Divisions within Latin@ communities

The documentary from Tuesday was very insightful and informative on a number of levels. One point that stood out to me was that, for numerous nations, there is a common practice of bringing in people from a particular community, using them for work, and once their presence ceases to be beneficial, they are coerced or forced (often through violence, on some level) back to where they came from. In the documentary, this was the case for the Mexican workers who built southern California from the ground up (something i didn't know of before watching the documentary) who, once the depression hit, were targeted as being the problem and shipped out of the country en masse. For Haitians, as well, this is and was the case for most of their history and relationship with the Dominican Republic. For African-Americans, as well, after we stopped working for nothing, many presidents and leaders encouraged Black people to return to Africa (which, in part, helped to establish Liberia). But given that a trip back to Africa costs much more than a one-way trip to Mexico, that option clearly wasn't as successful. I think it speaks to the ways in which power and money control people, even whole community's lives.

Something else that came to mind was a documentary i'd seen a while i was living in NYC for about 2 years (i believe this is it). It detailed the migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City in a similar fashion from the documentary we watched, however, it went more into detail of the types of discrimination they felt when they came. For one, they were seen as Black or a bi-racial group by whites, and thus treated similar to how Black people were being treated. On the other hand, they were treated as outsiders by African-Americans. Most African-Americans, even today, don't know that the vast majority of Africans during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade went to the Caribbean and South-America. So the encounter of Afro-Latinos is puzzling to most African-Americans. It's like "ok...you look Black, but why are you speaking Spanish?". It's an entire history/anthropological lesson (a course, really) missing from American "education" (if that's what we want to call it). The Puerto Ricans in the film felt like they had to choose between African-Americans and the other Latino-Americans (Dominicans, Mexicans, others from South-America), but there was a language barrier for the former group and a color complex inherent within the latter community, and weren't so keen on Afro-Latinos. So, they were in the middle and ostracized from both potential allies.
Another sad situation was when many of them had to attend public schooling. Given that many of them looked Black, they were treated in the same way African-Americans were treated. But unique to them was their language. So many of them coming as young children only knew how to speak Spanish (with a Puerto-Rican accent and slang). As opposed to the teachers rising to the occasion of connecting with children (who are the most flexible at learning a second language), they generally threw them into special-education and remedial classes, and many of them either dropped out or never left those category of classes. It was just a horrible situation to be in, as immigrants in a new place, living largely in poverty, feeling as if they have no home, etc.

The chapter in the book about Mexicans and gentrification is interesting as well. Like I said, I lived in NYC for about two years, and living there was the first time that i'd come into contact with a large group of diverse Latinos. Only there did I learn, really, the diversity of Latin-America, but also about the divisions. Dominicans live here, Mexicans here, Puerto-Ricans have this neighborhood, Cubans have this area of this borough, etc. From the perspective of subjectivity, they're all seen as the same (this is the way I saw all Latinos prior to moving there. Indeed, most Alabamians refer to all Latinos as "Mexicans"), whereas they have their own identities, music, histories, relations to the U.S., etc. Chapter 5 talks about how Mexicans are underrepresented in relation to Puerto-Ricans, and how they're seen by African-Americans and other Latinos as bringing in gentrification. It all seems very absurd to me. The communities of color that should be coming together and fighting their common issues are some of the most divided communities.

Also, Professor Shoaff mentioned the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (which i've been to a couple times. it's one of my favorite places in NYC) and i found a video for those who aren't familiar with the Cafe. The spoken word poet speaks about her Cuban heritage, assimilation, and Celia Cruz (see here).