Author: reinosoa3

https://blogs.stockton.edu/litrecovery/maria-amparo-ruiz-de-burton/

This outstanding woman, was a precursory writer of Chicano Literature, her social and cultural surroundings allowed her to posses a particular perspective on American society and politics, nevertheless she stayed truthful to the her roots and addressed multiple issues related to ethnicity, gender and class. It was quite interesting to learnt about her marriage and how the ceremony and the union itself was considered as a scandal because she didn’t share the same religion, nationality or age with her soon to be husband, however it was even more shocking finding out that some elderly californios remembered her, but not for her powerful voice through her writings but rather because of her beauty, denigrating all her efforts to acknowledge the social problems that she criticized throughout her novels, such as her well-known critic which established that justice was given just to the most powerful and influential individuals. Its also remarkable that her novel the squatter and the don, was written from the perspective of the conquered which granted her to express questions from a totally different and new angle.

I must tell you that I found extremely interesting the way the writer emphasized that latinos reveals a lot about themselves and a about how diverse we are just with the nomenclature that each of us identified with. Although people commonly labeled us as latinos or hispanics there is a hole variety of identities and each one of them possess qualities that makes them unique. After this, when they talk specifically about women on the earliest periods of Hispanic life in the Americas, it is established that their lives were conditioned by raced, class and marital status, also indian and black women were considered to be part of the bottom of the social scale. However, their participation didn’t end up there, they were also members of area missions since they were recruited to performed services as housekeepers, midwives, cooks, healers, teachers, seamstresses, and business managers. Women who had this kind of opportunities, shown the strength that characterized spanish speaking women, to put one example I can tell you about Apolinaria Lorenzana and how she was able to perform successfully multiple tasks after becoming the housekeeper at the San Diego mission. Thanks to the closure, Indian and Spanish/Mexican women formed something like a sisterhood which can be proved through some cases. On the one hand, we are taught the story about a Hispanicized Indian, called Victoria Reid, she was born as an indian woman but her identity was modified to Spanish/Mexican after she got married, she demonstrated to possess a great capacity as a businesswoman, however when she became a widowed, she became an Indian again, this situation could be considered as the living example of how race and marital status used to affected women lives in the past. On the other hand, in contrast to the situation that Victoria suffered, Spanish/Mexican women could retain the power and control over their lands after marriage. Then we came back to the historical context, in which we learnt that during the nineteenth century a bunch of conflicts  turned out to be the downfall of the colonialism, with this cultural context we are introduced to more prominent  female figures who shared the ideals of being in a land free of the Spanish conquered. After this time went trough some organizations were impulsed to encourage and to retain the cultural and ethnic roots, one example of this was the hard-work that Pura Belpre put on her job as the first latina librarian in the new york city library system, she was concerned that children were growing up without their culture or native language, so she started a series of bilingual library programs that were merely focused on culture and folklore, this is just one of multiple examples that can be cited of women who dedicated a highly portion of their lives to conserve their roots, so that future generations could understand and valuate the struggles that their ancestors had to go trough have a free and independent land.

Alba Reinoso

I pick this image in particular, after reading Mirtha Quintales letter in which she stated that not all Third World women are women of color and not all women of color are really Third World. I felt particularly, identified because although I possess a light skin color, I am still a latina, I am still part of an ethnic minority, I am still a middle class woman, I still could be able to be a victim of prejudice and institutional discrimination, I still could feel isolated in this endless journey of battle for our rights, therefore I can not fight everyones battles, this journey or this bridge like kate rushin stated must be a way to find our own power, to try to find our true self, to evolve, to put away our weakness, to face our fears and to learn how to improve as a human being.