Yo Soy Indio (I am Indian)
by Ruben Hernandez (Yaqui/Chicano)
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“Nepantla,” oil on canvas, 50" x 48",
by Santa Barraza expresses the artist’s feelings of in-between-ness as
both a Chicana and a Native American. As she puts it, “My artwork is
about resistance, de-colonization, self-definition, self empowerment
and survival..... I incorporate images such as the Guadalupana,
Llorona, Adelita and Malinche as Chicana Mestiza feminine archetypes,
warriors of womankind and humanity. The icons then become symbols of
the embodiment of the mestizaje, the hybrid.”
Texas artist Santa Barraza (Karankawa/Chicana) paints bold, powerful
images of Nepantla, a mythic “Land Between.” The term was first used by
Nahuatl-speaking people of Mexico in the 16th century to describe their
situation vis-à-vis the Spanish colonizers in their midst. Barraza’s
Nepantla is the artist’s imaginary Third World that intertwines the
historical, emotional and spiritual spheres of Mexico and Texas, living
between contemporary reality and the ancient worlds of the Aztecs and
Mayas. Barraza, who teaches fine art at Texas A&M University in
Kingsville, says Nepantla could also represent the “in-between-ness” of
Latinos like herself who are embracing their newfound Native American
heritage and Indigenous ways.
She proudly identifies as a Chicana, but just as proudly has traced her
heritage to the 1700s and a woman ancestor named Cuca Giza, a Karankawa
Indian from the region that was once part of Mexico but is now known as
south Texas.
Today, more Hispanics are redefining themselves, commingling their
Latino and Native ethnicities on a palette, and painting a new
self-portrait much different than that of their parents, says Barraza.
This new portrait highlights its Indian aspects as much, or more than,
its European (Spanish) bloodlines. “These people must regain what they
have lost in the past,” says Barraza. “I think when they lost their
land their existence became chaotic. They lost their spirit. It is a
retaking back of their self-dignity and self-respect, spirit balancing
their lives and becoming whole.”
A Look Back
The Latino culture is relatively young, counting about 500 years from
the invasion of the Spanish of the Caribbean, Mexico (including the
present southwestern United States) and Latin America as a whole.
Historically, Latinos are the mixed-blood, or mestizo, children of the
Hernán Cortézes (Spanish) and Malinches (female Indians), who met and
interbred during the tumultuous Conquista of the 1600s and subsequent
colonization of the Indigenous peoples in these lands.
The early mestizos were ashamed of their forced Hispanic-ness, because
their new heritage was birthed in enslavement and rape. In the lands
conquered by the Spanish, from Chile to Mexico, Indians were always at
the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Until recent times,
they’ve remained there, shunned by their follow countrymen of Spanish
heritage, even when the vast majority of those people (especially so in
Mexico) were and are of mixed heritage. For this reason, mestizos over
time grew to hate their “Indian-ness,” and, if they could, they hid
their Native ancestry. This dynamic played out even as they migrated to
the United States...
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