I wasn't born Chicano

Learning to believe in one common idea of humanity is a challenge.  Being humanistic is what some might call it.  But because I've been led to separate myself or my groups so often in life, there is a tendency to aspire to be above others, super human, heroic, or outstanding.  There is an innate tendency to compete.  I've been taught that there are certain aspired ways to be.  There seems to be a paradox because some of these characteristics that lead to separation might be necessary, they may be needed for survival.  The ideal never seems to include paradox.

The paradox that describes the human dilemma to be part of a group and the expense of being unique baffles our morality.  It seems as though there's a need for enough immorality in order for morality to be fully effective.  It is as if there are counter intuitive but necessary and limiting reactants in the creation of morality.  There needs to be just enough vanity, egotism, selfishness, and possibly obligation, among others in order for a healthy morality to form.  I picture it as if the righteous need something or someone to blame in order feel alive, while also needing something or someone to point to that doesn't blame, an icon.  Maybe the deviant function out of need to be relieved of the pain from not being afforded the same liberties afforded the moral.  Maybe the moral hide in uniform fearing the pain from being judged.  All I know is that I have struggled to maneuver between unpopular groups, privileged groups, discriminated groups, and the behaved groups.  This identity limbo makes being human not enough, I had to become Catholic, Latino, American, Chicano, graduated, or safe.  I couldn't just be understood as surviving.

I want to blame this on the colonial ways that some of my ancestors passed down or were imposed by. The tendencies of my communities appear to be influenced by a colonial heritage.  In the colonial or civilized arena, equal is a foul word.  It is challenging to be from heavily dogmatic systems that praise champions, yet preach conformity. It is discouraging to chase equality in a world that fears unity.  Unity might mean that we have to share, connect, and even let go of our self interest.  The colonial world cannot do any of these well.  So for so long I have attached to the concept of being Chicano, and I am slowly embracing that before I chose to be seen as Chicano I was Humano.

Hombre's Nombre

Valerio!  That was the name my family used for a majority of my childhood.  I was named after a great uncle.  The stories I was told of my namesake were short and sparse.  I recall that he lost an arm.  He was a stoic and rugged man.  He is remembered by my grandpa for his ability to roll a cigarette with one hand.  My grandpa describes how he liked to scare him and his siblings by grabbing them and wouldn't let them go, emphasizing how they teased him.  Painting a picture of a tangled and teasing game of roulette.  My name, was one of the first expressions of the polarity in my self concept, hinting at the liminality of cultures that would become my cultural labyrinth.

I was named Ronald Valerio Estrada.  I was raised in social divisions and cultural contrasts.  My first form of discrimination was that between being Garcia and Estrada.  There was prejudice in my name.  I carried names that reflected, represented, and embodied the divided jurisdictions of my developing identity.  My mother's family called me Valerio, pronounced Va-led-e-yo.  Ronald was my dad's name.  Ronald was an American name, the prelude to a greater division that would be a backdrop for many insecurities.  Being Mexican-American brings complexity just like being Garcia-Estrada did in my childhood.  Ronnie, was the name of Ronnie Lott, a class act linebacker for the 49er's, so I had a bias towards being called Ronnie.  But for my maternal family it was a reminder of disparity, my father gap, and divorce.  Before I was brown, while I was prenatal, I feel like my surrounding were disjointed.

Was I a mistake, a blessing, an accident, or passion's fruit?  I think I was likely a little of all these.

I enjoyed my name because nobody else in the neighborhood had my name.  It was easy to say at my school and by my teachers.  Nobody ever messed it up, like my primos who always had to say their names twice.  We were used to saying our names with an appropriate pronunciation.  When outside our neighborhoods, my primos and peers usually had to say their names twice.  Then, it was restated with linguistic distortion, the American accent.  With my name there wasn't that shaming encounter with the outside worlds.  Thinking about my name takes me to some quality memories.

I had the privilege of having a young mother.  A mother who, in my hind sight, was still a child herself, on the way out of her childhood home.  I think about my daughter, now 16 approaching 17, having a child and it makes me admire my mother even more.  I was an addition to an already large family.  I could not have been hoped for, but at the same time I feel like I may have been a small source of hope.  I came too early, I changed my parents lives, and I have to accept that when and how weren't my decision either.

It makes me wonder how scared she must have been.  I was scared at 24 when I learned of my first child.  I think about how handcuffed she might have felt.  She wasn't given the liberty to be a free little girl any longer, likely surprised.  I couldn't have been planned, hoped for, or anticipated.  I think that it may have been more a perplexing collection that included worry, fear, and a touch of resentment.  I know there was some excitement and preparation.  I sometimes worry that my first identity might be something along the lines of disruption.  I find it relieving to accept that my conception must have brought disruption before joy, even if I was absolutely wanted.

My conception without the authorization or consent from the religious or familial systems my parents were bound to, may have meant that much of my parenting was prepared in shame.  I was valued, but possibly with the residue of regret.  I am afraid to ask these questions of my parents, because I fear they wouldn't be able to express the remorse for their lust or passion.  And at the same time, I value the way those prenatal emotions taught me to fear and tread lightly, while at the same time trusting to be cared for.

I was not born Chicano, I was born Ronald Valerio Estrada.  I was born into undeclared prejudice, but non the less I can reflect and see how my father's line and mother's line were my first subjection to cultural judgments, moral dilemmas, and prejudice.  I did not have to wait long to find out what it is to identify.

The Shadow of Cultura

Am I ready to take a step towards accepting my daughters's independence?  If so, then my writing is now directed at me.  I think my opportunities to feed their ideas and mold them will be expressed differently, more passively.  Their lives are now more in their hands than in mine.  And I transition effort into accepting their choices, support their growth, and encourage an adventurous attitude.  In a more significant way, I feel I am freeing them from my biases and any obligation to my value system.

They will never experience the same culture I did.  They will need contemporary tools that will help them learn to be productive people in their culture.  They will reflect and fall back on the wisdom every generation seems to.  But not because of culture, more because of the human and innate ability to seek healing.  I like to say seeking God, the Divine, the Complete, the everlasting fountain.  Maybe even going as far to say as common as all organisms.  Mi jitas, they will face their own social, ethnic, and interpersonal dilemmas.  They may not need to call themselves Chicanas.

I don't value culture in the same ways I used to.  It means something different.  It isn't worth the same to me either.  It is just as important as ever.  It holds a different meaning for me.  It is beautiful and invasive, a paradox.  Culture is a facade established possibly, in a poetical way, to give the soul a face, and the ego fists.  It makes me sad and endeared.  I am curious what is in store for the New Mexican culture.  What will my young ladies call themselves?

What do I call myself?

I am a Latino, with a Chicano lifestyle, from the northern region of New Mexico.  After a history of identity crises, I stand poetically looking down into a menacing canyon, with the sun in my eyes, preparing to shed all the conveniences that have come with belonging to a group of people, land, religion, foods, culture.  I am practicing being real with myself, more fully human.  For much of my life I have felt obligated "to be", maybe more, "to be...long".  I am a collection of labels.

I am changing, always, yet in some aspect solidifying. With the changes in perspective I am also writing differently.  I feel ready to write about the limits, embarrassment, shame, and contradictions that come with applied culture.  It feels complicated having to grow up "brown".  I'll share what I feel has become generationaly irresponsible.  I want to capture in idea the hardship of having clung to a community built on oppressing, and eventually having to cry out oppressed.  I want to tell me, my Chicano story.

The term Chicano has so many meanings.  It doesn't have a quantitative nature.  It is an identity, a philosophy, a movement, a religion, and what ever the person needs it to be.  It has its traditions, conservatives, haters, and abusers.  Chicano in my writing will be the culture I know as the following:

Being labeled a radical American citizen having a consquistador's heritage, while believing I am seen as lower, asked to be accountable, yet perceived with less privilege, a revolutionary without country.

I was born human, nurtured like a villager, raised to be Christian, and taught to be American as translated by a bunch of New Mexicans, a bunch of Chicanos.  With this I can write my story.

Letting Love

I've shared my thoughts through writing, as a way of organizing discoveries I want to share with my daughters.  I have been conflicted by the results of my writing. My writing at times, seems more like an orderless rant. I re-read old entries and see a passive aggressive expression.  Other times, it seems like therapy.  I was hoping for some legacy.  I've watched my writing evolve with the mutation of my thought patterns and emotional synthesis.  

My writinghas had a life cycle.  The mutation feels a lot like the fine tuning of wisdom.  This forum started out sad and grew into resentful.  As I learned more about love and my vulnerability, my acceptance expanded.  Relationships inspired me.  The mistakes made in love, despite feeling genuine, helped me develop a stomach for self correction.   That became the emotional synthesis

The synthesis of emotions feels a lot like self acceptance.  I finally see myself as intelligent, but without a need to teach.  I have reached a point to where my learning isn't as competitive.  My learning is growing passionately.  I don't have a message for my daughters like I used to.  God has blessed me with the luxury of being an example more than a parent.  This stage of my writing will be an effort to write, not to my daughters, but to me.

I am capable of loving and accepting the opportunities to be loved.  I don't always receive love.  But Love doesn't ask to be received because love cannot be rejected.  The ego, the surviving pieces of me, and the judging part of me thought I could control who I allowed to love me.  I see now how love waits.  Love does not creep, solicit, or pester.  Love might invite.  Love might peek.  Love doesn't always have perfect timing, but love doesn't get tired.  So I see how love from me and for me, doesn't die.

How much love is there?

Love leads me to passionate topics.  Love has inspired me to be naked of unnecessary identities. Examples of this include how my views on race, they are being overshadowed by the emphasis on heritage.  My fear of not belonging is being cradled by solitude.  My guilt and shame are trusted allies, treasonously providing intelligence for what my shadow hides from me.  I may not be worthy to write about love, but I am worthy of writing about the love in me.

Disease in Homeostasis Clothing

I take words that agitate me and let them burn my thoughts, grind against my morals, weigh on my principles.  It is that beautiful agitation.  The agitation that feels like God just woke me at 5:15 a.m., nearing a winter dawn and asks me to go for a run. It is cold, mind you, its January.  The kind of beautiful that inspires just enough anger to be grumpy, but enough love to be meaningful.  The word Homeostasis does that for me.

Homeostasis has entered my mind through conversations about what is normal, and in particular what is acceptable behavior.  Normal and stable are often used as calibration tools.   Normal carries a stigma for being what is accepted.  

I have grown to embrace the unique.  Even further the radical.  Naturally radical is even more seductive for me.  Technologically radical would be an opposite extreme and un-favored for its mutative tendency.  Technology has shown me a divisive quality in the colonial world.  I see it as becoming luxury.  Luxury in my opinion is not natural.  So homeostasis in nature carries over for me in behavior. 

When I think of homeostasis, I think of it as an orientation towards or away from a state.  I can also see it as a condition.  It can also be dangerous when it becomes a perspective.  It is surely not a position.  It is the state when my wits, effects, or faculties are moving into or near active recovery.  Active recovery being borrowed from the fitness nomenclature, as the bodies search for readiness.  I think of it as if life is telling me, things will be alright.  It is a feeling where I am not exhausted.  I am not indolent.  I am not bored.  I might not be primed for exhilaration.  It's the brief existence when I am least fearful.  It may be a time when my aspiration could be pictured as relaxing.  

I am symbiotic and alive when nearing homeostasis.  Being a New Mexican, Chicano, a brown man inspires me to think about the homeostasis of a culture.  If it is, than my Latin derived culture's homeostasis is illusive.  Homeostasis when it comes to behavior seems to be heavily subjective, but bounded by the construct of equilibrium. It gives me the image as if my existence hears the wild call from symbiosis.  But being a brown man, doesn't make homeostasis convenient for racial, economic, and social factors.  

Identifying as a Chicano makes explaining homeostasis interesting.  Bluntly, and possibly unwarranted, I observe my culture is diseased, or maybe infected. Surely my culture is not completely unhealthy.  I'll explain this perspective in depth soon, but for now I just need to begin with the fact that I see its dysfunction. It makes me understand the need to surround myself with symbiotic systems in order to facilitate personal homeostasis, while I watch my culture moving away from cultural homeostasis.

I see outsiders looking in trying to understand us, describing the New Mexican lifestyle's dysfunctional aspects as potentially being a unique form of homeostasis.  It made me cringe to think how people might consider that our version of the Latin culture is acceptable.  This comes to mind in the realm of machismo, violence, education, apathy, and cynicism.  I am beginning to believe that my New Mexican lifestyle isn't it's healthiest and in denial, being allowed to call itself stable.
  

So as I look from the outside, as drift further away from the lifestyle of a typical New Mexican Chicano, I evaluate my communities with a cultured lens.  I hesitantly but assertively recognize my communities appear naive to conscious progress, a portion seem unaware of the utility for intellect, and enough display attitudes that are uninspired.

I picture my culture with sadness because we appear to admire and cling to our dysfunctions.  Maybe it is the only thing we can own.  It is the only thing that we can contribute to without being doubted or marginalized.  It might be the only thing that keeps us from being white washed.  Clinging to our cultural toxicity seems to keep us from being seen as powerless.  I cling to my cultural toxicity because I don't know where I belong when I let it go.

...

Next post will describe what I see as Toxic Culture.  And yes I will approach homeostasis by also describing the healthy aspects of the New Mexican Chicano, because critical thought requires symbiotic perspectives and homeostasis is my orientation.  

Albuquerque Street Artist Unknown

Happy New Year from a man  who accepts that "new" isn't necessarily any different than the old.  I hope all my loved ones roll into new perspectives.  So I am wishing those who surround me a Happy New Perspective.  This seems to be when life becomes really interesting.   I am thankful for so much this year, but there a day in November for that.  I feel full of love, but there is a day in February for that.  I am grateful for all the gifts in my life, and there was a day for that, it just passed.  So I feel upside down.  I have nothing to write about.  No worries that motivate the creative words.  My Family is well, my friends are well, my lifestyle is well, and my habits are well.  There is no good byes left unsaid.  This New Year isn't leading to much newness just a continuation of fullness.  Love is a powerful perspective.  It makes good byes understandable.  When applied to self it makes the future as valuable as the past.  So there is not necessarily an old year, but I can wish you a blessed New Year.  Bessos and Be Good!

Reflexion Dos: I am a human, disguised as Latino

Dear Elena and Veronica,

I left you for three weeks this summer to be curious.  I came to Mexico because when I was your age I called myself Mexican.  I called myself Mexican because it helped me be accepted into groups that seemed more accepting, similar, and understanding of me.  As an adult I am challenging myself to uncover the realities undiscovered from carelessly calling myself Mexican.  Being a counselor has helped me grow and trust my curiosity.  Today as a mental health professional I felt compelled to see what healing means in the Mexican identity.  I found Curanderismo.  I have spent a lot of time discerning what it means for me to have called myself Mexican and with it I have encountered a humanistic style of healing that Latinos call Curanderismo.

The curiosity for Mexico is tied to my desire to replenish the decreased connection we have to our traditions, especially the healing qualities.  I hope to be a productive member of our community, ethnicity, and humanity.  The pull to Mexico is around the imbalance teetering ethnic peoples towards poverty, particularly discrimination for Mexicans.  The motivation for this trip is the shrinking visibility for our ties to Mexican traditions that our grandparents relied on.  This investigation is a way for me to learn how to address the distinction between being New Mexican and Mexican while also enhancing my perspectives on wellness.  There is also a hope to decrease the disparity between those that have access to healing and others left to endure without medicines or wellness.  This trip is serving my need to become a better counselor and enhance my identity.

Over the years my declared Mexican heritage meshed into my identity and served me, but now I am beginning to see how it limits me.  It is a piece of an identity I have worn.  My identity has been a way to distinguish myself from some, align with others, and declare to many who I think I am.  I am excited to share with you that the curiosity for and exposure to other cultures is giving me understanding of how identities can be binding, adaptable and living.

I came to Mexico to learn more about an ancient and traditional form of healing called Curanderismo.  There are numerous types of curanderos.  Along with the many types, are the unique styles that each curandero can have, like a fingerprint.  Curanderismo is a way of healing that requires the use of four elements, fire, water, plants, and air.  It is a form of medicine that incorporates knowledge, trust, and instinct.  It is a form of medicine that connects divine uncertainty with intricate insight into observable cures.  It is a magical demonstration of how nature provides the elements and energies to ensure our bodies function appropriately.  Curanderismo is more about being connected to wellness and symbiosis than it is to being Mexican.

I came to Mexico to witness aspects of how Curanderismo is used.  I came with hopes of learning more about a community of health care professionals that functioned off the grid.  The grid being for profit, providing an alternative motivation I like to think of as, for passion.  This trip has allowed me to indulge in the spectrum of my own illnesses.  I feel like I am walking away with acceptance that Curanderismo is not a panacea.  What I witnessed cannot be encapsulated by words, because what happened during my trip was cosmic.  How do you put cosmic into words?

I feel like I can only hint at what Curanderismo is.  Curanderismo is the attention to harmony.  Curanderismo is the practices and aspires for an ultimate respect for others.  If Jesus Christ were to come back I believe he would smile at the lifestyle of the Curandero.  If Buddha were to stumble across a Curandera he would likely smile.  There seems to be a grace from what I see as divinity that shines on the practices of Curanderismo.  The experiences I had from the cleansings called Limpias, messages called Sobrados, and sweat session in a Temezcal, helps me see the nature of healing. It helps me connect with what seems to be the universal and primal desire to live.  There also are aspects that can be pragmatic and even scientific.

The practical components to Curanderismo that make up this attention to harmony are the pedagogy, techniques, and its social ability.  Curanderismo has not found its way into the colonial form of teaching.  There is not a formal curriculum like in contemporary healing practices.  It is taught generationally from an elder to a youth.  Usually, a curandero will see the gift of healing in a person and an invitation will be presented to them.  The process is not a vocation.  Curanderismo is a gift and choice to pursue the learning necessary to share the individual’s gift with the world.

The learning is by immersion.  The student is a mentee. The lessons are a legacy of plant knowledge combined with techniques to bring together the Devine, the patient, an altar, and elements.  The gathering of plants is an art in itself.  Special attention to the dignity of the plant is taught to ensure a dignified respect for the plants life and contribution to its destined healing.  The healing process is encapsulated by a special technique geared uniquely to address an ailment.  The Curandero and their mentees recite a pattern, a choreographed ritual, stirring energy, in trust that healing will happen.

The ritual is the technique and so are the Curanderos prescriptions.  The unification of the sickened with the prescribed elements is orchestrated by the curandero in an ancient set of intentional steps.  There is intense intimacy with a call for gratitude.  This is a prayer, an intention, or request for concentration.  The ingredients for healing are unified.  The air is made visible with incents.  The plants are made permeable.  The fluids are intoxicating and diffused by the curandero to be applied completely, covering all areas.  The body becomes grounded into the floor and body alignment is necessary so that energy flows without obstacles or impediment.  The process is the doctor, the healer, the medicine, and the science.

The social science is in the generational observations that help communities learn and teach the effects that surrounding plants have on wellness.  The tradition transcends culture and becomes the formula.  The idea of Curanderismo seen as a gift is the harmony and respect that creates ecosystems.  The intimacy and connection between participants shows that there is social science in the application.  The patient and the Curandero are crossing the belief in individualism to share energy.  The experience seems to conduct a transfer of medicine in the form of minerals, chemicals, fluids, inhalants, poetry of words leading to thoughts being converted to neuro transmissions, and lastly the discharge of barriers to relief.

That is a summary of what I can describe.  There is so much to share.  The plant knowledge can be lifetime of learning.  The rituals require commitment for learning.  The Practice is a powerful responsibility that should be performed under careful observation and supervision.  The final piece of the process, I can describe.

I am altered.  I gained insight into areas of my identity that can heal, need healing, be shared, and clarity for what I can pursue to nurture a better me.  I am validating ideas around healing and illness that feel foreign.  Professionally they seem marginalized.  Despite the lack of knowledge and familiarity, I recognize I have a talent for sensing these ideas.

The ideas I have seem like artifacts and waypoints left by ancestors, tucked away in passages, that they expected me to cross.  I once felt a strong anger that these ideas were perceived to lack value in the modern world.  I had bitterness that the world and technologies were depreciating them.  I encountered a heavy discouragement, but most importantly, I found hope for these lessons during my time in Oaxaca.

Before finding my path into the mental health world I was constantly being told who I should be. I felt like I was being corralled into how I should participate in the world.  Most things I was taught I believed to be concrete.  I had emptiness because people that looked like me rarely had answers to my question.  How come the world is unfair in too many places?  How come health is a luxury?  What is my worth?  With the encounters I am having with Curanderismo, my questions are coming to life, becoming visible, and at a pace that is letting me absorb.

The ideas I am describing are still formulating in my thoughts.  This paper gives me a great opportunity to organize them.  The curanderos have taught me that healing comes through my senses.  I take my medicine through the senses.  Some raw ideas can be that what I hear feeds my thoughts.  What I see heightens my understanding of reality.  What I touch connects me.  What I taste I consume and becomes me.  The aromas around me inform me of where I am and what surrounds me.  My thoughts and ideas are valuable and need to be shared.  

Because of this visit, its experiences, and training I am expanding my definition of illness and even considering defining my own.  My medicine is in my curiosity.  What I need to heal is revealed in my fears.  I don't have to take classes for pedagogy of lessons that are as rampant as the rain or as accessible as the seasons.  I don't have to earn my spot, apply, and hope I can participate.  I am capable of healing.  I can be responsible with power.  I will be respectful of fears.  I will guide you and teach what you want to learn.  This is an invitation.  There is no obligation to be healed or to learn to heal.  It will always be here, waiting like a flower to be smelled, touched, admired, possibly tasted, and listened to.  I wish for you to investigate your contribution and consumptions.  I ask that you learn balance and trust.

You are loved!  

Be good