Gavazza, Emmalee (Week 4: Rasquachismo)

Rasquachismo can be hard to define because the lack of strict, formal, institutional definition is such a significant part of what it means to be rasquache. As Tomás Ybarra-Frausto writes in “Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility,” there is a sense that “to name this sensibility, to draw its contours… is risking its betrayal.” Ybarra-Frausto also points out that rasquachismo is “nonlinear, exploratory, and unsolemn.” None of these features make it easy to put a dictionary definition onto the word or the ideas it communicates.

But from what I understand, rasquachismo is an underdog mentality and an attitude of improvisation and “making do” or “making it work.” This stance is both aesthetic and cultural. It rejects the strict borders of belonging and unbelonging that the “middle” and “upper” classes often spend so much time defining and enforcing. Instead, rasquachismo embraces the vibrant creative energy that “moves outside established boundaries” (Ybarra-Frausto) when working-class people use whatever resources are available to make their lives more functional or beautiful, or both at the same time. It’s about collage and improvisation, taking the materials at hand and using them in novel ways to add vitality to the rasquache’s lived experience.

When I first heard this word, it made me think of my dad. He’s a very thoughtful and creative person who enjoys finding ways to add personal touches to the assorted domestic projects that come up in his day to day life, especially if it involves working around the established way of doing things. A retired school custodian and union representative, he takes pride in never going to the store to buy something that he could make himself; last year he showed me how to change the rotors on my car. In other words, he loves to hacer rendir las cosas. Some of my dad’s projects have included collecting antique salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like various objects (ironing board, kitchen mixer, cars, etc), building his own plant aquarium, sealing small personal artifacts (creosote flowers from his yard, an old pocket watch) in molded resin to make ornamental cubes, and using PVC pipe and chicken wire to build an enclosure for his car so that the pesky desert kangaroo rats (he lives near Joshua Tree) won’t find their way under the hood overnight and chew on the wiring. My dad loves playing host to the various desert animals that share his environment; as the sun goes down every evening he likes to watch birds, rabbits, and squirrels gather to drink from the makeshift fountain he’s made out of an old plastic tub and an electric pond pump. He doesn’t view these tasks as a bother and seems to take a kind of roguish delight in adding his own flair to each one. To me, his approach is very rasquache.