The function of a name is to differentiate each of us from one another. It serves as a label that people can refer to us as; it’s something to write down on a paper that represents you. You are your name, and your name is you. Beyond this basic conception of a name we arrive at culture. Within the premise of culture we see that a name holds more value and significance than a mere label. It represents hundreds of years of family history. In my case, it expresses a great conquest that happened centuries ago. In this sense, names tell us stories not only of ourselves, but of the people who came before us and their lives. My full name is Oscar Uriel Zarate, and it tells a story of a tenacious father and of a people that travelled long distances in the pursuit of a dream. My name is a collection of stories that compose the ethnic identity that I possess today.
First, let’s consider my surname. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, my last name is ranked among one of the 639 most frequently occurring hispanic surnames. After a swift google maps search, I discovered that my name also refers to an area within the Basque region of Spain called Zarate. Being a Mexican, it comes to no surprise to me that my surname originates from Spanish roots. This, however, raises up the question, did my family descend from the indigenous people or the people who came during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. In the socioeconomic class rankings, during the spanish colonial period, the Spanish, both born in Spain and Mexico, were put on the top. However my parents and grandparents show no signs that they descend from the Spanish, for they lived in poverty, at the bottom. Furthermore, the caste system in Mexico during the Spanish rule was color based, my kinship, being of a darker skin tone, would not have been part of the elite class of light-skin Spanish, but of the lowly indigenous people.
Thus, it is reasonable to speculate that my last name is the name my forefathers were given by the Spaniards during their conquest. The action of replacing native names with Spanish surnames, and replacing native languages with the Spanish language is essential to understanding how the Spanish were influential in shaping the Chicano cultural life. The stripping of one’s own culture and indoctrinating a new one is a continuing phenomenon even in the twenty-first century. The conflict today, however, is more subtle and implicit and does not go as far as giving one a new name. Nonetheless, I connect this to my own experiences in school and American society as a whole, and how this cultural conflict changed my ethnic identity
I am known by my first name to the society that resides outside my household. My family, on the other hand, refers to me by my middle name: to distinguish me from my dad, who’s name I share. This difference of name emphasizes the contrast that exists between the culture I experience at home and the one that encompasses my community. This is important to note because just as Chicano cultural life is influence by Spanish and Native culture, my cultural life is influenced by the Chicano culture at home, and the culture present at school.
The population at my high school was entirely Chicano and Latino, but to better understand the culture that festered within my high school, regardless of the fact that it was largely Chicano, it requires us to first understand the conditions the school was in. My school was deprived of sufficient and adequate materials that would have made our educational experience more effective. For example, the school rarely had new textbooks, and the textbooks that we did have were deteriorating. The desks were in bad condition due to the tagging and misuse of past students. These conditions did not inspire me to continue on with my education.
The system that created my school is a system that does not benefit the Chicano, a system Tatum would describe as racist. The faculty was very limited, and the amount of college prep courses offered was small. Moreover, while the school was not made to get us into prestigious universities, it was constructed to get us into vocational or state schools. The counselors always promoted the many local vocational schools in our area. The tracking and de facto segregation of today, however, is not only at a micro level, such as a school-within-a-school model, but it is also at a macro level where a whole community filled with Chicanos are segregated by keeping them in low wage jobs due to their limited education provided by limited schools such as the one I attended. Nonetheless, this institutional racism that created such obstacles was what catalyzed “aspirational capital” in me. An aspirational capital that was nurtured and fortified by my family and the culture they provided.
My home is enthralled with what is now my native language of Spanish. A language that my parents used to instill “familial capital” in me through the method of storytelling. My mom told tales of talking whales and friendly sharks which taught me about friendship and cooperation. My dad, on the other hand, was more about inspiring me to strive for grander goals by retelling the tales of his own battle against the institutional racism that permeates the American job market. My dad is the representation of the Mexican man that leaves his family in the pursuit of anything, something that is remotely better than what he has in his homeland. He endures everything just to achieve that goal that is made tangible only in America. This hope, this aspirational capital is what I inherited, alongside my father’s name. In the educational road I too experienced obstacles similar to those my father faced at the various jobs he had, and I used the same aspirational capital he utilized to keep moving forward.
In the early years of my father’s tenure in America, he was able to obtain a decent paying job as an assistant manager in an electronics store. He was happy and flourishing for the time that he was there. However, when he lost his job due to immigration problems he learned that the system was not built to benefit him. He needed to work twice as hard as his competition to receive the same result as they did. As my father struggled for all those years to find a stable job he noticed that no one thought it was unfair that he was working double as hard for the same pay. That he had more experience than other applicants, but he was always turned down for a raise or promotion. His needs were never met, but the needs of his white counterparts were always met. No one took notice of this or saw it as unjust. This is mundane racism, and it reflects certain points in my educational tenure.
I parallel my father in my tenure inside the educational pipeline that is the U.S. public educational system. In this pipeline my needs were never met, and it was always justified by describing us, Chicanos, as low achieving and irrelevant. Nonetheless, I saw every class as a stepping stone, getting me closer to both a higher education and a brighter future. This aspirational capital instilled by my parents helped formed who I am today by catalyzing a resilience in me. Moreover, it motivated me to be more tenacious in the activities that I do, and shaped in me a perspective that there is something better for me out there regardless of the challenges that may make me doubt it.
My name is a representation of two cultures coexisting and slowly through time becoming one, a new culture. I am a crossroads to these two cultures whose intersection point lands on me. This intersection is the new Chicano culture, which stands dependent of Mexican, American and the old Chicano culture. The new Chicano culture is the one that I share with my kith because they also live in between this new cultures, where we incorporate American values alongside Mexican one, and create a new Chicano culture.
In school my name was not manipulated, for it could be understood in English. This is comparable to the short video, “Facundo the Great”, where most children’s names in elementary school are changed to more Americanized versions. The exception was Facundo whose name was too unique to be changed. My name, as well, was not modified, but for different reasons than that of Facundo. My name was not altered because it didn't have to be, for as I mentioned before it could be said in English. As the years went by I no longer noticed the difference between how my name was pronounced in English and Spanish. I was speaking English and enthralled in the American entertainment complex. From music to television, I was entirely swept into American culture. This is what makes up the part of my identity that I consider to be American. However just like my name my ethnic identity does not lie in one particular culture, I am a crossroads.
Claiming that I know who I am would be far from the truth, for can a name truly encompass the entirety of your being. Everyday I sculpt and mold the person I aim to be. Nonetheless, I ask myself, who am I at this moment? I am a mixture of two cultures, a melting pot of Mexican and American culture. A reflection of a bias public educational system, and a collection of my parent’s moral teachings. My name is a bilingual name that can be spoken in both English and Spanish. I assimilate to both cultures these languages represent; my name does as well. Does my name reflect me? For now I say yes.
