{"id":16250,"date":"2011-09-13T22:06:36","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T22:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=16250"},"modified":"2012-03-14T00:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T00:51:36","slug":"culture-the-face-in-the-mirror-is-mestizo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=16250","title":{"rendered":"Culture: The face in the mirror is mestizo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Culture: The face in the mirror is mestizo<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

San Antonio Current<\/a>
\nSan Antonia, Texas
\n2006-02-22<\/p>\n

Elaine Wolff<\/a><\/strong>, Current Editor
\nPlaza de Armas<\/em><\/p>\n

A two-day roundtable takes a big eraser to identity lines<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for the mestizo eye, the mestizo subjunctive, the mestizo soul,\u201d says author John Phillip Santos<\/a> as we wander through Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin-American Portraiture<\/em> at the San Antonio Museum of Art. He pauses before \u201cRetrato de un Matrimonio,\u201d by 19th-century painter Hermenegildo Bustos<\/a>. Husband and wife have light brown eyes and dark brown hair, but where she is decidedly European in appearance, with pale skin and delicate features, his ancestry seems more indigenous: broad cheekbones and a chiseled nose. The work reflects \u201cmestizo compassion,\u201d suggests Santos.
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cCompassion\u201d is not a concept frequently associated with \u201cmestizo,\u201d a word that has spent much of its 600-odd-year history wielded as either a derogatory description for the children of European and Native American unions, or as a battle cry in the Chicano identity movement.<\/p>\n

Circa 1523, in a creation myth that is equal parts fact and mystery, La Malinche<\/a><\/em>\u2014the mysterious Mexican Pocahontas\u2014and Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s<\/a> founded the mestizo race with their first-born son, Martin Cort\u00e9s, who would return to Spain with his father to further serve the aims of colonial-era Europe. Mexican and Chicano ambivalence over the legacy of La Malinche<\/em> illustrates the problem with fully embracing mestizo identity: It means embracing the white conqueror father as well as the subjugated, but re-ascendant, indigenous mother. While La Malinche<\/em> is celebrated by some as the mother of the Mexican people, she is alternatively known as La Chingada<\/a><\/em>\u2014the fucked.<\/p>\n

In a sense, embracing the Virgen de Guadalupe<\/em>\u2014a mestiza Virgin Mary\u2014is embracing an alternative mestizo birth, a virgin who conceived a new race without being defiled by the \u201cother.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nBut for Santos and an increasing number of Latino scholars, mestizo is the face of an optimistic future. \u201cWe are all mestizo. Our heritage is global. It quarrels with borders; it quarrels with demarcations,\u201d he says, echoing his mentor, Virgilio Elizondo<\/a>, the San Antonio priest who wrote The Future is Mestizo<\/em> in 1986. Elizondo and Santos are two members of the organizing committee for the \u201cRevealing Retratos,\u201d Taller Popular, a private, two-day conference that will be held this weekend at SAMA and Trinity University, and includes such participants as Henry Estrada of the Smithsonian Latino Center, author and artist Ito Romo, Sandra Cisneros, and Graciela Sanchez of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. A public conference will follow April 22 at SAMA…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Culture: The face in the mirror is mestizo San Antonio Current San Antonia, Texas 2006-02-22 Elaine Wolff, Current Editor Plaza de Armas A two-day roundtable takes a big eraser to identity lines \u201cI\u2019m looking for the mestizo eye, the mestizo subjunctive, the mestizo soul,\u201d says author John Phillip Santos as we wander through Retratos: 2,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,21,459,8,103],"tags":[7526,20753,7525],"class_list":["post-16250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mexico","tag-elaine-wolff","tag-mexico","tag-san-antonio-current"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}