Aztlán
24, no. 1 spring 1999
•Editor’s Introduction
•Editor’s Commentary
April Fools
•Essays
Chicana Political Consciousness: Re-negotiating Culture, Class, and Gender
with Oppositional Practices
Denise A. Segura and Beatríz M. Pesquera
Heroes and Orphans of the Hacienda: Narratives of a Mexican American Family
Vincent Pérez
Invisible and Undocumented: The Latina Maid on Network Television
L. S. Kim
Zapotec Immigration: The San Lucas Quiaviní Experience
Felipe H. Lopez and Pamela Munro
•Dossier: Profiles in
Suffrage
Loretta Sanchez and the Virgin
Larry Siems
Latino Republicans and the 1998 Election
Gregory Rodriguez
•Artists’ Communiqués
Multiculturalism without People
of Color: An Interview with Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Josh Kun
The Avalos Chapel
David Avalos
•Reviews
The Impeachment of Mike Davis
Ruben Martinez 203
Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol. By Guillermo
Gómez-Peña, Enrique Chagoya, and Felicia Rice.
Jennifer González
Contributors
Editor’s
Introduction
In one form or another, the
essays in this issue deal with political consciousness—a term that
Denise A. Segura and Beatriz M. Pesquera define as “a complex set
of negotiations between race-ethnicity, class, gender, and cultural configurations
with oppositional practices.” The authors in the essay section examine
political consciousness as it relates to Chicana clerical workers, testimonial
memory as a form of repression and resistance, the representation of Latinas
as maids in both news and entertainment television, and the experiences
of Zapotec immigrants in the United States.
In our dossier, “Profiles in Suffrage,”
Larry Siems and Gregory Rodriguez each profile Latino political figures
from the 1998 elections: Loretta Sanchez in her rematch against Bob Dornan
in California’s Forty-Sixth District, and the record number of Latino
Republicans who ran for state and federal office in California. While
both essays cover California-based elections, their implications for Latinos
are national in scope, and thereby give readers some up close and personal
insights into the broad demographic and electoral shifts taking place
at the end of the twentieth century.
In the Artists’ Communiqués,
we present Josh Kun’s interview with Guillermo Gómez-Peña,
who not only continues his ongoing border investigation of American civilization
and its Mexican discontents, but who also offers an honest reassessment
of the multicultural model of the late 1980s with which he is often associated.
You will no doubt notice that the cover for the journal looks a little
different, if not a bit more controversial than usual. Herein David Avalos
explains his “architecture of the perverse” as a historically
informed response to the beatification of Father Junipero Serra. Beauty
is in the hands of the colonizer. . . .
Finally, in our review section, we include
a slightly revised version of Ruben Martinez’s e-mail “rant”
against the recent criticism of Mike Davis in the popular press. The piece
signals the inevitably “complex set of negotiations” that
will be part and parcel of the emergence of a cadre of Latino public intellectuals,
including Martinez himself. But it also suggests the distinctive features
of political consciousness in post-riot Los Angeles—for which Davis
has been the critical touchstone since the publication of City of Quartz.
With news that Davis is now leaving the Southland for upstate New York,
we are left wondering, “What comes after an impeachment?”
The next issue of Aztlán, of course.
|
