Review: Melissa Castillo Planas's A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture
Reviewed by Nelson Santana
When one thinks about Mexican migrants, often what comes to mind, partly due to conservative narratives, are Mexican-descended people in the US-Mexico border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. However, the Mexican community — some whose ancestors lived on Mexican land prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and who suddenly went from living in Mexico to living in the United States on the same land[1] — is dispersed throughout the United States with significant populations in Illinois, Washington, DC, and New York. The Mexican population in New York City is one that has been booming for quite some time. There are multiple ways to gauge the significance of an ethnic group and oftentimes these forms manifest themselves via political representation such as the election of political figures or the establishment of research centers devoted to creating, preserving, and disseminating information regarding a specific ethnic group.[2] Similar to Puerto Ricans and Dominicans — who founded the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (1973) and CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (1992) — before them, Mexican New Yorkers established the Mexican Studies Institute in the early 2010s, housed at Lehman College. It is no coincidence, however, that the three research centers — devoted to the three largest Afro-Caribbean/Indigenous Latinx migrant groups in New York — are housed within the City University of New York (CUNY). Coincidentally, the author of A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture (Rutgers University Pres, 2020), Dr. Melissa Castillo Planas is currently assistant professor in the English Department at Lehman College (CUNY), where she specializes in Latinx Literature and Culture. She holds a doctoral degree in American Studies from Yale University.
A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture
By Melissa Castillo Planas
Rutgers University Press, 2020
258 pages
When I first came across A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, the first thought to enter my mind was the collaborative musical effort between Jay-Z and Alicia Keys in “Empire State of Mind” (2009).[3] Uncoincidentally, hip hop and urban culture play a prominent role in Castillo Planas’s dissertation-turned monograph. The research questions Castillo Planas aims to answer revolve around artistic inspiration and creative work such as the artistry of tattoo and graffiti artists as well as those by Mexican migrants who rap about their experience. Additionally, the front-cover image of a man spray-painting graffiti on a wall provides one with an intriguing preview of what awaits the reader: a narrative about one of the most vibrant, strong-willed, and (in)visible people who play an integral role in the development of New York City.
A Mexican State of Mind is the type of work that is made possible because of the lived experience of the author. It is precisely due to the fact that for twelve years Castillo Planas earned a living as a restaurant worker and similar lived experiences, that she was able to complete this research project with the care, sensitivity, and respect that she demonstrates both toward the subject matter and the people at the center of her study. Castillo Planas’ doctoral training in American Studies at Yale University combined with both informal and formal interactions with the community she analyzes, is an invaluable contribution to multiple historiographies, fields and disciplines, including the historiographies of migration studies, New York City, and Latinx communities. Additionally, A Mexican State of Mind also falls within more niche areas of study, including a relatively “new” area of exploration: carceral studies.[4]
The theoretical backbone of Castillo Planas’ monograph is the espousal of Gloria Anzaldúa’s and Paul Gilroy’s theoretical frameworks in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1995), respectively, which Castillo Planas denotes Atlantic Borderlands.[5] As per Castillo Planas, the Atlantic Borderlands is an approach to migration studies that is consistently in dialogue with African American studies “in terms of the way nonwhite bodies move and labor in the United States given the historically built economic and social structures that contain them.” Castillo Planas is careful not to lay claim to coining the term “Atlantic Borderlands,” particularly because she is not the first scholar to use the term, given that scholars such as Nathaniel Millet have previously used the phrase.[6] However, the manner in which Castillo Planas presents the Atlantic Borderlands theoretical framework is unique and different than that of the framework used by Millet. In addition to the Atlantic Borderlands, another critical concept or lens in which A Mexican State of Mind was developed, was through the concept of containment, deriving from the image of the shipping container. The concept of containment is concerned with the structural and systemic forms of migrant control, thus complimenting Castillo Planas’ Atlantic Borderlands.
The methodological framework in A Mexican State of Mind draws upon sociological and anthropological methods. Castillo Planas, however, brings a new interdisciplinary perspective by focusing on culture while also incorporating methods from scholarship grounded in history, literature, and cultural studies. Castillo Planas masterfully builds her arguments via the examination of uniquely rich sources including notable ones often overlooked or frowned down upon by more “traditional” scholars.[7] Her primary sources comprise but are not limited to arts collectives, graffiti, murals, personal accounts, both ethnographic and journalistic interviews, audiovisual content, lyrics, data and statistics from organizations or government entities such as the New York Police Department.
A Mexican State of Mind is part of a new wave of scholarship that moves away from how research was once presented. The vast majority of the previous monographs on migration, Latinx communities, and Latin America contained dense and voluminous double-digit chapters. Castillo Planas, however, presents a complex yet digestible and exciting monograph comprised of a well-researched introduction that frames the work, four chapters that contain the body of the text, and an epilogue. Jargon-free narratives are useful since they are more accessible to readers.
All chapters in A Mexican State of Mind are unique in their own way, making invaluable contributions to scholarship pertinent to US history. The first two chapters engage in conversation with literature on Mexican labor. Chapter one provides a case study of Mexican migrant containment, exploring active forms of resistance via the restaurant industry. The second chapter explores collectively-owned businesses that doubled as arts spaces such as Har’d Life Ink, a tattoo shop and performance space in Park Slope, Brooklyn (one neighborhood removed from Sunset Park) that serves as a hub for artists to share their artistic expressions and receive mentorship. The final two chapters hone-in and examine lesser studied areas of Mexican migrant communities. Chapter three provides a brilliant analysis of how Mexican hip hop contributes to (re)shaping Mexican identity.[8] The final chapter looks at the aggressive visibility of graffiti and how Mexican migrants are using this medium to voice their disproval of deportation by carving out their own spaces. Several themes run rampant in Castillo Planas’s monograph. Yet one theme that is interwoven through each chapter is that of citizenship and incorporation as Mexican migrants carve out their own spaces.[9] Mexican migrants accomplish this goal in multiple ways such as incorporating elements of Aztec culture within graffiti artwork (calendars, gods, jaguars, etc.); rapping about racism and economic hardships in English, Spanish, and Spanglish; or by playing a role in a basic human necessity: eating. Unlike most works, choosing a favorite or must-read chapter is a difficult task with A Mexican State of Mind.
A Mexican State of Mind is a book for enthusiasts of Mexican studies, Latinx studies, as well as migration studies. The book is also of value to cultural historians, scholars of music and the visual arts. Although the reading level is more on par with graduate students and advanced scholars, certain sections can be assigned both to undergraduate and high school students.
As someone who has interacted with Mexican migrants in Brooklyn and who has lived in New York City most of my life, I can attest to a lot of what Castillo Planas notes in her work and am glad that someone has finally produced this type of research study on Mexican migrants / Mexican-descended people in New York City. Hopefully, future scholars can learn from Melissa Castillo Planas and replicate her methodology with other groups.
Nelson Santana is assistant professor / collection development librarian at Bronx Community College of CUNY. He is a scholar of library and information science whose work explores the Caribbean, Latin America, and migration in the United States.
[1] Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between Mexico and the United States. As part of the agreement, the United States of Mexico ceded a large part of its territory to the United States of America, particularly Mexican territory that bordered with land from the United States of America.
[2] Within the United States there are many repositories devoted to preserving the history and legacy of Latin American-descended people and Latin American migrants. Mexican-descended people are not only the largest migrant group in the United States, but also the most documented Latinx group in the US. Some collections that exclusively preserve the legacy of Mexican migrants and/or document the history of Mexican migrants include the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the Tereza Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin; the Special Collections of the Latin American Library at Tulane University; and the Chicano Studies Collection at the University of California, Berkeley, for instance. There are many more repositories spread across the United States that document Mexican-descended communities and although most collections and repositories are located in western and southern states, repositories throughout the United States in areas such as the eastern coast, for instance, are documenting Mexican-descended populations as they grow within those geographic areas.
[3] Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, vocalists, “Empire State of Mind,” by Angela Hunte, Alicia Keys, Alexander Shuckburgh, Bert Keyes, Janet Sewell-Ulepic, Shawn Carter, and Sylvia Robinson, recorded 2009, track 5 on The Blueprint 3, 2009, Roc Nation-Asylum-Atlantic, compact disc. Other songs to come to mind include Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” (1976) and “N.Y. State of Mind” from Nas’s debut studio album, Illmatic (1994).
[4] Carceral Studies is not really a new area of inquiry. Michel Foucault is often credited with the “carceral” in “carceral state,” from Discipline and Punish, which not only takes into account prisons and the judicial system, for instance, but also aggressive policing, punitive crusades against illicit and informal economies, and the criminalization of people. Many scholars also examine race, class, and gender. Many scholars whose work analyzes the Carceral State focus on the sun belt states of California, Florida, and Texas, and major cities such as Los Angeles and New York.
[5] Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/Fronteras: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute Books, 1987) and Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Harvard University Press, 1995). Migrant communities affected by colonialism are effectively a displaced people. The works of scholars such as Anzaldúa and Gilroy remind us of the commonalities or shared experiences regarding people of color in the Americas who arrive from everywhere and essentially rebuild their lives and new worlds.
[6] Nathaniel Millet, “Borderlands in the Atlantic World,” Atlantic Studies 10, no. 2 (2013): 268-295. In “Borderlands in the Atlantic World,” Millet proposes a theoretical model that he calls the “Atlantic Borderland,” that focuses on the history of Africa, the Americas, and Europe during the early modern era and 19th century. Absent from Millet’s article are the works of Anzaldúa and Gilroy.
[7] The word “traditional” may not be the most appropriate term as “tradition” often implies that something (i.e. culture, cultural practices, society) remains static.
[8] Although beyond the scope of this work, it is worth noting that Mexican-descended artists have helped shaped music — including rock — in the United States (and beyond) including Ritchie Valens, Los Lobos, and the Mysterians. Artists such as Kumbia Kings and Cypress Hills (one member is half Mexican and half Cuban) have also experimented with elements of hip hop. Cypress Hills, for instance, lay claim to being the first hip hop group with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kumbia Kings may not exclusively perform hip hop, as they also delve into other genres such as Mexican Cumbia, but they have heavily influenced a generation of artists and musicians with their unique sound.
[9] Not meant to be an exhaustive list, some works on Latinx / Latino/a migration where the theme of citizenship and incorporation are prevalent include George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press), 1993; Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, (New York: Viking), 2000; Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth- Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2005; Lilia Fernandez, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2012; Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2007.