Octavio Romano
Octavio I. Romano was a significant figure in the Chicano movement, recognized for his work as an editor, publisher, and intellectual advocate. Born on February 20, 1923, in Mexico City and later raised in California, Romano faced challenges from an early age, including poverty and concerns about deportation. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he utilized the GI Bill to earn academic degrees, culminating in a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Romano co-founded influential publications, including El Grito and Quinto Sol Publications, which played crucial roles in shaping Chicano identity and literature. His contributions included establishing the Premio Quinto Sol literary contest and publishing anthologies that elevated Mexican-American voices. Romano's scholarly work critiqued the dominant Anglo-centric perspectives in American society, advocating for a view of cultural change characterized by "transculturation," which acknowledges the coexistence and synthesis of multiple cultural identities.
He also published short stories and poetry that often satirized academic biases, leaving a lasting legacy through the mentorship of many writers. His impact on Chicano literature and thought has been recognized by peers, affirming his role as a pivotal figure in advancing Mexican-American cultural narratives. Romano passed away in 2005, but his influence continues to resonate in contemporary discussions of cultural identity.
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Octavio Romano
- Born: February 20, 1923
- Birthplace: Colonia Rosa, Mexico City, Mexico
- Died: February 26, 2005
- Place of death: Berkeley, California
Biography
Although Octavio I. Romano published poetry and short stories, he was widely revered as a pioneering editor and publisher and as the guiding intellectual force in the Chicano movement. Octavio Ignacio Romano-Vizcarra was born in Colonia Rosa, Mexico City, on February 20, 1923, and raised initially in Tecate, Mexico. Early in his childhood he moved with his mother to National City, California, where after his mother died he was raised by his grandmother. Poor and often worried about being deported to Mexico, he dropped out of high school to work odd jobs.
In 1943, Romano enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in campaigns in North Africa and France. After World War II, he attended college on the GI Bill, earning a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1952. He earned a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley; worked for the Public Health Department in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and completed a doctorate at Berkeley in 1965. He taught at Berkeley’s School of Public Health until 1989, retiring as an associate professor.
In 1967, Romano cofounded El Grito, a literary review and journal that had far-reaching influence on the development of Chicano identity and thought, and Quinto Sol Publications, among the first publishing houses to specialize in Mexican-American authors. (The name was later changed to Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol Publications.) In 1970, he inaugurated an annual literary contest culminating in the Premio Quinto Sol. As an editor he issued anthologies of Chicano writing and beginning in 1995 and published the newsletter Mexican American Thought. Romano died in 2005.
Throughout his career as an editor and scholar Romano decried the “Anglo-British-Germanic bias” in the society of the United States and its intellectual elite. This professional elite considers Mexican American culture to be defective, according to Romano, and hopes acculturation will lead Chicanos to salvation by blending in and accepting the linear concept of progress. Romano vigorously disagreed in such foundational essays as “Sociology and Anthropology of the Mexican American” (1968) and “The Chicano Movement in History” (1995). Instead, he argues, .” . . in Mexican anthropology the principal concept of cultural change is ’transculturation.’ This concept holds that culture change is a bi-cultural, multi-linear and synthesizing process in which the ultimate end is the incorporation of cultural differences while the original forms pursue their own multi- cultural diversity.”
In his short stories, such as “The Scientist” (1976) and “Strings for a Holiday” (1971), Romano frequently satirizes academic figures who impose traditional Anglo perspectives upon Mexican Americans. Among his poems is “Plegaria” (prayer), a plaintive description of the back-breaking labor that supports the cotton industry.
Romano’s legacy lies in the many authors and thinkers whom he mentored. As one of them, Luis J. Rodriguez, wrote, “Dr. Romano will forever stand as the leading light of Chicano letters. He had the vision and fortitude to go far beyond whatever existed before.”