Marissa K. Lopez
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814752616
- eISBN:
- 9780814753293
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814752616.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book argues that the transnationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of ...
More
This book argues that the transnationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of contemporary economic conditions, which began in the mid-nineteenth century and primarily affected the laboring classes. The Spanish empire then began to implode, and colonists in the “new world” debated the national contours of the viceroyalties. The book locates the origins of Chicano literature here, which is now and always has been “postnational,” encompassing the wealthy, the poor, the white, and the mestizo. Tracing its long history and the diversity of subject positions it encompasses, the book explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It argues that while national and global tensions lie at the historical heart of Chicana/o narratives of the nation, there should be alternative ways to imagine the significance of Chicano literature other than as a reflection of national identity. The book provides a way to think of early writers as a meaningful part of Chicano literary history, and, in looking at the nation, rather than the particularities of identity, as that which connects Chicano literature over time, it engages the emerging hemispheric scholarship on American literature.Less
This book argues that the transnationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of contemporary economic conditions, which began in the mid-nineteenth century and primarily affected the laboring classes. The Spanish empire then began to implode, and colonists in the “new world” debated the national contours of the viceroyalties. The book locates the origins of Chicano literature here, which is now and always has been “postnational,” encompassing the wealthy, the poor, the white, and the mestizo. Tracing its long history and the diversity of subject positions it encompasses, the book explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It argues that while national and global tensions lie at the historical heart of Chicana/o narratives of the nation, there should be alternative ways to imagine the significance of Chicano literature other than as a reflection of national identity. The book provides a way to think of early writers as a meaningful part of Chicano literary history, and, in looking at the nation, rather than the particularities of identity, as that which connects Chicano literature over time, it engages the emerging hemispheric scholarship on American literature.
Lori A. Flores
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300196962
- eISBN:
- 9780300216387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300196962.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book investigates the history of the Salinas Valley to show how agriculture-centered environments and economies affected the politicization of U.S.-born and immigrant Mexicans in ...
More
This book investigates the history of the Salinas Valley to show how agriculture-centered environments and economies affected the politicization of U.S.-born and immigrant Mexicans in twentieth-century California. Located in Monterey County on California's central coast, the Salinas Valley occupied a central place in debates over agribusiness, labor, and immigration policy during the 1960s. Today, the valley's multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, and U.S. agriculture more generally, remains heavily dependent on Latino (mostly Mexican immigrant) labor. This book argues that the Salinas Valley, as an agricultural empire, was a microcosm of key transitions and moments in America's labor, immigration, and Latino history. It examines how Mexican Americans navigated their social place and political identity in an increasingly corporatized agricultural setting, especially in the face of a large influx of Mexican guestworkers brought by the government-sponsored Bracero Program (1942–1964). It also considers how people “became Mexican American” and articulated that identity in agricultural settings, as well as how these Mexican Americans then became Chicanos. Finally, it traces the Chicano Movement's evolution in California.Less
This book investigates the history of the Salinas Valley to show how agriculture-centered environments and economies affected the politicization of U.S.-born and immigrant Mexicans in twentieth-century California. Located in Monterey County on California's central coast, the Salinas Valley occupied a central place in debates over agribusiness, labor, and immigration policy during the 1960s. Today, the valley's multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, and U.S. agriculture more generally, remains heavily dependent on Latino (mostly Mexican immigrant) labor. This book argues that the Salinas Valley, as an agricultural empire, was a microcosm of key transitions and moments in America's labor, immigration, and Latino history. It examines how Mexican Americans navigated their social place and political identity in an increasingly corporatized agricultural setting, especially in the face of a large influx of Mexican guestworkers brought by the government-sponsored Bracero Program (1942–1964). It also considers how people “became Mexican American” and articulated that identity in agricultural settings, as well as how these Mexican Americans then became Chicanos. Finally, it traces the Chicano Movement's evolution in California.
Roberto Ramón Lint Sagarena
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814740606
- eISBN:
- 9781479854905
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814740606.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In the wake of the Mexican–American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in ...
More
In the wake of the Mexican–American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United States' national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano/a movement. Many Protestant Anglo Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In contrast, Californios—Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os—stressed deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage. Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.Less
In the wake of the Mexican–American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United States' national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano/a movement. Many Protestant Anglo Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In contrast, Californios—Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os—stressed deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage. Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.
Lorena Oropeza
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469653297
- eISBN:
- 9781469653310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653297.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
In 1967, Reies López Tijerina led an armed takeover of a New Mexico courthouse in the name of land rights for disenfranchised Spanish-speaking locals. The raid thrust Tijerina and his cause into the ...
More
In 1967, Reies López Tijerina led an armed takeover of a New Mexico courthouse in the name of land rights for disenfranchised Spanish-speaking locals. The raid thrust Tijerina and his cause into the national spotlight, catalyzing an entire generation of activists. The actions of Tijerina and his group, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Alliance of Land Grants), demanded that Americans attend to an overlooked part of the country’s history: the United States was an aggressive empire that had conquered and colonized the Southwest and subsequently wrenched land away from people who lived there—Mexicans and Native Americans alike. To many young Mexican American activists at the time, Tijerina and the Alianza offered a compelling and militant alternative to the nonviolence of Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. Tijerina's place at the table among the nation’s leading civil rights activists was short-lived, but his analysis of land dispossession and his prophetic zeal for the rights of his people was essential to the creation of the Chicano movement.
In this fresh and unvarnished biography, Lorena Oropeza traces the origins of Tijerina's revelatory historical analysis to the years he spent as a Pentecostal preacher and his hidden past as a self-proclaimed prophet of God. Confronting allegations of anti-Semitism and accusations of sexual abuse, the narrative captures the life of a man—alternately mesmerizing and repellant—who changed our understanding of the American West and the place of Latinos in the fabric of American struggles for equality and self-determination.Less
In 1967, Reies López Tijerina led an armed takeover of a New Mexico courthouse in the name of land rights for disenfranchised Spanish-speaking locals. The raid thrust Tijerina and his cause into the national spotlight, catalyzing an entire generation of activists. The actions of Tijerina and his group, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Alliance of Land Grants), demanded that Americans attend to an overlooked part of the country’s history: the United States was an aggressive empire that had conquered and colonized the Southwest and subsequently wrenched land away from people who lived there—Mexicans and Native Americans alike. To many young Mexican American activists at the time, Tijerina and the Alianza offered a compelling and militant alternative to the nonviolence of Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. Tijerina's place at the table among the nation’s leading civil rights activists was short-lived, but his analysis of land dispossession and his prophetic zeal for the rights of his people was essential to the creation of the Chicano movement.
In this fresh and unvarnished biography, Lorena Oropeza traces the origins of Tijerina's revelatory historical analysis to the years he spent as a Pentecostal preacher and his hidden past as a self-proclaimed prophet of God. Confronting allegations of anti-Semitism and accusations of sexual abuse, the narrative captures the life of a man—alternately mesmerizing and repellant—who changed our understanding of the American West and the place of Latinos in the fabric of American struggles for equality and self-determination.
Robb Hernández
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479845309
- eISBN:
- 9781479822720
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479845309.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Archiving an Epidemic is the first book to examine the devastating effect of the AIDS crisis on a generation of Chicanx artists who influenced transgressive genders and sexualities operating in the ...
More
Archiving an Epidemic is the first book to examine the devastating effect of the AIDS crisis on a generation of Chicanx artists who influenced transgressive genders and sexualities operating in the Chicana and Chicano art movement in Southern California. From mariconógraphy to renegade street graffiti, from the Barrio Baroque to Frozen Art, these visual provocateurs introduced a radical queer languageemboldened by opportunities in LA’s art and retail culturein the 1980s. AIDS not only ravaged their lives, but also devastated their archives. A queer archival methodology is demanded to ascertain how AIDS and its losses and traumas have rearticulated recordkeeping practices beyond systemic forms of preservation. The resulting “archival bodies/archival spaces” of queer Chicanx avant-gardists Mundo Meza (1955–1985), Teddy Sandoval (1949–1995), and Joey Terrill (1955–present) refutes dismissive arguments that these provocateurs have had little consequence for the definition of the aesthetics of Chicano art and performance. With appearances by Laura Aguilar, Cyclona, Simon Doonan, David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Mapplethorpe, and even Eddie Murphy, this book stands in defense of the alternative archivesthat emerged from this plague. Thinking outside traditional terms of institutional mediation, Archiving an Epidemic speculates not what Chicana/o art is but what it could have been.Less
Archiving an Epidemic is the first book to examine the devastating effect of the AIDS crisis on a generation of Chicanx artists who influenced transgressive genders and sexualities operating in the Chicana and Chicano art movement in Southern California. From mariconógraphy to renegade street graffiti, from the Barrio Baroque to Frozen Art, these visual provocateurs introduced a radical queer languageemboldened by opportunities in LA’s art and retail culturein the 1980s. AIDS not only ravaged their lives, but also devastated their archives. A queer archival methodology is demanded to ascertain how AIDS and its losses and traumas have rearticulated recordkeeping practices beyond systemic forms of preservation. The resulting “archival bodies/archival spaces” of queer Chicanx avant-gardists Mundo Meza (1955–1985), Teddy Sandoval (1949–1995), and Joey Terrill (1955–present) refutes dismissive arguments that these provocateurs have had little consequence for the definition of the aesthetics of Chicano art and performance. With appearances by Laura Aguilar, Cyclona, Simon Doonan, David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Mapplethorpe, and even Eddie Murphy, this book stands in defense of the alternative archivesthat emerged from this plague. Thinking outside traditional terms of institutional mediation, Archiving an Epidemic speculates not what Chicana/o art is but what it could have been.
Lori A. Flores
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300196962
- eISBN:
- 9780300216387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300196962.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines the bracero tragedy of 1963 in the Salinas Valley, the communities involved in and affected by it, and its impact on the Bracero Program and California's Chicano Movement. The ...
More
This chapter examines the bracero tragedy of 1963 in the Salinas Valley, the communities involved in and affected by it, and its impact on the Bracero Program and California's Chicano Movement. The tragedy happened on September 17, 1963, when a bus carrying the bracero crew that lived at the Earl Meyers Company labor camp in Salinas collided with a Southern Pacific Railroad freight train in the town of Chualar. Twenty-three died instantly. After the accident, urban and agricultural Mexican American leaders came together to protest the Bracero Program's exploitation and safety hazards. The protests led Congress to discontinue the Bracero Program in 1964. This chapter also considers the trial of bus driver Francisco (Pancho) Espinosa before concluding with an assessment of the implications of the Chualar tragedy for California's embryonic Chicano civil rights movement.Less
This chapter examines the bracero tragedy of 1963 in the Salinas Valley, the communities involved in and affected by it, and its impact on the Bracero Program and California's Chicano Movement. The tragedy happened on September 17, 1963, when a bus carrying the bracero crew that lived at the Earl Meyers Company labor camp in Salinas collided with a Southern Pacific Railroad freight train in the town of Chualar. Twenty-three died instantly. After the accident, urban and agricultural Mexican American leaders came together to protest the Bracero Program's exploitation and safety hazards. The protests led Congress to discontinue the Bracero Program in 1964. This chapter also considers the trial of bus driver Francisco (Pancho) Espinosa before concluding with an assessment of the implications of the Chualar tragedy for California's embryonic Chicano civil rights movement.
Deborah E. Kanter
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042973
- eISBN:
- 9780252051845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042973.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
By 1970 Pilsen had emerged as Chicago’s first majority Mexican neighborhood. Most parishes had become Mexican churches with new saints, mariachi Masses, and more processions. Even American priests ...
More
By 1970 Pilsen had emerged as Chicago’s first majority Mexican neighborhood. Most parishes had become Mexican churches with new saints, mariachi Masses, and more processions. Even American priests promoted devotion to Mexican saints, such as Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos and the Santo Niño de Atocha. The reforms occasioned by the Second Vatican Council and the Chicano movement’s revolutionary spirit led to a new expressions of Mexican Catholicism, epitomized by the Via Crucis, the Living Way of the Cross. In a neighborhood recently dominated by Slavic Americans, the Via Crucis proclaimed Pilsen as a Mexican and Catholic space. The Via Crucis exemplified an unprecedented engagement of social justice issues, activism, and religious devotion. A new way of being mexicano and católico had developed in Chicago.Less
By 1970 Pilsen had emerged as Chicago’s first majority Mexican neighborhood. Most parishes had become Mexican churches with new saints, mariachi Masses, and more processions. Even American priests promoted devotion to Mexican saints, such as Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos and the Santo Niño de Atocha. The reforms occasioned by the Second Vatican Council and the Chicano movement’s revolutionary spirit led to a new expressions of Mexican Catholicism, epitomized by the Via Crucis, the Living Way of the Cross. In a neighborhood recently dominated by Slavic Americans, the Via Crucis proclaimed Pilsen as a Mexican and Catholic space. The Via Crucis exemplified an unprecedented engagement of social justice issues, activism, and religious devotion. A new way of being mexicano and católico had developed in Chicago.
Kathryn Schumaker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479875139
- eISBN:
- 9781479821365
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479875139.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This book examines the development of elementary and secondary students’ constitutional rights between 1964 and 1984 and its relationship to efforts to secure racial justice at school during the ...
More
This book examines the development of elementary and secondary students’ constitutional rights between 1964 and 1984 and its relationship to efforts to secure racial justice at school during the desegregation era. The first three chapters cover case studies that provide the local context for students’ rights litigation that originated in Mississippi; Denver, Colorado; and Columbus, Ohio. Each case study focuses on a particular area of students’ rights, such as free speech, equal protection, and due process, and provides an examination of how student protestrelated to civil rights and Chicano Movement activism contributed to litigation. The final two chapters provide a national view of the effects that these cases had on students’ rights law more generally, including the rights related to bilingual education, equal educational opportunities, and access to education for students with disabilities. The book also explores students’ rights in relation to school discipline, including the areas of corporal punishment, privacy, and suspensions and expulsions. The book argues that, as the courts developed the principles that determine when and why students gain rights protections, they did so in ways that undermined the initial goals of the black and Chicano student activists who set these lawsuits into motion.This book therefore offers a critical approach to these developments in American constitutional law and concludes by pointing to the ways in which the law contributes to persistent racial inequities in education.Less
This book examines the development of elementary and secondary students’ constitutional rights between 1964 and 1984 and its relationship to efforts to secure racial justice at school during the desegregation era. The first three chapters cover case studies that provide the local context for students’ rights litigation that originated in Mississippi; Denver, Colorado; and Columbus, Ohio. Each case study focuses on a particular area of students’ rights, such as free speech, equal protection, and due process, and provides an examination of how student protestrelated to civil rights and Chicano Movement activism contributed to litigation. The final two chapters provide a national view of the effects that these cases had on students’ rights law more generally, including the rights related to bilingual education, equal educational opportunities, and access to education for students with disabilities. The book also explores students’ rights in relation to school discipline, including the areas of corporal punishment, privacy, and suspensions and expulsions. The book argues that, as the courts developed the principles that determine when and why students gain rights protections, they did so in ways that undermined the initial goals of the black and Chicano student activists who set these lawsuits into motion.This book therefore offers a critical approach to these developments in American constitutional law and concludes by pointing to the ways in which the law contributes to persistent racial inequities in education.
Karen Mary Davalos
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479877966
- eISBN:
- 9781479825165
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479877966.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Remixing and reexamining art of and after the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions that ...
More
Remixing and reexamining art of and after the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions that feature their work, but also collectors, curators, critics, and advocates. Using an interdisciplinary method that combines decolonial and feminist theory, art historical analysis, and extensive archival and field research, Karen Mary Davalos explores how narrow notions of identity, politics, and aesthetics have limited debates over Chicana/o art. This comprehensive art history employs vernacular concepts, such as the errata exhibition and the remix, which emerge out of art practice itself, to drive the analysis of over three dozen artists. It rejects familiar narratives that evaluate Chicana/o art in binary terms: political versus commercial, realist versus conceptual, and so on. Each chapter explores undocumented or previously ignored information, such as European aesthetic influences on Chicana/o art or commercial ventures of community-based arts organizations, which are made invisible by conventions of art history or Chicana/o studies. The book illuminates the transnational, borderlands, feminist, and decolonial aesthetic processes and social conditions that expand, not contract, how we consider Chicana/o art. Davalos presents her most ambitious project to date in this examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production in a major metropolitan area.Less
Remixing and reexamining art of and after the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions that feature their work, but also collectors, curators, critics, and advocates. Using an interdisciplinary method that combines decolonial and feminist theory, art historical analysis, and extensive archival and field research, Karen Mary Davalos explores how narrow notions of identity, politics, and aesthetics have limited debates over Chicana/o art. This comprehensive art history employs vernacular concepts, such as the errata exhibition and the remix, which emerge out of art practice itself, to drive the analysis of over three dozen artists. It rejects familiar narratives that evaluate Chicana/o art in binary terms: political versus commercial, realist versus conceptual, and so on. Each chapter explores undocumented or previously ignored information, such as European aesthetic influences on Chicana/o art or commercial ventures of community-based arts organizations, which are made invisible by conventions of art history or Chicana/o studies. The book illuminates the transnational, borderlands, feminist, and decolonial aesthetic processes and social conditions that expand, not contract, how we consider Chicana/o art. Davalos presents her most ambitious project to date in this examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production in a major metropolitan area.
Marissa K. López
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479807727
- eISBN:
- 9781479877676
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479807727.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Racial Immanence is about how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. The book explores disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience in Chicanx visual, ...
More
Racial Immanence is about how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. The book explores disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience in Chicanx visual, verbal, and performing arts from the late 1980s to the early 1990s in order to ask whether it is possible to think of race as something other than a human quality. This attention to the body is a way to push back against two distinct modes of identity politics: first, the desire for art to perform or embody an idealized abstraction of oppositional ethnicity; and second, the neoliberal commodification of identity in the service of better managing difference and dissent. While these two modes seem mutually exclusive, the resistance the artists in Racial Immanence exert toward both suggests a core similarity. By contrast, the cultural objects examined in the book assert human bodies as processes, as agents of change in the world rather than as objects to be known and managed. Within Chicanx cultural production the author locates an articulation of bodily philosophies that challenge the subject/object dualism leading to a global politics of dominance and submission. Instead, she argues, Chicanx cultural production fosters networks of connection that deepen human attachment to the material world, a phenomenon the author terms “racial immanence” that creates the possibility of progressive social change.Less
Racial Immanence is about how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. The book explores disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience in Chicanx visual, verbal, and performing arts from the late 1980s to the early 1990s in order to ask whether it is possible to think of race as something other than a human quality. This attention to the body is a way to push back against two distinct modes of identity politics: first, the desire for art to perform or embody an idealized abstraction of oppositional ethnicity; and second, the neoliberal commodification of identity in the service of better managing difference and dissent. While these two modes seem mutually exclusive, the resistance the artists in Racial Immanence exert toward both suggests a core similarity. By contrast, the cultural objects examined in the book assert human bodies as processes, as agents of change in the world rather than as objects to be known and managed. Within Chicanx cultural production the author locates an articulation of bodily philosophies that challenge the subject/object dualism leading to a global politics of dominance and submission. Instead, she argues, Chicanx cultural production fosters networks of connection that deepen human attachment to the material world, a phenomenon the author terms “racial immanence” that creates the possibility of progressive social change.
Alberto Varon
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479863969
- eISBN:
- 9781479868827
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479863969.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Before Chicano: Citizenship and the Making of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 is the first book-length study of Latino manhood before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mexican Americans are ...
More
Before Chicano: Citizenship and the Making of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 is the first book-length study of Latino manhood before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mexican Americans are typically overlooked or omitted from American cultural life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite their long-standing presence in the U.S. This book dislodges the association between Mexican Americans and immigration and calls for a new framework for understanding Mexican American cultural production and U.S. culture, but doing so requires an expanded archive and a multilingual approach to U.S. culture.Working at the intersection of culture and politics, Mexican Americans drew upon American democratic ideals and U.S. foundational myths to develop evolving standards of manhood and political participation. Through an analysis of Mexican American print culture (including fiction, newspapers and periodicals, government documents, essays, unpublished manuscripts, images, travelogues, and other genres), it demonstrates that Mexican Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries envisioned themselves as U.S. national citizens through cultural depictions of manhood. Before Chicano moves beyond the resistance paradigm that has dominated Latino Studies and uncovers a long history of how Latinos shaped—and were shaped by—American cultural life.Less
Before Chicano: Citizenship and the Making of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 is the first book-length study of Latino manhood before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mexican Americans are typically overlooked or omitted from American cultural life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite their long-standing presence in the U.S. This book dislodges the association between Mexican Americans and immigration and calls for a new framework for understanding Mexican American cultural production and U.S. culture, but doing so requires an expanded archive and a multilingual approach to U.S. culture.Working at the intersection of culture and politics, Mexican Americans drew upon American democratic ideals and U.S. foundational myths to develop evolving standards of manhood and political participation. Through an analysis of Mexican American print culture (including fiction, newspapers and periodicals, government documents, essays, unpublished manuscripts, images, travelogues, and other genres), it demonstrates that Mexican Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries envisioned themselves as U.S. national citizens through cultural depictions of manhood. Before Chicano moves beyond the resistance paradigm that has dominated Latino Studies and uncovers a long history of how Latinos shaped—and were shaped by—American cultural life.
Jimmy Patiño
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469635569
- eISBN:
- 9781469635576
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635569.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
As immigration from Mexico to the United States grew through the 1970s and 1980s, the Border Patrol, police, and other state agents exerted increasing violence against ethnic Mexicans in San Diego’s ...
More
As immigration from Mexico to the United States grew through the 1970s and 1980s, the Border Patrol, police, and other state agents exerted increasing violence against ethnic Mexicans in San Diego’s volatile border region. In response, many San Diego activists rallied around the leadership of the small-scale print shop owner Herman Baca in the Chicano movement to empower Mexican Americans through Chicano self-determination. The combination of increasing repression and Chicano activism gradually produced a new conception of ethnic and racial community that included both established Mexican Americans and new Mexican immigrants. Here, Jimmy Patiño narrates the rise of this Chicano/Mexicano consciousness and the dawning awareness that Mexican Americans and Mexicans would have to work together to fight border enforcement policies that subjected Latinos of all statuses to legal violence.
By placing the Chicano and Latino civil rights struggle on explicitly transnational terrain, Patiño fundamentally reorients the understanding of the Chicano movement. Ultimately, Patiño tells the story of how Chicano/Mexicano politics articulated an “abolitionist” position on immigration--going beyond the agreed upon assumptions shared by liberals and conservatives alike that deportations are inherent to any solutions to the still burgeoning immigration debate.Less
As immigration from Mexico to the United States grew through the 1970s and 1980s, the Border Patrol, police, and other state agents exerted increasing violence against ethnic Mexicans in San Diego’s volatile border region. In response, many San Diego activists rallied around the leadership of the small-scale print shop owner Herman Baca in the Chicano movement to empower Mexican Americans through Chicano self-determination. The combination of increasing repression and Chicano activism gradually produced a new conception of ethnic and racial community that included both established Mexican Americans and new Mexican immigrants. Here, Jimmy Patiño narrates the rise of this Chicano/Mexicano consciousness and the dawning awareness that Mexican Americans and Mexicans would have to work together to fight border enforcement policies that subjected Latinos of all statuses to legal violence.
By placing the Chicano and Latino civil rights struggle on explicitly transnational terrain, Patiño fundamentally reorients the understanding of the Chicano movement. Ultimately, Patiño tells the story of how Chicano/Mexicano politics articulated an “abolitionist” position on immigration--going beyond the agreed upon assumptions shared by liberals and conservatives alike that deportations are inherent to any solutions to the still burgeoning immigration debate.
Lara Medina
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter explores Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) as celebrated in the heart of East Los Angeles during 1998 at the internationally recognized Chicano community art center, Self Help ...
More
This chapter explores Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) as celebrated in the heart of East Los Angeles during 1998 at the internationally recognized Chicano community art center, Self Help Graphics. As a case study of how one Chicano community annually celebrates, it offers insight into the process that numerous Chicano communities engage in as they honor their dead. The healing aspects of the tradition receive emphasis, as does its political significance for a population committed to the task of self-determination. In ritual and artistic expressions of Chicano spirituality, the political cannot be separated from the spiritual. This chapter argues that for Chicanos, a key to healing from the trauma of spiritual and physical colonization is the claiming of ancestral indigenous epistemology that values interdependency between the living and the dead, between living communities and ancient ones.Less
This chapter explores Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) as celebrated in the heart of East Los Angeles during 1998 at the internationally recognized Chicano community art center, Self Help Graphics. As a case study of how one Chicano community annually celebrates, it offers insight into the process that numerous Chicano communities engage in as they honor their dead. The healing aspects of the tradition receive emphasis, as does its political significance for a population committed to the task of self-determination. In ritual and artistic expressions of Chicano spirituality, the political cannot be separated from the spiritual. This chapter argues that for Chicanos, a key to healing from the trauma of spiritual and physical colonization is the claiming of ancestral indigenous epistemology that values interdependency between the living and the dead, between living communities and ancient ones.
Inés Hernández-avila
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0023
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter explores the ways in which the Conchero dance tradition in Mexico City, as well as in many urban areas in the United States, manifests a process of religious healing that is not only ...
More
This chapter explores the ways in which the Conchero dance tradition in Mexico City, as well as in many urban areas in the United States, manifests a process of religious healing that is not only collective and individual but also earth-centric yet cosmic. The chapter itself is a story of recovery, by the Concheros themselves, and by the Chicano communities with whom they have connected over the last several decades. For the Chicanos from the United States who have sought out the Conchero elders and dancers, this story represents a vital healing step toward the retrieval of indigenous ways of knowing and being. This story is also one of solidarity and mutual respect between indigenous peoples in Mexico and the United States. Based in Mexico City, La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha is an established mesa of danzantes (dancers) who belong to the Conchero dance community and religious society in central Mexico.Less
This chapter explores the ways in which the Conchero dance tradition in Mexico City, as well as in many urban areas in the United States, manifests a process of religious healing that is not only collective and individual but also earth-centric yet cosmic. The chapter itself is a story of recovery, by the Concheros themselves, and by the Chicano communities with whom they have connected over the last several decades. For the Chicanos from the United States who have sought out the Conchero elders and dancers, this story represents a vital healing step toward the retrieval of indigenous ways of knowing and being. This story is also one of solidarity and mutual respect between indigenous peoples in Mexico and the United States. Based in Mexico City, La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha is an established mesa of danzantes (dancers) who belong to the Conchero dance community and religious society in central Mexico.
Jennifer Lozano
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781683401476
- eISBN:
- 9781683402145
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683401476.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines the history, production, and content of the Latina/o identified literary culture blog, La Bloga, which, the author argues, deviates from predominant understandings of digital ...
More
This chapter examines the history, production, and content of the Latina/o identified literary culture blog, La Bloga, which, the author argues, deviates from predominant understandings of digital media use, participatory culture, and its democratic political value. Through close textual analysis of blog content and history, as well as blogger interviews, the study finds not only that La Bloga’s use of digital media differs from participatory culture paradigms, but that these differences are facilitated through the vehicle of literary culture and register a legacy of Chicano/a cultural politics. Specifically, the essay unpacks how scholars have delineated a relationship between participatory media and participatory politics that privileges liberal philosophy and the concept of the ideal public sphere to the exclusion of other contextual histories such as the social movements of the 1960s. The analysis of La Bloga offers a broader understanding of digital participatory media, cultural politics, and Latina/o online practice.Less
This chapter examines the history, production, and content of the Latina/o identified literary culture blog, La Bloga, which, the author argues, deviates from predominant understandings of digital media use, participatory culture, and its democratic political value. Through close textual analysis of blog content and history, as well as blogger interviews, the study finds not only that La Bloga’s use of digital media differs from participatory culture paradigms, but that these differences are facilitated through the vehicle of literary culture and register a legacy of Chicano/a cultural politics. Specifically, the essay unpacks how scholars have delineated a relationship between participatory media and participatory politics that privileges liberal philosophy and the concept of the ideal public sphere to the exclusion of other contextual histories such as the social movements of the 1960s. The analysis of La Bloga offers a broader understanding of digital participatory media, cultural politics, and Latina/o online practice.
Robert T. Chase
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653570
- eISBN:
- 9781469653594
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653570.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were ...
More
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as “slaves of the state” and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.Less
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as “slaves of the state” and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.
Ruth Hellier-Tinoco
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195340365
- eISBN:
- 9780199896998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340365.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Dance
Chapter Nine provides a sense of the multifarious forms and contexts of presentation of the Dance of the Old Men that proliferated from 1968 onwards in Mexico, the USA, and Europe. Brief snapshots ...
More
Chapter Nine provides a sense of the multifarious forms and contexts of presentation of the Dance of the Old Men that proliferated from 1968 onwards in Mexico, the USA, and Europe. Brief snapshots and glimpses of the wide range of circulating practices encompass staged events (live and recorded), and publications (literary and photographic texts). Examples include: international folkloric tours, officially-sanctioned Mexico City staged events in museums, theaters, and stadia (Fiesta Purépecha), events by the Michoacán State Tourist Board and Discos Corasón, populist publications, tourist guides, television appearances and audio recordings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of influence of the Ballet Folklórico de México in the USA, and the proliferation of Mexican Folkloric Dance ensembles as part of the Chicano/a movementLess
Chapter Nine provides a sense of the multifarious forms and contexts of presentation of the Dance of the Old Men that proliferated from 1968 onwards in Mexico, the USA, and Europe. Brief snapshots and glimpses of the wide range of circulating practices encompass staged events (live and recorded), and publications (literary and photographic texts). Examples include: international folkloric tours, officially-sanctioned Mexico City staged events in museums, theaters, and stadia (Fiesta Purépecha), events by the Michoacán State Tourist Board and Discos Corasón, populist publications, tourist guides, television appearances and audio recordings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of influence of the Ballet Folklórico de México in the USA, and the proliferation of Mexican Folkloric Dance ensembles as part of the Chicano/a movement
Randy J. Ontiveros
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814738849
- eISBN:
- 9780814738887
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814738849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Reexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in ...
More
Reexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in the twenty-first. It explores the ways in which Chicano/a artists and activists used fiction, poetry, visual arts, theater, and other expressive forms to forge a common purpose and to challenge inequality in America. Focusing on cultural politics, the book reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino' s innovative “actos,” or short skits, sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. The book articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.Less
Reexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this book brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in the twenty-first. It explores the ways in which Chicano/a artists and activists used fiction, poetry, visual arts, theater, and other expressive forms to forge a common purpose and to challenge inequality in America. Focusing on cultural politics, the book reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino' s innovative “actos,” or short skits, sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. The book articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.
Edgar Garcia
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226658971
- eISBN:
- 9780226659169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226659169.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter focuses on the poetics of Mayan hieroglyphs, with special attention on how their formal features integrate the temporal contradictions of decoloniality. It recounts how poets Charles ...
More
This chapter focuses on the poetics of Mayan hieroglyphs, with special attention on how their formal features integrate the temporal contradictions of decoloniality. It recounts how poets Charles Olson and Alurista each studied Mayan glyphs, finding in them a means to integrate political contradiction in a Mayan philosophy of parallelism. The philosophy of parallelism associated with glyphs is called kajulew in K’iche’ Mayan, which anthropologist Dennis Tedlock translates as “mythistory,” or the interpenetration of mythic and historical times. As Tedlock and others have pointed out, that interpenetration does not resolve into synthesis. Mesoamerican mythistory is like a weaving with intersecting threads, in which the threads of mythic and historical times depend on one another but produce no unifying third position by which to resolve antinomies or contradictions. The threads are suspended in a state of complementary intensification, and they are distinctly inscribed in the aesthetics of the glyphs. For Alurista, this idea helps to reconfigure problematics of identity beyond set racial categories of Latino and Anglo. This chapter also examines how these ideas affected Black Mountain aesthetic, focusing especially on visual artist Cy Twombly’s Poems to the Sea.Less
This chapter focuses on the poetics of Mayan hieroglyphs, with special attention on how their formal features integrate the temporal contradictions of decoloniality. It recounts how poets Charles Olson and Alurista each studied Mayan glyphs, finding in them a means to integrate political contradiction in a Mayan philosophy of parallelism. The philosophy of parallelism associated with glyphs is called kajulew in K’iche’ Mayan, which anthropologist Dennis Tedlock translates as “mythistory,” or the interpenetration of mythic and historical times. As Tedlock and others have pointed out, that interpenetration does not resolve into synthesis. Mesoamerican mythistory is like a weaving with intersecting threads, in which the threads of mythic and historical times depend on one another but produce no unifying third position by which to resolve antinomies or contradictions. The threads are suspended in a state of complementary intensification, and they are distinctly inscribed in the aesthetics of the glyphs. For Alurista, this idea helps to reconfigure problematics of identity beyond set racial categories of Latino and Anglo. This chapter also examines how these ideas affected Black Mountain aesthetic, focusing especially on visual artist Cy Twombly’s Poems to the Sea.
Randy J. Ontiveros
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814738849
- eISBN:
- 9780814738887
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814738849.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter studies the reductive news coverage of the Chicano/a movement on television. Network journalists at NBC and elsewhere interpreted Chicano activism as another racialized threat to an ...
More
This chapter studies the reductive news coverage of the Chicano/a movement on television. Network journalists at NBC and elsewhere interpreted Chicano activism as another racialized threat to an imaginary postwar consensus. Mindful of the culture industry' s growing power, Chicano activists responded with the creation of an independent Chicano media that used mimeograph machines, offset printing, and other available media technologies to circulate alternative images and narratives of Mexican America. Among different media such as film, television, and radio, print became the movement' s most vital instrument due to its accessibility that allows creator and audience to imagine themselves as part of a Chicano nation.Less
This chapter studies the reductive news coverage of the Chicano/a movement on television. Network journalists at NBC and elsewhere interpreted Chicano activism as another racialized threat to an imaginary postwar consensus. Mindful of the culture industry' s growing power, Chicano activists responded with the creation of an independent Chicano media that used mimeograph machines, offset printing, and other available media technologies to circulate alternative images and narratives of Mexican America. Among different media such as film, television, and radio, print became the movement' s most vital instrument due to its accessibility that allows creator and audience to imagine themselves as part of a Chicano nation.
