The Transformational Politics of Identity in Luis Rodriguez's Vida Loca
Luis Rodriguez's memoir, Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., offers a vivid description of the struggles that many Mexican-Americans faced in Los Angeles. As Luis develops throughout the novel, he transforms from a criminal to a community activist by politicizing and historicizing his identity as a Mexican-American. Luis is able to connect his personal experiences to a larger community struggle and, in doing so, transcends the violence and destruction that plagues his barrio. This connection between the personal and political is developed through education and authentic community engagement as he crosses borders, breaks free from constraints, and removes the
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shackles on his mind. Luis Rodriguez was born in El Paso, Texas at the US-Mexican border (16). Literally and figuratively, Luis' border identity as a bicultural first-generation Mexican-American shapes his upbringing and world view. He has to navigate a white-dominated society that views Mexicans with contempt and suspicion. Relating his first impressions of America, he says “It seemed a strange world [...] spitting and stepping on us, coughing us up, us immigrants, as if we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of the country” (19). He learns that his skin color precedes him; he is judged and treated based on preconceived notions about his race rather than the contents of his character. From Watts to Reseda to the San Gabriel Valley, his family continues to face racial discrimination along with other African American and Latino “undesirables” in the neighborhood (17). These early exposures to racial violence cultivate a dangerous self-hatred that needs to be numbed through drug use and reactionary violence. By the age of 13, Luis was already tattooed, sexually involved, and into drugs (48). Luis' trajectory towards a criminality, therefore, was not innate but rather instilled and internalized by society's demeaning messages to him. At Mark Keppel High School, Luis writes, “If you came from the Hills, you were labeled from the start […] criminal, alien, already a thug. It was harder to defy this expectation than just accept it and fall into the trappings” (84). Luis Rodriguez is not trying to justify his behavior, but he demonstrates the toxic effect that racism has especially on minority youth in a multi-racial America. Throughout the novel, the motif of borders and barriers crops up again and again. “We never stopped crossing borders,” Luis says, “It was a metaphor to fill our lives.” This border space is represented geographically by unincorporated county territory such as most of Watts and East Los Angeles,“the old barrios” (38). It is also represented by unincorporated or un-integrated people and communities who remain “invisible” on the peripheries of American social and economic life (19). Finally, language and communication also represents a border dividing respectable citizens and unintelligible aliens. Early in school, Luis' brother is placed in the classes for mentally disabled students because he cannot speak English. He talks about his mother being disrespected by other white women for the same reason. Speaking of himself, Luis recalls, “I had fallen through the chasm between two languages. The Spanish had been neaten out of me in the early years of school – and I didn't learn English very well either.” This, he notes, was the predicament of many Chicanos. This precarious position of in-betweenness sheds light on Luis' struggle to integrate into a hostile and racially biased society. It is in this precarious insecurity of peripheral existence, where the economic and social infrastructures of the American Dream begin to disintegrate, that people like Luis are vulnerable to all types of degradation and abuse. The theme of racist police brutality comes to play very early on in the novel as one of the most distinct types of violence Luis, and others like him, face in the unincorporated ghettoes and barrios of Los Angeles. This is especially poignant because the police are supposed to be “peace officers” to serve and protect community members. However, this expectation is turned on its head when Luis reveals that “In the barrio, the police are just another gang” (72). The unyielding racial discrimination and the sustained violence carried out against people of color, from ordinary Anglo citizens to police officers, is given as the reason for Luis' first joining the Las Lomas gang. Gang initiation and formation are shown to be responses to a crisis of identity in the novel.
For Luis and other Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, they were either invisible and ignored or they were a pathology to be eradicated through police violence or random assaults by Anglos. Throughout the novel, Luis attends countless funerals as he watches his friends and neighbors die one by one because of the constant violence. “We were constant prey,” he says, “and the hunters soon became big blurs: the police, the gangs, the junkies […] We were always afraid. Always running” (36). When the Latinos are constantly castigated and told they don't belong, called spics and beaners and hounded by the police from the age of seven, joining a community of like-minded people is a natural form of protection. Gangs were supposed to offer physical protection but also social support, camaraderie, and some sense of sanity in a world of chaos and endless assaults. Gangs, Luis says, “is how we wove something out of the threads of nothing” (41). Luis shows that gang violence is a reaction to the powerlessness of these disenfranchised youths: “I had certain yearnings, as a lot of us had, to acquire authority in our own lives in the face of police, joblessness and powerlessness. Las Lomas was our path to that” (113). The gang culture offered a means to regain control over one's life, to claim power and authority in a world which emasculated them and denigrated their heritage and identity. It was a collective assertion of potency and masculinity that, ironically, fed into the pathologizing stereotypes and labels of the broader dominant society. In a moment of clarity, Luis recognizes the self-destructive cycle of la vida loca, saying “I was frustrated because I felt the violence was eating us alive”
(113). For Luis, the surge of community centers and youth programs in his neighborhood became vital in shaping his “proverbial way out” (151). Mentors like Chente at the Bienvenido Community Center invested in his potential in a way that the predominantly white teachers in his high schools never attempted. The assistance of role models like Chente and Daniel Fuentes in developing Luis' artistic, physical, and intellectual capabilities was significant because it showed Luis he could dare to dream of a better and brighter future. Moreover, he discovered books at the library about the black experience, the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets, a “searing work of a street dude and hype in Spanish Harlem – a barrio boy like me” (138). He discovered literature and history that actually had a connection to his life and stimulated his intellectual curiosity. Finally, student groups like ToHMAS (To Help Mexican American Students) and MeCHA allowed him to find his voice and connect his personal experiences to larger historical and political struggles. These experiences offered Luis affirmation for the first time and a non-judgmental environment to grow individually and as part of a community. This stands in sharp contrast to his previous experiences in school and society where his identity was pathologized and criminalized. Whereas previously he was told in school, “Don't be Mexican, don't speak spanish”, he was finally able to embrace his identity, his language, and his history in a way that removed the isolation and instead brought solidarity. In studying the history of social movements, the lives of inspirational change-makers, and the social, political and capitalist structures that facilitated racism and exploitation, he learned that he need not be a second class citizen in a two-track education system. He recognized his own power and the power of collective movements to precipitate change instead of passively accept and destructively react to inequities. Surrounded by intellectuals and respected leaders that looked like him and could relate to his experience, Luis says, “a whole new world opened up for me” (153). Importantly, the world of education and the pursuit of knowledge was no longer an exclusive space for the privileged, but rather an inclusive sphere for growth and inquiry. Through education, Luis is able to reclaim and affirm his identity. His performance as his high school's mascot, Joe Aztec, was a powerful symbol for Luis' reclamation and recuperation of his culture and “the power of civilizations long since written off, long since demeaned and trampled” (71). Rather than allow the Anglos to appropriate his culture, parading about like fools on the football field, he and Esme brought integrity and honor to the performance. As Luis grew to embrace his heritage and his identity, he no longer internalized the oppression and degradation he endured on a daily basis. By expanding his horizons through education, reading, and authentic community involvement, he was able to see how Las Lomas, La Sangra, and the other gangs were all victims of the same violent system of economic exploitation and racist degradation. The collective explained how “workers of all colors and nationalities, linked by hunger and the same system of exploitation, have no country; their interests as a class respect no borders” (185). This, to Luis, was an inconquerable idea, and a direct, powerful refutation of the countless borders, barriers, and obstacles which had always made life so difficult for him and his family. This allowed him to identity external sources of strife, institutional racism and ravenous capitalism, that worked to suppress Mexican Americans and people of color. He proclaims: Intellect and body fused, I now yearned to contribute fully [...] to live a deliberate existence dedicated to a future humanity which might in complete freedom achieve the realization of its creative impulses, the totality of its potential faculties, without injustice, coercion, hunger and exploitation. (243) The fusion of intellect and body here represents a wholeness and spiritual completion that accompanies Luis' transformation from reactionary criminal to proactive activist and progressive organizer. The cognitive dissonance that made him suicidal, as he struggled to navigate a toxic, racist environment, dissipates as he accepts and embraces his identity and his array of experiences. Luis builds his own identity politics on the foundation of a rich Latino heritage, a conscious awareness of economic class systems, and a refusal to passively accept inequity and intolerance in society. His identity became a source of strength and a call to resistance rather than an emblem of shame or criminality. Luis describes working with community leaders on issues ranging from police terror and labor issues to tenant rights and decent education, “a mixture of nationalities and colors, linked by economic equality, a commonality of survival” (243). Despite removing himself from the gang life, Luis somehow found himself unable to avoid arrest and police confrontations later on. His continued extra-legal activity, however, now comes from a place of love and solidarity than violence or criminality. Luis explains, for example, that “unlike others in the Chicano Movement who strove to enter the American capitalist system, [the collective] prepared for a fundamental reorganization of society” (184). Luis never wanted to be included in the system, so he remained on the peripheries and in confrontation with law enforcement. This speaks more to the unlawfulness of the law and the corruption and racism of the broader social institutions than to his moral character. Because he was fighting for justice in an unjust society, he is never integrated. However, in his outsider status, he learns to find a home in struggle built on an infrastructure of self-worth. Throughout the novel, racial and ethnic identity carries a heavy symbolic and material importance in every aspect of Luis' life. In the eyes of the police, being Mexican was a marker of criminality, societal threat and deviance. In the eyes of school administrators, Mexican-American students were seen as less-than, relegated to a C track, and forced into industrial arts classes that would prepare them for a life of manual labor and pobreza at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Finally, from the view of society at large, people of color were seen as aliens or thugs to be feared and despised. Luis' shares a litany of racial slurs which greeted him and his friends along with the always echoing refrain “this is not your country” (31). This devaluation of identity became the precursor to joining the gang life in the barrio, which in turn, was a precursor for prison and incarceration. However, Luis reaches a turning point when he discovers through inspirational books and discussions at the collective that violence is not the only response to this inequality. Once an marker of criminality and maladjustment, he reclaims and transforms his identity into a source of strength and a call for resistance. Luis is able to connect his personal experiences to a larger historical and political struggle and, in doing so, transcends the violence and destruction that plagues his environment. Works Cited Rodriguez, Luis J. Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Print.
In Sueños Americanos: Barrio Youth Negotiating Social and Cultural Identities, Julio Cammarota studies Latina/o youth who live in El Pueblo, and talks about how Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant law, is affecting Latina/o youth in California (Cammarota, 2008, p. 3). In this book review, I will write about the two main points the author is trying to get across. The two main points I will be writing about are how Proposition 187 is affecting the Latina/o community, and about how Latina/o youth are copping in the El Pueblo barrio. Afterward I write about the two main points the author is trying to get across, I will write a brief description of the author and write about the author’s strengths and weaknesses.
In both the movie, La Misma Luna, and the newspaper series, Enrique’s Journey, migrants are faced with many issues. The most deadly and scarring issues all relate back to bandits, judicial police, and la migra or Mexican immigration officers. The problems that arise are serious to the point of rape, robbing, and beating. It is not easy crossing the border illegally and secretly, but the successful ones have an interesting or even traumatic story about how it worked for them.
The book, “Y no se lo trago la tierra” by Thomas River grasp a point of view of a migrant community, as manifestations of Chicano culture, language, and experience as understood by a first person point of a young male protagonist. The setting of the book takes place of a year during the 1950s and uses a variety of perspectives and voices to follow the boy’s passages into adolescence. As the setting of the book moves from Texas to upper Midwest to the ye...
In Mike Sager’s Death in Venice, Sager creates a vivid story about the gang in Venice as well as their addiction to cocaine. What I enjoyed about this article, was that it told a story in the perception of the gang members. It allowed me to see a glance through the lives of the gangs in the late twentieth century. Throughout the story, I felt multiple emotions, it ranged from disbelief to anger. It is astounding how Sager documented the lives of young males in Venice. As a Chicana, I was surprised by the actions in the article, I grew up in an environment where my daily life was not surrounded by gangs and drive-bys.
Victor Rios is a previous gang member, whom “was given the opportunity” to get out of the youth control complex. In his book “Punished”, he analyzes the experiences of young black and Latino boys in Oakland, California. Rios gives us an intimate description of some of the everyday forms of “hyper discrimination” these minority boys experience. This book review will focus on the main concepts explained in chapters one through three from the book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.
Some kids have no other choice but to join the gangs at an early age. Lack of parent supervision has been shown to be linked with both boys and girls joining a gang. Even though most have men to prove they are the violent ones, not every gang member is shown to be violent. While the rest of Luis’s gang members treat women with disrespect, Luis seems to respect everyone no matter what gender they are. Being told his own mom the pain she had to go through influenced his ways of viewing and treating
If only he was given the opportunity when he first came here from Mexico, he wouldn’t have had to live the violent life he lived. Luis and his Family weren’t excepted nor given any hope. Sadly, Luis’ story is the story of many. Racism is real, it exists and it is affecting young people causing them to turn to a life of gang and violence in order to gain acceptance. It all starts at a young age and something that will determine the direction of one’s life. Luis’ life was a prime example of what society and statistic said he would be as if he would never amount to anything but against all odds the fire that has always lived in him, that desire to be someone and rise above out of the pits of hell is exactly what he has done. Giving others hope. “There are choices you have to make not just once, but every time they come up” (132). Unfortunately, there will always be obstacles, weather its racism, violence, drugs, gangs in life battling against you but it’s a choice you have to continue to make, it’s all up to the individual to persevere and raise above to get out of that life and become someone before that life takes
The Latino Generation: Voices of the New America is a book written by Mario T. Garcia. This book tells the individual life stories of individual Latino Americans all attending the same class at University of California, Santa Barbra. The book discloses stories and events told by 13 students each who narrate from first person and give us a brief description of their life. The book is composed of 13 sections with an additional introduction and conclusion (Garcia, Kindle). Within this reflection I will describe the key points within this book and compare the stories within this book not only to each other, but also to additional stories of Latino Americans and how Garcia’s book rids the general public of misconception of Latinos.
Torres, Hector Avalos. 2007. Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers. U.S.: University of New Mexico press, 315-324.
Los Angeles, California is often seen as the city of dreams. Hollywood paints the picture of Los Angeles as a place of endless possibilities. Los Angeles is also thought as the city where dreamers can come with nothing in their pocket and become an over night success story. Many Americans and immigrants come to Los Angeles with the same dream of success. In The Tattooed Soldier Tobar describes how this fictionalized “American dream” version of the Los Angeles affects immigrants. In the novel Tobar followed two Guatemalan immigrants Antonio and Longeria who live very different lifestyles in their home country and in America. Los Angeles seemed to be the land of dreams and promise to both characters, however; Los Angeles becomes a place of harsh reality for Antonio and Longeria. In the novel we watch how Antonio and Longeria adjust to the struggles of being immigrants in Los Angeles, , and what makes man a man.
Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire a History of Latinos in America. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 2000.
The eternal endeavor of obtaining a realistic sense of selfhood is depicted for all struggling women of color in Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” (1987). Anzaldua illustrates the oppressing realities of her world – one that sets limitations for the minority. Albeit the obvious restraints against the white majority (the physical borderland between the U.S. and Mexico), there is a constant and overwhelming emotional battle against the psychological “borderlands” instilled in Anzaldua as she desperately seeks recognition as an openly queer Mestiza woman. With being a Mestiza comes a lot of cultural stereotypes that more than often try to define ones’ role in the world – especially if you are those whom have privilege above the “others”.
Montoya, Margret E. "Masks and Identify," and "Masks and Resistance," in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Using both English and Spanish or Spanglish the author Gloria Anzaldua explores the physical, cultural, spiritual, sexual and psychological meaning of borderlands in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: A New Mestiza. As a Chicana lesbian feminist, Anzaldua grew up in an atmosphere of oppression and confusion. Anzaldua illustrates the meaning of being a “mestiza”. In order to define this, she examines herself, her homeland and language. Anzaldúa discusses the complexity of several themes having to do with borderlands, mestizaje, cultural identity, women in the traditional Mexican family, sexual orientation, la facultad and the Coatlicue state. Through these themes, she is able to give her readers a new way of discovering themselves. Anzaldua alerts us to a new understanding of the self and the world around us by using her personal experiences.
Despite having to battle discrimination and poor neighborhoods, second and third generation Mexican-Americans have made a great strife to overcome large obstacles. Mexican-Americans are finally gaining representation in city government representing the 9.6 million Mexican residents of Los Angeles. White politicians can no longer ignore Mexicans in Los Angeles, as former mayor Richard Riordan saw in the elections of 1997, in which his re-election was largely in part to the high turnout of Mexican voters in his favor. Although Capitalism still exists in the greater Los Angeles, its influence is not as great as it was fifty years ago. Los Angeles continues to serve as the breeding grounds for new cultures, ideologies, and alternative lifestyles. The pursuit of the American Dream becomes a reality for most immigrants in LA. LA is a great place to live, party, and be from. I knew little about the history of Los Angeles prior to this course, but now I am well prepared to answer the question of, “What makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles?”