Before this week's reading, I was not aware of the term “rasquachismo”. After reading more about it, learning the origins, and what makes someone rasquache, I have realized that this word totally encapsulates my father. The rasquache aesthetic came to popularity from the 1930s and 1940s theater shows called “carpa” and “tandas de variedad”. Actors acted in bawdy comedic sketches. Rasquache would later evolve during the 1960s Chicano movement to help Chicano identities. Jennifer A. Gonzalez, excellency explains how rasquachismo came to define many Chicanos when she writes, “Rasquachismo, as a sensibility of the downtrodden, mirrored the social reality of the majority of Chicanos who were poor, disenfranchised, and mired in elemental daily struggles for survival” (88). The idea of rasquachismo is something I now see within my own community and within my own family.
Throughout my life, my parents have always been known to be resourceful. They would reuse and repurpose anything and everything. And at times to the point where I would get embarrassed. Karen Mary Davalos even describes rasquachismo in Yolanda M. Lopez as “making do with what's at hand (15)”, and that's exactly what my parents learned to do. Both my parents come from a working-class background, so they needed to learn how to be resourceful and adaptive to survive. These are the very ideas of being rasquache. I don't have too many examples of rasquache, but I did find this little shrine my father made a while back. This is actually the same Guadalupe figure I showed in the previous post but I purposely cropped out everything else because at the time I thought it looked tacky (which rasquache was sometimes described as), but my father worked hard on gathering pieces around the house and even going to our local 99¢ Store to gather some additional supplies to build this. To him, he believes this is a beautiful piece that honors these figures, and I would agree.
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