Colonize This!
Cristina Tzintzún
I worry about dating whites, especially white men. I worry that even though my skin is white like theirs, they will try and colonize me. I see what a white man did to my beautiful, brown, Mexican mother. He colonized her. It is not love that drew my father to my mother, as I used to think; rather, it was the color of her skin, her impoverished background, her lack of education, her nationality, her low self-esteem, her submissiveness. In his mind these qualities reinforced his superiority. Instead of recognizing the differences between him and her as beauty, my father saw them as a means for exploitation.
My father met my mother in Morelos, Mexico. She was working at a store when he came and asked her for change. He told her that he was from the States and that he would be back for her. She just thought he was a crazy, gringo hippie, and she paid no attention to him. Later that day he came back for her. He told my mother that he and his friend Zauza, named after the Tequila brand, were going to take her to their place. My mother naïvely thought that they were kidnapping her—she had never seen gringos dressed so oddly. So she went with them fearing for her life. They took her to their house where the rest of their roommates were tripping on acid. My mother was doubly frightened by this, not only were they kidnapping her, but they were going to turn her into a drug addict. After a few hours they took my mother home, and after that they came to visit her regularly.
Two years later my parents got married. They raised my older sister in Mexico for her first year. Then they came to the States to “visit” but never returned to Mexico to live. If my mother could have returned to Mexico safely with us, her children, she would have. She feared that my father would kidnap us—not an unrealistic fear considering my uncle did the same thing to my aunt when she left him for the first time. Also, the economic possibility of raising three children in Mexico as a single parent was unrealistic. My mother was no longer in her early twenties and therefore considered undesirable for employment in machista Mexican culture. Her only choice was to raise us in the United States.
Both my father and my mother raised us to be proud of who we were. Shame was not part of my vocabulary. As a child I was proud to identify myself with brown, with poor, with Indian, with “other.” I specifically remember my father teaching me the avenues to fight my oppressors. He was the one who taught me feminist theory. He taught me about systemic racism. I listened to my father’s advice. I was not like most girls. I always spoke my mind. I had no reservations about acting “unfeminine.” I was raised with such fire. I was aggressive. I spoke like the boys did and never gave it a second thought. I was not worried about it if they would like it or disagree, or if they would like me.
I worry about dating white men because of my father. He is a “progressive” man, or so people think. Only those close to him realize his hypocrisy. Most consider him to be a liberal, a feminist, an antiracist, an anticlassist, but I know he is not. He is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He disguises himself as a humanitarian, but this deception makes him the worst offender of them all.
I was told never to submit to any man, but I was only demonstrated submission by my mother and domination by my father. I was raised with eyes closed but ears open. I heard my father tell me that as a womon, a Mexican, I should not let anyone degrade me because of my race or gender, yet this is exactly what he did to my mother. When he made fun of her accent, when he forced her to have sex with him, when he beat her, when he cheated on her, when he told her that she was stupid, when he told her that without him she was nothing.
I saw the contradictions between my father’s actions and words, but I had trouble processing it all. I did not realize what it meant that my father only cheated on my mother with African-American, Asian and Latina womyn. But the flashing lights became harder to ignore when I would hear my father tell other white American men that they should go to Mexico and marry a nice Mexican girl. So that she could take care of him, that they are such good cooks and so submissive that they would make anyone the perfect wife. I heard him only encourage my brother to date Mexican girls. They would be so grateful to go out with a gringo. To my father it did not matter whether my brother liked them or not.
When I would hear these comments I’d tell my father that he is a racist. That just because he is white and American does not mean that every brown womon wants him. I’d tell him that just because they are poor and Mexican, he thinks he is better than they are. That they are people too, people with emotions not to be toyed with, that they are not his brown dolls! My father rolls his eyes. I’m too damned PC, he says.
I remember the first time I saw sex. It wasn’t on TV, or catching my parents. It was my father with another womon, and I was three. My parents used to sell jewelry door to door. Sometimes there would be deliveries to be made, and on such an occasion I accompanied my father while my brother, sister and mother waited in the car. I remember a petite African-American womon answering the apartment door and my father locking me in the bathroom, telling me to stay in there. I was frightened but also curious why I was not supposed to open the door. When I did, I saw the answer: my father naked having sex with another womon. I quickly shut the door, my stomach churning, knowing that something was wrong. When I went back to the car and told my mother what I had seen, my father called me a liar and my mother chose to believe him, too hurt to admit the truth to herself.
My father never did try hard to hide the other womyn. My mother, however, did try hard to deny and forgive. It was difficult for her to accept the truth. In the beginning, she not only became angry with my father but with the other womyn. She blamed them for “making” my father cheat. My mother felt worthless. She, like many other Mexican womyn, fell into the trap of thinking that without her man, she could not do or be anything. Not until my mother was able to see the value in herself was she able to face reality. She finally saw the truth behind the other womyn’s situations: that these womyn were the same as her.
When I think of colonization, I think of my father’s “conquests.” I think back to all the faces that he has colonized. I think back to Dow, the womon from Thailand; Denise, the long-time girlfriend; Guadalupe, his soon-to-be new wife in Mexico. And I think back to all the faces which I never saw. The girls in the whore houses from here to Mexico to Thailand. I see faces as young as mine. I remember the note I left my father with a package of condoms, before his business trip to Thailand, begging him to think of his actions, begging him for once to think of the lives of these girls. I noticed it, he did not; this was rape. Sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. My father is a rapist. She was forced to work in the brothel; she is not a prostitute—she is a slave. And I want to hold her hand and beg a million apologies. I want to cry with her. I want to look into her eyes, for I can only imagine her pain; she is my sister. We are both human, both equal, but my father does not acknowledge this. For my father even has the audacity to claim that he knows what it is to be a womon of color, because he used to have long hair in the sixties.
As long as I can remember, my father has always been fascinated with womyn of color. He likes to flaunt money and power in front of these womyn. He thinks this makes him superior, more powerful, and more intelligent. So he chooses to date only womyn of color—these are the womyn he feels he can exploit. Black, brown or yellow, my father loves them all—he is so multicultural.
When I think of all the womyn my father has used, I feel sick. My father exploits their poverty, their desperation, their need to eat. And for me it is not some far-off image of who these womyn are, or of their economic situations. No, these womyn are my close relatives—my mother, my aunts, my grandmother. You see, my father is not the only person I know who “colonizes” womyn of color. No, it runs in the family. My grandfather is also married to a Mexican womon (my father’s stepmother). She married my grandfather so that her daughter would have economic stability, so she would have a father, but what kind of father calls his daughter “his little spic”? My uncle has been married to three different Costa Rican womyn. He smugly says to me, “Any womon can be bought.” I just smile and nod. While he thinks he is fucking these womyn, they fuck him. Like Raquel, his second wife, who left him black-eyed and bruised when he raised his hand to her, or Guiselle, who stole $10,000 dollars from him. I admire these womyn—they could never be colonized.
I know that my brother is going to help me stop the circle of colonization. He refuses to partake in my father’s racist, sexist, exploitative games. And for him like me, it is an internal struggle. One that requires me to question what I feel and most of all my memory. I must make sure again and again, that my father’s superiority complex has not seeped into me subconsciously. I have met other mutt/colonized children like myself, but instead of overcoming their colonization they succumb to it. They become internally conquered. They shame themselves into believing that half of them is inferior. They choose to deny their culture and heritage. They make such claims, that their brown skin originated from their French background. And sometimes they become the worst type of colonized people, those who try and hide their feelings of inferiority by persecuting those like them.
It took me till the age of eighteen to connect the dots of why I exist, of why my family was and no longer is. I saw something amiss, something foul in my father’s actions and words. I knew there was a lie. I knew the truth was deep and painful. When I found it, I was left confused. I did not know what to do with it. My whole existence is based on things I cannot tolerate. I was raised with eyes closed because I did not see my family for what it was. It was based on the ideals of “isms.” It was there to soothe my father’s ego. I often wonder if my father even sees anyone as his equal. I wonder if he knows that when he demeans other womyn of color that he demeans me. His actions and words pierce me to the core. This is not just any man who is saying these things, this is my father. This is half of me. This is where I come from.
I am careful to learn from other people’s mistakes as well as my own. I know that in the past I have let comments slide. My first boyfriend (white) found it funny to tell me to go get him a Coke so that he could pretend I was his Mexican maid. His friends called me spic and told me I smelled of tacos. Back then I didn’t know how to challenge their discrimination. I kicked the boy who called me spic, but I had no words. For the first time I could not speak. My “friends” then thought such words were not racist, that the only hate word that existed was “nigger.” Their definition of racism was so rigid, pseudo-liberal and white. I knew I was faced with racism, yet my peers could not see this through my brown eyes.
It was my mother’s mistake not to challenge my father; it was my mistake not to do the same to the people I dated. I know I will not make these same mistakes twice. I know I cannot be colonized. I realize now that I can’t be with anyone who wants to pat me on the head and tell me how neat it is that I am Mexican but never actually wants to hear me talk about it. Far too many times I have tried to speak of my struggles or those of my people to be met with bored or un-understanding eyes. It leaves me frustrated and isolated. When one friend learned what I was writing this piece about, she replied, “Blah, blah. Heard it all before. Nothing new.” My body goes numb when she says these things. I want to punch her, slap her. Instead I just call her an asshole. When I am done with this essay, I will make her read it. Her lack of emotion and understanding makes it next to impossible to speak to her. She is as sensitive and caring as an electroshock. I see her words as self-absorbed ignorance, resentful and dismissive of a culture she does not even try to understand. I struggle to make my voice heard so that she and people like her will learn that there is more than just a white experience.
In my parents’ relationship my mother constantly struggled for equality. She fought to be seen as my father’s equal. In many aspects she succeeded; in my eyes and my siblings’ eyes she was equal if not
more
than my father. Her unconditional love and support gave us the strength and independence we needed. When my mother became tired of my father controlling the family money, she became self-employed. With the small amount she earned working, selling jewelry at local festivals, she would buy us the fast food my father wouldn’t let us eat. She would take us to dollar movies and bus trips downtown to the children’s science museum. Around my mother I could always be myself. I never had to live up to any false expectations, unlike with my father.
My mother is the strongest womon I know, she stayed with my father so that my siblings and I could have an education, so that my sister and I would have the means to take care of ourselves, so we would not need to depend on any man as she had. She felt she had no escape from my father, she was not from this country, she did not speak the language, nor did she have anyone to turn to. So my mother did the best she could. My mother hid her tears, cried in her pillow, and I slept soundly. This was her sacrifice. She did not want us to feel her inferiority. She put her feelings of inadequacy aside and raised us to be proud. And for this I am absolutely grateful to my mother. In fact, I feel fortunate that I was raised with such true contrasts. It helped me find balance. My mother now tells me that her biggest fear when my sister and I were growing up was that we would be submissive. We laugh about her worries now. My mother says that she could not have hoped for more feisty, self-assured daughters.
I do not hate my father. I love my father. I respect him as a father but not as a person. If it were not for him, I would not be as proud and outspoken as I am today. If it were not for him, I would not be passionate about womyn’s issues. I look at my father and I see the best example of what not to be. He preached one thing but did another. This taught me to question not only him but the world around me. This helped me see through the lies society fed me. It also made me take action. My father always spoke of the injustice in the world, the racist war on drugs, factory farms, homophobia, free trade. He taught me so much, but he left so much out. He spoke and spoke but never did a damn thing about these injustices. He saved his activism for reading books and preaching to those he could feel more intelligent than. It is because of my father that I am a vegan, even though he eats meat. It is because of my father that I don’t tolerate homophobia, even though he says “dyke.” It is because of my father that I teach English classes to undocumented immigrants, even though my father calls them “wetbacks” and tells me I should charge them for my services. If it were not for him, I would not be committed to a life of activism. I see his true colors, and I am glad he is my father. I do not wish to change what I cannot, my father or the past. Yet, I choose not to speak to him. He is too sad and pathetic to know how to love. To him love is something to manipulate. And my love is far too precious to be treated in such a manner. I know that to continue speaking with him only hurts me. So I must keep severed ties with this man that I still call daddy. I have hope for my mother. After twenty-one years she has signed divorce papers. She was ready—her three children out of high school, her sacrifice complete. I, like her, have been waiting for her freedom for some time now. And at last it will soon be here.