Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship, Equality and Governance

I. Billie Holiday, "Strange Fruit" (a protest poem written by Lewis Allen--Abel Meeropol--in 1938 and recorded by Holliday in 1939)




II. Law and the Subaltern Body

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (MARB), The Squatter and the Don (1885)

After the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, "Black Codes" were outlawed but actual protection from second or tertiary citizenship in practice was quite different. The extant historical material documents this with considerable detail. Take, for example, the finely crafted response of former slave Jourdan Anderson to his former "owner's" letter demanding that he return to work on the same farm where Anderson had been a slave.

We discussed last week how MARB's The Squatter and the Don (1885) ultimately failed to entice a broad Anglo-American readership to consider the fundamental "whiteness" of "Spano-Americans" (Chapter II). This week we will discuss this failure in relation to the categories of "aesthetic representation" and "philosophical ethics," specifically the category of "normative ethics" in philosophical discourse.

In preparation for our discussions you will need to review the following items below as well as the above links as needed. Some useful questions to ponder:

1. How does our methodological model for literary analysis (TCI Method) help us understand MARB's investment in representing Mexicans as "Spano-Americans"?

2. Should aesthetic representation (such as MARB's The Squatter and the Don) be bound to normative ethical codes? Why or Why not?

3. Ken Gonzales-Day's artistic and scholarly work attempts to grapple with the haunting specter of racism, African American slavery, lynching, and its fundamental relationship to Latinos in the United States after "the American 1848" (recall/review your notes from Victoria and Zuley's presentation). Gonzales-Day's work--as evidenced both by our assigned reading of his work and Isela's presentation--asks us to ponder our relationship to this history through aesthetic contemplation beyond scholarly understanding. Be prepared to discuss Gonzales-Day's visual and scholarly meditations about this haunting in relation to MARB's Squatter and the Don (1885), and the homework questions assigned for his "Erased Lynching Series."

4. Given the examples we have discussed of Latino "citizenship" vs. "cultural citizenship" ("subaltern" citizenship), How does José Martí extend the concept of "rights" in hemispheric terms? Why? To what ends?

5. Given the U.S. example, and U.S. expansionism in the XIX century in particular (e.g., Mexico-US War), why is Martí so invested in understanding the concept of "governance" in "Nuestra América"?

6. What is Martí's relationship to the problematics of race and education?

7. What would good governance look like for José Martí?

For review prior to coming to class:

Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV)

[Remember that the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the American Civil War.]


The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Section 1

This section was also in response to the Black Codes that southern states had passed in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.The Black Codes attempted to return former slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, prohibiting them from owning firearms, and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court.

III. Preview:
Precious Knowledge
Some, but not all, of the Mexican-American studies classes in TUSD open with a poem written by Luis Valdez, of Zoot Suit and La Bamba fame. The poem is called "In Lak Ech," a Mayan phrase that was used as a greeting; the poem in some ways mirrors the golden rule.

Luis Valdez's poem:

"In Lak Ech"

Tú Eres mi otro yo / You are my other me.

Si te hago daño a ti / If I do harm to you,

Me hago daño a mí mismo / I do harm to myself;

Si te amo y respeto / If I love and respect you,

Me amo y respeto yo / I love and respect myself.

Picturing the Pain of Others: Ken Gonzales-Day's Latino Hang Trees

0. Review: The "Mexican War"
























[Printed at the Eagle and Advocate Office, [Philadelphia] offering 160 acres, a $12 bounty, and pay of $10 per month. Posted by Capt. Pemberton Waddell.]

"A Few More VOLUNTEERS Wanted for the MEXICAN WAR!"

"One can sign up for the length of the war or five years, at the Armory - The Oregon House, or some other places, including over Sutton's Bowling Saloon!"

I. Necrocitizenship/Cultural Citizenship
Police Gang Tyrannized Latinos


















East Haven, Connecticut police officers rooted through stores looking for damning security videotapes of how they had treated some of their targets, described by one of them on a police radio as having “drifted to this country on rafts made of chicken wings.”

NYT: "They were known as Miller’s Boys, police officers who worked the 4-to-midnight shift, patrolling the largely working-class town of East Haven, Conn., including the small but growing Hispanic community that has spread out in recent years from New Haven.

The officers were more than well known in that community; according to residents and federal authorities, they were feared. They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason, federal prosecutors said, sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall. They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest, who tried to document their behavior."

II. Writing Violence on the Latino Body: Gonzales-Day's Erased Lynching Series

Lynching in the West
LYNCHING IN THE WEST:1850-1935 (2006)
KEN GONZALES-DAY

Ken Gonzales-Day's Lynching in the West began as an effort to expand the historical record on lynching in California, and in doing so, discovered that contrary to the vast majority of published texts and histories on California, that frontier justice and vigilantism were not always a racially neutral set of practices.

The book includes a detailed appendix, assembled by the author, of individual cases of lynching and other forms of public execution. The appended case lists reveals that in California, Latinos of Mexican and Latin American descent were more likely to be lynched than any other racial, ethnic or national group. The book also considers how eighteenth and nineteenth century theories of race, nationality and ethnicity, may have contributed to this history.

From the vigilance committee to the antilynching movement, lynching touched nearly every community in the United States, and continues to serve as a catalyst for thinking about race, ethnicity, and national identity today.

III. Without Sanctuary

Without Sanctuary

Latino Identity Politics

I. Giant and "American" Cultural Memory



Sarge's Diner

Ángel

II. Necro-citizenship

Director: Ari Luis Palos; Producer: Eren Isabel McGinnis, Precious Knowledge (2011/12)




II. Discussion topic: For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color

From Zuley: Ethnic Authenticity and the Racial Divide

U.S. Latino Literature and Culture

Pre-class viewing, "Lorna la rapera," Lorna Zarina Aponte (1983 Panama)
"Spanglish" and transnational Latinidades. "Papi chulo... (te traigo el mmmm...)"
#1 in France, #2 in Italy, Belgium, #3 in the Netherlands, #12 in Switzerland, #49 in Sweden



Introductory Comments and Lecture: Latinos in the National Imaginary

I. Mapping Latinidades: History Against Proleptic Inclusion





















II. "American" Cultural Industries and Latinos
The Lone Ranger/El Llanero Solitario ("Enter The Lone Ranger", 9/15/1949)



George Stevens, dir.,Giant (1956)


George Stevens, dir., Giant (1956)


Taco Bell (1997)


Modern Family (2009)


Huffington Post, "Hispanic Images In The Media: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Bratt," by Stephen Palacios

"Spanish Girl" Series on Youtube (2012)