Historias de Éxito within Mexican Communities

Silenced Voices

O. Pimentel

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137536808
• eBook ISBN: 9781137532886
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Using qualitative research data on Mexican/Mexican Americans and their historias de éxito that center on Mexican centric concepts such as buen trabajador, bien educado, and buena gente, Octavio Pimentel reveals that when social networks guide personal goals in these communities, goals become community-oriented rather than personally-oriented.

1

Introduction: Comparing Historias de Éxito with Success Stories

Abstract: This chapter works as an introduction to the manuscript because it sets the foundation to the manuscript. It does this by addressing how dominant discourses affect Mexican Americans. While addressing issues of discourse, the chapter also speaks to the racist discursive practices that commonly appear within the United States that marginalize Mexican Americans. A large section of this chapter also addresses the rhetorical situations of Mexican Americans and how they constantly fight against racist rhetorical practices.

Pimentel, Octavio. Historias de Éxito within Mexican Communities: Silenced Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137532886.0005.

My historia de éxito is having the ability to choose so as I reflect on what I’ve been able to achieve in life, in my life with education as a tool . . . the idea that I have the ability to choose where I want success, when I want to work, how I want to work, that I can move laterally or progress to higher positions without having to worry about starting at the bottom . . . “working my way up.” I think that’s probably my notion of success career wise and education was the tool to create that. For me though, my ultimate historia de éxito is my family. Having two kids that are doing well in life, are healthy (both physically and emotionally) and having my wife’s support. I think my best notion of success is my family.

Currently, the negative discourse against Mexicans appears everywhere and it is especially widely spread throughout the World Wide Web. For example, on a recent web search I did on December 17, 2013, on the term “Mexicans,” most of the articles listed focused on some sort of negative aspect against Mexicans. Specifically an article titled “Number of Mexicans Crossing US Border Lowest in Decades” (http://rt.com/usa/mexico-us-immigration-remittance-declining-923/) mentioned that despite the government not agreeing on immigration issues illegal migration of Mexicans to the United States was down. Rhetorically, this article produces a negative stock story against Mexicans because instead of focusing on a positive message about Mexicans, it continues to produce a negative message. That is, although the message emphasizes that Mexican illegal entrance into the United States is down, it does this by focusing on what Mexicans are doing that’s illegal and expressing an undesired practice.

Furthermore, the first article that appears when googling “Mexican and Books” is Ken Bessinger’s “Chilling Mystery: Why Don’t Mexicans Read Books?” (<http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0216/p01s04-woam.html> viewed on December 18, 2013) that was published in The Christian Science Monitor, which focuses on how Mexicans do not like to read. The article mentions: “Competitive pressures in a country where 3,000 copies sold makes a bestseller have pushed 4 out of every 10 bookstores in Mexico out of business over the past 10 years, according to the Mexican Booksellers Association”. The article then further adds that the “. . . fundamental problem is that there are few readers [in Mexico]”. What is critical to understand is that this article never mentions that the difficult economic status of many Mexicans makes it nearly impossible to afford to buy most reading material. Once again, this rhetoric emphasizes the negative majoritarian narrative against Mexicans.

Unfortunately, this negative portrayal of Mexicans is common. Gumbel’s article “Pentagon Targets Latinos and Mexicans to Man the Front Lines in War on Terror” adds evidence to this by showing how the US government depicts Mexicans as dispensable. In his article, Gumbel writes about how the US government targets Mexicans to fight the war on terror. More specifically, he explains that Mexican soldiers are the ones mandated to the frontlines and thus are leading the combat teams into war. The problem is that since the frontlines are usually the first soldiers who enter a battle, they are often the first to die in a battle.

At first glance, this message can be interpreted as Mexicans had a strong role in the war against Iraq. However, a closer examination demonstrates that Mexicans are of little importance in US society because they are expendable, which once again helps support the negative majoritarian narrative against Mexicans. Ironically, as Mexicans help fight the war on terror (in Iraq), the United States fights another war against Mexicans (on the US–Mexican border). Seper’s (2005) Washington Post article, “500 New Agents to Patrol Arizona Border” elaborates on this and mentions that the Mexican border needs to be heavily patrolled, so it can alleviate the terrorist threats that come from Mexico. Seper states, “Federal officials yesterday said more than 500 new border patrol agents will be assigned along the US–Mexico border in southeastern Arizona to combat illegal immigration and protect against potential terrorists.” The article further claims that ideally these 500 new agents are just the beginning because the problem needs much more attention. Seper likewise mentions that US citizens are getting tired of the undocumented problem, so they are now taking an active stance against undocumented individuals, by implementing programs such as the Minuteman project. In short, the Minuteman project consists of volunteers (without legal authority) who help patrol the border. These volunteers mostly patrol the Arizona/Mexico border. Since the Minuteman volunteers are ill trained, the biggest critique of this project is the likelihood that they will abuse undocumented individuals (Shane, 2005).

Similar to this, other scholars like Santa Ana have also written about how and at what frequency the media represents Latinos in news stories. In Juan in One Hundred Santa Ana shows how the media, television news programs in particular, routinely ignore Latino issues. Santa Ana writes on how ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN have collectively broadcasted over 12,000 stories in their nightly programs, but have done an excellent job in ignoring topics dealing with Latinos. In this book he elaborates that exactly 118 stories (less than 1%) have addressed Latinos issues, which compared to the 15% Latino population shows the representation inadequacy. When Latinos are part of a news story, they are often represented in negative terms. In his book, Brown Tide Rising, Santa Ana examines how Latinos are represented in news reports that appear in the LA Times. After examining seven years (1992–1998) of newspaper articles that do focus on Latinos, Santa Ana finds that the texts utilize various negative metaphors to describe Latinos. In all, Santa Ana identifies 4500 “text metaphors” in 671 articles—metaphors that describe Latinos as outsiders, invaders, burdens, parasites, animals, diseases, and weeds. In a similar fashion Pimentel and Balzhiser (2012) argue that census data and census reports are framed in a way to monitor Latinos as a racial threat to US society.

Considering the aforesaid, hence the constant rhetorical oppression that Mexicans face daily in United States, it is important to further conduct stories that give light to the counter stories that are often ignored—stories that debunk the stock narratives that continually oppress people of color. This book is an attempt to take on this challenge and to focus on historias de éxito (counter stories to majoritarian success narratives) within two Mexican Americans. Oftentimes “success” is defined within the parameters of White European American (WEA) ideologies that produce stock definitions of success. As a way to couch this chapter, the first section will focus on people’s tendency to surround themselves with familiar settings. Following this setup is a discussion on historias de éxito, which will hopefully make the reader understand the value of Mexicans. As a way to amplify the discussion, I discuss data that showcase my participants’ counter stories.

Most people feel best in familiar settings. In fact, some would claim that it is human nature for individuals to feel like this because of the comfort level this brings them. Here in the United States, this can be seen in many different ways, including in the places we live in and in the composition of our friends. In “Racial Diversity Increases, But Segregation Persists Says Geography Professor” Barber writes that most people today still live in segregated areas. He expands on this by writing “While census data shows racial diversity is increasing in major cities across the United States, highly diverse neighborhoods are still rare . . .”.

Consistent with this controversial finding is also the assertion that many individuals only have friends who consist of people of their own race and/or ethnicity. In “Many Americans Have no Friends of Another Race: Poll” Dunsmuir writes “about 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race . . . .” This is staggering because with the diversity that exists within the population, it is apparent that it takes a valiant effort for people to solely socialize with people from their own ethnicity/race. Additional data show the unwillingness of 25% of nonwhite, but a staggering 40% of WEAs who are unwilling to diversify their friends.

Information such as this fuels my research because in my own work I am interested in looking at how success is defined within the United States. Through my research I have learned that majoritarian rhetoric often defines success through the perspective of WEAs and thus commonly centers on wealth, formal schooling, and individuality. Keeping this in mind, WEAs often feel best when people (re)produce success stories that are defined within the parameters they are most comfortable with, which is commonly related to their culture and/or ethnicity. When individuals move away from these expected norms, they are most often classified as defiant, not following the rules, and thus their “success stories” are not highly valued. Although this practice happens among many “othered people,” it especially happens within Mexican Americans because of the enormous amount of negative rhetoric that they face on a daily basis, such as the United States commonly supporting laws against bilingual education, ethnic studies, and other forms of culturally relevant pedagogy. Following this trend, it is obvious that US discourse continues to produce negative stock narratives.

Within dominant society as a way for the media to show that there is hope for the Mexican American culture, when a Mexican American achieves success, defined within WEA ideologies (wealth, formal schooling, and individuality), therefore producing a majoritarian narrative, he or she is often paraded. This is done strategically because along with showing WEAs that success can appear within some Mexican Americans, and thus displaying that the entire Mexican culture is not a complete failure, it also shows Mexican Americans that there is hope for them reaching stock notions of success. For example, when Raul Macias Sr. (founder of “King Taco,” a very popular Mexican restaurant chain in Los Angeles) died on December 3, 2013, the narrative was not on the many different activities that he supported throughout the Mexican community, but was much more focused on the economic success of his business. Wikipedia, for instance, emphasized how by 1995 his 14 restaurants were worth over 21 million dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Taco viewed on December 12, 2013). Similarly, in a television broadcast by KCAL Channel 9, the focus again not on how Raul Macias helped the Mexican community, but instead was fixed on how he reached the “American Dream” of becoming rich—an expected stock story (http://news.yahoo.com/video/founder-king-taco-dies-71-065800945.html viewed on December 18, 2013). As these stories illustrate, what is often ignored in these stories is the counter story that Raul Macias, and the King Taco franchise, was highly respected within the Mexican communities because he often supported many Mexican events, including Las Posadas that is celebrated during Christmas time. This alternative definition of success, which can be viewed as a counter narrative, would have classified Raul Macias and King Taco as a historia de éxito within his Latino community, but because this practice did not follow WEA notions of success, it was most often ignored by the dominant culture.

As can be seen in this example, historias de éxito (a counter narrative to the stock narrative of success) have a much broader definition of success than traditional hegemonic notions of success. Within the concept of historias de éxito, success is commonly guided by an individual’s social network. For example, a successful Mexican lawyer, whose social network is composed of working professionals, might define her historia de éxito as the ability to overcome the obstacles she faced in college. Then again, a recently immigrated Mexican whose social network is also composed of recent immigrants, might define a successful individual as anyone who earns enough money to financially support her family.

Contrasting historias de éxito are “success stories” that are identified within the United States, and most often within WEAs. Within the United States, and particularly among the WEA population, the stock notion of success is often defined within the parameters of individuality, wealth, and/or formal education. That said, within a WEA framework, an individual who is a medical doctor is often identified as successful because “her success” is often attributed to “hard work.” Similarly, the college dropout who builds a financially secure business is also identified as successful because it is believed that through “her hard work” she built her business. Theorists like Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985, 1992) and Putnam (2000) have written on this topic and specifically address how hegemonic success stories are often embedded with the basis of individuality.

Habits of the Heart by Bellah et al. (1985) addresses what they call one of the United States’ prominent problems: the conflict between individuality and community. They claim that individuality corrupts America’s social and moral fabric:

Perhaps the crucial change in American life has been that we have moved from the local life of the nineteenth century—in which economic and social relationships were visible and, however imperfectly, morally interpreted as parts of a larger common life to a society vastly more interrelated and integrated economically, technically, and functionally. (p. 50)

In other words, Americans (commonly WEAs) are often so focused on individual success that they lose focus on the benefits of community social networks. Bellah et al. criticize this practice and insist that the United States needs to rebuild community and renew the cause of social justice.

Bellah et al. (1992) address similar issues in The Good Society. A central claim in this book is that US society does not recognize the degree to which it is controlled by institutional forces. Additionally, Bellah at al. claim that although they live in a democratic environment, most US citizens do not recognize that in theory they have the power to change. According to Bellah et al., what prevents Americans from “taking charge” is their long and abiding allegiance to individualism—the belief that the “good society” is one where individuals are left to strive independently to reach the goals that have been set by themselves, and not by others.

In his work, Putnam (2000) addresses similar issues and writes that the decline in civic and social engagement of Americans has almost eliminated community social networks, which in the past had provided Americans their social capital. More specifically, Putman refers to the lack of social activities (such as bowling, playing cards, dinners) that once were very popular in the United States. Putnam traces this decline starting in the 1970s in almost all social-capital-rich contexts such as parties, unions, and, of course, bowling leagues that have thus affected the social capital gained within a social context. He explains, “Many Americans continue to claim that we are ‘members’ of various organizations, but most Americans no longer spend much time in community organizations—we’ve stopped doing committee work, stopped serving as officers, and stopped going to meetings” (Putnam, p. 64). He proposes that both individuals and institutions should have the goal of reinstating the need for social gathering once again. Once this is implemented, he believes the success of the country will be much more fluid.

The individuality that Bellah et al. (1985) as well as Putnam write about exists in all aspects of life including social responsibility, economics, among many others. According to them, the focus on individuality often pushes WEAs to have a bias against others who do not seek individualism as their prominent goal. Bellah writes, “Anything that would violate our right to think for ourselves, judge for ourselves, make our own decisions, live our lives as we see fit, is not only morally wrong, it is sacrilegious” (p. 142). Although there are exceptions to this, such as various church organizations, according to Bellah et al. and Putnam, there is clearly a strong push for individuality in the United States. For example, dominant culture viewed my participant Luis as unsuccessful because he did not have the individual desire to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and fulfill his own social responsibility—gaining legal status in the United States. On the other hand, my other participant Quetzin is viewed as a success story because he built and operates a million-dollar business, and therefore has reached a stock definition of success.

A critical finding in my study is that in some cases Mexicans do not operate within the concept of individuality in defining their historias de éxito. Instead, they believe that social networks and thus social capital are crucial in determining and achieving their historias de éxito.

Interpreting historias de éxito

Historias de éxito may be interpreted in different ways, but a commonality that exists between them is a connection to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Comparing Historias de xito with Success Stories
• 2  Research Design and Method
• 3  Haciendo y Compartiendo: Quetzins Historia de xito
• 4  In Search of Prosperity at All Costs: Luiss Historia de xito
• 5  What Does All This Mean? Implications and Conclusions
• Appendices
• References
• Index