Tenoch Huerta and the racism in Mexico that he wants to be known about: a little bit of "Orgullo Prieto"
Photo taken for EL PAÍS, 09.07.22
For a few weeks Tenoch Huerta has been a trend on different social networks (which makes me proud, certainly. Hollywood finally makes the right people famous 👏) thanks to his portrayal of Namor in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" (I already read all your fics, they're amazing by the way).
But today I want to talk about something else, beyond his sexy back, his great performance as Namor and his countless and exotic sexual fetishes: his first book, in which he exposes, without stuttering, racism in Mexico: "Orgullo Prieto".
For those who don't know, Tenoch is an actor who for some time has turned his privileged speaker into a continuous platform against racism in Mexico.
This year, a few months before the premiere of his most recent film, Tenoch gave us this beauty, where, based on reflections, anecdotes, questions, concepts and ideas, he covers this topic, in an attempt to answer the question: of what we talk when we talk about...?
I had the opportunity to read a little of this book, which from the first page captivated me. You may not believe me, but throughout the entire reading I was smiling. Not because Tenoch was telling a story that made me happy or saying something funny, but because every word this man wrote, every word from which I learned something new. It left me floored. As part of Mexican society, reading this book (even if it was only a small part of it) made me realize the impact that racism had and has on my life and those around me. It made me question the origin of every decision I've made in the past and many of them come from the same root: racism, which without realizing it, was instilled in me since I was a child.
Leaving my sentimental speech behind, I would like to share with you small parts of—what I read from—this book, phrases and stories that made me think, get out of my comfort zone and say: "Verga, estamos bien jodidotes".
"racism exists in everything: in every governmental, social, private, cultural institution and even in language. If we are part of this society and participate in all of the above, without needing to be violent or actively aggressor , whether we want to realize it or not, we are all racists. You and me too. Why? Because we were trained in it and it conditioned us, and because we ignore it for centuries so as not to speak openly and on a daily basis about the subject."
"It was too tired and painful. That attempt to assimilate me, to mix myself, cost me a lot. Little by little I came back to myself, but there is something I still can not recover from: I lost my linguistic identity, and I think forever. I stopped sounding like myself, like I sounded all my life. I stopped sounding like my childhood, like my friends, like my family. Years after having lost or forgotten this part of my identity, I took a voice workshop where the teacher said: "The eyes are the mirror of the soul, but the voice is the mirror of intimacy". I had lost it: I had lost myself. I was adrift for a few years and made a number of stupid things that separated me from my true and original being."
"I remember when, as a child, a teacher asked me if my parents weren't ashamed for giving me a dog's name. She was Mexican, brown like me, and part of the same population group. Without knowing it, with that question, she was denying our roots, our identity. She did it because she surely grew up hearing (also at school, the same from monographs or history books full of Europhile biases) that our ancestors were savages and that Europeans were an "advanced" civilization, just because they were cool, because they were splendid, They came to save us from an almost animal life. We must thank them for our "humanization" or something like that. Was it really like that? Were the Mesoamerican peoples the true savages?"
"I remember one of my girlfriends, brown girl, who always sought shade or avoided sunbathing at all costs because "it burned her face". She didn't say it because she was worried about getting skin cancer, but because she didn't want it to darken. She even told me that it was to avoid stains. She searched for all possible euphemisms to turn around the real reason: not to get "more dark". It is clear to me that she, like others, surely grew up hearing that the ideal way to be beautiful was to aspire to be white and that if you are dark, you have to avoid being even more so. They are aggressions that mark us."
"What happens then with those who deny racism in their country? Being racist is a "bad" thing. So, first: no one comes off as racist because no one wants to be the bad guy. Second: since they do not see themselves in that situation, riding a horse burning crosses, it means that they are not racist. It would be like saying that men who commit gender violence are only those who have reached the point of beating or murdering a woman. Seen like this, if I don't wear the cone, I'm not a racist. Mistake."
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