meXicana Encounters

Fregoso’s book meXicana Encounters explores the cultural and political pressures surrounding people, especially women, of Hispanic heritage in Mexico and America. Through the analysis of film, Fregoso points out the varying systems of institutionalized racism, classism and sexism within and without the community that combine to oppress meXicana women, and create “a ‘problem of interpretation’ that is ‘decisive for terror, not only in making effective counter discourse so difficult but also making the terribleness of death squads, disappearances, and torture all the more effective in crippling of people’s capacity to resist.’”(19) Fregoso condemns the anti-racism movement for ignoring the views and problems of women, especially the problems within the community and family. “The policing of feminist public talk about intracommunity violence is also rooted in the 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) This privileging of “masculine” problems over “feminine” ones leaves females stuck in a system that perpetuates violence against them, while suppressing their voice under the guise of “the rigid binaries of ‘them’ versus ‘us’ fostered by Chicano nationalists”(85). She points out that these voices must be heard in order to create real change in the world.

Her analysis of films from the early 1900’s show the ways in which Mexicans were vilified and uprooted from their history as natives in America, to foreigners. In the history of California “it took just one year after the U.S.-Mexico War of 1848 for the inversion of history to occur. It took one year for Anglo immigrants to reinvent themselves as ‘native’ by recasting the inhabitants of the former Mexican territory as ‘foreign’”(127). In films such as Red Girl, Anglos allied themselves with Native Americans to package themselves as native to the land, and as common enemies of the foreign Mexicans. Even the famous actresses who were Mexican were repackaged into white roles instead of Mexican roles, so they wouldn’t provide good examples of Hispanic people in the media. Mexican actresses such as Lupe Velez, who embraced their Mexican heritage in real life and in media roles, were criticized and defamed for not conforming to Anglo ways.

Fregoso explores the many interconnected systems keeping meXicana women oppressed, but fails to offer her solution to the problem within the discourse. Instead she concludes her book with the hope that “meXicanas claim their space in culture and the body politic of the nation”(170) while being seen as related to the distant natives of parts of America. This is not a solution to the wide scale problems involving many different interacting systems of oppression. If Fregoso really believes in her interpretation of oppression for meXicana’s what does she want us to do about it?