Culture and Richard

Pocho

October 18, 2007

Cross Cultural Psychology SOP 3723-0001

People wonder about some questions like how similarities and differences of people’s behaviors emotions, motivations, and thoughts across cultures? How examines psychological diversity links between cultural norms and behavior in which particular human activities are differently influenced or sometimes dissimilar social and cultural forces? Several decades ago, cross cultural psychology has basically answered those questions. By critical and comparison, psychologists discover not only about meaningful links between a culture and the psychology of individuals living in this culture; they also advocates the idea that mental process are essentially the products of an interaction between the culture and the individual as well (Pike, 1998). In this paper, we focus on the “cultural traditional influences” on human psychology through analyzing the book names Pocho. As a lively evidence to illustrate what knowledge that cross cultural psychologists devote to human and society in the twentieth century.
Take a glance of what is cultural tradition. There are two types of cultural influences: Traditional culture and Non-traditional culture. The first one is a cultural construct rooted in traditions, rules, symbols, and principles established predominantly in the past. The other one which is often called modern is based on new principles, ideas, and practices. While the traditional tends to be conservative and intolerant to innovations, the non-cultural tradition tends to be absorbing and dynamic (Eric Shivaev & David Levy, 2007). Assimilation is a main subject in the Pocho and religion and gender are two other aspects that we focus on to see the problems. Jose Antonio Villareal, in his novel Pocho, pictured of assimilation as it applies to the experiences of Richard Rubio and his family. The Rubios are Mexicans attempting to start a new life in the United States, and the book records the difficulties they face. For the need to adapt to the new culture while holding onto as much of the old one, results in a new as much as coming-of-age does. The author presents the subject of assimilation realistically, without illusions about the degree to which the Mexican characters maintain their own tradition in the midst of the American culture.
The Rubios is a family whose lives are shaped by the seasons and the crops. Not only do they work hard for little money or security, but also they must face the reality as strangers in a strange land. They are hard to maintain the Mexican tradition, especially in the winter months, when most Mexicans leave the area of Santa Clara, and then they return in summer to pick crops. Richard who is the younger generation is losing contact with Mexican culture, slowly but surely. He hears his father and the other men tell stories of Mexico, but “the tales of that strange country seemed a very far to him, and the stories also seemed of long, long ago.” However, the Rubios family and others keep their connection to the Mexican culture and its traditions through fiestas and songs and dances: “A small piece of Mexico was contained within the fences of the lot on which Juan Rubio kept his family” (43). Still, by the end of the book, when Richard goes off to war, the author leaves little doubt that Richard has been thoroughly assimilated. He may always maintain some sense of connection to Mexico, but he is far more an American at the end of the book than he was in the parts covering his childhood. According to Eric, cultural dichotomies mean the differences of cultures which can conceptualize in four terms: high versus low-power distance, high versus low-uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, etc. Power distance is the extent to which the members of a society accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally (Hofstede, 1980). This concept matches this circumstance of the Richard family in the book. Representing the traditional people, they reluctant to accept new knowledge; especially the ones take their powers. In the area of gender, Richard is the son of his father. That is he has been thoroughly brainwashed into the macho tradition, believing without question that men are superior to women, and that is the way it supposed to be now and forever: “My father says that a man should have a woman if only to do the work around the house” (84). When his father rebukes his mother for questioning his fidelity, Richard stands up for his father anyway. His mother says his father would be locked up if he hit her in the United States. Richard finds this hard to believe that “there were people who would interfere with matrimony—with the affairs of a man and his woman” (93). Richard has been brainwashed by the macho philosophy to believe that a man has the right to do with his woman whatever he thinks is called for to keep her in line—even beating her if necessary. Suddenly, however, he sees his mother’s rage, and the sense of frustration underlying it, and he understands her situation because it is so close to his own. He curses the tradition which imprisons an individual: “And he knew that he could never again be wholly Mexican, and furthermore, he could never use the right he had as a male to tell his mother that she was wrong” (95). The problem of assimilation is revealed here not as a battle between the traditional and the new, the Mexican and the American. What assimilation is in this book is the testing of the soul of the individual. Richard is being forced to examine every one of the basic beliefs in which he was raised. He is being forced by the clash of cultures to decide for himself, as a free individual, what he believes and what he does not, what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. Assimilation, then, at least for a strong, open-minded, and good-hearted young man like Richard, is a forging of the individual’s character. Assimilation makes it impossible for the individual to simply go on with his life as he had lived it previously. He may decide to retain his connection with tradition, but in order to do so he will be forced to explain or rationalize that tradition. With respect to religion, Richard increasingly questions and examines a Roman Catholicism which as a child he blindly accepted as the only religious reality. Therefore, the process of assimilation for Richard and his parents and sibling is one in which every part of the lives they knew in Mexico is called into question and is ultimately transformed in the mixing of the cultures. Richard is a strong individual who resists his assimilation at every step of the way. For example, he “defeated” his tormentors in school by “enduring their contempt and derision openly” (47). That contempt had focused on the Mexican food Richard ate, but instead of eating his tortillas in shame, he ate them in the open, showing the other boys he would not be shamed. When the Depression hits, the other boys’ families are as poor as him. Richard triumphs by sharing his food with them. In part, then, this scene shows that both symbolically and specially, how Richard gradually becomes assimilated, but at the same time maintains as much as he can of his Mexican heritage. The relationships between Richard and his mother and father are constantly changing in the new land, but again, this is as much due to his coming-of-age which it is to the forces of assimilation. In his talk with his mother (60-66), he expresses the view that tradition puts a severe restriction on him. He does not automatically accept the American culture, which is based primarily on making money and acquiring possessions and improving the financial lot of the next generation of the family. He wants more out of life, to travel, to experience all he can. Even in such a state of mind, however, he draws on his Mexican tradition, referring to the saying that “life is only a breath” (64). Richard begins to think for himself about religion, about what he believes and what he doesn’t believe. He does not reject the Church’s teachings, a purely rebellious perspective, but he determined to examine those teaching to see what he believes and does not. Part of this change is due to Richard simply growing up, and part of it is due to his living in a world which is far less dogmatic about religion than was Mexico. Assimilation forces Richard to question everything, but he does not reject everything he questions. He accepts certain teachings of the Church and rejects other teachings. He does not reject his father for his traditional attitudes and practices, but comes to love and respect him for what he is, good and bad. For example, when he learns his father stood up against evil in the Revolution, he ‘looked at his father with a new respect” (101). Richard can reject his father’s macho attitude toward women, but respect him for his courageous stand against the forces of evil at the same time. Assimilation teaches Richard that life is complex, that it is not possible t see the deep questions of existence in black-and-white terms. He is learning to be a loving and compassionate human being, nor merely a Mexican, or an American, or a Mexican-American. Perhaps because Richard is so fully aware of the process of assimilation (123), he will be able to resist it and maintain a strong connection with Mexican tradition which at the same time living a successful life in the mainstream culture. In any case, he will very likely continue to choose consciously for himself what he honors in that tradition and what he sees as no longer helpful to him in his journey to becoming a fully human being. In conclusion, too many young Mexican-Americans who seek an identity rooted in their own cultural heritage, the Pocho represents much of what they, the Chicanos, are trying to change. Jose Antonio Villarreal, however, intimately understands the Pocho and brings alive the various problems his generation to new ideas. In his struggle achieve adulthood as a youth influenced by two worlds. Richard illuminates not only the traditional Mexican culture, but also the difficulties of the hyphenated American. Over all, through the Pocho, we discovered not only about meaningful links between a culture and individuals living in this culture, but also we know how the mental process is essentially the products of an interaction between the culture and the individual.

References
Eric Siraev & David Levy (2007). Cross-Cultural Psychology: Critical Thinking and Contemprorary Applications. 3rd. ed.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Pike, S. (1998). Contributions of Psychological Anthropology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29 (1), 9-32

References: Eric Siraev & David Levy (2007). Cross-Cultural Psychology: Critical Thinking and Contemprorary Applications. 3rd. ed. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Pike, S. (1998). Contributions of Psychological Anthropology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29 (1), 9-32