Millennials come of age in immigrant families

In this blog entry, Evelyn Ibatan Rodriguez celebrates coming of age ceremonies and discusses what prompted her to write Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceañeras

When I first pitched the project that has become Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceañeras to my dissertation chair, the feminist in me worried that I might be judged as a phony because of my interest in traditions so associated with sparkles, poufy dresses, and curtsies.  Fortunately, my chair had just finished organizing her daughter’s bat mitzvah, so she didn’t need much persuading when I proposed studying “debuts” and “quinces” to better understand gender and American immigrant adaptation.  With this book, I now have the exciting opportunity to show readers how much more there are to debutantes and quinces than meets the eye.

In some ways, this task seems more daunting today than when I started my fieldwork—a decade before Joel Stein lead Time readers to consider whether young adults are more entitled than ever or “will save the world” (2013).  And long before internet commenters blasted Ms. magazine for daring to call pop superstar Beyoncé a “fierce feminist” (2013).  But, amidst the hand-wringing over young people and what advocating for women’s equality should look like, Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceañeras shows how some American immigrant families have managed to indulge their daughters without producing narcissists. These families observe old-world female coming-of-age traditions without imposing old-school limits on what females (and feminists) can be in a number of creative ways:

1.     They tie personal success to collective success.  Although female coming-of-age parties are framed as “for the girl,” the immigrants I studied organized these events as collective endeavors, designed to showcase the beauty and success of their families and cultures, as well as that of their daughters.  This requires celebrants to recognize what they want as inextricable from their parents’ and communities’ desires, needs, and goals, and, ultimately, it imparts a sense of responsibility for the well-being of those around them. This is remarkable when one considers that the majority of my subjects are “millennials,” teenagers who have been accused of being  more self-involved and significantly less civically and politically engaged than the generations before them.

2.     Debuts and quinceañeras also re-establish first-generation authority.   Viewers of MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 and Quiero Mis Quinces (which paint debutantes and quinceañeras as teenage divas who control their parents via tantrums and manipulation) might be shocked that the immigrant parents I observed actually exercised a good degree of influence and control over their daughters.  During preparation for their events, for example, daughters often came to appreciate their near-total financial dependence on their parents.  And, by stressing the “tradition” aspect of their daughters’ celebrations, immigrants asserted themselves as “cultural experts” who their daughters needed to properly understand the traditions they were taking part in. This is vital for children of immigrants who are at risk of “downward assimilation.”  Inter-generational collaboration is also healthy for all youth because of how “cyberculture” has enabled many young adults to evade meaningful contact with anyone beside their peers, though healthy maturation requires youth to relate to older people and things.

3.     And quinces and debuts enable daughters to experience obstacles and figure them out.   Though these events allow some parents to establish greater authority over their kids, the immigrants I studied were not “Tiger” or “helicopter” parents.  In fact, the young women who experienced the best outcomes in my study were those who were granted some autonomy during their debut or quince preparation and performances.  Letting young women to take some financial and/ or organizing responsibilities and enabling them to respectfully voice their disagreement during planning helped cultivate leadership, money-management, communication, and conflict-management skills.  And these are all aptitudes those on either side of the Beyoncé-as-feminist debate should be able to agree are vital to women’s social, political, legal, and economic equality.

Of course there are other ways immigrant-organized debuts and quinceañeras avoid (and do not avoid) producing millennial narcissists and chauvinists.  Nevertheless,Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceañeras should give the hand-wringers some pause—and maybe a little hope.  Because, as I write in the last pages of my book, the advancement of the communities I studied, and of our society in general, depends on how we enlarge our culture to accommodate diverse forms of expression—including feminists in sparkle dresses, being American and Filipino and/or Mexican at the same time, and learning to care for others by organizing a birthday party.

The Filadelfia Story

In this blog entry, Sabrina Vourvoulias, the managing editor of Al Día, describes the stories that can be found in the photo history, 200 Years of Latino History in Philadelphia. 

I am enamored with stories. My own and my family’s, certainly, but also the stories my friends and neighbors tell. And the ones I overhear when a grandparent explains to a child why something is significant, or a beloved custom.

Even more, I love the stories that emerge when many of us sit together leafing through photo albums — remembering food, festivals, people — in community.

For the past twenty years, Latinos in Philadelphia have read and seen their stories appear weekly in Al Día newspaper. The book 200 Years of Latino History in Philadelphia is simply an extension of that work of documentation. 

In it you’ll find stories about Latinos in Philadelphia that go back to the time of the founding fathers: Like Manuel Torres, for example, the first diplomatic officer from Latin America recognized officially by President James Monroe, who was a resident of the city and is buried at Old St. Mary cemetery alongside Commodore John Barry and Thomas Fitzsimmons.

You’ll see a cabinet card of of Samuel Cruz and his family, newly arrived from Puerto Rico. He would go on to become one of the best respected of the butchers working in the meat-packing district of Northern Liberties, and an integral member of the Puerto Rican community that opened bodegas and settled their families in North Philadelphia. You’ll also see photographs of community-wide celebrations, like the annual St. John the Baptist parade, that took place along Spring Garden Street because that’s where La Milagrosa — the first church in the city to hold a regular Spanish-language Mass and considered “the Plymouth Rock of Latino Catholic Philadelphia” — was located.

There are stories, too, in the photographs of the Puerto Rican community taken by local photojournalist David Cruz in the decade before the Al Día newspaper was established, and in the profoundly moving photo stories he’s shot for Al Día since. In these — many of them focused on the Mexican community — you’ll find stories of tragedy, and resilience, and of the hope for a better life every immigrant packs in his or her bags when they come here.

The value of this book isn’t as an exhaustive history — it isn’t one — but rather it is in the glimpses it provides of the everyday lives of Latinos of the city. It also handily refutes the erroneous assumption that all Latinos are recently arrived, unskilled laborers and undocumented immigrants. There is both honor and great joy in the way every member contributes to the vitality of our community, but our diversity is also a point of pride.

As you leaf through the pages of this book, I hope you’ll see what I did when I took on the task of editing it: There are a million stories in these images. They are worth telling. And worth hearing.

Asking how and why industrial hazards persist

In this blog entry, Dangerous Trade co-editor Christopher Sellers discusses industrial dangers, past and present, and how people have sought to discover and correct these hazards.

Over the past few months, a burst of stories have made headlines in the New York Times and elsewhere about dangers of what we buy and use have posed to those in foreign lands. First came a harrowing report last December about what was happening to car batteries that Americans had used up and discarded.  A growing business has emerged of shipping these batteries to Mexico, where around disassembly plants, lead has been steadily escaping into the air and soil, to poison neighborhood children. Then came the coverage of China’s Foxconn, manufacturer of Apple’s i-pad.  We learned that this latest, dazzling digital wonder, brought to us by one of America’s most respected and successful firms, had come with a cost none of us knew about or had bargained for.  Workers in China had paid, instead, with lengthy work-days, exploitative and sometimes toxic working conditions, and distress that could reportedly turn suicidal. 

Scientists and scholars who have followed these industrial dangers for years have to applaud the media’s new in the distant hazards imposed by our own consumer purchases.  The rising awareness suggests the prospect that, finally, more effective ways of mobilizing and intervening against them may arise.  Those of us who have followed this kind of issue, and sought to dig up its history, have to conclude that these sporadic reports offer only a visible tip of what is likely a global iceberg.  International studies suggest that occupational diseases alone kill more throughout the world than malaria.  These numbers do not include the many additional casualties from contaminants in the air, water, and soil.  With rebounding economic growth throughout the world, this toll is no doubt on the rise once again, especially in the developing world.

A starting point for understanding how and why these dangers continue to recur is to recognize that this problem is far from new.  Dangerous Trade: Histories of industrial hazard across a globalizing world, is the first book to take a genuinely global approach to their history, one that encompasses both the developing and the developed world.  

Dangerous Trade explores the contours of this kind of problem not only in our contemporary world, but historically, through the past century and more of what has been a long-standing trade in industry-derived dangers.  In every period when international trade has picked up, the most hazardous industries have tended to cross national boundaries, to gravitate to where regulation and awareness of the attendant hazards remain less.  Looking at examples from colonial Malaysia’s mining industries to the extraction of oil in Mexico, this book’s essays offer rigorously documented accounts of just why and how these dangerous industries arose where they did, and the ways in which locals strove to cope with them.  As these essays make clear, the ways and means by which dangerous activities travel has nevertheless been shifting over the last century. As technology has changed, nations especially in the developed world have come up with new and more effective ways of recognizing and correcting the worst hazards.  The result, however, is hardly one of unadulterated progress. Instead, these hazards endure, if in changing and ever more wily ways. They get shipped elsewhere, where the companies that rely on them, and the consumers who give these companies their business, can once more put their dangers out of mind.  Hence, the resurgence of poisonings from lead, perhaps the longest known and most studied of industrial hazards, but still sickening workers and children from Uruguay to Mexico in our contemporary world.  

This collection constitutes a first effort to ask how and why these problems have persisted, even decades after new efforts have arisen around the globe successfully to identify and address them. A central concern of the collection, as well, is to generalize cross-nationally, about the evolving repertoire through which people in different times and places have sought to discover and correct these dangers, once they arise.  From the early health departments to worker compensation laws of the early twentieth century, to the environmental legislation starting in the sixties and seventies, to latter day campaigns to ban a dangerous substance like asbestos, the tools and targets of those who would ameliorate these dangers have constituted a work in progress.   Often it is precisely the loopholes in an earlier system of control that make a later one necessary.  But a key theme as well is that amelioration has not been a given even once the hazards became unmistakable to the experts and officials in charge.  Expert activism was often important in calling attention to new hazards, but as if not more important in stirring real change was the mobilization of the inexpert.  From the workers in Mexican oil fields to the environmental agitators in late twentieth century France and Uruguay, those who were themselves the victims of these exposures also had to mobilize, to marshal the available political tools to induce governments as well as scientists to consider their problems. 

If these histories suggest just how persistent industrial hazards like lead or asbestos can be, together they also offer many grounds for hope.  Not just failures but success stories abound here, of mobilizations fighting asbestos and lead battery-burning and pesticides and liquefied natural gas facilities. In addition to elucidating these problems’ persistence, these essays thereby offer an abundance of models that may inspire today’s practitioners, activists, policy-makers, and citizens, and on which they may build.

The Top Five Myths in Nursing

In this blog entry, Lisa Ruchti, author of Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines  debunks assumptions about intimacy, race, gender and caring in the nursing industry.

With popular television shows about nursing today, e.g. Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe, one might think that we know all we need to know about nursing. Even if we don’t watch television, we probably think we understand nursing when we consider how often we or our loved ones find ourselves under nursing care. The truth of the matter is that we couldn’t possibly understand nursing the way a nurse does simply because nurses hide many aspects of their work as part of their job. They know that patients and family members don’t need to be bothered with the specifics of nursing when patients are really interested in their own illness and recovery.

In my research for writing Catheters, Slurs and Pickup Lines, I found that most people did not understand nursing. Even the president of the hospital I studied said, “I don’t care how they do it; I’m just glad they do!” But after years of intensive study of nursing and eight months in a hospital setting, I can honestly say I understand some of the ins and outs of nursing. 

 Check these out. You might be surprised.

 One:  Patients are too weak to want sex.

 I know it is hard to imagine a patient sexually grabbing a nurse, making lewd comments, or even having sex with their visitors. We don’t tend to think of patients as anything other than needy so it might be hard to imagine that patients can exhibit sexual desire. Yet, in an eight month study I conducted, nurses consistently reported these behaviors to me. I found that if nurses were successful at gaining trust of patients, patients sometimes felt entitled to service, attention, or even sex. Interestingly, when patients engaged in sexual behaviors toward nurses, many of which were legally defined as sexual harassment, most nurses did not define these acts as sexual harassment. While new nurses were surprised at sexual behaviors from patients, experienced nurses negotiated them as part of their daily work.

Two:   Patients are never mean.

The majority of the 45 nurses I interviewed avoided describing patient care as involving conflict. They used words like nurture, kindness, and compassion to make it seem like nurses “being caring” was a natural personality characteristic characterized by goodness. Feminist philosopher Eva Kittay discusses this in her work: patients are not usually described as anything other than “needy,” and we don’t tend to think of needy people as causing conflicts for those who provide their care. In my study, however, I found that patients – “ordinary” patients, not “psychiatric” patients – yelled at nurses and even hit them. My focus on identifying conflict is as much about seeing patients clearly as it is about seeing the work of nurses clearly.

Three: Race does not matter in the provision of care.

Women of color nurses worked harder to negotiate racism and xenophobia from patients.  For example, sexual harassment of women of color nurses incorporated multiple aspects of their identities. It is one thing for nurses to manage sexually explicit language or touches; it is quite another when those are combined with racial slurs and epithets.  Imagine that a nurse not only walks in to check on a patient and sees him masturbating, but she is also called a “dirty foreigner.” Or, a nurse is giving a patient a bath, and the patient says you remind him of his mammy.

Four:  Male nurses aren’t as caring as female nurses.

My study shows that men feel called to care and also care well. All the male nurses I interviewed were in the job because they cared. I watched male nurses take great care with their patients. I also observed male nurses have what seems like a “knack” for care, but is actually simply skilled expertise. My findings on men challenge the idea that men don’t want to care or can’t care just because they are men.

Five:    You can’t teach someone how to be caring.

A lot of people, including nurses, think that the quality of care cannot be taught in nursing school. My study maps how experienced nurses care so that it can be taught in nursing school. When I first began the study I was not sure if and how a nursing student could be taught what is typically seen as a “caring quality”. But after the study I am convinced that if new nurses know to expect conflict on the floor and learn how they can negotiate those conflicts they will be better able to care.

The Cycles of the Haitian Vodou Ceremony

In this blog entry, Benjamin Hebblethwaite, author of Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English, describes a recent vodou ceremony he attended at Société Linto Roi in Miami.

In this blog I want to tell you about the gorgeous beauty of Vodou, a systematic Haitian religion with roots in the Vodun of West and Central Africa. The ceremony and its rituals, music, dance, and possession events are key expressions of the Vodou religious and cultural system. The periodic Vodou ceremonies I have attended at Société Linto Roi in Miami, most recently on the eve of January 2^nd and morning of January 3^rd, 2012, are riveting experiences that start at 9 p.m. and go beyond 6 a.m. The ceremonies are literally founded on continuous drumming, singing, dancing, and ritualizing that leads to short and long possession events.

Kongo-style Vodou drum (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

The ason rattles hang from the center post (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

 The white attire worn by the initiates, the temple’s most active members, indicated that the Rada rite of Dahomian origin, with its regimented line of Dahomian lwa (spirits), would begin the evening’s worship. Later in the evening, when the focus shifted to the Petwo-Kongo rite, the participants changed and wore multicolored attire. The oungenikon (the choir leader) led the songs and shook the sacred rattle and bells (ason ak klochèt) while the ounsi (initiated choir members) responded in song and dance. Four drummers thundered taught rhythms, intensifying their beating to heighten spiritual energy and urgency. The ountogi (drummers) are central as they pound the lwa into the heads of the Vodouists. As the music filled the temple with its cathartic power, the priests and priestesses—there are usually several working in tandem—began cycles of ritualizingthat endured throughout the ceremony.

A vèvè symbol consecrates the ceremony (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

Each lwa in the Rada or Petwo-Kongo pantheon receives a handful of songs. As each spirit receives her or his allotted songs and praise, priests and priestesses skillfully wield their rattles and bells as they salute and honor the major stations of the Vodou temple: the drummers and drums, the center post (potomitan) which is the conduit of the lwa, the altar, and the audience. The salutation of each station—renewed with each new cycle of songs to a specific lwa—entails the synchronized dancing and ason-work of the priests and priestesses. The rattle and bells are held forward and shaken in unison; the priests or priestesses gracefully twirl, dance, dip and bow as they approach each station. At the station, the ason is shaken and touches the parts of the station, rum or water libations are poured out, gulps of rum are vaporized into a fine mist, candles are lit, and, in the case of the drummers, bowing takes place in which the head touches the ground.

The colorful attire indicates the Petwo-Kongo rite; the manbo salutes the drums (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

The manbo salute the center post on which the serpent lwa Danbala and Ayida Wèdo are painted (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

The Vodou ceremony is cyclical ritualizing and dancing. For each lwa called upon—for example, Legba, Marasa, Ayizan, Loko, Danbala, Agawou, Agwe, Azaka and so forth—a series of songs are sung and the stations of the temple are saluted with renewed vigor. Although the lwa, the songs, and the rhythms change throughout the ceremony, the salutation of the stations in the Vodou temple remains constant. Cutting through the cyclical nature of the ceremony is the cyclical nature of Vodou songs which are condensed statements on the lwa and the Vodou universe expressed in 4-8 lines. The songs are cyclical as the lines are repeated; at the same time the lines of the songs can be slightly embellished as they recur. The salutation of the stations of the Vodou temple cycle from lwa to lwa; however, unique ritual elements specific to the honored lwa are expressed in each cycle. For example, candy is presented to the audience during the cycle for the Marasa (the Divine Twins) and a sword is presented during the one for Ogou. Another important cycle in Vodou is the dancing and worship that moves counterclockwise around the center post (potomitan).

The cyclical structure of the ceremony, of the songs and rhythms, and of the dancing around the center post all serve Vodou’s primary objective: to be the launch pad for possession by the Vodou lwa (spirits). They often appear in the sequence of ritual in which they are heralded, and they dance in the heads of those they ride, expressing their traits, traditions, wisdom and energies. Atibon Legba, the ancient one, comes stooped over a crutch, blessing worshippers who bow before him; the wide-eyed Èzili Dantò, exuding power, pain and strength, tightly grasps daggers at each side; Danbala Wèdo, the serpent lwa, writhes silently on the ground and is covered with a white sheet by worshipers. The appearance of the lwa is a sacred narrative that inserts itself into the course of worship. The various forms of cyclicity in Vodou ceremonies serve to insistently call upon the appearance of sacred narrative—possession.

The white attire indicates the Rada rite; Danbala has possessed a worshiper (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

Danbala is covered with a white sheet as he writhes toward the altar room (photograph by Hebblethwaite)

Our book, Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English, is a diverse collection of texts that stem from Haitian Creole Vodou worship. The songs span Haitian and pre-Haitian history and preserve the sacred traditions from the African nations that Haitians descend from. As the Vodou ceremony is grounded in song, including during possession events, they are literally the main body of the religion’s sacred literature. The mythologies, histories, epistles, prophesies, and commandments of religions like Islam, Christianity or Judaism are not found in Vodou sacred literature; instead, songs and prayers dominate the religion’s literary output. To know Vodou theology, mythology, history, culture, and language and to grasp Vodou ceremonies, one should read, listen to, and sing Vodou songs. The songs repetitively cycle in order to heighten trance states of mind and open the way for possession performance. Vodou ceremonies and songs are beautifully preserved illustrations of the African wing of humanity—the cyclical structure of Vodou worship is a unique dimension of this sublime World Religion.

Celebrating an “important contribution to the understanding of a neglected ethnic community in the Caribbean”

Anne-Marie Lee-Loy’s  Searching For Mr. Chin: Constructions of Nation and the Chinese in West Indian Literature recently won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award. This award, which is given by the Caribbean Studies Association, honors the best book about the Caribbean published over the previous three-year period in Spanish, English, French or Dutch. Award committee chair Linden Lewis provided his announcement of the award.

Searching for Mr. Chin is an attempt to understand the construction of  Chinese identity and the place of people of Chinese descent in the Caribbean, namely in Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad, where the importation of Chinese indentured workers was more heavily recruited.

The bulk of Chinese indentured labor to the Caribbean occurred between 1853 and 1866. Despite the focus on the three English-speaking countries, Lee-Loy from time to time expanded her focus to include the Chinese presence in Cuba.  The book is the exploration of a process of belonging and non-belonging in the region. 

Indeed, the author is careful to point to the ambiguous images of belonging of Chinese people in the Caribbean.  Although its focus is on literary representations of Chinese citizens of the region, the book goes to great length to situate the Chinese presence in an historical context.  Lee-Loy takes the reader on a journey in time from the point of Chinese indentured labor, and the way in which these immigrants were compared to both people of African and Indian descent in the region. There is an interesting story here about the control of labor and of sowing divisions among workers along racial lines.  The characterization of Chinese indentured workers was often one that was made up of compliant subjects, who were efficient, and least likely to rebel.

One of the important contributions of this book is to present a more nuanced understanding of the Chinese images in the region that move beyond stereotypes.  There is very little literary work in the region that focuses exclusively on Chinese Caribbean people, so that Lee-Loy’s analysis revolves around minor characters as opposed to book-length treatments of this community. 

Another strength of the book is her analysis of the representation of  Chinese Caribbean persons as having an alien presence in the region.  Some of these representations directly place the Chinese at odds with other Caribbean people.  There are also other images of the Chinese man as a sexual predatory, who by virtue of his financial resources, mainly in terms of shop-ownership, preys on economically vulnerably women.  It is the Chinese shop that also gives us some insight into the perception of the Chinese Caribbean identity that is important to the phenomenon of the nation.  Lee-Loy summaries this issue in the following manner: “The Chinese shop, like West Indian literature in general, must therefore be recognized as a site of performance, that is, a site of contact and exchange between West Indians, where ideas of exclusion and inclusion, suspicion and trust, hostility and camaraderie – namely, ambiguous everyday ideas of belonging – are given tangible meaning through repetitive stylized gestures”. 

The book is clearly written, broadly interdisciplinary, makes an important contribution to the understanding of a neglected ethnic community in the Caribbean, and would add to the storehouse of information on race, ethnicity, gender, class, national identity and community in the Caribbean.  This book is certainly worthy of the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis award.

A horrific crime prompts a quest for justice–and stories that resonate

In this moving blog entry, Maria Helena Moreira Alves recounts the inspiration for Living in the Crossfire , her book (co-authored by Philip Evanson)  about favela residents in Rio de Janeiro and the violence they encounter every day of their lives.

We dedicated our book, Living in the Crossfire to the “Mothers of Acari” in recognition these women’s untiring search for their disappeared children and their tenacity in seeking justice and due punishment to those responsible for this horrific crime. This crime occurred July 26, 1990, near the town of Acari, in Rio de Janeiro. Eleven young people were kidnapped by military police, tortured, raped, and their bodies were disappeared. According to many accounts, the dismembered bodies were fed to crocodiles and black panthers that were kept by a member of the local militia. Because of their fight for justice, the mothers themselves were persecuted and threatened. 

One of the mothers, Edméia da Silva, was murdered on July 20, 1993, after she visited a state prison to interrogate a key witness. More than 20 years have passed and none of the guilty were brought to justice. The case was clearly abandoned until the crime described.  Because of this, Marilene Lima de Souza, mother of Rosana de Souza Santos—who was only 18 at the time of her disappearance—has asked for international solidarity. Amnesty International has taken the case by asking the Brazilian judicial system to re-open and carry out the investigation.

In 2000, we began to work with NGOs of Rio de Janeiro dedicated to social and educational projects in different favelas.  Through this connection we became personally acquainted with community leaders and residents of the favelas that worked with these NGOs. We were struck by the accounts of violence by drug dealers, who acted as “owners of the areas”—the hills where they reigned to enforce their law. What was most shocking, however, was to learn that members of the security forces—particularly the military police and their elite troop, the BOPE—were the chief allies of the drug lords. In many cases, the drug lords were replaced by militia under the command of military police who took over the job of terrorizing the population; sold favors as “security guarantees;” received payment from drug dealers to allow them to continue their business; and also monopolized services to the residents—such as gas distribution, cable television, electricity, radio transmission and even mail delivery and transportation.  Much like the Mafia, these groups enforced their power by the use of extreme violence both against the drug dealers and against residents. 

The reaction of the governments of Rio varied from non-involvement to repeated but ineffective raids into the favelas that resulted in the deaths of more innocent people than arrest of the guilty. In 2007, the government decided on a policy of all out war and moved into areas heavily inhabited with the full force of armored vehicles similar to tanks, machine guns and even helicopters firing directly against residential areas without definite targets.  At that point many people we had known in the favelas asked for solidarity.  They stated that they no longer could trust or believe in the government’s actions and only solidarity from the international community could make their voices heard—heard so loud that the local government would be forced to listen to them and change their policies. In this regard, they agreed to provide us with the stories of their lives.  We heard so many heartbreaking stories—particularly of mothers and of children— that we were unable to publish all of them. However, the stories contained in Living in the Crossfire were chosen because each represents many others and hence their voice is multiplied a thousand times. 

We hope that our book, and the speaking tour we are undertaking in prestigious universities in the United States, will help develop the international support that can make the dreams of the residents living in the crossfire come true: A dream that justice can be achieved in Brazil; a dream that democracy will become a true fact for all people; that the Brazilian Constitution will be valid and enforced by those in government; and that the human rights of all citizens, particularly the most vulnerable citizens residents in the favelas, will be indeed respected.

Revealing the appeal of the fantastic in fiction

Cynthia Duncan, author of Unraveling the Real, reveals why she is attracted to ghost stories and Latin American ficciones.

When I was a little girl, I loved old fashioned ghost stories. I liked the idea that within the everyday world I inhabited there could be magical and mysterious things with no rational explanation.  It made the world much more exciting, like there was the promise of something beyond what I could touch, see, or hear around me.  It opened the doors to my imagination, and to a love of reading and watching films about these other worlds.  The books and films I loved the most weren’t about fantasy creatures that lived on other planets or mutant monsters who ripped off heads and stomped on skyscrapers.  I loved the more subtle forms, set in the everyday real world I could recognize as my own, where the supernatural was only suggested, never overt, and fear was balanced out by doubt and disbelief.

I remember an old T.V. show, maybe something from The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone, that haunted me for years.  The ghost of a beautiful, vain woman lived inside an old mirror, and she punished any other woman foolish enough to spend too much time admiring her own beauty by reaching through the glass and dragging her to the other side.  This seemed both logical and possible to me, although, of course, improbable.  The supernatural wasn’t random and inexplicable; it erupted into the real world as a moral warning, or a kind of vengeance.  Stories like “The Telltale Heart” and “The Monkey’s Paw” fascinated me, because they slipped so effortlessly between the recognizable world of the reader and the seemingly unreal. I could read them again and again without ever reaching any conclusion about why things happened as they did.  The uncertainty of the texts fascinated me.

It wasn’t until I was in graduate school, when I took a seminar in Spanish American fantastic literature, that I learned there was a name for the kind of fiction I loved.  I had by then read most of the short stories I could find by Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, and others who would later find their way into my book, Unraveling the Real.  But I didn’t know how to think about them critically.  There was so much disagreement and vagueness in all the theory I read about fantastic literature.  I was deeply attracted to magical realism at the time, which focused on the clash between the so-called “primitive” worldview of marginalized people in Latin America and the more modern, “developed” worldview of western European settlers.  The political implications of this literature were limitless, and invited dialogue about the impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism on Latin American letters.  Many people dismissed the fantastic as an outdated mode of expression, something that had no relevance in the 20th century, and that was essentially escapist in nature, not a true representation of Latin American reality.  I knew instinctively that this attitude was misguided and wrong.  My desire to vindicate the fantastic as a valid and important mode of expression in Spanish American literature and film motivated me to specialize in this kind of fiction, and to write a book about it.

Some of the stories I write about in Unraveling the Real are my favorite works of literature in the Spanish language. Julio Cortázar  ”Continuidad de los parques” is one of the most perfectly crafted short stories I’ve ever encountered. Every word matters, and the text is absolutely seamless in its construction.  Borges’  ”El sur” and Carlos Fuentes’ “Chac Mool” speak volumes about the alienation of modern man in the giant metropolis, but also about the way Argentines and Mexicans think about themselves and their place in history. Elena Garro’s ”La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas” and Silvino Ocampo’s “La casa de azúcar” are as relevant today as they were when written.  They talk about the difficulties of human relationships, and the way women have been marginalized from male-dominated discourse.  No te mueras sin decirme adónde vas is, quite simply, the most romantic movie I’ve ever seen and, every time I watch it, it takes my breath away with its message about love and redemption.

I hope that readers of Unraveling the Real will come to share the same profound affection and interest I have in the fantastic in Latin America, and it will show, beyond doubt, that the metaphysical, political, and social issues the fantastic treats in fiction still resonate in the world around us.

Solve Undocumented Immigration—Bail Out Mexico

In this blog entry, Bill Ong Hing, author of Ethical Borders offers his responsible approach to addressing undocumented Mexican migration through substantial investment in Mexico’s infrastructure and economy.

With healthcare reform out of the way, the White House announcement that it wants to tackle comprehensive immigration reform is good news for the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and their supporters. However, if the package does not include at least the first steps toward helping Mexico improve its economy and infrastructure, undocumented Mexican migration will not be solved permanently.

During the presidential campaign, President Obama made it clear that his vision for reform includes legalization for those living in the shadows, but also securing the integrity of the border through additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry. His commitment to border integrity has been made clear through recent announcements by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano of increasing resources at the border and targeting employers who hire undocumented workers. The problem with the obsession of resources at the border and enforcement of employer sanctions is that those responses have been tried for years, yet unauthorized immigration continues. Coincidentally, as the White House was making its announcement on reforms, the Border Patrol reported increased migrant border deaths along the southern border, in spite of a decrease in arrests. In other words, migrants keep coming in spite of the militarization of the border and immigration raids. While Mexicans are not the only undocumented immigrants in the country, they make up almost 60%. To understand undocumented migration, we have to look beyond the simple explanation that many cross the border looking for work; we have to ask why they cannot find what they want in Mexico.

Comprehensive reform no doubt will include much-needed proposals for increased family and employment-based visas. Expanding those categories is necessary and will help reduce the pressure that leads to unauthorized border crossings. But we cannot deny that reducing the substantial flow across the southern border will require the expansion of the economy and job growth in Mexico, so that more Mexicans will be able to stay home. Interestingly, Obama the candidate, recognized this when he stated: “To reduce illegal immigration, we also have to help Mexico develop its own economy, so that more Mexicans can live their dreams south of the border.”

In 1994, we were told that NAFTA would solve the undocumented problem because jobs would be created in Mexico. But NAFTA contributed to huge job losses in Mexico. Mexican corn farmers could not compete with heavily-subsidized U.S. corn farmers, and now Mexico imports most of its corn from the U.S. Because of globalization, 100,000 jobs in Mexico’s domestic manufacturing sector were lost from 1993 to 2003. Where do those out of work farm workers and manufacturing employees look for work? Toward El Norte.

When the European Union experienced a push to expand its ranks to include poorer nations, member countries faced similar concerns. Because membership includes the right to open labor migration for all nationals of EU countries, the wealthier countries worried that as soon as membership was granted, there would a flood of workers from poorer nations flooding into the wealthier ones. Beginning with the 1973 EU enlargement to include Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, the British insisted on an approach to aid poorer regions. When Greece (1981), and Portugal and Spain (1986) were added, all three nations as well as Ireland received infusions of capital and assistance with institutional planning. The approach worked. Their economies transformed, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain who were all emigrant-sending nations prior to EU membership, now are net immigrant-receiving nations. Today, only 2 percent of EU citizens looked for work in other EU countries.

The anti-immigrant lobby has used the politics of fear to generate much of the hysteria over immigration today. They advance the image of hordes of immigrants coming to take our jobs and commit crimes, all the while not wanting to speak English. Of course all the empirical data contravenes those myths. Yet through fear and intimidation, comprehensive immigration reform has been stalled. Fear makes us lose our conscience; fear paralyzes us; we lose our sense of analysis and reflection. Fear has led to an enforcement regime that has resolved nothing, while wreaking havoc in communities through ICE raids and increased migrant deaths resulting from the militarization of the border.

When it comes to the treatment of our fellow human beings who have crossed into our territory, we should consider what has driven or attracted them to travel before we become overly judgmental. As American culture, economic influence, political power, and military presence affect the far reaches of the globe, we cannot be too surprised at the attraction that the United States holds throughout the world. Coupled with the ubiquity of American culture, the United States appeals to would-be immigrants and refugees who seek the American dream of freedom, prosperity, and consumerism. Migrant workers, refugees, high-tech workers, multi-national executives, and familial relatives (both professionals and those from the working class) all respond to this attraction. Thus, America itself is responsible for luring countless migrants to our shores each year, as the phenomenon reinvigorates the Statue of Liberty’s call to those “yearning to breathe free.”

At the end of the day, economic investment in Mexico is what’s needed to solve the undocumented migration challenge. Reducing undocumented migration is in Mexico’s interest as well; the persistent loss of able-bodied workers needed to build its infrastructure and economy cannot be good for Mexico. Economic investment in Mexico will not and, probably, should not be done without some close monitoring. The EU enlargement policy sets certain standards for candidate countries. These criteria require a country that wishes to join the EU to meet certain political, social and economic standards. Whatever the process, we need to include investment in Mexico as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

Bill Ong Hing is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, and Professor Emeritus, at the University of California, Davis.