The Barriers Will Crumble One Day
by Melissa Cardenas
​
Author’s Note
As I read Gloria Anzaldúa’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, I kept connecting everything that was being said with my own personal experiences. Which is quite problematic, because the piece was written around thirty-years ago, but I found myself facing the same shame and insecurities that Anzaldúa’s felt when speaking Chicana Spanish. Anzaldúa’s touched on various topics and managed to center them all around language. Reading the piece, I was more than eager to write my paper. One being that I had never read a piece by a Chicana, so I was incredibly intrigued. I am so greatly that this piece was assigned. Second, I had much to say on what I was reading. I wanted to add my two cents to everything that Anzaldúa was saying. When I began writing my paper I did not have a clear focus, but I typed away. I selected various quotes that I—needed—to address. As I wrote, I felt like Anzaldúa; I was talking about different topics including culture, politics, gender roles, social barriers, and history. But when I read over it, it was not like Anzaldúa’s at all. It sounded much more like scattered sally. After my conference, Professor Kostelnik made it clear that I needed to narrow down the topics I was discussing. I then went back and centered my paper around the history and cultural aspect of Chicana Spanish.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
Gloria Anzaldúa’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, circles around various topics including: culture, society, and sexism in the Spanish language. She addresses how Chicana Spanish is seen as a pejorative language and highlights the impact of this on Chicanas. This piece was published thirty-one years ago, but I found myself aligning my insecurities and experiences of using Chicana Spanish with those of Anzaldúa’s. The issues that are addressed in the piece are still prevalent in the Latinx community, and no real progress had been made to combat these social and cultural barriers that the Latinx community have built pertaining Chicana Spanish. Using anecdotes from Anzaldúa’s piece, I will add and forward the conversation of the current and past status quo of Chicana Spanish by correlating my narrative and experiences to Anzaldúa’s.
​
I can use the words: Mexicana, Latina, Tejana, and Chicana to describe my racial identity. But Chicana—is like a slap in the face. This word is dense and powerful and leaves the person on the other end with the urge to ask, “What does Chicana even mean?”. Classifying myself as a Chicana is more than a label; this word comes from the people and is enriched with history and an entire movement. Anzaldúa says, “[s]Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul--we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality" (Anzaldúa 44). It took harsh treatment and the violation of basic human rights that sprouted the word Chicano. The United States Bracero Program—initiated in World War II—exploited Mexicans. They were underpaid, mistreated, and put in horrible living conditions. They were sprayed with pesticides as if they were just bugs in the dirt. They United States specifically selected individuals who were from poor pueblos in Mexico—with the intent of acting as their savior. After all of this, Chicanos then created a different type of Spanish and form of identification—one that tied them to their identity, so when I refer to myself as Chicana I am acknowledging the struggle my people went through after the United States used and abused them.
​
The language (Chicano/a Spanish) created by those immigrants in the States Anzaldúa says, is seen as the mutilation of Spanish. It is seen in the Latinx community as a pejorative language. This has created barriers within people of the same origin. Coming across this piece has made me fully aware that these social barriers still stand strong thirty-years later. These issues remain the status quo in the Latinx community. My negative connotations of speaking Chicano Spanish stems from Latinas and Latinos telling me that I am not speaking “proper” Spanish. Therefore, my opinion or anything that flows out of my mouth is invalid. The way I speak is “Englishized”. Anzaldúa says, “Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas, afraid of their censure,” (Anzaldúa, 39),and this hit home. I am afraid of speaking to those from Brazil, Spain, El Salvador in fear that my slang will slip. But that is not the only reason that I bite my tongue. Anzaldúa does not address how the disappearance of an accent is shamed upon in the Latinx community. She focuses on one perspective of how having a Mexican accent is seen saying, “Que vale toda lu educacin si todavía hablas Inglés con un 'accent’: "my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican,” (Anzaldúa 34). I’d like to discuss a different perspective that Anzaldúa does not address regarding accents. In the Latinx community when you have no accent that means you have completely assimilated. I am afraid to speak to Latinx people or those back home in English because my accent is completely gone. Summers in Mexico are no longer the same for me. My cousins and I would laugh at how bad our English was when we were children. We’d giggle over words like “soccer” pronouncing it dramatically like “sawkhur”. The similar struggles that I had with my cousins have faded, and I am now fluent in English. A part of me feels like I am losing my roots and distancing myself from those back home in Mexico.
​
One of my biggest fears is my culture being ripped away from me, but another racial identity that I categorize myself under is being Mexican and that acts as a thumbtack—pinning my culture to me. My father is an immigrant from Mexico, and he labels me as Mexicana—nada más. He does not like for me to refer to myself as American but neither do I. When I identify myself as being Mexicana, everyone jumps to the assumption that I was born in Mexico. This is where Mexicanas are forced to add hyphen American so that people are aware of their “race”. But what they don’t see is what being Mexican is. As Anzaldúa addresses where one lives does not necessarily correlate with being Mexican she says. “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in” (Anzaldúa 42). I was socially brought into the world through my beautiful culture. Checking the box “white” or “Hispanic” hurts my identity, because I am not white. Now for the term Hispanic—it is a white man’s word. It was created to group Spanish speakers all into one category. It is a label made in America. It is easy to select a check mark as “Hispanic”on a racial identification question, but we are more than a linguistic group. Anzaldúa says, “[t]There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the forms of images and emotions” (Anzaldúa 42) she then elaborates on what ties her to her identity:,“Woodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woodsmoke perfuming my grandmother's clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a folded tortilla” (Anzaldúa 42). For me it is the music that connects me to my identity. Growing up in Baile Folklórico wearing my bold red skirt that can be seen miles away and my colorful floral shirt. Spinning around holding the tip of my skirt looking like a dancing flower. Allowing my body to fall into the rhythmic mariachi stepping. This all brings me back to my homeland and ties me to my identity.
​
Although there are social barriers created by Chicana Spanish and other forms of Spanish, the culture is the anchor of my people. My culture will always connect me to others of my ethnicity. The way that I speak Spanish alters depending who I am around, just the way my personality alters depending on the group of people I am with. I’ve learned to accept that these language barriers can only be broken by accepting that there is not right way of speaking Spanish—using different tongues is perfectly fine. I do not need to speak consistent Spanish to everyone just as I grow and blossom into a woman my Spanish will do the same.