Chicanismo, La RAZA
The Chicano revolution, Chicano Power. The meaning behind Chicanismo and Chicano/Chicana power!
Do not fear the cosmic giant chicanismo, because we keep on coming.
For we have already embraced you and brought you with us.
We are inside each and every one of you, in your veins, in the medications that go into your innermost being and heal your deepest pains, in your DNA and RNA, in your sight….
When you look into a microscope and see Severo Ochoa’s discovery of synthetic protein synthesis, or when you are dazzled by Guillermo González Camarenas brilliant and colorful images of Jupiter you are seeing through the eyes of my people. Every time you look at these things and share new ideas, you have joined us fearlessly into the unknown.
We not only overcame our fears but we pulled you along with us in our successes and held the line as we grabbed people from the sidelines and brought them into the light.
We keep coming... proud chicanismo... strutting like a giant in our collective halo, pure gravatus .... We do things that benefit the collective as a whole and as Chicanos and Chicanas in this great nation, the United States of America is our collective.
We keep on coming. Overcoming our fears and bringing our cultural heritage to this culturally diverse nation offering a new perspective on ideas and issues.
The frequency of chicanismo phased the barred doors of bigotry, we keep coming. Never have we recoiled from the venom of the undulating gentrifying wall.
Fear has never held us back, individually or collectively. We have always overcome our fears throughout history, furthering us in our discoveries. It does not matter where we are from or where we are going. All that matters is that we are working as one towards a greater goal and towards something bigger than ourselves, something beautiful, and democratic.
Every great scientist and inventor has said: "The best things come out of the unknown…”
So I ask you to join me on this never ending journey of discovery.
Intrepidly take the leap into the unknown and see what wonderful and beautiful things lie ahead as we work together through science, politics, mathematics, english, policy, and every other fear that we have ever had. We have already overcome it… And we keep coming, together…. From Madre Terra, Aztlan, Nuevo Espana, Mexico, America, and beyond the Milky Way. We keep on coming fearless and relentless embracing the unknown.
Do not fear the cosmic giant chicanismo, because we keep coming.
So you many be asking what is Chicanismo? where did it come from? how come I've never heard about this in American History? well let me tell you about it.
Chicanismo is a term that was formed in the 1940s, it was the era of the Mexican American Civil rights movement. Many peop[e think that when African Americans got their civil rights so did chicano's, but this is not true. In fact we were fighting our battle a while before they began theirs, and yet you only see a glimpse, if any, about our fight in text books.
The word Chicano comes from a very sad history of the spanish hierarchical system of race classification called casta. This systems was used to classify people as if they were animals or flora, giving us names like cholo, chicano, ect. This system was used for the Spanish to document how my people were "breading" and was documented through paintings. So when you see a painting of a person with light skin and a person with brown skin and their children, this may be a historical documentation of casta.
My people were being documented like plants and animals and named as if they were lower than humans. think about how they name animals with latin root words, this is what they were doing to us.
So how, you ask did such derogatory terms become terms used by people of Mexican and Spanish heritage as an identifier. Well, we took it back, and still to this day many people do not like to be called some of these terms because they feel ashamed. But the Chicano movement changed this for many people.
As an aside the term Hispanic derives from the meaning "his spanish", essentially it is the Spanish king calling us property.
Chicanismo is a term that means the integration of Mexicanos in to America. Which if you think about it really does not make since since we were here before it became America.
Lets take a look into New Mexican History and dig deeper into how we were here long before our text books begin to tell us that we were.
The Spanish came and tried to conquer the land and indoctrinate the natives, and this is where casta came from. Many of the natives died because of unknown illnesses that their bodies were not immune to brought by the Spanish.
New Mexico used to be part of Mexico, hence the name NEW Mexico, and while it was Mexico Mexicans and indios lived on that land.
After many years of living on this land that we called home the US began to expand west with this thing they called "manifest destiny" and they took over our land and began to do awful things to the native peoples of that region. People that had been their for hundreds of years were being told to leave and brutalized because they had a "destiny" on our land. among these people were my ancestors.
Then this thing called the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 happened, this is one of the only things you will every hear or read about in your text books, and ended the Mexican American War.
If you known any Marines then you might know their hymn and how they sing "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of...." This is referring to the Mexican American War when the Marines stormed Chappultepec Castle, Mexico City, during the Battle of Chapultepec in 1847,
During the next 50+ years New Mexico would be a territory, and their were territorial battles between neighboring states for the next 50+ years untill 1912 when it became a state.
And Mexican Americans will be enslaved as workers (working right along side black, although never mentioned in history books).
After this in 1912 New Mexico became a state and so the terror continues.
Now in 1912 forward peoples whose families have been here for generations are being told to leave because they are not citizens, when... well... they were here first.
So lets fast forward past the great depression, Mexican Americans and the Zoot Suit riots begin. In the 1930s thousands of Mexican Americans were being thrown out because they were "Mexican" and in California young Latinos began to get upset.
A young Chicano was murdered on a road near a swimming hole known as the sleepy lagoon in California and later passed away. The young chicano was brutalized and his murder was pinned on several other chicano boys (17 Mexican Americans) that had not done anything wrong. This was said to be one of the onsets for the movement.
The zoot suit riots were when chicano, Mexican american men and women would dress up in zoot suits as a way to protest. During the riots men and women were brutalized by white Americans because they believed the beautiful suits were "unpatriotic" as this was during war time in the 1940s. The zoot zuits were made out of large amounts of fabric.
These pride full chicanos and chicanas were looked down upon and called gangs. They were marginalized, othered, and objectified. Their clothing was not disgraceful or unpatriotic it was beautiful and a sign of pride of who they are as Mexican Americans
So before the black civil rights movement had even begun, we had been fighting for equality for over 75 years. I hate it how when I read something that is so significant to my history as a chicana and I am an after thought. Articles will ramble for paragraphs only ever mentioning black slavery, and black peoples fight for equality then if I'm lucky I will be mentioned , again as an after thought, as "Mexican Americans are also cited victims of the.....crime" why am I not important to history? My people fought longer and their own battle for equality and yet we are only an after though, if anything, in history books or journals.
During the 40s there is another thing that you never hear about white capping, or the white hats, caps. These were white farmers that would go around and lynch, beat, kill, rape, and so many other awful things, to Hispanics in the south. These men were commonly identified as bandidos and "heros" in the south. but this was not the case. White Caps began in the late 1800s and progressively became worse as my people were becoming more recognized.
Now into the 60s, the chicano movement. A group of young Chicanos created an organization known as the Brown Berets, arose and fought police brutality, created free clinics, and fought for equality.
Chicanas were and still are a huge part of the Brown Berets.
So there is a sort of brief overview of what chicanismo is, so now if any one every asks you or if you want to contribute something to a discussion about minority movements in America, chicano power, chicano movement, CHICANISMO!!!
Thank you for reading (this is my perspective on my history, I do not mean to offend any one thank you)
Ciao
