CARA's Politics of Representation- Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Alicia Gaspar de Alba discussion of representation of women in CARA in the book CARA’s Politics of Representation was interesting to me when she discusses some of the underlying messages created by the placement of the “Feminist visions” exhibit and the type of art displayed by women and of women. Gaspar de Alba describes how the placement of the “Feminist Visions” exhibit between “Reclaiming the Past” exhibit and the “Redefining American” exhibit perpetuates the idea that women are cultural and biological links between the past and the present. This is similar to the way she describes that women during the Mexican revolution were seen as baby making machines to produce the future men. The constant view of women as having a sole purpose of being mothers is reinforced by the placement of the exhibits. It makes me wonder if this was done purposefully. In addition to this, it is so frustrating that most of the art in public spaces like at CARA are by men because they tend to include problematic reinforcements of the roles of women as well. Women are constantly being objectified and being illustrated as whore or being glorified as wives and mothers. Why are women not glorified while playing other roles outside of motherhood? In the chapter discussed, Gaspar de Alba also correlates the inequality between Chicanos and Chicanas to a quote in the novel Animal Farm, “some animals are more equal than others.” I interpreted this as like Chicanos in the Chicano movement are more equal to the dominant race because they are the dominant sex in a patriarchal society. This gives Chicanos more power in the movement and puts the importance of Chicana’s rights below the men’s. I also thought this was interesting because it could be applied to the idea of how 2^nd wave feminism which was dominated by white women, the elite race, did not take into consideration the inequalities that women of color are subject to. Here, white feminists are the animals that are more equal. Both correlations to the Animal Farm quote exhibit how women of color are really at the bottom of the totem pole with regards to inequality.