This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
I use the term pueblo, to mean both the specific town in which Indigenous Latinos originate—in my family’s case, Yalalag, Oaxaca, in the Sierra Juarez of southern Mexico—and the broader meaning of pueblo as “a people.” This is an important distinction, since each township has a specific history in relation to autonomy struggles, land and water rights, trade, and national political activity. Pueblo also means a sense of peoplehood for these specific towns, belonging, kinship, emotional and psychic commitments, a sense of “Yalalteconess” rooted in but not exclusive to the land—a process that has become an animating feature of indigeneity in diaspora.
Please see chapter 3, “Basketball, Pageants and Guelaguetza: Forging Zapotec Identities in California,” in my forthcoming book Mexican–American Indigeneities from NYU Press for a full discussion of how political efforts gave rise to the now-familiar cultural Oaxacan celebrations throughout Los Angeles.
References
Bacon, J. 1998. Getting the Story Straight: Coming Out Narratives and the Possibility of a Cultural Rhetoric. World Englishes 17 (2): 249–258.
Byrd, J.A. 2011. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Calderón, D. 2014. Uncovering Settler Grammars in Curriculum. Educational Studies 50 (4): 313–338.
Decker, G. 2011. Hispanics Identifying Themselves as Indians. New York Times, July 4.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors, Maylei Blackwell and Luis Urrieta, for their vision and work, the Critical Latino Indigeneities group for their intellectual generosity and friendship, and the University of Utah for their generous support of our 2016 symposium. A special thanks to my mamí, Romualda Celis, the Alberto clan, and my own corazónes: Roma, Fausto, and Ian.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Alberto, L. Coming Out as Indian: On being an Indigenous Latina in the US. Lat Stud 15, 247–253 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0058-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0058-y