Who or What is a Chicana/o?

For the first blog post of this class, I am going to go over the various ethnic terms we use to describe the Mexican/ Mexican-American/ Chicana/o community. 

When thinking about the term Chicana/o how do we define it? What do we think of when we think about Chicanas/os? What sorts of imagery emerges?

Cheech Marin on Being Chicano via YouTube

Generally speaking, Chicana/o is generally interchangeable with Mexican American. In fact, the most common assumption is that Chicana/o means a second generation or US born person of Mexican descent. But the term evolved over time.

Scholars disagree on when the term Chicana/o becomes relevant to understanding identities of the ethnic Mexican community in the US. The first significant moment historically is the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty was enacted to the end the US-Mexico War 1846-1848 which began because of the annexation of Texas

James Polk, 11th President of the United States

Image via history.com 

James Polk, president of the US from 1845-1849 was a believer in Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is the concept that the US was ordained by the rights of God (as a Christian nation) to expand geographically westward until we claimed all the land from one coast to another. Polk claimed in his Inaugural address that his goal was to eventually take over the territories belonging to Mexico to strengthen the US. Initially the US offered to purchase the land from Mexico for $25 million dollars, but the Mexican Federal government refused.

Texas, which was still a part of Mexico in the 1840s, was a controversial territory at the time. There were a lot of Anglos/US citizens entering the territory from the South. Their desire was to bring slaves/plantation system into the territory and eventually take it over to be ratified as a slave state. However, Mexico abolished slavery in 1829 so legally slaves were not allowed under the Mexican federal government.

The reality was that Mexico was still a young nation, having only won its own independence from Spain in 1821. Mexican national citizens who were living in Texas wanted to become part of the US because they not only saw a lot of benefits economically but also because they were dissatisfied with the newly formed Mexican government. So Texas was annexed in December of 1845.  

The push for war came once the annexation had taken place there were still border disputes. Mexican army sent 2000 soldiers who battled against 70 US soldiers. Killed 16, wounded 5, and captured 49. Each side claimed the other had crossed into their territory. US congress declared war on Mexico. Eventually Mexico lost and the war ended with the Treaty.

The key Treaty terms were:

1) $15 million dollars to the Mexican government in exchange for the territory (originally offered $25 million).

2) The lands, language, and culture of the Mexican people would be respected.

2) Anyone of Mexican citizenship that stayed in the new US territory would be granted citizenship.

It is this last term that becomes the most salient in terms of defining Chicana/o. One, it is the first time that Mexicans are legally defined as white. Whites or Americans of European descent are the only ones eligible for citizenship in the 1840s, thereby the loophole here is that if Mexicans can become citizens, they can also be legally categorized as white. This later gets solidified in the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which created a quota system for immigration to the US. The 1924 act barred all migration from Asia and put a limit on Eastern and Southern European migration, all places seen as “undesirable.” Yet, it disallowed quotas for the Western Hemisphere. Scholars argue the exemption of the Western Hemisphere was due to the fact that most of the labor source for the Southwest was rooted in Mexico and other Latin American countries. This further solidified Mexicans as legally white because in two major pieces of legislation they are allowed a privilege (citizenship in the first, migration in the second) that is being restricted for people of European descent.

But in the case of the 1848 Treaty, some scholars also argue that this is the first notion of a Chicana/o identity. The border quite literally crossed us and creates an idea that there is a mixture, a mestizaje, of culture. So it fosters the beginning of a Mexican-American identity.

The more pronounced notion of Chicana/o as an identity would be a product of the 1960s and 70s civil rights movement where we see the rise of Chicana/o nationalism. Dissatisfaction with the mainstream civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s pushes many groups to push for their own social movement. The mainstream Civil Rights Movement focused largely on changing the legal and social culture of the Southern states treatment toward African Americans. Other ethnic-racial groups feel left out of the agenda and feel their issues are not being understood or addressed.

It is in this moment that Chicana/o as a political identity is formed. Now there not just an ethnic or racial component to the identity term, but it comes to represent a political consciousness. The idea that you would identify as Chicana/o means you are committed to the movimiento or the civil rights movement that represents ethnic Mexicans in the US. So the term shifts, and becomes more about activism and about social political thought. You can be ethnically Mexican and not necessarily be Chicana/o.

Image via multiculturalfamilia.com

So where do these other terms we use to describe Mexican communities: what is Hispana/o,  Latina/o, Tejano, Mexican American, Mexicana/o. Why are there so many distinctions in terms of identity labels? Why make it so complicated?

Mexican or Mexicana/o is used to label someone from Mexico. Someone who roots their culture, language, all their understandings as originating from Mexico will identify themselves this way. Not all Mexicanas/os are necessarily born in Mexico. There are some 1^st generation folks who really consider themselves more Mexican than American. Depending on where they were raised, depending on what the culture was or continues to be at home really determines a persons outlook on how they self identify. This isn’t always the case, there are some that become influenced also by what is outside of the home. 

Hispanic is a government created umbrella category. Arguably related to Hispania or Spain and is supposed to include all people from Spanish speaking countries. But if it includes Spain, which is in Europe, where does Brazil a Portuguese speaking country fit? Are Brazilians Hispanic?

It is also not an ethnic category as we see most of Latin America is ethnically and racially diverse. It is a means to categorize a group for census purposes. Latina/o is used to denote peoples from Latin America. But again, if we are looking at Latinas/os the do groups such as Spaniards qualify as Latin American when we are collecting data (i.e. census) on Spanish-speaking communities?

Both the terms Latina/o and Hispanic are also used by business’ and the government to market to and create programs for this particular group. Some people do also use these terms to define themselves, but these are also particularly complex given that they really have no sort of cultural attachment.

Although it is sometimes hard to think about calling each individual after their specific ethnic origin, they are all really different, culturally, historically, socially. And their experiences in the US do differ. For example Puerto Ricans statistically tend to be more working class, settle in more urban areas, and have achieved less education than other Latina/o groups. Cubans on the other hand statistically tend to be more upper-middle class, vote more conservatively, and have one of the highest educational attainment levels of Latinas/os. And even those statistics are just a generalization as individual communities and individual people do not fit these parameters.