Guest Blogger on Academia de Cruz

Andy Besa de Tejas Talks Mistaken Identity

Check out the recent Guest Blogger on my Academia de Cruz blog:
http://writerscholarprofessional.blogspot.com/2011/03/presenting-guest-blogger-andy-besa.html

Writer Andy Besa discusses how mestizaje makes him a target of microaggressions.  When Polynesians aren't sure of his ethnicity, they welcome him. When Anglos think he's native American, he's made to feel as though he's lacking if he doesn't fulfill their desire to interact with an 'other.'

(Besa and Walter Mignolo at New Directions Conference 2010)

Pocho as Spanglish & Bruised Fruit

A Note on "Pochismo" Author(s): William E. Wilson
Kicking it old school, here is an excerpt from a 1946 article that speaks of pocho as a Spanglish kind of dialect.
 
From The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 30, No. 6, (Oct., 1946), pp. 345-346

"POCHISMO, derived from pocho, an adjective which originally meant discolored, has now come to mean a type of popular slang in Mexico. In the evergrowing list of pocho expressions are many hybrid words, artificial combinations of English and Spanish. Indicative of its spread is the inclusion of many words of this type in a Spanish vocabulary list prepared for U. S. Border Patrol Trainees.' with the remark that "those words underlined are colloquialisms but are often used on the Mexican border and the officer will get better results if he understands them." Typical examples in this list are bebi, baby; yaque, jack; diche, ditch; lonche, lunch;pene, pen (penitentiary); esteche, stage; traque, track, and huachar, to watch. Mexican intellectuals and conservatives have long endeavored to check the spread of this hybrid language, and even held an Anti-Pochismo week in August, 1944."

 (Sun Mad Ester Hernandez)

This image kind of goes along with the theme of the bruised fruit or even dead on the vine as it were.

Rodolfo F. Acuña's "The Making of the Political Pocho"

Pocho as Socially Comfortable Middle-Class
A function of this blog is to document the different definitions, connotations and embodied rhetoric that 'pocho' takes on. It should be noted that many of the people in the 'list' section have 'owned' pocho, reclaiming it as a self-identification. Acuña's article http://www.aztlan.net/pocho.htm seems to denote 'pocho' in the vein Gloria Anzaldua uses when she describes it as 'cultural traitor.'

From Acuña's article:
"I make the analogy of the pocho because when many of us entered the public schools we spoke fluent Spanish. In fact, it was our only language. Because of the lack of maintenance of Spanish our development in the language remained at a primary school level. It did not advance to reading Spanish language literature. English in many cases became our primary language. Meanwhile, we were not able to take Spanish classes until high school when we repeated like parrots, "?HOLA PACO, QUE TAL? ?COMO ESTAS?
Many former Chicano activists through a lack of political maintenance have become political pochos. They learned the basics of Chicano studies, its language, but have not advanced beyond a cultural level. They identify with the culture, but not the political dimensions of culture. Over time, they begin to think about the barrio as a justification for their entitlements. Notions such as the transformation of the barrio become alien to their political vocabulary"

It is true that Acuña is calling into question the political commitment of middle class Latin@s and Chican@s; however, I am interested in the use of 'pocho' and how it is deployed to denote transgression.
Update: 
No, I have no real great insights that I have come to about the perceived transgressions of pochismo at this time; rather, I tracked down the Chuck Norris image that kept coming to mind every time I looked at the "El Pocho" movie poster above so I had to add it for visual juxtaposition purposes.

Pochteca Deity Yacatecuhtli

From: Aztec Mythology: The Influence of Aztec Mythology on Mexican Culture and History

By: James W. Salterio Torres

Description of the Yacatecuhtli:
"Yacatecuhtli, like the Greek Hermes, is the god of merchants, traders and travelers. He is pictured with white and black facial decorations, his hair is bound in a high sheaf, and he carries a staff and a flywhisk. He is honored by having his statues wrapped in paper wherever they are found. Merchants hold their walking stick, a massive cane called an utlatl in high esteem. They carry these walking sticks when traveling and when they arrive at a place they are to sleep, they gather all of their sticks in one bundle and tie them together, lay them at the head where they are to sleep and spill drops of blood in front of them from their tongue, ears or arms and legs; they offer copal and light a fire that burns before the walking sticks which they hold as the image of the god himself. This is their way of asking for the god’s protection from all dangers. (Restored by the author from the Codex Fejervany Mayer)"













I'm not sure how the deity of the pochteca affects the embodied rhetoric of the pochteca as a figure. Although Dolores Delgado Bernal has looked at the role of spirituality in the academic identity of Latin@ students, so this could be an aspect to consider.

Pocho como Estereotipo...

Fronteras y representaciones sociales: La figura del pocho como estereotipo del chicano

"JMV Arce - Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 2004 - UCLA
Las representaciones sociales son construcciones colectivas a través de las cuales se construyen
a los otros(as) generalizados y se producen explicaciones de sus rasgos y
comportamientos. Las representaciones sociales, de acuerdo con Jodelet, son ..."

A good article that looks at the perceived transgressions of the 'pocho' by Mexico-born persons. It points out the tie to language and call, "No te apoches" with regard to the language.

 I really don't know the origins of this picture except that I found it on wax.fm, but I would say there is some stereotypical connotations of the style that this guy is putting out there.

If you have access to JSTOR through your university library, I would recommend finding this article that way.

New Space, Continuing Idea

From Academia de Cruz

The idea for this blog as a place to compile ideas that are a part of a larger project came into conception on my somewhat long running blog Academia de Cruz.

Here is the first post that is a cross-post from my other blog, but I thought it was a good way to start.

This is the third of my blogs that I am currently solely contributing to, but I believe that they are indicative of some of the multiple identities that I will address in the content of this blog. Academic identity will be a thread as a part of discussions of the pochteca, an Aztec traveling merchant detailed in the Florentine Codex.