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Last revised: December, 1993

DARK GODDESS

by Laura del Fuego

We were all fighting for identity. Who were we? Indian? No, look at those green eyes. Mexican? No, we were too outspoken, rebelious, not docile and accepting like the newer immigrants, and we were born in the U.S. to boot. White? No, we spoke Spanglish, ate beans and tortillas and talked like greasers. Not Spanish or English but something wierd and in between. And of course we lived in the barrio. Who wanted to be white?

I AM AN AMERICAN WOMAN OF MIXED BLOOD, typically born into a perpetual state of contradiction and rebellion. My mother's people migrated to Mexico via Basque Spain and the French Pyrennes and intermarried with Iroquois Indians early on. They spoke Spanish and were Mexican citizens. My father's people were Jews who were forced out of Spain during a pogrom and converted to Catholicism due to persecution and settled in California before statehood. The Figueroas owned land grants all over Southern California, intermarried with Anglos, boasted a governor--a radical, a well known newspaper editor, a peoples' priest and a famous revolutionary. (In this generation most of the effective activists in the family are women.)

I was born in L.A. in the forties, raised in the East L.A. barrio. If there was fighting and brutality in the streets where I grew up there were tremendous contradictions and confused alliances in the family. My mother who considered herself toda Chicana, a fiery rebel, being Basque and Iroquois was naturally matriarchal and hated my Anglo grandfather for being protestant and authoritarian. He accused her of being ignorant and superstitious (Indian), a papist. She accused him of being a gutless lilly-livered pale fork-tongued (white) snake. And so it went. The arguments regarding Jews, Christians, Indians, Blacks, upper class lower class went on day and night.

The one thing we all agreed on was that we were working class. There is a long history on my father's side of fighting for the Union, for defending the underdog etc. But when the doors were closed it was pandemonium. We were all fighting for identity. Who were we? Indian? No, look at those green eyes. Mexican? No, we were too outspoken, rebelious, not docile and accepting like the newer immigrants, and we were born in the U.S. to boot. White? No, we spoke Spanglish, ate beans and tortillas and talked like greasers. Not Spanish or English but something weird and in between. And of course we lived in the barrio. Who wanted to be white? No one wanted to be white in the barrio, no no no. We decided we were Chicanos.

Learning to Fight Back
My mother who had been a victim of segregation and discrimination in L.A. in the twenties and thirties told me when I was a child, dead eyeing grandfather Clark, "You are a Chicana, don't ever forget it. Fight back!!" I grew up fighting in a very racist L.A. I fought with girls at school who called us dirty greasers, beaners, cholos. I fought with boys. My mother told me when I was about thirteen, "If those boys try anything, tu sabes, dirty with you, boys or men, you kick 'em you know where, hard and run. We girls were taken out in the back yard and given fighting, biting and kicking lessons by older cousins. I was made to fight cousin Jimmy, who was about my own size, till I could hold him down and make him cry. "You're strong, fight back" we were told.

I grew up in the aftermath of the second world war. A demonically racist war. Aren't they all? I have fought against racism, which forged itself in my sensitive childhood heart like a hot iron, branding my psyche, my soul, a terrible legacy, profoundly destructive, capable of annihilating everything in its path, all my life. For the last six years I have been trying to learn to let go of the automatic defensiveness. But I know that I will never ever be able to really stop fighting. So now in my older years I use this fire, born of rage, mentally. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Incidentally I believe all adolescent girls should have combat training.

Racism and confusion is the legacy of every American child. The metaphorical meaning of the Americas is contradiction taken to the ultimate, where equations no longer can be made with the rational or mundane mind but require going beyond intellect to synergy, necessitating a sort of leap of faith, insight more than calculation, intuition more than rationalism. To play music which combines structure and spontaniety or to write poetry you have to start with the basic then move to the sublime. But only when you let go of control, sort of enter the tao, the great cosmic flow, does it transcend prose and noise and become lyric and music. This is done with great patience and practice, discipline, fueled by desire, vision and reverence. It requires faith.

Enter, the Goddess
My family, mostly my mother, whose background is Mexican and Indian, worshipped and prayed to La Virgin. So it was natural for me to discover the great Goddess and experience the transformation that saved my life. Finally I could stop fighting so hard. It was after a long and arduous illness which went on for a year but seemed like a lifetime that I was enlightened by the Mother Goddess and never have been the same. I keep an altar in my home dedicated to her. So it is Her that I turn to around this time of year, Her in the form of La Virgin de Guadalupe, or Tonanazin. Her Saint's day being the 12th of December fits in perfectly with Christmas and the winter solstice, which is for me, being neo pagan, the acknowledgement of the Holy Darkness, the time when the earth lies fallow. The time when things are underground, when the seeds have not yet sprouted into light, but are taking root in the sacred dark earth. So it is to Her that I dedicate this.

La Guadalupe, Tonanazin, The Dark Goddess