187
Encounters
with Jesus `El Matador' Chávez: In and Out of the Ring
SAGE Publications, Inc.200610.1191/0967550706ab046oa
BenitaHeiskanen
University of Helsinki, Finland, benita.heiskanen@helsinki.fi
Address
for correspondence: Benita Heiskanen, North American Studies, Renvall Institute
for Area and Cultural Studies, P.O. BOX 59 (Unioninkatu 38 A), 00014 University
of Helsinki, Finland; Email: benita.heiskanen@helsinki.fi
This article considers
sport as a locus for US Latino ethnoracial identity formations. To suggest
a dialogue between everyday practices and academic discourses, it first examines
professional boxing on a theoretical level as a network of spatio-bodily
power dynamics; it then discusses the life story and legal case of world champion
Jesus `El Matador' Chávez. A Mexican national who grew up in the USA, Chávez
was twice deported before winning his legal case against the US Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) in November 2000. Through his story, the
article problematizes identity formations within various spatial frameworks — such as the city, the prison, the ring and USA—Mexico national borders.
It also considers how the boxing body is both linked to power relations and
how, through its own agency, it contests those relations. Ultimately, Chávez's
case exemplifies the fluidity of identity formations, the incongruency of
many identity signifiers, and how, simultaneously, identity formations have
a necessary strategic and political function.
I
could be considered Mexican or Chicano or Tejano, although I usually say I'm
`Mexican'. But it's important that some of us start realizing that, in the
end, we are all Latinos and we still eat the same beans. (Boxing champion
Jesus `El Matador' Chávez1) INTRODUCTION2 In January 2000, when I was a PhD
student at the University of Texas at Austin, I took a graduate seminar entitled
`Documentary Explorations', which had a fieldwork component as a requirement.
According to the instructions for our first assignment, we were to do a `mini-documentary'
on something that people generally perceived in a stereotypical or
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simplistic
manner, something that we, on the other hand, were familiar with and could
portray in a different light. A photojournalism student and I teamed up to
do an in-depth portrayal of a Mexican bantamweight boxer who, we had been
told, was claiming fame in town.3 Although I had not been involved with boxing
for some time, I was quite familiar with the fistic world, for I grew up on
fight circles in Finland, following my brother Tom Heiskanen's amateur and
professional career in the 1970s and 1980s. The very first interview, however,
fell through, because the bantamweight left the gym due to professional disagreements
with his manager. Instead, we became acquainted with a cohort of other fighters
in town; and, with a back- ground in martial arts, I soon started working
out at the gym myself. Not long thereafter, my dissertation topic changed
from the late Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla Perez to a community of Latino
prizefighters who grew up and began boxing in the East Austin barrio from
the 1970s onward (Heiskanen, 2004). For the next four years, then, I was working
out at gyms, interviewing or transcribing interviews, going to boxing matches
in town or out-of-town road trips; or else I was at the library, reading boxing
literature, trade magazines, or scanning newspaper articles; and if at home,
I found myself watching several 2–3-hour fight cards weekly on TV.44
During my early interactions with fight insiders in Texas, the name Jesus
Chávez frequently popped up in conversations. There was talk about his extraordinary
boxing talent; about his deportation to Mexico because of some legal trouble; and that if only he were allowed back to the USA, he would be world champion
in no time. A Mexican national who grew up in the USA, Chávez was twice deported
before winning his legal case against the Immigration and Naturalization Service
in November 2000. A year later I would conduct my first interview with him.
By the time he was back at the gym, I already knew many other boxers in town,
so `estab- lishing rapport' with Jesus was never an issue. The first time
I saw him face-to-face was early one morning: he was done with his workout,
and – like many of the pro boxers often did – he offered to
help me out with the medicine ball and the punch mitts. Besides, I had gathered
from my dis- cussions with other fighters that I had three things going for
me as a researcher: first, my brother was a boxer, so I was not a `newbie'
in the fight game; second, I was a foreigner, and people really had no precon-
ceived notions about Finland whatsoever; and third, I spoke Spanish, hardly
a minor detail with Latino fighters in Texas. For example, when Johnny Casas,
an Austinite welterweight, once put me in touch with an interviewee, he offered
the following explanation: `I don't know what you call a person from Finland,
if she is `white' or `Finnish'. But she is really smart and she speaks Spanish.'
Another time, someone else from the gym asked me: `I heard you speak Spanish
to Gallito the other day, but I thought you were white. What are you?' After
I heard similar comments
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a few
times, I understood how deeply, on an everyday level, US ethnora- cial identities
were conflated with language: Spanish equaled being non- white – irrespective
of one's skin colour – whereas English automatically labeled one a
gringo/a, regardless of one's actual nationality. During 2001–2002,
I conducted two taped interviews (3–4 hours each) with Jesus Chávez.
In addition, I had a number of informal encounters with him at the gym; and
once he came to UT campus to listen to a presentation I gave on his life story
and legal case at a graduate student conference.55 Both of the interviews
turned into powerful experiences: I felt privileged by the fact that he was
willing to share his personal and professional expe- riences with me, complete
with all the joyful and painful memories that my questions brought with them.
I was also struck by his conspicuous mood change during the interview: at
the gym he was always joking and fooling around; talking with me, he became
extremely articulate and analytical – almost `academic' – in
his approach toward his profession. I had a broad interest in sport and ethnoracial
identity formations, but Chávez's life chronology enabled me to begin delineating
their connection as spatially determined processes. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico,
bred in Chicago, Illinois, and living in Austin, Texas, his personal experiences
came to assume meanings within such spatial dynamics as the barrio, the prison,
the boxing gym, and USA–Mexico national borders, also evoking a larger
tension between social control and individual mobility in US society. Chávez's
legal encounters within the United States, his citizenship battles with the
INS, and his rise in North American boxing to world champi- onship level all
further illustrated the complexities at work in identity for- mations within
various everyday contexts. To get a sense of the boxer's growing popularity
and reputation in town, I also did extensive research on media depictions
of his career, with particular attention to the coverage of the city's main
newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman during 1995–2005. My theoretical
conceptualization of boxing was initially informed by Michel Foucault's perception
of the body as a product of power relations and space as a locus for the exercise
of power. In accordance with his (Rabinow, 1984: 17) key argument that `[d]iscipline
proceeds from an organization of individuals in space, and it requires a specific
enclosure in space', I thought of prizefighting as a basic form of bodily
and spatial knowledge, always in conversation with larger societal and pugilistic
power dynamics. Various spatial frameworks within the sport, such as gyms,
dress- ing rooms, weigh-ins and competition venues, in turn, offer everyday
sites for these processes, while the boxing body enables the contestation
of the existing power relations. The Foucauldian premise was subsequently
exem- plified in practice by Loïc Wacquant's (1995a; 1995b; 1998a; 1998b; 2004) sociological work with journeymen boxers in Chicago. Wacquant depicts
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how
boxers conceptualize their lives, work, and social relations within the everyday
culture of the sport, and he (1995a: 501) argues that boxing, in effect, serves
as `the vehicle for a project of ontological transcendence whereby those who
embrace it seek literally to fashion themselves into a new being'. It is also
my contention that boxing is centrally about seeking to improve one's ontological
status, for it is through the sport that many boxers conceptualize their everyday
existence – training, competition, injuries, sacrifices, diet, pain,
fear and control of desire – and the body serves as a foundation for
both their athletic achievement and personal development. The instrument as
well as the physical target of the combat, the body comes to constitute an
all-embracing significance to a boxer's being: it serves as the only medium
to conduct one's occupation, but it also comprises the principal source of
athletic information, technical know-how and professional expertise. However,
rather than a literal `transcendence', I would characterize boxing as enabling
a continual ontological contesta- tion, because identity formations fluctuate
amidst different bodily encoun- ters within the shifting social dynamics on
a daily basis, never quite reaching a completion or a permanent state of `transcendence'.
For such theoretical delineation, I also found Joyce Carol Oates's On boxing
thought-provoking. Oates (1987: 8) depicts how seemingly ordi- nary bodily,
spatial, and temporal aspects of boxing turn into extraordinary existential
experiences: `Boxers are there to establish an absolute experi- ence, a public
accounting of the outermost limits of their beings; they will know, as few
of us can know of ourselves, what physical and psychic power they possess – of how much, of how little, they are capable'. In its most elemental terms,
then, boxing is a combat between two bodies within a confined space against
limited time, but it hardly ever is solely about physical prowess. Jesus Chávez,
for example, describes the function of the boxer's body for strategic information:
When I first meet the person I'm gonna fight, it is with his clothes on. I
look at the way he dresses; how he approaches me; how he treats other people.
I look at his facial wounds – war wounds – scars in his tissue; whether he has a limp, whether his hands are long. And, finally, at the weigh-in,
without his shirt on, I size him out. And I look at his bone structure: does
he look solid or weak, where the strengths and weaknesses of his physique
are. In spatial terms, the boxing match has to do with controlling the geography
of the canvas. Chávez (ibid.) describes the spatial logic of the ring: There
are different types of rings, big ones and small ones. If you don't have enough
force to take control of the ring, then you use it to your advantage. The
big rings are for boxers who like to move and use the space; the small ones
are for punchers who prefer not to have their opponents run around.
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Powerful
fighters fight in a smaller ring, while slimmer and faster fighters want to
fight in a more spacious ring, where they can maneuver better. Specific types
of rings correspond to boxers' different stylistic approaches and become hotly
contested tactical choices, especially in a championship fight, even if the
contender typically has to succumb to the champion's home turf advantage in
such matters. However, in addition to the explicit technical battle, other
more implicit battles transpire during the course of the fight: one over gaining
control of one's own body; another over carv- ing spatial autonomy for oneself
and, ultimately, over defining one's own identity. Indeed, the body does not,
as Jacquelyn Zita (1998: 146) so aptly writes, exist in a sociocultural vacuum:
`[it] is also materialized and assembled in cultures, histories, and languages,
and continuously repre- sented by laws, ideologies, and various regimes of
knowledge. The body is a critical nexus serving the effects of power, as well
as an inner sanc- tum of human agency'. In the rest of this paper, I want
to consider sport as a locus for US Latino ethnoracial identity formations
through the life story of Jesus `El Matador' Chávez. US prizefighting, in
particular, carries meanings as a racialized practice, corresponding to minority
groups' integration endeavours in social hierarchies on an everyday level.
For the past half- century, the sport has been overwhelmingly dominated by
African American and Latino athletes6 but, as I have argued elsewhere (Heiskanen,
2005), it is currently undergoing increasing latinization and regionalization
from its northeastern origins into a southwestern phenom- enon. This racialized
sport takes place in the spatial margins of society and, as a result, is regarded
as a peripheral activity; it is viewed marginal within the hierarchy of sports
in general; and boxers themselves are con- sidered to represent the outskirts
of socio-economic power dynamics.77 Another spatial aspect of boxing is its
solitary nature: many fighters identify themselves as `loners'; they often
choose the one-on-one combat consciously as opposed to team sports; and they
are generally instructed to minimize personal/physical interactions several
weeks before a fight. Even so, as Kevin Hetherington (1998: 107) argues, `those
who adopt values and beliefs that are perceived as marginal within society,
are likely to have some sort of symbolic affinity with the identity in question.
Such spaces facilitate opportunities for being different and the constitution
of new identities'. Furthermore, I would suggest that marginality provides
spaces for the formulation of situational identities and intra-group solidar-
ities, what several cultural critics (see, for example, Spivak, 1996: 214)
have called `strategic essentialism'. Such a process has to do with appropriating
certain identities for a political purpose or, as Coco Fusco (1995: 27) puts
it, `a critical position that validates identity as politically
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necessary
but not as ahistorical or unchangeable'. In other words, it acknowledges the
fluidity of identities, but does not deny their de facto communal function.
When Jesus Chávez (interview, 2001) reasons in the epigraph that `it's important
that some of us start realizing that, in the end, we are all Latinos and we
still eat the same beans', he is emphasizing the political urgency of ethnoracial
identity formations as well as the strategic function that any identity labels
have. But to understand the background for such reasoning, let us now turn
to his life story. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS An examination into Jesus Chávez's personal
history begins with naming. Born in a Mexican mining town of Parral, Chihuahua
in 1972, he was christened Jesus Gabriel Sandoval Chávez. Throughout his childhood
and adolescence (that is, school and amateur boxing career) he was known by
his paternal surname as Gabriel Sandoval. In 1979, the Sandoval family moved
illegally to the United States; they settled in Chicago; and applied for permanent
residency as part of an amnesty in 1987. Although the par- ents soon gained
their green cards, Gabriel and his sister's applications were declined, because
a technicality classified them ineligible for perma- nent residency. Due to
a 1982 sojourn in Mexico, while their mother underwent heart surgery, the
children's school records showed a one-year gap and, as a result, they did
not fulfil the INS's requirement of seven con- secutive years in the United
States before qualifying for legal status. The INS's ruling was remarkable – not only because of its impact on these individual lives, but as a legal and
social principle: that under-aged, immi- grant children could be, in effect,
separated from their parents in legal status. (The obvious paradox here is
that while children lack legal and political autonomy in society, the INS
in this case considers them to be independent agents in determining citizenship
status or lack thereof.) During his childhood, such legal details seemed relevant
to neither Gabriel's identity nor his everyday life: he went to school, had
hobbies and played with his friends – just like any other immigrant
kid in the neighbourhood. It was not until later, with recognition in amateur
boxing, that the citizenship question first became an issue: whether he would
be able to represent the USA in international boxing tournaments. When Gabriel
began boxing in 1982, within months his handlers started signing him up for
local events and district tournaments, and he was soon winning most bouts
in the flyweight division. By 1987, he became the Chicago Youth Organization
Champion, the Amateur Boxing Federation Champion, and he was named Chicago's
Amateur Boxer of the Year. In three consecutive years – 1988, 1989
and 1990 – he won the Chicago Golden Gloves Championships. At this
time, he had three simultaneous
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social
frames of reference: school, boxing and gang membership. He was generally
considered to be a rising star in boxing; high school newspapers printed stories
about the up-and-coming local prospect; and he himself strongly identified
with the boxing team. On his boxing merits, he was awarded a scholarship to
pursue studies at a university, but – secretly – he also became
a member of the Harrison Gents, one of Chicago's tough gangs. When on 25 September
1990, Gabriel decided to join two fellow gang members – albeit as a
passive accomplice – in a grocery-store robbery in Chicago, he prioritized
the gang membership over the other two frames of reference: being a scholarship
grantee or a sports star. In the following, he (interview, 2001) explains
the circumstances in hindsight: I was a good kid. I was going to school, I
had two jobs, I was boxing; and I had a scholarship coming to Northern Michigan
University. But [the gang] was different, something I had never experienced
before – the attention they had – they seemed like pretty cool
guys. I was a teenager, I didn't know jack about life; I didn't have a true
direction. I had no idea that I could be one of the best boxers in the world.
I was friends with everybody [in the gang], but whenever they needed to take
care of some business, as they would say, they would sneak out and I felt
left out. I guess [the robbery] was to get some respect, to know that I was
down with whatever they were doing. So, when the guys asked me if I wanted
to go along, it seemed very simple – just like you asked me if I would
do this interview – and I said `Sure'. A general sense of confusion,
a desire to belong, and peer pressure seem the main motives behind Gabriel's
unfortunate choice. However, it was not until he was sentenced to seven years
in prison (out of which he served 3.5 years) in the Illinois state penitentiary
system, that the ramifications of the crime began to dawn on him. Within the
power dynamics of the prison system, Gabriel had, again, var- ious social
frames of reference, but in the new situation, spatiality took on a central
role in identity formations. At stake was, as John Bale and Chris Philo (1998:
8) write, `how spatial relations – the spaces in and through which
bodies move, display themselves and are disciplined – enter into the
articulation of bodily presences with the operations of wider socio-cultural
formations'. Because of the confined everyday circumstances, Gabriel obvi-
ously identified himself as a prisoner first. Within the frame of reference
of the other inmates, he also identified with the Harrison Gents, because
the gang affiliation brought him a sense of security. Third, as an athlete,
he (inter- view, 2001) viewed himself as a power-lifter, because bodily strength
and physical weight were necessary for his self-defence: `In there, I had
to iden- tify myself as a gang member; I had rivals there. And I was a power-lifter.
I was buffed; I needed my body weight to fight the people in there. When I
came out of there, I was weighing 175 pounds; now I'm back to 129.5'.
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Inside
the social space of the prison system, Gabriel deemed an over 40-pound bodily
transformation as crucial to his everyday survival, but the spatial role of
the Harrison Gents is also thought-provoking, for they exem- plify the double-edged
workings of power on an everyday level. They had a strategically necessary
function for Gabriel's survival in jail, yet they were also his nemesis, as
they were the cause of his initial incarceration. In addi- tion to these identity
formations, Gabriel's (interview, 2001) seemingly lost possibilities and identity
as a boxer began to gain increasing foothold in his thoughts and daydreams:
[In prison] I had time to watch boxing. I thought that someday I'm gonna fight
this dude or that someday I wanna be like this dude. I had my experience with
boxing and people cheering my name — it's a thrill you never forget.
It's the adrenaline that goes through your body ... and I just wanted to get
back into it, to be a professional fighter, but I thought I never could be
because of who I was at the time, a prisoner. I thought I had left the best
of me on the streets — which was boxing. When the 21-year-old Gabriel
was paroled for good behaviour on 1 April 1994, he did not end up in Chicago's
boxing gyms realizing those dreams; instead, he found himself on a plane to
Mexico City. All of a sudden, his citizenship status (the 1982 situation that
had caused the denial of his per- manent residency earlier) took on new significance,
because now the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was in effect,
and it stated that all non-US citizens with a criminal conviction were to
be deported from the country. The law did not take into account the circumstances
that had denied Gabriel's legal status as a child; nor did it consider that
his father and brother had become US citizens, that his mother and sister
were permanent residents, or that he had lived practically his entire life
in the USA – he was to be sent back to his place of birth. As followed,
during the deportation flight's stop-over in Texas's capital city, Gabriel
became mesmerized by Austin's skyline, quickly contemplating an opportunity
to start his life afresh in a new place, to realize the daydreams envisioned
during the long hours spent in the prison cell. After a brief stay in Mexico,
then, he illegally crossed the Texas–Mexico border once more – again, undetected. But to give himself another chance as a boxer, he had to
adopt a new identity – to be renamed – and to be spatially removed
from Chicago. Enter Jesus Chávez of Austin, Texas. AUSTIN, TEXAS After Jesus
Chávez relocated to Austin in 1994, his mind was set on a sin- gular agenda
and his identity assumed little other meaning than that of a boxer. The transition
from prisoner to boxer developed as he worked his
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way
up from an unheralded unknown to championship in Austin. Not only did he start
training and competing immediately, but he soon moved into the boxing gym.
The boxing body became inscribed in the social space of the gym: sparring,
weightlifting, dieting and personal interactions all took place therein. Living
in the gym, the trimmed, 130-pound Jesus was either working out or training
other people. The much-quoted maxim that boxers `eat, sleep, and breathe boxing'
was literally true in Chávez's case. He initially began to use his maternal
surname Chávez to go undetected by the INS, but his life soon became more
representative of the newly adopted ring name, `El Matador'. The matador was
a tribute to Chávez's (interview, 2001) former boxing gym in Chicago, but
it also represented his cultural legacy: `I identified it with Spanish if
not Mexican-Spanish culture'. `A matador', Chávez (interview, 2002) explains,
`is basically a person who loves to fight life because if he wins, he gets
to keep his life; if he doesn't, then the bull wins'. In Chávez's case, life
meant boxing; the bull came to signify the INS. After a couple of tune-up
fights, Chávez ended his amateur career with a record of 95 victories to 5
defeats, and his professional debut took place on 5 August 1994. On 31 March
1996, he won the WBC Continental Americas featherweight title; on 9 August
1996, he gained the NABF featherweight championship; and on 5 March 1997,
he was crowned with the NABF super-featherweight title.8 He was soon offered
a contract with Main Events Promotions, and his fights were subsequently broadcast
on national television. A local celebrity, he had also become a prime motor
for a thriving boxing business in Austin at a time when boxing was expe- riencing
some major changes. First, women were now visibly present in the sport and
second, boxing had also become a popular form of condi- tioning training for
aficionados from diverse socio-economic back- grounds. These bodily presences
affected boxing gyms in new ways, as they all began to interact within the
existing social dynamics. With ama- teur and professional fighters working
together with female and recre- ational boxers, many assumptions about social
organization within the sport were seen in a new light. Chávez (interview,
2001) explains the social function of the diverse groups: `There are all sorts
of people walk- ing into the gym, all sorts. That creates a different type
of environment and a different kind of encouragement. There are a lot of women
that train there which is a good thing for boxing: seeing them hit that bag
makes me train harder.' Indeed, many of my Latino interviewees have used boxing
to decipher their own understanding of gender relations, but Chávez, in par-
ticular, was a role model for the motley crowd – male and female alike – hence, his self-awareness of his bodily performance. It is interesting to
observe Jesus Chávez's career not only to see his devel- opment as an athlete,
but also to see how his representations of himself as a
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boxer
gradually change. The boxing trunks, robes and other clothing are telling
in this regard. What name, for example, does Chávez/his entourage use on the
trunks; what else gets printed on them; which colours are chosen, and so on?
In one of his early professional bouts, his trunks had all of the following
items: `Austin, Texas', `Richard Lord's Boxing Gym', and `Chávez'. In another
bout, his trunks had the colours of the lone star flag with `Austin, Texas'
on them; yet in another fight, he had trunks which only stated `Lord's Gym'
(certain Christian groups, in fact, interpreted the mes- sage to be a religious
one). For most of his professional career, his trunks have included `Jesus
Chávez – El Matador' in various colours and combi- nations. The fighter
(interview, 2002) explains: When I first came here, I was just glad to be
part of a team: I was in Richard Lord's Boxing Gym. I was still in that amateur
mode – when you fight out of Chicago, you represent Chicago; when you
fight out of Austin, you represent Austin. But then my train of thought changed,
and I only had Chávez. I decide what I'm gonna bring into that ring, who I'm
gonna bring, and who I wanna work for me. Now I know all these things. I run
my own career. With his overall experiences as a prizefighter, Chávez began
to take charge of the workings of his own body; to recognize his own agency
within the pugilistic power relations; and to determine his own identity representations.
But just as the Matador rose up in the world rankings to be a contender for
the WBC super featherweight title, the bull had also awakened. Because of
some official paperwork that he had to file at the Texas Department of Public
Safety, the INS pieced together that Jesus Chávez was Gabriel Sandoval. Taking
into consideration his boxing accomplish- ments, they allowed Chávez to stay
in the United States to fight some important fights, on the condition that
he would then leave the country voluntarily. The news on Chávez's deportation
created a movement in Austin: local boxing personas, fight aficionados, lawyers,
politicians, writers and other public figures began an appeal process for
a clemency hearing. Feature stories (see Acosta, 2000; Reid, 1998; 2002) on
Chávez's life and career appeared in print; a documentary film (Garriott,
2000) was made about his life; and Austinites were signing petitions for his
pardon. His supporters brought up the following incongruencies in his legal
case: that he had served the sentence for which he was convicted; that he
had been deported from the USA without an appeal process; and that he could
not be deported as an aggravated felon when he was never a legal resident
in the first place. So intense was the reaction in Texas that Austin Mayor
Kirk Watson declared 7 August 1997, Jesus `El Matador' Chávez Day. Two months
later he was deported to Mexico.
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CHIHUAHUA,
MEXICO Whether he was referred to as Gabriel Sandoval, Jesus Chávez, or `El
Matador' had little significance in the dusty town of Delicias, the home of
his grandparents in Chihuahua, Mexico. The fundamental question became to
understand what `Mexicanness' meant in this new context. Identity formations
were now problematic within the spatial framework of national borders, and
with the deportation, the body became a physical representation of law. The
role of citizenship status, national boundaries, and language also intersected
in an altogether new light, as Chávez was now exiled in a place legally deemed
his home. While he had denoted his ethnoracial identity as `Mexican' in the
United States – referring to his cultural heritage rather than place
of residence and/or citizenship status – the situation was more complex
in Mexico: there he was considered Mexican American, a pocho or, to cite the
historian Neil Foley (1997: 8), a `gringoized Mexican'. Particularly problematic
for Chávez (interview, 2001) was the conflation of identity with language,
and not only because he encountered different vernacular versions of Spanish
but – more impor- tant – because he could not understand doble
sentido, a Mexican culture- specific capacity to signify: Well, I basically
felt like I was up in the air, because I grew up in the US, and my Spanish
was not the same as the Spanish in Mexico; we don't have the same tongue.
There in Mexico, they have a thing called doble sentido – when you
say one thing and actually mean another. I went back to Mexico and a lot of
people there realized that my accent was not the same; I didn't understand
the doble sentido, so I wasn't considered a `real' Mexican. But, then again,
I didn't feel like an American because, although I grew up in the US and knew
the language well, I had been deported from there. Despite the adjustment
transition, Chávez began his boxing regimen in Chihuahua. Training in elementary
conditions and taking random fights, his (interview, 2002) impetus was to
keep his WBC rankings, for he had risen to be the world champion's first challenger:
`I was training for a fight to survive, to keep my number one position – with the hopes that I could come back to the US.' Meanwhile, his immigration
lawyers had begun working on a possible clemency hearing in the USA. After
two years in Mexico, Chávez got a chance to defend his (conti- nental) NABF
super featherweight title against the less prestigious Mexican (national)
championship title in Mexico City. Curious incidents transpired during the
preparations for the fight, and the boxer experienced the sport's notoriously
corrupt everyday manoeuvrings first-hand. Because of an inexplicable fatigue
during training sessions, Chávez sought a physician's advice, and laboratory
tests showed a 350-milligram
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barbiturate
poisoning in him. Most likely, the drugs had been put in his food or drinking
water, although to this date, it is unclear who was behind the poisoning.
The championship bout, however, was postponed as a consequence, and the media
in Mexico City invested the fight's meaning with ideas of national identity:
`El Matador' was ridiculed as the pocho who was afraid to face the Mexican
champion. A newspaper cartoon (see Reid, 2002: 186–87) portrayed Jesus
with shaking legs, with a caption saying `Poor Jesus. He doesn't feel good'.
Nonetheless, after his recovery, Chávez decided to go on with the original
plan, and the 12-round bout did finally take place in Mexico City. On 23 May
1999, dressed in his mata- dor outfit, Jesus Chávez won the Mexican championship
against the hometown favourite Julio Alvarez by a unanimous decision. The
boxing match had remarkable consequences. After the declaration of his victory,
the Mexican TV announcer (see Garriott, 2000) proclaimed: `Congratulations,
El Matador! You have demonstrated that you are number one in the world, you
have demonstrated that you are Mexican!' Boxing merits now became the basis
on which Chávez's identity was conceptual- ized within Mexican national boundaries,
and the championship entitled his claim to `Mexicanness'. After the victory,
Chávez (interview, 2001) explains, `[people in Mexico] considered me Mexican
then, because I had beaten the Mexican national champion'. Six months later,
his immigration lawyers were able to resolve his legal case in the United
States. They found a provision under the immigration law (see Pitluk, 2001)
which stated that if a person committed a crime under the age of 18, and five
years had passed since the crime, a waiver for readmission to the United States
was not nec- essary, and the person would only need the INS's permission for
re-entry. Chávez was finally allowed to re-enter the United States legally
in November 2000, and he was granted permanent residency on 8 February 2001.
Although the sudden turn of events, complete with all its media attention
in Mexico and the United States, proved quite overwhelming for Chávez, the
return to the USA meant – above all – that he would finally
get a chance to fight for world championship. THE US COMEBACK On his return,
Chávez signed a contract with Top Rank Promotions, which began to stage boxing
shows in Austin's mainstream sporting venues, such as the Frank Erwin Center
at the University of Texas, featuring Chávez, but also bringing to town many
international TV celebrities. The Austin American-Statesman (Golden, 2001a)
recognized the significance of the pugilistic expansion: `The Erwin Center
has been the site of many mar- quee performances over the years. The famous
names who have appeared on the marquee form the who's who in entertainment
and sport.
199
Bruce
Springsteen. Andre Agassi. Tina Turner. The Harlem Globetrotters. Now add
boxer Jesus Chávez to the list.' For his comeback NABF title defence (see
Golden, 2001b; Maher, 2001) in Austin on 23 February 2001, Chávez underlined
his multiple identities: he was introduced as `repre- senting Chihuahua, Mexico
by way of Austin, Texas'; his entourage brought three flags – the US,
Mexican and Texan – with them; while his immigration lawyer carried
his title belt into the ring. For his next fight (see Golden, 2001c) in Grand
Rapids, Michigan on 23 May 2001, Chávez entered the ring in a robe and trunks
with the colours of the Mexican flag, again paying homage to the Mexican sporting
community, while claiming residence in Austin, Texas. Chávez's career culmination
(see Golden, 2003a; 2003b; 2003c) was the first world title bout ever organized
in Austin on 15 August 2003, when he gained the WBC world championship in
the super-featherweight division against Thailand's Sirimongkol Singmanassuk
by a unanimous decision. While the boxer, his corner and the audience were
all dressed up in various matador paraphernalia, the fervour of the live Austin
crowd spoke to the tan- gible impact that Chávez has had in raising the visibility
of Austin boxing to mainstream international spotlights. Curiously, however,
it was not until he lost the title against Mexican three-division world champion
Erik `El Terrible' Morales on 28 February 2004 that Chávez suddenly gained
national recognition and newfound esteem in the United States. Injuring his
arm in the second round of the bout, Chávez fought some 10 rounds with only
one arm exhibiting, according to the New York Times (Katz, 2004), `one of
the most courageous performances ... ever seen [in boxing]; the kind ... that
gives credence to this game, that makes it worthwhile'. Yet courage in professional
boxing can become a double-edged sword, and 17 September 2005 turned into
a sad day in Chávez's career. The Matador entered the ring to face New Jersey's
Leavander Johnson as a contender for the IBF light- weight world championship
title. From the early rounds on, Chávez was overpowering his opponent, but
Johnson kept fighting back, and the referee did not stop the bout until the
eleventh of the 12 rounds. Immediately after- wards Johnson was showing signs
of brain trauma, and he was taken to the hospital for supervision. His condition
soon deteriorated; he went into a coma; and five days later he died of injuries
sustained in the match. Chávez visited the opponent and his family at the
hospital, the promoters involved expressed their condolences to all parties
involved, for both boxers were considered to be victims in the tragedy. Chávez's
new promoter, Golden Boy Promotions, arranged for a press conference (see
De La Hoya, Chávez speak on the death of Leavander Johnson, 2005), in which
he issued the following statement: `The best way I can do justice to the title
Leavander and I both proudly held is to defend it well and to be a true champion
in and out of the ring, like he was.'
200
Since
his return to the United States, Chávez has led a life in a geo- graphic triangle
of Austin–Chihuahua–Chicago. `Mexicanness' has become invested
in spatial meanings as it intersects with bodily practices, ethnoracial labels
and language. In Austin, Chávez identifies himself pri- marily as a boxer,
as his life revolves around the sport, and the gym is still his main spatial
frame of reference. His `Mexicanness' in Austin is not as predominant, because
he interacts with a heterogeneous and, to a large extent, English-speaking
group of people. `Mexicanness' in Chihuahua has come to mean a sense of security:
there Chávez has a chance for intro- spection, as he takes spatial distance
from his public self as a boxer, there he signifies freely in Mexican doble
sentido and other local idiosyn- crasies, and there he has no citizenship
concerns to preoccupy his mind. Yet Chicago is where `Mexicanness' has always
signified cultural heritage rather than national boundaries for Chávez; where
his parents, siblings and childhood home are. Indeed, in light of his life
experiences, Chávez (interview, 2001) conceptualizes identity labels anew:
`Now, I guess, I would even say that I'm Mexican American, because I have
access to both countries and they both recognize me as whatever it is that
I wanna call myself – which is an advantage to me.' Claiming a single,
place-based identity, then, is not possible for Jesus Chávez; his identities
are in flux, a negotiation process between societal and individual assessments,
sporting dynamics and personal choices. To quote `El Matador' (interview,
2002) once more: My life has changed. Very dramatic changes: from getting
out of prison back to amateur boxing to pro-boxing; to getting deported and
running most of my career down there; getting back into the US which was a
huge change. Boxing has changed my lifestyle and it's changed me a little
bit. I've been liberated from myself a little bit. REFLECTIONS Today's professional
boxing in the USA is undergoing increasing latiniza- tion: a growing number
of boxers hail from the southwestern states; and these athletes, in turn,
attract more Latino TV audiences. In the spring of 2003, boxing was allowed
back on US national television after a decade's hiatus when the bilingual
Budweiser Boxing Series on NBC/Boxeo Budweiser Telemundo was launched as a
joint endeavor between promoter Main Events, NBC, Telemundo and Budweiser.
Their (Press releases – NBC, Telemundo and Main Events, 2004) goal
was `to enter into a venture that includes integrated sales and sponsorship
opportunities; extensive crossover promotions; combined television production; shared broadcast/ fight promotion costs and revenue sharing'. These shows
featured mainly
201
up-and-coming
Latino talent in their early twenties; for example, Francisco `Panchito' Bojado,
Eleazar Contreras, Juan Díaz, Juaquin Gallardo, Rocky Juarez, San Leandro,
Joe Morales, Elio Ortiz and Luis Rogado. According to Jorge Hidalgo (ibid.),
Executive Vice President of Telemundo Sports, the series focuses particularly
on Latino fighters, because `Hispanics are not simply the most passionate
consumers of boxing; they also represent the fastest growing ethnic group
in this country.' Be that as it may, yet another purpose behind the boxing
shows was to broadcast them to US military personnel on duty abroad. Bob Matheson
(Budweiser boxing series will be broadcast globally to over 800,000 USA military
personnel, 2004), Director of Broadcasting for the Defense Media Center, explains:
The Main Events fight cards are a tremendous booster for our soldiers, sailors,
airmen and Marines serving in harm's way ... The most deserving audience in
the world are our troops in remote and hostile locations defending our way
of life against terrorism, and providing humanitarian support for those in
need. We thank Main Events and NBC for helping us bring them home during these
weekly broadcasts. Consequently, before the commencement of combat, ring announcer
Jimmy Lennon, Jr. addresses the various targeted audiences: `And now, Ladies
and Gentlemen in attendance, boxing fans joining us across the United States,
and to the US military personnel joining us from Iraq and around the world
on the Armed Forces Network ... It's the Main Event!' To be sure, for the
large number of US minority soldiers, Latino boxers come to stand for participation
in patriotic agendas, national unity and sol- idarity, and personal belonging
in the nation. Jesus Chávez, too, has worn camouflage-coloured boxing trunks
for a couple of his recent fights – despite the fact that he does not
hold US citizenship – in homage to the troops doing battle abroad.
Even so, as we have evidenced from his life story, US Latino ethnoracial identity
formations are contested terrain in various everyday and sporting contexts.
Many identity signifiers – such as naming, citizenship status, national
boundaries, language and even clothing – become contingent on various
shifting power dynamics. Whether a government agent, for exam- ple, deploys
a particular label to classify a group, carries conspicuously different undertones
from a group's self-chosen pan-ethnic identification label. By the same token,
whether a boxer refers to himself as `Mexican', `Chicano', `Tejano', `Latino',
or `Mexican American' is influenced not only by his origins/place of residence,
but by whom he is interacting with, where he is located, and what language
he happens to be using. For this reason, Agustín Laó-Montes (2001: 8) writes,
`it is crucial to conceive latinidad not as a static and unified formation
but as a flexible category that
202
relates
to a plurality of ideologies of identification, cultural expressions, and
political and social agendas'. All US prizefighters, then, continually negotiate
their individual identities within a range of pugilistic and socie- tal relations,
but Latino fighters' collective status is further contested within the power
dynamics of the Americas, with distinct everyday, strategic and political
functions.
NOTES
1 Jesus Chávez's professional
record is currently (February 2006) 43 victories and three defeats. He won
the IBF (International Boxing Federation) world championship in the lightweight
division against Leavander Johnson on 17 September 2005. He is the former
WBC (World Boxing Council) champion in the super featherweight division (2003)
and the former NABF (North American Boxing Federation) super featherweight
champion (1997), with 11 successful title defences. He is also the former
NABF featherweight champion (1996) and the former WBC Continental Americas
featherweight champion (1996).
2 I would like to express
several thanks with regard to this article. First, thanks to Jesus Chávez
for conducting interviews with me; second, thanks to Cary Cordova, Janet
Davis, Neil Foley, Gerald Gems, Jeffrey Meikle and Kim Simpson for reading
earlier drafts of the paper; and finally, thanks to the anonymous reviewers
at Auto/ Biography for their comments and suggestions.
3 Special thanks go to
my project sidekick Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon.
4 For my dissertation research,
I found John Sugden's Boxing and Society a particularly helpful source
in dealing with various methodological aspects — and pitfalls — of doing ethnographic fieldwork within boxing. Akin to Sugden, I also experienced
several challenges out in the field: for example, having to collaborate with
characters that I certainly would not like to even be acquainted with, let
alone associate with; sometimes I would hear stories that made me sick to
the stomach; and, at other times, I would end up in situations that were
not only ethically questionable, but downright dangerous. These experiences
brought about a range of emotional, ethical and disciplinary questions that
had to be tackled during the research.
5 Presentations based on
the paper were given at the American Studies Graduate Student Conference
at the University of Texas at Austin on 27 September 2002 and at the North
American Society for the Sociology of Sport Conference in Indianapolis on
9 November 2002.
6 In 1952, S. Kirson Weinberg
and Henry Arond ranked the occupational numbers of twentieth-century professional
boxers in the following order: the Irish dominated the fighter numbers until
1916; by 1928, the Jewish had taken over the list, although only to be replaced
by the Italians in 1936. In 1948, a new category, the `Negro', topped the
rankings, and that year also saw the appearance of Mexicans for the first
time, in the third place.
7 However, I am not suggesting
that all boxers retain their `marginal' status in society. In fact, in `The
latinization of boxing: a Texas case-study' (2005), I discuss how my
interviewees understand their early influences and possibilities, as shaped
by their surrounding socio-economic realities, and how they construct and
recreate their 203personal lives, careers and identities within boxing.
I argue that boxers' agency makes it possible to contest various established
power relations within one's own everyday spaces. It also enables challenging
one's geographic boundaries, as it offers access to spaces which would ordinarily
be out of the reach of those in societal `margins'. Indeed, many `grassroots'
boxers become celebrated figures in their immediate communities, and boxing
also offers them meaningful athletic, social and personal gratification.
On the other hand, boxing is also known for its blatant exploitation of the
athletes. See, for example, Culbertson, 2002; Hauser, 1986; McRae, 1996;
Newfield, 1995; 2001.
8 For newspaper coverage
on these fights, see Cantu, 1997; Clare, 1996; Dubois, 1996; Habel, 1997; Halliburton, 1996; Hornaday, 1995a; 1995b; 1995c; 1995d; and Wangrin, 1996; 1997a.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR
BENITA
HEISKANEN received her PhD in American Studies at the University of Texas
at Austin in August 2004. Her research interests include ethnoracial formations
in the USA; Latino/as in sport and popular culture; and theories of the body,
space and place. She teaches in North American Studies at the Renvall Institute
for Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki.