Spilling the Beans: Mujeres Talk Can Be a Virtual Public Sphere

by Ella Diaz

In the first two months of 2012, there are already major crises facing Latin@ and Chican@ communities. From Alabama’s HB56, which makes all civic participation illegal for undocumented children and their parents, to Arizona’s recent “confiscating” of certain books from public schools, the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness in the U.S. is looking kind of bleak. If you have 35 minutes, you should listen to the first portion of the January 27, 2012 episode of This American Life, titled "Reap What You Sow." They do an excellent job of talking about HB56 on the street level and frontlines of law enforcement.

On the MALCS listerv, we send out many emails updating each other on the status of certain legislation and movements against Latin@s. We also update each other on general news from our campuses and professions, or ask for specific help on projects. But perhaps it’s Mujeres Talk –our blog—that can provide us with a virtual public sphere, a place that each of us may enter and speak with one another openly about many of the topics we raise in our emails. There are so many important circumstances we are facing in our schools, jobs, communities, and families. What is a major issue that you are currently facing? In 2012, what do you find to be the #1 crisis we need to confront?

            For me, the next year will prove to be one of the most significant for the 21^st century. We are in a political and mainstream cultural moment that will continue to push us farther away from our stories, the lives we live that make us tell them, and, as writer Wally Lamb entitled his second novel, from what we know is true. Theoretical frameworks that are not grounded in our narratives are ahistorical; and by "our narratives," I mean the testimonios, poems, plays, fictions, and "autobioethnographies" (to use Norma Cantu's term) that create our individual and collective memory. It is my opinion that one cannot understand Borderland Theory without knowledge of the 1845 and 1848 annexations of northern Mexico in to the U.S. Likewise, oppositional consciousness and the decolonial imaginary are also not possible without knowing the migrant chains of mujeres across geopolitical borders, historical revolutions, and tactics for survival under state policies of the twentieth- now twenty-first century. Theoretical frameworks not grounded in our narratives help create a reality that makes Shakespeare’s The Tempest a banned/confiscated text in Arizona and Helena Viramontes’s “The Moths” pornography. I am not undercutting the value of the theory and critical lenses we use to more clearly interpret our cultural production in relation to larger systems of power and the global economy. I am merely stating that theory and narrative aren’t mutually exclusive. We have to decide if, in addition to scholars, we are also story-tellers who listen, remember, and retell the stories that built the fields of Chican@ and Latin@ Studies. That is my biggest concern, and I would love to know what others think and if they agree or disagree. What is your #1 concern going forward into March 2012?   

Ella Diaz is a Visiting Faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her Ph.D. in American Studies is from the College of William and Mary. Diaz is an At Large Representative of MALCS. 

State of the Organization: MALCS Executive Committee Working on Major Initiatives

by Mónica F. Torres, Chair, MALCS Executive Committee

For several years now, the MALCS Executive Committee has been working on critical initiatives, projects it believes will fortify the foundation of the organization for the next period of time.

Bylaws Revision. As members know, particularly those who attended the 2012 Summer Institute in Los Angeles, the Executive Committee has been working on a revision of the MALCS by-laws. While many of the changes proposed will be minor, changes in wording or changes meant to bring our bylaws in line with our practice, other proposed changes will be more substantive: about membership, voting procedures, the Summer Institute, etc. After many months of discussing, writing, and rewriting among the members of the EC and with the membership at large, the Executive Committee will post our bylaws proposal in late May or early June. More information about the processes we will use to discuss and vote will be posted with the proposal.

Communications. Historically, MALCS members have had two formal opportunities to communicate: the Summer Institute and the journal. More recently, with much thanks to Susana Gallardo, the MALCS website has become another important source of information for members. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that the web will continue to be an important site for communications. Understanding that, the Executive Committee has established a working group addressing communications issues. Convened by Chair-elect Theresa Delgadillo, this group will investigate a question I heard Ex-oficio Keta Miranda ask many times last year: how can we use the web as a venue to support and increase the vibrancy and vitality of this organization? The Communications and Web Team includes Susana Gallardo, Keta Miranda, Marivel Danielson, Seline Szupinksi Quiroga and Elisa Huerta.  

Resolution on Institutional Violence. At the 2011 Summer Institute, a group of mujeres proposed a resolution calling on Chicano/a Studies to address institutionalized violence—specifically sexism, misogyny, and homophobia—within Chicano/a Studies programs. The resolution enthusiastically passed. Since the Institute, an ad hoc group, convened by Keta Miranda, has been working: clarifying the issues and developing strategies to address the set of concerns that prompted the resolution. More information will follow as specific actions are identified and organized.

Membership Drive. Marivel Danielson, Membership Coordinator, is developing a new membership drive for MALCS. She has several goals in mind: to make it easier for members to renew their memberships, and to get information about MALCS into the hands of prospective members more often and more easily. More information about the membership drive will be forthcoming in the next few months.

Funds Development. There is no doubt that we are an established organization. Our annual meeting and our journal are manifestations of that success. The members of the Executive Committee have started to ask, what’s next? What can we do to build on that success? One response: raise funds that will support and extend the work we do. To that end, we already accept donations large and small, restricted and unrestricted. We are now working to establish a more formal giving structure, which will articulate more and more fully developed giving options and benefits. In addition to that, we have discovered a number of charitable foundations that have goals that match or complement ours. We are researching and discussing the feasibility of applying to the grant programs of these organizations.

Other Projects on the Horizon. There are a number of other projects in the works as well. For example, the Executive Committee is developing or revising core organizational documents including an Administrative Policies and Procedures manual, a Summer Institute handbook, and a procedures and operations manual for the journal. We believe these improvements in our institutional structure are essential for the long-term health of the organization.

Like you, the members of the Executive Committee value this organization. Each of us has a story or two or three about the ways in which MALCS has made a difference in our own professional and personal lives. Our work, as members of the Executive Committee, is meant to be a promise to current and future members that MALCS will continue to be a source of support, insight, and inspiration.

Mónica F. Torres is the 2011-2012 Chair of MALCS and is on the faculty of New Mexico State University. She served as Chair Elect of MALCS from 2009-2011.  

Finding Missing Latinas

by Theresa Delgadillo

Over the past decade, there has been significant attention focused on the murders and disappearances of Mexican women in Juarez, Mexico. The public protests and demands for justice directed at local, state and national government bodies by the families of the missing women have been joined by international women’s organizations, grassroots feminist campaigns, and several books and films about these events. A recent issue of the MALCS Journal, Chicana and Latina Studies, features a critical scholarly essay that compares cinematic treatments of the violence against Mexican women in Juarez, Mexico. However, few people know that similar violence against women on this side of the border, in this case against Latinas, proliferated in Albuquerque, New Mexico over the past decade.

In the fall, I caught a re-broadcast of a Dateline program that originally aired in December 2010 titled “Somebody’s Daughter.” This episode of the Friday night television news magazine dealt with the discovery of the serial murders of Latinas in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2006. As in Juarez, the women’s remains were discovered buried in the desert, in this case on the mesa, just beyond a newly developed housing tract. The program did not use the term “Latina,” or say much directly about the ethnicity of the missing young women. Instead, the program featured photos of the missing young women and told us their names -- allowing these facts, as well as interviews with family members to make plain the ethnicity and race of the victims. The Latina ethnicity of most of the missing women was further highlighted when one of the victims found in the desert was identified as a young African American woman from another state, a departure from the profile of most of the missing women.

Dateline and shows like it often present violence against women as spectacle, frequently, it seems, featuring stories about women murdered by their husbands in which the recurring image of the happy wedding picture is juxtaposed to images of violence and death. The myth or illusion at the heart of a flawed relationship will be exposed by the show, most importantly by the presentation of a careful police investigation, one that proceeds only because someone in law enforcement has taken a particular interest in the case. It's a curious formula. It might seem to be a formula for championing the victims of domestic violence, except that it also murder-as-entertainment. These stories feature heavy-handed and titillating narration, a focus on unanswered questions and doubts, employment of a deficit theory focus on victim's lives, and the always flawless police work.

It was disturbing to see one of these shows focused on the serial murder of Latinas. At the heart of this story was another story: the Latina detective. Assigned to the “backwater” job of finding persons reported missing, Detective Ida Lopez identifies a pattern in the profiles of missing young women. Lopez is the only person assigned to these cases, and only part-time. The show takes Detective Lopez seriously, and reveals that for her “everybody counts or nobody counts,” that is, for Lopez, a woman who might be sick with addiction or desperate for money is not a disposable human being. Yet her investigation into the missing women doesn’t get any traction until “something turns up” – that is, until remains are discovered not by detectives trying to find the missing women but by construction crews called out to take care of flooding problems created for the residents of a new suburban development on the mesa. Michelle Valdez. Anna Vigil. Evelyn Salazar. Anna Herron. Angelina Guerra. The names of the missing women appear on the placards made by family members demanding an investigation.

At one point, Josh Mankiewicz interviewing a police officer, asks whether they wouldn’t have acted sooner if the victims were young, white women to which the officer answers that in some cases it’s months before these women were reported missing because of the nature of the supposed lives they lead, and in that broad stroke he, once again, dismisses them, and their demands on his time. Some family members are interviewed, but it would have been good to hear more from more of the families of the missing young women in Albuquerque, New Mexico; to learn more about the state of Latina life there; to see more of the investigation into the many other still missing young women in Ida Lopez’s case file, and to feel assured that there was a commitment to finding them. The television program wants to end on the note that the mystery is solved. But it isn't. The violence against women in Albuerquerque, New Mexico mirrors the violence against women in Juarez, Mexico and the killers continue to roam free. What other kinds of violence against Latinas are we not hearing about? Is there a way to make this news known that doesn't turn Latina death into spectacle?  Can popular television programs effectively tell our stories? What does the handling of the disappearances and murders of Latinas in Albuquerque, New Mexico say about the value of Latina life?