Re(presenting) Naquismo in Postcolonial Modes of Mexican Cultural Production
Ana Maria Perez
Department of Women's Studies
University of Maryland
A recent National Public Radio program aired in 2004, centers on NaCo. a company that sells novelty T-shirts. This is a popular culture trend in Mexico and the United States that attempts to expand the concept and meaning of the term naco/a. These popular shirts are marketed towards recent immigrants and first generation Mexicans Americans. Also high profile Mexican celebrities have been seen wearing these shirts. They can be found in upscale boutiques as well as in the stores that sell inexpensive imitations. These t-shirts display the term naco as textual and visual designs that refer to U.S. and Mexican popular culture icons and phrases. This project stems from a larger collaborative project with graduate student Mateo Munoz from the University of Maryland.
Using this co-authored project as a point of departure, this discussion will focus on the ways that NaCo. T-shirts relies on postcolonial imaginings of the authentic subject (read: Indian) juxtapostioned against the modern Mexican subject (read: mestizo). How do these forms of cultural production work? What is at stake? This discussion also delves into an examination of modernity in Mexico and reveals the ways in which naquismo serves as a gauge of progress and modernization. Claudio Lomintz notes the concept of naquismo represents a state that is emblematic of the dismodernity or the “dis-motherism’: a mixture of a quite postmodern desmadre (chaos) and continuing aspirations to an achieve modernity”.
The implications of Lomintz’s discussion on desmadre, is significant to this project. In what ways do representations on NaCo. t-shirts convey incomplete and mismatched modernity? How is “lo naco” representative of in-between spaces between authentic post(colonial) subject modern Mexico? NaCo. t-shirts appeal to a large audience and promote a universal aesthetic of naquismo. Founders and designers of these products claim that “lo naco” is equated with tackiness and excessivess. Hence, anyone can be a “naco” regardless of race, class, or gender.
The catch phrase “Naco es Chido” displayed on NaCo. products capture the cultural project of reclaiming a previous negative term with a more positive and celebratory identity category. However, the images of these products allude to different cultural story. Images of naquismo in forms of makeshift antennas, mispronunciations of English phrases, and cultural icons associated with working class Mexicans demonstrates the ways that NaCo. cultural production simultaneously aims to redefine naquismo and also reaffirms an authentic referent. In other words, the universal subject of naquismo is not entirely universal but specific to a certain type of person or subjectivity. I will demonstrate using a multimedia presentation that these meanings are contradictory and convoluted. I aim to open a discussion on how naquismo is emblematic of postcolonial Mexico and the ways that these examples of Mexican cultural production operate in a transnational context.
About Ana María Perez
Ana Maria Perez, is a second year graduate student in the department of Women's Studies at the University of Maryland. She is part of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Etnicity as a fellow. Her research interests are in feminist cultral studies, particulary looking at formations of identity among Mexican and Chicano/a diaporic communities.