Rasquachismo is not a term that may be clearly defined into words as it is a personality of everyday life, an attitude or taste that is a private insider code within the Chicano community. This attitude or taste stems from an underdog perspective which is adaptable and resourceful defining not only people but objects and places. With the rasquache lifestyle, objects are constantly on the verge of falling apart so movidas or coping strategies that provide more time and options through making do with what you have, make objects temporal as they will only hold up in time to make do. Rasquache taste is to embrace eccentricity, to be loud and bold when everyone else is muted, there is no shame in combining patterns and bright colors as boldness is valued over the mundane. The personality of the rasquache underclass that is held by both Mexican and Mexican Americans is viewed as vulgar and distasteful by working-class aesthetics as it interrupts the dominant culture's pure standard of living. Therefore, within the Chicano middle-class rasquache must be left behind to allow for social mobility, meaning one must forget the resourcefulness and inventiveness of the barrio lifestyle.
My Grandmas's bold decorative sense correlates to the resourcefulness of rasquachismo. In the living room of my grandmothers’ old home was a wall of decorative trinkets that she would collect from all over the place, none of them matched and each was vibrantly colored and had their personality. Although none of her trinkets matched in any way, shape, or form they all held a meaning for her remaindering her of found, places, memories, and people. When my grandmother could no longer live on her own, she moved in with us and had to leave behind all her trinkets but did not leave her rasquache resourcefulness behind. In our house nothing could be thrown away as everything has a use, I recall on the day of my graduation my mother could not find a vase to place my flowers, so my grandmother grabbed an old coke bottle from the trash and placed my flowers inside.
Rasquachismo is such an interesting theory and I love the way you tied it into the objects and personal belonging of your grandmothers home. I learned about rasquachismo first in a theater last quarter and im glad the word was able to pop up once again in this class.
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