Dear Yreina Cervantez,

               I am a Senior at Loyola Marymount University, and I am currently taking a Chicano/a Studies course with Professor Alma Lopez. More specifically, the course title is Chicanas/Latinas in the U.S. The main focus of the class is to examine social, historical, and cultural influences that have formed Chicana feminist thought in the U.S. As a class, we are examining the literary and visual works of Chicana/Latina artists, writers, and activists and incorporating that to our society. Our main objective this semester is to work on a class website project which will incorporate Chicana/Latina artists, writers, and activists in the U.S. A main prerequisite is that the artists, writers, and activists must not have a current personal website of their own. Each student was given the option of choosing their own Chicana/Latina to work on and research for the website. I chose to focus my research on you because I found your artwork to be very intriguing, and representative of Chicana identity.
               My main purpose for this letter is to inform you of what I have learned thus far in this Chicano/a Studies course, and find a way to connect certain concepts to your own work. After doing quite some research on yourself, as well as your artwork, I chose one major concept from each of the two books that we have read in class. Alma Lopez introduced to us Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities by Laura Perez, and the much acclaimed Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua. Now, I must admit that I enjoyed reading Anzaldua’s book more that Chicana Art; I felt that Borderlands provided me with very clear concepts that I myself was able to relate to, both as a Chicana and a Lesbian, while Perez’s book was harder to follow. With that being said, the first concept/term I chose is “Nepantla” from Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities, and the second concept is the “Cultural Tyranny” found in Anzaldua’s Borderlands.
               From what I have learned, both from Perez’s book and my own research, Nepantla is a Nahuatl word meaning “the land in the middle” or a reference to being in between. From my understanding, it is to exist within a border where there is a disassociation with one’s identity. From a different perspective, it can mean being stuck in between two places, or between order and disorder. As human beings, we constantly live in a state of instability in the crossroads. More specifically, the term refers to a culture and people that have become marginalized post-conquest, and now engage in resistance strategies in order to survive. Often seen as “neither one nor the other”, it leads to a creation of a new middle. In the chapter of “Spirits, Glyphs”, Perez refers to Nepantla as a post-conquest state, and said that a lot of colonized people painted and wrote in the middle of the transformation and devastation of their cultures and own identities. One thing I found interesting about this chapter is when Perez says that “la cultura cura”, so this theme can be seen in a lot of contemporary “spirit glyphs” by both Chicana artists and writers. Besides using your artwork as an example in the book, Laura Perez uses Frances Salome España’s “Nepantla” from Sacred Confessions and Holy Smoke...The Confessions Trilogy to further explain this term. It is really interesting to see how she interprets the still images of a “live” contemporary woman and the souls in purgatory that shadow her. The woman is shown in “sexy” attire almost as if seducing the camera, but when looking at the videos in slow motion, there is a different message that is conveyed to the audience. The woman begins to appear stuck in a space where only the black girdle comes into full view. According to Perez, the girdle symbolizes bodily and social constrictions imposed on women, so the space that the woman is stuck in between is “the culturally difficult space occupied by those Latina women caught between Christian religious and social discourses of gender that dichotomize women as spiritual or carnal, angels or whores” (Perez, 36). Nepantla, in this sense, is the space where these two different sides meet which creates a never-ending social punishment for Chicana/Latina women. This then leads to women being self-disciplined in fulfilling specific gendered and social roles. I saw this as a more modern way of looking at Nepantla, and as something that can definitely be applied to Chicanas, including myself. In my perspective, I am stuck in between religious and social discourses of gender as well because being raised Catholic; there are things I have been taught that are considered wrong, so how do I find a way to live my own life while adjusting to the norm? I feel like sometimes you can’t and this is what I see as “Nepantla”, finding a happy medium for myself and resisting the mainstream which ultimately is the space between right and wrong, both in a cultural and social sense.
               It makes a bit easier to talk about your work, when you have a series of lithographs named Nepantla, Mi Nepantla, and Beyond Nepantla. Although Laura Perez talks specifically about your work, I first want to analyze your art through my own eyes. In Mi Nepantla, I see part of which is your self-portrait and a dot on the middle of the forehead. There are also mountains and your eyes are closed. To me, this symbolizes you remembering or imagining your identity/culture as you knew it before. Perhaps it is thinking of a state that was pre-colonization and post-conquest because of the fact that there are a lot of older Aztec symbols, as well as an image of you as a child. The image of the child looks happier, while a lot of the rest looks very chaotic as if you’re stuck in a conflicting state where you feel your identity has been damaged. Beyond Nepantla is very similar, but I see more of an evolution that takes place, as oppose to you envisioning the past. There is a whirlwind where a lot has been destroyed as to symbolize that is the past that no longer exists which was taken away. Now in terms of Perez’s actual analysis of your work, the first panel she describes as being a struggle between two culture legacies, but at the same time there are symbols that signify balance. This balance is between all beings amid the ongoing change. In the second panel, Perez interprets you as being in a state of meditation with glyphs of Coyolxauqui. I did not know what those glyphs meant before, but now it makes sense when she explains it as you speaking of your own damage that you’ve experienced as a Chicana artist. Your artwork clearly depicts being in a state where there is a range of gendered and racialized cultural losses, but still being able to grasp what is left. In the third panel, various Indian cultures are presented. According to Perez, your work suggests that perhaps what the effects of colonial histories represent may be transformed in viewing them from the nonhierarchical traditional American Indian way. The multiple layers that you create in the Nepantla series bring about a new kind of meaning through the systems of different cultures. I think the way that Nepantla can really be applied is the fact that you maintain that balance, while acknowledging the other conflicting sides.
               The second concept I would like to introduce to you is “Cultural Tyranny”, which is a concept found in Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. I originally wanted to discuss the idea of the Coatlicue State, but I feel that it too close relates to Nepantla. From what I understood of the Coatlicue State is that it serves as a way for Chicanas to decolonize their minds. In other words, I view Nepantla as a colonized state, while Coatlicue is resisting the main stream and going through the process of “transculturation”. Without going into further detail of the Coatlicue State, I would much rather speak about Cultural Tyranny because I feel I can make a bigger connection with that term to some of your other artwork. From my own understanding, Cultural Tyranny is culture oppressed upon us the way men want it to be. The people in power, men, are the ones that make up culture. Here, men are dominant while the women are submissive and carry on those laws that men dictate. This was one of my favorite parts of the book because of the many examples that Anzaldua provides. I was able to relate on so many levels because especially in the Chicano community, women are expected to follow very subservient roles. Women were not given the fourth choice of having an education before, and now I’m so lucky to be given that opportunity and follow a different path in life that my mother and grandmother could not do. Like a lot of other Mexican women, they married, had children and that was their role. They live the domestic life, but that’s not something that I am interested in doing. Now I can be something other than just a housewife, but commonly within our culture, women do not go out of the norm and prefer to do it the “man” way. The main purpose of a woman has always been to be a mother, and if one does not fall within that spectrum, we’re made to feel total failures. Even at my young age of 21, I constantly have aunts and uncles who ask when I’m going to have a boyfriend or when I’ll get married, as if that’s the only choice I have. My answer is always that I’m too busy with school, but in reality, I’m too busy deviating from the sexual common because it does not fit who I am.
Although I may be wrong, when I think of Cultural Tyranny, your La Ofrenda mural is what comes to mind. Maybe you do not necessarily mean to portray that, but there are a few connections I can make. In La Ofrenda, you retell the story of the Chicano/a movement, placing Dolores Huerta in the middle of the mural. That is what makes the mural so powerful because you put a woman in the center of the movement, when you could have easily put Cesar Chavez instead. This is important because it symbolizes all the work that was done by Chicana activists during the Chicano movement which was too often downplayed and overshadowed by the importance claimed by men in the movement. Women worked extremely hard in daily activities, doing most of the grassroots organizing. Men did most of the strategizing sessions, away from women, which did not involve the actual Chicano community. I am not enouncing the fact that men played a big part in the movement, but I am simply giving credit to the women activist who worked even harder. You showcase this in your mural because you go against the cultural tyranny and against the idea that women were supposed to stay at home and let the men do the work. Even though many times the men were the ones with the leader positions, in your mural you choose to put Huerta as the leader. You not only do that, but the mural is placed in a rural community amongst the everyday life of Chicano community where much of the Cultural Tyranny exists.
               I have found your work to be very interesting and which sends powerful messages to an audience such as myself. I have enjoyed looking at your art and being more aware of the many talented Chicana artists that I was not previously exposed to. Learning about specific concepts and being able to apply it, not only to other visual artwork but to my own life, makes it even more important to me. It has been a pleasure sharing the information that I have learned with you. Although I maybe not have provided any new research that you previously did not know, I hope that my insight and analysis gives you a clearer understanding of the message that your artwork conveys to a Chicana college student. I hope that you continue to succeed as an artist and other projects in the future. Keep representing for the Chicanas!

Sincerely,
Rosalie Ochoa