VivirLatino

VivirLatino at the DNC 08 : Riding the Back of the Ghetto Bus in Denver

11:22 H | Topics: Colorado - Denver - DNC - DNC08 - Politics

One blogger has criticized this website, with a personal attack on me and the use language and identity. Normally, I would unleash a stream of Spanish curses at my screen and move on, pero the reality of the Democratic National Convention against the reality of Denver ties it all together.

It's all in the representation. Carlos attempted to do an incomplete post about the Latino (he puts the word in quotes) bloggers covering the convention. I say incomplete because he misses many Latino bloggers and other POC bloggers here covering not the speeches, that can be followed from a hotel room as well as from the "privileged" space of the credentialed blogger area, a room with a tv, but rather the extreme space between those spaces and the real, physical reality of Denver residents, especially residents of color.

Like the physical reality of the Latina mujeres who are waking up at 3:30 am to serve the delegates at the numerous breakfasts sprinkled in the downtown hotels. One woman headed home somewhere between 11 and 12 midnight, told me how she was getting paid $8 an hour to serve at a breakfast, when the average going rate is somewhere between $15 and $16 and hour. A 50% pay cut to serve Dems in the mile high city. That's change to believe in, because it's business as usual for those outside the perimeter.

When I spoke to this woman, it was as a Latina, in Spanish, not fronting a game or identity. Carlos writes:

its content reinforces stereotypes about "latinos" as if we were one homogeneous ethnic and cultural group, but Megan puts a lot of effort on letting everyone know she is Puertorican.

What stereotype am I projecting when I talk about that working mujer, or the Argentino on the bus who was just released from the hospital after being carjacked and beaten? The guy going to a halfway house. The homeless man asking the bus driver to let him on even though he didn't have the fare.

My (spelled Maegan fyi) identity as a Puerto Rican (two words capitalized), is the lens through which I view and and experience the world and specifically the DNC. Just as the route of the number 30 and 27 bus weave connect downtown Denver to the 'hood, My Ricanness, the status of colonial woman, can not be cleaned up and pushed to the margins como the homeless in Denver who were given haircuts to look nicer for the cameras.

Carlos continues to write and attack me personally :

They add this "ghettoish" way to write Spanglish, intended to make you laugh, I think.

And what is wrong with the "ghetto", the being pushed to the edge of what is being presented in the mainstream media and even many of the bloggers here. It is not out of hipster irony that I write in Spanglish, it is how I think and actually speak when I'm not code switching to "pass" and make myself "acceptable" and palatable to mainstream (read white) tastes.

The ghettoization, the pushing out of reality in pushing in of official party line is what this convention is all about. I have seen it in my daily bus rides to and from downtown Denver. Representing that isn't an attempt to make anyone chuckle. If you're laughing. You're not paying attention.

Related

• National Rican Organization Challenges Presidential Candidates to Speak Address the Community (Wednesday, Sep 17 2008)
• Looking back the the DNC08 Via Kai/Zuky (Sunday, Sep 14 2008)