DOLORES PRIDA

Coser y cantar (1981)

Paulo Freire. 1998 (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

https://books.google.es/books?isbn=1501305328

The theory of antidialogical action has one last fundamental characteristic: cultural invasion,
which like divisive tactics and manipulation also serves the ends of conquest. In this
phenomenon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group, in disrespect of the
latters potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade and
inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression.
Whether urbane or harsh, cultural invasion is thus always an act of violence against the
persons of the invaded culture, who lose their originality or face the threat of losing it. In
cultural invasion (as in all the modalities of antidialogical action) the invaders are the authors
of, and actors in, the process; those they invade are the objects. The invaders mold; those they
invade are molded. The invaders choose; those they invade follow that choiceor are expected
to follow it. The invaders act; those they invade have only the illusion of acting, through the
action of the invaders.
All domination involves invasionat times physical and overt, at times camouflaged,
with the invader assuming the role of a helping friend. . . . Cultural conquest leads to the
cultural inauthenticity of those who are invaded; they begin to respond to the values, the
standards, and the goals of the invaders. In their passion to dominate, to mold others to their
patterns and their way of life, the invaders desire to know how those thy have invaded
apprehend realitybut only so they can dominate the latter more effectively. In cultural
invasion it is essential that those who are invaded come to see their reality with the outlook of
the invaders rather than their own; for the more they mimic the invaders, the more stable the
position of the latter becomes.
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of
their intrinsic inferiority. Since everything has its opposite, if those who are invaded consider
themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognize the superiority of the invaders. . . . The
more invasion is accentuated and those invaded alienated from the spirit of their own culture
and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders: to walk like them, dress
like them, talk like them.
Franz Fanon. 1963 (1961). The Wretched of the Earth, 236-37.

Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which
has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior, to recognize the unreality of his
[nation], and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological
structure.

Gloria Anzalda. 1999 (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera, 99.

Jos Vasconcelos, Mexican philosopher, envisaged una raza mestiza, una mezcla de razas
afines, una raza de color la primera raza sntesis del globo. He called it a cosmic race, la raza
csmica, a fifth race embracing the four major races of the world. Opposite to the theory of the
pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of
inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromosomes constantly
crossing over, this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid

progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool. From this racial, ideological,
cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an alien consciousness is presently in the making
a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the borderlands.

Because I, a mestiza
continually walk out of one culture
and into another,
because I am all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan
Simultneamente

Fernando Ortiz. 1987. Del fenmeno social de la transculturacin y de su

importancia en Cuba. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azcar, 96-97.

Entendemos que el vocablo transculturacin expresa mejor las diferentes fases del proceso
transitivo de una cultura a otra, porque ste no consiste solamente en adquirir una distinta
cultura, que es lo que en rigor indica la voz anglogermnica acculturation, sino que el proceso
implica tambin necesariamente la prdida o desarraigo de una cultura precedente, lo que
pudiera decirse una parcial desculturacin, y, adems, significa la consiguiente creacin de
nuevos fenmenos culturales que pudieran denominarse neoculturacin. Al fin, como bien
sostiene la escuela de Malinowski, en todo abrazo de culturas sucede lo que en la cpula
gentica de los individuos: la criatura siempre tiene algo de ambos progenitores, pero tambin
es distinta de cada uno de los dos. En conjunto, el proceso es una transculturacin, y este
vocablo comprende todas las fases de su parbola.

Juan Bruce-Novoa. 1982. Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos, 8.

Assimilation into another culture is a form of death for those who fear losing their own culture.
True, it could be seen as a necessary process for entering and receiving society, but those forced
to change may not be convinced. The melting-pot ideal is fine for those who have forgotten the
excruciating pain of being melted down and repoured into a different mold. Nor does it make it
easier to be told by others that their ancestors endured the same thing.

Paula Gunn Allen. 1986. Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism.
Failure to know your mother, that is your position and its attendant traditions, history, and
place in the scheme of things, is failure to remember your significance, your reality, your right
relationship to earth and society.

Rubn Rumbaut. 1991. The Agony of Exile: A Study of the Migration and
Adaptation of Indochinese Refugee Adults and Children, 61.
Children who were born abroad but are being educated and come of age in the United States
form what may be called the 1.5 generation. These refugee youth must cope with two crisis-
producing and identity-defining transitions: (1) adolescence and the task of managing the
transition from childhood to adulthood, and (2) acculturation and the task of managing the
transition from one sociocultural environment ot another. The first generation of their parents,

who are fully part of the old world, face only the latter; the second generation of children
now being born and reared in the United States, who as such become fully part of the new
world, will need to confront only the former. But members of the 1.5 generation form a
distinctive cohort in that in many ways they are marginal to both the old and the new worlds,
and are fully part of neither of them.

Gustavo Prez Firmat. 1996 (1994). Life on the Hyphen. The Cuban-American Way, 6.
In my usage, biculturation designates not only contact of cultures; in addition, it describes a
situation where the two cultures achieve a balance that makes it difficult to distinguish between
the dominant and the subordinate culture. Unlike acculturation or transculturation, biculturation
implies an equilibrium, however tense, precarious, or short-lived, between the two contributing
cultures. Cuban-American culture is a balancing act. One-and-a-halfers are no more American
than they are Cubanand vice versa. Their hyphen is a see-saw: it tilts first one way, then the
other. The game ends at some point (the one-and-a-half generation passeth away, and the board
then comes to rest on one side. But in the meantime it stays in the air, uneasily balancing one
weight against the other.
I realize that mine is not a fashionable view of relations between majority and
minority cultures. Contemporary models of culture contact tend to be oppositional: one
culture, say white American, vanquishes another, say Native American. But the oppositional
model, accurate as it may be in other situations, does not do justice to the balance of power in
Cuban America. I like to think of Cuban-American culture as appostional rather than
oppositional, for the relation between the two terms is defined more by contiguity than by
conflict. I am not talking here about the political relations between Cuba and the United States,
to which this statement, obviously and sadly, does not apply. And neither do I want to discount
the persistent anti-Americanism that has loomed so large in the islands history. My context of
reference is the experience of Cubans in this country, lives lived in collusion rather than
collision. Over the last several decades, in the United States, Cuba and America have been on a
collusion course. The best products of this collaboration display and intricate equilibrium
between the claims of each culture. Equilibrium does not necessarily mean stasis, however, and
I am not talking about dull, motionless coexistence. Fractions are fractious, and one-and-a-
halfers are restless and uppity.

Dolores Prida. 1995. I Am a Hyphenated American: Interview with Dolores Prida.

Latin American Theatre Review 29 (1).

Latinos have another way of looking at the world, and Coser explores those differences. We
will always remain outside of both Spanish and English monolingual cultures, never fully
understood by either one. I am a hyphenated American, a bilingual person who lives by
dualities (115).

Coser is about the process of searching, being, living, not about easy solutions. SHE/ELLA
must find common ground inside before they can venture outside. The struggle isnt to
obliterate the other, but for supremaca. . . . The struggle for self-definition involves process:
who wins, which culture will rule the body. Both cultures win and neither one wins; thats the
point. Coser dramatizes the convulsions of rejection and reconciliation. Ese tira y jala keeps
them alive. Sure, its painful but its not negative. Once SHE/ELLA accept the other, the
Woman becomes a different person These convulsions create a new person [third character],
a composite that accepts and reconciles dualities. This combination is not the result of

acculturation, which implies the melting pot concept. Latinos walk a tightrope, we have to
balance polarities to prevent falling to one side or the other. That balance differs with each
individual. Biculturalism is a positive energy. Whats negative is self-estrangement, the refusal
to participate in American life. Some Latinos view themselves as non-melted people with split
or incompatible personalities. Also, divisive issues like bilingual education and the English-only
movement create the impression that Latinos want to remain separate, to retain Spanish as our
principal language. In fact, we are the truest Americans because we combine the two Americas
(116).