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ChxLtxintheU.S.-TheChicanoMovement-1.pptxChicanx/Latinx in the U.S. The Chicano Movement
ETHST 1
Dr. Frank Perez
Lecture Layout
What we'll be covering
Frameworks of oppression in the 20th centuries
Building Race Tensions and WWII
Flash Points for the Chicano Movement
Zoot Suit Riots
Bracero Program/Operation Wetback
Walkouts
The Chicano Movement
UFW
Brown Berets
The Chicano Movement and Gender Politics
Key Terms:
Dogmatism: the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.
Autocolonialism: A process in which the people of a country impose on themselves an alien lifestyle which helped in destroying their own culture.
Frameworks of Oppression in the 20th Century
Systems of Race and oppression today stem largely from current economic systems
Why have we exploited racialized minorities in the U.S.?
Politics and the economy shape and define social relationships
The more complex our society is, the more opportunity there is to categorize and exclude individuals thereby ensuring domination by some over others
Capitalism/Colonialism
Racism
Sexism
Xenophobia
Homophobia
Abelism
ageism
Building Race Tensions and WWII
The great depression and the dust bowl of the 1930s completely destabilizes American life
Immigrants are coming and congress is imposing new immigration laws to restrict who can come
Economic woes are felt throughout the U.S.
Racism is building with full articulation of Jim/Juan Crow where People of Color are confined to segregated spaces
The U.S. gets involved in WWII to fight anti-Semitism and oppression in Germany/East Europe
Critical Thinking Questions:
Is anti-Semitism a form of racism?
Was U.S. doing its part domestically to end racism and racial
Flash Points for the Chicanx/Latinx Movement: Zoot Suit Riots
Rampant racism gave rise to various racial riots (these have been increasing in frequency, ferocity, and commonness across the U.S.)
The Zoot Suit Riots (1943) was major series of riots that happened here in the Southern California area
Defining features:
Anti-Mexican and Immigrant sentiments growing in the U.S.
Mexican-Americans start to resist their discrimination through dress and cultural performance
They develop the Zoot Suit and Chicano identity as a response to not feeling included in the American and Mexican culture and communities
The overwhelming presence of servicemen (mostly white) in the area
During the riots, 150 Chicanx/Latinx males beaten and several hundred arrested. No service members faced repercussions.
Flash Points for the Chicanx/Latinx Movement: Bracero Program and Operation Wetback
Bracero Program:
Wartime guestworker program between U.S. and Mexico from that lasted from 1942-1964
An estimated 4.5 million Mexican citizens are employed through the program
Many brought multigenerational families to the U.S.
Braceros were paid $.30/hour and were regularly abused by farmers and farm owners
Labor conditions were deplorable and little protections were given to workers
Operation Wetback
A targeted deportation initiative (1953-1954)
Largest mass deportation initiative in U.S. history
An estimated 1.3 million people were deported (data is fuzzy on this)
Deportees crammed into buses, trains and planes to be sent to unfamiliar parts of Mexico
Law set social precedence by having wetback be used in legal and social discourse
Flash Points for the Chicanx/Latinx Movement: Walkouts!
Mexican segregated education was both widespread and extremely damaging
Urban and rural schools did little to educate brown youth
Many school policies allowed youth to leave school so that they could do farm work
Corporal punishment was regularly used against students speaking Spanish
1968 Chicanx/Latinx students across California and U.S. stage series of walkouts to bring awareness to various issues in their schools
The Chicano Movement UFW & Brown Berets
So why were Chicanx/Latinx folks so pissed about their rights not being honored?
Society, like humans, go through processes Social Amnesia:
is a collective forgetting by a group of people or a national citizenry. The concept is often cited in relation to Jacoby’s (1970) where this type of amnesia occurs due to a forced repression of memories, ignorance, changing circumstances, the exclusion of peoples from historic record, or the changing that comes from changing interests.
Protest, folklore, arts, and cultural nostalgia are counter-narratives that combat the amnesia
Counter-narratives: Stories told by a population that are in direct contrast to the dominant narrative
The Chicano Movement UFW & Brown Berets
Chicanx/Latinx individuals formed organizations in order to advocate for their communities
These movements employ certain ideologies, policies, and practices that are shaped by social and historical conditions/realities
Many protested
Created media like magazines and newspapers to highlight issues in the community
Largely, all social justice movements are responsive to persistent/historic oppression that devalues/exploits colonized groups
The Chicano Movement UFW & Brown Berets
UFW and Brown Berets
Two of the leading social organizations that emerged to combat discrimination against Chicano/as
Both respond to the colonial devaluation of brown bodies despite the U.S. society's overall progress after WWII
UFW
Fought to allow farmworkers to organize/unionize and demand better working conditions
Demanded that farmworkers be included into the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which gave sweeping protections to laborers
Modeled after the Black Civil Rights movement and utilized nonviolent/peaceful protests
Brown Berets
Contested Chican@ discrimination in lands that were taken from their ancestors when the U.S. failed to uphold the Treaty de Guadalupe Hidalgo
Wanted better schools and communities for Chicano/as and an end to police violence
Modeled after the Black Panther Party and organized as a community defense organization
The Chicano Movement UFW & Brown Berets
UFW work centered on the struggles of the Farm Workers in the central valley
The movement here evolved as a result of key work done by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who built solidarity among farmworkers or various races
Growers would use other desperate labor groups to break strikes and leverage against organizers who were asking members, who were largely poor, to stay home
Working with Pilipino farmworkers was decisive in building the larger solidarity across the movement
The Chicano Movement UFW & Brown Berets
Brown Berets took a different approach more militant approach to activism but were guided by a fundamentally similar philosophy (supporting their community)
Both orgs fought for the guaranteed protection of Chican@s, which were supposed to be granted by federal labor laws and national treaties
This group recognized how the U.S. government had stolen lands from their ancestors as well as unequal and discriminatory of their community
These failures by the U.S. showed how America didn't honor treaties nor upheld civil rights legislations
However, the Berets felt they needed to assert a more nationalistic agenda because they believed the U.S. would never ensure equality for Brown communities
The Chicano Movement and Gender Issues
Often singular civil rights movements (Black/Chicano/Native American/Asian American/Women/LGBT+/Workers) overlook interrelated struggles.
These movements seek to either claim their issue as most salient or want to address individual issues first before looking at more complex problems
Dogmatism tends to be created in these types of movements where the singular focus overwhelms the nature and direction of the movement
Dogmatism: the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.
In a growing mestizo society, can we limit ourselves with by following age old paradigms?
The Chicano Movement and Gender politics
The Chicano Movement or El Movimiento didn’t die in the seventies, but rather took influence in homophobia and machismo (normative gender relations in our society).
Male leaders used “selective memory” to highlight the areas of the ancient cultures to better serve the heterosexual males. An example of this would be the Aztec warrior bravado.
Machistas viewed women of the community and movement as either a suffering desexualized woman (Mother) or a woman who slept with the enemy (Malinche).
Creates the Virgin v. Whore paradigm where women are expected to retain traditional gender/sexual roles or be seen as a gender/sexual deviant.
Chicanx/Latinx Movements and Gender Politics
Woman of Color feminism emerges during this time as various social movements fail to address the intersection of Race and Gender discrimination
Woman and LGBT+ activist see that sexism and homophobia are common in BIPOC activist spaces and Race/Racism are not addressed in feminist spaces where their needs/issues aren't addressed
This failure to address intersectionality stems from auto-colonialism where oppressed people act in ways and retain beliefs that resemble their colonizers
Autocolonialism:
A process in which the people of a country impose on themselves an alien lifestyle which helped in destroying their own culture.
Auto-colonialism can be considered worse than colonialism itself because its one's own community oppressing itself
While in colonialism a foreign power forces its own values and lifestyle on another country, here a free people after their independence impose these foreign and alien values on themselves.
Lecture Layout
What we covered
Frameworks of oppression in the 20th centuries
Building Race Tensions and WWII
Flash Points for the Chicano Movement
Zoot Suit Riots
Bracero Program/Operation Wetback
Walkouts
The Chicano Movement
UFW
Brown Berets
The Chicano Movement and Gender Politics
Key Terms:
Dogmatism
Autocolonialism
