Week 3 - Rasquache Sensibilities and Memories

Thinking of rasquache sensibilities, it brings me back to my upbringing in terms of Yolanda López and how it contributed to her artwork and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto’s and Amalia Mesa-Bains' underdog perspectives of it. As for my upbringing we never lived in poverty, but we were definitely not rich. I remember in the 1970s, my Dad held jobs at local warehouses, and I think the wage back then was somewhere just over one dollar per hour. Growing up in La Habra was a unique experience, since the town was mostly white people with a much smaller Mexican American population and an even smaller population of Mexicans that could not speak English. Language in many ways divided us and in strange ways pitted many of my friends to hold prejudices against Mexican nationals. I know for a fact that many of my Mexican American friends felt they were better than those other kids. It bothered me then just as it does today when I see Mexican Americans that consider undocumented people as “wetbacks.” Ironically, being Mexican American in the 1970s, I was never called a “wetback” myself; but in November 2017 my own conservative cousin told me if I didn’t like the U.S. I could leave and called me a “wetback” twice, since I spoke out against Trump. Then there were all the white kids that came from well to do families up in La Habra Heights, as we lived down in the city. I bring this up since, I can recognize the pressures my parents endured in trying to provide for us kids.

My parents made do with what little we had. Being rasquachismo makes sense to me, but domesticana is still confusing. However, as for my rasquache memories, since we did not have air conditioning during the hot summer nights, my parents would create our own drive-in theater in the backyard. They called it “bedroll theatre” and we’d bring out some blankets and pillows or sleeping bags and watch home movies and cartoons with a projector they had. We didn’t have furniture in the yard, so we used chopped tree stumps for chairs in the backyard. We never had the type of clothes that were fashionable. For example, my mom always bought my brother and I navy blue Vans for shoes, while all the other kids had these cool looking running shoes with stripes. Then one year, all of sudden, Vans became the popular shoe, but then my Mom switched us to the more affordable running shoes with stripes. We made what was out of fashion be fashionable for us. My parents built a make-shift bedroom for my brother and I. Recently, I was told all our Christmas toys came from Goodwill and I loved everything my parents gave us. My Pop fixed anything that broke down with spare parts. My entire approach to learning how to sing is all rasquache, since I taught myself by listening and imagining singing in my thoughts. One time I took a date to the beach and it was so cold I ripped out the wood bench from the back of my parent’s pick-up truck to burn it, so she’d be warm. Is that rasquache too? I’m not so sure.