Chicana

By Silvia Isabel Rael Almanza

Silvia Isabel Rael Almanza is a Chicana. That is not a racial or an ethnic statement/status but, rather, a political one. It was in the 1950s that the hyphen in Spanish-American defined a group of people as less-than-American.

It was the political process that eliminated the hyphen and restored our rightful place on this North American land in the United States of America. Silvia feels at home and is proud to be defined as a Chicana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543473476

Silvia Isabel Rael Almanza

Silvia Isabel Rael Almanza is a Chicana. That is not a racial nor ethnic statement/status, rather, a political one. It was in the 1950s that the hyphen in Spanish-American, defined a group of people as less-than-American. It was the political process that eliminated the hyphen and restored our rightful place on this North American land in the United States of America. Silvia feels at home and is proud to be defined as a Chicana.

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Copyright © 2018 by Silvia Isabel Rael Almanza.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017919337

ISBN:                      Hardcover                     978-1-5434-7349-0

                                Softcover                        978-1-5434-7348-3

                                eBook                              978-1-5434-7347-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/19/2018

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This book is

dedicated to my family, from the roots, to the flowers and fruits.

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Family Tree

Preface

It has been here on North American soil that the roots of our family began to take hold. It is also here where we have failed, floundered, and ultimately flourished.

Tracing the ancestors to the 1640’s in Mexico City, Mexico is exciting and revealing. It reinforced the fact that the Spaniards and the Native Americans are forever a part of our legacy!

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Simona

Where do I begin to analyze the ambiguity of belonging to two cultures? Let me follow the life of a woman in the midst of a changing world. First, I see her simple life forming in an adobe home around 1888. Jacinta, perhaps one generation removed from the Indian reservation, was born May 10th to the Sandoval’s along with six other siblings. The condiments of folklore, ignorance, superstition, and faith were added to make a flavorful beginning in her life. She was an attractive and bright girl, if brightness was to be recognized in those days, among the traditional female roles. The selfless, almost squaw-like woman would have many obstacles in life, but she would overcome illiteracy. It was not her destiny to be illiterate, even though many of her peers had inherited this. She learned to read, one can only speculate from a nearby convent or church-related institution. My vague information about Jacintita’s roots, are only a testimony of the need to understand where I had come from. The fractions of information, the lack of instruction regarding my background was important to me, in order to understand and identify myself. Why should Jacintita worry about who she was and what her purpose in life was? Why should I?

Just as the other girls in the neighborhood were busy doing the household tasks until they were old enough and able bodied to work outside the home, Jacintita wed. She first wed Luis Quintana, and I don’t know why, but the marriage did not work. Love, I imagine was, and is the hope in people’s heart that inspires life and teases one with self-esteem. You are worth caring about when you draw that person to you, as if by magic. There were no stories to understand the first marriage. Adelaido Rivera was the grandfather I remember. He was the father of Josefita, Corina, and Socorro (Mary). He was big (at least six feet tall), and strong. Perhaps, he too had to fulfill the macho role that meant he was untied to family responsibility, including marriage. I can only assume the type of life that she had, but I will always wonder. She also had another man in her life, Juan Garcia.

The oldest child Josephita, died at a young age (perhaps ten), but I recall a story told me about her. She was clairvoyant, according to the story, and when Jacintita went to clean the house of the woman that she worked for, she never knew if she would be paid with money, or other means (clothing, etc.). Josephita would tell her mother how she would be compensated each day. The story goes that when Jacintita was pregnant, with Josephita, she was sitting on the sofa, next to her mother, Pitacia, and the baby cried in her womb. Jacintita was startled, but Pitacia said not to be afraid. It was a sign that this child would be special, and she was after all.

I will learn more about Jacinta, by looking at my mother, Corina’s life. Corina was the second child, but first in character and strength. She

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Luis Quintana / Jacinta

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Jacinta

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Enrique & Marieta

was born in May, on the 2nd, in 1921, in the same stagnant environment that women of that time had to bear. She had a selective quality about her as well as an intelligence of high caliber. She was able to observe the world around her and want more. She walked to school with the big boy’s shoes that made her feel awkward, and endure teasing, but she learned what was taught and more. Fifth grade was the highest level she was allowed to achieve, because of the duties at home. She endured the hardships and pressures of demanding housework, and an uncle (Francisco), who would sometimes hit her. She was subject to verbal abuse as well, by her mother’s siblings, and was expected to be obedient to the point of near slavery. She became the first bilingual (Spanish-English) person in Jacintita’s family, and was a handsome woman, if not beautiful, in face and body. She married, at the young age of sixteen, Jacobo Rael, a man nine years her senior, who came from Antonchico, New Mexico. She was out of her pressing environment, but it was not going to be an easy life.

There was an economic improvement in her life, but her emotional wounds would be unhealed because of the marital problems of spousal abuse. These problems had their root in the alcohol consumption that Jacobo had grown up with and they accompanied the beatings, if not

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Hipolito & First wife

precipitated them. She like most women of the culture, were victims of their surroundings, and expectations. Jacobo was humiliated and ridiculed by his father, Hipolito, who was quite the patriarch of the Rael family. Jacobo’s frustrations were soothed by alcohol, and expressed on his wife. She paid for his father’s cruelty.

Somehow, Corina, after a good and bad life in her marriage, decides that she has had her last beating, and commits an unprecedented act of getting a divorce. She is outcast by her husband’s family, as well as Jacintita, her mother. She has something left that she has always relied on, strength and intelligence. She decides that she will survive. She is awarded the three children, ages two, five, and seven, and moves to New Mexico to live in the adobe house her grandmother, Pitacia built. There is tension between her and her mother, who is relentless about how she should not have gotten a divorce, but she stays. In Denver, where she left Jacobo, the Rael’s too, are insulted that their son would be part of such a shameful thing as a divorce, so Inocencia (Jacobo’s mother, and the matriarch of the Rael family), insists that he should have the children. Inocencia feels that this would provide her with the pride that she has lost with her church-related friends. So the children are allowed to come to live with their father, in Denver. This decision was a forced one that would have consequences, not only for the