Ever since the 1960s, it's been hammered into the national consciousness that racial and ethnic slurs are a Big
No-No. That to indulge openly in them denotes backwardness, ignorance and a lack of compassion and understanding for your fellow person. But somehow the caveat has excluded Cubans.
Somehow, it's OK to dump on us.
So please understand that we do get fed up with it. And please excuse us if every now and then, we choose to strike back.
This is one of those moments.
Hispanic Link
News Service just carried a diatribe by Julio Morán, executive director of the Los Angeles-based California Chicano News Media Association, in which he poses the question “What is it with Cuban women in
L.A.?”
While the question offers some food for thought, it also suggests that all Cuban women in Los Angeles are suffering from some sort of collective, post-tropical PMS.
As a Cuban woman living in New
York, I would like to respond.
In his piece, Morán chastises Hollywood television producer Nely Galán and Los Angeles Times writer Alisa Valdés-Rodríguez, both Cubans, for publicly offering their
extraordinary takes on ethnic awareness.
Galán relates in an interview with The Miami Herald that she does not consider herself Latina, and that Latinos in Los Angeles suffer from an inferiority
complex and despise Cubans.
Valdés-Rodríguez writes that she does not identify with the term “Latino” or “Hispanic” because “people believe it means cinnamon brown with a Spanish surname.”
Then Morán
goes on to explain just why other U.S. Latinos do not like Cubans.
He says that we're “divisive” and “elitist,” and that we “cling to our Caucasoid racial description.” He could have added that we grow no
hairs on our tongues — that we speak sin pelos en la lengua, Spanish for being brutally frank.
Although Galán's and Valdés-Rodríguez's candor is admittedly hard to stomach and oh-so-politically
incorrect, I believe I know where it comes from.
Let me try to explain.
First of all, understand that most Cubans in the United States haven't yet learned how to make the right political noises because
they just haven't had to do it:
a) They've been culturally isolated down in South Florida for a long time.
b) They dominate that place, and Cubans elsewhere view this as irrefutable proof of genetic
superiority.
c) They've succeeded on their own, so they don't see the need to put up with anyone else.
This is the kind of mentality that fueled Galán's and Valdés-Rodríguez's comments.
But there's
lots more. Since Morán's initial query — “What is it with Cuban women?” — carries intimations of pre-menstrual syndrome, we can phrase it all in terms of syndromes.
First, there's the Invisible Cuban
Syndrome (which happens mostly outside of Miami). It involves walking into Latino places and being met with you-don't-belong-here stares. Speaking Spanish won't remedy the situation because then someone will
blurt out some variation of “Funny, you don't look Latina.” Sorry, I left my maracas at home.
What is a Latino supposed to “look” like, anyway?
Most Cubans, who are very well grounded in their
own culture, take offense at having their Latino identity questioned in such a clumsy manner.
Then there's the Battered Cuban Syndrome. Whenever a Cuban American issue becomes national news, grab your
shotguns; it's open season on Cubans. The recent Elián González imbroglio was a perfect example. Day after day, I witnessed columnists, news commentators, talk-show guests and community leaders deriding
“crazy Cubans,” “rich, right-wing Cubans,” “extremist Cubans,” “obsessed Cubans,” “navel-gazing Cubans” etc., etc., etc., etc.
Enough is enough, already.
Just what would happen if anyone dared speak
about “crazy blacks,'' “extremist Jews,” “obsessed Puerto Ricans” or “navel-gazing Mexicans” in the U.S. media?
What shocked me the most is that many of these comments came from other Latinos and persons
of color, who should know better. I've never seen any other U.S. ethic group so openly showered with such undiluted vitriol.
Worse, these anti-Cuban comments were often “balanced” by others that made
Fidel Castro look like Martha Stewart.
There are volumes of examples of anti-Cuban-American rhetoric carried unchallenged as truth in the U.S. press. They feed behaviors such as Miami witnessed recently,
when dozens of members of the non-Cuban community took to hurling bananas at City Hall as their commentary on the Cuban mayor's politics.
What would happen if Washington, D.C., whites started throwing
watermelons at the feet of Anthony Williams, their African-American mayor? Or if New York City voters threw pizza at Mayor Rudy Giuliani? Or if the white population in El Paso, Texas, threw tacos at Mayor
Carlos Ramírez?
All hell would break loose, that's what.
Patricia Duarte is a freelance editor living in New York.
© Hispanic Link News Service. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
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