My maternal grandparents are a large influence on who I am becoming. It seems funny to think I'm still "becoming". I come from privilege and scarcity. Along with so many more positions of operation that can be conflicting . This means that I'm limited and liberated, simultaneously. It's become an interesting dilemma to contemplate on how so much of my early adulthood was centered in an oppressed mentality. Now I'm challenged by the encounter with genuine creative possibility. It seems embarrassing that so much of my self, social, and cultural doubt has grown from variations of culturally imposed limitations, including the defiant pachuco. The Chicano psychology promotes the need for being a radical, counter Anglo culture, or maybe just defiant. It surely instilled an underdog mentality.
My grandparents didn't and don't seem to struggle with identity. If they do they do it subconsciously, passively, and for sure not openly. They label others, but for whatever social and personal influences they don't clearly label themselves. Their generation doesn't have the identity rebellion that mine does. They want to declare how American they are. They have a blind spot for the injustice and limitation that slowly smothered them, possibly through the patriotic propaganda during WWII. They seemed to have one validating system, family. They were raised in a generation that inspired the need for a Chicano mentality, but at the same time were falling in love with an idea of being accepted as American.
My grandparents were taught under a regime of catholic laws and the radical authorities that enforced a catholic tradition of shame and guilt. The penitent facade of Christianity. The religious attitude that paints with broad strokes, rules that seem to stifle the liberated, creative, and revolutionary mentalities. A faith rooted in hesitancy, fear, and obedience. My grandparents are still obedient Catholics, and my culture has exchanged southwestern tradition for new and improved evangelical ways of accessing God. We have yet to grow in the area of awareness.
Then the 60's happened. The Vietnam war happened. Communism happened. The regularity of T.V. happened. The birth of inflamed capitalism. The precipice of the modern age, crawling out of industrial times. America needed an army to train, a population to sacrifice for the capturing of resources. America needed pawns to ensure the war strategy of the wealthy. This was what sculpted my mother and father.
My grandparents didn't and don't seem to struggle with identity. If they do they do it subconsciously, passively, and for sure not openly. They label others, but for whatever social and personal influences they don't clearly label themselves. Their generation doesn't have the identity rebellion that mine does. They want to declare how American they are. They have a blind spot for the injustice and limitation that slowly smothered them, possibly through the patriotic propaganda during WWII. They seemed to have one validating system, family. They were raised in a generation that inspired the need for a Chicano mentality, but at the same time were falling in love with an idea of being accepted as American.
My grandparents were taught under a regime of catholic laws and the radical authorities that enforced a catholic tradition of shame and guilt. The penitent facade of Christianity. The religious attitude that paints with broad strokes, rules that seem to stifle the liberated, creative, and revolutionary mentalities. A faith rooted in hesitancy, fear, and obedience. My grandparents are still obedient Catholics, and my culture has exchanged southwestern tradition for new and improved evangelical ways of accessing God. We have yet to grow in the area of awareness.
Then the 60's happened. The Vietnam war happened. Communism happened. The regularity of T.V. happened. The birth of inflamed capitalism. The precipice of the modern age, crawling out of industrial times. America needed an army to train, a population to sacrifice for the capturing of resources. America needed pawns to ensure the war strategy of the wealthy. This was what sculpted my mother and father.