Reclaiming Poch@ Pop: Examining the Rhetoric of Cultural Deficiency

170 Pages·2015·2.822 MB·English

by  Cruz Medina (auth.)

Reclaiming Poch@ Pop
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0001
Latino Pop Culture
Series Editor: Frederick Luis Aldama
Books in the series give serious critical attention to all facets of Latino popular culture.
Books focus on topics generally that pertain to the making and consuming of Latino pop
culture, including music, performance and body art, TV shows, film, comic books, web
media, pop art, low-riders, sartorial wear, video games, sports, and cuisine, among many
other areas.
Titles include:
Cruz Medina
RECLAIMING POCH@ POP
Examining the Rhetoric of Cultural Deficiency
Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González
LATINOS IN THE END ZONE
Conversations on the Brown Color Line in the NFL
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0001
Reclaiming Poch@ Pop:
Examining the Rhetoric
of Cultural Deficiency
Cruz Medina
Santa Clara University, USA
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0001
reclaiming poch@ pop
Copyright © Cruz Medina, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-50157-8
Foreword © Arturo Aldama, 2015.
Cartoons courtesy Lalo Alcaraz & Universal Uclick syndicate Copyright 2014
Permission for images from Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border
Patrol provided by Felicia Rice at Moving Parts Press.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–49807–6 PDF
ISBN: 978-1-349-50555-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from
the Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
First edition: 2015
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137498076
For Kathryn, William Julian, and Jackson.
And to Julian and Debra for their sacrifices.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0001
Contents
List of Figures vii
Foreword viii
Arturo Aldama
Acknowledgments xi
1 A Poch@ Pop Preface: Si se puede 1
2 Proto-Poch@ Representations in Film:
Exploitation or Bust 24
3 Poch@ Methodological (Re)appropriation
for Resistance: Poch@ Past 45
4 Alcaraz and Madrigal: Re-appropriating
Poch@ for Resistance : A Time and Place for
Poch@ Pop 66
5 Poch@ teca: Re-understanding the Historical
Trajectory of a Proto-Chican@ Identity 91
6 Poch@s Strike Back: Ozomatli Members
Respond to Pop Culture Commentary 128
Afterword 137
Bibliography 141
Index 155
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0001
List of Figures
1.1 Dolores Huerta with Medina 2
3.1 Muerto Mouse 56
4.1 Police state 80
4.2 Sherriff Joe: America’s Top Hog 83
4.3 “Ethnic Studies” 86
4.4 “Whitewashing Arizona” 87
5.1 a & b “Superman; Mickey sacrifice” 111
5.2 a & b “Superman with boy; Jesus bleeding” 114
5.3 a & b “Superman crossed arms; Mickey
Mouse tank” 116
5.4 a & b “Batman stigmata; Aztec baseball glove” 118
5.5 a & b “Mickey; Superman and mob” 120
5.6 a & b “El Existentialist Mojado; Goofy” 122
6.1 Raul, Ulises, and Cruz 135
A.1 Medina and Marin 139
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0002 vii
Foreword
Arturo J. Aldama
To frame my discussion of Poch@ Pop, I start with draw-
ing attention to two points that are argued throughout
The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality,
and Colonization (University of Michigan, 2003) by Walter
Mignolo. First, he contends that the Spanish/European
conquest of Mexico and the Americas was based and prac-
ticed on absolute denial of the “coevalness” of Indigenous
civilizations with European cultures and empires; and he
argues that the contemporary “postcolonial” condition
that frames borderlands studies is characterized by a
sustained attempt to “deny” the “denial of the coevalness”
of civilizations. Second, his book challenges scholars and
activist intellectuals to consider the complex enunciative,
epistemic, and discursive practices in borderlands loci that
are grounded in layered indigenous epistemologies and
cultural practices. It is in the epistemic space to deny the
denial of coevalness that Cruz Medina practices a nuanced,
multilayered, and multi-genre intervention in US-México
popular cultural studies. Through a series of decolonial
ruptures and articulations, Poch@ Pop skillfully re-locates
a subject position/rhetorical position/and epistemic space
of the Pocha and Pocho or Poch@ (to queer and problema-
tize binary gender endings of masculine and feminine in
Spanish). Dr. Medina metaphorically lifts the bucket of the
term Pocho and its history of negative connotations (not
Mexican enough, not authentic, impure, fractured, traitor,
diglossic, etc.) and its complex origins in Mesoamerican
viii DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0003
Foreword ix
societies (pochteca) and flips it over and embraces the layered elegance
of contemporary Poch@ cultural expressions. Poch@ Pop embraces a
Poch@ subject, looks at Pocho cultural productions and offers a compel-
ling methodology of how to read Poch@ aesthetics, and destroys or at
least attempts to destroy the rhetoric of deficiency associated with the
term Poch@.
Medina takes on a ludic—sometimes funny—and always nuanced
look at the Poch@ cultural and narrative practices and rhetorical
performances in a range of genres and with a range of cutting-edge
borderlands cultural producers. His writing is elegant, clear, and will
speak to scholars, consumers, and producers of popular culture, film,
graphic novels, music, and performance art. Framed against the current
political backdrop of xenophobia and nativist intolerance of borders,
and border crossings by mestizo@ subjects, Poch@ Pop offers the readers
a six-chapter look at how artists resist “rhetorics of cultural deficiency”
and looks at such poch@ popsters as Ritchie Valens, Selena Quintanilla-
Pérez, Tejano filmmaker Roberto Rodriguez, cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz,
performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, actor and director Edward
James Olmos, Luis Valdez, icon of Chicano theatre and film, Al Madrigal
commentator on the Daily Show, actor and art promoter, Cheech Marin,
and the well regarded music group, Ozomatli.
Inspired by the decolonial possibilities articulated by Gloria Anzalduas
classic, Borderlands/La Frontera, Poch@ Pop is part of a new and cutting-
edge wave and way to read borderlands cultural productions. Poch@ Pop
should be taught, used, and enjoyed in large classes, graduate seminars,
and faculty reading groups and in community centers and spaces. It will
make a fine vecino (neighbor) in the barrio of your bookshelf next to such
works as Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America
(Univ. of Texas Press, 2007) by William Anthony Nericcio, Wild Tongues:
Transnational Mexican Popular Culture by Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz (Univ. of
Texas Press, 2012), Performing the US Latina and Latino Borderlands, Eds.
Arturo J. Aldama, Chela Sandoval, and Peter J. Garcia (Indiana Univ.
Press, 2012) and the very recently released Creating Aztlán: Chicano Art,
Indigenous Sovereignty, and Lowriding across Turtle Island by Dylan A.T.
Miner (Univ. of Arizona Press, 2014) among many other engaging and
tour de force books.
I end my enthusiastic foreword by citing directly from Poch@ Pop.
I chose this passage because it is a particularly poetic and uplifting
DOI: 10.1057/9781137498076.0003