Shame and Pride in Narrative

Mexican Women's Language Experiences at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Kenneth A. Loparo, Ana Maria Relaño Pastor

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137348586
• eBook ISBN: 9781137348593
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyzes personal experiences of language through the voices of Mexican immigrant women, in relation to the racialization discourses that frame the social life of Mexican immigrant communities in the United States. It reveals the power of narrative, understood as a social practice, to validate and give meaning to people's lives.

1

Mexicalifornia: Mexican Immigrant Women at the Tijuana–San Diego Border

Abstract: This chapter introduces the sociocultural context of Mexican immigrant women in Southern California. The first section discusses the visibility and agency of Mexican immigrant women in the settlement process in San Diego, including decisions regarding their English proficiency. The second section focuses on the role of language ideologies surrounding the communicative challenges faced by these women. The final section discusses the initial stages of doing fieldwork in La Clase Mágica, the bilingual/bicultural community-based after-school program from which I recruited the women in this study. I explain how I entered the field, negotiated my position as a researcher, and came up with the research questions around which my study was organized. I end this chapter with an overview of the structure and main contents of the book.

Keywords: border; language experiences; language ideologies; Mexican women; narrative

Relaño Pastor, Ana María. Shame and Pride in Narrative: Mexican Women’s Language Experiences at the U.S.–Mexico Border. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137348593.0005.

1.1 Crossing language boundaries

This book is about the personal language experiences of a group of 18 Mexican immigrant women in San Diego (California). Because language is embedded in a complex web of socially constructed categories and specific settings that account for the multiplicity of meanings we associate it with when we talk about it, the emotionally narrated incidents that these women recount, involving Spanish and/or English, must be understood against the backdrop of life-changing and sometimes violent, physical and metaphorical border crossings at the U.S.–Mexico border. A close analysis of their language experiences reveals how, when and why they raised their voices in order to tell stories that make sense of the racialization incidents they encountered in Southern California, and to reaffirm their views of a more just linguistic moral order for the sake of their children. They enacted these narratives as a response to the symbolic domination of English as well as the symbolic racism they had to overcome across different social settings. On the one hand, the symbolic domination of English in this case refers to the power of monolingual ideologies that consider English to be the one and only necessary language in the United States, assigning, as Zentella (1997, 2005, 2007) explains, a lower status to Spanish and its speakers. Symbolic racism, on the other hand, refers to subtle, concealed forms of racism that naturalize racial differences without overtly using racist language. Scholars agree, for example, that the border militarization discourse is sustained by symbolic racism, which criminalizes undocumented Mexican migrants and reinforces the idea of the border as a “war” zone (Kil & Menjívar, 2006, p. 169).

The 2000 miles stretch across the U.S.–Mexico Border Region, which includes the U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, along with the Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, is separated by the natural barriers of the Rio Grande, Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. El otro lado/the other side/the borderlands/la linea/la frontera/ does not only constitute a highly militarized physical space that criminalizes undocumented immigrants (Kil & Menjívar, 2006), but it is also a metaphorically contested space (Anzaldúa, 1987), where heterogeneous Mexican identities and languages converge. In this area, home to about 13 million people, since the establishment of the Maquiladora Program in 1965 and the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1996, the industrial development on both sides of the border has fostered highly controversial economic and population growth. For Kil and Menjívar (2006), Palafox (2000) and Téllez (2008), these trade agreements favored the flow of capital, but not of labor. Particularly, border enforcement measures (“Operation Hold the Line/Blockade” in El Paso, Texas, 1993; “Operation Gatekeeper” in San Diego, California, 1994; “Operation Safeguard” in Nogales, Arizona, 1994; and “Operation Rio Grande” in the Brownsville corridor, Texas, 1997) aimed at deterring undocumented migrants from crossing to the United States, but instead exposed migrants to less urban and more dangerous crossing points together with the abuses of smugglers or “coyotes”. At the time the narratives in this book were collected, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that changed U.S. Americans’ discourses and ideologies about immigration, race relations and social consideration of immigrant communities, the number of Mexican women who ventured to cross from Tijuana to San Diego was at its peak. According to Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera (2012), quoting data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Border Patrol apprehensions of all unauthorized migrants most recently peaked in 2000, and now are at their lowest level since 1971” (p. 28). In addition, these researchers point out that the federal government “doubled staffing along the southwest border from 2002 to 2011, expanded its use of surveillance technology such as ground sensors and unmanned flying vehicles, and built hundreds of miles of border fencing” (p. 27). These border enforcement measures, in crescendo since President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Act into law in October 2001 and the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002 with a “vital mission: to secure the nation from the many threats we face” (http://www.dhs.gov/about-dhs), have demonized the border as “violent” and “criminal”, whilst dubbing unauthorized Mexicans as “illegals” (Alim, 2011) endangering the people who organize their lives in the borderlands. In fact, as Alonso Meneses (2003, 2012) and Cornelius (2001) suggest, since 1993, border strategies of immigration control have resulted in an increasing number of deaths of Mexican immigrants with clear evidence of the violation of their human rights by U.S. authorities (Alonso Meneses, 2003, p. 281). The political power of borders and the influence of nation-state policies upon people living on both sides of the border (as the anthropology of borders emphasizes) needs to be teased out to understand how border inhabitants negotiate a complex system of ethnic, national, linguistic and cultural identifications to build their identity (Alvarez, 1995; Heyman, 1994; Michaelsen & Johnson, 1997; Vila, 2000, 2003; Wilson & Donnan, 1998).

In this regard, narrative, a fundamentally sense-making activity, as Capps and Ochs (1995) show in their study of women suffering from agoraphobia, makes it possible to link experiences, thoughts and feelings in the present interactional moment we co-construct with others (p. 15). Similarly, Mexican women in this study engaged in the social practice of narrative as they recounted language experiences in San Diego against the backdrop of the physical hardship involved in crossing the border and the dominant circulating racialization discourses they encountered. In doing so, they validated and authenticated past language experiences in the present moment. Whereas the language experiences of Mexican Americans have been examined in terms of bilingualism and minority status (Martínez, 2006), the language experiences of Mexican immigrant women have scarcely been addressed in the literature, especially as part of the myriad adjustments necessary in the settlement process.

Recent research on gender and migration (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2011) emphasizes the different research streams scholars have engaged in since the 1990s, when migration started to be understood as “a gendered process” (p. 220). This includes areas of study such as migration and care work, sexuality, sex trafficking, borderlands and migration, as well as scholarship on gender, migration and children. Specifically, approaching migration as a gendered process means adopting a perspective that takes into account immigrant women’s agency in organizing their lives in the United States. For example, Chavira (1988), Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994), Ruiz and Tiano (1987) and, more recently, Segura and Zavella (2007) show that immigrant women play an important role in everyday social transactions in shops, schools, hospitals and places of employment, and in the use of public and private financial support as well as in the development of community activities. In the sociolinguistic context of Southern California, being able to navigate across social settings means acquiring enough proficiency in English “to get by” (defenderse) whilst struggling to maintain Spanish as their first language. In keeping with the dual meanings of “defenderse” in Spanish, the defense Mexican women referred to in their narratives, not only included acts of defense related to acquiring enough English proficiency to get by across different social domains, but also, and most importantly, extended to a defense of their social rights as immigrants and Spanish speakers – standing up in particular for the protection and social inclusion of their children.

Shame and pride are the two main emotions that trigger the narratives described in this book. On the one hand, shame invokes humiliation, distress, regret for not having learned the English language, not having achieved sufficient proficiency in English, not being able to speak out in English – in short, not being able to “do being” in English. On the other hand, pride in Spanish as the mother tongue, the heritage language, the language transmitted over generations in Mexico, emerges as the main resistance strategy women in this study rely on to defend who they are and contest the place assigned to them in the racializing order of Southern California. The construction of identity around shame and pride in the narratives discussed in this book is historically and socially determined. As Sawin (1999) suggests, any person’s narrative should be reconceptualized as “multiply contextualized”, as responding to “culturally, historically, and personally determined needs and lacks” (p. 254). In this case, among the pertinent contexts for the production and analysis of shame and pride in these narratives, we need to consider the role that dominant language ideologies and practices in the United States, particularly in Southern California, play in Mexican women’s decision making regarding how to survive linguistically in San Diego. In addition, the local context of the interviews in which these narratives emerged should also be taken into account as one of the multiple, particular, historical and local contexts in which women construct gender specific discourses (Bucholtz, 1999; Gal, 2001; Sawin, 1999). Thus, the specific roles of these Mexican women in the migration process and in the family settlement are factors that impinge on the shape of the narrative discourse produced by them. Other factors include the type of sociocultural context evoked and the circumstances of the interview.

1.2 Language ideologies and linguistic settlement

As part of their immigration experience, Mexican women’s settlement process in San Diego included language struggles to acquire the proficiency in English necessary to communicate at different social sites. Institutionally, the language use and English-speaking ability of Hispanic/Latino populations in the United States have been addressed officially in public reports (see Census Brief, 2003) to provide evidence of the need to learn English in the United States “to communicate with government and private service providers, schools, businesses, emergency personnel, and many other people in the United States” (p. 1). At the time the narratives were collected, the report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau (2000) indicated that among the 262.4 million people aged five and over, 47 million (18%) spoke a language other than English at home, reaching over 55 million, almost 20%, nationwide. Together with the political interest of indexing the number of speakers in the United States who spoke languages other than English, since 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau has overtly made evident the ideology of linguistic superiority and discriminatory treatment against non-native English speakers underlying the definition of “linguistically isolated households”. These were identified as the ones in which “no person aged 14 or over speaks English at least ‘very well’ ” and, consequently, “linguistically isolated persons” referred to “any person living in a linguistically isolated household”. Once a household was defined as “linguistically isolated” every member was classified as “linguistically isolated”, including children under 14 who spoke English fluently. Fortunately, the American Anthropology Association (AAA), together with the American Association of Applied Linguists and the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed a resolution against these classifications “to urge the U.S. Census Bureau to expand its language questions and to acknowledge that those who speak English ‘well’ should not be grouped with those who speak it ‘not well’ or ‘not at all’ ” (AAA Newsletter, 2011).

The Mexican immigrant women who participated in this study did not speak English when they migrated to the U.S. and, consequently, faced a host of difficulties at school, in workplaces, hospitals and with public services, as well as at home with their U.S.-born children, who in many cases ended up with weak Spanish skills, losing their Spanish by the time they were schooled. Problems arose involving second-generation husbands and relatives, whose language-policing role ignored the linguistic difficulties these women experienced as English learners. Although they were determined to enroll in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes in neighborhood schools, due to family duties and working conditions, they found it difficult to keep up with them. Researchers agree that the patterns of English proficiency and Spanish maintenance among Latino immigrants depend on generation (Hidalgo, 2001; Valdés, 1988), age of arrival (AoA) and length of residence in the U.S. (Stevens, 1999; Wong Fillmore, 2000), as well as language beliefs and socialization practices at home (Bayley & Schecter, 2003; Schecter & Bayley, 2002). These women preferred to use Spanish to communicate with their children at home and made the effort to communicate in English in public settings (e.g. the workplace, schools and stores) despite being looked down upon, discriminated against or rejected because of their heavy accents. Consequently, language conflicts derive, not only from the objective inability to communicate and make themselves understood in everyday situations, but also from the hostile language ideologies and practices that support and are, in turn, supported by symbolic domination (Bourdieu, 1991). In fact, spoken ability to communicate fluently, represents the most basic form of human capital for economists (Chiswick & Miller, 2007, p. 78), whether or not it is an important determinant of immigrants’ labor integration and labor market outcomes. The ability to communicate fluently does not necessarily imply a successful appropriation of cultural capital in a marketplace influenced by dominant language ideologies.

Language ideology research explains, among other issues, the relationship of local notions associated with language and languages, language use and speakers, and the organization of everyday practices (Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002; Schieffelin, Woolard & Kroskrity 1998; Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994). In addition, in multilingual contexts, ideologies of language are complexly intertwined with notions of power and identity in society (Bailey, 2002; Relaño Pastor, 2008; Zentella, 1997, 2005). Moreover, language ideologies are also manifested in the discourse that constructs values and beliefs at state, institutional, national and global levels (Blackledge, 2008; Pujolar, 2007). Mainstream language ideologies are built around the idea that linguistic diversity is a cause not only of cultural disintegration, but also of social, educational and economic conflicts whose solution lies in the reestablishment of the supremacy of the dominant language(s) and language varieties (Baker, 2001).

In the case of Spanish in the U.S., these ideologies have led to “blatant Hispanophobia” (Zentella, 1997), and to the growth of xenophobic power groups such as US English (http://www.us-english.org/), aimed at declaring English the official language of the country. In fact, 31 states, including California in 1986, have declared English their official language: the latest being Oklahoma in 2010. Ideologies as such and subsequent practices such as the passing of Proposition 227 (1998), which eliminated bilingual education in California, emphasize the status of Spanish as a dis-preferred language and Spanish speakers as a low-prestige minority group. In addition, these ideologies are part and parcel of the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino discourses that scholars such as Santa Ana (2002) and Chavez (2001, 2013) have analyzed through metaphors and representations of Latino immigrants in political and public discourses as well as in the U.S. media. These scholars reach similar conclusions regarding the negative, violent and xenophobic portrayal of Latinos in the United States.

According to Gal and Irvine (1995), language ideologies mediate between social structures and forms of talk by means of three semiotic processes, namely “iconicity”, “fractal recursivity” and “erasure”. Iconicity explains how some language varieties like Spanish in the United States or some linguistic features of the English spoken by Mexicans are equated with social images of their speakers, naturalizing differences among groups and reinforcing racial inequalities (e.g. Americans speak English and Mexican immigrants speak Spanish, therefore English is the legitimate language of the U.S., and Spanish is out of place because it does not belong to the U.S.). That is, language or some linguistic features become an icon for a particular group. Fractal recursivity is defined as a “projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto some other level”, like “fractals” that are reflected onto multiple levels (p. 974). This means that salient elements of the opposition between social groups are projected on another level. For example, “Spanish is the language of the poor, undocumented migrants” and “English is the language of the successful”; therefore, English enjoys a superior status as compared to Spanish in the United States. Finally, “erasure” is a process by which differences between social groups are essentialized as being immutable and homogeneous, for example: “Latinos speak Spanish” “Americans speak English”. When intra-group diversity within Latino communities in the United States or, particularly, Mexican communities in Southern California is erased, homogenous, monolithic ideologies of language and cultural belonging are perpetuated. These three processes emerge in one way or another in the narratives of language experiences analyzed here, and will be discussed in the following chapters.

Very few studies, with De Fina and King (2011), King and De Fina (2010), Relaño Pastor and De Fina (2005) and De Fina (2003) being notable among the exceptions, have approached how migrants from Latin American countries frame their language experiences in the United Stated in narrative discourse. The analysis provided by these studies shows the discursive strategies these communities employ in narrative discourse to construct language experiences in the United States. This book specifically addresses how these language experiences are better understood within the racialization framework that otherizes Spanish and its speakers in the United States, including Mexican women in Southern California.

1.3 Doing fieldwork so far from and so close to the border

This book is the result of my journey as a critical ethnographer interested in the intercultural experiences and daily communicative challenges faced by the Mexican community of San Diego (California). The first destination and main research site of this journey was La Clase Mágica (The Magic Class, hereafter LCM), a computer-based, bilingual/bicultural after-school program, committed since 1989 to providing a culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum, based on a lifelong approach to learning and development, to Mexican/Mexican American/First Nation children and youth in San Diego. LCM-San Diego currently comprises five educational sites throughout San Diego in under...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Mexicalifornia: Mexican Immigrant Women at the TijuanaSan Diego Border
• 2  Narrating Language Experiences
• 3  Mexicanas at La Clase Mgica
• 4  Racialization in Narratives of Language Experiences
• 5  Shame and Pride: Defendindose in Narrative
• 6  Conclusions: Narrative Revelations
• Appendix I: Interview Log
• References
• Index