...has it really taken me twenty-two years to notice the racial implications of Speedy Gonzales? A Mexican mouse that runs incredibly fast and wears a comically large sombrero? Is that racist, or no? Am I asking this question fifty years later than everyone else?

I probably am – but then again, according to the facts Mike Davis brings up in his book Magical Urbanism, fifty years ago the US Census was hardly even counting Hispanics and Latinos into the population. Wish-washing on whether or not “Mexicans were a ‘race’” (Davis, 11) and even switching to some ridiculous revisions (“Persons of Spanish Mother Tongue” and “Spanish Surname”). Why don’t we just toss in, “Persons Inclined to Maybe Sometimes Refer to Mexico In Certain Situations” and call it day? If there’s one thing I picked up in the selected readings from Davis’ book, it’s the struggle that Hispanic and Latino people face in working to improve their social recognition and regard. From being wholly unacknowledged; to forcibly lumped into one large group of the same (“Caught in a no-man’s-land between ascriptive systems of race and ethnicity…” (Davis, 17) to being a part in the growing wave of the future (“The result, he confidently predicts, will be a new hegemonic global culture: ‘a Pan-American twenty-first century” (Davis, 23).

Reading the excerpt from Gloria Anzaldùa’s Borderlands La Frontera makes the first ten pages of Davis’ second chapter seem even more comical. Can you imagine trying to explain to the Census Bureau in 1930 what a “mestiza” is? I’m a little doubtful that they would have added, “cosmic race” (Anzaldua, 99) as a check box on the census. Perhaps it is such a laughable idea because it’s this same rigid, categorical structure that Anzaldua speaks out against in her book when she writes, “Rigidity means death. Only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically.” This concept seems to be a difficult one for the White-American psyche in general; as I recently learned from Patricia Limerick’s criticism on Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, America was entirely founded on an “Us versus Them” mentality. There were no Anglo-Pioneers asking each other, “Wow, this land is nice, I wonder if those Native folk would be okay with us building a cozy cot by the trees over here. Let me go ask them. Do I have anything in my teeth? No? Okay, thanks,” so on that hand, it is not surprising that Hispanic and Latino peoples meet resistance, and that Mestizas fight an overwhelming inner turmoil.

This brings me back to my main point: Speedy Gonzales. As I said, this week’s readings made me consider the racial depths of Speedy Gonzales (certainly not during a time when my mind wandered while doing homework.) Consider if you will, that Speedy Gonzales is a character created by White-Americans, marketed for White-Americans and birthed from Mexican culture and stereotypes. Do you see what I’m getting at? Gonzales is both American and Mexican, he is our “cosmic race” mouse and chief cartoon mestiza representative. I knew it. Read between the lines, people! "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale!” he cries out to White-America, challenging them to acknowledge and empathize with their fellow man, “¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!"