Latino Professionals Association Celebrates Yo Soy: Rewriting People’s Histories
Through Midwest Mujeres, Araceli Esparza helps women of color and others collaborate and to find their voives and define their personal narratives.
Part 2 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling
Interviewing Araceli Esparza is like listening to a poem being read. While you think you understand it as you hear the words, just to make sure, when you read it — or transcribe it — you have to make sure you are unpacking it and understanding its full meaning. It isn’t linear. It’s more like a stream of thought that drifts over us as we conduct the interview.
Esparza created an online community at the start of the pandemic called Midwest Mujeres that uses various social media to connect women
“I created Midwest Mujeres to help Latinas expand their networks and grow their businesses,” Esparza said. “We focus on networking, mentoring, marketing, growth and education. My experience really comes from growing up in the Midwest with strong roots to Mexico. And that is why I felt we needed to break the isolation of Latinas, of women of color and women period living in the Midwest. I decided to start this mentoring program called Midwest Mujeres.”
And while she is relatively young herself, she has also become a mentor for younger Latinas.
“I have such a heart for helping young professional Latinas coming up,” Esparza said. “They are entry-level and I love welcoming them into our professional community of communidad, of what it means to be Latinas, Chicanas, and Mexicana coming from the Midwest. Because I am also fully bilingual, many of them might not be bilingual and they may be asking me questions like, ‘Hey how do I say this or tell me about that.’ And so I feel like a little bit of that cultural connection even going forward in second and third generation Latino professionals coming up in our scene. There are not a lot of us who can speak from a place of ‘I can speak from because I’ve been there.’ I travel to Mexico quite frequently. That doesn’t make me better than a Latino who grew up not speaking Spanish. And I do ask why because I am really adamant about creating a Latino space in English. I think that is why younger millennials or Gen Z professionals are coming to me, asking me questions about decolonization, questions about our culture and traditions and them questioning those traditions.”
Anyone who drives north on Park Street has noticed the “Got Decolonization?” billboard when they hit W. Washington Avenue. Decolonization is “full-body” movement for people who want to recapture their authentic, cultural selves.
“When we are talking history, it’s like the Pilgrims came and history started,” Esparza said in explaining what decolonization is all about. “No history did not start there in the Americas. For someone of Mexican descent, decolonization is understanding we’re not illegal people in this country. We belonged to this continent. We were on this continent originally. We’re not illegal and we’re not undocumented because we are from this continent. That’s where it comes to me. We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us. That’s an old Chicano saying. That saying is part of the decolonization process through an Indigenous lens. I think we all know that in our hearts. But we don’t practice it every day.”
Decolonization has different meanings for different folks.
“Decolonization is a very politicized and loaded word,” Esparza said. “But when I am talking about it, I do feel like it’s about the unweaving of these half-truths that we are told as we grow up in this country. And decolonization is really a term that people of color use a lot. But I think it is a term for everyone. Even white people need to decolonize themselves from the mainstream media and narrative. We do see that a lot. There is the counter culture. That’s what decolonization is. It’s not a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. It is the very act of taking traditions and making them your own and also unlearning or relearning your own cultural traditions from which you come.”
In Esparza’s view, decolonization is what you make it to be within your own world. And people take decolonization in many directions that she doesn’t want to put a definitive label on it.
“For me, at least, it has little to do with tradition, but everything to do with family and your friends and how you are talking to them today,” Esparza said. “You run from those traditions and question those traditions. Are they imperialism or a space from the collective, Indigenous, more authentic space where everyone wins. I think colonization really teaches us that on the top is the king on a snow hill. Who makes it on top? We’ve all played that here in Wisconsin. You grow up here in winter. You make a big snow pile and you get up on top of it. I think that decolonization is all about that. Who’s the king of the snow hill? Everyone else is trying to make it up there, but we are all slipping and sliding. The metaphor for the snow is that capitalism is all of the systems that keep us sliding back down the hill instead of taking the perspective of, ‘Let’s gather away from a hill. Let’s gather somewhere else.’ Instead of having a house with two cars, a high wage income and a very heterosexual centered view of what a family is, we can adopt other ways of looking at what a family is.”
Esparza used a cultural tradition in her own family as an example.
“My daughter just turned 15-years-old and we know that the quinceanera is a Latino-Mexican tradition into adulthood,” Esparza said. “A lot of folks take out second mortgages. I myself helped organize quinceaneras for $10,000-$20,000. Are we really coming to terms with the tradition of becoming an adult? What does that really mean? For me, it meant that I could lean on Midwest Mujeres and my collective group and ask for help. And I got some help. People helped me with photography and decorations. I got tons of recommendations from our group. I didn’t have to lean on capitalism so much as a demonstration of wealth.”
Decolonization can also touch on gender identity.
“You’re naturally taking away that not every man who comes up to me needs to hug and kiss me,” Esparza said. “It’s an entitlement of invading the personal space of a female. It’s a very heterosexual way of meeting a situation. Where does that come from? When you start questioning those things, you realize that sometimes, guys get handsy. They get too handsy. A lot of women and people who I talk to are questioning these traditions in 2022. How does that fit into things now? Now we are post-feminism. We are now living in those times in the early 21st century.”
There is a lot to unpack with decolonization. And Araceli Esparza is helping women and others to move into their new emotional home.
