Rasquachismo and Domesticana: Chicanx Aesthetics

Before reading these articles in Chicana and Chicano Art: A Critical Anthology, I had already encountered and learned a little bit about them in other Chicanx courses. The way I had come to understand rasquachismo was that it was a Chicanx/Mexican/Mexican-American, working-class aesthetic or sensibility of making do with what you have. In the article by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, I found many things to be resonant. "To be rasquache is to be down but not out (fregado pero no jodido)" (154). This speaks to the will to survive and to thrive within a working-class lifestyle. Interestingly, "[b]oth in Mexico and in the United States rasquachismo retains connotations of vulgarity and bad taste, a sense of being cursi" (154). When I was first exposed to what rasquachismo was, I learned it had been a derogatory term used against people of lower classes. I also learned that Ybarra-Frausto had reclaimed and reframed it in a positive way to refer to the resourcefulness of our community. It shares this similarity with the reclaiming and reframing of the word Chicano. However, I did not know to what extent it was still seen as an insult here in the United States. I had told my friend about rasquachismo and she had found it really interesting. Over break, she made a comment about something her mom had done (repurposing a yogurt container) and called it rasquache which her mom, a Mexican immigrant, did not appreciate and got really upset about. It is interesting to see this reaction and this disconnect from what I understood the word to mean now. I think this opens up a conversation about access to knowledge about the changing meanings of cultural words within an academic framework. If we really think about it, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto was highly educated and was publishing his work in academic journals. How would we have known this shift in meaning if we had not read about it in this anthology?

In the article by Amalia Mesa-Bains, she distinguishes domesticana as a uniquely Chicana rasquache aesthetic and sensibility informed by feminist ideologies within art production (162). It has ties to the domestic realm of life that often surrounds Chicanas along with their working-class and feminist positionality. "For Chicana artists using the rasquache stance, their work takes on a deeper meaning of domestic tension, as the signs of making do are both an affirmation of domestic life and a resistance to the subjugation of the women in the domestic sphere" (168). I believe it is really important to make this distinction between rasquachismo and the uniquely-Chicana sensibility of domesticana because it acknowledges and carves out a space for a Chicana feminist perspective to be seen and heard where oftentimes it was quieted and actively ignored. I also wonder if this word would mean anything to Mexican women of older generations -- would they be resistant, or would they identify with its message?