Intra-Latina/Latino encounters: Salvadoran and Mexican struggles and Salvadoran–Mexican subjectivities in Los Angeles

Article

Intra-Latina/Latino encounters: Salvadoran and Mexican struggles and Salvadoran–Mexican subjectivities in Los Angeles

Ethnicities 2015, Vol. 15(2) 234–254 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468796814557651 etn.sagepub.com

Steven Osuna University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Abstract In the last 30 years, the mass transnational migration of Salvadorans and Mexicans to the U.S. from their countries due to changes in the world capitalist system, and its specific effects on their homelands, has made Los Angeles the most Mexican and Salvadoranpopulated city in the United States. Within the everyday struggles of the working class in Los Angeles, an internal antagonism between these two Latina/Latino communities has developed that has divided them yet, dialectically, a sense of solidarity between them vis-a`-vis the dominant racialized regime of the U.S. has also emerged. This paper investigates this dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity between Salvadoran and Mexican communities in Los Angeles through qualitative interviews with 20 young adults who are children of mixed Salvadoran–Mexican migrant families. This paper will contextualize their families’ experiences within a larger theoretical, analytical, and historical framework of the global capitalist system and recent transnational processes, including neoliberalism, migration, and the racialization of Latina/Latinos in the U.S. The exploration of the participants’ families and their relationships to a series of structural and cultural factors that ground both communities, such as racialized labor market competition, migration, and national belonging, may assist in explaining this dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity. Keywords Salvadorans, Mexicans, Latina/Latinos, Los Angeles, neoliberalism, racism, Intra-Latina/Latino relations

transnational

migration,

Corresponding author: Steven Osuna, University of California, 3005 Social Sciences and Media Studies Bldg., Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. Email: [email protected]

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In early 2000, the Pacific News Service in San Francisco and the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles collaborated to bring together and publish a collection of Salvadoran American writing and visual art. The title of the publication, Izote Vos, combines two cultural connotations of El Salvador: the izote, which is the national flower of El Salvador and vos, which in Salvadoran Spanish means you (Kim and Serrano, 2000). According to the editors of the publication, Kim and Serrano (2000: 2), ‘‘[t]hough there were widespread coverage and fervent interest in the country and its citizens during the war, there is little that documents Salvadoran lives in [the United States] and even less written by Salvadoran Americans themselves.’’ Izote Vos presents the experiences and voices of U.S. born and migrant Salvadoran youth and young adults in two of California’s most Salvadoran-populated cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Through essays, poems, and photographs, the participants in this volume share their intimate stories about family tribulations, stories, economic struggles, and the infra-politics of everyday life. From these diverse images and stories, one feature that appears in stark relief on the pages of Izote Voz is the dialectics of intra-Latino/Latina social, cultural, and political relations. Salvadoran writers reflect on their group’s affinities and antagonisms with Mexicans and Chicana/ Chicanos. Contributor Raquel Josefina Gutie´rrez, a poet and writer from Los Angeles, includes three short essays that best describe these social dynamics. ‘‘Our Lady of Subversive Activity’’ discusses the Virgen de Guadalupe’s articulation as a revolutionary influence on liberation struggles such as the Zapatista’s fight for ‘‘tierra and libertad’’ in Southern Mexico and Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero’s struggle for social justice in El Salvador, and on Gutierrez’s own political consciousness and sexuality (Kim and Serrano, 2000). As Johnson (2008: 157) illustrates in her discussion of Charlotta Bass and Luisa Moreno’s activism with the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee in the early 1940s, Gutie´rrez’s description of the Virgen embodies a ‘‘constellation of struggle’’ in which two distinct social movements that consist of, ‘‘an array of activities, histories, and identities,’’ are represented in her image. Gutierrez also illuminates the intersections of religion and nationalism in South Los Angeles through references to disagreements between Catholic Mexicans and Salvadoran Evangelicals about a mural of the Virgen in a butcher shop. She poses the questions: ‘‘could it [the mural] pit predominately Catholic Mexicans against the heavy Evangelist Salvadorans? Who knew a few strategically placed carnicerı´a (butcher shops) murals would spark such disagreements?’’ (Gutierrez in Kim and Serrano, 2000: 26). The essay revolves around the cultural expressions of the Virgin Mary and how the mural became a site of tension between two Latina/Latino communities with distinct religious and national backgrounds when the mural was defaced. Gutie´rrez’s ‘‘Part-Time Salvi’’ describes her lived experiences growing up as a ‘‘Salvadoren˜a-Mexicana’’ in East Los Angeles. Throughout this essay, Gutie´rrez explains the maneuvering among Salvadoran, Mexican, and Chicana/Chicano cultures and communities. She discusses the process of acculturation that Salvadorans

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who live in predominately Mexican communities such as East Los Angeles experience and expresses her yearning for a ‘‘multi-purpose, self-identifying term’’ that describes who she is as both Salvadoran and Mexican. The essay chronicles her upbringing in East L.A. with her Mexican father and Salvadoran mother, recalls participating in student rallies, and protests chanting ‘‘Viva Zapata’’ and wondering why no one ever chanted the name of Agustı´ n Farabundo Marti, a Salvadoran communist revolutionary in the late 1920s. She illustrates that she ‘‘learned’’ to be Salvadoran from her mother’s stories, an experience typical of immigrant children. As Rodrı´ guez (2003: 3) argues, ‘‘[f]or many children of the Central American diaspora who came to the United States at an early age, or who were born here, their knowledge of the homeland is oftentimes a secondhand one, mediated by the stories, memories, and texts transmitted to them by others.’’ This experience for Central Americans born in the U.S. produces a secondhand identity in which Salvadorans such as Gutie´rrez, ‘‘recuperate and reconvert a wide range of cultural elements deriving from the various transnational, national, and local sites they occupy,’’ which contributes to their identity formation (Rodrı´ guez, 2003: 2). Gutie´rrez witnesses how her mother was unintentionally ‘‘becoming’’ Mexican from living with her Mexican husband in East L.A., separated from recently formed Salvadoran communities, such as the Pico Union District of Los Angeles by the large overhead freeways that make travel between neighborhoods difficult (Avila, 2006; Hamilton and Chinchilla, 2001). The experience of Salvadoran acculturation to Mexican culture that Gutierrez finds in her mother’s life occurs often. They have been documented in mainstream media outlets such as The Los Angeles Times and in Gregory Nava’s film El Norte (Bermudez, 2008; Nava, 1983). Central American migrants not only need to deal with white America, they often must adopt Mexican ‘‘ways’’ once they arrive in Los Angeles in order to survive in predominately Mexican and Chicana/Chicano communities (Bermudez, 2008). Bermudez (2008) interviews Salvadoran migrants who have left their homelands to arrive in the city whose Latina/Latino majority is Mexican and Chicana/Chicano. ‘‘The metropolis drives many to Mexicanize, to degrees big and small,’’ she notes, ‘‘often before they start to Americanize’’ (Bermudez, 2008). Salvadorans, as well as other Central Americans, who migrate confront a city that has the largest Mexican population in the United States, but in turn face the exploitative and assimilationist project of the U.S. racial regime as many other immigrant communities before them (Robinson, 2007). As the L.A. Times article observes, Mexicans in Los Angeles are what Oliva-Alvarado (2013: 383) refers to as ‘‘contextually dominant’’ among Latina/Latinos communities in Los Angeles while simultaneously being economically exploited and racially oppressed by white supremacy (Acun˜a, 1996; Valle and Torres, 2000). Struggles over space, employment, and representation in the city of Los Angeles bring about strained relationships between Mexicans and Salvadorans. Many studies (Acun˜a, 1996; Arias, 2003; Hamilton and Chinchilla, 2001; Oliva-Alvarado, 2013; Wallace, 1986; Wallace, 1989) have noted that although these groups share

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similar cultures, histories, and languages, the competition for jobs, housing, and other resources creates antagonistic relations. According to Acun˜a: In the struggle for space in Los Angeles, Chicanos [and Mexicans] have not always been generous to other Latinos. Competition for survival has resulted in tensions between youth and even adults, with some Chicanos blaming Mexicans and Central Americans for their lack of access to jobs, housing, and other resources. Mirroring these tensions have been tensions between immigrants themselves, with each group asserting its own claims. Indeed, these internal tensions often take on the characteristics of the racism of the dominant society. (1996: 120–121)

Hamilton and Chinchilla also observe that in Los Angeles: While the presence of large (and growing) Mexican and Mexican-American communities undoubtedly eased the reception of new Central American immigrants in the neighborhoods where they shared the language and culture, they also led to some resentment toward what some Central Americans perceived as domineering or prepotente (arrogant) attitudes on the part of Mexicans as well as tensions between longterm residents, including more established immigrants, and Central Americans and Mexican newcomers. (2001: 224)

These observations highlight the stakes in Gutie´rrez’s depictions of the dialectics of intra-Latina/Latino social, cultural, and political struggles in Latina/Latino Los Angeles (Ochoa and Ochoa, 2005; Valle and Torres, 2000). Her narratives illustrate the tensions and solidarities between the two transnational migrant communities displaying the common historical legacies of resistance and situated knowledge that both migrant groups bring with them through transnational migration and their creation of transnational spaces in the city (Basch et al., 1993; Portes, 1996; Smith and Guarnizo, 1998). These transnational spaces have produced the second generation whose perspectives Gutie´rrez airs, which embody both the Salvadoran and Mexican communities. Although both Mexicans and Salvadorans fall under the hegemonic pan-ethnic term, Latina/Latino or Hispanic, and despite the fact that U.S. ‘‘common sense’’ lumps them together—often labeling Salvadorans as Mexicans in Southern California—my argument in this essay is that Salvadorans and Mexicans have specific sociopolitical and economic modes of incorporation into the U.S. racial regime through the global capitalist system (Grosfoguel, 2004; Robinson, 2004, 2007). These distinctions, which are historically specific, have made the city of Los Angeles the most Mexican and Salvadoran-populated city in the U.S.: second only to San Salvador in El Salvador and Mexico City in Mexico, respectively. Since 1848, the city of Los Angeles has been a racialized class-segmented city, with people of color facing the brutal domination and exploitation of capitalist social relations and white supremacy (Almaguer, 1994; Barrera, 1979; Davis, 2006; Griswold del Castillo, 1979). Mexicans have had to face these oppressive and

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exploitative conditions in the city since the 19th century, while Salvadorans have become the most recent group to confront them. Although these two groups have distinct sociopolitical and economic modes of incorporation, they make up the majority of the local working-class population, and, in the ‘‘first instance,’’ the majority of both groups share similar structural conditions and physical locations (Hall, 1986a; Valle and Torres, 2012). Through the quotidian struggles of working-class Mexicans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles that emerge from the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, a dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity emerge between their communities. I argue that a window into this dialectical interplay of tension, solidarity, and the gap between the promises and practices of neoliberal capitalism, is through the subjectivities of the children of mixed Salvadoran and Mexican descent in these communities, such as Gutie´rrez who observe the interactions between both communities, while being engaged in both. They are in a position to theorize questions such as: Are there intra-Latina/Latino tensions between Salvadorans and Mexicans in Los Angeles? If so, why among these two Latina/Latino groups and why at this conjuncture? What conditions perpetuate and preserve these tensions? Yet, their experiences also enable us to ask when do these two Latina/Latino groups demonstrate solidarity or show a mutual understanding of each other’s struggles? Do these two Latina/Latino groups ever see each other as in what some call, ‘‘the same boat?’’ This essay seeks to answer these questions through a mixed methods approach. Between 2009 and 2011, I conducted 20 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with participants who are of both Salvadoran and Mexican descent and were raised in Los Angeles, California. At the same time, I conducted participant observations in numerous Latina/Latino community and student organizations. I linked this qualitative data with a demographic analysis of Salvadoran and Mexican communities in Los Angeles, I analyzed expressive and popular culture representations such as Izote Voz, corridos, and films in the light of a theoretical, historical, and analytical framework of the global capitalist system, recent transnational processes, and the U.S. racial regime and its effects on Latina/Latino populations. Gutie´rrez’s perspectives in her essays in Izote Voz and the 20 participants of this study present testimony that can serve as a point of entry for discussing the intra-Latina/Latino struggles among Salvadoran and Mexican communities in Los Angeles, providing a view from within the dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity in the current era of neoliberal capitalism.

Historical and theoretical contextualization The intra-Latina/Latino struggles described by the participants of this paper must be placed within the historical context of Salvadoran and Mexican transnational migration to Los Angeles. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, there was an exodus of people from El Salvador. People fled the hardships brought upon by more than a century of oligarchy and military dictatorships that escalated into a

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civil war led by social movements under the umbrella organization of the Farabundo Martı´ National Liberation Front (Booth et al., 2006; Menjı´ var, 2000). The majority that fled from El Salvador migrated toward the United States, with many arriving in Los Angeles (Hernandez, 2006). A depiction of this process is found in a 1988 corrido, a musical ballad, performed by a Mexican norten˜o band, Los Tigres del Norte (2001). Titled Tres Veces Mojado (three times a wetback), the corrido illustrates the hardships of Salvadoran migration. The title refers to the three different borders, Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S., that Salvadorans must cross and the derogatory term, wetback, assigned to undocumented migrants. The corrido contextualizes one man’s journey through Mexico on his way to the United States within the political and economic crisis in El Salvador, the discrimination of Salvadorans while traveling through Mexico, and the amnesty of many undocumented migrants in the U.S. through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. A year later in 1989, the popularity of the corrido led to a film with the same title staring two members of the band (Urquieta, 1989). Unlike the corrido, which ends with the protagonist receiving amnesty and a new life in the U.S., the film ends in tragedy. The Salvadoran character Pedro and his Guatemalan companion Sylvia and Mexican companion Juan eventually cross the U.S.– Mexico border. On their journey, Sylvia dies in the desert from heat exhaustion, hunger, and despair. As Juan and Pedro continue the journey with no food or water, they nonetheless maintain a sense of hope. However while walking on an unknown highway, they are apprehended by agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The film ends with Sylvia deceased and Juan and Pedro with their heads and hands on the hood of an INS vehicle, a realistic depiction of the tragedies that Salvadorans and others face during transnational migration. The film Tres Veces Mojado, like the corrido, portrays the hardships that many Salvadorans have to face though transnational migration while demonstrating the relationships that can emerge between Salvadoran and Mexican migrants. The experience of migration differs based on the country that each migrant departs from, but fundamentally, in the current epoch of global capitalism, ‘‘the transnational circulation of capital induces the transnational circulation of labor,’’ and thus is fundamentally the main cause for migration (Robinson, 2006: 83). Many flee their countries to improve their life chances. The Latin American migrants are part of the transnational labor pool that migrates globally and end up in places like Los Angeles (Castles and Miller, 2003). As a dominant economic system, global capitalism is the underlying structural dynamic that drives the social, political, economic, and cultural processes around the globe. In the last 30 years, world capitalism has gone through qualitative changes that have restructured the political economies of many Latin American nations, such as El Salvador and Mexico. According to Harvey (2010), this restructuring has taken place through implementation of political and economic policies known by the name of neoliberalism. With its contradictory social and cultural

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processes, neoliberalism has created the conditions for mass migration from Latin America toward the United States. ‘‘Up to one-third of El Salvador’s 7 million people were living abroad in 2005,’’ observes Robinson, ‘‘as were 15–20 percent of all Mexicans’’ (2008: 206). The majority of these Salvadoran and Mexicans living outside of their respective countries reside in cities such as Los Angeles and surrounding areas where they make up, ‘‘all of the farm labor and much of the labor for hotels, restaurants, construction, janitorial, and house cleaning, child care, domestic services, gardening and landscaping, hairdressing, delivery, meat and poultry packing, food processing, light manufacturing, retail, and so on’’ (Robinson, 2008: 314). Salvadorans and Mexicans who migrated during the current epoch of capitalism have filled the lower rungs of the service sector of the California and the Los Angeles economy. Los Angeles is the most Mexican and Salvadoran-populated city in the United States (Lipsitz, 1999: 215). Mexican and Chicana/Chicano communities have been incorporated into the U.S. capitalist system for more than 100 years (Barrera, 1979; Ortiz, 1996). The Mexican and Chicana/Chicano populations, including the original settlers of the annexed land of Mexico and successive waves of new Mexican migrants, have become a proletarianized pool of cheap labor for capitalist production and the service sector of the city (Robinson, 1993: 42). The Mexican and Chicana/Chicano communities were the first Latina/Latino groups to come under U.S. political and economic dominance. This dominance must be understood not only within the U.S., but also in conjunction to U.S.–Mexico relations. The local experiences of Mexicans and Chicana/Chicanos are related to the transnational processes of U.S.–Mexico economic, political, and social policies (Gonzalez and Fernandez, 2003). Salvadoran and Central American migrants and their children have become a recent source of cheap labor for U.S. and global capital. Although they were not incorporated like the Mexican and Mexican American communities, the entrance of Salvadoran and Central Americans into the United States was very much a byproduct of the same historical patterns of U.S. capitalist expansion and imperial domination (Robinson, 1993: 49). Through U.S. involvement and support of dictatorial regimes and civil wars in Central America, many Central Americans became refugees and fled their respective countries (Booth et al., 2006; Garcı´ a, 2006). Currently, neoliberal policies such as free trade agreements have only exacerbated those conditions that many faced during the 1980s and have further increased the mass migration of people (Abrego, 2014; Garni and Weyher, 2013). The majority of Central American migrants have moved to the lowest rungs of the service sector, often in what is described as the ‘‘informal sector’’ (Robinson, 1993: 50). The largest of the group of Central Americans, Salvadorans, have become the second largest Latina/Latino group in Los Angeles (Lopez et al., 1996). Like Mexicans, Salvadorans share many systemic barriers due to their position as transnational migrants, whether documented or undocumented, or being from a working-class or professional background (Valle and Torres, 2012).

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Mexicans, Salvadorans, and all Latina/Latinos have become a heterogeneous, yet singular, racialized group that faces many forms of subjugation and exploitation in the United States (Grosfoguel, 2004). Once in the U.S., and in Los Angeles in particular, many of these migrants and their children face not only class exploitation but also the pernicious effects of a racist landscape. As Federici (2009: 17) argues, ‘‘capitalism must justify and mystify the contradictions built into its social relations—the promise of freedom vs. the reality of widespread coercion, and the promise of prosperity vs. the reality of widespread penury—by denigrating the ‘nature’ of those it exploits, such as immigrants displaced by globalization.’’ Through racialized class relations, segmented labor markets, and political and institutional differentiation, many if not all migrants who enter the U.S. become positioned in an antagonistic relation to those who own the means of production and exploit their labor power. Racism works to reify these class relations as inevitable and unalterable, while racially stratifying the working class. The city of Los Angeles has been, as Avila (2006: 20) explains, the southwestern outpost of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation. Race as a cultural construct has placed aggrieved communities in racialized hierarchies, which experience differential forms of racism. Lipsitz (2006: 58) argues that these experiences create, ‘‘alliances and antagonisms, conflicts and coalitions,’’ and, ‘‘characterizes the complex dynamics of white supremacy within and across group lines.’’ Latina/Latinos are no exception (De Genova and Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Pulido, 2006). Many different ethnic groups fall under this pan-ethnic term. As Grosfoguel (2004) illustrates the term conceals specificities such as sociopolitical modes of incorporation, antagonisms, and intragroup struggles that arise. Recently scholars (Bedolla, 2005; De Genova and Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Gutie´rrez, 1995; Padilla, 1985, 1986; Ru´a, 2001) have begun to interrogate the conflicts and coalitions that emerge within Latina/Latinos, but have briefly discussed how these social processes emerge among Mexicans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles (Arias, 2003; Acun˜a, 1996; Hamilton and Chinchilla, 2001; OlivaAlvarado, 2013; Wallace, 1986; Wallace, 1989). This essay is informed by Hall’s (1986b) use of Antonio Gramsci’s theories in the study of race and ethnicity. His interrogation of Gramsci is useful in studying the specificities of racism and class and the dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity that emerge with them. Among the numerous points covered, Hall (1986b) argues for a study of race and ethnic relations that is guided by historical specificities, a nonreductive approach to race and class, recognition of the nonhomogenous character of the ‘‘class subject,’’ and the commitment to seeing social formations as structurally complex, not simple and transparent. These principles promote understanding of the complexity of intra-Latina/Latino working-class struggles that emerge within the dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity. They provide a lens for seeing the specificities of the struggles within working classes and evaluating the perspectives expressed by the voices under study in this article.

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Salvadoran–Mexican subjectivities I’m just thinking from this perspective . . . the Central American migrants have to pass through Mexico and I think that’s where a lot of the tensions begin where your competing for jobs. Even here in L.A. the competition for jobs. It has to do with competing in this market. (Monica Perez, 2009, personal communication) I don’t think the tension was created in part of the content of the cultures, but because it’s more competition. It’s like a long time ago it was the Irish and that stuff . . . I think with any group, it’s with people pointing out the differences. People not acknowledging that we are the same and we have a lot of very similar struggles. I think that creates a disconnect from each other. And from then on it’s so much easier to hate someone and it makes it easier to blame things on them. (Elizabeth Quintanilla, 2009, personal communication)

According to Antonio Gramsci, everyone is an intellectual and can theorize about the social formation they inhabit. Yet knowing where one comes from is the first step. ‘‘[T]he starting point of critical elaboration,’’ he argues, ‘‘is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’’ (Gramsci, 1971: 324). The participants of this paper all identify as both Salvadoran and Mexican and recognize the intra-Latina/Latino struggles between both communities. Throughout the interviews, they engaged the ‘‘infinity of traces’’ that brought about these struggles in migrant working-class communities in places such as South Central, Mid City, Pico Union, and East Los Angeles. They shared how they interpreted their realities, and as Gramsci suggests, they connected these realities to historical and social processes. Portelli (1991: ix) argues for conceptualizing and studying people’s subjectivity as, ‘‘the cultural forms and processes by which individuals express their sense of themselves in history.’’ Learning through peoples’ subjectivity is vital to explaining the contradictions within a social formation while making larger connections to power relations shaped by global, regional, and local processes. The participants developed their racialized and class identities inside workingclass communities. Class consciousness and identities do not only develop in a person in regard to their position in the production process but also within their social, cultural, and ideological surroundings. As Thompson (1966: 10) reminds us, ‘‘class consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, and ideas, and institutional forms.’’ Many of the participants developed class identities not only due to their class position but also because they were Latina/Latinos. Their ethnicity was racialized in the racial order of the U.S., which is a system of racialized capitalism. Class can be experienced though race as Hall (1980: 341) notes, ‘‘race is thus, also, the modality in which class is ‘lived,’ the medium through which class relations are experienced, the form in which it is appropriated and ‘fought through’.’’

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In aggrieved communities, conditions emerge in which ethnically distinct factions of a class develop tensions with each other that have to be ‘‘fought through.’’ The participants in the interviews who form the basis of this study elaborated on the tensions they observed and experienced in their communities while being positioned between Salvadorans and Mexicans. Yet as the epigraphs to this section demonstrate, the participants argued that the tensions felt within their communities develop from structural and historical forces that are not always of their making or choosing. Adriana when discussing this topic said she definitely saw tension between both communities. I think there are a lot of different reasons. I think one of the most important ones is the experience of Central Americans crossing the border and the experiences they have to go through . . . Another of the things is what they say the ‘‘bigger fish always eats the little fish’’ and I think because Mexicans are more of the majority they tend to think they’re ‘‘better’’ . . . maybe because they’re closer to the border . . . like the Tigres del Norte song says ‘‘tres veces mojado’’ they think that [Salvadorans] are more immigrant than they are. (Adriana Reyes, 2009, personal communication)

Adriana addressed two points: the experiences of migration for Central Americans while crossing through Mexico and the idea of being ‘‘more immigrant’’ than Mexicans. The long journey across Mexico brings a lot of different experiences for Salvadorans who then settle in predominately Mexican communities in Los Angeles (Arregui and Roman, 2005; Zentgraf, 2005). These experiences, whether positive or negative, are then materialized when they share spaces with Mexicans. The second point she made was of Mexicans seeing Salvadorans and Central Americans as more immigrant than them. She argued that the distance from the U.S. and the demographic number of Mexicans might create a sense of superiority over Salvadorans that in turn perpetuates the racial hierarchy of the U.S. Although they are both immigrant communities, Mexicans and Salvadorans can internalize and perpetuate the racial hierarchy already in place. Adriana mentioned how being both Mexican and Salvadoran allowed her to see these tensions since she would hear it from both sides. Another participant, Elias, saw this tension as ‘‘very real’’ (Elias Alvarenga, 2009, personal communication). To support Adriana’s argument, Elias believed it also has to do with the hostility that exists when struggling for resources. It’s the hostility [immigrants] encounter in the moment [she/he] comes in . . . he or she starts competing for the same jobs, resources, for this, for that. It’s that hostility that’s created when resources are scarce. I think that triggers other things. The hostility has the same origin, but it diffuses in different arenas. It’s diffused in, ‘this is not how you talk.’ It diffused, ‘as your soccer team doesn’t even exist.’ It’s diffused in many ways, but ultimately has the same origin, that we’re all competing for the same resources and that creates the hostility between both of our ethnic groups. (Elias Alvarenga, 2009, personal communication)

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When arriving in Los Angeles, Salvadoran and Mexican migrants must start from scratch looking for work and everything else that is needed to survive. This then entails competition with others who are looking for the same scarce resources. The competition then becomes not among individuals, as Elias mentioned, but against ethnic groups. This competition for resources then gets dispersed into distinct modes of tension. Elias mentioned two modes, through creating hierarchies of language and nationalism in regard to soccer teams. Since Salvadoran Spanish and Mexican Spanish are linguistically distinct as far as certain words and accents, the tensions among them get played out in creating hierarchies of language, in which Salvadoran Spanish can be considered inferior to Mexican Spanish. Tensions spread into the field of sports, in which Mexicans argue that El Salvador’s national soccer team does not exist since they are less well funded than Mexican’s national team. He argued that although this may be true, when Salvadorans and Mexicans argue about soccer, it can be infused with antagonisms that emerge from struggling for resources. Other participants commented that this tension experienced developed from a sense of inferiority–superiority on the part of immigrant communities trying to develop a sense of dignity. As Maribel argued, ‘‘I think that comes from the need to create a sense of dignity, a sense of importance in relation to the atmosphere that they are put against (Maribel, 2009, personal communication). Maribel contextualized this sense of ‘‘superiority/inferiority’’ with what she called the ‘‘atmosphere’’ that migrants live in. For Maribel, Mexicans in Los Angeles create a sense of dignity in the face of racialized class exploitation and this unfortunately can be played out through placing Salvadorans below them in the racialized hierarchy. Jose on the other hand perceived that Salvadorans also created a sense of superiority over Mexicans. ‘‘For some reason Salvadorans think they’re better than Mexicans. I don’t know, but that’s what I see’’ (Jose Rodriguez, 2010, personal communication). A participant by the name of Jorge mentioned that he has heard Salvadorans speak negatively about Mexicans. ‘‘Yeah, I’ve heard some Salvadorans talk crap about Mexicans like, ‘oh los indios no se que . . . [Oh the indians I don’t know what . . . ]’’ (Jorge Jimenez, 2010, personal communication). These two observations by Jorge and Jose illustrate that simultaneously both Mexican and Salvadoran communities try and place the other group below them. The idea of Mexicans being indigenous as opposed to Salvadorans can be informed by the 1932 massacre of over 30,000 indigenous peasants in El Salvador that led to the almost entire extermination of indigenous cultures and epistemologies (Tilley, 2005). This has led to a ‘‘common sense’’ notion that has been created in El Salvador that there are no longer indigenous people in the country. Although this is entirely false, many believe it to be true and deny any indigenous heritage. This can then used by Salvadorans to look down upon Mexicans for still having a strong indigenous presence in Mexico. Yet beyond the 1932 massacre and the tensions between Salvadorans and Mexicans, the use of indigenous ancestry as a marker of inferiority has a foundation in the distinct forms of U.S. and Spanish

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colonialism that still have prominence in the current social formation (Quijano, 2000). The tension observed by the participants between their communities manifests itself in different places. Some of the participants noticed it at work, such as Jose and Jorge who both saw it when they worked as custodians. Other saw it at school when other classmates would look down on them for being part Salvadoran. Most of the participants also saw it within their families. Many mentioned that when their families would come together for parties their parents’ families would sit apart from each other and would not interact or shame the other family for either being Mexican or Salvadoran. Erin argued that another important reason why there is tension between Salvadoran and Mexicans is due to being lumped into one group, Latino, Hispanic, or Mexican. ‘‘You get grouped together . . . People see us as just one . . . That little cluster between North America and South America. Too hard to memorize all those ‘little places’ so they group them as one. It’s like they say you’re Mexican, you’re Salvadoran, you are all the same’ but no we are not!’’ (Erin Molina, 2010, personal communication). Since the dominant discourse creates the notion that all immigration comes from Mexico since it is the nearest Latin American nation and the most immigrant-sending nation in the hemisphere, any other immigrant group is labeled as Mexican. This is also spatially specific. In regard to the U.S. Southwest, the dominant Latina/Latino group is Mexican. In the popular imaginary, any Latina/Latino must be of Mexican descent (Chavez, 2009). This in turn creates hostility among other Latina/Latino communities, such as Salvadorans. As Erin states, if you are constantly called something you are not, you will begin to resent what you are being labeled and in this instance it is Mexican. Adding to being labeled Mexican, many Salvadorans resent Mexicans for having to adapt to their communities, or what some have called ‘‘Mexicanization.’’ Many of the participants state that they observe that many Salvadorans have to adapt to Mexican culture in order to find work, housing, or other important resources. Patricia noticed this ‘‘Mexicanization’’ with her mother. She stated her mother lost her Salvadoran accent, only makes Mexican food, and knows very little about El Salvador. She understood how this happened in the sense that Salvadorans need to find work. ‘‘Well, they see that’s more accepted, and they want to be accepted. They don’t want to get left out of jobs, say at a Mexican restaurant, and say they want to make a connection with an employer, so they act this way’’ (Patricia Quintero, 2009, personal communication). Elias added that this idea of ‘‘Mexicanization’’ is a form of survival. As a method of survival, don’t even talk about it. And, people started to adopt the language, it just happened. I think it’s the conditions people were forced into. I remember dad telling me when he had to travel through Mexico, he had to talk like a Mexican because if not they would deport him all the way back to El Salvador. So there’s a tradition of Mexicanization, as a method of survival. (Elias Alvarenga, 2009, personal communication)

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He further elaborated that he felt that this process of ‘‘Mexicanization’’ was part of a larger process of assimilation in the United States. Because as a Salvadoran in United States you accept Mexicanization, you accept that’s how the United States looks at you. So, it’s just embedded, and all you’re doing is repeating it more. To lose your Salvadoraness is to fade into the American society. It’s to accept its norms and everything that comes with it. (Elias Alvarenga, 2009, personal communication)

The process of Mexicanization that the participants discussed must be contextualized as Elias demonstrates. As a method of survival, Salvadorans adopt certain ways of speaking, behavior, and cultural repertoires that will allow them to fit-in in Mexican communities. This allows them to find work and housing. But as Elias discussed, this is part of a larger structure of assimilation. Since Salvadorans have to lose their ‘‘Salvadoraness’’ to adapt to Mexican culture, they begin to accept their marginality. Brenda saw some truth to this description of the process but also felt that this was not a one-way process. She claimed that Mexican communities have been heavily influenced by Salvadoran culture as well. ‘‘I don’t think it happens. If anything, if a Salvadoran goes to a Mexican community, if anything they [the Mexican community] become a little more Salvi. Because it’s changed. Maybe not the grown ups. But the [Mexican] kids catch onto some of the words [Salvadorans] use, which are different than the ones they use’’ (Brenda Gomez, 2010, personal communication). Brenda made the same argument Hall (1981: 323) once made, that people are not ‘‘cultural dupes.’’ Although Salvadorans move into Mexican communities, she felt that they do not lose who they are, but rather adapt to their new setting and in turn also influence it. She felt that arguing that Salvadorans becoming Mexicanized was to make Salvadorans sound passive, and this was not the case. The tensions that the participants observe were based, as Elizabeth stated in the epigraph, not on the content of each community’s culture, but rather from material experiences. Robert’s analysis of this tension stressed this point. You know if the owner of Wal-Mart was Salvi (Salvadoran) and the owner of Ford was Mexican I don’t think they would have any tensions at all. I think that the reasons there are tension between us is the same reason that there are tension between Raza and Blacks, the same reason why the Irish had tension with other Americans here in the U.S. once they came here. It’s not really based on any concrete cultural reasons. It has to do with both Mexicans and Salvis, and countless other ethnic groups and nationalities that are basically stuck at the bottom of the barrel with few resources and have to fight each other for those limited amount of resources. It’s always easy to point at a couple of things . . . ‘‘oh look they speak different, they eat those different foods,’’ but I think there are tensions but for the most part it’s working class people with limited amount of resources and those tensions are going to happen. (Robert Cruz, 2009, personal communication)

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Robert’s analysis of the material conditions of these tensions was shared by many of the participants. They argued that the tension between both of their communities did not develop from within their communities but from larger structural forces. Robert’s comparison of other moments of tension or conflicts between other communities demonstrated to him that the tensions felt between Salvadoran and Mexican communities were not created in a vacuum, but rather generated by a larger system. It is a system that creates hostility among aggrieved communities. Yet simultaneously, recognizing that they are part of the same class position and racialized as ‘‘other’’ to whiteness, the participants observed that both of their communities share a sense of solidarity with each other. The same conditions that create tensions between Salvadorans and Mexicans dialectically develop a sense of solidarity between both communities. Jose who currently lives in East Los Angeles has noticed in the last couple of years a larger Salvadoran community emerging in a community that was once entirely Mexican and Chicana/Chicano. He observed how different neighbors are adopting things from each other’s cultures. Some of his Mexican neighbors are playing salsa and merengue, while his Salvadoran neighbors are playing corridos. He noticed how each group is adopting certain cultural forms from the other. This, he argued, demonstrated that they are very similar. This place is not only Mexican anymore . . . Up the block there’s a lot of Salvis. I could say were all the same . . . In between all of us were the same. We’re all in the same boat. The only difference is nationality. We’re all Brown. (Jose Rodriguez, 2010, personal communication)

When Jose refers to being in ‘‘the same boat,’’ he is referring to communities who have to deal with the same racialized class, and gendered forms of exploitation. His reflection of his parents migrating, his mother’s job at the garment industry in downtown Los Angeles has confirmed to him that all Latina/Latinos face very similar structural conditions. Although there are different nationalities or ethnicities lumped into the tern Latina/Latino, he argued that they are all Brown. The use of the term Brown for Jose represents a sense of belonging to a common group of people in the United States; a people who come from different countries of Latin America, yet become racialized and exploited for their labor. Elizabeth argued that her communities face similar struggles. She mentioned that in 2006, she saw a lot of different Latin American communities in Los Angeles come together in mass protests for immigration reform and mobilization against the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Control Act (H.R. 4437). This bill would have further criminalized undocumented migrants, but many Mexicans and Central American migrants came together to stop this bill (Gonzales, 2013: 51). Elizabeth indicated that many Salvadorans and Mexicans she knew commented on how they needed to come together in moments of antiimmigrant hysteria (Chavez, 2009). She also noted that many Chicana/Chicano

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and Salvadoran students on her campus discussed the importance of working with each other. She felt that the second generation inherited the tensions that were felt between Salvadorans and Mexicans from their parents. As Elizabeth illustrated, in moments of xenophobia, many of the second generation saw the need to come together as Latina/Latinos rather than be divided based on ethnicity or nationality. This emerges from the experience of being a racialized ‘‘other’’ and their parents’ exploitation as immigrant workers. Like Elizabeth, Elias argued that Salvadorans and Mexicans may have tension and are different in regard to culture and nationality here in the United States, but he mentioned a bit of Salvadoran history that showed solidarity across national and ethnic lines. ‘‘I was exposed to Salvadoran history where the guerilla movement had a lot of [Mexican] combatants with them. We had a lot of combatants from a lot of different countries’’ (Elias Alvarenga, 2009, personal communication). According to Elias, the Salvadoran guerilla insurgency having Mexican internationalists in their ranks in the 1980s was an example that solidarity was possible and has existed between Salvadoran and Mexicans. He argued that this tension felt by Mexicans and Salvadorans was situated in the U.S, and specifically Los Angeles. ‘‘It’s people here that are competing for resources that is the problem. And that helps me understand that the problem is not the Mexican people, it’s the communities that are fighting for certain things here’’ (Elias Alvarenga, 2010, personal communication). When Elias refers to here, he is referring to the United States and the conditions that immigrants and their children face. It is having to migrate, having to live in aggrieved communities, and having to share a limited amount of resources that creates the conditions for tensions to arise. Michelle also discussed history to demonstrate that solidarity has existed between the two communities. She argued that both communities can learn from the different historical moments of struggle that each country has gone through and what each community experiences in the U.S. ‘‘Here in the U.S. were dealing with the same goddamn monster. We’re all undocumented here if you came after a certain year’’ (Michelle Garcia, 2010, personal communication). The monster Michelle is referring to is what Elias referred to as well; it is a system that thrives on what Gilmore (2002: 16) calls the, ‘‘fatal couplings of power and difference.’’ It is a system that thrives on using difference to divide and conquer, even though those being divided live and experience virtually the same objective conditions. The discussion of solidarity between Salvadorans and Mexicans brought up many points of discussion from the participants. Some of the participants such as Ernesto and Alex felt that there was no tension between their communities. They argued that both communities had more in common than people actually think they do and that they all are here for the same reasons, to have a better opportunity in living their lives. They both mentioned that they never felt animosity from any side. Maribel also noted, ‘‘and even though I see tension, I have never seen it to the point of violent hate. Obviously people are making babies’’ (Maribel Pen˜a, 2009, personal communication). She argued that both communities have a lot in common that enables many to see their similarities. ‘‘The struggle . . . having to

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relocate to a new country and establish a new foundation. Having to create new networks and learn a new language. Besides their national origins, they all have to go through the same process’’ (Maribel Pen˜a, 2009, personal communication). Robert who has worked as a high school teacher and community activist in the community of South Los Angeles for many years added that although tensions exist, there are a lot of Salvadorans and Mexicans that see their common struggle against larger forces. He works with both communities and sees the commonalities that create the conditions and also the need for solidarity. We have a hell of a lot more in common then we have different. Yes we have differences like one eats pupusas and another tacos, but in the big picture that is insignificant. Differences in history are not a whole lot. The history of colonization, of struggles, and even to this day the history of . . . well we have the same enemy. We have small differences like Salvadorans use vos instead of tu, but in the big picture, who cares. We have more in common and that’s what we have to educate ourselves about. If you look into any construction job, you have different people working together, Mexicans, Salvis, and Guatemalans. (Robert Cruz, 2009, personal communication)

The discussion of the dialectic interplay of tension and solidarity created by the mass migration and racialized classed position of Mexicans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles that was provided by the participants sheds light on this social relation. As many argued, the tensions and solidarity that exist all come from the same conditions of marginalization and exploitation. All the participants recognized that each group has differences, but these differences are not the problem. Rather the problem stems from larger structural forces that pins marginalized groups against each other.

Conclusion But is it wiser to sit on my mother’s side to cheer the Salvis on in a soccer match against my father’s superior Mexican team? (Raquel Gutie´rrez, in Kim and Serrano, 2000: 29)

Toward the end of her narrative on being ‘‘part time Salvi,’’ Gutie´rrez poses a question of whether she should root for El Salvador or Mexico when it comes to a soccer match. This is a major question for someone whose heritage comes from both countries. Soccer is a major sporting event for both countries and for many Mexicans and Salvadorans who reside in the U.S. It is a pastime unlike no other. She mentions how Mexico’s national team is superior to the Salvadoran team, not innately, but rather to denote the financial investment that Mexico has on soccer as opposed to El Salvador. Gutie´rrez, like many of the participants in this study, ask themselves this question when it comes to soccer. Do they choose their mother’s

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side or father’s? It might not sound like a serious question or one that requires much thought, but for individuals who are both Salvadoran and Mexican, it is one that depends on not just the team’s statistics or record, but one infused with a sense of what side they feel much closer to or whom they identify with the most. Or like some of the participants mentioned, it does not matter who they root for since whoever wins, they win regardless. The participants of this study went far beyond discussing soccer and what team they prefer. They shared their observations of the struggles of everyday life of their communities. Within these struggles, the participants theorize what I have referred to as a dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity between Salvadoran and Mexican communities in Los Angeles. All the participants observed that their communities at times had animosity with each other. They argued that this stems from the experiences of migration and fighting for the small amount of resources provided to them in Los Angeles. They also mentioned that the experience of being part of the working class creates antagonistic feelings that are then projected by dividing themselves through national identities and reproducing the racialized hierarchies of the U.S. Another important part of these tensions, the participants argued, came from the experience of Salvadorans having to adapt to Mexican communities and vice versa. Sharing the limited space of their communities developed antagonisms between them. Alongside these tensions, the participants also argued that they see moments that their communities identify with each other. Many mentioned that because of the anti-Latina/Latino immigrant discourse and attacks on their communities, they see that their communities also develop solidarity with each other. They mentioned how they were all Brown and in the ‘‘same boat.’’ The similar struggles of Latina/ Latinos in the U.S. create the conditions to look beyond national and ethnic lines and confront the U.S. racial order. Their discussions illustrated the complexities of their dual communities. As many of them demonstrated, both Salvadoran and Mexican communities are in the ‘‘same boat,’’ but they did not create this boat. Larger structural and historical forces that led the many Salvadoran and Mexicans to migrate to Los Angeles and form their respective communities created it. Borrowing from Hall’s use of Gramsci’s theories to understand the specificities of race and ethnicity, this essay was an attempt to reveal the importance of learning through the different experiences of Latina/Latinos in Los Angeles to analyze how power operates; how the current social formation is maintained through the misappropriation of struggles such as intra- and interethnic tensions that occlude and naturalize the current neoliberal social formation. If we only explain this tension at the surface level, we will miss the forest for the trees, as Kim (2000: 3) notes. We have to illuminate the forest to expose racialized hierarchies and capital accumulation that creates this dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity—to unmask the gap between the promises and practices of neoliberalism. Through Gutie´rrez’s exploration of her identity and her communities’ formations in Izote Vos and the subjectivities of the 20 participants studied in this paper, we can gain an important insight about Latina/Latino communities in struggle. By

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openly discussing this dialectical interplay of tension and solidarity between their communities, Salvadorans and Mexicans can confront what Cabral (1979: 121) in his 1966 speech in Cuba called the, ‘‘struggle against our own weaknesses.’’ Latina/ Latinos in the U.S. are a diverse population with many distinct histories, cultures, migration experiences, and much more complexity. Coming to terms with these differences is a beginning step in interrogating the tensions and solidarities that emerge. It requires struggling with the weaknesses within heterogeneous communities. Salvadorans and Mexicans in Los Angeles are a major part of the city, the working class, and must be recognized as a force that can alongside other communities in struggle challenge the terms of order (Valle and Torres, 2012). Acknowledgements I am grateful for the comments, suggestions, and support of Leisy J. Abrego, George Lipsitz, and William I. Robinson. I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of Ethnicities for their thoughtful and useful suggestions of a previous version. My appreciation for the participants of this study is insurmountable. I hope this article does your voices and experiences justice.

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