Happy Mother's Day

Because I was born of a matriarchy.....

...because I have bi-racial hair and while Nunez Mom is a non-violent mujer, Nunez Matriarch definitely gave me a swat or two with her chinelas get me to sit for its combing....

...because they are the reason for my being....

Happy Mother's Day...to Nunez Mom...and to Cuqui, Ma-ma...to Premonition who is a momi-to-be (in a matter of days)...and to all the other querida blogging and real world mommies, too many to mention.

(Picture Credit: "Hija de Yemaya y Ochun" by Yasmin Hernandez, a super bad, political, activist, rooted in raices y la tierra Boricua artista. Read about her here and support her site here.)

ETA: Took out the italics on my Puerto Rican. So I guess I'll owe a post about why soon. (Evolving Boricua Latina Caribeana mindset is the short answer...)

La Pasion De La Decision

LOL! And I love that Rosario Dawson and Wilmer Valderrama ("Fez") are in it!



From VivirLatino.

"Hispanic" Heritage Month...

...begins today. From another mujer "in the empire":

So what of this month? This month that includes “Columbus Day” of all things? This 15th to 15th “month” that derives its name from the Nixon Administration’s labeling of “Hispanic”? No se.

Read the rest at the Unapologetic Mexican.

Mariposa, "Diasporican"

H/T Sofrito for Your Soul

Favorite line: "Yo no nacio en Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico nacio en mi." It's got a Julia de Burgos swag to it.

WaPo: U-Md. Weighs Creating Latino Studies Minor

A 10-year campaign to establish a Latino studies program at the University of Maryland at College Park will hit a milestone today when a University Senate committee considers allowing students to minor in the field.

At a time when Latinos are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, students and professors said approval would be only a first step toward meeting their academic needs.

"This has been extremely frustrating," said Ana Patricia Rodriguez, an assistant professor and longtime activist on the issue. "You can see the great need in our local area to have people who know about Latinos who can provide attention, services, et cetera. It is important for our students to graduate with this background, yet our hands are tied because we don't have a structure at the school."

University officials said they are making progress. About $120,000 was provided in 2006 by the then-provost to write a proposal for a minor in U.S. Latino Studies. Within the past month, the minor was approved by a panel in the College of Arts and Humanities as well as by its dean, James F. Harris.

Harris said he expects the minor to be approved and plans to give it two years to see if students enroll in the program and faculty members want to teach its courses. Harris would then consider broadening it to a full program. Expanding the program could cost $300,000 to $500,000 for new faculty and other resources, said Ruth Enid Zambrana, a professor in Women's Studies and the senior Latina faculty member on campus.

Latino studies is a complex, evolving field that focuses on the history, culture, literature and the social fabric of Latino communities in the United States. Obstacles to creating such programs include misunderstanding about the field and debate about whether such programs are legitimate scholarship. Lack of funding also is an issue. The Persian Studies center at College Park, for example, was established with a multimillion-dollar donation from an outside institute.

"There seems to be a common underpinning: the concern that it is simply a political project, whether as a variation of affirmative action, political correctness or inverse segregationist impulses among Latinos," said Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, director of the Latino Studies Program at Cornell University.

For the rest.

"Critical Latinidad" makes the cover of Latinidades

Cover Image: Viajero#14, David Amoroso (2007)

One of Waiting 2 Speak's most clicked makes its published debut!

"It is only recently that U.S. Latina/o studies has begun to recognize the importance of Afro-Latina/os to Latina/o history, culture and condition in the United States."

Click here for the free download.

UMCP Latina/o Studies Working Group Founder and Director Robb Hernandez is the Managing Editor. Article submissions and art work inquiries can be made to him at robbher3@[no-spam]umd.edu. (Remove the no-spam when you email!)

Boricua Human Rights: Crimes Against Humanity, A Play

Produced by the National Boricua Human Rights Network and Batey Urbano.

Written by poet and activist Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides and former Puerto Rican political prisoner Luis Rosa, the play confronts the physical and mental torture these prisoners endured for more than 27 years. We gaze into their cell and experience the loss of parents, the transition of children into adulthood and feel the physical brutality and torture of a government out to make an example of them. We see them as they refuse to be victimized and objectified, confronting their hardships and adversities while maintaining their dignity, and upholding their humanity.

If you are in Chicago, check it out. Upcoming shows will also be in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Hartford, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.



(Thanks "C"!)

Junot Díaz Wins Pulitzer Price (Fiction)

"I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey," Díaz said. "If anybody deserves this, it's all those people who dragged my giving-up, depressed [expletive] over the finish line" -- among them his fiance, Elizabeth de León, and his agent, Nicole Aragi, "who spent 11 years telling me, 'You can do this.' "

Click here.

*Thanks "B" for passing it on.

Puerto Rican Women Writers

For those like me, who are searching...I am sharing....
Autorretrato VIII, by María de Mater O'Neill

From the introduction, by Consuelo Lopez Springfield:

This special issue of Callaloo is a colective effort by art and literary critics, translators, teachers, artists and writers to make Puerto Rican art and writing accessible to a wider audience. Inspired by its editor, Chalres Rowell, whose commitment to promoting the creative accomplishments of colonized peoples is exemplary, Callaloo is the first publication to offer outstanding art, photography, literature, interviews, and critical essays by and about Puerto Rican women. It is also the first feminist publication to unite exiled and island women in intellectual debate and artistic exchange on such major themes as the sexual control of women, the nature of identity, race, and class in colonized societies, and the challenges of bicultural life.

Check your local college/university collection. (If only I could post the articles here and not break copyright laws, I would!)

UMCP Students Fight for Latina/o Studies Program

Foolishness: Another ethnic studies program is under siege.

Last night, a meeting was organized by undergraduates, graduate students and supportive faculty. Particularly incensed are two students who are set to graduate with the minor this year but may not have it reflected in their degrees because of the university's proposed "strategic plan":

"And for ten years we've experienced a number of setbacks … and one of the things we keep hearing over and over again is that the university doesn't understand why we need a U.S. Latina/o studies program," said Hernandez, who formerly worked as a reporter for The Diamondback.

With laughter and applause from the crowd at the considerably audacious move, senior Evelyn Lopez, a criminal justice major and one of two students who has met the requirements to graduate this May with a minor in the unsanctioned program, took the floor as well. There, she asked Farvardin how he can push a plan full of global initiatives while a diversity-centered program sits on the administration's desk.

"We've worked really hard," Lopez said. "Are you just going to forget about the other minors that are trying to get put into place, or are you just going to give more initiative to [the strategic plan] and just kind of put everything aside?"

The university claims it does not have the resources to sponsor a Latina/o Studies Program.

Times are tight, true. But the first move is to cut scholarships, fellowships, programs and departments that cater directly to populations already underrepresented at the university-level???

And what does a university without these programs look like? How does that change the dynamic of a campus over one, five or ten years?

Click here to contact
Robb Hernandez about what you can do to help the students (who are united across race, by the way) at University of Maryland-College Park.

More Critical Latinidad....

...courtesy of Planet Grenada. This time on the race, gender and sexuality matrix in the music:

The classic merengue tune [El Africano by Wilfrido Vargas] is about a "rabioso" (angry, literally "rabid") black man uncovering the innocent girl who has little experience with "lo que quiere el negro" (what the black man wants). On one level it is a festive party anthem, but on another it pretty clearly perpetuates certain alarmist attitudes towards Black sexuality. (e.g. see race and sex)

DJ Laz made heavy use of a Vargas sample and updated the song musically, if not lyrically. While more recently, Cuban-American rapper Pitbull came out with "The Anthem" featuring Lil' John as an homage to the original. Miraculously, he manages to make the lyrics more lascivious (the girl is certainly not calling her daddy for protection) and racist (adding typical Latin stereotypes of Black female/"morena" sexuality to stereotypes of Black male sexuality)...

We must, we must, we MUST critique the racism in the Latina/o community and the (hetero)sexism. We must challenge the dangerous stereotypes we perpetuate in our music, whether that is hip hop, reggaeton, or merengue. Because these stereotypes give life to things like the Da'Niyah's rape and murder + Al Sharpton's proposed defense of the Dunbar Village rapists + Juanita Bynum's return to her abusive husband Thomas Weeks III + The women who keep going missing in Juarez. Those are just examples. Those are just the (barely) publicized examples.

It's not a game. People are dying. People are scared. And critical thought leading to critical action (theory + praxis) is so key. Work change into the world from whichever direction you choose--at the moment, I choose the master's tools. Which is why I love La Chola's 1, 2, 3, and 4-part take on academe--and respect the change being worked from all kinds of directions. Which is why I love her and her and the things they are doing for the communities they live in.

It is painful and frustrating to have to think so hard about the world. To be engaged in everything around you when what you really want to say is

COME ON!
AT LEAST LEAVE US ALONE IN OUR FAMILY ROOMS
LET ME HAVE MY MICROWAVE
AND
FLATSCREEN
AND MY
20 INCH RIMS
AND I WON'T SAY ANYTHING!

When what you want to do is twinkle along your way....or be go-go gadget lost in space...

But imagine if we did. Imagine if "every n*gga was a Master Teacher?" How FUNDAMENTALLY would our entire worldview change if we treated every man and woman, every child, ever bum on the corner or professor at Oxford as though ALL of them had something to teach us? As though ALL of them had something we could learn from, experiences we could learn through? My Gawd....

(I'm still thinking through these thoughts. More to come. Thanks for the inspiration, Abdul-Halim V....)

When it Rains it Pours...

And I forgot to add this as another update. Passed along to me courtesy of Robb Hernandez, Program Coordinator for the United States Latina/o Studies Initiative and Director of the Latina/o Studies Working Group, both based at the University of Maryland. For all those with an interest in Afrolatina/o Studies or Black Latinidad:

Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops
Ginetta E. B. Candelario

Associate Professor of Sociology and Latin American and Latina/o Studies at Smith College

"Black behind the Ears is an innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States. For much of the Dominican Republic’s history, the national body has been defined as “not black,” even as black ancestry has been grudgingly acknowledged. Rejecting simplistic explanations, Ginetta E. B. Candelario suggests that it is not a desire for whiteness that guides Dominican identity discourses and displays. Instead, it is an ideal norm of what it means to be both indigenous to the Republic (indios) and “Hispanic.” Both indigeneity and Hispanicity have operated as vehicles for asserting Dominican sovereignty in the context of the historically triangulated dynamics of Spanish colonialism, Haitian unification efforts, and U.S. imperialism. Candelario shows how the legacy of that history is manifest in contemporary Dominican identity discourses and displays, whether in the national historiography, the national museum’s exhibits, or ideas about women’s beauty. Dominican beauty culture is crucial to efforts to identify as “indios” because, as an easily altered bodily feature, hair texture trumps skin color, facial features, and ancestry in defining Dominicans as indios." CLICK HERE