I am both
by Ana Cecilia Lopez

I am both:    The one who speaks English and the one who speaks Spanish
                  The one who is American and the one who is Guatemalan
                  I am Ana, as the officials call me, and I am Ceci, to my friends
                  The one who loves men and the one who has loved women
                  The one who is half Indian and the other half is not
                  I am mother and I am daughter
                  The one who is reflection and the one who is projection
                  The one who goes to college and the one who learns Indian chores
                  I am now. And I am . a work in progress .

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia:

                  Culture is usually acquired through enculturation, the process through which an older                   generation induces and compels a younger generation to reproduce the established lifestyle;                   consequently, culture is embedded in one's way of life. Culture is difficult to quantify,                   because it frequently exists at an unconscious level, or at least tends to be so pervasive                   that it escapes everyday thought (Columbia Encyclopedia, 1993, p 696).

If culture, as defined by the Columbia Encyclopedia, is transmitted within generations, then I am the very same thing I wish to change. I was born and raised in a patriarchal, sexist and oppressive society. As a woman, I was not supposed to think for myself or be strong for myself. I was expected to get married, have children, stay at home, and do as I was told by my husband, his family, my family, and society. But I did not. I refused. I rejected my place in society because I saw the misery of the women around me. I did not want to live like my parents or my neighbors. I learned to see my life as something I held in my hands. I realized that I had certain power over my own life. When I was pregnant at age 16, I decided not to get married right away. I realized that people would criticize me no matter what I did, so I put a brave face and carried my big stomach with pride. I defined my boundaries and only allowed in my life those who would support me. I became somewhat of an icon in my neighborhood and school. After my cultural defiance, parents in the neighborhood were more willing to support their pregnant teens without forcing them to get married. I did eventually marry my son's father two years later, only to get divorced after six months of living together. The reason for the divorce? I continued to demand respect and equality which I was not receiving. With this decision, I earned the titles of whore, disgraceful, dishonest, and many others from my ex-father-in-law.

What is my culture? What did I inherit from my ancestors? Am I able to relate with my culture? As I pondered in these questions, I realize how easily I left out the forces of Social Class . In my dad's family, social class, prestige and community status are very important. With this in mind, I try to find in my house traces or clues that define me as part of a Guatemalan and/or American culture. But mostly I find clues of personal values, family values and personal priorities. Clues of choices I have made that have affected and changed my life and my family. I have chosen to buy books instead of a cell phone, and I have chosen to buy a computer rather than a car. I realize that cell phones and cars are signs of status in both my Guatemalan and American culture. To me, these are unnecessary gadgets right now. So I make a statement of who I am by reflecting my personal needs at this moment only. I see choices everywhere. Leather boots, jacket and helmet for my scooter. Acrylic paints, brushes and canvas for my art. Wool and needles for knitting. Tons of books everywhere. And lots of shoes. I left a good paying job for college education. With every choice I make, I change and I evolve. Where did I learn this? How do I even know about books, or knitting, or painting?

I suppose this is enculturation. My mom's dad, with whom I was very close, spent his life reading books of all kinds. The first gift I remember from him was a complete set of story books, with big letters and lots of pictures. I can even smell them now. The knitting and painting come from my mother. She was a stay at home mom, and dedicated her life to crafts.

My mom's mom is my favorite grandma. I have always seen her with admiration and she has been my role model. I have always wanted to be like her: strong, determined and humble. She has defended herself physically and emotionally and has defended others from harm. Her hands are big and rough with strong healing powers; she has the perfect grandma hands. Her hands can accomplish anything. She is proud, courageous and headstrong. She is also quiet, reserved and very private.

From my mother I also learned guilt and blame. Distance and silence. After I decided to divorce my son's father, my mother stopped talking to me for three entire months. Everyday, I would try, but there was a wall. A sound proof wall. Why was my mother acting like this when I needed her the most? The answer gets complicated. It is entangled with culture, personal experiences, religion and expectations. Columbia Encyclopedia tells me that "culture is embedded in one's way of life", and my mom's reaction to my divorce announcement is a clear example. Her Guatemalan culture tells her that she needs to marry her girl-child into a "good" family. Because I already had a child, she felt that I could never get married again simply because no one would like to marry a woman and live with someone else's kid. If a woman doesn't get married, her whole life is ruined as she does not have the economic support needed for surviving. She is seen as the "easy" kind who is never taken seriously, meaning that men only look at her as a sex object. This perspective always made me laugh because everyone around me seemed to be pretty miserable regardless of marital status. The only difference I saw was that I did not have to suffer to someone else's rule. My family always told me that I was not a real woman. That bailing out was for the weak. In their view "real women suffer." My mom's personal experiences where of oppression and abuse. This, I think limited her perspective on possibilities for empowerment and demanding respect. After talking to her recently, she told me that she was raped by a family friend when she was seven years-old. She has never told anyone else, ever. Today, she is an independent woman and has immigrated to the U.S. She lives in Chicago where she works as a domestic helper and prides herself on making it for herself.

I hear the term intergenerational trauma, and I play with the word. Would this be the doorway to the deepest ME? What did I get from my mom that I am not seeing? Where do I start and where does she end? Burdens that are not mine. Burdens of inconsolable pain; how do I see my own and stand away from hers? Intergenerational trauma. The word sounds like a phantom that follows me around. My mom's phantoms are with me, she passed them on to me, but I did not want them. Her secret revealed. I can see her pain; and her silence now has meaning. Yet, it is still silent and it still hurts. With a new perspective, I love her. With a renewed sense, I cry for her. For that pain, for that trauma, for child rape, for child abuse, for what she suffered and never told. I can understand better her coldness and distance. I was not a bad child. I was a child. I had a childhood that she protected with envy. I always felt her coldness and distance, and thought it was my fault. Now I see that she was only envious of the innocence I had and which was stolen from her. When I decided to divorce my son's dad, I was gaining my freedom to "be", and she was envious. She questioned me for getting out of a bad relationship when she had to endure 30 years of unhappiness and misery just for her children. She had suffered enculturation and could not see a way out. I also recognize the incredible sacrifices my mom made for me and my brother. She started her days very early and worked all day to fulfill her stay at home duties. For a couple of years, she walked two miles under heavy rains, chilly mornings, wind and storms to drop me off and pick me up from the school bus. Nonetheless, her distance and coldness left me with guilt, shame, and undeniable issues of inadequacy. Now, I am able to recognize my need to impress those who I perceive as authority figures, and because I never got my mom's approval, I have come to believe that nothing I do is ever going to be good enough. This results in self inflicted pressure to overachieve, but no matter how hard I try, it never seems good enough. This sense is aggravated in a society where even those who look like me perceive me as a minority, reinforcing my feeling of powerlessness and my need to prove myself, where, again, any efforts immediately become inadequate.

How could I live without my mother's love? Ever since I can remember, I have craved it and have looked for it. But I did not find it. I looked all over. First with first grader cards, then with stupid 3 rd grader songs, and then with grown up coffee or tea, but it was never there. It was my grandma's love that kept me going; in my heart I adopted her as my mom. I still work hard to get my mom's approval, I still try to be loved unconditionally, but I am just met with emptiness. Whoever hurt my mother hurt me and my son as well.

When my son was born, I protected him. I did not want my mom's frozen heart to get a hold of his. I loved him every second. I wanted to ignite the fire in his heart to burn so hot that it would melt my mom's frozen one. But it did not work. My son and I became so attached to each other that my mom only distanced herself more. What do I know about love? Not much and very much. I know of the way a mother does not love her child, and I know of the way a mother loves her child. I am both.

My culture is one of silence, pain, sexism, family pressures, "growing-too-quickly" child responsibilities, oppression, classism, and discrimination. At the same time, it is one of dance, good looks and wildness, raw feelings, danger, one-day-at-a-time, music, hard work, books, persistence, survival, strength, hardships, love, death and life. Labels.

It means that I am made of contradictions. A member and an outcast. Unable to stay silent and to hold the pain, unable to succumb to sexism, oppression and family pressures, I do not belong. I want answers for my questions, so I do not belong. I expose and reject the prejudice my family holds, so I do not belong. I am dangerous: I inquire, so I do not belong. I speak Spanish so I belong. I dance, so I belong. I speak English, so I belong.

When I define my own culture I see no other culture like it. I am free and I am wild. I am me, an individual not a collective, but thirsty for a community. I have rejected the imposed Guatemalan labels that keep me subjugated. I am a survivor not a victim. I have rejected the imposed American labels that keep me oppressed. I can be insecure and eloquent. Passive or aggressive, I can choose. I will face the consequences. But I can choose. I embrace my American freedom as much as my Guatemalan gift for recognizing oppression. I am both.

I have been given the gift of education. My parents, transcending the Guatemalan culture of low literacy, saw the importance of education. They emphasized bilingual education as they recognized the role of the United States in the global economy. My place was to become the next generation of house wives who could also hold a job. This is the trend I saw: Women who work as many hours in the market place and go home to run their households, take care of the kids, cook, and take care of the husband. I could never do that. My father is a typical patriarchal Guatemalan macho. One time, he wanted me to get up from eating only to refill his coffee when the coffee pot was right behind him. When I refused, the got so mad, he told me that he would not be surprised if I never re-married. That he would not intervene if my future husband or boyfriend beat me up, because I would deserve it. Because I was not subjecting myself to submission, any kind of violence against me would be justified. How can I ever embrace my Guatemalan culture when it spells my value with such violence? No. I do not belong. The silence around these issues can easily be mistaken by family tightness. I shriek when I hear the romanticism of the Hispanic family, "oh so tight and committed to each other". Dysfunctional, oppressive, repressive and violent it is; however, I continue to love and miss my family. Maybe some people had it great, I don't know and I may never know because no one ever talks about it.

My Public Life: Given my own experience in America , I have to agree with Richard Rodriguez's view on access to the public language. For me, learning English has meant the difference between factory and high profile management jobs. It has been the difference of $0.08 p/hour and $18.00 p/hour compensation. It has been by adopting the American culture where ever I am, that I have developed friendships and support networks to guarantee my survival. As a kid, I learned to morph and it has proven to be one of my most valuable tools. I learned this from my parents; I saw them morph to ensure our survival.

My conclusion: My identity and culture have been constantly evolving and have never been static. The external forces that have formed me have given me the tools to grow and go through the transformation to achieve what I see as my life . At the same time, I realize that my life is not separate from the people around me; we are forces transforming each other. We are the building blocks of future generations in the same way as those who came before have been the blocks that support us. I think that this is the idea behind close knit families and communities. I see the importance of those who break through the expected cultural norms as an opportunity to weed out those things that prevent a positive identity of individuals and the continued evolution of the collective. In this light is how I see Richard Rodriguez, Condoleeza Rice, and a handful of my mentors, not as tokens or tools of white supremacy, but as examples of what is possible, as inspiration of what can be achieved -what I can achieve. As individuals, they are entitled to their own opinions and experiences and by separating them based on what is culturally expected from them because of their ethnic/cultural identity is equally damaging as if they where not there. Perhaps we criticize them because they are the minority within our group. I think that self-segregation based on skin color is dangerous. I advocate for access to the tools that would take us to an equal plain of existence as those whom we perceive as dominant. This process is flexible and means something different for each of us. In a perfect world, we would be able to define ourselves in as many ways as we want and to develop at our own pace. We would recognize that diversity is necessary and each of us is important to the development of each other and our communities.

Now what? I wish we had a reset button in our head. I go around thinking, and analyzing my moods. I see my son behaving in ways that I cannot comprehend. He is angry. He is fed-up with life. And he doesn't even know why. I wonder how much of my mom's incest have I transmitted to him. I observe his posturing. He laughs at life. But I also see how he sabotages his capability. He is afraid of being great. He is afraid of having all the answers right. He needs to fail, at least a little, because he does not want to shine. Unnoticed. He is my mirror.

I wonder if this was the way my mom felt around her predator? Was she always trying to disappear? Vanish. Was this why she kept so distant? Cold. Nonexistent. I feel the urge to do something. I want to stop this cycle now. Here. But it is not easy to undo 50-something years of emptiness. I have stepped out from my blind spot. After all, I am not a victim I am a survivor. And this is how I continue to evolve.

Ana Cecilia Lopez, "Ceci," was born in Guatemala , Central America where she lived until she moved to Minneapolis , MN in 1995. Ceci is currently attending Fairhaven College and seeks an undergraduate degree that would allow her to further her interests in cultural diversity, identity, civil rights and social justice. Her long term goal is to seek opportunities with the United Nations doing Civil Rights or Humanitarian work.

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