizos is basically racist or at best, deep ignorance.
People Have The Human Right To Learn From Others
People have a human right to learn from others. Knowledge is like the air, nobody has a claim to it. So, generally speaking, the people that survive and progress are the people who pick up things from other cultures, learn from other people, etc. Acculturation did occur but mestizaje, its colonial and generally accepted definition, did not occur.
Looking at things in a historical context, since we like to look at things historically and how things were at a particular time, mestizaje, at one time was used in a progressive context. We are talking about the U.S. in the 1950's and early 1960's when racism was real brutal, overt, straight out, and to say you were Mexican was a revolutionary act. To claim that you were Indian could get you killed or at least your ass kicked. To claim you were a mestizo was the next best thing to say. So it was progressive at that particular time.
We think it is important that we learn history, because like people say, if we don't know our history we don't know what we are about today, and if we don't know about today we sure won't know about the future. I would like to end here and thank Victor for allowing me to make these comments. Gracias.
¡HASTA LA VICTORIA- SIEMPRE!
So summing up this particular question around mestizaje, we must make it clear that we are not saying that acculturation didn't occur. It did occur. All people- I don't give a shit where you live on the planet earth- all people are products of acculturation. Also all cultures are evolutionary. White people don't go around dressed as Vikings to prove they are white, we know they are white. The Japanese don't dress like Samurai warriors to prove they are Japanese. All people historically have progressed when they acquire knowledge and customs from other people.
Like I said, we are in the 1990's now, we have a whole twenty years of experience since the last period of struggle, we have technology, we have done more research, and we are learning things more and more. One of the things we learned was how mestizaje has been used against our people, and to a degree continues to be used.