Latinx Cultural Studies

I learned something new from Padilla's work! I did not know that non-binary people can be gender conforming simultaneously. I learned that one could adopt "non-binary" as an identifier as an act of solidarity with other queer people to undermine Western gender and sex categorizations. This adds even more fluidity to the idea of gender (the idea that someone can *not* be gendered). That's cool. It makes me wonder as a bisexual person if I'm bisexual? Because sure, the "bi" refers to the binary categories of "man" and "woman", but if everyone isn't gendered, and if gender isn't really told by appearance, how could one truly know how many genders they are attracted to? I'm not having an identity crisis or anything. I'm probably still gonna identify the same after this. Bu t it made me realize these words really mean nothing........ but so much at the same time.

Tato Laviera's "Spanglish" was way more easily understood when read aloud, which I found ironic since Anzaldua's article is about the importance of the tongue. Surely, hearing Laviera's poem read aloud reminded me of the power of the tongue. Its unrelated, but this emphasis on the tongue reminds me of the emphasis of speech into my traditional religion. Sacred knowledge is transmitted only orally, with no written sacred text. Many indigenous cultures from which Indigenous Latinx people descend also practiced this. My cultural anthropology professor taught us that in cultures where there are shamans (applicable to many Indigenous Latinx cultures) there is very rarely oral texts. Knowledge is transmitted orally through generations. I wonder if this played a role in why the oral transmission of Laviera's work was such a different experience than reading it.

The contradictions of racism are extremely extremely exhausting for people who live within the margins that social constructions have created. It's exhausting because no matter how many times you point out the contradictions or explain the reality of things, the people who have the most power will be committed to misunderstanding you because it is those contradictions that secure their comfortability in society. I finished Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad for a class immediately before I began this documentary, and the theme of white people not being able to recognize the inconsistencies in their values is present in both works. In Whitehead's book, slavecatchers boast about America's superiority and say it is because the noble white men take whatever they want; yet they dedicated their lives to brutalizing and chasing Africans in America who took  what they wanted (freedom). That's all I could think about when in the documentary, Legislator Horne had ...

The article by Maria Garcia begs the unanswerable question, "to what extent has the US used immigration and immigration policy to repress left wing agendas and reinforce racism throughout the years"? The reason I say it is unanswerable is because even if we analyze large scale incidents of US being politically strategic in their refugee admission (i.e. with Cubans during the Cold War) there are likely so many other minor movements that US policy affected before they could fully expand and that are not well documented enough to fully study. It's also always fascinating how well-designed colonialism can be despite how immoral it is; it is equally as interesting how colonialism and racism go hand in hand. Garcia's emphasis on Cuba reminded me of all the Cubans I know who tell stories of their parents and grandparents legally immigrated to the US during the Cold War, namely in places like Miami. The people who have told me this have always been white or non-black mestiz...