“This Is Not Your Country!”: Nation and Belonging in Latina/o Literature

In the first chapter of his prizewinning autobiography, Always Running (1993), Luis Rodriguez—peace activist, poet, writer, and former gang member—tells a story about one of the first lessons he received about the politics of identity in this country. Having taken a walk to Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles with his mother and siblings, Rodriguez (who was born a US citizen) witnesses his Mexican mother’s humiliation at the hands of an “American” woman who contests his mother’s right to sit herself and her children on an available park bench. “ ‘Look spic, you can’t sit there!’ the American woman yelled. ‘You don’t belong here! Understand? This is not your country!’ ” (19). The anecdote serves to introduce Rodriguez’s reader to a key theme that runs throughout the book—a theme that motivates much of the action in the plot of his life. From a very young age, Rodriguez heard the message from teachers, policemen, and random “American” strangers that, as a young, poor, Mexican-origin boy, he was unwanted, out of place, and ultimately disposable. Rodriguez’s reaction to his predicament was one that he suggests is completely understandable—he joined a gang. “Gangs,” he explains, “are not alien powers. They begin as unstructured groupings, our children, who desire the same as any young person. Respect. A sense of belonging. Protection. The same thing that the YMCA, Little League or the Boy Scouts want. It wasn’t any more than what I wanted as a child” (250). What Rodriguez wanted as a child and what he got, however, were two very different things. Although the gangs he joined did initially give him “something to belong to,” they did not finally empower him to claim his rightful place as a fully entitled citizen of the US (41). It was not until he began to educate himself through the Chicano Movement about the economic and social institutions that put him and others like him at a structural disadvantage relative to other “Americans” that Rodriguez was able to break free of gang life and begin the long, arduous process toward achieving full, substantive Rewriting North American Borders in Chicano and Chicana Narrative By Monika Kaup Peter Lang, 2001