The Lost Pocha
po•cha
noun, pocho, pocha, poch@
[poh-chah]
1. Mexican Spanish for rotten fruit.
2. Spanish derisive term for U.S. American born children of Mexican parents.
1.No soy gringa, ni Mexicana. Soy pocha.
WHY THE LOST POCHA?
“What are you?”
“Are you Spanish?”
“Where are you from?”
These are questions that have plagued me my entire life. “My parents are from Mexico”, is what I usually respond. But, what am I?
At the age of 14 during an accelerated college course on Mexican-American literature, I found the Chicano movement, and within it the Teatro Campesino which formed during the California strikes of the United Farmworkers Union in the 1960s. Through playwright Luis Valdez I found much of what I desire in film and theatre: political action through performance. In that moment, I adopted the term Chicano/a and used that to not only convey my ancestry but also my political involvement anchored in my identity.
For years I carried this label like a torch, ready to be used as a tool of enlightenment, or as a tool of destruction when necessary. That is until I recently began hearing about how a group I had previously been a member of, MeChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán) was considering a name change, which included striking the use of the term “Chicanx”. This name change seeks to eradicate the numerous political grievances that many have had with MeChA. The point that stuck with me and forced me to seek a new label is that in sporting the label of Chicanx, we inherently also sport the machista (sexist) culture that coincides with the movement. Through Mexico’s history, and let’s be real in Latin America’s history, there has been a gender social divide and superiority complex that the colonizers instilled, which inevitably was adopted by the founding language of MeChA.
Personally, I cannot label myself something that negates my existence. But the problem remains: What am I?
As I grew up and had the privilege to travel to and from Mexico, there was a label that my family bestowed upon me that through the years I have gone back and forth to: pocha. Pocha is typically a derisive term meaning rotten fruit and one which, though typically used in a negative fashion, I find poetic in nature. And, the more I think about it, the more I agree with it. I am not Mexican; when I am in Mexico I am anything but. People hear the slightest accent and I am ‘othered’. I am not American, as I am reminded of that every day that I come across a bigoted individual, which lately, tends to be often.
So, I am not the tree from which I fell. I am the fruit that litters the ground, that most would consider spoiled. But some of that fruit on the floor is the sweetest fruit you will find, that if left untouched and unwanted will turn to fertilizer, contributing to the enrichment of the earth from which the tree gets its nutrients. Pocha. I may be lost in this world, but I am valid, essential, and wonderful.