Survival Strategies of Mexicanas

Four Principles of Life

Mexicanas rely on resistance and survival strategies to ensure their well-being. A mother is expected to provide necessities for her child in four aspects of the child’s life: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Providing for the physical aspect includes providing life’s most basic necessities for survival such as food, shelter, clothing, and health needs. These physical needs are partly met through financial means. The emotional needs are taken care of by the way mothers help their children cope with their emotions and feelings. The mental aspects are provided for through creativity and development of intellectual potential. The last aspect, spiritual, is developed through a disciplined moral grounding. Providing the necessities that go along with each theme (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) is not just for children, but for adults as well. Furthermore, these four aspects are interrelated needs that Mexicanas put much effort and energy into ensuring for themselves and their children.

Sobrevivencia

Chicana feminist theorists identified these four aspects as strategies of sobrevivencia used by Mexicanas in their daily lives. Sofia Villenas defined sobrevivencia as “survival and beyond” (Villenas 2005:274) and “resilience and resistance” (Villenas 2005:275). Other descriptions of this concept are the ability for Mexicanas “to survive sexism, class oppression, and discrimination while laying their mark on the world” (Delgado-Bernal 2006:152) and the ability “to endure but also create meaningful lives” (Villenas 2005:275). These strategies include the idea of valerse por si misma (financial self-reliance), convivencia (formation of family and community networks), consejos from elder Mexicanas, la educación (socialization/education in manners and moral values through advice and story-telling) and spiritual epistemologies (theories of knowledge). In an ethnographic study of Latina farm workers in California, Castaneda and Zavella addressed the impact of a male-dominated work environment on the daily routines of Mexicanas. According to one of the women they interviewed, the

…normal work regalia include heavy shirts, baggy pants, sturdy shoes, gloves, hats (often attached to scarves covering their necks), and kerchiefs over their mouths- so they appear cloistered while working, with only their eyes visible…‘Well the number of women in the fields is much smaller than that of men; we can’t always be in a crew of only women. It’s important to protect ourselves from them (the men) and from what the other women can think. If one walks around showing off her body, then the gossip will get around that we’re not there to pick strawberries but to find men. [2003:135]

The Latina farm workers in California were physically and emotionally drained by the experience of working with a high number of male farm workers. This work environment affected the women physically because they had to wear heavy clothing in order to avoid degrading comments and physical harassment, which in turn could possibly result in overheating and exhaustion of the body. It is also emotionally draining because the women have to deal with the idea that they could be physically harassed everyday at work, their reputation could be at stake, and their dignity could be taken away.

Valerse Por Si Misma

For Mexicanas, the ability to be economically self-reliant is tied to the idea of valerse por si misma (Delgado-Bernal 2006:149), which describes the capacity to provide financially for themselves and their children. It is a strategy used to ensure survival in case a man is absent or is not providing financial necessities. Mexicanas using this strategy do not depend on anyone else to provide for their needs (Villenas 2001:682). For example, a Mexicana farm worker in California who was a middle-aged woman, overweight, and a single mother of five children, considered herself to be particularly unattractive and not marriage material to Mexicanos. Yet, with the high male-to-female ratio among farm workers in California, she had received two marriage proposals but said, “I can’t trust men. It’s better if I work to support myself” (Castaneda and Zavella 2003:137). Self-reliance allows this Mexicana to choose to be the sole provider of her children and herself. It seems that the Mexicana knows that, for lack of trust, she cannot rely on a man and therefore chooses not to give a man power over her survival.

Convivencia

Another strategy that Mexicanas use to meet the needs of the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of life is convivencia. Convivencia is a form of socialization through which Mexicanas build strong relationships among family and community. Convivencia promotes encouragement, empowerment, and reciprocity. This concept is also defined as “how to be together,” “communalism,” or as “communal spaces of teaching and learning” (Villenas 2005:273–275). An example of convivencia that promotes empowerment and is a communal space of teaching and learning is described by Delgado-Gaitan (Villenas 2005:274). She speaks of a program made up of a group of Latina mothers designed to help their daughters work to develop computer literacy (Villenas 2005:274). This program challenged the women to develop computer skills and think critically. From the program, the women gained empowerment by learning new skills that enabled them to teach and help their daughters with computers. Therefore, they can play a key role in their daughters’ success in school. The challenge of learning computer skills and gaining that empowerment was both mental and physical as they must train their hands to use computers. This challenge was emotional and resulted in a sense of empowerment by the women.

Delgado-Gaitan also describes an emotional support group for mothers of critically or terminally ill children. This group for Latina mothers served as a tool of encouragement for each other and was centered on the idea of how to be together. The Latina mothers in this emotional support group shared hope and faith with each other by creating tools of spirituality (Villenas 2005:275). Spirituality is a very important aspect of Mexicanas’ lives. As Sofia Villenas mentions, Mexicanas have strong spiritual epistemologies: “Spirituality is a driving force underlying women’s sobrevivencia” (Delgado-Bernal 2006:144).

La Educación y Consejos

La educación is Mexicanas’ “funds of knowledge,” which “includes both manner and moral values” (Villenas 2001:674). “Funds of knowledge” are the “resources of education and knowledge found in Latino/Mexicano households” (Villenas 2001:673). The literal meaning of educación in English is education; however, this type of education is very different from formal education. It is used instead to encourage manners and moral values. Educación is also “a dialectical form of education because it is inclusive of what is thought and learned in all social spaces, including home and community” (Villenas 2001:674). According to Villenas, for some Mexicanas la educación was at least as important, if not more so, than the formal education that their children were provided by the schools. “Raising a well-educated child was about teaching buen comportamiento (good behavior)…moral education was a collective responsibility and ‘el pueblo les enseña a vivir’ (the community teaches them how to live)” (Villenas 2001:16).

To illustrate Mexicanas’ understanding of educación Villenas quotes Valdes from her book Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools: “For most ordinary Mexican families, individual success and accomplishment are generally held in lesser esteem than our people’s abilities to maintain ties across generations and to make an honest living.” As mentioned before, la educación is not formal education but rather it is valuing those who are “educated in the moral sense” (Villenas 2001:13). Mexican families value collective knowledge and success rather than individual success and knowledge. However, Mexicanas in the United States are confronted with the American value of individualism. This emphasis on individualism goes against Mexicanas’ value of community collectiveness. Consejos, according to Sofia Villenas, are “nurturing advice and moral lessons” (Villenas 2001:675). The advice given by elder Mexicanas is sought because of their expertise on life experiences—their good educación—which in turn helps younger Mexicanas deal with the emotions that result from the clash between American and Mexican values.