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Review of Chicana Falsa and How to Be a Chicana Role Model Excerpt from Chicana Falsa - Mi Problema Tour Schedule

During the holidays it's expected that families, no matter how harmonious or not, spend time with one another. If you have a traditional Mexican family like mine, it's an excuse to get together, ditch the Suddenly Salad mix and anything Swanson, and devour homemade moist or dry (depending on who made them) pork tamales. It's a time to join together and sigh with relief upon discovering that every gift box has a receipt on the bottom. It's a ritual to observe Great-aunt Lydia as she turns up the TV volume to high and lowers the iron's setting to low so the annual pressing of used Christmas wrap can begin. "Now this piece is just beautiful," she'll remark, holding a large piece of red foil wrap. "See how it glistens with the TV? Ricky should've been more careful taking this off."

But one year, 1996 to be exact, was different. I can still recall the warm balmy California Christmas night that I spent alone.

I spent it alone because not only was I emotionally overcome and completely outraged by my family's actions, but I was the sole participant in an annual boycott. Relatives who I'd thought were a loyal tight loving circle of kinship actually went and did it. Went against the wishes of a dead man-a family member, I might add-and stabbed him in the back on the holiest of all calendar days. They actually got into their Hondas, drove across town, and chose her over him. Chose to support her business endeavor rather than respect the One Percent's artistic effort. God I'm so ashamed to admit it, but my family actually chose to spend the last hours of Christmas night with Madonna. Not the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, not My Donna, the Benifields' twenty-year-old Palomino that had just given birth to twin foals, but Madonna. Yes, that one. That new film of hers, Evita, premiered nationwide and, wouldn't you know it, landed in a mini-mall theater smack in the middle of Oxnard.

"How can you go?" I protested as they searched the Ventura County Star for show times. "What about our promise to Uncle Charlie?"

"Who cares about that old promise?" my cousin Gina said as she looked for her car keys. "He made such a big deal about everything, anyway. It's a movie, a musical, it's Madonna."

"You know," my aunt Margaret remarked as she caught herself in the living-room mirror, "I could have been Evita in my college musical. Remember that, Lennie? I had the voice of a choir girl. I almost had the role, too, but they said my hips were too wide and that I didn't look Latin enough, not like Madonna."

And that would have been Uncle Charlie's point. Uncle Charlie was my father's oldest cousin, a struggling actor during the sixties and the seventies and even during the early eighties. He never found an acting gig. As a third-generation Mexican, he was always told he looked too brown or not brown enough, too Mexican, yet not Latin enough.

"You know," he'd say, "all the Latinos in this country, heading political of6ces and creating careers with dishwater hands, but you never hear our stories, see our lives on the big screen. We're almost the largest minority in this country and we barely make up one percent on film!"

Unfortunately, Uncle Charlie's last role five years ago was as a dying man at Ventura Community Memorial. Before he died he whispered to his wife, Aunt Lucy, "Please, promise me you'll always respect the one percent."

Since then, in honor of Uncle Charlie, we've refused to pay money for any films featuring Latino roles portrayed by non- Latino actors. From Chariton Heston in A Touch of Evil to Marisa Tomei in The Perez Family, we boycott this type of film out of love, para respeto for Uncle Charlie. What could be worse than paying to see Madonna, the greatest offender in cultural appropriation, play a Latin American? But my family had apparently long forgotten the promise to Uncle Charlie.

"Madonna's different now," Gina tried to explain. "She's a mother."

"She's always different." I rolled my eyes. "Every year we see just how different she is."

"Don't talk about Madonna that way," Aunt Lydia bit back She doesn't even have a mother. She died when she was a little girl. I saw that on Oprah. Even Oprah almost started crying."

"Oprah's always crying."

"Don't say that about Oprah. She's a wonderful person, such good role model. Why, just the other day I saw her trying to talk Spanish with Gloria Esiefan and she was actually doing pretty good!"

So this was how the dialogue went that Christmas-full of allegiances to beloved celebrities as seen on daytime television and MTV.

And that's why I spent Christmas alone. The front door slammed and shook the wreath on the other side. As I heard the three cars pull out of the driveway I thought of Uncle Charlie. And then in honor of the one percent, I turned up the TV, grabbed some green-and-gold wrapping paper, and began to press.