Here comes the Brides' March: cultural appropriation and Latina activism.

• Author: Hoyes, Candice

I said, "Hell, let's use the same people that were portraying that negative image of Gladys Ricart and place them in a position where they are going to have to show the other side of that story. Let's force them to show what domestic violence is really about." What I tried to do was turn the tables. Let's give them something dramatic that they're going to have to report on. --Josie Ashton, on the use of bridal gowns in the Brides' March (1) I. INTRODUCTION

Domestic violence, though often disaggregated as a women's issue, is a social phenomenon that encompasses physical, sexual, emotional, economic, and psychological abuses; reaches across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background; and impacts everyone including children, the elderly, and the disabled. The image of an abused woman conveyed in popular culture and political rhetoric is fraught with stereotypes of poverty, low educational attainment, and cultural or ethnic predisposition to violence. Yet these misconceptions lead to a flattened and deeply flawed approach to a highly dimensional social epidemic. In America, "battering of women by husbands, ex-husbands and lovers [is] the single largest cause of injury to women," and "thirty-one percent of all women murdered are killed by husbands, ex-husbands and lovers." (2) This article focuses specifically on heterosexual violence in the Latina/o community through the case of Gladys Ricart, a Dominican-American woman assassinated by an ex-lover on her wedding day, and the startling activism of the Gladys Ricart and Victims of Domestic Violence Memorial Walk ("Brides' March" or "March") that was born in her wake. Josie Ashton first initiated the Brides' March by wearing sneakers and a wedding gown with a picture of Ricart pinned to its front, and walking 1,600 miles from Miami to the Queens church where Gladys Ricart planned to wed. Subsequently, the collective movement of the Brides' March was created not only to pay tribute to Ricart's memory, but also to raise awareness about the impact of domestic violence and the need for resources devoted to the challenges facing many Latinas in particular. (3) This article asserts that the Gladys Ricart case presents a cross-section of the dominant ideologies about domestic violence in the Latina/o community, and that the resultant Brides' March presents a vein of Latina activism that is, on the one hand, innovative and experience-based, and on the other, limited by patriarchal stereotypes.

Part II explores Latina identity as it is relevant to the leadership and participants of the Brides' March, as well as the clients cared for by organizations against domestic violence in the Washington Heights community. Part III discusses Gladys Ricart's struggle in her relationship with and separation from Augustin Garcia as an instructive case study of domestic violence within the Latina/o community. Part IV focuses on the media, community, and activist responses to Ricart's abuse and murder that precipitated the Brides' March. Part V critiques the Latina/o cultural narrative of the bride's white wedding gown, including the values and patriarchal stereotypes of Latinas and Latinos that underscore this performance. Part VI evaluates the advances and limitations inherent in appropriating the bridal gown as a symbol of Latina protest against domestic violence. The Brides' March has proven successful as a community-building activity in the short term by incorporating a great breadth of Latinas. Yet the appropriation of the wedding gown is ideologically problematic because it reinforces paternalistic conceptions of Latinas, presenting potential challenges to the long-term viability of the Brides' March as effective activism.

2. PROBLEMATIC RELEVANCE OF LATINA IDENTITY

   The identifiers "Latina," "Latino," and "Latina/o community" concentrate a multitude of experiences in national origins, modes of American assimilation, historic immigration patterns (e.g., colonization, political turmoil), class and educational backgrounds, bilingualism, religiosity, American regionalism, gender, sexual orientation, race, and self-determination into one or two essential categories. For example, a person (or a family or a community) may self-identify more strongly as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or South American than "Latina." Furthermore, an individual who identifies as part of a complex category and therefore chooses, based on the context, to alternate between identifiers (for example, "Puerto Rican" and "Latina") may have outsiders view her identity as relatively monolithic.

   Nonetheless, many commonalities of experience arise when members of these overlapping groups avail themselves of the cultural and legal institutions through which claims of domestic violence are discussed and processed, making the focus on Latina identity relevant to critiquing the activism of the participants of the Brides' March. This article adopts an intersectional analysis of the Brides' March that aims to address all of the dynamic components of identity. (4) Conventional approaches to studies of people of color employ an additive approach (e.g., "race plus gender plus poverty") that favors the efficiency of applying pre-existing solutions for treating "different" people caught in the mainstream. An additive approach ignores many situational differences and often leads to a paternalistic competition and ranking of identities. The intersectionality theory acknowledges that identity labels are incomplete because people live their identities as relationships of simultaneously relevant experiences. An intersectional analysis can be used to raise awareness of domestic abuse among Latinas because it evokes the interaction of multiple experiential situations at stake and helps generate a pragmatic and instructive understanding of the problem.

   This article posits that the identities of the Brides' March participants are informed in many ways by shared racial, gender, and cultural experiences that require new analysis. Responding to domestic violence presents challenges to Latinas that many other women would not face. (5) For example, abused Latina women who are marginalized by poverty and language barriers, or who feel pressured by their insular immigrant communities, face this challenge of difference from the mainstream on multiple fronts. Many Latinas share a need for Spanish-language resources and a means of ending abuse that allays their fear of losing their own or their family's immigration status or income. It would be a mistake to ascribe these concerns to one essential "Latina" agenda. These considerations are both under-inclusive to the extent that an immigrant woman from China may face the same language barrier and social pressures, and over-inclusive to the extent that many native English-speaking Latinas have greater access to political and economic resources, but face other obstacles to separation from violence, such as concern for the safety or custody of their children.

   With these challenges in mind, critical discussion of Latina/o experiences is useful for significant reasons. First, criticism of Latina identity underscores the diversity of needed resources among Latinas as a collective. Second, it highlights new political and communal efforts, as well as common pressures, to conform to dominant American stereotypes of gender, religious, and familial roles. (6) Third, many Latina survivors of domestic violence experience common difficulties with utilizing available resources, both while they are abused and during the process of reporting the crime, that other survivors would not experience. (7) This experience is a persistent obstacle to individual women and to the general discourse about domestic violence in predominantly Latina/o communities. The women who are the subjects of this paper identify themselves as Latina and the activist leadership against domestic violence in Washington Heights organizes itself (and the Brides' March) under the name New York Latinas Against Domestic Violence ("NYLADV"). (8) This self-identification is a statement that the community they form shares distinct challenges and seeks distinct solutions outside of and within mainstream society.

3. GLADYS RICART'S EXPERIENCE OF DOMESTIC ABUSE

   The Brides' March was born in the wake of Gladys Ricart's murder by her former boyfriend and abuser, Augustin Garcia. Gladys Ricart emigrated from the Dominican Republic in her early twenties, speaking only Spanish, and endeavored to become the first person in her family to complete college. (9) She was a single mother with one son, Davis Ricart. (10) In the 1990s, Ricart received welfare assistance and later became independent. (11) She was employed as a file clerk at a Manhattan travel agency where she was eventually promoted to the position of accounts payable manager. (12) In 1995, she moved from the Bronx and bought her first home in Ridgefield, New Jersey. (13) In the early 1990s, Ricart met Augustin Garcia and they began a romantic relationship that spanned seven years. (14)

   The relationship between Ricart and Garcia was very public and ostensibly committed. (15) Garcia was a prominent community leader and businessman in Washington Heights, catering to the economic, educational, and political needs of the Dominican community. (16) He was friendly with mayors and members of Congress and in 1996 was the Grand Marshal of the Dominican Day Parade with Ricart by his side. (17) In their private life, however, Garcia was unfaithful and abusive: Ricart's friend remarked, "Everyone knew that he had other women. She was often upset with him." (18) Mireya Cruz, Director of Nuevo Amancer, (19) opined that Ricart sought the more socially respected status of being Garcia's wife rather than his girlfriend, and his unwillingness to commit to marriage was a source of tension. "For women, especially leaders in [this] community, you want the proper introduction, not girlfriend, but...