Breaking the Silence

As I waited for the dice to stop rolling, I listened to the sounds of laughter and conversation that filled the living room of Casa Latina. At first glance, you wouldn’t know the board game we were playing was based on heavy topics because everyone seemed so happy. It was Monday night which meant there was a Lo Nuestro meeting. Tonight we were playing a game called The American Dream where the goal was reach the end and achieve the ultimate life in the United States. The catch: we had all assumed new personas with social identities that differed from our own. I was now named Zeb. I was a white, upper-middle class Jewish man whose first language was Hebrew. I was also a gay U.S. citizen and deaf in my left ear.

The dice stopped rolling. It was a three. I moved my game piece accordingly and read the Chance Card aloud. “You start a new job and have to repeatedly hear your name mispronounced by your new coworkers. If you are Latinx or Asian, moved back one space.” Even though none of my group’s members assumed either a Latinx or Asian identity in the game, gestures of understanding marked some of their faces. A knowing eye roll to my right and a sarcastic chuckle to my left, these individuals knew firsthand what it was like to experience something like that despite being unaffected in the game.

Lo Nuestro is an organization on campus that primarily focuses on Latino cultural awareness. They do this primarily through social, cultural, and academic activities on campus that help spread understanding and appreciation of the languages, histories, and traditions of Latinx individuals. Lo Nuestro currently operates out of Casa Latina-- one of the five cultural centers on campus. Through my observations and interactions at the Lo Nuestro meeting this past Monday, I have come to understand this organization as a place where Latinx students can go to be around other Latinx students and feel a sense of shared cultural identity. The history of Lo Nuestro and Casa Latina also suggests that they were created in response to a lack of representation which relates to Trouillot’s points about silences in historical narratives. By establishing these spaces, Latinx students have had an outlet to reaffirm and preserve their  cultural identities on a primarily white campus.

Casa Latina
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Lo Nuestro was established in 1990 with the goal of providing support for Latinx students at Knox in order to make their college experience more meaningful. However, Lo Nuestro hasn’t always had a home on campus. It wasn’t until 1994 that Casa Latina (then Rittenhouse House) was designated as a theme house to support the mission of Lo Nuestro. 

In September 2001, Lo Nuestro led an initiative to change Casa Latina’s status from theme house to cultural center due to increasing enrollment of Latinx students. The President of Lo Nuestro at this time, Pamela Hernandez, stated in an interview, "There are more Latino students at Knox in recent years, and changing from a residential house to a culture center will help us provide more services and support for students." This effort further cemented the Latinx presence on campus.

This past Monday, the meeting started out with the icebreaker, Rose and Thorn. Members took turns saying one positive (rose) and one negative (thorn) that happened this week. Responses varied in how personal they were but each was responded to with support from the group. I interviewed the vice president, Karen Barragan, and asked her thoughts on why Lo Nuestro matters to her. She stated, “The environment in Lo Nuestro is welcoming and it is both a safe and brave space. I value Lo Nuestro and what it stands for because I have a space where I can be myself and where people will understand and help me. The fact that I can provide that same amount of energy, comfort, and support is really important to me.”

Even though each member may come from a different cultural or ethnic background, they all united under their collective Latinx identity in order to support themselves and others. By doing this, I think that they created their own unique culture.

Later in the meeting, Tianna Cervantez (director of Center for Intercultural Life), facilitated a board game called, “The American Dream.” This game ultimately demonstrated how different social identities or cultural practices could influence one’s success in attaining the goals associated with meritocratic American Dream. Tianna gave each member a card with a list of different social identities and explained the rules before we broke into groups of 5 and played the game. Despite not actually having the identities listed on the cards, the simulated obstacles in the game had members groaning in frustration when certain Chance Cards allowed privileged identities to move along the board while targeted identities had to move back. 

After we finished the game, a whole group discussion took place based on our experiences playing the game. I think Geertz would say that our discussions and interpretations of how certain sociocultural identities might feel in the instances relayed on the Chance Cards were simply that-- interpretations. Since the whole point of the game was to interact with the challenges of the world as someone from a different culture or background, nobody could fully know how it would feel to experience a setback based on one’s race or religious background, for example. Only those within the affected culture can provide authentic narratives of these experiences. However, as Geertz states, “it is not necessary to know everything in order to understand something.” As members of a minority group on campus, members of Lo Nuestro have their own similar experiences with facing setbacks due to their sociocultural identity. 

The discussion that took place after the game opened up dialogues about connections members made between their experiences in the game and in real life. Members opened up about their own experiences with facing barriers due to their Latinx identity. I interviewed another member, Armando, about why he joined Lo Nuestro in the first place. He stated, “I kept going [to meetings] because I liked the fact that it was a diverse group of people that got along really well and discussed issues that we minorities currently face.” Lo Nuestro offered members an opportunity to learn about and reflect on experiences that others shared with them which reinforced their collective identity. This was corroborated by Karen who said, “We all want to make a change and continue learning and teaching others about our heritage and history. It is important to be around people who relate to you.” 

Methodology

I engaged this observation by fully participating in the meeting. I’ve been sporadically attending Lo Nuestro meetings since my freshman year and have befriended many of its members. As such, I thought that taking formal notes and removing myself from the activities would go against the usual atmosphere of Lo Nuestro meetings. Therefore, I sat among the members and interacted with the group. I interviewed Karen and Armando separately after the meeting through informal discussions. If I were to do this differently, I would have taken the time to look through the scrapbooks and historical artifacts of Casa Latina. I didn’t have enough time this week but in the future I think examining them will reveal a lot more about the history and collective culture of Lo Nuestro and Casa Latina.

Final Thoughts

Lo Nuestro and Casa Latina were constructed in response to a lack of space for Latinx students at Knox. Their establishment allowed Latinx students to break the silence that has permeated the culture at Knox throughout history. Trouillot discusses the way power impacts which narratives get accepted as truth. Silences are created when different interpretations are conflict. The narrative with the most power wins out as fact. Latinx identity is often misinterpreted as a homogeneous, one dimensional culture which silences the true heterogeneous, multicultural reality of Latinx identity. Lo Nuestro has capitalized on that and united under a shared identity in order to break the silence of that very identity. When discussing the history of Lo Nuestro, Karen explained, “It was a club created to offer a space for Latinx and Hispanic individuals on campus to work through the college experience with one another and to create a place of resistance.” 

Dedication of Casa Latina as a cultural center, Apr. 27, 2001
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The success of this effort can’t be understated. In this archived Knox news article, the growing number of Latinx and Hispanic students at Knox is credited as another reason why groups like Lo Nuestro are needed on campus. It states, “The number of Hispanic students at Knox has more than doubled in the past decade, up from 15 in 1990 to 39 in 2001.” Today, Latinx students make up 14% of Knox’s population, or about 196 students (source). The meeting last Monday alone brought at least 25 of those students to Casa Latina. By sharing their narratives in a space of collective identity, Lo Nuestro members’ struggles are validated and their successes are celebrated. True to the meaning of “lo nuestro” which means “ours,” both struggles and successes are shared.