Category Archives: Education

Corrido de Norma Cantú

By Rita Urquijo-Ruiz and David Garcia Video by Larissa Mercado-Lopez August 31, 2012, is the last day that renowned Chicana, feminist scholar Dr. Norma E. Cantú will be at the University of Texas, San Antonio’s English Department. To honor her work, Dr. Larissa Mercado-López (one of her former students) led a group of volunteers who organized an amazing mini-symposium on the life and work of Dr. Cantú. Other Chicana scholars and some of Dr. Cantú’s former students presented papers highlighting the multi-faceted aspects of Cantú’s work. As part of the panel on “Chicana Literary Expressions,” David F. García, and Dr. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz collaborated by writing her a corrido entitled “Destino al andar.” The day closed with an after party at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center co-organized by another one of Dr. Cantú’s former students, Dr. V. June Pedraza, and Dr. Antonia I. Castañeda, Dr. Elsa Cantú Ruiz and another group of volunteers. People visited from all over the country to honor and thank Dr. Norma E. Cantú for all the work, passion and love that she has shared with thousands of people in her communities. This corrido is just a little “regalito” for her. Mil gracias, Norma! De todo corazón.

Written and performed by Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz and David Garcia at UT San Antonio on Friday, August 24. Video by conference organizer Larissa Mercado-Lopez.

“DESTINO AL ANDAR”
Al empezar a cantar
Pedimos permiso ahora
Para rendir homenaje
A una ilustre doctora.Ella es de la frontera
En los dos Laredos criada
Chicana de tal carrera
Por todos muy apreciada

Norma Cantú es su nombre
Y le vengo a saludar
Le brindo mi canto alegre
Un regalo musical

Es persona de renombre
Con buen don de la palabra
Maestra en todo sentido
En cualquier lengua que habla.

Esta doctora sí cura
Con esa pluma en la mano
Escribe de la cultura
De chicanas y chicanos

Para ayudar a estudiantes
Nunca nadie la mejora
Todos ellos son brillantes
Es la ideal profesora

Escribe nuevas historias
Que hablan del feminismo.
Y con una pluma zurda
De un pájaro fronterizo

Brindamos a la maestro
En el lindo San Antonio
Por la cultura tejana
Sigue dando testimonio

Al andar se hace el destino
Por donde no hubo ni huella
Peregrina de caminos
Yo le saludo, ¡Ultreya!

Vuela, vuela golondrina
Por el cielo tan azul
Protege a nuestra madrina
La profesora Cantú

¡Viva la Dra. Norma Cantú!

“DESTINY AS WE WALK”
As we begin singing
We now ask for your permission
To pay tribute
To an illustrious doctorShe is from the border
Raised in the two Laredos
A Chicana with such a career
Respected by everyone

Norma Cantú is her name
And I come here to salute her
I offer her my happy song
A musical gift

She is a renowned person
Gifted with words
Knowledgeable in every sense
In any language she speaks

This doctor does cure
With her pen in her hand
She writes about
Chicana and Chicano cultures

At working with students
No one can be better
They are all brilliant
Because she’s the ideal professor

She writes about new (hi)stories
That speak of feminisms
And with the left-handed plume
From a borderlands bird

We toast our teacher
In our beautiful San Antonio
She continues to give testimony
On Chicana/o culture

Destiny is created as we walk
Where there wasn’t a footprint
Pilgrim of the roads
I salute you, “-Go forth!

Fly, fly away, swallow
Throughout the deep blue sky
Protect our godmother
Professor Cantú

¡Viva la Dra. Norma Cantú!

Dr. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a professor of Spanish and Transnational Mexican Popular Cultures at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. Her book entitled Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture was published in July 2012 in the UT Press Chicana Matters Series. David Garcia is a musician/composer of Chicano/Mexican music from northern New Mexico. He is a Queer Xicano/Manito anthropologist who studies popular culture, foodways and the production of public space. Garcia is currently a Ph.D. student in the in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.

A Fotonovela on Predatory Lending

August 13, 2012 By LeighAnna Hidalgo During my undergraduate years at Arizona State University I worked on a diverse range of research projects for the South Phoenix Collaborative, studying current and historic risk factors such as migrant status, poor quality of neighborhood amenities, lack of access to affordable healthcare and healthy food, and erratic income. My commitment to South Mountain families led me to become a politically active researcher in solidarity with the segments of the community most affected by anti-immigrant legislation. I became painfully aware of the differential socio-spatial distribution of banks and predatory lenders in Phoenix area urban spaces. Under the tutelage of Dr. Seline Szkupinski Quiroga, I undertook a historical and spatial analysis on the access to credit and finance in South Phoenix for an undergraduate seminar class. This work demonstrated how space in the city is constructed and functions to produce economic and social inequality. After graduating from ASU, I entered the Applied Anthropology Masters of Arts program at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). While there, I expanded on my undergraduate thesis research on fringe financial services and followed my principle of democratizing anthropology by designing a multimedia interactive fotonovela using maps generated from GIS, archival and contemporary photographs, and video taped interviews in order to make my research knowledge accessible to the public and provoke dialogue on salient economic and immigration issues. My fotonovela comes from the tradition of rasquachismo,relying on resourcefulness to learn ‘just enough, but not too much’ GIS & Final Cut Pro and repurposing and reinventing western technologies like YouTube and Calameo from their original intent or function into a creative improvisation. My next goal is to recreate this fotonovela in Spanish and make it available for illiterate Spanish speaking populations. Currently I am experimenting with a printed version of the fotonovela with embedded videos procurable for those with smart phones. This fotonovela has been requested by ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, it has been presented in undergraduate level courses at ASU and CSULB, and in the future I hope to share it with the civil rights and advocacy organization Arizona Hispanic Community Forum. [calameo code=000553314fbaac851f9af width=420 height=272] LeighAnna Hidalgo is a first year Ph.D. student at UCLA Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies. This is her fourth year as a MALCSista. Comment(s):

Sara Ramirez August 14, 2012 at 10:20 AM Wow! This is a fierce project can certainly bring attention to systemic reproductions of economic inequality. I appreciate LeighAnna’s care and thoughtfulness to provide access to those who don’t have computers and/or smartphones as well as those who can’t read. I’m super excited that I’m part of a generation of Chicana/Latina thinkers who understand the value of multi-media to effect change.I wonder in what other ways today’s generation of Latina/o feminist dissertators can make our work accessible to those subjects about whom we write.Best of luck to you, LeighAnna. I’m in your cheering section!
La Chica Mas Fina August 14, 2012 at 3:29 PM Thank you very much for your thoughtful and encouraging comment Sara Ramirez! I really appreciate it! Auto-title loans and the predatory nature of these businesses is something that affected my family and me personally when I was a chamaca. I too am very excited by the possibility of multi-media for effecting change and I hope that more Chican@s will start to think about how we can start democratizing our research, so that it truly serves the communities where we come from. Writing an article or a thesis is not enough when what we want is justice for our communities! Not only does it benefit our communities when we work hard to create accessible research, but it also benefits us as researchers to be humbled, to remember our own humanity, and give back to the places that raised us.
Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) August 14, 2012 at 1:03 PM LeighAnna, Thank you for sharing this careful work in interviewing community residents and collecting and analyzing data to show trends in financial services available to minority communities. Hope this finds many, many readers! A few years back there was a campaign here in Ohio to limit the amount that payday lenders could charge in interest which I believe was successful, but your research points to a deeper problem of inequalities in financial services more broadly.
Sandra D. Garza August 15, 2012 at 8:09 PM I love this Fotonovela! What a creative use of technology! Have you thought about submitting some of your written work to the MALCS journal?
La Chica Mas Fina August 16, 2012 at 11:13 AM Thank you Dr Delgadillo! Thats great to hear about the law that passed in Ohio. In Arizona a law passed in the summer of 2010 making payday lending illegal, but since then all the payday loan places turned into auto-title loan or income-tax loan outlets. My data was collected before this change occurred, so I would like to do a re-study to reflect all these changes. You are right that there is a deeper problem of inequalities that allow these financial service disparities to continue multiplying and mutating and I am glad that was clear in my fotonovela. Gracias for letting me share my work. -LeighAnna Hidalgo
Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) August 16, 2012 at 4:36 PM Yes! The same thing happened here: they morphed into other “financial services” that weren’t covered by the changed legislation. I wonder if banks that got bailout money could be required to provide services in low-income areas?
Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) August 17, 2012 at 12:49 PM I agree with Sandra, too, the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal will be a great venue for dissemination of your research work!
Monica Russel y Rodriguez August 23, 2012 at 1:03 PM LeighAnna, Thank you for sharing your excellent work with us. I find the nature of your work and the mode of communication fierce indeed. I am so encouraged by the possibility of a broad readership here. That is to say, getting our research into the hands of people who can use the information powerfully. Additionally, I am encouraged by the possibilities of moving away from the narrowly constructed essay. Your work and this blog (props to Theresa!) move us in a better direction.
La Chica Mas Fina November 12, 2012 at 12:29 PM Monica Russel y Rodriguez, Thank you so much for your encouragement! I apologize for responding so late to your message. I am only now seeing it. I am very excited about the possibilities of using this digital fotonovela methodology in my other research projects, specifically my work with taco vendors in Arizona. As you say, these methodologies can allow us to “get our research into the hands of people who can use the information powerfully”. Exactly! Gracias por tu apoyo!
Alicia Gaspar de Alba November 6, 2012 at 11:40 AM LeighAna, I think this would make a fascinating subject for a lecture in 10A, and hence your final paper in 200. Let me just clarify, however, that the name of our department is the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. We do not have Latina/o Studies in our title, and we are very proud of the Chavez name. Profe Gaspar de Alba
La Chica Mas Fina November 12, 2012 at 12:21 PM Thank you Dr. Gaspar de Alba for reading and commenting on the digital fotonovela and for welcoming me into the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies program. I really value your work and look forward to incorporating the Alter-Native perspective into my final paper. Gracias!

Politics of Fear

June 25, 2012

Photo credit: Stuart Anthony/stuant63 from Flickr.

By Marie “Keta” Miranda

These remarks were delivered at the 2012 NACCS Conference Panel titled “Callin’ It Like It Is: Transforming Gendered, Sexual and Heteropatriarchal Violence in Chicana/o Studies and Academic Institutions”

Fear cannot simply be created from thin air.

There have been quite a few feature stories lately about the culture of fear, especially as journalists have reflected on U.S. culture since 9/11.[i] However, I want to introduce the idea of a politics of fear into our discussion of Institutional Violence. As Antonia has stated, Institutional violence consists of the practices that violate personhood.

Anna NietoGomez helped to clarify that Institutional Violence is:

… when authorities of institutions, and organizations both formal and informal know or should have known that members or participants are bullied, harassed, and or are subject to physical and sexual violence, but do not believe they should be held accountable to institute deterrents and consequences to prevent, investigate and rectify the problem to protect the interests of the institution or organization and instead ignore, deny, shun, blame and or intimidate those who report incidents and protect the victimizer and thereby directly or indirectly encourage the repetition of hostile and violent behavior, sanction and perpetuate a hostile and unsafe environment.

Therefore, I think that as we address practices, we also need to address the politics and other activities associated with Institutional Violence.

Fear is usually expressed in a personalized and privatized way. For example, fear resonates as “what happened to a friend or a neighbor might also happen to me.” Fear as a problem is understood in an abstract sense and is generally diffused. For example, ‘I am frightened’ is rarely focused on something specific but it does express a sense of powerlessness. Institutional Violence, I believe, is about fear that is diffused and that enables a sense of powerlessness, a diminished sense of agency that leads people to turn themselves into passive subjects. Institutional violence is about pressure groups that make us scared about the people we love and about the experiences that we cherish.

When an organization is not motivated by inclusion, the more likely it is to rely on fear — particularly the fear of being an outcast from the group’s circle or society —as a means of control over its members. In many ways this shifts the arrangements, the affection and affiliation within the group, as more individuals are prepared to sacrifice their individuality in exchange for the comfortable sense of belonging to a more powerful group. Creativity is stifled and the evolution of plans, aims and missions are frustrated. Thus the monolithic group asserts itself, “to protect the interests of the institution or organization and instead ignores, denies, shuns, blames and or intimidates those who report incidents,” and a minority of individuals—courageous enough to rebel against group constraints and diktats—are cast out. And FEAR operates. Fear as a basic survival mechanism, becomes a controlling factor in people’s lives and a controlling mechanism of the present and of the future. Discussing the use of fear in politics, Niccolo Machiavelli’s 1513 handbook, Il Principe, notes: Create a fear scenario. The aim of fear is power.

Cheri Moraga, in her “Introduction” to This Bridge Called My Back speaks about knowledge, offering a shift from a binary opposition of mind/body.

Theory of the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives—our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings—all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity.” (23)

Moraga’s intervention sets up the bodily experiences–the personal, flesh, the private, the intimate–how these experiences inform new knowledge. While a theory of the flesh is about knowledge creation, it is also a tool of political resistance. Moraga’s theory of the flesh is tied to the experience of being excluded, and provides a call for new sites of solidarity, particularly as theories of the flesh. Fear attacks the body, where the body freezes in a paralysis. Where escape or avoidance are the behavioral acts—looking for safety.

When we look at Institutional Violence, and the politics of fear, then a Theory of the Flesh can be an action—the other response to fear—not of flight but to confront, to encourage, to act.

I think that Moraga provides a way to using the body as a way to get outside traps –regulation, law, policy, procedure—ways of doing things—that trap us, immobilize us—to finding ways of addressing how we can address Institutional Violence—so that [paraphrasing Anna’s definition] we can be accountable to institute deterrents, to find ways of prevention and remedies to enhance our organizations and institutions.

[i] Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation by Frank Furedi

Professor Marie “Keta” Miranda is on the faculty at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Comment:

Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) July 3, 2012 at 1:12 PM
Keta,
Your essay prompts me to consider how we might enact this attention to caring for our bodies in our gatherings. Thank you for taking up how fear works on the body.

Gender Que(e)ries

June 4, 2012

By Anita Revilla

Anita Revilla is an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada where she serves as Director of Women’s Studies.

Comment(s):

Mujeres Talk Moderator June 4, 2012 at 10:32 AM

Thanks Anita for sharing this! We will all be voting on updating our bylaws this year at 2012 Summer Institute.