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Bianca Picariello Signori

University Writing

4 October 2020

Moraga and Spanish: Languages of Resistance

Throughout the text, “Art in America, Con Acento”, the Chicana author Cherríe Moraga

thoroughly discusses the notions of attachments to cultural identity, the experience of being

Latino in the United States, and the valuable role that representation holds, particularly in the art

forms she participates in: writing and theater. Her identity as a Chicana writer in opposition to

American culture, history and values is clearly identifiable as a core aspect of the essay, as

Moraga employs repetition to re-affirm this part of her identity various times, with concise,

direct claims such as “I am Latina, born and raised in the United States. I am a writer” (154). She

relies on these identity claims to establish her ethos as a Latina writer and thus qualify her to

carry out her aim of rendering her texts and revolutionary ideologies accessible to others that

may identify with her experience. Nonetheless, Moraga is publishing her essay in Frontiers: A

Journal of Women Studies, an American journal, and thus must be aware that the majority of her

readers will be American and English-speaking. This ultimately leads to the question: given that

Moraga explicitly expresses that she intends to make her writing and art accessible to her

audience, which is mostly American or English-speaking, why does she tend to frequently

incorporate Spanish phrases and words, communicating in a language many she is addressing

won’t understand?

Moraga generally relies on Spanish to express phrases that reinforce her own cultural

identity, as well as unite the experience of Chicanos and other Latinos living in the United States.
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Moraga affirms she “cannot be a playwright unconcerned about how theater is created and for

whom” (159), acting in reaction to the lack of representation of Latinos, particularly women, in

art and working to render her own theater accessible to the oppressed and non-privileged. Thus,

the shift in language is a conscious choice to distance herself from the language that she

considers to be that of domination, English, in support for the language of her people: Spanish.

This is most noticeable in a phrase that is repeated various times throughout the essay by

Moraga, as she refers to Mexican Americans living in the US as being in “las entrañas del

monstruo” (154). Her metaphor establishes a relationship between the United States and a

physical body with internal organs and entrails, but also creates an opposition and distinction

between white America and Chicanos, as she symbolises a country and government that has

historically presented itself as an adversary to Mexican freedom and independence, both cultural

and national, as a monster that they are living within. This portrayed antagonism furthers her

various affirmations of her Chicana identity, as through a rejection of American culture and a

celebration of her Mexican heritage, she is affirming her own ownership over her own body and

country, its language and spirit. She thus frequently employs Spanish phrases and diction

throughout her writing to reject anglicization, an aspect central to Chicana identity and Chicana

art. Furthermore, she claims that “the Left, the Third World, feminist, and gay movements still

employ the language of the dominant class and as such culturally bind one’s way of conceiving

revolution” (157). Through her use of Spanish, she is opposing herself to the “language of the

dominant class”, English, and introducing a new medium through which revolution and

resistance can take hold.

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Throughout her writing, Moraga frequently relies on the Spanish language to express her

opposition to American assimilation – yet, why does she most frequently focus on the discussion

of bodies when intentionally writing in a language of resistance? Moraga describes the theft of

the territory, both of American indigenous people and of Mexicans, by white Americans, as well

as the theft of a language and tradition, and thus of the “spirit and flesh” (156), drawing a parallel

between the value of culture and the physicality of land and of bodies. Her focus particularly on

the bodies of women is most evident as she discusses the main character in one of her most

recent plays: Cerezita, a body-less Chicana. She writes about Cerezita to express the stereotypes

and gender roles that are enforced on women, by both the American and Mexican patriarchy, and

thus their deprivation of freedom and choice over their own bodies and identities, thus

establishing the "liberation of Chicana sexuality as intimately tied to the liberation of nations”

(159). Moraga fortifies the relation between the American colonization of territory and of

identity, as the Anglo-american efforts to anglicize Latino cultures is interrelated to that through

which patriarchal and sexist standards and norms are imposed on women. The liberation of

“sexuality” as well as the “liberation of nations” (159) that she proposes involves the reclamation

of choice over how Chicanos, especially women, should and can acceptably appear in society

and so their feeling of identity, both to their person and to their territory. This idea is echoed

when she states that “los Estados Unidos es mi país, pero no es mi patria” (156). She is referring

to the colonization and robbery of Mexican land, now part of the United States – thus

recognizing the physical territory she is standing on as part of her heritage and that of her people,

and so her “país”, yet not recognizing the present American values and culture that have asserted

themselves on the land as her own, thus making it not her “patria". These ties between
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subjectivity and corporality emphasize Moraga’s understanding of the interrelatedness between

the oppression of imperialism over territory with that of the patriarchy over bodies through the

silencing and exploitation of Chicanos. She ultimately communicates this metaphor in Spanish to

introduce an alternative, valuable language of resistance, that of bodies, to those who most face

the pressures of assimilation and cultural and physical subjugation: Chicana women.

Moraga proposes the art of theater as a space for community building and a reclaiming of

Chicana identity through their physical representation. She recalls the notion of a woman

rendered to exist without a body, arguing that “she who has been made invisible and

dismembered – the bent back in the fields, the rough hands in the garden, the rigid body beneath

him in bed, the deep lap to the child on the bus bench, the assembly-line fingers, the veiled face

above the rosary beads – begins to assume full dimension on the Chicana stage” (158). As the

Chicana woman is rendered subject through her protagonism in Moraga’s plays, she reclaims her

body, communicating to the audience an unrestricted portrayal of her experience and identity

through the physicalization of culturally silenced voices. Thus, Moraga introduces the

transformative potential of theater as found in the opportunity to heal from the harm of the

patriarchy and cultural colonization by rendering the oppressed, in Moraga’s case Chicana

women, the principal actor of her own story, narrated in a bodily language completely unbound

from the domination inherent in English and still present in Spanish . This is particularly

interesting when considering that she ends her discussion of the role of the Chicana on stage by

reminding the reader that, “you cannot be ignored” (158). Moraga intentionally switches from

the third person to the second person, addressing the audience members directly and personally,

calling them to participate in her act of resistance. The decision to switch the person addressed at
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the end of her text is extremely relevant as it centralizes to Moraga’s audience the value of their

own participation in the process of resistance, particularly through speaking Spanish and theater,

or any means of opposition to forced assimilation. She induces upon the reader the experience

that the Chicana woman experiences on stage, rendering them the subject of her writing and thus

giving them the freedom to establish their own self and identity, one that “cannot be ignored”

(158).

Moraga, despite publishing in an American journal, makes the conscious decision to

incorporate Spanish language throughout her text, through which she affirms her own Chicana

identity through the rejection of Anglicization and ultimately furthers her aim as a writer to

render transformative ideologies of resistance accessible to those silenced in American society.

She thus draws various metaphors between body and land in Spanish to try and render the art

form of theater as more inclusive to women, particularly Chicanas, who have most been

subjugated by the interrelation of Anglo-domination and patriarchal oppression, present both in

the USA and in Mexican culture. Moraga’s metaphors are intended to demonstrate the link

between the inability to fully choose, belong and act upon one’s own body to one’s land, both of

which have been colonized. The focus on bodies enables Moraga to further address the

experience of Chicana women and offer a language of resistance even more effective and

unrestricted than Spanish: physical expression through theater. Moraga ultimately is

communicating in Spanish to compel the reader, particularly the Spanish speakers who have

faced hardship living in the United States and the Chicana women who relate most to her

experiences, to answer her call and participate in theater to reclaim their bodies as a physical act

of resistance.
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Works Cited

Moraga, Cherríe. “Art in America, Con Acento.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol.
12, no. 3, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.