Pocho versus Nationalism

Author Luis Alberto Urrea

Fiction and non-fiction writer Luis Alberto Urrea spoke at the University of Arizona this past Friday as a part of the UA Reads Program and as a part of the Tucson Festival of Books. During his talk, Urrea discussed his travels that accompanied his writing. A Tijuana native, Urrea cautioned against the nationalistic messages he heard on radio stations while traveling in Mexico. Urrea warned that many of the messages about Honduran immigrants paralleled rants from the conservative right in the U.S. about Mexican immigrants.

Urrea reminded me not only of the dangers of nationalism, but also of how that nationalistic message is a part of the discourse surrounding the connotations of pocho. When deployed in the manner that nationalist Mexicans, who see outside cultural influences as negative, pocho takes on a very negative meaning situated in opposition to "true" or "puro" Mexican identity.

An interesting podcast from Onda Latina about the novel Pocho that addresses the notion of nationalism within the opposition of Mexican and American identities.
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/onda_latina/program?sernum=000536942&header=Culture