Chicana and Chicano Studies

This article analyzes Chicana feminist texts to frame a discussion of survival as a theoretical concept. Using Emma Pérez’s historical novel Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory as a window into the decolonial imaginary, I introduce the concept of survival narrative as a framework for analysis of Chicana literature, and briefly review Chicana feminist theory to support the argument. Examples from Perez’s novel illustrate the power of the survival narrative to advance a decolonial perspective. The novel reinscribes mainstream representations of gender violence that characterize the traditional Western by focusing on the empowerment that comes from solidarity amongst women and storytelling as central to cultural survival in the borderlands.

Astounding digital murals have emerged from the minds and souls of Chicana artist Judy Baca and the youth of color who have collaborated with her over the past ten years. Their workspace is SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center, founded by Baca in 1996 and dedicated to the creation and support of community and public art in Southern California.

Colleagues from throughout the US contact me in my role as Editor of" Noticias de NACS." They send me information and news items and request that we include them in the newsletter. Some of these news items reflect issues which the Chicano/a community is addressing locally or regionally.

a-sobek is associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and academic policy and is professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano studies at the University of California, santa barbara, where she also holds the Luis Leal endowed Chair. Her book Chicano Folklore: A Handbook is forthcoming, and she is working on a book project: "Constructing Nationhood and ethnicity: La Malinche, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and La Llorona in art and Literature." THe rio GraNDe VaLLey, aLso kNowN as THe MaGiC VaLLey, is siTUaTeD iN THe soUTHeasTerN Tip of Texas, CirCUMsCribeD oN THe east by the Gulf of Mexico and on the south by the Rio Grande and the Mexican borderlands. Here, among the tall, green, swaying palm trees, the short, squatty mesquite trees, and the endless rows of verdant agricultural fields, Gloria Anzaldúa grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. The Magic Valley has produced a series of distinguished scholars, poets, and novelists, including Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, the Saldívar clan (Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Ramón Saldívar, and José Saldívar), Américo Paredes, and of course Anzaldúa. Although I do not claim the same stature as the above luminaries, I too grew up in the Rio Grande Valley in the 1940s and 1950s, in a tiny town called Rio Hondo, population 701, which is but a few miles from Hargill, Texas, where Anzaldúa was born (1942) and raised. It is from this personal perspective, of one who grew up in the rich farmlands of the Magic Valley and experienced the economic and sociohistorical context of the era, that I propose to discuss Anzaldúa's Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Specifically, I focus on the sense of place, race, language, and sexuality that characterized the area and Anzaldúa's brilliant insights in the narrative she wove and reconfigured in the pages of Borderlands.

nevertheless, for mexican americans or Chicanos, as more politicized americans of mexican descent like to call themselves, folklore was and still is an integral part of the Civil rights movement which began in the 1960s. The Chicano Civil rights movement in the united states rose in conjunction with the african american one. This movement was a quest for social justice, for equal rights, for the right of self determination, and the right to one's own cultural and ethnic identity. The question of who Chicanos were as a people, as a group of marginalized citizens in the united states, was in part answered by looking deep into their cultural specificity, their everyday cultural practices such as language, play, food, oral traditions, theater, music, religious belief systems, traditional customs related to birth, marriage, death, speech play, folk speech, clothing, art, architecture, folk instruments, folk medicine and all aspects of living in a society. Folklore, therefore, became an integral part of the ethno-nationalist or ethnic oriented nationalist political movement of the mexican american people in the united states. in this study my central thesis focuses on how folklore has been indispensable in the construction of contemporary mexican american ethno-nationalism via literary texts. i center my attention on indigenous myths and legends and in particular the folk figures from the mexican and Chicano cultural tradition: la llorona, la malinche and the virgin of guadalupe as examples of how folklore is adapted and transformed in the Chicano ethno-nationalist movement of the 1960s. i define ethno-nationalism as that nationalism that emerges from ethnic groups or minority groups living within a nation that perceive themselves or are perceived by others as different due to racial and/or cultural characteristics. Thus while Canadian americans are a minority group living in the united states, they are not generally perceived as an "ethnic" group because they do not see themselves or are seen by the majority group as culturally or racially different. mexican americans, on the other hand, are perceived as an "ethnic" group due to their cultural and racial characteristics perceived as different from the majority anglo population. These ethnic groups may have coalesced as "ethnics" due to colonization or immigration or both. i use the term ethno-nationalism to differentiate the two types of "nationalisms" practiced by the mexican american population; these two types are ethno-nationalism and usa nationalism, that is loyalty, love, and patriotic feelings toward the united states. ethno-nationalism for Chicanos means pride and insistence on retaining their cultural identification, in this case a mexican cultural identity. This is patently evident when the mexican flag is used in local, state, and national Chicano demonstrations even though mexican americans are citizens of the usa. other extremely visible signs of ethno-nationalism are rooting for mexican teams in soccer competitions in the usa instead of rooting for the american teams. This is very disturbing and difficult to understand for the usa population. a third example is keeping the spanish language very much alive in the usa which again is opposed by conservative sectors in anglo american society such as the english-only movement. real and virtual spaCes oF Folklore studies / realni in virtualni prostori Folkloristike

My analysis focuses on the journals of Alejandro Malaspina titled, Alejandro Malaspina: En busca del paso del Pacífico (1990 edition), written during his expeditions to the Pacific Coast of California and the Northwest (Alaska) in 1791, and the diary of Fray Pedro Font edited and translated by Herbert Eugene Bolton as Font's Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition. The edited and translated volume was first published in 1930 and reissued in 1966. The Font diaries record the day to day events transpiring during Captain Juan Bautista de Anza's expedition in Arizona and California (1775-76). The study has two sections: Section I focuses on Malaspinas' journals while Section II is devoted to some aspects of Font's Diary related to the clothing or lack of clothing worn by the Indigenous peoples. The essay deals specifically with issues of Spanish responses to indigenous lack of clothing (nakedness) or their distinctly different way of dressing (the berdaches). I highlight how the Spanish/Indigenous encounters veer from the comical to the tragic and posit that the encounters are characterized by the dialectic of "naked" and "clothed." Furthermore, I demonstrate how European clothes become a metaphor for European knowledge, culture, technology, and power, i.e. "civilization" while

This interdisciplinary book explores human rights in the Americas from multiple perspectives and fields. Taking 1492 as a point of departure, the text explores Eurocentric historiographies of human rights and offers a more complete understanding of the genealogy of the human rights discourse and its many manifestations in the Americas. The essays use a variety of approaches to reveal the larger contexts from which they emerge, providing a cross-sectional view of subjects, countries, methodologies, and foci explicitly dedicated toward understanding historical factors and circumstances that have shaped human rights nationally and internationally within the Americas. The chapters explore diverse cultural, philosophical, political, and literary expressions in which human rights discourses circulate across the continent taking into consideration issues such as race, class, gender, genealogy, and nationality. While acknowledging the ongoing centrality of the nation, the volume promotes a shift in the study of the Americas as a dynamic transnational space of conflict, domination, resistance, negotiation, complicity, accommodation, dialogue, and solidarity where individuals, nations, peoples, institutions, and intellectual and political movements share struggles, experiences, and imaginaries. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of Inter-American studies and those from all disciplines interested in Human Rights.

© 1996 by the University of New Mexico Ptess All rights reserved. Revised edition, 1996 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chicana creativity and criticism : new frontiers in American Literature / edited by Maria Herrera-Sobek & Helena Maria Viramontes. — Rev. ...

nevertheless, for mexican americans or Chicanos, as more politicized americans of mexican descent like to call themselves, folklore was and still is an integral part of the Civil rights movement which began in the 1960s. The Chicano Civil rights movement in the united states rose in conjunction with the african american one. This movement was a quest for social justice, for equal rights, for the right of self determination, and the right to one's own cultural and ethnic identity. The question of who Chicanos were as a people, as a group of marginalized citizens in the united states, was in part answered by looking deep into their cultural specificity, their everyday cultural practices such as language, play, food, oral traditions, theater, music, religious belief systems, traditional customs related to birth, marriage, death, speech play, folk speech, clothing, art, architecture, folk instruments, folk medicine and all aspects of living in a society. Folklore, therefore, became an integral part of the ethno-nationalist or ethnic oriented nationalist political movement of the mexican american people in the united states. in this study my central thesis focuses on how folklore has been indispensable in the construction of contemporary mexican american ethno-nationalism via literary texts. i center my attention on indigenous myths and legends and in particular the folk figures from the mexican and Chicano cultural tradition: la llorona, la malinche and the virgin of guadalupe as examples of how folklore is adapted and transformed in the Chicano ethno-nationalist movement of the 1960s. i define ethno-nationalism as that nationalism that emerges from ethnic groups or minority groups living within a nation that perceive themselves or are perceived by others as different due to racial and/or cultural characteristics. Thus while Canadian americans are a minority group living in the united states, they are not generally perceived as an "ethnic" group because they do not see themselves or are seen by the majority group as culturally or racially different. mexican americans, on the other hand, are perceived as an "ethnic" group due to their cultural and racial characteristics perceived as different from the majority anglo population. These ethnic groups may have coalesced as "ethnics" due to colonization or immigration or both. i use the term ethno-nationalism to differentiate the two types of "nationalisms" practiced by the mexican american population; these two types are ethno-nationalism and usa nationalism, that is loyalty, love, and patriotic feelings toward the united states. ethno-nationalism for Chicanos means pride and insistence on retaining their cultural identification, in this case a mexican cultural identity. This is patently evident when the mexican flag is used in local, state, and national Chicano demonstrations even though mexican americans are citizens of the usa. other extremely visible signs of ethno-nationalism are rooting for mexican teams in soccer competitions in the usa instead of rooting for the american teams. This is very disturbing and difficult to understand for the usa population. a third example is keeping the spanish language very much alive in the usa which again is opposed by conservative sectors in anglo american society such as the english-only movement. real and virtual spaCes oF Folklore studies / realni in virtualni prostori Folkloristike

Zu den kulturellen Repr sentationen von Gewalt und Krieg sind in den letzten Jahren eine große Zahl wissenschaftlicher Studien erschienen-a ls Reaktion auf unsere Lebenswelt, aber auch auf die zunehmend mediale Vermittlung dieser Erfahrungen. Gewalt und Grenz berschreitungen in den Literaturen und Kulturen ethnischer Minorit ten ist der vorliegende Sammelband gewidmet, der auf einer internationalen Tagung zum Thema basiert, die vom 2. bis 4. Oktober 2003 an der University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) stattfand. Der Tagungsort ist f r das Thema insofern bedeutend, als die UCSB nicht nur ber ein Centre for Chicano Studies verf gt, sondern 2004 auch das weltweit erste Graduiertenprogramm in diesem Bereich einrichtete.

The online video “How to be a Cholo” is demonstrative of the potential that
YouTube has to be a decolonial space where the reinvention of Chicano archetypes is possible. In this video, creator Eric G. Ochoa and his alter ego, Ego the Cholo, engage in humorous commentary that questions the stereotypes that have been ascribed to male Latinos through the Chicano archetypes. From this viewpoint we explore how new media facilitates the renegotiation of recurring Latino archetypes by explaining the role media had in illustrating bandits, pachucos and cholos. We also demonstrate how the conflation of the three archetypes (bandit, lover and buffoon) creates a type of humor that serves as a weapon of the marginalized by breaking down scenes in the video. In conducting an in-depth content analysis of the video, we found that Ochoa rearticulates the bandido archetype by contesting three particular characteristics that are ascribed to cholos: delinquency, masculinity, and appearance. Finally, we propose that YouTube itself has the potential to be a social space of self-affirmative cultural production citing “How to be a Cholo” as evidence.