Presentation: Mestizo Consciousness and Writers of Color

These are the terms we use for our presentation

Chicano/a, Chicana/o, Chican@

Chicano/a is a neocultural sign, and a neosubjective outcome, of a history of conquest, transcultural contact, and migration, spanning more than 150 years. Originally a term of disparagement for working-class Mexican Americans, Chicano was adopted as a collective identity marker in the 1960s by the Chicano Movement. The terms announced a break along generational and aspirational lines between Mexican American student and worker activists, and older Mexican Americans. It also signified a desire to differentiate Mexican American from other Latino/a sectors and to affirm Chicanos as a distinct US minority formed by invasion, colonization, and capitalist exploitation. Under this name, activists attempted to politicize a community, now recast as a people Rafaela Castro (2001) describes three possible origins of the term dating from the early twentieth century. Frist, Chicano may derive from a fusion of the Mexican City of Chihuahua with Mexicano (Chi-and – cano). Second, the word may derive from the Mexica (indigenous people) and the Náhuatl convention of pronouncing “x” as “sh” or “ch.” A third theory posits that Chicano derives from chico (Spanish for boy), a disparaging term used by Anglo-American. The third explanation may also account for the resistance on the part of older Mexican American to adopt a term they regarded as demeaning and insulting.  Although Chicano is now commonplace, having given its name to the field of Chicano/a Studies, the term has had a contested history since the 1960s. Acuña (2000) suggest that the Chicano Movement may have erred in dispensing with Mexican as a marker of a distinct ethnic identity. Nonetheless, Acuña continues to use Chicano/a in honor of the term’s reclamation by Movement activists. Although it is routine to encounter the single masculine noun Chicano in critical and cultural work, variations that acknowledge gender differences are also commonplace: Chicano/a, Chicana/o and Chican@. Xicano/a is an alternative spelling, the use of the “x” (which follows Náhuatl orthographic conventions) reminding of the Mexican base and acknowledging the importance of indigenous ancestry and traditions for many Chicano/a identifications.

Hispano

Hispano is the name adopted by many Mexican-origin inhabitants of New Mexico and southern Colorado, and is most often claimed by people who trace their ancestry back to the Spanish colonizers of New Spain, and not to the region’s Indian and mestizo people. Hispano has similar connotations to Spanish American and Hispanic American, which also emphasize European at the expense of indigenous, African, or mixed-race ancestry. Historians trace the origins of Hispano to a romanticizing but pragmatic myth of Spanish Americanness by which elite and meddle-class Mexican American managed their interactions with working-class Mexicans, Indians, and Anglo-Americans (J. Chavez 1984). By insulating themselves from the accusation of being like Indians, the bearers of Hispano were at once perpetuating racial stereotypes and attempting to preclude racist attacks on their own class identities, particularly in the decades following the Mexican-American War when Anglo-American authority in the conquered territories was consolidated. An alternative term for a New Mexican is Manito/a.

Latino, latino/a, latina/o, latin@

Latino/a is the broad panethnic identity term that includes the Chicano/a and Puerto Rican historical minorities and any citizen or resident with Latin American heritage. Latino is the preferred term of many Latino/as when adopting a panethnic identification or speaking of self and community in national terms; is thus circulates as a self-adopted alternative to the government-imposed and media-preferred Hispanic. The political uses to which Hispanic and Latino/a can be put, and the significations accruing to them, have attracted a great deal of critical debate among scholars and cultural workers. Since Latino/a provides the nominal base for the panethnic sensibility, imaginary and potential vector of community affiliation, a key debate in Latino/a Studies has concerned the viability, potential formation, and meaning of Latinidades. The orthographical convention of replacing Latino with Latina/o or Latino/a, and Latin@, reflects a widespread political gesture against the gender power of the noun’s masculine form to signify all Latinos, irrespective of gender, and to acknowledge Latinas as an essential component of the panethnic designation.

Allatson, Paul. Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies. , 2007. Print.

Presentation:

Key terms: Mestiza, Chicana, Conciencia de la Mestiza, Horizontal Axis, Writers of Color.

In her article Gloria Anzaldúa presents the “conciencia de la mestiza” as a need to fill a void that helps the new generation to find its own identity. In this way not only return to the cultural roots of their parents but incorporate them into this new paradigm or horizontal axis, structures established by Chela Sandoval in her book, in order to create a new category. Anzaldúa also interpellates the writers of color by identifying with them through their struggles, being victims of the same oppressors and inviting them to write in order to recover finding their own space and reconcile this other within us.

Discussion Question: Gloria Anzaldúa affirms that the new mestiza manages to develop a tolerance for contradictions and ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, and to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. The new mestiza must learn to juggle cultures. Do you think that this definition can be applied to other groups that try to find a place between borders and cultures in order to be able to define and name themselves? Does the poem Ode to the Diasporican, by Mariposa represent this new type of woman / group? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n802rVXC8l0&t=5s

Borderland/La Frontera, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness” (99-113)