Book Review: meXican ecounters

In meXicana encounters Rosa Linda Fregoso looks at the ever-changing stereotypes surrounding Mexicanas and Chicanas (or meXicanas) throughout time and deconstructs those stereotypes in relation to the patriarchal, heteronormative, racist and classist societies that they come from. The relationship between Mexico and the United States is explored primarily through film, with some literary analysis and a personal interview with her own Grandmother as well. Fregoso’s main goal was to “consider the role of violence in reproducing racial, class, gender, and sexual hierarchies, emphasizing the interconnections between experiential and symbolic forms of violence” (xiv).

Her first case example used to perpetuate the white, male, heterosexual patriarchal norms was the example of violence in Ciudad Juárez. Fregoso argues that, “Feminicide in Juárez makes evident the reality of overlapping power relations on gendered and racialized bodies as much as it clarifies the degree to which violence against women has been naturalized as a method of social control” (2). She then sites films such as Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos and Performing the Border to show the connection in Juárez between globalism and “the exploitation and alienation of laboring bodies in various sites within global capitalism” (13).

She then talks about the way that feminist ideas in public discourse are perceived and dismissed stating that, “The policing of feminist public talk about intracommunity violence is also rooted in the hierarchical ranking of oppression – the notion that struggles against oppression based on class or race are more important than those against sexism and homophobia” (33). She then goes to the film Paulina that talks about a young girls journey through oppression. The topic of intersectionality is important in this movie because it focuses on how not only race but also class and sex affect the exploitation of this young girl.

Fregoso also talks about the “fantasy heritage’ of California – a rewriting of history to make California come from distinctly Spanish roots instead of the way that things actually went. This false history strikes an awful lot of resemblance to the retelling of Native American narratives and (re)creating and (re)presenting their history as a noble race that the American should want to return to.

Another stereotype of meXicanas that Fregoso talks about is the idea of a lowly mixed-race “other” that derives from “the then-current pseudoscientific theories of race and racial ranking, themselves molded by an earlier discourse of theology” (134).

Through her reverse chronological report on stereotypes in the United States about meXicanas, we touched upon the women of Juárez being shown as Mexican Jezebels, feminists being describes as “others”, the typical Chicano “familia”, and as the mixed-race (and therefore less ‘pure’) people. She tracks these stereotypes and then deconstructs their patriarchal, heteronormative, racist and classist roots in a way that is both informative and thought provoking.