Final Assignment: Audio Submission

00:01 Hello, Good afternoon. My name is Vanessa Muniz. I did want to start off my presentation with a little disclaimer about any type of background noise. I don't live in the Crenshaw neighborhood and I also have a full house right now. So if any, you know, background noise comes up, I apologize. But yeah, let's just straight jump straight to it. So for this presentation, I picked two different readings and one film. So I picked these because I feel like I continuously get asked about my semester or my classes and when I. How I respond to them. I feel like I continuously bring up these three pieces because they were just a really big, hard thought They were, you know, nourishing my mentality and my heart. And it just felt like I can say that I actually learned something this semester. So, yeah, I picked Borderland, Sweet Poems by Ariana Brown, Profile of an Afro Latina by Maria Rosario Jackson, and Ich Canol, which was written by Jairo Bustamante.

01:19 So I think the biggest one that I continuously come back to is Ixcanul

01:26 Just because I feel like there has been this structure in my head that was, you know, it's like the American structure of how things go in our society, in our government, all these things, and it tends to have white people on top of the structure and brown and black people at the bottom. But I feel like I continuously make the mistake of forgetting indigenous people and indigenous communities. And I feel like I have this way of putting certain groups into different structures that are kind of separated. And I feel like that has to do with just growing up in educational system where we were taught that indigenous tribes, indigenous communities are extinct. And I feel like as I grew up and as I ended up, you know, searching for higher education, I just came across the complete opposite. And I feel like watching each canol is kinda giving representation into groups that we normally don't see and we don't know as much of their struggles as we do of our own. And yeah, I feel like when I touch on this film, I think there are scenes that continuously get into my head and are the ones that I keep replaying, one of them being in the last couple minutes of the film Maria's dad gives. Ignacio actually receives money from Ignacio. And it just gave me like the worst headache and the worst stomach ache to just think that that money is what Ignacio received from the hospital to sell Maria's baby. And I'm pretty sure it was. And, you know, there's no way of like completely proving it, but just to think of that's the Case. It was.

03:51 It was very hurtful to just see that.

03:55 And I've read a couple of articles where children, especially brown children, black children, indigenous children, they have. They just continuously go missing. And to think that there are human traffickers that are, like, you know, people selling off children, it kind of. I feel like it takes their humanity away of, like, you know, you're not a gender. You're not a person, which is also seeing, like, back. And I'm not even gonna say back in slavery, because I feel like slavery is still continuously happening today. It's just shown in a different light that we haven't exactly put out into, like, the public, but just continuously seeing how people of, quote, unquote, lower class don't have those privileges of keeping their children. Like, that's not even a privilege.

04:55 That's a human right.

04:58 And it made me so angry to just see things like that. And I think one of the other.

05:05 Scenes that really messed me up was.

05:09 The translating part where Ignacio was translating for Maria and her family. And it made me upset because why would a hospital rely on someone that they don't know their connections to this family to do a translating? Why don't they have a proper translator to do something like that that's actually professional, that knows that they know that they're gonna have, like, you know, there's not gonna be any questions within the language barriers? And then I started to think, like, that's just my way of thinking with my privilege, because if I need a translator, I can just ask for it. And I feel like in different communities, maybe that's something that's not entirely accessible. So I feel like I had a lot of questions when I came up with this film, but majority of it, I feel like I was showing it from my own ignorance and privilege. And I feel like that kind of just connected me to the article of Profile of an Afro Latina by Maria Rosario Jackson. Because it started off with Maria talking about her parents and how her mother didn't want to understand why her father was so into, like, the idea of race. And I feel like that was just her way of showing her privilege of, like, you know, that doesn't. That's a situation that doesn't bother me and that it shouldn't get to my head. But it's like, how can her father go through life without worrying about race? When race is what people first see, it's what people see them as. It's what people kind of put. How do I say this?

07:04 Stereotypes. Like, they connect stereotypes, too.

07:07 And I feel like it continuously just connected within one another. You know, like the way that Maria was talking about her father in the article where she said that he loved Mexico for their non whiteness and how he thought that race didn't matter there. But that's exactly how I was thinking of Mexico, because I saw Mexico as a place far away from the US and in my mentality it's like, if it's this bad in the US like how worse can it get? But I'm literally just saying like five feet in front of me without like with ignoring the whole entire world and their own problems. So I feel like hearing Maria talk about her dad that way, it kind of just makes me realize that that's just a common way of thinking, but it's not the best way of thinking. And that kind of thinking about those two of the profile of an Afro Latina and each canol, it kind of just connected with the poems that we read in class, which is the Borderlands Suite, poems by Ariana Brown. I feel like when I read that.

08:39 I did have to say after class.

08:41 Because I had to ask some questions because it was just a lot packed.

08:45 Into one little piece.

08:47 And it kinda went against everything that I have come to learn as a child where, you know, I grew up with a father who had the patriotic mentality of Mexico of like, oh, you know, this is my land, this is where I come from, like this is me type of thing, where it's like I wanted so badly to have that, you know, pride into your land. But how can I have a pride that strong without. With ignoring all the problems that are happening, Especially now, seeing these readings or these pieces. I mean, because the H. Canola is actually a film, I keep forgetting to mention that. But yeah, I feel like the Borderlands poem, it started off with talking about how brown is her color, brown is her name. And the more it went through, it was just talking about how brown isn't a thing. How we Brown doesn't mean Mexican. Because saying that brown is Mexican, then that means you're erasing the Afro Latinones of Mexico and you're ignoring the problem of whiteness incorporated into generations in order.

10:22 To widen the race and better the.

10:24 Race, which is a common. Oh my God, it's such a common continuous comment throughout my family, which is.

10:33 So problematic, especially as someone who doesn't.

10:39 Look anything like a white person. But just seeing that this is like a very common mentality, it just opens up my eyes to understanding that there's a lot of, a lot of healing that needs to be done within our community.

11:01 And by our community, I mean the world community, because it is so much. And to see that there are.

11:11 A lot of borders between people, not only physical, but, like, structural and generational, and.

11:20 There'S a lot to it.

11:21 I. I still have a lot more questions. I still have a lot more comments.

11:30 And I'm sorry that I went over.

11:33 Eight minutes, but I can go on.

11:35 For a lifetime to talk about how messed up things are, but I think I would have to end it there.

11:46 But, yeah, I feel like reading these and seeing these pieces has started a whole new chapter of my life where I need to check myself and my own privilege and see how I can help in different ways because I have.

12:13 Been doing some work here and there.

12:15 And I took a break because of school, but I feel like it's not enough.

12:20 And I don't know if it will ever be enough, but it doesn't mean.

12:26 That I won't stop trying.

12:28 So thank you so much for showing us these pieces, for creating that space to have these questions and for it to be okay to have these questions, because I have so many, and I.

12:41 Feel like if I ask them all, I don't under. I don't know how I would be viewed.

12:48 And I feel like that's another issue that I need to work on. But, yeah, I want to just say.

12:54 Thank you, and I will leave it at 13 minutes.

12:58 And I apologize for that, but thank you.