1. LOSE THE ACCENT CHIQUITA!:
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH VIDEO PERFORMANCE
Introduction
“Autoethnographic performance makes us acutely conscious of how we quot;I-
witnessquot; our own reality constructions. Interpreting culture through the self-reflections
and cultural refractions of identity is a defining feature of autoethnographic performance”
(Spry, 2001, p. 706)).
Lose the Accent Chiquita! uses the lens of lived experience to explore themes that
illustrate the myriad of colonial influences on the persons that are colonized. The decision
to explore the themes of internal racism, identity formation, exoticism, assimilation, and
resistance to the dominant culture was ignited by my fascination with autoethnography
and performance. As a result, the main goal of my thesis show was to illustrate through
performance and video installation the autoethnographic vignettes of these themes, which
are associated with the effects of colonialism.
After all, without our experiences we would not be able to compare and explain
our day-to-day existence. We would not be able to question a phenomenon, because we
would not have the prior knowledge through participation necessary to draw upon these
instances, that would then become experience. In other words, nothing comes from
nothing. Storytellers would not exist if it were not for the stories that were weaved out of
oral histories passed on from generation to generation. Thus, autoethnography allows one
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2. to situate one’s own experience and to express its importance in relation to a particular
culture, political, or social group; in this case, the Puerto Rican cultural experience in
relation to the American culture.
In my autoethnographical video performance, I attempted to embody an
experience in order to rouse the understanding of a social, cultural, or political message to
the audience. In using the personal as political through the medium of art, I wanted to
convey first-hand experiences which can subsequently be used to incorporate sentiment
and knowledge through a shared experience by the use of video art, narratives of personal
experiences, voiceovers, and evocative images to construct a new experience about
different realities, which are not those of the audience. It was an attempt to convey that
the experiences shared with the audience are important, in order to explain why disregard
and disrespect do not offer any worthwhile contribution in today’s society.
Referring to a statement by Sara Wall in her article, An Autoethnography on
Learning About Autoethnography (2006),
This is the philosophical open door into which autoethnography creeps.
The questioning of the dominant scientific paradigm, the making of room for
other ways of knowing, and the growing emphasis on the power of research to
change the world create a space for the sharing of unique, subjective, and
evocative stories of experience that contribute to our understanding of the social
world and allow us to reflect on what could be different because of what we have
learned. (p.3)
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3. Lose the Accent Chiquita! was intended to recount experiences that reflect on
instances of identity and assimilation, by juxtaposing personal narratives and showing
their larger social and cultural correlation. Thus, autoethnography allows questioning and
synthesizing of the elements that define identity and assimilation and continues the
dialogue in order to ascertain a certain “truth” of how identity formation is shaped.
I wanted to engage the audience, using my personal stories, in order to open the
door to a dialogue of the important issues related to colonial influences and what those
influences meant to my identity formation as a young woman growing up in the South
Bronx in New York. For instance, in The Visit, I wanted to show the internal racism,
expressed through my utterances as I confront the ghost of my mother. And in The
Arrival, my goal was to convey the alienation my mother experienced when she was
transposed to an unfamiliar and claustrophobic metropolis—New York City—where she
had to learn a new and foreign language. Finally, in Chiquita, the daughter (played by
myself) turns into a stereotypical spitfire, and gazes back defiantly at the audience to
show her power and resistance to the colonial gaze. The performance intends to either
evoke the empathy of the audience or to make it feel uncomfortable through the stories
presented to them. Moreover, it intends to provoke an emotional response from the
audience, such as when I read the letter to my daughter, in which I confessed to not being
a perfect mother and feeling so insecure about becoming a mother again. I wanted to
prove that it is more effective to connect to the pathos of my audience using
performances rather than through personal narratives.
I am a strong believer in appealing to the pathos of the spectator, and I try to
provoke a reaction by creating emotional work: punctum versus studium. As Roland
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4. Barthes wrote in his Camera Lucida (1980), “A photograph's punctum is that accident
which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).”(p.27) He experienced this
when he found an old photograph of his mother as a child:
There I was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these
pictures of my mother, one by one, under the lamp, gradually moving back in
time with her, looking for the truth of the fact I had loved. And found it. (p. 67)
In Roland Barthes’ case, it was a photograph that stirred an emotion. In my case,
it was my painfully reconstructed memories that helped me to work through the effects of
colonialism and reconcile those effects through performance and video art. At the same
time, I hope that my own healing through art, will foster understanding and tolerance, and
allow us to experience a new collective memory with a continuing dialogue, that will
address the difficult issues which arise as a consequence of colonialization. Performance
and video art offers an alternative means to get a message out and at the same time, to
investigate why things happen. The use of the self-reflexive mode of inquiry enables us
to explore and analyze the meaning of the experiences in an attempt to figure out the
intricacies of identity and assimilation.
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5. The Nuyorican Identity
To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro
who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the
cultural tool that language is. Rather more than a year ago in Lyon, I remember, in
a lecture I had drawn a parallel between the Negro and European poetry, and a
French acquaintance told me enthusiastically, 'At the bottom you are a white
man.' The fact that I had been able to investigate so interesting a problem through
the white man's language gave me honorary citizenship. (Fanon, p. 38)
An attempt to reconcile with the past was the impetus for choosing to make Lose
the Accent Chiquita! I didn’t think I had a problem in describing who I was or where I
came from. After all, English was my first language now, and I had gradually shed my
Puerto Rican roots. It was when I realized that I would have to answer questions related
to race, ethnicity, belonging, and cultural differences to my grandchildren that I
understood that I had to confront these issues for the first time in forty years. Without
question, it was a subject I had avoided for most of my life. In questioning my
“Puertoricanness,” the search to find the real history of Puerto Rico, the world’s last
colony, became my goal. It was this exploration of the whys and hows of the colonization
of Puerto Rico by the United States and its (oppressing) effects that guided me.
Meanwhile, I began unpacking the enigma of who I was and started off in the inescapable
pursuit for the real truth.
The way to go in this search for truth I chose was through an autoethnographic
exploration, using memory work, performance, and video installation. The blending of
video, sound, and performance served to restructure and assemble events from the past,
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6. and led to the knowledge which is needed to name and describe the themes that
encompass colonialism and its consequences. I cannot think of a better way to get a
message across than by splashing certain flashes of memories and feelings by means of a
performance. By reliving the essence of past experiences as a colonized subject, and
sharing it with members of the audience, performance provides a means to transmit the
feelings of these moments.
To continue my discussion of my thesis, I would first like to put into context how
I became interested in this journey of self-discovery, the uncovering of the influences of
colonialism, and renaming myself as a Nuyorican (a person that was either born in
Puerto Rico and raised in New York, or born in New York of Puerto Rican parents). Why
Nuyorican now? This renaming is not an issue of the past, I decided to call myself
Nuyorican when I realized that my struggles to figure out who I was and where I came
from was paramount to the discovery of myself and the need to share this with my
children and their children.
Renilda Roman Pacheco, my mother, was a strong-willed Puerto Rican of Spanish
descent and she insisted that I continue to speak Spanish at home; while my father, a
black Puerto Rican who served in the United States Army during WWII, wanted me
assimilate into the American culture. He encouraged me to speak English and to rid
myself of my Spanish accent. Looking through the boxes filled with family photographs,
I could not help but notice that my appearance always seemed flawless. My mother
dressed me in expensive (handmade) dresses and made me wear children’s jewelry.
Obviously, my mother went to great lengths to make sure that I looked better than other
children and behaved accordingly. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that my
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7. mother was of Spanish descent and my father was a black Puerto Rican. It may be that by
dressing me up like a doll she hoped that I would be accepted more easily, not only by
the whites in Puerto Rico, but also by the whites in the States. Even though Puerto Rico is
a commonwealth of the United States, it really is just another colony subject to the
(hidden) laws of domination and discrimination with origins begun long ago when Spain
dominated Puerto Rico. For instance, my father could be drafted into the United States
Army, only to be subsequently housed in segregated barracks, and was not allowed to
vote for president of the United States. In fact, Puerto Ricans have been treated like
second-class citizens and were (amongst others) subjected to a sterilization program, one
of the plans to limit their proliferation. In Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences
of Language, Race, and Class, Bonnie Urciuoli states:
“Biological control was also encouraged. Citing Vásquez-Calzada's (
1978) discovery that 35.5 percent of the women between the ages of 15 and 45 in
Puerto Rico had been sterilized by 1968, López ( 1987) argues that such practices
are part of a U.S. ideology of population control. Doctors treating women in
Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican women in New York found sterilization an
efficient way to deal with patients they considered too ignorant to practice
effective birth control.” (p.45)
The authority that the U.S. exerts over Puerto Rico goes way beyond the political.
Racism never stopped after all these years since the abolition of slavery. My grandmother
was an indirect victim of slavery through her relationship with her partner: she was black,
thus my grandfather, who was white, would not marry her. Although she bore him nine
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8. children, he never recognized a single one as his. Since I was exposed to this supremacist
colonial attitude, I was constantly pushing my own identity and ethnicity within the
“American” cultural realm. The formation of my identity went through stages. In the 50s,
I wanted to be a Shirley Temple. In the 60s, I fluctuated between black and white. In the
70s, I was a single parent, in doubt on how to raise her multiracial child. During this
period I spoke English only and deliberately tried to hide my accent. My mother was still
alive and she was distraught and upset by my decision to forget my roots. It was not until
I had my own grandchildren, all multiracial, that I began to question and investigate my
lineage and ethnicity in order to be able to help my own children and their children to
accept their value as individuals and build their self-esteem.
The relationship between my parents and me was shaky at best. My memories of
them were intricate and accentuated by a continuous push and pull as a result of their
characters and diverging ideologies, that is, to assimilate with versus resist the hegemony
of the predominantly white culture of the United States. As a result of the confusion of
the situation, I developed a substantial inferiority complex similar to the internal
depreciative view that the colonized and the like experienced. I should not forget to
mention that it was not until I arrived in New York (at the age of two), that I noticed that
I was suddenly different from the rest of the world. Later on, especially during my school
years, I had this distinctive feeling that my predominantly white classmates and white
teachers imposed this difference on me. The experience one undergoes as an outsider is
eloquently expressed by Frantz Fanon (1952) when he describes his encounter with
racism upon his arrival in Lyon:
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9. Dirty nigger!' Or simply, 'Look, a Negro!' I came into the world imbued
with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain
to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of
other objects. (p. 109)
Throughout many societies, past and present, this feeling of being different
resonates in the lives of immigrants. I have spent a lifetime dealing with this issue of
identity and cultural differences, and I have struggled to find the answers and in fact, still
do. It was not until I began my graduate work in interdisciplinary studies that I began to
create work that mirrored my angst concerning this topic. In the past I tried in vain to
create work that was not about Latinos. I did not want to be pigeonholed as to what I
needed to create. What I had in mind was to create experimental work that excited and
challenged me. So why could a Puerto Rican woman not create and write about the
French New Wave, the surrealist movement, or just present narratives that talked about
anything else but the Latino issue? How many times was I asked to look at Coco Fusco’s
work or Lorna Simpson’s? And each and every time I would state that that was not what I
had in mind at all. I grew up during the 60s, and in those days my preferences went
basically and passionately to film noir, films in black and white, and foreign cinema. For
the last 15 years, whenever I would do a photography assignment or a video project I
preferred to express myself in black and white with a lot of detail for contrast and
shadows.
So what made me take this detour to my “Latino-ness?” I cannot pinpoint time
and place, all I know is that when I took custody of my grandchildren and looked at their
little brown faces, I realized that the moment had arrived to take the veil off the mirror
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10. and take a long hard look at myself. Of course I was anxious of what I might discover
and also a bit scared, but this time there would be no excuses. I could not cop out now,
because if I refused to look in the mirror, I would continue to be the object of the white
man’s gaze. It was time to turn the gaze back at them for a change. And so the journey
began.
At first I felt that the pieces of the puzzle formed a muddled mess and I was afraid
that I would not be able to piece everything together. I kept running head-on into walls
and became frustrated with my ideas and concepts. It was not working for me. One day,
as I was showing my granddaughter the family album, she looked at this one photograph
of my mother standing against the wall. My mother, who was white, looked sad in that
photograph. My granddaughter looked at me and then looked back at the photograph. She
then told me that she wanted to be white like my mother. I didn’t know what to say. How
do I tell my granddaughter that she is beautiful, while the media bombard us with images
of white, slim, and tall people as criteria for beauty? There was a silence and then I gave
her a big hug. I told her she was beautiful. Was my hug strong enough to dispel the
notion that being white was beautiful and superior? It took a long time to come to terms
with my identity and in fact, I feel I still have many steps to go before I will accept who I
am completely, if ever. Anyway, the sole reasons for my journey are my children, their
children, and of course, myself. It was not until I realized that I had to take back the
power from the white supremacist culture that I decided to redefine myself as a
Nuyorican.
White supremacy has been dominant in this country for ages and resistance has
always been part of the marginalized people of the colonized part of the world even if it
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11. was transparent. Resistance took many forms. For my mother, it was not learning the
English language. For others, it was trying to speak English better than the average white
person. One had to acquire knowledge in order to gain power and beat the dominant
culture at its own game. It was this resistance that compelled me to get rid of the layer of
passing for white that prevented the acceptance of my ethnic distinctiveness, the very
same reason why so many Puerto Ricans joined the Young Lords, a Nuyorican movement
during the turbulent sixties, where rebellion seemed to be the only answer to issues like
civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and other social and political concerns.
And although a Nuyorican is basically a citizen born in New York from Puerto
Rican parents, I preferred to slap this name on myself. Why? Because I spent most of my
young life in New York City, even though I was born in Puerto Rico, and I felt closer to
the people from Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx. And, during the 60s, I responded
to the call of the Nuyorican Poets and the Young Lords. It was then that I took back the
power. I began to wear my hair in an Afro, wear army jackets, and wear “Che” T-shirts. I
began to read Karl Marx and participated in “sit-ins” to protest against the discrimination
that motivated not serving minorities at Woolworths in Binghamton, New York.
As I grew older, I started to appreciate my bilingualism. I only wish I was more
fluent. It’s interesting that even today, when I am in the company of a Spanish-speaking
person, I do try to speak Spanish, but I find myself code switching, a term used when
people would intermix their first language with their second language. When I am at a
loss for words, I may make up a word or two that almost sounds like an English or
Spanish word.
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12. There’s a lot of baggage associated with the Nuyorican ideology, especially being
defiant in a militant way. Puerto Ricans of my generation, particularly icons like Pedro
Pietri, Miguel Pinero, Giannina Braschi, Miguel Alagrin, Piri Thomas, and Sandra Maria
Esteves, expressed their distress with the way things were for the marginalized people of
color. The plight of the Puerto Ricans living in New York during the 60s and 70s (and in
fact, still goes on today) was expressed in poetry, plays, and songs.
As briefly mentioned, the use of Spanglish was also used as a resistance to the
imposed English of the dominant culture. The power to speak in English, sprinkled with
words of Spanish origins did not sit well with the whites in New York or in other major
cities in the United States. Even today, we are reminded that we are in the United States
of America and should only speak English.
What was interesting was that the Nuyorican movement was also an intellectual
movement, which encouraged the people to become well read and articulate, in order to
dispel the myth that Puerto Ricans were not educated and therefore elevated the feeling of
self-worth. The Nuyorican movement also recognized the hybridity that existed within
the cultural and racial makeup of the Nuyoricans. It celebrated the cultural make up of the
Nuyorican, which consisted of Taino, Spanish, and African roots. Of course not every
Puerto Rican living in the states agreed with this philosophy, including my father. My
father still maintained that we should only recognize our Spanish roots, because
embracing the Indian or African roots would not allow us to fully participate in the
American Dream, as the Indians and Blacks were still seen as savages by many whites in
this country. In Lose the Accent Chiquita!, I show this tension between the African
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13. religion of Santeria, which my father and grandmother followed, and the Catholic
religion, which my mother embraced.
We have been conditioned by the media that white is good and black is evil, that
white signifies beauty and black signifies ugly, and that there are the civilized and
uncivilized. This all points to the categories of Manichean colonial discourse which
Fanon (1952) further recounts in another one of his experiences in Black Skin, White
Masks:
A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of nonexistence. Sin is Negro as
virtue is white. All those white men in a group, guns in hands, cannot be wrong. I
am guilty. I do not know of what, but I know that I am no good. (p. 139. )
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark (1939-1940) conducted a study over
fifty years ago, which asked black children which doll would they rather play with: a
black or white doll. Their response was the white doll. This test has been done numerous
times since then, and it still elicits the same response from black children. In fact, when I
had brought a black doll to my granddaughter, I saw an uneasiness displayed. She played
with the doll, but afterwards would put the black doll aside and continue to play with the
white dolls.
Social displacement is an overall theme that resonates throughout my thesis.
Puerto Ricans who relocated to the United States during the 1950s in search of a better
life experienced this feeling of not being able to fit into this new culture. In the
monologue following The Visit, I reflect about the experiences uttered by both my mother
and father. My mother felt a sense of alienation and lack of roots, while my father was
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14. hopeful for the opportunities that the United States promised to offer us. Moving to the
United States was a necessity for most Puerto Ricans because of the lack of employment
opportunities back on the island. But the welcome mat was not visible for the newly
arrived Puerto Ricans and what often resulted was a disillusionment of the “American
Dream,” and a weakening of the self-esteem of a group of people. For Puerto Ricans, as
well as other Latinos, race is not a clear-cut issue as evident when you fill out forms
which ask to what race you belong. In most cases, the form has a choice for “Hispanic,”
which does not signify a race, but rather a government label, because Puerto
Ricans/Latinos are comprised of a mix of races. Many Puerto Ricans who fall into the
Black category experience a higher incidence of racial discrimination than a white Puerto
Rican. When my father, who served in World War II, arrived at his base, he was directed
to the “Black” barracks because he had a dark complexion. The army, which went by
visual markings, would order recruits to take off their shirt to see if they were white. If
you had a dark complexion, you were considered black and you were enlisted in a Black
regiment, whereas you were enlisted in a White regiment when you were considered
Caucasian. There were several photographs of my father in uniform in our home and you
could not help but notice that he was very proud to serve in the American Army, even if
he was not allowed to break bread with the white soldiers.
Puerto Ricans have been denoted as inferior ever since the United States acquired
Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 and saw it as their duty to colonize the natives. Senator
Vardaman, from Mississippi, expressed the negative representation of Puerto Ricans as
early as 1916 when he states,
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15. So far as I am concerned, I really think it is a misfortune for the United
States to take that class of people into the body politic. They will never, no not in
a thousand years, understand the genius of our Government or share our ideals of
government…I really had rather they would not become citizens of the United
States. I think we have enough of that element in the body politic already to
menace the nation with mongrelization. (cited in Rodriguez, 1997, p. 147-148)
Throughout history and up to the present, the media have put the Puerto Ricans in
a negative light, be it in newspapers, books, films, or television programs. In her own
way, my mother tried to make sure that I became a representative of the positive side of
the Puerto Ricans. She was overprotective of me in her own way and would not allow me
to play outside with the other children and therefore, being an only child, I spent most of
the time indoors, mainly in my own room, watching my favorite shows and films on TV
and daydreaming my own make-believe existence in “white surroundings.” The
flickering box became my muse and my imagination would take me away, far from the
reality of the South Bronx. Nevertheless, I often witnessed from my bedroom window the
drug deals, the fights, and the shootings.
It was unavoidable, but unfortunately, the influence of the media had a profound
and sometimes confusing effect on the formation of my identity. I began to wonder if
Latinos ever were portrayed positively on the screen. Sally Fields, Patty Duke, and
Annette Funicello became my role models. In fact, I remember seeing a photograph of
Annette and saying to myself that she looked more Puerto Rican than Italian. I guess it
was just wishful thinking, because I wanted so much to see someone who looked like me
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16. on the screen. No wonder that some Puerto Ricans, including me, wanted to assimilate
and shed their identity, however, notwithstanding that my father wanted me to assimilate
into mainstream America, it proved to be too difficult because of my mulatto features.
When I was younger, I tried everything I could to look and become a “whitey,”
but as I grew older and experienced the resistance to get accepted by “White America,” I
began to identify more and more with the “Other” and began to relate to the non-white
ideology and to be who I was and accept it. I got interested in the poetry of the
“Nuyorican Poets Café,” which explored the social and political experiences of the
Puerto Ricans in New York since their migration. Miguel Algarin (1975) wrote in his
introduction of the Nuyorican Poetry:
The experience of Puerto Ricans on the streets of New York has caused a
new language to grow: Nuyorican…The Nuyorican is a slave class that trades
hours for dollars at the lowest rung of the earning scale. The poems in this
anthology document the conditions of survival. (p 15. )
In order to survive in such settings, one had either to change masks and
assimilate, or to continue the battle to hold on to one’s identity. The Puerto Rican
Esmeralda Santiago, who wrote When I Was A Puerto Rican and When I was A Woman,
(Santiago, 1993) touched on these themes in her books when she says, quot;I don't belong
here. I don't belong there. I don't belong anywhere.quot; (Masterpiece Theatre, n.d.).
Santiago echoes the pleas of a people who tried so hard to find their place in their new
surroundings: the United States of America.
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17. All her life, my mother daydreamed of the day when she would return to Puerto
Rico, she never got to visit Puerto Rico again. She passed away in Brooklyn, New York
in 1987. In The Arrival, I tried to show through performance and video projection the
longing of my mother for the tranquility and peacefulness of Puerto Rico and her
uneasiness with noisy, boisterous, and violent New York City.
In reading Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas (1967), I realized that this
nostalgia for home prevailed with many Puerto Rican families who had moved to New
York in order to find a better life and found nothing but sorrow and hatred instead. It
would always sadden me when I overheard people say “go back to where you came from
if you don’t like it here” and realized that these people did not understand that the United
States had in fact acquired Puerto Rico as a colony. And even though we became citizens
in 1917, we were never fully allowed to participate in the governing process. In time of
war, we were always there to fight for the United States and hoped that we would be
accepted and respected once the war would be over.
We drank hot cocoa and talked about summertime. Momma talked about
Puerto Rico and how great it was, and how she’d like to go back one day, and
how it was warm all the time there and no matter how poor you were over there,
you could always live on green bananas, bacalao, and rice and beans. ‘Dios mio,’
she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see my island again.’ (Thomas, 1952, p. 9)
In his Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, Vega tells of all those moments when the
discrimination towards Puerto Ricans prevailed in the new urban cities, especially in New
York. Because of this, many Puerto Ricans who could lawfully label themselves as
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18. Spaniards would avoid doing so in order to steer clear of racial discrimination. Vega
states,
The other papers continued to stir up ill-feelings toward everything
foreign, and were especially virulent in their treatment of Puerto Ricans. Which
is why some Puerto Ricans, the better-off ones in particular, would try to pass for
“Spaniards” so as to minimize the prejudice against the. There were even those
who went so far as to remain silent in public… They made sure never to read
Spanish newspapers in the subway or to teach Spanish to their children…That’s
right, that’s what they did, I know it for a fact. (Vega, 1977, P. 97)
Some said that my father, a black Puerto Rican, married my mother, a white
Puerto Rican, in order to “whiten” future generations. This became clear to me when I
was dating an African American and my parents showed their opposition to this
relationship and wanted me to marry someone lighter. I was rebellious and so I married
an African American and bore children that were of color.
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19. Context & Influences
The work of Coco Fusco with Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Pepon Osario has been
an inspiration and an influence to my work. Fusco and Gomez-Pena’s performance piece,
Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit…(1991-1992), (Fusco, 1995) is significant to my
work, because it reinforced the notion that the colonial mentality has not been erased. In
my work, I also touch upon how colonialism is still brewing beneath the surface,
especially as it pertains to the people that migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States.
For me, it is not enough anymore to make art for the sake of art, but the work has to
transcend the aesthetic value into a realm of proactivity, especially when it comes to
making change, meaningful change. Throughout Frantz Fanon’s book, Black Skin,White
Masks (1952), he talks about the psychological effects of colonialism and has influenced
me in regards to the troubling effects of colonialism within my work. This feeling of a
lack of self worth, low self-esteem, and low self-image is a symptom of people’s inability
to assimilate and integrate into the dominant White culture in which racism is still
prevalent. For many years, I was made to feel inferior in school, at home, and sometimes
with friends. As a result, when I became involved in an abusive relationship, I felt that I
deserved this situation. I continued to live in a situation where there was constant put
downs of my intelligence and even on how I looked. Like most addictive illnesses, I had
to hit bottom in order to see the light. Thankfully, I did hit bottom and turned my back on
the abuse and moved forward with my life.
If he is overwhelmed to such a degree by the wish to be white, it is
because he lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a
society that derives its stability from the perpetuation of this complex, in a society
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20. that proclaims the superiority of one race; to the identical degree to which that
society creates difficulties for him, he will find himself thrust into a neurotic
situation. (Fanon, 1952, p.100)
Colonialism equates with power and resistance. The power to dominate people
was the case when the United States acquired Puerto Rico from the Spaniards. The
United States felt it was their duty to come into Puerto Rico and “civilize” the people and
make them feel dependent on the United States. They did this by making the natives feel
less intelligent, less able to take care of themselves, and of course, encouraged an
internalized racism in which they felt the need to self-deprecate themselves because they
did not live up to the “American” ideals. All those who have been colonized share the
same psychological effects to colonial domination as stated time and time again in
Fanon’s book “Black Skin, White Masks” (Fanon, 1952).
I decided that I needed to create a body of work that would address the themes
associated with the effects of colonialism. After all, if I didn’t feel comfortable in my
own skin, how could I convince my granddaughter that her color didn’t matter? The title,
Lose the Accent Chiquita! actually began about three years ago for an assignment I was
doing for one of my classes. At the time it was called, “Lose the Accent,” and it consisted
of images from my family album and voiceover to explain how through the years I
perfected my “white accent” in order to assimilate and pass. The project was put on hold
as I wanted to work with non-Latino issues. During this time away from the project, I
began to look closely at performance artists, since I wanted to do more than just project
images with voiceovers. The idea of mixing the elements of performance, video
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21. projection, and voiceovers intrigued me, so I began to look at work created for the
purpose of promoting awareness of social and political issues.
Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s in their 1992-1993 performance, Two
Undiscovered Amerindians Visit (Fusco, 1995), was an experiment showing how
throughout history, non-whites were exhibited by the colonial powers. They called it
“reverse anthropology,” where they used themselves as the object of study. They would
record the responses from the audience and analyze their findings. What they were
hoping for was just a representation of historical events of a fictional colonized subject.
What they did not expect was the reactions they received from the audience, which
showed how the psychological and emotional response of colonialism still persists today.
Like Fusco, I believe that it is through the media, as well as in institutions like schools,
churches, and even the government, that the ugly hand of colonialism continues to
survive. Fusco (1995) states,
…the stereotypes about nonwhite people that were continuously
reinforced by the ethnographic displays are still alive in high culture and the mass
media..embedded in the unconscious, these images from the basis of the fears,
desires and fantasies about the cultural other. (p. 48)
Upon seeing the photograph of Fusco and Gomez-Pena in a cage, I could only
imagine the humiliation they felt. While in the cage, they were curiously examined by the
audience, who even went so far as touching Gomez-Pena’s genitals for a price of five
21

22. dollars. Whenever Fusco or Gomez-Pena needed to go to the bathroom, they were led on
a leash by those they referred to as their “zoo guards.” Interestingly enough, the audience
did not question this treatment. They actually believed that these people in the case were
savages from the wild:
Gomez-Pena found the experience of being continually objectified more
difficult to tolerate than I did. By the end of our first three days in Madrid, we
began to realize not only that people’s assumptions about us were based upon
gender stereotypes, but that my experiences as a woman had prepared me to
shield myself psychologically from the violence of public objectification. (Fusco,
1995, p. 57)
Coco Fusco believed that the display of colonized subjects was the beginning of
intercultural performance during the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby the subjects were
asked to play out their lives and display their bodies in a controlled environment for all
the colonials to observe. It was this observance of differences in language, rituals,
socialization, and so forth, which perpetuated their belief that they were superior to their
colonized subjects.
In Lose the Accent Chiquita!, I wanted to create a body of work in which I could
continue the debate of the effects of colonialism, in particular, the colonial gaze,
displacement, and assimilation. Even though my work did not portray my character as a
direct representation of a Taino, Spanish, or African person, as in the case with Two
Undiscovered Amerindians Visit (Fusco, 1995), I did show the embodiment of an
individual whose life was impacted by colonization. In Fusco and Gomez-Pena’s
enactment, the characters were displaced from their fictional homeland and, in my case, I
22

23. was showing the displacement and its effects on my mother. Displacement and its
ramifications are prevalent in works of many artists of color.
In the works of Pepon Osorio, he creates pieces that reflect and celebrate the
Latino working-class. In Art 21, Osorio states, “And so I think of ways of connecting,
and how my work can connect to those experiences, but also to the idea of displacement,
and the idea of how you move from one place to another.”, which is how many
immigrants came to feel when they came to the border cities of the United States or, as in
my case, from Puerto Rico to New York City. I was inspired by Pepon’s installation
piece, Badge of Honor, where he constructed a jail and a bedroom and projected a father
and son talking to each other from opposite sides of the gallery space. By recognizing the
importance of these art pieces that deal with the “other’s” experiences, the audience can
learn to understand the “others,” as well as their important contributions to the art world
and society. I was particularly intrigued by this piece of work, because it comes close to
what I am trying to do with my work. It portrayed the healing of the father and son
through a difficult time in their own lives. The only difference is that both of them were
able to communicate with each other because they were still present in the world, as
opposed to my mother and I, who had to relate to each other through a reconstruction of
our troubled past through video and performance, because she was now dead.
Re-creating events and putting them together in a cohesive work was what
excited me about Marlon Riggs’ work, in particular Tongues Untied. He was trained in
doing documentary work, but he wanted to include the lived experiences of an African
American man dealing with AIDS, in the form of performances, monologues, poetry, and
even musical presentations, which resulted in an amazing creative expression. He was
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24. one of the first artists to inject himself in the film, as well as to perform with an ensemble
of African American males, touching upon the themes of alienation, sexuality, support
for one another, and of course, identity issues. In other words, he created an
autoethnographic video, in which he does situate himself in connection with what was
going on in the social and cultural world at the time.
The artists inhabit their videos as subjects who articulate their cultural
location through their own subcultural performances as others: poetic teen angst
monologues in the case of Benning, and from Riggs, vibrant snap diva virtuosity
that includes, but is not limited to, dance, music and monologues. (Munoz, p. 89)
24

25. Thesis Design and Description
The performance takes place in the Southern Illinois University Museum in the
South corner. Four shows are given in a period of two days. The only props in the
performance space are a large table, three chairs, vanity mirror, cup and saucer, and a
thermos. There is a box under the table, which houses other props such as a wig, makeup,
shawl, a book with the Nuyorican Anthem inside. There are two speakers on opposite
walls. The speakers are covered with lace tablecloths and statues of saints and candles are
placed on top of the speakers. The statues and candles represent the ones that occupied
my grandmother’s altar in her bedroom. The projector sits on a stand in the middle of the
room. A technical person, Pablo Tobon, maintained the projector during the duration of
the show.
The reason for having the projector in the middle of the room was to project the
video on the entire wall. This was especially important to project the character of
Chiquita, which was going to take up the whole wall in order to be overwhelming and
uncomfortable to the audience. The larger than life Chiquita exaggerates the spitfire
persona, directing her gaze to the audience, taunting and arrogant with her words and
actions. In other words, the colonized is exuding power over the audience in the form of
the “gaze.” She is taking the power away from those who are gazing at her, as well as
toying with the psychological push and pull of power, as Schroeder (2002) remarks: “To
gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in
which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze” (p. 58). However, Chiquita is doing
more than exuding power, she is setting up a relationship between both parties, in order
25

26. to make the viewer accountable for treating the Latina unfairly as a hot blooded sex
maniac, or, in other words, as an object.
Chiquita is also made up as a clownish figure, which lends itself to a duality of
identities. Clowns have always been depicted as happy-go-lucky characters, but with a bit
of tragedy embedded in them. In my photography work and now in my video work, I
utilize the clown, because in many ways I am using it as a mask to hide my own identity.
Since there is a history of self-hatred, I thought it would be a good idea to hide behind the
mask in order to make it easier for the shy Bennie (me) to come out. Cindy Sherman’s
series about clowns echoes some of my thoughts on the use of clowns:
I still wanted the work to be the same kind of mixture - intense, with a
nasty side or an ugly side, but also with a real pathos about the characters - and
[clowns] have an underlying sense of sadness while they're trying to cheer people
up. Clowns are sad, but they're also psychotically, hysterically happy. (Tate
Magazine, 2008)
The characters in the script were meant to interact with the screen as if the action
of the story was taking place in real time, with a “live” actor talking to the images that are
projected on the screen. Using this technique made the performances uncanny and
surreal. In future performances, I would utilize the projector from the back of the room,
so as not to interfere with the actions of the actor.
The decision to have the performances in the museum was intended to create a
carnivalesque atmosphere, as was the practice of the colonials when they would exhibit
non-white indigenous people in order to display their conquests. Carnivalesque,
according to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, is a term used to describe the notion that rules
26

27. and beliefs can be temporarily liberating from the rigid and constrained social order of
the village or city (Wikipedia, Bakhtin) . In other words, anything goes in the carnivals,
just as in the carnivals of Rio. It was my hope that my thesis show would result in a
carnivalesque experience within the confines of an institutional setting, such as the
museum. In future performances, the carnivalesque experience would become more
pronounced.
The performance begins with a persona dressed in top hat, cane, and white gloves.
Her face is painted white. My decision to make the narrator/ringmaster a payaso—
Spanish for clown—was based on what clowns stood for throughout history, in literature
and film. In an essay by Meredith Anne Skura, Shakespeare’s Clowns and Fool, she
quotes Susanne Langer: “Tumbling and stumbling through one disaster and another, the
clown shows a brainy opportunism in the face of an essentially dreadful universe.”
(Skura, 1993)
As the show opens, the payaso invites the people to gather and witness the
performance. She converses with the audience as they enter, as well as makes comments
that relate to the show itself: “Step right in, step right in…come see the exotic ladies of
the Latin persuasion.” The statement is a prelude to the first vignette regarding spitfires
and the notions of desire and fear. It is the character of Chiquita who lures the audience
with desire—a desire that makes a person open one eye when something is seductive and
lurid at the same time, in much the same way as when Coco Fusco and Guillermo
Gomez-Pena performed their cage show. People were curious, but at the same time, they
felt uneasy because of the mirror that was figuratively placed in front of them to see the
make-believe indigenous people being exhibited in much the same way as when
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28. indigenous people were displayed in Europe or early America for the sake of
entertainment.
During the course of the Spitfire segment, the narrator, still in white face, speaks
to the viewer and gives commentary to the Latinas being paraded on screen. It is a
dialogue of the stereotyping that has plagued Latina women, as well as other people of
color, in the Western culture:
In particular his role was to mediate between the play and the audience,
whether to gather the crowds and collect money as clowns had done for road
shows, or to provide between-act diversions which appealed more directly than
the play did to the crowd already gathered. Often he commented on or parodied
the action, just the way a spectator might; or he made reference to himself as
actor.” (Skura, 1993)
At the close of the commentary, the narrator introduces Chiquita, then the narrator
sits at the table, with her back facing the audience. As Chiquita gives her comments on
what it feels like to be marginalized as a spitfire, the narrator is removing her white face
makeup. Chiquita taunts the audience with seductive facial expressions as well as
language, in order to incite the audience’s desires and fears. As Chiquita asks the
audience, “Do you want to see what the real Chiquita looks like?,” the narrator stands and
faces the audience. It is a stance of defiance and power. (In the video, I utilize a split
screen to show the faces in this scene up close and personal.) Chiquita fades, and the
narrator walks to the other side of the table, sits and as she is putting on regular makeup,
28

29. she is singing a Spanish love song, Historia de un Amor (The Story of a Love). The song
is the theme song of the narrator as well as the character’s mother.
The vignette The Visit now takes place. As the character is singing and humming
the song, the screen behind the character is transforming into a kitchen, and in the
background you could also hear a woman’s voice singing the same song. Slowly a
woman appears as she continues to sing the song and is flipping through a magazine and
occasionally sips from a cup. The character soon recognizes the voice and begins to turn
around slowly. She is startled to see that it is the ghost of her mother. After the singing
ceases, a conversation begins between daughter (narrator) and mother. The conversation
touches upon the cultural differences, alienation, assimilation, and racism, all of which
are a result of the effects of colonialism. At the conclusion of the conversation, the
mother begins to disappear and the daughter stands up, faces the screen, and then touches
the screen as if saying a final goodbye. The background remains as the kitchen while the
daughter turns and walks towards the audience, at which time she begins a monologue
reflecting on what just happened, as well as injecting commentary on the issues regarding
colonial effects that were touched upon. In concluding the monologue she asks the
question, “What was she thinking when she realized that she was leaving her family and
friends and heading to Nueva Yol?”
It is at this point the narrator/daughter walks back to the table and puts on a wig
and puts a red shawl around her shoulders. The significance of the two items is important
because the wig is straight which reflects the mother’s whiteness and also signifies that
the daughter is acting as her mother now. The red shawl first of all signifies a wrap that is
also used as a head covering in church, and it is red because of the implication of
29

30. “spitfire” to denote the Latina stereotype. It is then we are transported to The Arrival
vignette of the performance. In this scene, the mother is reminiscing about the paradise
she is leaving in Puerto Rico. The song, En Mi Viejo San Juan (In My Old San Juan), is
sung in the background. The song is important here because the words of the song signify
leaving a homeland and going to a new place—New York. As she continues to sing along
and dance in front of the video screen with scenes of Puerto Rico—palm trees, ocean, and
tranquility—we see in her face this longing and sadness at the same time. The future is
uncertain and the mother is fearful of what lies in store.
The scene on the screen fades into what seems like a plane moving away from the
island and then quickly, the video changes into a busy and bustling city scene. The
soundtrack is a cacophony of droning music, loudness, and city sounds. The mother is
seen as frantic, unnerved, and helpless. She walks around in the space as if the walls are
closing in on her. At times, you hear voices, “go back where you came from….you dirty
spic!,” all of which makes the woman more nervous and uneasy. At one point she begs
the audience to help her. She asks for reassurance by asking if someone speaks Spanish.
She speaks only in Spanish. The reason for this is to prompt the audience to feel what it
would be like to not be able to understand another language besides English, the
dominant language of the United States, and also to experience the alienation that the
mother is feeling. As the scene begins to die down, the woman’s posture slumps as if to
say she gives up. She then slowly returns to the table, and as she returns to the table she
slowly pulls off her wig to signify that the mother is reverting back to the daughter. At
this time, the video continues to show city life and the woman grabs a book and reads the
poem of Pedro Pietre, Nuyorican Poet, The Spanish National Anthem, a parody of the
30

31. song played at the beginning of the scene, En Mi Viejo San Juan. In this version, Pedro
talks about how the American Dream eluded the Puerto Rican immigrants who wanted to
experience opportunities away from the Puerto Rican poverty that prevailed on the island.
The Arrival was the name of this scene, and it is significant here in that when you
think of arriving, most often you think of adventure, optimism, and hope for a better life.
When the daughter ends her recitation of the poem, the video fades to black and she
walks to the edge of the table, takes out a letter and begins to read a letter to her daughter.
The letter addresses the themes of colonialism as in the earlier vignettes, but it also
addresses the next generation of immigrants and how one copes with the trials of being a
Latina woman, of being mulatta, of being black, and of how to address the future to make
it a better place for the coming generations.
At the conclusion of this scene, the daughter talks about how religion played a big
part in their lives, especially since her father and grandmother—both black Puerto
Ricans—had to adjust to the dominant Christian religion. Her mother, who was white,
embraced the Catholic Church as the acceptable form of worship. She did not accept the
fact that both her husband and her mother-in-law believed in the Yoruba religion of the
African slave. After all, embracing Santeria would cast them as uncivilized, according to
the colonial rule. The daughter then returns to the table, places the red shawl on her head,
and walks towards the chair, which was placed in front of the screen and in front of the
audience. The scene, Pray, is a confessional scene, in which the daughter confesses her
sins for absolution and healing. But there is another end result of this ritual, and that is
the overwhelming struggle and tension between the Christian religion of the colonizer
and the African religion of the colonized. This is manifested in the video and by the
31

32. soundtrack which is playing in the background, which is a combination of Christian
chants juxtaposed with African drums and chants. As the scene progresses and the
daughter is reciting her penance, the image of the back of a woman is seen while she is
flagellates herself with a whip. This is a visual metaphor for “beating herself up” for the
sins she has committed. The sins do not only relate to moral and religious offenses, but
also to the sins of negotiating between the colonizer versus the colonized idea of sins. As
the drums begin to get louder, the daughter goes into a trance state. There are moments
where she vacillates between the two religions, by interjecting the prayers of each faith.
The scene rises to a crescendo and the daughter sits back down on the chair in
exhaustion. There is no indication of which faith the daughter chooses, because there is
no answer. The answer would be up to interpretation by the audience. When this scene
concludes, the daughter goes back to the table, grabs her top hat, and walks towards the
audience.
At this time she addresses the audience and briefly talks about the effects of
colonialism, as it relates to immigration. This particular scene was a bit shaky for me.
How do I sum up all that has happened in the previous scenes? How do I sum up my life?
Because I had a difficult time with it, it was short. Perhaps it is because I still had
problems in making sense of it all and coming to grips with my identity. I used some
suggestions from Antonio Martinez, Assistant Professor, Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale, Cinema and Photography Department, but due to time constraints, I did not
manage to carry it through. I did want to do justice to the piece with his suggestions, but
my memory was failing me as I have a difficult time in memorization. In the final video,
I decided to use two people to stand in for the White and the Latino, and I would remain
32

33. as the narrator. The scene was shot in the performance room of the speech
communications department because of the lighting already there. I think the lighting
added to the atmosphere.
33

34. Conclusion/Observations
Lose the Accent Chiquita! was a healing process for me. I had to confront the
demons that had been close by my side for most of my life. When I finally decided to do
this project, I was not sure that I could open my Pandora’s Box. I refused to talk about the
baggage that I was carrying. In fact I did not even recognize the symptoms of
colonialism. But I knew the time had come to chase the demons away and open the box
so that I could handle the issues that could arise as a result of my adopting my multiracial
grandchildren. The project came together slowly. I hesitated at times to face the truth,
but I could not wait any longer. Time was running out. Having done my show I can’t say
I am completely healed…no one ever does, do they? I still feel the insecurities, self-
hatred and yes, sometimes paranoia because in my past, things happened that made me
apprehensive about my abilities, both physically and intellectually. In looking back, the
project has made a lasting impression, so much so that I do want to continue this research
when I continue my studies in Amsterdam. The project will continue to evolve as I
evolve and as I get older and confront whatever happens to my grandchildren.
Soon I will be making a journey, much like the journey my mother made 55 years
ago. I will be living in a country where the language is foreign to me. Where the culture
is still illusive and still out of reach to what I am accustomed to. I did experience that a
few years ago, when I went to the wedding of my husband’s niece and they sat my
husband and me with all Dutch people. Although my husband was happy to be talking in
Dutch, all I could hear was garbled sounds. It was like being in a movie where the camera
is on the protagonist and the people are revolving around her with lips moving, sounds
34

35. coming out of their mouths, and I was the frightened woman who could not speak the
language. At times, there would be someone at the table who would talk to me in English,
but then revert to Dutch. At one point, I was in tears because I felt like I was totally lost
in a crowd of chatter that I could not understand. It must have been the same feeling my
mother felt when she arrived in the United States. That August day, I finally felt what my
mother had felt for so many years. So, I will journey to the Netherlands, but I will be
mentally prepared to handle what I need to handle. It won’t be easy and who knows if I,
too, will resist learning the language. My grandkids are young and I guess they may feel
what I felt as a young girl growing up in the Bronx. They will probably learn the
language quickly, but what is still unknown to me, is whether or not they will feel
differently because of the color of their skin. Chiquita was important to me and will
continue to be important as I move through this life of “difference” and “tolerance.” It
would be nice if, during my remaining years, I could feel secure with myself and where I
came from.
Two Identities, one self
Choices? Make them!
Surviving…through another day.
Does anybody really care?
Of course….
I’ll always be a Nuyorican? Now and always. Punto! (Beretta, 2007)
35

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