JORGE ANTONIO VALLEJOS

Embracing My Identity: Reflections on Jorge Gonzlez Camarena's Painting El Abrazo

Red comes at me hard. Thoughts of high-pitched screams, sharp abdominal pains, crunching bones, and pierced organs, as a glimmering sword enters a brown body and comes out bloodstained. This being symbolic of Indigenous women on their backs forced to give birth to the Mestizaje, and that in turn symbolizing the rape of Pacha MammaMother Earthwho now bears catastrophes in response to oil drilling, mine excavating, and countless other forms of exploitation. Un abrazo, a hug, is traditionally thought of as a display of affection, an embrace that brings two or more people together, a form of bonding. But was it bonding or bondage that occurred in the Americas when several nations from Europe invaded? Jorge Gonzlez Camarena's painting El Abrazo brings to mind how Western civilization came into beinghelotry. Broken are the pieces of wood on the ground that Camarena paints; broken like the false identity of the people born of the colonization of Indigenous land. Broken like the religious law that the colonizers supposedly practiced and enforced on Indigenous populations.

Jorge Antonio Vallejos

Broken like the original ways of life of many of the first peoples of the land now called Mexico, named after the Mexican people, better known as the Aztecs. "Tu eres original de esta tierra," I said to a Mayan woman at the Mercado Libertad in Guadalajara, Mexico. "Si," she responded. Her smooth, tanned face, braided black hair, and short height patiently stood in front of me as I peppered her with questions. Her friends were selling handmade garments and traditional regalia at a booth. My traveling partners looked at their merchandise with tourists' eyes; while they thought of deals on clothes, I thought about how the ground that I was standing on belonged to this woman's ancestors, to her, and her children if she has or plans to have any. When I think of Mexico, I think of people like her, original to the land, and people like myself. Mestizos, who are the indoctrinated oppressors. "Brainwashed? Who? But we're Latino, Spanish, Hispanic! No somos indios!" is what I have been told. "You sure about that?" I ask people during such conversations. "Mestizo means a mix of Indigenous and Spanish. Spanish people are from Spain; Indigenous people are from Abya Yala'land in its fullest maturity'now known as the Americas. Our parents come from the Americas and have passed on both Indigenous and Spanish blood to us as it has been passed onto them," I explain. Conversations like this are common in my life. Having to explain how and why I identify the way I do; refusing to succumb to the imposed labels Latino, Spanish, and Hispanic, as that would mean to cut off one part of me just as the conquistador in Camarena's painting is cutting into the Indigenous warrior defending his land. The conquistador in Camarena's painting first appeared to be standing over his victim. Once, examining the painting closely, it became apparent that they are both wounded, both on their knees, and as with any form of war and colonization, both are victims. Still, the conquistador is above the Indigenous warrior. Equally, the mentality that los conquistadores brought hangs over the heads of Mestizos who identify with them: Puerto Rican mixed martial arts fighter Jorge Rivera calls himself "El Conquistador"; my Mestizo friend Harold has yelled "I'm Spanish! Their blood is in me"; during Christmas dinner my mother has proudly proclaimed that the customs we practice are "al estilo Espaol."
51

The Kenyon Reviev*/

Through the inculcation process practiced by the Spanish on the Mestizaje, a people's true identity has been left in the dark. Slavery of the mind has helped to continue the practice of slavery on the original peoples of Abya Yala and the new people who believe that they are better and difterent from them. As the fire in Gamarena's painting burns strong, so must be the taking back of a true identity. As objects fly in his painting as a result of explosions around the fatal embrace of the colonizer and the colonized, so do the colonial mentalities of discrimination, sexism, and classism need to be blown away. In the same manner that both fighters bleed together, the Mestizaje have to embrace both sides of who they are. The eagle claw lying on the ground and the feathers worn as armor must be set free to fly again so that full-bloods and mixed-bloods, the original people and the Mestizaje, can live together as one. It is this type of abrazo that now needs to be painted.

Copyright of Kenyon Review is the property of Kenyon Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.