By Fredesvinda Rojas
Borderzine
EL PASO— The Mexican experience in America, presented with verve as a celebration of the culture and and as a bulwark against negative stereotypes in popular art and media was dubbed Mextasy by Dr. William Anthony Nericcio.
“This anti-Mexican fervor needs to be met with a kind of invocation of mexicanidad that needs to be equally strong,” Nericcio says. “You got to attack it with the same power with the same fervor, with the same dynamic focus.”
Nericcio captivated a room of faculty members and students when he came to the University of Texas at El Paso recently to discuss and present his travelling art show,
The Mextasy pop-up exposition contains objects that Nericcio has collected over the years, Ranging from dolls to posters that harken back to the 1950′s representing and satirizing the Mexican experience in the United States, representing an analysis of Hollywood’s contribution to perceptions of Mexican ethnic identities.
Nericcio gets serious when addressing how consumers should fight the negative commentary on Mexicans that some commentators in media like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter advocate.
Ectasy healing
For Nericcio, Mextasy can be seen as a form of defense and cure against those Mexican stereotypes and tropes. Presentations like Mextasy can heal society just like creating the art healed Nericcio.
“For me, a lot of this work, this artwork is recuperative.” Nericcio explains, “It’s me paying for my sins, and trying to imagine another way of being in touch with my innerMextasy.”
Nericcio, a Texas-born professor of Chicano Studies and Latin American Studies, English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, explains that the origins of the title Mextasy come from the word…
Finish reading The Mextasy of William Nericcio dashes stereotypes and builds ‘mexicanidad’
