El Narco Sparknotes

Acclaimed American author Richard Rodriquez’s autobiography “Days of Obligation” conveys that his feelings for both Mexico and the United States can be expressed through contrasts. Rodriquez uses pathos, tropes, and schemes to articulate his feelings. His purpose for writing about the contrasts between Mexico and California is to help readers understand the differences that affected his life. Rodriguez’s relationship with his literate audience is personal, since he is opening about his personal life and his views on it.

El Norte is an American independent film about a Guatemalan family. The film, directed by Gregory Nava, was first released at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983. El Norte was the first American independent film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay (IMDb.com, Inc., 1990-2012). The film El Norte is about a brother named Enrique and a sister named Rosa. Enrique and Rosa are on a quest to get out of the ethnic and political repressed Guatemala and attempt to escape to the North where they can live the “American dream.” Will Enrique and Rosa live the “American dream” once they escape to the North? Can an illegal immigrant achieve the “American dream?” The answers to

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

Alejandrez begins his essay with a story from his childhood. He sets up the story by giving it a time and place he is the son of a migrant worker born in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi. He then describes his difficult childhood using vivid language, as the son of a migrant worker he had to move many times a year and assimilate into many different schools. His family had to make ends meet with the little money they had so most of the time that meant having no shoes or one pair of pants. The social climate was also very tense, he describes it as “ I always remembered my experience in Texas, where

The Mexican cartels are so powerful mostly because they are being supplied with weapons from the U.S. “A recent weapon seizure in Nuevo Leon, just across the border from Texas, illustrates that drug traffickers may 11, after an armed confrontation, the Mexican army seized 124 assault rifles, 15 handguns three rockets, more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition and 1,375 ammo magazines.”(Ignatius 2). Most of these weapons come from the U.S. In Arizona the Mexican government held 31.946 handguns and 41,093 assault rifles of these weapons 80% percent came from the United States all this according to the Mexican ambassador starting December 2006 and the percent is getting larger (Ignatius1).

First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author

The story of Enrique is fundamentally a story that stirs the emotions. While we may find reasonable the logical arguments laid out by the Nazario’s sources, and while Nazario’s ethos is backed by extensive notes, the tale is fundamentally an anecdotal account in the larger debate over immigration. Its appeal is pathetic in that it viscerally shows the life and travails of an immigrant from Central America, following the protagonist through drug addiction and beatings, danger and deportations, poverty and exploitation, and finally the thorny reunion with his mother. Nazario intentionally writes an engaging adventure (or misadventure) story using a third person narrative instead of focusing on Enrique’s own words. The writing and organizational style of Enrique’s Journey walks a thin line between ethnography and creative non-fiction, a choice that deliberately increases the emotional and imaginative appeal.

She discusses how her culture uses their language against each other, especially the Latinas and Chicanas, they will speak English to each other to keep it neutral. She gives the reader very vivid memories from her childhood and how being raised poor affects her identity as a person. She discusses how Mexicans identify themselves; since there are many different ways to identify culture, they make up several different cultures (Indian, Black, and Mexican). By the end she talks about the fight that Mexicans put up to stand up for their culture and their identity.

As Henderson weaves the imagery of a very defenseless nation and the precognition of defeat and lose for Mexico, the political spectrum is placed into sight as he examines the encounter with Hidalgo and states the indigenous people were “indulg[ing] themselves in an orgy of looting, pillaging, murder and mutilation,’ forcing he stance towards independent Creoles like Hidalgo to “gaze into the maw of barbarism” (20). The images placed forth are very descriptive to create a savage stance, one based on no type of foundation to rely on and lack of morals to guide in the past events.

In the narrative, “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” by Rudolpho Anaya expresses the emotions of well known “Chicano writers” how they felt when judges constructed those type of novelists to write out of thier element due to the fact that many readers had a difficult time reading the “Chicano” writing.

Ilan Stavans says that Juan Rulfo’s book, The Plain in Flames, is best represented by the phrase realismo crudo. Stavans defines this phrase as “a type of realism interested in the rawness of life”, meaning that he characterizes Rulfo’s writing as an unfiltered view into the lives of the average Mexican (Stavans, xi). By writing in this style, Rulfo is able to provide “an image—instead of just a description—of our landscape” as stated by Octavio Paz (xv). To create this image, Rulfo broke his story writing the process down into three separate steps. As paraphrased by Ilan Stavans, the first step “is to create a character”, the second step “is to place him in an environment where he might move around” and the third step “is to discover how the character expresses himself” (xiii). Rulfo was able to repeatedly crafted stories that were filled with high levels of realismo crudo by using that special three-step process. By creating his protagonist, crafting an environment for said protagonist, and allowing the character to express themselves within this environment, Rulfo crafted a three-tier image of post-revolutionary life in Mexico that has never been seen before.

Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is still our reality. While discussing the rhetorical analysis of this essay I had an epiphany. The purpose of this essay is what troubled me most. Was she just writing to write or was she just a creative writer? After one hour of discussion it hit me, the feelings that me and my class mates where encountering was it. Nearly all of us came into the discussion annoyed and impatient. We were unwilling to analyze the essay because we where enraged by the fact that it was not completely in English. All but a few who understood Spanish where irritated because to the paper was not converted to what we wanted it to be. How dare she write a paper and expect us to read in when it isn’t in perfect complete English. I then discovered that all of our anger and annoyances were her point or purpose. She wanted to make us feel how she felt. Every day she was criticized on how she spoke and wrote. One side wanted only English while the other only wanted Spanish. When in reality she knew both therefore wanted to use both intermittently. Every time she was corrected she was annoyed and discourage. As each and every one of us read the paper we were all annoyed by the fact that it wasn’t in the language we wanted. We thought that because

The first time that Mr. Hernandez and his brother left his home town was when he was 12 years old and the reason why they left was because they were told by a friend who was in Chicago that there was good work and people made good money. He and his brother decided to try out their luck so they crossed the border and set off to Chicago. When they arrived at Chicago they got work in a factory making metal cabinets for offices. During his time there he had experience something new that he had never new about, “I had experience my first act of racism against me for being Mexican”. He says that the food and the climate was not what he had expected and he only stayed there for three months and decided that the American culture was not for him. He found himself out of place and couldn’t relate with the current culture that he was in, so he decided to go back to Mexico to seek the comfort of his home town. Upon arrival to his home town in Mexico he didn’t know that he would have a strange feeling almost of feeling out of place. The greeting of his friends and family that he got was not one to he had expected. Friends would tease him by calling him “Here comes the gringo” meaning here comes the white man. Mr. Hernandez says that he was tease because people in a way felt like if a person would leave Mexico it was because he felt that he was better than the rest of the people. Mr. Hernandez faced many social pressures from his community for seeking to better his finances.

In 2006, Mexico began to crack down on drug trafficking operations in union with the United States. Why all of the sudden? In regard to that question, my paper will include a history of events leading up to this sudden crack down on drug trafficking, from its start in the 1960’s until today. After the history of the drug war, I will discuss the main states involved like the United States and Mexico itself. Along with their main goal of eliminating drug trafficking all together, although it is a very high expectation. Mexico has sent out 50,000 soldiers that are being paid less than a burrito vendor, in attempt to lessen the

Sandra Cisneros’ short story, “Never Marry a Mexican”, indirectly underlines her perspective, her interpretation, judgement, and critical evaluation of her subject, the work and its title. This perspective is evident in her use of literary devices, diction, and language structure in her narrative. The purpose of the use of these elements in the way that she does is ultimately linked to understanding her viewpoint on the subject. The author’s perspective is embedded in the meaning of the story and its theme. Her interpretations are valid, and justified in detail throughout the story to add color and vibrancy to her characters. Her judgment is lightly touched upon but only clearly and directly given at the end of the story, to allow the