Letters from the Road: A Selection of Performance Chronicles Author(s): Guillermo Gmez-Pea Source: TDR (1988-), Vol.

46, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 97-109 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146962 . Accessed: 22/09/2013 05:31
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Letters

from

the

Road

A Selection of Performance Chronicles

Guillermo G6mez-Pena

I have alwaysbeen interested in looking for ways to operate as an artistin the difficult in the U.S., a society that confines artists public sphere. This is particularly and intellectuals to the rarefied realms of the art world and academia. National Public Radio is the closest I've ever gotten to the public sphere. I've been involved with NPR since the mid-Ig8os, first in Enfoque and Nacional,then in Crossroads, and LatinoUSA. In my radio chronicles later, in the 'gos on All ThingsConsidered I have explored various genres, but alwaysfrom the positionality of a performance artist.What follows is a selection of these chronicles. "Dual Citizenship" was recorded for Latino USA, and the other texts for All ThingsConsidered. An earlier version of"Tattooed Brown Body" appearedin my book Dangerous Border Crossers (Routledge, 2000). The version that appearshere was considerablyrewritten for radio. The other pieces are being published for the first time.

Touring in Times of War

(2001) I am a brown-skinned Latino performance artist, and I've been told many times in recent weeks that I happen to "look Arab." Since September I th, my never-ending tour to the outskirts of Western civilization has been bumpy to say the least. When the tragic attacksoccurred I was in Northern Spain,paradoxically performing a piece on the violent side-effects of globalization. After a nervewracking week of waiting for airspaceto reopen, my wife and I finally made our journey back home, and that's when an unprecedented adventurebegan for me. It started at JFK airport in New York. After going through the final security check point, my exhausted wife hugged me with relief. "Ahh, we made it back, amormio," she whispered into my ear, sliding her hands into the pockets of my pants. We were immediately surrounded by five screaming policemen: "What did you put inside his pocket?" "Carinito," she responded, meaning "a little tenderness." They were more than serious. We raised our hands like surrendering Hollywood bandits. One cop made me empty the contents of my pockets with
The Drama Review 46, 2 (T174), Summer 2002. Copyright ? 2002 New York University and the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology

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98

Guillermo Gomez-Pena the ferocious certainty I would produce a weapon. I complied in extreme slow motion. The sole, pitiful item-a snotty handkerchief-made them feel embarrassed.But to saveface they sent me to secondary inspection. There I experienced the longest ethnographic inspection of my identity ever: a bizarreinitiation ritual to the other "war on terror,"the one Americans are fighting inside their psyche. As a migrant artist and a Chicano veteran of "mistakenidentity," I now have to deal with new fears of T-W-A-L (traveling while Arab-looking). I am not scared so much of Muslim fundamentalistsor airplanes. I'm more afraidof the entire country becoming a huge "neighborhood watch program"where anyone who looks or acts different comes to be seen as suspicious in the name of "high security." During my next trip, my fears were confirmed: At the RaleighDurham airport, I was singled out, along with a young Pakistani couple. The airline agent tried to persuade the three brown passengersthat we "simply had no reservations."After showing him my tickets-and explaining that Mexico was not in the Middle East-I was finally allowed on the plane. But the other passengerslooked visibly scared of me. In their fearful eyes, I probably looked like the lead singer of Sammy Ben Latin & the Tali-vatos. Clearly, my new dilemma was how to avoid ethnic profiling on the road. Performance provided me with an expedient semiotic solution: I would simply intensify some of the friendly stereotypes Americans alreadyhave about Latinos. I developed three travelinglooks: the gallantmariachiwith my sombreroin hand, the Tex-Mex rocker, and the Native dandy. It didn't help much. Five times during the next eight trips I was "coincidentally" chosen for "random security checks." And as my tour progressed, the contents of my trunks (mainly "ethno-techno" props and "robo-Mexican" costumes) began to diminish: Some, like my Igth-century Sevillian dagger and hiAztec mask, I took out myself. Others, including theatricalprostheticsand sci-fi sex toys, were confiscated by airport security and customs agents. And, understandably,they had no time to listen to a lecture on pop archeology and performance art. A couple of times, the agents scrutinized my scripts,books, and slides, which made me realize they were actuallylooking for "content." I congratulated them on their forensic sophistication. Are all these incidents a mere preview of my new, exciting life as a permanent suspect?I keep trying to understandwhat politicians mean when they tell us to "go back to our normal lives." I guess performance artistshave to redefine what "normalcy" means for us. PerhapsI should get a 9-to-5 job, shave my mustache, and start wearing three-piece suits. Or maybe to be congruent with my art, I should travelwith a sign hanging from my neck stating:"Nomadic Chicano artist, intense-looking but inoffensive;has no Arabblood, no political affiliations.Works mostly in galleries, museums, and universities. Please, cut him some slack. He is just trying to be normal."

A Sad Postcard from San Francisco, Chilicon Valley

(I999) (Latinoloungemusicmixedwith soundsof crowds) I'm sitting in a bar in San Francisco'sfashionableMission District. Less than a year ago this place was a Mexican cantina for local winitosand brown blue-collar workers; now it's a shi-shi lounge club jam-packed with upper-classhipsters in their twenties wearing gothic tattoos, retro hairdos, swing jackets, and "vintage" '70s clothes. From the old decor, all that's left are two Mexican murals on the

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the Road 99 Lettersfrom

Boxer" 1. "El Binational in a "videoback wall. The bartendersare two blond female bodybuilderswith designerbod- (G6mez-Pena) by G6mez-Pena ies and minds. There are no Latino customers other than myself; but the music graffitti" and Chicano filmmaker coming from the originaljukebox is pure Latino '5os lounge, including Esquivel, Perez Prado, Acerina, and Javier Cugat. Occasionally, we hear a tune by Herb Daniel Salazar (2000). Daniel Salazar) Alpert & the Tijuana Brass,who, as far as I'm concerned, is an honorary Latino. (Photoby I wait for my friend, City Lights editor Elaine Katzenberger,while sippingMyers rum. Suddenly, in the middle of this typical Bay Area vignette, the door opens abruptlyand an old Mexican homeless man pulling a shopping cart enters, holding what appearsto be a sharpened stick. He begins to scream in Spanglish at the crowd: "I'm tired of all of you, yuppies del carajo!" He begins to theatrically threaten some customers with his handmade "weapon." He is clearlyacting out, but the Femme Nikita bartendershave a different opinion. They grab baseball bats from behind the counter and go for the man's head. I cannot believe my eyes. I instinctivelyjump in between them and manage to persuade Las Anime Amazons that, "I'll take care of the situation." They back off reluctantly.I grab the old man's arm, take him outside and tell him in Spanish, "Life'sa drag, ese. You must be real tired, que no?"The man nods affirmatively. "So am I." I try to commiserate with him. He gives me a hug and begins to cry. "Carnal,"he says, "all I need is a little pincheattention. I've been walking these streetsforever,but since last year, no one looks at me anymore. These kids are arrogantand selfish. They don't even imagine this was my hood just a few months ago."

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Ioo

Guillermo Gomez-Pena He's clearly referringto the rapidprocessof gentrification that has transformed the Mission from a laid back Latino barrio to "one of the hippest hoods in the country," according to Vanity Fair and the Utne Reader. I grab his hand very firmly: "Man, this is the last chapter of a very old story: the conquest of the West." "Yes, ese," he continues, "they are the cowboys and we are the Indians." Though I am not quite sure which category I fall into as a Mexican mestizo, I answer: "True, but there's not much we can do about it, other than keeping the flame of our rage alive." After a long pause, a very sad one, I tell him: "Ese, we gotta move on." The old man grabs his cart and begins to walk away toward Market Street. I can see the distant lights of the financial district framing the fading silhouette of the homeless veterano. I go back to the bar, crestfallen. This lounge hipster comes to my table and offers to buy me a drink. I politely reject it. "Thank you, man," he says. "You handled the situation real smooth. It was like a scene from a SpaghettiWestern." The recurrentreferencesto frontier iconography make me even more depressed. I walk out of the bar to wait for my friend. What I had experienced is clearly a new version of a very old western movie. Elaine finally arrives. I suggest that we go to another bar, and that we please not talk about gentrification at all.

Tattooed Brown Body

(1998, rewritten 2000)
I've always taken tattoos seriously. As a performance artist, my body is my laboratoryof experimentation, my canvasand diary.In this most personal book, scars are like imposed inscriptions, whereas tattoos are the words and phrases consciously chosen by me. Whatever happens to my body inevitably affects my art and sense of self, my social and sensual relationship to the world, and vice versa. Like most visible scars, each of my tattoos revealsa dramaticmark or shift in my accidental and nomadic biography. Verbigratia:The bold pre-Columbian snake etched on my left shoulder by Mexico City punk artistDoctor Lacracelebrated my arrivalin early '95 to San Francisco, my most recent hometown. In mid-I996, tattoo master Don "Ed" Hardy and I collaboratedon the design of a huge tattoo on my right arm and shoulder: a detailed map of Mexamerica made up of intricate computer circuits. Migrant Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the giver of culture and agriculture, is seen departing from the YucatanPeninsula on a lowrider motor boat; while to the north, Zorro burstsout of the U.S. on his rearing black stallion. This one-of-a-kind tattoo functions as a biographical/historical map of my journey as a Mexican immigrant, one that goes from South to North and from pre-Columbian America to high-tech Chicanismo. In July of 1998 I got my third and most painful tattoo, this time right over my heart:an intricate skull with a rattlesnakewrapped around it. A crown of electric thorns frames the head. Its forehead bears a romantic sign written in barrio calligraphy, "Sin Fin," which in Spanish means "without end." Unlike my prior tattoos, this one was done in the purestpinto (Chicano prisoner) style, with delicate renderings and soft fading grays. The artist was Ruben Franco, a 23-yearold surenoex-gang member from East L.A. who now resides in the Watsonville area. His main clientele are migrants who work the venomous strawberryfields of Northern California. They go to him to get tattooed on their backs and chests as a permanent reminderof their dangerousU.S. adventure,right before returning to their homeland. The favorite designs of the migrant workers are Virgins of and muscularvatos Guadeloupe, bucolic landscapespopulated by gorgeous cholas locos...and skulls,just like mine.

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Letters from the Road I

lowrider Vintage drawing the mid-g98os. (CourThe reasonsbehind my third tattoo were many. I hadjust turned 43, and I was from tesy of PochaNostra Two of uncles had own favorite of mortality. my becoming hyperconscious my just died; I had separated from a three-year-long relationship; and, as if this Archives) weren't enough, a grumpy border patrolmandecided to invalidatemy green card when I was coming back from Mexico. As you can imagine, these incidents clearly marked the end of a chapter in my life, and the beginning of a new era. And all this is now scripted on my body for good, as a performance script. Lastyear, I got my most recent tattoo on the right side of my chest, opposite the skull. It's a curious hybrid character,half samuraiand half lowrider, meticulously rendered in traditionalYacuzza style by artistEddie Deutch. My "Pacific Rim Vato Loco" is wearing a pachuco hat pierced by a dagger whose handle reads in Japanesecalligraphy: (phonetically):nan-jin, gay-juska,han-neen, which means, "madman, artist, criminal." This artwork documents my renewed commitment to radical art and social change in the dangerous era of globalization; and in dialogue with the other tattoos, it constitutes a ritual affirmation of life on the edges of an ever-dying Western civilization. People often ask me if my tattoos affect my social interactions. Sure they do, especially with cops. Despite the fact that tattoos have become commonplace, and even Ivy League students and sugary pop singers wear them ostensibly,law enforcement agents tend to observe me with suspicion. Why? A tattooed brown body has very specific connotations for them. It is not just a bold act of social defiance from a dark-skinnedmale, but a signifier of a criminalpastspent between gang warfareand jail. Now, if to be a politicized Chicano performance artistin
2.

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102

Guillermo G6mez-Pena

the U.S. can be misconstrued as an act of social defiance and criminality,I fully embrace the cops' misunderstanding.It gives me a strange kind of power.

Generation "MeX"
(I997)
I love my Generation MeX nephews madly. There is Ricardo, AKA "Ricarfrom Mexico City; and Cristobal, the 22diaco," the skinny 25-year-old rockero from San Diego. Our relationshipis crucial year-old existentialist grunge surfero from both ends. They are my philosophical heirs and indirect performance disciples, and by default, I am their surrogate father. My sweet but pusillanimous brother Carlos, Ricardo's father,lives in TJ (Tijuana)and does not have the means to support him; and Cristobal'sfather, don Fernando, has long been dead. They are also my toughest critics. If one of my performances or Spanglish poems does not fly in their eyes, I tend to kill it. Why do I pay so much attention to them? In a way, they are my ideal audience. They are the "children gone wrong" of globalization, the orphans of Chicanismo, Zapatismo, and any other "ismo" you can imagine. I am analog, they are digital. Gleefully disconnected from their roots, they are cyber-literate, fully bilingual, furthermore, biconceptual-smart but monosyllabic-and their attention span is under Io seconds. They were born in Mexico, true, though one may agree with Mexican writer Carlos Monsivais that "they belong to the first generation of gringos born in Mexico." Experts on transnational pop culturaltrivia, they know very little about what we boring adults call "life." They've seen many more guns and much more blood than we have, yet they aren'treallytough. They never cry at family funerals, but they always attend. Deep inside they harbor good feelings. Their sense of loyalty to family and friends is thin but real. Ricardo and Cristobal were born respectively in 1975 and '78, when their parents' "counterculture"had already gone sour and the incipient punk movement was emerging out of the ruins of modernity. Their "progressive"parents were so "hip" that they decided to leave them alone to their own fate, without a compass or existential structure.They grew up in complete silence, immersed in a soliloquy of despair,with the permanent temptation of suicide, the reality of hard drugs, and the ephemeral redemption of self-destructivelove a la Kurt & Courtney (the film, not the albums). They now live stalking us with distrust, unable to talk back-or rather tired of talking back-and with a much more developed sense of style. In fact, everything in their lives is about style. From 1993 to 1997, Ricardiaco went through at least 25 different temporaryidentities and corresponding hairdos. Among others, he became a designer cholo,a dyedblond rasta,a gangsterrapper,a lounge lizard,and a "skinheadfor peace" without any (apparent)organic logic to these changes. He was merely "sampling"culture. Content was secondary.The "look" was what mattered. What my nephews and their friends lack is fear of death and mortality. To them, death isjust ajoke, a good image, a rock tune. Death is...cool, and condoms are a nuisance. The reasonsfor this are not lack of responsibilityor sex education, but rathera nihilistic spirit of defiance. It's a neo-Aztec thang. They know very well the risks of casuallove and are more than willing to take them. Luckily, my Generation MeX nephews have found temporary redemption in true love. Ricardo just found Paola, a beautiful ballet dancer and cyber-designer who happens to be as skinny, skeptical, sarcastic,and aloof as he is; and Cristobal found Jennifer, an unconditional accomplice to his contemplative sense of orphanhood. I love both couples though I feel awkwardaround them. I think that

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the Road I03 Lettersfrom

for them.rom much" "too simply i

~~~and strident

personality, my~as

hybrid persona

I ~~~~~~~ -rc~~~~~~~~~ ~ :~ .~: ~.noza; L m ~~Nostra ."'I~~~~~~~~~

3. Roberto Stfuentes poses "El East LA Roberto by Espi~~~~~~~~(Photo courtesy of Pocha Archives)

they secretlyadmireme. But since they are existentialminimalists,my verbalskills and strident personality,my epic spirit, and neo-baroque artistic sensibility are tfo,"they constantlytell me, which roughly simply "too much" for them. "Baijale translatesto "cool off, uncle" or "turn down your volume," or "get off your unnecessarily wild horse." Despite our dramatic differences, there's always an implied moral contract between us: We never lie to one another. The rest is up for grabs. I hope with all my heart they get to live at least to be my current age.

Vacationing in a War Zone (I999)

words is one of the mostmythically NPR announcer: The word "Colombia" charged overshadows it instantly evokes Thestereotype in theAmerican clearly reality: imagination. and tropical music. political violence, and, at best,coffee drugs, guerrillas, El GranSilencio) (Musicby Vallenato rappers

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104

Guillermo Gomez-Pena LastJuly, my wife, Colombian curator Carolina Ponce de Leon, and I spent a couple of weeks in Bogota. We were invited to judge a national art contest and to give a couple of lectures on U.S. Latino art. The day before our trip, the FARC guerrillasbroke the temporary peace treaty with Pastrana's government and attacked several towns in the vicinity of Bogota. The much-awaited peace talks originally scheduled to begin in a week were indefinitely postponed. The morning before we left, we received severalphone callsfrom friendswondering if we were insane "to go on a culturalvacation to a war zone." Carolina answered with her habitual poetic logic: "Hey, if my 75-year-old mother lives down there, and so do my best friends, I don't see why Guillermo and I can't go. Colombia was certainly intense. The recent confrontationsbetween the guerrillas and the army had left hundreds of casualtieson both sides, and the rightwing paramilitary groups were carrying out daily massacres throughout the country. The economy was in shamblesand common crime was out of control. This national chaos translatedinto a total militarization of Bogota, the capital. The soldiers were embarked on the project of disarmingthe civilian population, and raids to nightclubs and restaurants were common. Ana MariaRueda, a close artistfriend of Carolina's,told us: "In San Francisco, you have gotten used to living without fear. Here, you might want to make some radicaladjustments."These adjustmentsin our daily behavior included only taking radio cabs, not walking alone at night, never leaving the hotel with your documents and credit cards in case you get kidnapped, and only going to bars with a sizable group of friends. Since I spend at least three months a year in Mexico City, most of these precautions sounded quite familiarto me. But since human beings are incredibly adaptableto violence, fear faded fast and so did our precautions. Within two days, we were visiting with friends, hanging out alone at bars, and walking the city up and down. Everyday life in Bogota seemed strangely,abnormally "normal." The streets were buzzing with energy, people were cordial, and music-good music-was bursting everywhere. Sometimes it was easy to forget that the country was at war. For Carolina and I, the only constant remindersof violence were the explicit Colombian TV programs,which showed bleeding corpses in between pop singers and sports news, and of course, the eerie presence of the military throughout the city. A few times fear kicked in. Once, leaving a movie house, Carolinaand I found ourselves walking in front of cyborg-like, U.S.-trained soldiers holding uzis and standing motionless every five meters. Another night, the embasucados (homeless people high on basuco, an even more dangerousform of crack)were particularly edgy. They walk up to you with fiery eyes, get really close to your face, and ask you for money. If you don't give them any, they follow you. They love to scare the you. In Colombia, they are called los desechables, and when are find around, you disposablepeople, they *^^* ^ * yourself looking over your shoulder in search of a soldier, the very same soldier you feared so badly the day l ON~'~ _JC before. It's confusing. ~ But then, every time I felt fear, I would console myself by remembering all that we had left behind in the U.S.: supremacistserialkillers,massacres at high schools perpetrated by teens, deranged militiamen preparing for a race war, police brutality selectively directed at youth of color. The U.S. wasn't that differentfrom CoJ ~ lombia. It just had a different image of itself, a selfrighteous and depoliticized one. In the American imagination, "realviolence" alwaysseems to take place

4. This racist sign was placedby the INS in many to border-crossingfreeways warnmigrant workerfamilies of the traffic ahead.Pedestrian areoften migrants victims accidents. of traffic (Courtesy of PochaNostra Archives)

PRECAI

>

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the Road I05 Lettersfrom beyond our borders, in distant lands like Bogota, or Baghdad. At our farewell party, one of Carolina'sfriends told me something that blew my mind. When I asked him if he was planning to go to America in the near future, he responded: "No, I don't like it up there. It's very violent. Everyone is armed, and racists shoot people of color, just because." He had a point: violence is relative to who you are and what you representat a given time and place. In this sense, someone like me, a brown-skinned Mexican with a thick mustache and an even thicker accent, might be saferin the streetsof Bogota than in Idaho, Wyoming, or Georgia. Am I making my point?

The Mysterious Connection between Montana and Chiapas

(1996)
Since the abrupt end of the cold war, many philosophers and historians have been talking about the fact that we are now living in a world without political theory and that the mirror of ideology has turned upside down. For me, this concept was hard to fully grasp until I toured Montana, a few years ago. The following incident took place during the Freemen standoff [March-June 1996]. After giving a lecture in Bozeman, I was invited to a bar by a group of local artists.There I met this huge bearded guy who had attended my talk. He introduced himself as a true "American anarchist";and out of the blue, he began to discuss political self-determination and the sacred right to bear arms-his eyes glowing in a messianic way. He used theological quotes to support his case. I listened patiently. He then confessed he was a supporter of the Montana militia and the Freemen, "the true American revolutionaries."I asked him why, if that was the case, he had attended a talk on Chicano experimental art and border culture. He said that since I was a Mexican artist,he assumed I was going to talk about Zapatismo. I asked what was the relationshipbetween Zapatismo and the U.S. militias. He replied that both movements believed in the holy right to utilize guns to defend themselves from an oppressive government. Blown away by the analogy, I lost my Chicano cool. I tried to explain to Tom Payne Jr. that there were major differences; that the Zapatistaswere indigenous peoples waging a centuries-old war against colonial forces; that they were not interested in guns per se, not even in armed struggle;and that their true weapons were the Internet and their now legendary and quite poetical press communiques. He responded with militia-style cliches saying that, "Anglos were also indigenous to Montana, and that like the Zapatistas,they wanted their land back and their country back." "Fromwhom?" I asked. "From the federalgovernment, or from people like me?" He didn't understandmy sarcasm."You know," I elaboratedmy sarcasm,"nonChristian darkpeople with foreign accents." He laughed in a fake manner. I then continued with my list of obvious distinctions:I told him that the Zapatistas were coming from a leftist/internationalistperspective, and that they were into coalition politics; whereas the U.S. militias were extreme rightists, heavily Christian, and micro-separatist.He didn't see much problem with these minute distinctions, or perhaps he didn't even understand them. At that point, I politely excused myself and returned to the other table with my artist colleagues. Last April, when the standoff with the Republic of Texas Militia made the international news, I was performing in Mexico City. My friends down there asked me if the fringe patriot group was composed of or inspired by Chicano secessionists. I explained to them that RTM was a marginal white supremacist group immersed in nostalgia for the brief period when Texas had been an independent republic. My friends thought I was making it up.

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Io6

Gomez-Pena Guillermo

thinksdifferent, 5. "El Mexterminator y que?"G6mez-Penaincarnating thefearsof Internet users, (1998). (Photoby EugenioCastro) posesas a border superhero

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the Road Lettersfrom If people in the '9os are having such a hard time distinguishing a right-wing secessionist movement from an indigenous movement of political selfdetermination, our ideological compass may not be working that well. I mean, I just can't imagine a Mexican farmworker or a Zapatistasubcomandante arriving unannounced at the Montana Militia camp and asking Trockman, "Oiga Sefior, let's join forces. You are probably aware we have the same enemy." And him answering: "Sure amigou. Let's organize the first binational guerrilla summit in
Tijuana."

I07

The Chihuahua Project

(2000)
Question: What is the most effective social aid to break the interculturalice in America? Answer: A chihuahua dog. (Soundsof TacoBell Commercial) Exactly a year ago, when Taco Bell spokesman Mr. Viva Gorditaswas still the "most famous Mexican in the U.S.," my wife and I decided to carryout a unique sociological experiment: to buy a chihuahua dog to see how his presence would affect our daily interactionswith people. We got one on the Net and named him "Pochito." He immediately became the defacto "gallery attendant"of the art space run by Carolina, and the whole staff decided to share the responsibility of his upbringing. A true San Francisco "community dog," he was blessed with two lesbian mothers, two gay fathers, and two straightparents. Among other costumes, we made him a mariachi suit and an S&M number with leather undies, a garter belt, and a studded necklace. To introduce him to society according to Mexican tradition, we organized a "chihuahuaethnic fashion contest," and people from every imaginablesubculture showed up: sensitivebikers,lowriders, apocalypsehipsters,bohemian dot.comers, Asian post-punks, middle-class couples from Marin County-you name it, each with their chihuahuitadressedup accordingly.Soon, Pochito became a local celebrity, and gallery attendance increased by 20 percent. We also startedtaking him places, which was extremely easy since he fit inside a little handbag. Overnight, Carolina and I became the ultimate lovable Latinos, or ratherthe human prostheses of Pochito, which is to say,extensions or projections of his chihuahuaness.At restaurants,parks, and shops, people approached us immediately. First, they would talk to him, and then to us-about him, of course. And no matter who these people were, in terms of their age, class, or ethnic background, their voices became immediately infantilized. Others suddenly broke into a kind of Sesame Street Spanish, to be more anthropologically accurate, I assume: "Ay, perritou, que lindou chiquitou. Viva Chalupa, ajua." Some even asked him questions as if expecting a verbal answer:"Hey little hombri, tu tienis hambri?" I wonder what makes Americans so friendly to dogs-and so indifferent to other humans?Perhaps,in a country ridden with racial,generational,and genderbased conflicts, it is much easier for people to relate to dogs. After all, they never question our behavior. They become the perfect substitute for friends, relatives, children, even lovers. Pop culture may be partiallyresponsible:People here grow up watching cartoons, TV commercials,and films populated by animalsthatspeak and behave like humans. My next art project is to install a tiny video camera on Pochito's head and document a day in the life of a chihuahua from his perspective. Each and every

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Io8

Guillermo Gomez-Pena

6. Globalization exports fear of theOther,herede-an pictedin a popularJapanese as the evil Latinovilcomic lain with theAmeric good an guys. (Courtesy of Pocha Nostran Archives)

invo s T "d" w

person who touches him or talks to him will instantly become an involuntary actor, or rather, an ethnographic specimen. This "dogumentary"will certainly provide me wth crucal i nformation about a rare species, El Homo Canofilus Americanus.

On Dual Citizenship
(zooo) It's late December, 1999, and my wife Carolina and I are sitting at the San FranciscoINS office, waiting for my turn to get interviewed for citizenship. My "resident alien card" was invalidatedby a border patrolmanwho couldn't deal with an uppity Mexican. Besides, for the first time ever, Mexico and the U.S. accepted dual citizenship and my lawyer suggested that instead of applying for another green card (which may take me up to two and a half years to receive), I should apply directly for citizenship. It suddenly dawns on me: After o20 years of living in America, I'm gambling everything I've got, including my family and friends, my art projects, even my voice on National Public Radio. I hear my name in the loudspeaker:"Guermo Comes Pennis." I enter a nondescript office with my heart pounding real fast. A Chinese American INS officer welcomes me with a huge smile, as if I were some kind of undocumented celebrity. "Aren't you... G6mez-Pefia...the performance artist!?"No puedocreerlo, coiio!(untranslatable). ya me cacharon "Well...yes." I try not to express my surprise. "I, I, love your, your book, The New World Border," I said. I truly didn't she tells me. "I didn't know that INS officers actually...read," know how else to respond. "In fact," she tells me, "I am a writer myself. I've

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the Road Lettersfrom

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7. Gomez-Penaand Carolina Poncede Le6ncelebratin ing dualcitizenship costume. of Pocha (Courtesy NostraArchives) got two books out on Chinese American diasporic literature.""What are you doing here? Researching the source of our immigrant pathos?" I ask her. She cracks up, suddenly nervous, and then answers apologetically, "Well, there are not that manyjobs availablein academia."It's one of those casesin which reality is much strangerthan any of my writings. Ten minutes later, I walk out of the INS office with my brand-new dual citizenship. In a sense, I just exchanged my green card for the gold one. I give a humongous kiss to Carolina. Our kiss is heard through the entire INS building.

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