Masks and Acculturation:
Masks and Acculturation: Navigating Identity as an "Outsider"
Introduction to Masks and Stories
The author, Margaret E. Montoya, explores how culture and stories intertwine in the lives of "outsiders." This intertwining can lead to the creation of "masks" as a form of adaptation, or it can generate new avenues for expression, personal identity, cultural authenticity, and pedagogical innovation.
The text begins with a poignant quote by Alma Villanueva: "I put on my masks, my costumes and posed for each occasion. I conducted myself well, I think, but an emptiness grew that no thing could fill. I think I hungered for myself." This quote encapsulates the core theme of using external facades while experiencing internal self-alienation.
Early Experiences and the Formation of Public Self
Childhood Memories: The author's earliest school memory dates back to a pivotal year, 1955, when she was seven years old and in second grade at the Immaculate Conception School in Las Vegas, New Mexico. This year marked the beginning of her self-awareness in relation to Anglo society, noticing differences between herself and her classmates/families.
Home Environment contraste: Her family's home featured an outdoor toilet and was located on an unpaved street, near railroad tracks. This starkly contrasted with the implied comfort of her Anglo classmates' lives.
The Ritual of Braiding Hair (Trenzas): Her mother's daily ritual of tightly braiding her and her sister's hair was significant. The tight braids were meant to last through recess activities like running, jumping, and hanging from monkey bars. Her mother would say, "Don't move," while meticulously parting the hair with a comb to ensure it was straight.
"Don't want you to look grenudas": Her mother's admonition, "I don't want you to look grenudas" (meaning "uncombed"), carried a deeper, subtextual message. There is no precise English equivalent for "grenuda" (Footnote 2 explains "Apenas estrenados" as another untranslatable Spanish concept relating to first-time wear of new clothes and associated privilege).
Language and Cultural Interpretation:
Bilingual Communication: Her mother frequently code-switched, using both English and Spanish.
Spanish for Significance: Spanish was reserved for profound topics: her feelings, doubts, worries, and discussions about "gringos," "Mexicanos," and their relationships. Stories often included anger and implicit bitterness about mistreatment by gringos, alongside admiration for egalitarian, smart, well-spoken, and well-mannered Anglos.
Spanish as a Shield: Sometimes Spanish was spoken specifically so that "They" (Anglos) would not understand.
Subtextual Meaning of "Grenuda": The word "grenuda" was encoded with familial and cultural meaning. It wasn't just about grooming; it was a parental strategy for navigating societal scrutiny. Her mother was interpreting the world, teaching her children that their world was divided. "They-Who-Don't-Speak-Spanish" would judge them, find them lacking. Lessons about grooming, hygiene, and homework were deeper messages: "be prepared, because you will be judged by your skin color, your names, your accents. They will see you as ugly, lazy, dumb, and dirty."
Cultural Disguise and Public Persona: The school uniform (blue jumpers, white blouses) and tightly braided "trenzas" served as a "disguise." They announced she was clean and well-cared for, blurring distinctions between her family's modest economic and cultural circumstances and those of wealthier Anglo students. This was a deliberate effort to conceal her minimal wardrobe and relative family poverty.
Navigating "Anglo" Town: The walk to school, away from unpaved streets and the "Spanish" part of town to the "Anglo" part, evoked mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion. She wondered about Anglo life, homes, food, and clothing (e.g., closets full of dresses, sweaters, shoes, apenas estrenados).
Attempted Masking and Revelation: In second grade, when asked about lunch, she lied about eating "caldito (soup) y tortillas" because she lacked English words for them and feared mockery. Instead, she fabricated a meal of "pork chops, mashed potatoes, green salad, sliced bread, and apple pie," assuming this was what an "American" family would eat. This act of unsuccessful masking revealed more about her internal struggles than it concealed.
The Catholic School Environment and External Pressures
Catholicism and Sin: Catholicism, before ecumenical reforms, emphasized sin, especially lying, even for elementary school children.
Disguised Truth and Oblique Language: The religious environment presented "Truth disguised in myriad ways," with oblique language and multiple meanings (e.g., Virgin Mother, Risen Son, Body and Blood).
Hidden Teachers: The nuns, her teachers, were completely hidden: nameless, without families, friends, or homes, embodying the collapse of private into public. Their black and white habits concealed their physical attributes.
Anglo-Dominant Culture: Despite the school being well-integrated with "Spanish" students due to the predominantly Latino town population, the school's culture was overwhelmingly Anglo and middle-class.
Suppression of Spanish: The use of Spanish was frowned upon, occasionally punished, and any trace of an accent was mocked, even by some "Spanish" nuns themselves.
The Exposed "Other": The author recalls tutoring another second-grader, a boy who spoke mostly Spanish, wore denim overalls, and had his head shaved for a medical procedure. She perceived him as "exposed" by his inability to read, lack of uniform, lack of hair, and lack of English. This experience tragically connected "Spanish-ness, sickness, poverty, and ignorance" in her child's mind.
Intersectionality of Identity: By age seven, she was acutely aware of living in a society with little room for those who were "poor, brown, or female." She inhabited "dualized worlds: private/public, Catholic/secular, poverty/privilege, Latina/Anglo." Her "trenzas" and uniform were a cultural disguise and a "precursor for the more elaborate mask" she would later develop.
Defenses Against Racism and the Struggle for Acceptance
Parental Strategies: Parents passed down defenses against racism: presenting an acceptable face, speaking without a Spanish accent, hiding true feelings, and masking inner selves. This taught children it was "safer to be inscrutable" and necessary to maintain a public disguise.
Conflicted Identity: There was a struggle to be seen as Mexican while simultaneously seeking acceptance as "Americans," a term which at the time primarily connoted Anglos.
First Generation Latinas in Academia: The author belongs to the "first generation of Latinas to be represented in virtually every college and university" in significant numbers. However, this often meant isolation due to a lack of Latina role models to guide nuanced interpretations of dress, speech, and social codes in academic environments.
The Chicano Movement and Evolving Public Persona
Transformative Experience: Her participation in the Chicano student movement in college was fundamentally transformative, leading to the adoption of an ethnic label as a primary identifier—an "ideological mask" that proved psychically liberating.
"Reactive and Inchoate" Liberation: This nascent liberation was still early and in development, as she simultaneously struggled to redefine herself while still being bound by definitions imposed by others.
Harvard Law School and Political Statements: As a student at Harvard Law School, her clothing initially proclaimed her politics. On her first day of orientation, she wore a Mexican peasant blouse and cutoff jeans embroidered with the Chicano symbol of the aguila (stylized eagle) and a woman symbol. The aguila symbolized her links to the United Farm Worker rallies and a specific community. The unfinished woman symbol highlighted the ambiguity of her struggles and identities.
Marginality in Movements: The separation of the symbols reflected her experience of gender limiting her participation in the Chicano movement, and ethnicity limiting her in the women's movement. Though drawing power from both, she felt at the "margin of each one."
Protective Coloration: Over time, her clothes lost their overt political distinctiveness. Her attire signified ambivalence: a desire to fit in and acquire conventional ideas by dressing "like a lawyer," or a strategy to harbor disruptive thoughts for future use. Her clothing became a form of "protective coloration," allowing her to "fade into the ideological, political, and cultural background rather than proclaim my differences."
Assimilation, Acculturation, and Their Costs
Traditional "Damaging-Culture" Model: Academic success traditionally demanded linguistic and cognitive characteristics of the dominant culture. Historically, retention of traditional Mexican-American culture was believed to impede successful adjustment in mainstream American society. This "damaging-culture" model justified advocating for the complete assimilation of Latinos.
Pressure for Assimilation: Widespread assimilationist thought created social and familial pressure on Latinos to abandon traditional values and lifestyles for educational and economic upward mobility.
Concomitant of Education: Acculturation into the dominant culture is seen as a natural consequence of education, with most college-educated Latino students appearing highly assimilated.
Tolerated Acculturation: To support academic progress, Latino parents encouraged English proficiency and tolerated other aspects of acculturation, such as changes in friends, clothes, and recreational preferences. Students adopted masks to avoid negative values ascribed to traditional Latina/o culture.
Loss of Identity: Latina/o history is filled with stories of individuals who changed names, lost Spanish language and accents, or married outside the culture to avoid being seen as "different."
Feelings of Estrangement: Higher education for Latinas/os often leads to feeling "doubly estranged"—from both ancestral roots and the dominant culture—due to the socialization process.
Resistance to Assimilation: Feeling masked due to ethnic and racial differences is linked to cultural assimilation and the pervasive Latina/o resistance against it, specifically against being seen as agringada (turning into a gringa).
Assimilation as a Mask: Assimilation itself becomes another mask for Latinas/os to hide behind.
The Clay Mask Metaphor: The author describes a clay mask by Mexican artisans as a powerful metaphor:
Outermost Layer: A white skeleton face with a grimace (a death mask).
Second Layer: A face with an aquiline nose and goatee, suggesting the Spaniard, the colonizer.
Innermost Layer: A pensive Aztec face.
Meaning: This sculpture symbolizes post-colonization and acculturation, representing individuals who have successfully preserved a valuable part of their past behind constructed public personas.
Costs of Upward Mobility: Moving into a higher economic class or adopting mannerisms, clothing, or speech patterns of privileged classes can strain familial and ethnic bonds.
Accusations: Families might feel estranged and resentful, leading to accusations of vendida ("selling out"), forgetting the ethnic community, or abandoning the family.
Internal Doubts: Students themselves may grapple with internal doubts about what they sacrificed for academic success, leading to concerns about ethnic identity and personal authenticity.
"Who Am I Really?" and Cultural Betrayal: Comments like "You don't seem Latina" or "How Latina are you?" carry different meanings based on who delivers them.
From Anglos: Implies rising above one's group, being special, better, acceptable.
From Latinos: Carries an innuendo of cultural betrayal and the threat of cultural excommunication.
Living Between Worlds: Professional public lives can be vastly different from home cultures, leading to a constant sensation of moving between worlds, "putting on one face and taking off another." The "strands of our lives resist being woven into a neat braid."
Unmasking and the Validation of Biculturalism
Personal Encounter and Realization: A profound moment occurred when the author, on a trip to Cambridge as an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association, found Luis J. Rodriguez's autobiography, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. In it, she found her cousin Rodolfo "Sonny" Gomez listed among those who didn't survive la vida loca. This revelation starkly reminded her of shared struggles and the proximity of different fates, making her realize, "Sonny could have had my fate and I, his." Both stood "with a foot in two worlds," Sonny introducing her to Bob Dylan and Karl Marx, demonstrating complex identities.
Challenging the Assimilationist Model: Over the last decade, Latinos and other "Outsiders" have effectively challenged the efficacy of the assimilationist model.
Heterogeneity of Experiences: They highlight the diverse orientations and experiences within Latino communities.
Integration is Conducive to Success: Empirical research, such as that by Raymond Buriel, demonstrates that "integration with one's ancestral culture is conducive to success and adjustment in American society." (Referencing Raymond Buriel, Integration with Traditional Mexican-American Culture and Sociocultural Adjustment, in CHICANO PSYCHOLOGY 95, at 97 (Joe L. Martinez, Jr., and Richard H. Mendoza eds., 2d ed. 1984) ).
Multifaceted Adjustment: Sociocultural adjustment is now understood as a complex, multifaceted process rather than a simple substitution of one culture's customs for another's.
Validation of Biculturalism: Latinos have long exhibited bicultural behavior and values, but only recently has a body of literature and discourse emerged to validate such cultural integration. Contemporary Latina/o poetry and fiction often exhibit bilingual and bicultural characteristics, and public discourse increasingly mirrors private speech.
Constructing Varied Identities: Latinas/os are actively constructing varied identities while navigating traditional understandings of "real Latinas/os" and adapting to novel situations. This resolution process does not need to be isolating or alienating from family or community.
The Nature of Masking: Universal vs. Subordinated Experiences
Universal Masking: Masking, in a general sense, is a universal condition; everyone controls how they present themselves to others. For members of the dominant culture, this behavior is not inherently self-loathing.
Masking for Subordinated Groups: A fundamental difference exists when masking is done by members of one or more oppressed groups.
Self-Hate: Masking immutable characteristics (skin color, eye shape, hair texture) that have historically been deemed "loathsome" by the dominant culture can lead to the experience of self-hate.
Fear and Humiliation in Unmasking: For dominant culture members, unmasking does not typically provoke fear or deep humiliation. However, for subordinated individuals, unmasking is often involuntary and unexpected, sparking profound fear and humiliation, echoing past hurts. It is a holistic experience; there are no separate masks for different aspects of identity (e.g., female-ness, Latina-ness).
Historical Necessity: For "Outsiders," masking has been a historical necessity, with strategies passed down through generations to accommodate, resist, or subvert oppressive forces.
Loss of Authentic Self: Subordination fosters the persistence of mimicking the styles, preferences, and mannerisms of those who dominate.
Lost Identities: "Lost to the Outsider are those identities that would have developed but for our real and perceived needs to camouflage ourselves in the masks of the Master."
Limited Choices: The dynamics of subordination and privilege restrict the variety of choices and multiplicity of identities that would otherwise be available, resulting in a loss for all. The author, as a child, altered or denied her language, clothes, and foods, using "trenzas" to fit in. As an adult, she continues to alter or deny parts of herself, both consciously and unconsciously.