Somos en escrito The Latino Literary Online Magazine
Extract from: Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War and Keeping the Faith
By Ignacio M. Garcia
Prologue
In early spring of 2006, I stood on the balcony of an eight-floor condo and looked out toward the lights of the nation’s capital. Even as I enjoyed the cool Virginia evening, I wondered if I had jeopardized the endowed chair in history for which I had been nominated. Only hours earlier I had e-mailed my dean a seven-page memo telling him I was not willing to “remake myself” to fit the role he envisioned for the next holder of the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professorship of Western Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU). I was happy at the university and well liked, but after almost eleven years was no closer to being a “BYU professor” than when I first arrived from Corpus Christi, Texas. I still irked some students with my “radical” views, and while not part of the dean’s discussion with me or even his stated misgivings about me, I knew the university was uncomfortable with my questioning of its diversity policies and my publicly stated disappointment with the Latter-day Saint (LDS) church’s unwillingness then to participate in the great immigration debate unfolding across the nation and even in its congregations.
I was on my second semester as the faculty advisor to the university’s Washington Seminar internship program. The first had been rather uncomfortable as I was under siege from a number of students who met, sometimes nightly, to plan how to frustrate this “Chicano” professor who did not love America. One supportive student asked me on one occasion, “Why do they dislike you so much?” I had no answer except to say that these students had probably taken our wide open discussions over Katrina, Justice John Roberts, Iraq, and the literal interpretation of the constitution as a challenge to their deeply held personal political views. I did not push a particular political line and have, in fact, never used the classroom to promote my personal ideology or partisan politics, though I am open about my views so students know I’m not trying to slip something by them. And I encourage them to be just as open. I also don’t teach “radical stuff”; I teach about people, their struggles and triumphs, about those who afflict them, and about those who worked on their behalf—in essence about a nation’s search to fulfill its legacy. And I most certainly teach students to think about what they believe and try to help steer them away from making harsh and unfounded judgments they will later regret, having made many of those myself in trying to live my faith. BYU is, after all, a place of faith, and our faith should make us aspire to nobler purposes.
Being told by the dean earlier in the morning that I was the committee’s top choice but there were “concerns” with a couple of my student evaluations was a bit disheartening and upsetting. After all, getting an endowed chair is the high point of an academic career even though it was coming early for me. It is not a time to be molded into something you are not or to change the history of your politics to appease a few disgruntled students who could not see beyond their own politics and appreciate the sincere efforts I made to help them learn. I acknowledged then and now my limitations as a teacher and scholar, but I think that few people who know me would question the lengths to which I go to help students learn and become good citizens. Earlier in the day my dear Alex told me to reject the offer. And I was reminded of something that the philosopher of my generation, Yoda, once told Anakin Skywalker: “willing to part with that which you love most, you must.” I didn’t necessarily love most an endowed chair, but there was no secret that it was what I wanted at this stage of my career.
I got no response to my e-mail even though one associate dean wrote to tell me to “submit” to the dean’s wishes—an unfortunate use of words by someone I considered a friend—but when I got back to the university several months later, I was called in and, without mention of the “concerns,” offered the endowed chair. I had stood my ground, and the dean whom I respected despite our differences made what he believed was the right choice. With this appointment I entered the very thin ranks of both Chicanos and Mormons so honored.1 You can probably count on two hands—maybe three—the number of endowed chairs combined possessed by them in the humanities and social sciences, and unless there is someone else out there that I have not heard of, I am the only one with an endowed chair that belongs to both groups. It was a personal victory for me but more important, I believe, a small victory for all of those who fight for their community and do so because of their faith. We come in all shapes and forms and from different religious backgrounds but we all affirm the divine call to serve our fellow beings in whichever way we can. While a worthy call, it is also a difficult one. It has been for me incredibly hard as I evolved from a young activist, a journalist, and now a well-established scholar.
Being a Chicano Mormon intellectual makes me an incredibly rare breed of scholar that rarely fits in nicely anywhere or is fully understood by anyone. I’m a complicated Mexican,2 more “barrio” than my colleagues who write about it and less so than my friends who live in it. I am more liberal than my Mormon hermanos and more personally conservative than my “radical” compañeros. I love and have fought for the rights of my people from an early age, but I am also an optimist about their ability to find their dreams in this land. And like them I am more concerned about the daily struggles of people to survive and achieve security and stability for their families than about ideology, social positioning, or politics. Thus like many of them, I live a contradictory life. And as a Chicano Mormon intellectual my contradictions are front and center and have been for much of my life.
I have, in the past, been treated with suspicion by Chicano scholars and Mexican American activists who can’t believe that a Mormon would be as committed to positive change for his people as I am. While some Mormons believe that the commitment to my faith must be soft and secondary to a scholarly activism they deem outside the church’s traditions—as was the case with the aforementioned students. Those who know me well understand that I am a creation of both my religious faith and my ethnic experience. Each side of me has made the other better. Though counterintuitive and especially so to individuals fully committed to either side of the divide, I’m a better Chicano scholar for being a Mormon and a more devout Mormon because I’m a Chicano scholar. Both have required struggle and perseverance to live up to, and often one side has been critical of the other, and it has been up to me to find the balance and make the peace.3 In finding that balance and creating that peace, I have become a better scholar and, I hope, a better person.
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Ignacio Garcia, taking a break with two Army buddiesduring basic training in El Paso |
This story about the early part of my life has two audiences, and I find myself trying to make sense to both because even those who know me—and think they know me well—rarely know the whole tale of my life. Others who never heard of me probably don’t believe such creatures as I exist. I am a scholar of six books on Chicano history, biography, civil rights, and sports. I have also written a novel, numerous short stories, book chapters, essays, and plays. Not all of those who know of me agree—but many would—that I am one of the top scholars in my field and one whose work has been influential in the classroom and in scholarly debates where it has been both highly praised and at times just as highly derided.
At the same time, I am a devout Mormon whose life has been about making the church—and religion itself—a welcoming place for Latinos. From a young orthodox boy to a lay bishop to a university professor at the “church” school, my identity has clearly been marked by a commitment to religious principles and to making this a better world through them and because of them. This story, then, is very much a story of finding a place in this land, of struggling to find an identity, of growing up segregated, aspiring for better things, fighting in foreign lands, and coming to a tense accommodation with this nation, all while keeping the faith in both my beliefs and in the potential of my people.
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Ignacio Garcia's two children, Roman and Veronica, on the step of their run-down home in Kingsville, Texas, one year into his graduate studies. |
As a young immigrant boy I loved the possibilities of life in this country, which is a strange thing to say by someone born into poverty and whose parents never found much fortune here and who early on experienced the racial ugliness of American society. But like most immigrants, I had so little growing up and could look back to my country of origin and see even less that I saw even more potential in this country than what was really there for people like me. I was also a believer. I believed what teachers told me, what I read in the books, and what my eyes saw and ears heard—and as a religious person, I also believed in many things I did not hear nor see. When you have nothing, everything seems so plentiful and wonderful outside of you. My sense was that being at the bottom, I had nowhere else to go but up. So I believed my teachers when they said everything was possible in America. It was the land of the free and the home of the brave, and if the streets were not covered with gold at least there was money to be made working for “the man.” Main Street and Wall Street were not yet opened to people like me, but that was okay for my teachers because they knew I was too Mexican to aspire beyond the barrio while others thought I was too Mormon or religiously orthodox to ever turn out normal.
My youthful awe of American society did not, however, blind me to its inconsistencies and its contradictions. I learned early that my life would be burdened by prejudices and the indifference of American society toward those like me. I was reminded at every turn that I was part of those on the outside looking in. But because I was religious, I came to believe that the challenges inherent in this Mexican/American life were a test, God’s way of making me tougher and possibly much humbler. But God, I soon found, is a tough taskmaster, so I suffered poverty, discrimination, alienation, indifference, and some self-inflicted wounds on my way to finding a place for myself in this land and acquiring my character—which I must sadly say is still a work in progress.
My core values were learned in a small Mormon church in the deep west side of the city and strengthened by defending them against smart nonbelievers in the East Coast; my work ethic arose in the tables and kitchens of small and large Mexican restaurants and in numerous army assignments and college jobs; and my courage, or lack of it, sprouted in the dangerous stretches of pachuco (gang) infested “San Anto” streets and maybe even in the jungles of Viet Nam defending American “democracy.” I received a poor education but a lot of wisdom in the segregated schools I attended, and I inherited my Mexican identity from working class parents and neighbors who took time to tell me about Mexican history, its heroes, as well as some frightening ghost stories whose moral was somehow ingrained within my ethnic heritage. And I affirmed my Americanism by traveling this land, learning its history, befriending its people, and embracing its homegrown religion.
This story, which has been a long time coming, focuses as I noted earlier mostly on my early years, much in the tradition of the classic Mexican American autobiographies or memoirs of Ernesto Galarza, Julian Nava, Richard Rodríguez, as well as others who have sought to tell Americans what it means to grow up Mexican in American society. That these personal stories have had different takes on the value or simply the context of the “Mexican” experience speaks to our diversity. My story adds to theirs, I believe, though mine is not a traditional coming-of-age story. It is the story of becoming an American while remaining Mexican (or Chicano), of finding a political voice while remaining outside the political mainstream, and of going to war and turning toward peace. It is not a gripe against American society— though there is much of that to be found here—but rather an internal discussion made public about finding my space within it. Finally it is about finding my faith on the ground as I worked to live my religious principles among people out in the world, outside the confines of my Mormon bubble and in the peripheries of both mainstream Mexican America and Mormonism, where I have found the spaces to more freely navigate.
It is appropriate to say here that I am a product of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, that social catharsis that ended the invisibility and forgottenness of the Mexican-origin population of this country. This movement for human rights was both a cry for inclusion and a demand for Mexicans and Mexican Americans to be seen as a people and not simply an ethnic group.4 It was nationalistic, artistic, and political, and it gave meaning to the lives of those who marched, boycotted, picketed, ran for elected office, drew the murals on the walls of the barrio, and sang the songs of the people. It was a renaissance period, and those of us involved would change the way we saw ourselves in ways that we still do not fully comprehend. For those of us who were also believers, it allowed us to practice our gospel among people of other faiths and those who had none. Ours was a “social gospel” that remained connected to the church and not simply to charitable ideals, as would be the case with that earlier social gospel movement that expanded progressive politics but led to the loss of faith among many of its practitioners.5
Beyond the more familiar stories of César Chávez and Reiés Lopéz Tijerina,6 the story of people of faith in the Chicano movement and subsequent struggles has only recently begun to be written. It is not an institutional story, since most religious institutions have failed Chicanos, but rather a story of ordinary people expanding their religious boundaries to fight against what they saw as evil—or in secular terms, “unjust.” Theirs was a complicated fight and an engagement in civic duty not fully understood by those with more liberal or secular ideologies or by those whose religious values were more conservative. It was difficult and at times almost impossible for us to reconcile our politics with our institutional faith, but we persevered because we knew what we were doing was right and consistent with our view of the gospel. But as hard as it was for Catholic and Protestant activists, I saw it as harder for me—the Mormon whose religion congregates the ultimate patriots and rule-followers who also happen to be among the whitest of all religious people. But I’m sure that my Catholic, Pentecostal, Baptist, and so forth, coreligionist activists would beg to differ.
My story is different from most Mormon tales, which often follow one of several approaches: discuss the complications of growing up religiously different and the eventual dropping out, tell of the difficulties of hanging on because nothing could replace the loss of the faith, or testify of the personal redemption that is the story of those who’ve made peace with the challenges of their religion and have found its most redeeming value. Of course they can also be about the missionary experience, remaining morally spotless during war, or simply recount a life in the Mormon heartland or its outposts in Southern California, Idaho, Arizona, or wherever Mormons have constructed tight parameters to practice their “peculiar” religion. Often absent in many of these memoirs, however, is an in-depth discussion about the larger world or about characteristics forged in the heat of worldly battles in the public square and not just in the Mormon heart, mind, or calling.7
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Ignacio Garcia speaking against police brutality in a protest rally in Laredo, Texas |
Some of these personal stories become critiques or lamentations about or against other things Mormon, especially our leaders or the slackers in the faith, revealing that some Saints also suffer from some form of self-hate.8 These works also underscore the complicated relationship that Mormons have with the outside world because while they are supposed to live “in the world but not of it,” many live in a Mormon version “of the world” as they adopt secular philosophies to enhance the critique of the shortcomings of those with whom they disagree. At the moment, too many Mormon intellectual debates sound like those which come from a doctoral seminar, not because the debated ideas are naive or superficial—which they surely are not—but because they are insular, lacking an experience “in” the world, and having no history of refinement through battles outside their intellectual landscape or the four walls of their chapels, institutes, university classrooms, offices, or private studies. To my way of thinking, it is in those earthly battles and with people not of the faith that religious ideals are tested, complicated, and invariably strengthened. Thus, while Mormon memoirs engage in penetrating and often fascinating discussions of what it means to be a Mormon or to live in our group-constructed spheres, they say little about what it means to be a Mormon in the world or what it should mean to the world to have a Mormon within it. Too often Mormon writings are “faith without works.” To compound the challenge to Mormon memoir as a genre, and where I think I come in to complicate the matter, is the fact that with few exceptions people of color are almost completely absent in this literature. Along with our missing bodies have been lost our thoughts, religious experiences, and our struggles within and with the faith. The few people of color— mostly African Americans—who have contributed for the most part also followed the pattern of writing mostly about their Mormon world. And this is tragic when the majority of Mormons worldwide are now nonwhite and the decline of white Mormons is accelerating at an alarming rate.9
After being asked to submit this memoir to the press, the series editors asked me, in so many words, whether the Mormon scholarly world could learn anything from my Chicano life. After all, they had not envisioned having a memoir—and a Chicano one at that—as one of their first books in the series. One of the reviewers would inevitably bring up this question. Knowing the “whiteness”10 of Mormonism’s intellectual discourse currently, I immediately said “yes.” I knew that the Mormon scholarly world could learn much about what it means to be raised a Mormon of color and the challenges that come with trying to live a religion that in its early years was for the most part about situating whites for the upper echelons of the coming kingdom of God and finding “others” a place in the peripheries; also about why Mexicans, Latinos, and other people of color join the church with high expectations not only about the spiritual but the temporal aspects of Mormonism, but then fall away disappointed. They will learn what it means to have faith in an institution that doesn’t always have faith in you, and why people like me see so much potential for good in a gospel founded by a poor, rural boy with great spiritual expectations but little knowledge of the world. Finally Mormon intellectuals and rank-and-file white Mormons will get a glimpse of the coming reality of a church that will soon be majority of color. To many it will be a rude awakening, though upon careful meditation they might just see that people of color will most surely bring them back to their founding principles not because they are better people but because they need them so much more than those for whom life has been kinder and much more prosperous. I would venture to say that is the case of most religions currently facing the same Mexican/Latino growth in their congregations.
I not only grew up Mormon but served as bishop twice and have dedicated my life to understanding the church’s history, its doctrines, and its leaders and legacies, and to trying to put in practice on the ground the doctrines I believe in. I have done it within the mainstream of the church, and at times in its peripheries. My commitment has wavered periodically, but my Mormon identity and the fundamentals of my belief have not. That identity, however, cannot be severed from my Mexicanness or my barrio experience because it is in living one’s fundamental values and associating with others who don’t share them that one truly becomes committed to them. I hate to say it, but it’s definitely true that most traditional Mormons can only guess at what it means to be a Mormon of color. And there are few intellectuals of color in the church who could help them understand. At the moment, I am one of the few that teaches at a church school and has engaged in the discussion of what it means to be of color within Mormonism.
But it may be that the Chicano, Mexican, and Latino reader will be who most appreciates this memoir because they will see much that resonates in their lives. Whether it is my immigrant experience, growing up in the barrio, going to segregated schools, joining the army, going to war, being one of the few in college, or battling prejudices as a Chicano movement activist and wondering why some things happen in America, they will likely shake their heads and say, “yes, that is the way it is when you are who we are.” For those who know my scholarly work, it will provide them a more profound look at the seeds that influenced how I came to be the scholar I am and why I remain committed to the principles that undergird the Mexican people’s struggle for justice. For those who have listened to my Sunday school lessons for years, they will learn why it is that “Hermano García” brings all the lessons home to the barrio and their barrio experience and why I stress that Mormon adage to live “in the world but not of it” lest they be consumed by its materialism, its arrogance, and its indifference toward those who have less or who are simply different.
A final point. My Chicanismo and Mormonism might make me peculiar in some things, but those who are neither will find much they can relate to in this work. After all, our color, gender, politics, and religion (or lack of it) cannot completely mask the fact that we are all human beings and that there are some things in life we all have to learn the same way.
So, let me start with my story.
Editor's Note: Full footnotes are found in the book edition.
Ignacio M. Garcia is Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor of Western & Latino History at Brigham Young University. Somos en escrito has featured Ignacio’s work in the past: a novel,
Can Tho: A story of love and war,and a non-fiction book, When Mexicans Could Play Ball: Basketball, Race, and Identity in San Antonio, 1928-1945. For copies of Chicano While Mormon, go to https://rowman.com/RLPublishers(use the promotion code, UP30AUTH15, for a 30 percent discount but only in that website), or Amazon.com.
Text and photos from Chicano While Mormon Copyright© Ignacio M. Garcia, used by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or printed without permission in writing from the publisher.