The Latino Woman

THE LATINO WOMAN  (dedicated to our Mexican sisters)

Frida Kahlo

8 December 2011

Women share a common dynamic of perception as well as emotional and mental mechanisms of expression.  We emit a singularly sensitive and deeply activating resonance to life. Individual choice and circumstance determine how each woman colours and packages these characteristics, displaying, veiling, or keeping them secret even from herself.  There is no way to speak about each woman’s individuality and yet each woman contains all others within herself.

Stereotypes help us understand general trends and the powerful social machinery that judges and shapes us.  Today I have the difficult task of describing Latino Women, those women who, like myself, have been brought up in the shadow of Mother Spain’s legacy in the New World.  Our range of differences is as great as any, but there are definite features we share around what is held as a sacrosanct tradition.  A quality that goes beyond borders and religion, beyond individual cultures, social level or individual abilities, and extends forcefully into first generation emigrates wherever they may find themselves.

As a Puerto Rican in the second half of the XXth Century I was brought up under two highly dominant influences: a very strict conservative, colonial Spanish upbringing that determined my cellular responses and emotional nature, and a progressive North American educational system that qualified my mind and marked my thinking.  Observing my family and friends, I painfully discovered deep contrasts with the Anglo Saxon cultures that surrounded me in the USA.  Although I excelled in every way, I never felt as if I fitted in.  But then, as I found out later, neither did I fit into the home cultures of Latin America.  I believe that mine is the arising psyche of the Latino Woman in a tense, changing world.

By Latino I am referring to Latin America.  In spite the great mixture of immigrants that came from all parts of the globe to the Americas, the predominance of Spanish autocracy imposed itself in each of the countries that today speak Spanish as a first language, and who still celebrate Columbus Day on 12 October  (“Día de la Hispanidad”) as a living memorial to our forefathers.  It is the one thing that unites us where everything else may not. Even today, the mentality of Latin America looks to the USA as to the big protective father figure, the provider and inspiration for the material future, but it lays its cheek on Mother Spain’s bosom every evening as it seeks solace, intimacy and continuity.  It is the way of our people: loyalty to family and tradition.  Emotions over mind.

I was brought up as a Latino child in New York City, with interludes in varying Central American cities as a child.  I spent the critical formative years of adolescence and early university in my parents’ natural habitat of Puerto Rico.  I travelled the world over and lived in almost all the continents of the world. In spite of my attempts at defining myself otherwise, I always carried my Latino mind-frame with me, the inbred habits of the culture of my ancestors.

Latino women are conditioned by a strict code of ethics where the main tenet is implicit obedience… to men and elders.  The absolute ruler over our family – twelve children, twenty-odd grand-children, and two great-grandchildren was my great-grandmother “Mamanía”. Two practices stand out in my own childhood: (1) having to ask permission for absolutely everything, and (2) always invoking her blessing, or that of my elder when parting from him or her.  As well as duty and respect bordering on fear and trembling, with ancient cultures we share the taboos associated to our bodies, sex and social obligations.  Our lives, minds, appearance and duties are regimented since time immemorial. We are surrounded by emotional excesses, swamped by sensory stimulants, and obligated to enforce social or religious etiquette.  Only in the privacy of our own homes, or when family circumstances call for it, are we allowed to be as bossy and demanding as we really are.

Socially, the programmed restraint imbedded into most Latino women makes it so that no matter how much exposure to our more liberated sisters we have, or how extensive is our education and opportunities, our world travel or profession, the original programming inculcated by older women (based on what men require) lasts a lifetime and holds most of us in a state of constant defensive expectation.

For many women this means that she is “adaptable”, ready to comply.  Usually this revolves around the husband, but lacking that, all authority, which is equivalent to masculine order or doctrine. This is perhaps most prevalent in Mexico and Central America but bleeds through into other countries as well.  Externally, we see apparent exceptions to the submissive rule in all the mayor capitals of Spanish speaking countries where professional women find themselves.  Internally, however, is another matter: it is a very rare Latino woman who does not hum the tune of her great grandmothers.  This is perhaps her hidden charm, that chaste downward tilt of the head in apparent submission.  What few know is that through that indirect gaze her peripheral vision constantly scans minutest details.

As a type, a Latino woman is held to be spicy, spontaneous and fun.  We are considered fiery, moody, volatile, and proverbially get fat as we grow older.  In truth we come in many varieties.  In the extremities, such as in the northern parts of the world and in the southernmost, we appear somewhat reserved.  In the tropics we stand out by our sensual ease, gently veiled by suggestive allure until the sudden outburst of typical Latin temper surfaces.  Wherever we are, our regard insinuates a subterfuge where both Madonna and prostitute are embraced.

We are worlds apart from one another culturally as we are in degrees of emancipation and outspokenness.  Nevertheless, an inner seal of severity flavours intimate contact with ourselves.  We know our weaknesses all too well, and play our parts regardless.  We are proudly strong, emotionally fierce and loyal to a fault.  We are also as mistrustful as any woman, but in times of stress and need we band together perhaps more strongly than most women.

Physically, the ancient roots of indigenous peoples colour our physiognomy and a kind of fatalistic view of time, life, death and relationship that is tempered only by the even grimmer doctrines of compliance and submission administered by the Church over centuries.  America presents a dream, a remote possibility for most, and Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Selma Hayek a constant aspiration.

In spite of all the macho-men who dominate the scene, as eminently featured by the Mexican “charro” and Chavez, inwardly Latin America is an inveterate matriarchy.  And here is the subtle twist.  A woman represents implied property; she is overtly put down, ignored, disenfranchised.  Still, in the (I might add “guilty”) conscience of every male, the Mother is sacred – untouchable and as pristine as the Virgin to whom he prays.  Women must content themselves with this uncanny unreality outwardly.  Inwardly, men are deeply fearful of women’s power.  Machismo is an incongruous and utterly cruel façade.

A Latino woman embraces life with dignity, in silence, in secrecy or in an operatic solo of her doing.  She depicts the situation of every woman with exaggeration and detail.  Shunned by many of her phlegmatic sisters, disapproved of by erudite others, manipulated by or manipulating, she remains uncontrollable and passionate, connected to an inner turbulence of fear and wonder.

Traditionally, the Latino woman is a replica of her Spaniard grandmothers, and in some more closed village lifestyles this is quite obvious.  She takes her role of matriarch and continuity very seriously.  Behaviour contrasts starkly with our North American and British counterparts.  Most Latin American women, even the European-educated ones, are compelled to touch physically and gesticulate, externalizing not only their feelings but their thoughts.  This has given rise to the caricature of the emoting, dispersive prototype.

When the Latino woman comes to Mother Spain she is in for a shock. Her ancestors, those she struggled to defend and uphold have moved on to a different century. Rather than the affectionate and rather indulgent embrace of her fellow women back home, she meets somewhat distant, rigid, and nervous women who, just like when she was a child, tell her what to do with cold efficiency and disdain. It is difficult for her rekindle the matriarchy she belonged to, and out of habit eventually and unrelentingly, she pours her maternal feelings onto these distant cousins who bask in her warmth and inner strength.

The Latino woman is extraordinarily perceptive and sensitive.  As a lineage she was led to reinforce an already keen sensitivity in order to survive.  This sensitivity has been and continues to be a necessity, particularly in the atmosphere of constant double standards, most acutely lived in the New World.

Now, as we address our sisters in the Americas, especially Mexico, we call on their sense of self in respectfully hushed tones, with sympathy and delicacy, speaking directly to their hearts. We acknowledge that central core of courage and fortitude in them as in ancient women, that which holds the rest of the world together.  We reach out to them in humble understanding and hope.

There is a spark of cunning always hidden in the apparent stillness of a Latino woman’s modesty.  Women everywhere are counting on it.