FROM the FIELD

First, some history. As a popular symbol of the United States, "Uncle Sam" was brought to first life in the 19th century by two very different Americans, Sam Wilson and Thomas Nast.

Sam Wilson, a butcher and packer working in Troy, N.Y., shipped meat to the U.S.Army in barrels stamped "U.S." during the War of 1812. Word spread in its usual wandering way that the "U.S." on the barrels stood for "Uncle Sam" Wilson, the meat man. And because the "U.S." on the barrels clearly also stood for the nation buying them, the terms "Uncle Sam" and the "United States" merged easily and took on a life of their own.

Some 100 years later, the 87th Congress of the United States made Uncle Sam's origins official by adopting a resolution that gave Troy, NY its desired place in the history books and among tourist attractions, "Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives that the Congress salutes Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America's National symbol of Uncle Sam."

It was, however, Thomas Nast, a caricaturist carried by Harpers Weekly magazine in the 1870s, who created the image of "Uncle Sam" as we have generally come to know him: a tall, slender white man wrapped in the stars and stripes and wearing a top hat, tails, and goatee.

Since Nast's time, caricaturists have offered the public innumerable variations on the original but, it is fair to say, no subsequent version has been more famous than the recruitment poster created by James Montgomery Flagg in 1916 entitled "I WANT YOU!

Compare now Flagg's portrayal of "Uncle Sam" in the early years of the 20th century and Darío's revised image in the first years of the 21st. The contrast is dramatic. Flagg, an American, depicted a vigorous, confident and stern "Uncle Sam", a strong and mature nation sure of itself, its mission, and the legitimacy of its demands.

Some 100 years later, Darío, a Mexican, presents us with a very unfamiliar, old, and tired "Uncle Sam", a nation worn down by innumerable wars abroad and confused by mounting problems with drugs, crime, and racial divisions at home. Though his oversize cowboy boots affirm Sam's continued ability to stomp on enemies, the enormous power of his science and technology has been turned ominously and suddenly against him. The airplanes falling from the skies are his own, "made in the USA", transformed into bombs by those who have come to judge the United States government as the sickening center of evil in the world.

In Darío's caricature, the virile face and mind depicted by Flagg in 1916 has taken on an unsettling simian cast, a countenance suggesting sensibilities more appropriate to an earlier primate, signifying the moral regression of a nation whose bombs rain down not selectively on those responsible for the crimes of September but indiscriminately, murderously on the people of Afghanistan.

"When news of the attack on the twin towers reached us," Dario explained, "we identified immediately with the victims in New York. And when the bombs started falling on everyone from Masar-e-Sharif to Kandahar, our reaction was pretty much the same: sorrow for the sufferings of people in no way responsible for what happened in the United States."

I recalled that a Mexican friend who also identified with the victims in New York thought Osama Bin Laden was indeed a criminal who should be punished but also admirable in a way because he was "muy chingón".

"It's the David and Goliath story," Dario replied. "A small man taking on anyone more powerful is admired because he's 'muy chingón'. It doesn't mean you approve of what he does. We're against murder and murderers. At the same time, you look at Bin Laden and see a small force taking on an incredibly greater power and getting away with it. That makes him 'muy chingón', smart, capable, ready for anything. If you ask a man in Oaxaca what he does or who he is, a common reply is 'I'm ch.p.t (chay pay tay)', meaning chingón para todo, ready for anything, on top of things, prepared for whatever comes."

"The man on the right in your caricature isn't ready for everything. Bombs are falling and he's got an umbrella for protection."

"And that's why we identified with both the people of Afghanistan and the people who got killed in the twin towers: we're in the same boat. Only it's not airplanes or bombs falling on Mexicans, it's hunger, sick kids, bad water, unemployment, corrupt politicians and the United States border patrol. Forty to fifty percent of the people in Oaxaca live in terrible poverty and have no reason to believe things are going to get better. Most Mexicans and especially the poor are up against Goliath everywhere they turn. Any Mexican like Zapata or Marcos who attacks those centers of power is going to be popular."

The word "chingón" comes from the verb "chingar" which means, among other things, to annoy, to get drunk, and to copulate. We talked about the relative weight and meaning of those three definitions as they're used in Oaxaca when referring to someone who is "muy chingón".

"Chingar isn't used much for getting drunk," Darío said, "but we do use it both for a man who's annoying and for copulation. 'Annoying' and 'copulating' have similar resonances for Mexican men. To annoy someone is to 'get into him', just as to copulate is to 'get into her'. Both activities, annoying and copulating, 'open' someone up. They force an opening in the other person, demonstrating the power of a man who can open others but never gets opened himself. A real man doesn't get opened, he never breaks or cracks himself. He breaks into others. And this, it's believed, is rooted in nature: a man has a penis for penetrating; a woman has a "wound" or "crack" to be penetrated."

Darío honors the work of Octavio Paz and especially "The Labyrinth of Solitude" as seminal to his thoughts on Mexican character and the uses of 'chingar'. Paz' descriptions matched and clarified his own experience as a Mexican male.

"We think of women as weaker. In part because they're born with an opening that'll never heal, an opening to others that makes them vulnerable and inferior to men because they'll inevitably be invaded, split open. We say, 'yo soy valiente and no me rajo,' 'I'm strong and don't break'. In an enormously popular song, Negrete sings, 'Yo soy Mexicano valiente y bravío y como Cuauhtemoc (last Aztec Emperor, tortured but never broken) en vez de rajarme, me aguanto y me río.' I'm a Mexican, strong and courageous. Like Cuauhtemoc, I never break, I bear everything and smile.' The idea is that Mexican men don't weaken. So when things go badly and they're feeling hurt, upset and threatened, it's hard for them to take responsibility for what's happening. So they 'echar la culpa', they 'throw the blame' on women."

Here again the old, man-made story: woman as the inferior, passive creature with a wound that won't heal, a being made to be penetrated. Man, in contrast, the superior, active creature with a penis, a being made to penetrate. Penetration as characteristic of man, not woman, because man comes equipped with the "virile member".

Man, penis, penetration, power. Woman, wound, passive, non-penetrator. A strange story that seizes and stultifies the imaginations of men. Strange because in continuing and obvious fact, women have "penetrated" the world with its entire population. Strange because every newborn desperately desires nothing more eagerly than to be "penetrated" by the nourishing nipple of the mother's breast, wants nothing more anxiously than to "mamar la mama de mamá", to suck the breast of the mother, the penetrator, the soft heaven at the root of desire for more of the same throughout our lives. A strange story because it is woman, "first mirror, first judge, first lover", who first "penetrates" each of us with the language and dispositions enabling us to grow into what is called a human being.

I've known Darío for years, know that he rejects traditional notions of "inferior, passive women", and asked if his generation is telling a different, perhaps better story.

"Some changes are taking place," he told me. "They're most obvious among those now in their teens and early twenties, and the changes aren't always for the best. On the one hand, you'll see a few men wearing t-shirts saying, 'Soy mandilón, y qúe?', 'I'm mandilón, so what?!'. Thats very different. Traditionally, mandilón meant a man wearing a 'mandil", an apron, a man who cooks, cleans, does women's work. He's generally considered housebroken and weak, not a true man. But far more women are employed today, working outside the home and men are helping with children and around the house. It's even common now to hear younger women calling themselves 'muy chingón' and branding women they consider submissive and stupid 'bueys' or oxen. In a way, they're treating women the same way men do, as inferiors. Sexually, young women are incredibly more aggressive. They take the initiative, they keep lists of conquests, they're very open about what they want. There's nothing submissive or passive about them.

"But a whole lot stays the same. The old attitudes are deeprooted and vigorous and live along with the changes. Women are still pushed to the side, still experience discrimination, and still abused because men still want to be 'muy chingón', 'ch.p.t. para todo, up for anything, powerful. And power remains intimately connected in the Mexican male mind with the sexual penetration and dominance of women."

+
saber
our understanding idiomatic
vivimos en esperanza
we live in hope
waiting
esperando
por cambio
for change
intercambiando
claiming our permeability
speaking
in mutually broken tongues
sharing
mutually broken bread
mending memories
to thread our bare\ness-
-essities
planting our selves
igualmente
porque tenemos cosas en comun
where our feet sink
into well-turned earth
soiled gladly in its grip
growing rooted again
by penetrating a commonality
born not of inherited circumstance
but spirit and intelligence:
an achieved reach across received divides.

Michele Gibbs
{from OTRA ONDA, 2001}
*

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