Spanish purity is a real pity

”Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” -Matthew 7:3

    One thing my mental health background helps me to understand is that we are all individually, familially, and communally needing to repair, refine and maintain a dignified lifestyle. Nuevomexicanos have plenty of repair to continue with while paradoxically needing grace from the punishment inflicted by the intruding realms. This typically means a growing Anglo presence. The idea of Anglo itself is a complicated concept. Much of which propagates a mythology of race reinforcing a European farce that motivates people to segregate, compare, and weigh. The aspiration for some type of purity that allows some people to situate themselves with power might always have a place in humanity. I haven’t reached a point in my life where my profits are more important than the communal wellness. This is idealistic. The term I like to use to describe this orientation is communal, because conservative culture has ruined any ability to use socialist neutrally. To be a better person I feel I need to look critically at me, my family, and my belonging systems often. 

    The current injustices towards Mexican heritage by conservative organizations, is the speck I am wanting to remove from a brother’s eye. The American conservative want to dismantle several systems that I find vital to my culture, prosperity, and understanding of liberty. Ethnic studies and affirmative action are among these. The basis for their position against these are complicatedly sensible from a theoretical position. For example, it isn’t helpful to use race as a distinguisher and equally it isn’t clear how racist discrimination and bigotry are rare enough to trust a merit based value system.The part I have concerns about are the lack of barriers around prejudice and corruption. If we don’t acknowledge these factors and scan for them we are propagating the imperial tactics that divided the melanin rich peoples from positions of power and safety from exploitation. The large grey area here is having a mature normal criteria for identifying toxic traits like prejudice, oppression, bigotry, cheating, corruption, lies, and deception. We want to legislate like we are not bigoted.  We want to civil empowerment like we are fair. We want to regulate like we aren’t corrupt. We want liberty like we aren’t greedy. This dissonance is rolling around in my head.  What is far more clear are ways in which I resort to these corrupt modalities. I feel I try to keep my grey areas small and steer clear of convenience. One that I have recently gained clarity on is a belonging system. I have championed for years being New Mexican, and I have not processed thoroughly the positions of privilege that my heritages have leveraged. 

    The prompt for these ideas stem from not being able to reconcile how family members could align themselves with a person like Trump. I have been holding this dissonance emotionally and contemplatively. Abortion laws seem to be the de facto reason, but beyond that there are still some concerning indicators that point to other potentially menacing symbols. The labels New Mexican’s choose hint at a lingering infection of the mind; we still carry the germs of racism. When we subtilely choose a label that favors a Spanish purity, we unconsciously align ourselves with the legacy of whiteness as power. So before I can ask the Federalist or Confederate American to remove the speck from their eye, I feel a need to give attention to the plank in mine. This is the Chicano way of holding the both/and. The art of the mestizo, we know how to hold the liminal tension found in competing truths. Or better the convenience of situating ourselves between the myths and lies.   

     Research around this topic explores the significance of a Euro purity, whiteness, and political power as key factors in the use of labels that Mexican descendants choose. Discourse on this topic presents how the identity politics has been materializing for over a century. New Mexico’s transitional periods from a Spanish colony to a Mexican province, and then into the eventual US take over have highlighted the leveraging of an allegorical Spanish purity. This theme shows an alignment with a racially safer European identity. John Nieto-Phillips writes about the beginnings of a caste struggle for Nuevomexicanos/as as their power was depleted under United States (US) rule (2004). Nieto-Phillips writes about the origins for Nuevomexicanos/as demand to show Spanish purity as an effort to establish a standing in the American social and civic platforms (16). As Nuevomexicanos/as leave the colonial period of dominance, Martha Menchaca details how land loss becomes a key motivation for the early identity struggle of Nuevomexicanos (246).  The theme of social relevance grows during this period.

    A trend begins for Nuevomexicanos indicating a grasping at European identity to plead for equality with the Anglo American (Nieto-Phillips 16). The generations that experienced a Mexican nation, around a quarter century, experience a widening wealth gap (Menchaca 271). Research helps to describe the early events that created New Mexico’s divide between the have and have nots and perspective on not embracing a Mexican label. Where Menchaca and Nieto-Phillips shape an understanding of civil conditions, there is a menacing topic of lynching of Mexican people that research has not been widely written about. The civil systems that Menchaca has written about skirts a more violent ethnic prejudice, white supremacy, and a “tantamount to state-sanctioned terrorism” that existed (Carrigan et al. 416). The power dynamics for the Nuevomexicano reverse going into US rule, and the embryo that will be a Chicanx identity forms in the womb of the region we now know as the borderlands. And here comes the “Hispanic” identity. Laura Gómez explores the origins of the term “Hispanic,” forming a confluence that begins to link the allegory of purity, caste-izing, land loss, and terrorism with an incentive to be more tolerated (52). Gómez reveals how the Hispanicization is the sanitization of a more radical form of label like Chicano (45). A throughline is observable in this tiring and bleak attempt at colonial purity and evolution to a modern submissive quality still needing to show belonging. Along with belonging there is some desperation for success or slanted form of prosperity.

    This research reveals a persistent need for control, authority, and influence through the epochs. These traits have tumbled around with paradoxical traits like harmony, dignity, and collaboration. There are Nuevomexicanos/as gravitating towards a Hispanic label and their association to the label Chicanx is not clear; it is still tumbling. Both carry responsibility to self-govern their potential to diminish the dignity of the people who use them. More importantly, each has potential for pursuing ethnic advocacy.  In the underlying history these labels still have a responsibility to help repair atrocities inflicted and endured. Gómez posits that these newer labels are “infused with political meaning,” despite not being clear in what the meaning is (55). What is clear is that there are paradoxical, maybe a less romantic term might be competing, regardless, there is a splitting that is leading to an ongoing split around becoming more agreeable to Anglo systems. The tug of war between a Hispanic elite, more conservative and in alignment with power and a Chicanismo that wants a more communal modality to chip away at the deviance of misused power, might be exactly what the colonial machine intended. It is not clear how to approach the lynching of Mexican descendants.  I have resolved that the cultural identity tumbling is not slowing down soon. The impacts of Hispanicization on the Nuevomexicano through a frustrated lens looks like the choking to death of a querencia. It is confusing because it could also be the opposite from a more hopeful lens. Neither label has obvious footings in these two perceptions. The newer label of “Hispanic” complicates the comradery that might be needed and raises more questions. Is solidarity between these two labels essential to the health of the people that use them? I would say to Hispanics:

“Feel free to identify as white while responsibly resisting the urge to turn it into any form of supremacy”

 

Work Cited

Carrigan, William D., and Clive Webb. “The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928.” Journal of Social History, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, pp. 411–38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3790404. Accessed 26 June 2025.

Gómez, Laura E. “The Birth of the ‘Hispanic’ Generation: Attitudes of Mexican-American Political Elites toward the Hispanic Label.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 19, no. 4, 1992, pp. 45–58. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2633844. Accessed 10 July 2025.

Menchaca, Martha. Recovering History, Constructing Race : The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans, University of Texas Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unm/detail.action?docID=3443170.

Nieto-Phillips, John M. The Language of Blood : The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New                            Mexico, 1880s-1930s / John M. Nieto-Phillips. University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

            EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=5665a9f5-2deb-377b-b84d-78ecac91c9d8

Hispanics in Panic

How to deal with the Hispanic causing panic? Being New Mexican usually affords you a dog in the fight about how Spanish one is. This post is not about the measurable traits to help with this argument. This post is about my understanding of how the Mexican descendants in the borderlands, the North American Southwest, demonstrate heritage acrobatics to draw a phantom line between an Anglo heritage and a Mestizo heritage.  The idea of identity itself is phantom and only a frame of mind. The two words Spanish and Mexican qualitatively not only divide a mindset, but these contrasting signifiers ripple through in Nuevo Mexico’s politics, prejudices, and myths.

Most Hispanics aren’t white supremacist. White supremacist in this context is the belief that Anglo-euro white persons are superior to all other heritages, often using race as a criteria for this belief.  This post is also not about breaking down the semantics for what can be seen as white supremacy. I use this as a basis for describing a cultural divide amongst Mexican descendants in the borderlands. The fallout of the Treaty of Hidalgo, was a promise through a “sporked” tongue. This is the type promise where the agreements were implemented with the bigotry and system rigidity that ensure quick unraveling of any promises, and with an invisibility that left Mexicanos screaming with no one to hear.  The agreement was implemented in a way that provided loopholes, negations, and forfeitures in a manner that skirted the line of evil, while blowing past dignified. This was a colonial carry over from imperial tactics, but mainly just dirty.

This is where the Mexicano people likely consummated the Corsican relationship between Chicano and Hispanic. It served the newly acquired “American Citizens” a naturalized chance at running the prosperity obstacle course to retain their land, rights, and dignity. Many of these land owning Mexican descendants saw the landscape of this obstacle course. They learned from watching squaters, false claims, vigilante justice, and susceptibility to unchecked white crime. They learned how important it was to claim “White” as a piece of safety equipment.  New Mexicans found themselves at the mercy of the American’s appetite for all things profitable. 

The paradox here is the wealthy newly naturalized American citizens likely used similar tactics in their past to acquire their capital during the conquest. So the capitalist encounters a more vindictive capitalist and we have two bullies finding new ways to keep their power. The Mexican with much more to lose transforms themselves from Mexicano into something distinguished, Hispanic. The New Mexican northern Mexican villager who somehow had a direct flight from Santa Fe or Albuquerque to Spain. One of the very first Southwest Airlines  “gotta get away” deals. Joking aside, elite Nuevomexicanos among other politically motivated people used their Spanish lineage as a litigation tool.  

Nearly 200 hundred years later we have people who hold tightly this same Spanish purity myth.

I offer me.

As I recognize my life’s tank dial, move closer and seemingly faster than ever towards empty, I accept how pain and love complement themselves more than ever.  I love that I feel pain free and simultaneously respect how pain filled life has to be.  My youthful self mildly glamorized a pain filled self perception and romanticized some struggles. I romanticized my story stirring up pain, replaying thoughts of hardship. I think through the years I have learned to value the reflective strategies that help me assess my pain; translate my pain versus indulging. My Catholic faith with its many flaws, provides me with tools that help me understand when and if my pain is phantom or real. Both my romanticized manifested pain and real wounds are impactful. 

The phantom pain lead to the stirring up of anger pangs, and the real pains hurt so bad I am led to anguish reminding me they still needing healing. I also get to taste the pain, regardless of its ontology, and can better determine if the pains are necessary or in vain. The strategy I feel most essential to my encounters with pain is embracing paradox.  My capacity to scan for paradox is a tactic my Catholic faith instilled in me. It is literally a believe system of contradictions where holding a concept made of competing truths is fundamental. In  the context of pain, it is the movement to find a balance between fear and trust. I have to hold the avoidance of pain with the absolute inevitability of pain, like a person who has to breathe in while going under water, building up a panicked eagerness to breathe out.  The paradox isn’t the breathing, the paradox is the desire to be where we don’t naturally belong to get a taste the forbidden, at the risk of drowning; we find a way to have both. There are tiny opposites in every paradox creating small revolutions of meaning. At the same time there is a consequential tranquility laying down a stillness. The struggle and or the dance to seek out this idiosyncratic balance is what I call a Chicano style. Finding a personal balance between two competing intrapersonal truths and offering that awareness as a contribution to the everyday interpersonal existence, a Chicano Style. Most healthy cultures have a similar system. 

I think there is something revealing about the mestizo attitude that encourages gravitation towards pain. My pride in a Nuevomexicano (Mexican-American) heritage gives me the bedrock to let my pain filled experiences flow right into a humility that my elders prepared me for. Hard work is the place where pain goes to be planted, beads of sweat cool the tempers, releasing tears dripped from the grief, hydrating my seeds of passion. Seeds of passion that were fanatic in my childhood and adolescence. Seeds of passion that were economic and political in my early adulthood. Maybe the social justice curiosity is how I have learned to deal with my pain.  Social injustice is the way for my pain to be externalized. How I approach the externalized is how I feel I will heal the internal. If I let the greedy American infuriate me with their disregard for my heritage or perceived dignities then I cannot learn about the defenses of those material imbalances of land, water, money, laws, comforts, rights, or culture. This is where my faith guides me into paradox. The greedy American is in pain, and maybe more pain than me. Their insatiability is the strategy they’ve learned to rely on to ease their pain. I have that same insatiability in me. The paradox is seeing myself as a greedy Chicano, while also defending myself from the toxicity of the greedy American. My peace of mind has to be found through the hard fight of treating my inner insatiable and building up a harmonious internal sense of enough. Then bring this feature to existence in the form of a Chicano ofrenda to my immediate world. 

I understand that my romance with pain, gave me the emotional state to write interestingly, at least to me.  And at least it felt more interesting as I revisit it.  Now I just feel the paradox. The fire that pain once lit, is now more of an irritating burn. I have found joy in the mediocre.  I can’t write like I used to. I often feel like my thought process is analogous to a cows digestive system. I chew the same topics, swallow, digest, absorb, regurgitate, and bite a few more blades of tragedy.  It doesn’t feel as poetic and color filled as it once did, when I was closer to my pain. I think that balance is easier to choose than preference.  My emotions aren’t as contrasting, making it harder to find the momentum to write. With acceptance comes comfort. I haven’t learned to write from comfort.

I wonder if this is a type liminal space that might help with saying goodbye to this world.  Does balance fit with acceptance?  Is acceptance an illusion that is really just expressing the condition of being option-less.  I once relied so much on my grandparents.  I relied so much on mothering from, of course Mom, and fortunately my Aunts.  I felt such hurt from the lost or missed time with an attentive father. And yet I had the attention of loving people,  I found perspectives that highlighted my pain and that I nestled up to. My pain was a fuel for my movement, pain was my rhythm.

I am losing my family and friends. I think this would bring on a sadness that I think I would channel into these perceptions to propagate the same outlets.  I’m not sad in the same ways.  I am a sad that feels as if it skipped straight to acceptance.  I am curious about my comfort with solitude.  What is it about balance that allows for an apparent comfort for being alone.  My life still feels meaningful but equally it is definitely feeling less certain.  I still want to live.

Life is still teaching me.