Aja Martinez’s Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical
Trope to Raise Awareness About Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic
Studies represents storytelling as an act of resistance by examining assimilation vs. dissimilation and opposition through the fictional story of Rosette Benitez and her work to create and distribute a nanobot that would reverse the aging process and detect all diseases and eliminate them from the human body, inherently leading to immortality. Rosette, after attaining a scholarship to an elite-prep high school, leaves her Mexican family behind in a border town in Arizona and moves into a wealthy White family’s house in northern Arizona to ease the burden of the commute to school. Although at first she feels awkward and strange that a lot of the family customs and traditions are different from the ones in her own family like having three drinks daily instead of just at special occasions, children having cars, and barely communicating with their parents, she even grimaces at the idea of a Mexican housekeeper doing her chores instead of doing them herself like at home, Rosette soon becomes accustomed to these changes and grows apart from her own family. Growing increasingly disdainful of her own Mexican family, she judges her cousins when her mom updates her that one “cousin who was graduating high school and got a job with the police (that’s nice, Rosette thought), or another cousin who was getting married (good for him), one who dropped out (geez), and another who was pregnant (big surprise). Rosette didn’t understand her cousins and their life choices, they had every opportunity I had, she’d think” (3). The inner monologues of Rosette demonstrate the apathy she gains for her Mexican family and culture as she becomes separate from them and starts living a more privileged life as she assimilates into wealthy White family. Rosette, a highly ambitious, hardworking, and dedicated Mexican person who is able to create a life and succeed within the dominant culture as she follows the rules they created, becomes blind to the struggles her family members and others who lead a less privileged life must deal with everyday. Due to her blindness, she is unable to see and understand the circumstances less privileged people are in and how they may lack access, money, and connections to overcome their struggles and create a new, more privileged life.

My mom always says to me, “You always need support in life. You can’t do anything without support.” I, a young, naive girl, blind and deaf to the world and how cruel it really is, often have negated her statement, have said that in this country, you can do anything, you have freedoms, you have rights, but Aja Martinez’s piece invokes the idea of the “mythological American Dream.” Rosette, highly successful, MD/PhD, co-creator of an immortality nanobot that is going to change the world and life as we know it, who is able to sell the rights to the U.S. government, realizes the definition and extents of privilege when she is asked, really ordered, to be the face of the nanobot that will be distributed to Americans based on their written history of success and contribution to the United States of America. Rosette realizes, that “her family and people of her family’s status who have not provided documented evidence of historical contribution may never meet the criteria necessary to qualify for the treatment, and although they likely will not completely die out, they will not have access to the American Dream” (11). Secretary Borne, Breckenridge, and President Dennison, wealthy White people, use Rosette’s Latina identity to justify their claims of supremacy towards other classes and races, and will create a “powerful echelon of the caste” because they have “prolonged access to learning and political positions” as well as “longevity allowing for accumulation of wealth and sources.” All the success Rosette had garnered through assimilation has only been temporary. She doesn’t really have support, she’s not one of them. Martinez again demonstrates how allegory can be an act of resistance because she examines how Rosette’s assimilation lead to arrogance and a false sense of belonging where the mindset creates division between yourself and apathy towards others. Believing herself to be “one of the good ones” from the Latinx community that was able to thrive and succeed within the dominant culture, led her to suppress her identity and turn her back on her own culture. Through Rosette’s realization, Martinez advocates for a togetherness, for communities to stand together and create their own mark within the dominant institution so they can achieve the American Dream.