EP 36: ¿Quiénes Somos? Identity, Culture & Queer El Paso

What do we mean by “identity”?
Identity isn't necessarily one thing. Race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, family, language, geography and even the communities we grow up in can all contribute to how we see ourselves. Those identities can overlap, reinforce one another and sometimes even seem to pull us in different directions.
That idea is particularly interesting in a border community like El Paso, where Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano and American identities have been interacting and evolving for generations. UTEP's Chicano Studies program itself approaches the Mexican-origin experience through overlapping questions of race, class, gender and sexuality.

Chicano, Chicana, Chicanx, Latino… which one?
There isn't necessarily a “correct” label. Chicano/Chicana has particular cultural and political roots in the Mexican American experience and the Chicano Movement, but not every Mexican American identifies with the term. Latino/Latina, Hispanic, Latinx and Chicanx carry different meanings and associations, and people may embrace some while rejecting others
Queer history is also border historyDr. Montelongo's research looks at the history of race, class, gender and sexuality on the U.S.-Mexico border. Her doctoral dissertation, Illicit Inhabitants: Empire, Immigration, Race, and Sexuality on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1891–1924, examines how institutions and authorities helped create and police categories involving Mexican identity, masculinity, gender, class and race in the El Paso region.

About Dr. Irma Victoria MontelongoDr. Irma Victoria Montelongo is Professor of Instruction in Chicano Studies and serves as Associate Chair and Director of Chicano Studies at UTEP. A three-time UTEP graduate, she earned her Ph.D. in Borderlands History in 2014. Her areas of study include gender and sexuality, Latin American history, immigration, race and ethnic studies, and U.S.-Mexico border history.
Her interest in border history is personal as well as academic. Montelongo has said that hearing her great-grandmother's stories of fleeing the Mexican Revolution and immigrating to the United States in 1915 helped spark her love of history. As she studied history herself, she became increasingly aware that the communities she knew were often missing or poorly represented in traditional historical narratives.