By Rev. Lydia Muñoz
Musicals in my household were part of the diet I grew up on. From old Mexican musicals by the likes of Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante and Libertad Lamarque to the beloved Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland and Fred Astair. If there was a musical on, we would watch it. Of course, a staple in this musical diet was West Side Story. Not just because of its incredible musical score and unparalleled choreography but because Rita Moreno was one of the leads and she was Puerto Rican. This was a big deal not just for Puerto Ricans but because she was a Latina in an industry that was largely ignoring us except to cast us as savages, maids, bandidos and overall “bad hombres.” You can imagine the excitement when one of our own won the Oscar for best supporting role. Pure pride!
Now that’s been a minute! It has been a long time since a story about some of the many struggles of Latinx communities have been portrayed across the silver screen. Although most of the cast in West Side Story that portrayed Puerto Ricans, including the character of “Maria,” were not from the Island nor from any Latin American country for that matter, it was 1961 and any sliver of representation that had a much more authentic and relatable character like “Anita” was worth celebrating. It’s been precisely 60 years until this moment when the phenomenal In The Heights by one of our very own, Lin Manuel Miranda, leapt from the success of Broadway to our screens at home a couple of weeks ago to bring us the story of just one Latinx barrio in the United States.
I have to admit, I’ve watched it at least three times already since its release and every time I watch it, I am in tears. The characters are exactly everyone I ever grew up with even though I did not grow up in Washington Heights. This is the story of my parents, who met and married in Washington Heights after their arrival from Puerto Rico. They had three daughters in Washington Heights and later moved to Brooklyn and eventually, in that perpetual search of all immigrants for better work and better living for their family, they moved us to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My sisters are Nuyoricans, but my brother and I consider ourselves DutcheRicans!! But the story is the same in any barrio.
It is the same story of neighborhood, community, church family and the struggle to figure out how we are supposed to be, how to survive and what we are supposed to give up from our culture and what we had to take in from this new place. The constant shifting between living in two worlds has always been a reality for Latinx communities, especially for those of us who are bilingual and bicultural. This is an incredibly exhausting work, so much so that the only solace we find is when we come back home emotionally, and as “Nina” does, when we listen to our blocks to remind us of our value and worth. You want to know why Latinx people wear our “banderas” in our rearview mirrors and in almost everything we wear? Or why when we see each other in annual conference we want to sit together and talk Spanish? It’s not because we’re talking about you (although we might be) or we want to exclude others in any way. It’s because we are looking for our sense of dignity and pride, as Doña Claudia reminded us in the details of our food, music, craft, stories, our shared struggles and our “sueñitos.” Because the truth is, we don’t find them anywhere else and so the work of lifting up our own sense of pride is on us.
This is especially true in this church that I have grown to love and am ordained in – The United Methodist Church. Even though we like to tout the famous words of Wesley “the world is my parish,” that world doesn’t seem to include places like Washington Heights, East LA, Humboldt Park in Chicago, or F & Tioga here in Philly. Oh sure, we’ve had ministry in these communities, but tell me if you recognize this very usual script:
White dominant congregation in the middle of a changing community does not know
how to minister to this changing community. Into that mix is sent a Latinx local pastor, lay missionary, or if we’re lucky a commissioned or ordained person if we can find one. Placed on them is the responsibility of ministering to the community with all its social and political issues as well as transforming the congregation that operates in racist fear spiritual anxiety who probably never wanted to be transformed in the first place but are just looking for a way to survive. Into this mix, comes the constant micro-aggressions from a system that continues to see ministry among and with Latinx people as a desperate attempt at survival and numbers instead of a missional priority that has at its core the eradication of racism and whiteness.
The best part is that we want younger, and more diverse persons to be a part of our white dominant denomination, but we watch while we make our communities do the emotional, mental, and spiritual adaptability gymnastics to belong. As we watch our communities not only be gentrified by the commercial world and hipster cafe shops as our communities disappear, but then we also must experience our own denomination step in and begin to absorb our churches both physically and spiritually as if our story as Latinx in this church never existed from Rio Texas to Washington Heights. This is the story of In the Heights and that is why the main character “Usnavi” kept telling the kids to repeat the name so that they would not become invisible and the song “we are powerless” during the blackout is so significant. I see the same blackout today across many conferences throughout our denomination.
Although schism is the talk of the town these days throughout our denomination, the reality is that Latino ministry has often felt segregated and schismed (not sure that’s a real word, but Spanglish helps me create new ones) within our church. We often speak of Latino ministry as something we do for Latinos and not for the entire denomination. The National Plan for Hispanic Ministries, as much as I’ve heard the argument that this plan is for the entire denomination, is often seen as a plan available if a conference wants to start Latino ministries within their boundaries. More often, when we do start a ministry, we are just looking for warm bodies who speak Spanish to cover ourselves and start ministries that don’t cost the conference much money or effort. Never have I heard it prioritized as a ministry of every conference and even now, there are many conferences that have never even engaged in its services.
It’s the oldest excuse in the book that I’ve heard so much in my 20+ years of ministry, “we don’t have those people here.” Yet, they are here. They are sitting in our pews or at least they should be, waiting for someone to ask them about their stories; waiting to hear their stories from the streets to the pulpit to the administrative council and finally reflected in conference and denominational leadership, not as something novel whenever we want to talk about diversity or immigration, but as a vital and viable part as we consider our future as a denomination. If they are not in our pews, we should ask ourselves where they are. Why aren’t they in our pews on Sunday morning? Perhaps we haven’t realized that most of them are making your morning coffee at McDonalds or landscaping your lawn while we worship comfortably in our pews. Or most of them are just doing their own thing to celebrate all that they are because we don’t, not in our worship, not in our church administration, not even in our welcoming statements.
My favorite scene in the movie, without giving away too much for those who haven’t seen it, is “Carnaval del Barrio.” It is an unbridled celebration of all our cultures, all our experiences and stories of arrival and survival. It is the mass of the people, of the barrio with all its struggle through life and death and its small resurrections every now and again. It is an elevation of all that we hold dear and all we have to hold together. It is bar none, the best display of a holy celebration that I have seen in and out of the church. The line in the song that always send me to my knees is:
Esa bonita bandera! (Hey!) This beautiful flag
Contiene mi alma entera! (Hey!) Contains my entire soul
Y cuando yo me muera And when I die
Entiérrame en mi tierra! Bury me in my land
Every Latino community that I have encountered has this same sentiment. We are here out of necessity, and it’s clear to me it is this country’s necessity more than it is ours. The history of colonization and US intervention in Latin America have created these odds. Raising our flag is not a denial that we are here and that we are grateful, you just must take a long look into how many Latinos have fought in every American war to realize that loyalty and civic duty toward Uncle Sam has never been a problem coming from our community. Rather this is an affirmation of our identity that cannot be consumed, and our history that cannot be erased. It is a reminder of our resistance and resilience as a people that, in this critical race theory moment, aren’t even given a seat in the room let alone the table. We are a community that continues to be ignored in our overall conversations about the future of the United Methodist Church, and conversations over us continue to discount our ability to make out of our backyards in our barrios and in our abandoned buildings, places where communities of faith are formed over asados, music and shared humanity.
If you haven’t heard by now there has been some important conversations about Afro-Latino identity and whether there has been a lack of representation in this movie. This is an important conversation and one that every Latinx family and congregation needs to be having regarding internalized oppression and the effects of colonialism and whiteness that we have internalized. If we are not brave enough to have these important conversations about prejudice and colorism, then the very thing we have been fighting against has indeed consumed us. I choose to believe that it has not and so encourage us to engage with bravery and love for each other and confront this truth without becoming an easy escape for those in power to not have the larger conversation about Latinx ministry and engagement. My experience is that this is what usually happens. People have conversations around us about us without us. Looking back, perhaps that has been the reality all along.
Now, before you think I am sounding completely bitter and cynical let me assure you, I am not. As Dr. Miguel de la Torre says in his book Embracing Hopelessness:
“To be hopeless is a desperation refusing to give up, a recognition that even if carrying the cross leads to crucifixion, the struggle for justice is what defines the present and could plant seeds that might blossom in some future.”
I have learned that facing reality and embracing the change I can bring is the real and lasting hope I can give to my family, to my community, to my church and to the world. I cannot wait for someone else to forge a plan or bring me hope that I will be included in. I have to build that hope myself along with my community. Antonio Machado was right:
“Caminante, no hay camino. El camino se hace al andar.”
(Sojourner, there is no road. The road is made by walking)
So, go ahead and have all the conversations you want, we’ll continue to scrape out of the ice of our realities con paciencia y fe the sweetness of life with all its flavor and love as we have always done and as the “piraguero” sings;
“Piragua, Piragua
Keep scraping by, Piragua…le lo le lo lei..”
Paciencia y fe, mi gente, paciencia y fe
Lydia