Faculty Mentor: Ed A. Muñoz (Ethnic Studies, University of Utah)

The research I participated in this summer has been eye-opening, and it went in directions that I did not expect, but these changes taught me more than I could have hoped for. When we first started our research this summer, we conducted a literature review where I had the opportunity to read illuminating works by several scholars in the field of Latinx Studies. One work, by Dr. Armando Solorzano, highlights the historical indigenous ties that the Latinx community, particularly Mexicans, have to Utah. In this article, I was introduced to the idea that the Aztecs and Utes came into contact early on, “The use of the Uto-Aztecan languages in Utah’s territory testifies that many Native American tribes, the Utes among them, have lineages that reach from the Southwest, to Mexico and Mesoamerica” (Solórzano 1998). This makes the case for Latinxs in Utah having pre-colonial roots. While historical papers aided me in contextualizing the long history of the Latinx community in Utah, I also relied on contemporary papers. One paper made the case for the use of “Latinidad” in Latinx Studies, “I employed the term Latinidad based on the understanding that Latina/o identity is not a monolithic concept or process. Rather, it is an ongoing, fluid social, economic, and political construction mediated through individual and institutional processes, as well as by historical and contemporary regional contexts” (Muñoz 2021). This article helped to solidify my understanding of the term Latinidad, but more importantly, it gave me a basis to interrogate different Latinidades, which is what our research is doing.

Our research aimed to explore how the Latinx population in Utah maintains Latinidad, and the oral histories that we analyzed provided us with data that highlighted key components of Latinidad. We then decided to focus on two Latinx dance groups with which my mentor had conducted oral histories, Bomba Marilé and Westside Dance. Bomba Marilé is a Puerto Rican Bomba dance group and WestSide Dance is a Mexican ballet Folklorico dance group. As I spent time analyzing the oral histories, watching the recordings, and reading transcripts I felt as if I got to know each narrator. I learned the stories of a Chinese Mexican immigrant mother, a Chicana who has been making community in Salt Lake City for generations of kids, a married couple fleeing environmental disaster in Puerto Rico, a Puerto Rican female endocrinologist who wanted to make space for her people, and a Utah native male of Puerto Rican descent who waited 28 years until he finally found his people. Each of their stories was rich and they showed the diverse array of intersecting identities that make up Latinidad.

Initially, I wanted my final project, my presentation at the Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS), to display both dance groups. However, due to limited poster space, I had to choose just one group to focus on. The decision was a hard one. Due to my Mexican background, I felt an affinity towards the WestSide Dance group. In the end, though I decided to focus on the Bomba Marilé members. Through these interviews, I learned the most because their experience of Latinidad was new to me. They shed light on so many things that I have learned in my previous Latinx Studies classes.

I learned about the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. I learned about the way that Puerto Ricans call themselves Boricua as a way of fighting against their island’s colonization and as a way of claiming indigenous heritage. I saw Afro-Latinidad on display, something that I realized is often dismissed in the Mexican American community. Although it hurt, I even learned how some of the members of Bomba Marilé faced discrimination from their other Latinx groups due to their U.S. citizenship status through Puerto Rico’s historical colonial relationship with the U.S.

These narrators opened my eyes to their experiences and showed me a whole new way of being Latinx. Even so, I still found myself able to relate to so much of what they talked about like the effects of diaspora and feeling as if you do not belong. More than that though, I was inspired by the members’ display of belonging and insistence. They did not see a space for themselves in Utah, so they went out of their way to create one. Bomba Marilé is an organization where these members feel free to be themselves, to be Puerto Rican, to be queer, to raise children, to sing, to dance, to celebrate, to live.

This project for me was an exercise in diversifying the way I view Latinidad. I think that it would serve all of us within the Latinx community to get to know each other better not only so that we can see similar struggles but so that we can celebrate our joys and triumphs together. The Latinx community will never be a monolith, and that’s what makes it powerful.

This summer research has inspired me to familiarize myself with other Latinx ways of being. I engage in research so that it can inspire my creative works. I can say the individuals I have come to know have inspired me. It has truly been a pleasure to get to know their stories, and I would like to thank Bomba Marilé and WestSide Dance for participating in these oral histories. In the future, my mentor and I will carry this research further by writing a paper, submitting it for presentation at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, and creating an ArcGIS storymap about our research.

Bibliography

Muñoz, Ed A. (2021). “‘Why Not Nuevo Mexicano Studies?’: Interrogating Latinidades in the Intermountain West, 1528–2020.” Genealogy, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 68. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5030068.

Solórzano, Armando (1998). “Struggle over Memory: The Roots of the Mexican Americans in Utah, 1776 through the 1850s.” Aztlán, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 81–118.