Exploring the latinx metaidentity

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What makes up the metaidentity

When dealing with Identity, there is a tendency to lump people together for one similarity, and ignore that there could be a great deal of difference within that group of people for a myriad of other reasons. This is a problem that has been considered of course, and how people’s different identities come together has been called intersectionality. There exists intersectionality within every community, which bares the question what value does that meta identity even have? Or rather, what message does that metaidentiy potray? For some meta identities this is very obvious if you are vegan you don’t consume any animal product no matter anything else about you, if you are Utilitarian you believe in the production of pleasure and diminishing of pain no matter anything else about you.
I am not a member of the Latinx community, therefore it is not my place to explain what a person who identifies as Latinx is. However, based on two interviews that I conducted I can point to different aspects that effect the identity as a whole. To put it another way, within the meta identity Latinx there exist other identities which act as, to steal a term from mathematics, sliders for a person's place within the community. One example of a slider would be education, a person is either more or less educated. If you ignore reality and isolate education, then a person with less education would have less standing in the community than a person with more education. This may be true in some instances, however it ignores the point that Identity is complicated, and a person may exist anywhere in the hierarchy of the latinx community depending on a variety of these sliders. Although there be many more than I will bring up here, I will be looking at education, nationality, religion, and gender as well as the place in which one currently resides.
I Interviewed two college students, both of whom currently live in the Kansas City area. They have different backgrounds, one was born in the states from a Mexican mother and a Bolivian father, while the second person I interviewed moved here when she was very young from Mexico.
Although she was born here to a Mexican mother and Bolivian father, my first interviewee identified herself as more Bolivian than Mexican or American. According to her she was in tune with Bolivian culture more than she was to Mexican culture because her parents wouldn’t let her travel to Mexico but she went to Bolivia frequently. I asked her if she ran into many other Bolivians in the Kansas City area and she told me that she didn’t find many. She also confirmed that when people see her they generally assume that she is full Mexican until she confirms otherwise. Although this itself didn’t bother her, I do find it interesting that despite it being easier to blend in as being Mexican, she chooses to represent her Bolivian identity. It seems that for her National identity is a strong slider when it comes to her overall identity, but it does not supersede her identity as a Latina.
The second interviewee on the other hand was born in Mexico and moved to the states when she was very young. She has a very strong tie to her Mexican identity, she still keeps up with the news from there, still reads books and watches shows from Mexico, and visits whenever she can. It is much easier for her to access not only her culture from Mexico, but also many people who she grew up with moved here from the same area of Mexico that she came from. So it is very clear that her Mexican identity is very important to her.
Although both of my interviewees expressed this identity with said country, there was also a disconnect to it as well. My first interviewee for example explained that when she was in Bolivia everyone knew that she wasn’t a native because of how she dressed and even her accent when she spoke spanish. Even my second interviewee who was born in Mexico said that when she visited Mexico she didn’t feel 100% Mexico because she was living in the States and had a different experience. Unfortunately I was unable to interview someone who moved here later in life or else I may have been able to elucidate the differences moving later in life has on a person.
Another slider seemed to be whether or not they thought that they had a voice in politics, locally, nationally and internationally. My first interviewee paid attention to Bolivian politics, and a little bit to American politics, but she didn’t feel like she could present her opinions in either theater. While she did express lament that she didn’t have as many political opinions as such, and said that she thought it would be important for her to do that in the future.
My second interviewee has lots of political opinions for both America and Mexico. She did state, however, that her opinions on politics were different because she was living here. We spoke about the Mexican border, and the Hondurans and Guatemalans that were trying to pass through and get to the US. Because of policies of President Trump, there has been much more tension at that border. However, she told me that this anti-immigrant stance by Mexico went against her Identity as well. Because for her a latinx political identity is more empathetic and cosmopolitan. It doesn’t want to see conflict between any of the latin american countries. So here too we can see the influence that a national identity has to a Latinx identity without superseding it. Although she was thinking in terms of her country; people encompassed by the term Latinx came first to her.
Another big slider of course would be how much you identify with the culture of your previous country, more of the American identity, or perhaps simply a connected but separate Latinx identity. My first interviewee identified with Bolivian culture, since she lived here and was born here there is a lot about Bolivian culture that she doesn’t know about. Whenever she goes to Bolivia they can tell that she is not native Bolivian just from the way that she speaks spanish and the way she dresses. She says that even while she doesn’t feel 100% Bolivian, it is still a huge influence to her, one major example she gave me was using Bolivian characters in her art. She liked to do it not only because it allowed her to express characters and culture that she loved, but also it allowed her to explain her culture to people who may not have been familiar with it otherwise.
(Clip of her talking about her art).
My second interviewee also really tried to keep up with Mexican culture, it was something that she was really proud of. Mexican music and Mexican art are two things that she really enjoys and as a historian she will often get on a tangent of just researching aspects of Mexican culture.
However when I was talking to my first interviewee there were several aspects of culture that she couldn’t tell if it was from this country or that country, and she did tell me that there is a merging of cultural identity in the U.S.
It is clear from both of my interviews that the distinction between latinx and national identity are difficult to do. On the one hand both of them wanted to identify with their country of origin, but they knew that they weren’t 100% accepted into that culture or politics. In my second interview the issue of representation was brought up in schools. My second interviewee said that when she was at school she was able to have a lot of students who were also mexican and that helped her be able to get through school. According to her the group of Latino students were not only helpful to her because they shared a similar cultural background, but also because several of them came at different times and were at various stages in their english or understanding of American culture and customs, so they would be able to help one another in that way as well. There was, however, no Latinx representation as teachers. This was only a problem for her in the beginning because having a role model that spoke her language and knew what she was going through at the beginning would have been helpful. However when she moved to secondary school, she thought that it wasn’t as big of a deal because at that point she was already driven and accustomed to american school life. She added that, for her, she was surrounded by a group of people from a similar area of Mexico as she was so it may have had an effect.
My first interviewee was very focused on school. She felt like she owed it to her community to do well in school. She felt like she had a lot of pressure not only to go to post secondary school, but also to do well and help people afterwards. She wants to be a graphic designer, not only because that is what she loves but also because she wants to use it to show her culture. It is a common theme between my two interviewees because they both feel a need to get through college so they can better explain their culture and help people through it.
My second interviewee seemed to think that although Nationality was important, there were other ways that people in the latinx community were organized hierarchically. This is important when evaluating the importance of Nationality in the community, what other factors are there. She thought that these hierarchies do exist and need to be addressed, but she saw them less in generation z and hoped that they were getting better. One of the biggest factors outside of nationality would have to be legal status. My second interviewee seemed to think that legal status can be used as a form of hierarchy within the community, something that she wished would be addressed.
The purpose of this paper has not been to try and rank what is more or less important in terms of what makes a person a part of the Latinx community. It has instead tried to show that there are many different factors that make up that person's identity than just being Latinx. I attempted to show just a few sliders that effected ones internal identity within the meta identity. For the last part of the paper I will explain why I think it is important to view identity as sliders, and not assume everyone in a group is a monolith.
There are certain needs or wants that a Latinx person in general may want or need. For example having cultural food is something that is very important. But if you factor in the sliders you will start to understand the group as much more complex. There is a significant population of Latinx voters who voted for President Trump; regardless of what exit polls you look at it is still a decent part of the latinx population. This number could not be understood if you looked at the Latinx population as a Monolith.
So I guess the real hidden part of this paper is also to show that in KC there is a large Latinx population, the most recent available census data has the Latinx population being at 10%. Unfortunately it is hard to find any good data on how this population is divided by Nationality. I think this is a huge mistake because currently the assumption is that someone is mexican, and although a large population of the Latinx community is Mexican it is not the entire amount. My second interviewee had an interesting example of one problem this could have on people. She said it was quite easy for her to get news in spanish, but it was quite often biased from a Mexican perspective, if someone was from Bolivia or Honduras etc they would get their news with a Mexican spin on it.
(Enter clip of her talking about that)
Identity is complex, and there are a lot of things that go into it. Among two college age latinx women there was even still a difference between their values and where they placed themselves within the community. I think that this difference should be valued and brought to light as to have a more full understanding of the people that make up the community both locally but also nationally.

Description

this was an attempt to understand what made up the latinx metaidenity looking at nationality, gender, education etc. it was ultimately a faliure.

Interviewee

Xiclaly Flores

Interviewer

Israel gulley

Subject

Nationality, Identity, Latinx

Date

3/12/2020

Date Created

5/12/2020

Rights