The Mextasy event held at The Front in San Ysidro, CA, last Tuesday was illuminating, inspiring, and invigorating. On the bill were author Daniel Hernandez, Gustavo “Ask a Mexican” Arellano, and San Diego State University professor Bill Nericcio. Los Hollywood closed the proceedings with a badass acoustic performance.
Hernandez got things started by reading two excerpts from his book, Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century. I had no previous familiarity with his work, but what he read was enough to prompt me to buy the book on the spot. First, he narrated his return to El Chopo, a traditionally countercultural marketplace in Mexico City that Hernandez describes as “the permanent citadel of the Mexican counterculture. Or what’s left of it” (35). Then, in response to a request from the audience, Hernandez continued with a reading of the opening chapter of the Spanish-language translation of his book, a chapter in which he narrates his participation in a pilgrimage to the famed Basilica of Guadalupe. Coincidentally (since he did not exactly plan to read the Basilica passage), the two excerpts had in common a description of two very different cultural cornerstones slipping away. For different spiritual reasons, people continue to trek to both El Chopo and the Basilica, but as Hernandez says of El Chopo, people’s ideas of these two places seem to be “on perpetual repeat” (35). In a manner that brings to mind another return-to-the-homeland narrative, Jessica Abel’s La Perdida, the author ends up finding his dislocation intact as he meanders through D.F.
Arellano followed with a reading from his newest book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. Arellano has already made a name for himself not only as the eponymous sage of his Ask a Mexican column and book, but also as a historian of Latinos in Orange County (which is something one gets a taste of in his other book, Orange County: A Personal History). Much to my amusement, the selection that Arellano read spoke to a question that has been nagging us over here at Arte y Loqueras: Why do the names of so many taco shops end in “bertos?” For example, here in La Mesa we have within a few miles of each other “Aliberto’s,” “Roberto’s,” and “Rigoberto’s.” As much as the background that Arellano provided helped to explain the –berto’s phenomenon, it also showed that he is a man who does his homework. In his columns he may seem like an off-the-cuff smartass, but he is clearly very smart and informed and can deftly bring together issues of immigration, economics, and family drama into one seamless and instructive explanation. I’m sure his students at Cal State, Fullerton, where he is a lecturer in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, appreciate the wit and insight he brings to the classroom.
Nericcio wrapped up the readings section of the evening with a taste of his book Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America. This project glosses a broad selection of images and stereotypes of Mexicans in American popular culture, covering everything from dolls to movies to advertisements to cartoons. For his part this evening, Nericcio read from a section about Orson Welles and Touch of Evil. For those in attendance, this proved revealing for thinking about the construction (and distortion) of racial identities in the American imaginary, especially as they necessarily relate to the concomitant construction of racial hierarchies. In fact, for audience members the benefit of Nericcio’s talk was twofold: on one hand, they walked away with a new lesson on the film itself. On the other hand, Nericcio modeled the possibilities that arise when one looks around at and spends some time meditating on the assorted stuff that surrounds us (what he calls “the fabric of popular culture”).
Los Hollywood always put on amazing shows and on this night they not only utterly rocked again, but they also provided the perfect exclamation mark with which to close this evening. Every time I’ve seen them, it has struck me as uncanny how forceful a delivery vocalist/bassist Heidy Flores manages to muster. On song after song, including my—and probably everyone’s—favorite “No te Aguites,” she belted out bilingual lyrics that shook the building and the soul alike. To her left, guitarist Marcos Mondregon was uber-cool as he strummed and moved the music along. (In one of the cuter moments, at the start of a song Flores seemed to express concern to her guitarist about the placement of the capo on his guitar. Nonchalantly, Mondregon shook her off as if to say, I know what I’m doing.) Drummer Gustavo Mojica (who also plays for San Diego band Cabeza de Gallo) sat atop a beat box to Flores’s right. It was amazing to watch his dexterous ability to sustain a driving beat not only with his palms (which reddened as the set continued), but also with a few tambourines, one of which he had at one point duct-taped to his foot to free up his hands.
Musically the trio were impressive (to be sure, they are never anything less). Just as significantly, they effectively finished off what Hernandez started and which Arellano and Nericcio extended: making the audience feel excited about and proud of Chicano/a cultural studies in the 21st century. All involved in Mextasy provided a much-needed reassurance that Chicano/a ideas, words, scholarship, and art are thriving.
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