Melina Duarte who is the resident of Eastern Coachella Valley, started a new business of tote bags where she used a controversial word for courageous women to give them unique identity.
Melina Duarte shares her childhood memory, while growing up in Coachella, she used to believe there was no proper word available for representing self-sufficient, intelligent, bold Latinas. Instead, she used to notice in a festival or events where girls wear t-shirts and the term “chula” (cutie) and “princesa” (princess) printed on them.
Even as a young girl she immediately come to the point where she realized that “Chula is not my thing.”
“I am not just Latina. I am a badass and I get things done,” Duarte said.
This lack of description made Duarte start a new business of tote bags with a modernized interpretation of the term “Chingona”. The first tote she created was a DIY design that received a lot of appreciation on social media. This DIY encouraged Duarte to use her tote bags project into a small business where she gave a new meaning to Chingona.
History of Chingona:
Everywhere in Latin America and in many communities of Latinx in the United States, the word chingona has always had contradictory interpretations associated with it.
Historically, the word has been used to represent a woman who is “too aggressive,” whereas the masculine version of the word “chingona” is used to represent an honorable man. In modern years, Latinas like Duarte have made attempts to recreate the term and used it as a way to empower Latinas, like how the LGBTQI community has taken back the word “queer.”
Other Famous Latinas Reviews About Duarte’s Tote Bags:
Duarte was confident that the chingona tote bags would be a success within her surroundings. Many of her associates and colleagues had already been using the word “chingona” to show women power within themselves. In January 2017, a week after she released the first batch of tote bags, they all sold out.
Duarte happily told: ”People were waiting for more bags to come out, “I got orders from New York, Florida, Oregon and all over the country.”
Elizabeth Romero, who is the current President of the Riverside County Board of Education, said that she is fortune enough of being surrounded by chingonas who have inspired her to keep moving forward throughout her professional career. She also brought up in the Eastern Coachella Valley, also felt the lack of words used to represent a powerful, self-sufficient Latinas. When Romero came to know about the idea of her friend, she was excited and offer her support.
“The word is powerful and has a tempo,” Romero said. [It] can lead to social action and social change.”
“What is more important is that they feel that way in whatever they do. [The word,] is a symbol and a powerful symbol for however, they own their space.“
Esperanza Mendez who is famous a blogger, and reporter, she was also a Latinas who born and brought up in the Eastern Coachella Valley, says that Duarte’s tote bags and representation of a term for women is actually a need of time.
“I think this is a really new movement. Given the political climate, our impulse may be to shy away or stop, especially for folks who are undocumented or living in fear,” Mendez said. “It is time to embrace and feel like you own your ‘chingonaness’ and that power.“
While Duarte is pleased about how rapidly her customer following is growing, she is also intended to guard her intellectual property through copyrighting for the word and description. Although she has been requested by many stores and shops who want to sell her merchandise, but Duarte chose to keep her distribution little.
In 2017, Duarte traded almost 700 bags with very minimum marketing. Duarte’s customers have also been requesting her to made t-shirts with the word and definition printed on it. Duarte said she intends to make more stock available this year.
For Duarte, Chingona description is more than a business; it’s a movement.
“I also want to do a women’s empowerment movement around this, have a conference around it [and] have it be a mission for people.”
Mendez acknowledges that Duarte’s works are now helping to create a space for a discussion that many Latina’s have been lacking and wanting to have for a while.
“There is no term for Latinas who are embracing their power and also their culture. I think chingona is that word for us as we move forward.”
What Sandra Cisneros Defines Chingona Means to Be:
At the age of 62, Sandra Cisneros seems more passionate than ever because she found a term for representing self sufficient women. She said: “I was trying to find a way to place a woman in her place of power when she’s following her camino.”
Sandra Cisneros who is the Chicana author, addressees with great honesty about her life encounters, career, and feminism during a phone chat with HuffPost from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The decadelong career of Cisneros was acknowledged with Congressman Joaquin Castro’s 2017 Chair Award at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 40th anniversary gala on Sept. 13 in Washington D.C. The award is significant to the author.
“Some awards are more important than others, to be frank,” the MacArthur Fellow said HuffPost. “But this one I think comes at such a difficult time in the history for Latinos in the United States, so it’s of special significance.”
Since the publish of her iconic novel The House on Mango Street, in the mid-1980s, Cisneros has been a powerful voice in literary gatherings and a guide for Chicano writers. The author is also recognized for being a self-described chingona, a term that roughly translates to “f**ker.” She said, the masculine translation of the term, has been used to define a person who uses sexual perception as a form of control.
I was attempting to find a way to set a woman in her status of power when she’s following her camino.”
“I had to take that word back [because] I felt that that word was a word that’s used against women and gays,” Cisneros told HuffPost. “I think I’ve been influenced a lot by the gay community in how they’ve taken language as a way to empower themselves because the language does matter. It does matter what we call ourselves. It does matter what people call us.”
Whereas some people use the word chingona to express a badass woman, Cisneros’s interpretation goes a step further.
“I wanted to find a positive way to say ‘a woman who is on her path and who is powerful and is not being defined by a man but is being defined as a woman on her own path, on her own direction, on her own intuitive powers,’” Cisneros said. “I wasn’t trying to offend or shock anyone, sometimes people think that I’m a professional provocateur but I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to find a way to place a woman in her place of power when she’s following her camino.”
And the Chicago-born author is nothing but frank about her own way. During the conversation, for instance, Cisneros showed up her determination not to have children and the significant part it played in her life and career.
“I have students that are like my children,” she said. “I don’t have children, but that was my choice. It was a choice that I made because I felt that I’m either going to have children or I’m going to be able to write books, or if I’m going to write books and have children, I’m going to have to move back to Chicago. And I never wanted to do that.”
“I need to be someplace that nurtures me as a writer, that makes me feel safe and that is affordable,” she added. “[I wanted a place] I can afford independently, without someone putting a roof over your head that’s a father or a husband. I need to be able to do this on my own. But, everyone’s path is different.”
Despite her influential views on female empowerment today, Cisneros reveals that she might have “never latched on to the women’s movement” if she had not been received in by Latina writers and feminists.
“I never felt part of the mainstream feminist movement,” Cisneros told HuffPost. “But really, the word mainstream is even incorrect there, because when you look at the world, we’re the majority of women. Women of color are the majority. And I really think this is a time for us to look and intersect with other women of color, globally.”
In the 2011 HBO documentary “The Latino List,” Cisneros says that it takes a woman a long time to “aspire to be a chingona, to give lessons on how to be a chingona in ten easy steps.”
The author, who once gave speeches on how to be a chingona, states one important step is to do research and reveal the unsung Latina heroes and role models in history.
But growing as a true chingona takes time. In fact, Cisneros thinks her own quest to be far from over.
“I’m 62 and I feel like I’m not even half way to being the chingona I want to be,” Cisneros added. “I look at women that I admire, like Maria Salinas or Elena Poniatowska ― these are women who I think are extraordinary powerhouses ― and I don’t even feel like I have enough years on the planet to get close to what they are.”
“But I’m young, I feel young,” she added. “I feel like everything that I worked towards in my life has come to this point so that I can focus now on evolving myself and reaching my highest potential before I leave this planet. I’m excited because to me, at an age when most people feel like it’s the end of their lives, I feel it’s the beginning of my life.”
Final Words:
In the end, how I conclude my article about the word Chingona, being a chingona is both a preference and an honor for not only the women of Latin but all around the world. Melina Duarte gives this word a new meaning and identity to women. It is a permanent state of mind, not to be taken carelessly. We hope this article will become an inspiration for women to own a positive word especially for them, Chingona.
