Latino Usa: Being In Between Two Worlds
In the start of the year, I thought Latino USA would focus on different Latin cultures; now, Latino USA, to me, is learning that Latinos are in between two worlds: one world will make one second guess their identity, and the second world will make one feel welcomed. But being in between both worlds, is one of the biggest struggles for many Latinos in the United States because they have to push through discriminatory rejections.
The first source that changed my understanding of Latino USA is Selena. Selena is in between the two worlds, and her dad, Abraham, is concerned that she will be rejected by the audience because of her gender and her ethnicity. Selena’s ethnicity was Mexican American; she grew up not speaking Spanish nor did her parents speak Spanish at home. One day, her father heard Selena sing in English, and he got motivated to teach Selena how to speak Spanish for her to know how to sing in Spanish because he wanted to start a band-“Selena y Los Dinos”. Selena was not that excited to learn how to speak it but either way she learned how to throughout her singing career. The reason why Selena’s father wanted her to learn Spanish was because he faced a lot of discriminatory rejections throughout his career with “Los Dinos”.
As Selena, Los Dinos were also in between the two worlds. Los Dinos were going to perform at this club, but the owner of the club rejected them because they were a bunch of “Mexicans”, and the club was white zoned so the owner just gave them a ten dollar check since they showed up. Even though Los Dinos sang in English, people would portray the band as “Latin” because their band name was in Spanish. This demonstrates that they got rejected by the American world because according to the owner they were not going to satisfy the audience and probably make his business go down due to the fact that a lot of racial segregation was going on around the 1960’s in the United States, and that club was for whites only. On the other hand, Los Dinos performed at a Mexican club, and they still got rejected; one of the Dinos,before going into the club, said,” Nobody can kick us out from this job guys. . . they’re Tejanos and Mexicans like us. ” Later on in that scene, Los Dinos are singing “We Belong Together”, and Mexican people are screaming that they want “rancheras and Polkas”. One of the Dinos says,” We don’t know any Mexican music. ” The quotation reveals that Latinos are so harsh on people that are Mexican Americans because they expect them to know Latin music and know how to speak Spanish.
On the contrary, the American world, rejected them because of their skin complexion; the white owner of the club was prejudice to categorize them as “Mexicans”. In addition, since their band name was in Spanish, the white people that would attend the performance that night would have assumed that they spoke broken English, no English at all or that they had an accent, so they would not attend their performance at that club, so the owner just took the decision to not admit them at all because he did not want to lose his customers. The second source that changed my perspective of Latino USA was the novel, Make your Home Among Strangers. Lizet, the protagonist of the novel, is Cuban American. She grew up in Miami
