Book Review- meXicana encounters

Rosa Linda Fregoso uses film representations to examine the Chicana/Mexicana experience on both sides of the US-Mexican boarder. Fregoso’s book analyzes the role of colonialism and patriarchal structures in defining the identities of Mexicans and in particular Mexican women. It is a study of the formation of a Mexicana identity in the shadow of American social, economic and political dominance. As a result, is not just an examination of race for the individual, but also of familial dynamics, gender identities, sexuality and globalization, all characterized by the Mexican experience.
One of the most prevalent topics, sexual identity, appears throughout the book in a variety of forms and acts as a link between many of the other themes. According to Fregoso, Mexican women have struggled to assert sexual independence throughout Mexican history. In 1915’s Martyrs of the Alamo, Fregoso argues, Mexican women are seen as antithesis of what a proper, meaning white, woman should be:

“Open expressions of sexuality on the part of Mexicans in the Southwest remained as subversive and even ominous residues in cultural memory. For in setting negative examples for white women to emulate, the very visibility of Mexicanas in the public sphere came to be seen as threatening the social control and managements of white womanhood. Out of the racial/sexual fear of the ruling order came a destructive urge to devalorize and dehumanize the alternative erotics that Mexicana bodies represented.” (147)

This not only highlights White America’s fear of Chicana sexuality, but greater fears that Mexican culture will adulterate its purity. White America has fear of losing societal dominance and the attempts to “other” Chicanas in order to maintain control.
Fregoso uses the 2001 documentary Señorita Extravada to illustrate a continuing identity struggle. It traces the serial murders of female maquilladora factory workers, seeking answers to the government’s negligence. In an increasingly globalized world, women continue to suffer from inequitable societal depictions. According to Fregoso, “Mexican officials blamed women’s growing independence and mothers entering the workforce of the 'disintegration' of the family and, first and foremost, the loss of male authority in the domestic sphere” (4). Greater societal forces label Chicana women challenging traditional roles as subversives, undermining established power structures. Ultimately, these women are disregarded for not staying within traditional structures. Fregoso argues that the government’s refusal to sight these murders as racially or sexually motivated is evidence of this (2).
Although Fregoso contends that Chicana women suffer the worst of this marginalization, it does extend into the majority of the Mexican experience. Fregoso uses a poignant interview with her own grandmother to convey this notion. Her grandmother says of her experiences:

“There is little written about Tejanas and Tejanos or about the booming Mexican part of Corpus. We are mentioned in generic terms; an amalgamated mass of hands, as ‘cheap laborers,’ without names or discernible faces...all absent from the official historical pronouncements.” (150)

This book illustrates how the drive to form a cultural identity is ongoing within the Chicano Culture. There is no definitive Chicano person or family, but there is a shared history of marginalization that each must reconcile.
While Fregoso’s argument is extensive in that she included a variety of issues that affect the Mexicana/Chicana experience, I found the way in which she supported her argument disengaging. The exclusive use of films disregards the influence of all other forms of media. There are more accessible forms of pop culture, for example television or newspapers, that deserve to be mentioned in analyzing the greater representation of Mexicans. Furthermore, the films that she discusses are frequently inaccessible to the majority of readers. Fregoso uses silent films from the early forms of the media or independent films with a small range of circulation. I think this weakens her argument of representations depicted in mass media.