Preserving Our Identity as an Indigenous-Hispanic (Mestizo) People
Since the 1970s, we have been labeled as “Hispanic” or “Latino” by agencies of the federal government. The only name we have bestowed upon ourselves is Chicano. The word has origins, according to some sources, in the early 1900s as a shortened version of Mechicano—it may have been born in song or on the railroad lines or in the fields. The sense of a unique identity entailed in the name, Chicano, is what gave the Chicano Movement its essence as a radical departure from the past but imbued with the past. It is the reason that the philosophy behind Chicanismo continues to thrive because it is still evolving; it should be renewed continually through a process of small encounters each year leading up to national symposia every five years. The Chicano Movement is still very much alive and can only survive by adapting to evolutionary changes in human understanding.
We should adopt a process of concientización, whereby groups made up of community activists, scholars in various disciplines, political leaders and professionals in business, health, philosophy, writers and artists, and so on examine the principles of Chicanismo and revitalize its relevance by reaching out to barrios and enclaves of our people throughout the country. The nature of these encounters should become fields of study in our schools that incorporate elders/teachers of the barrio reaching out to youth/students.
We must bring an end to the use of Hispanic or Latino by forging our own name, building on how we perceive our own identity, and how our language and history can guide us in arriving at a name, which proves acceptable to all indigenous-hispanic people regardless of politics, gender or language, as long as it is derived organically and logically from our nature, history and worldview.
One suggested set of steps to arrive at our own name:
Step 1: Call to Chicanans (my placeholder for a possible name) willing to commit time and resources to form a planning working group, conduct a series of small conferences around the country dedicated to arriving at the recommendation of a name, or names, within a set timeframe.
Step 2: The working group would set a time line for convening a first gathering (including in person and via internet facilities) to launch an effort to ensure a diversity of members, set dates for further meetings, and initiate guidelines for a national inquiry.
Step 3: The working group would set a deadline for deciding on a name, although it would most likely arrive at two or three optional names for people to consider. The main duty of the group would be to recommend one name and publicize it for broader consideration and, hopefully, acceptance.
Step 4: Submit the name by which to identify us indigenous-hispanic Americans to the U.S. Census Bureau for inclusion in the 2030 Census. Generate varied efforts to gain support from appropriate sectors, elected officials, national organizations, local community groups, etc.
We should adopt a process of concientización, whereby groups made up of community activists, scholars in various disciplines, political leaders and professionals in business, health, philosophy, writers and artists, and so on examine the principles of Chicanismo and revitalize its relevance by reaching out to barrios and enclaves of our people throughout the country. The nature of these encounters should become fields of study in our schools that incorporate elders/teachers of the barrio reaching out to youth/students.
We must bring an end to the use of Hispanic or Latino by forging our own name, building on how we perceive our own identity, and how our language and history can guide us in arriving at a name, which proves acceptable to all indigenous-hispanic people regardless of politics, gender or language, as long as it is derived organically and logically from our nature, history and worldview.
One suggested set of steps to arrive at our own name:
Step 1: Call to Chicanans (my placeholder for a possible name) willing to commit time and resources to form a planning working group, conduct a series of small conferences around the country dedicated to arriving at the recommendation of a name, or names, within a set timeframe.
Step 2: The working group would set a time line for convening a first gathering (including in person and via internet facilities) to launch an effort to ensure a diversity of members, set dates for further meetings, and initiate guidelines for a national inquiry.
Step 3: The working group would set a deadline for deciding on a name, although it would most likely arrive at two or three optional names for people to consider. The main duty of the group would be to recommend one name and publicize it for broader consideration and, hopefully, acceptance.
Step 4: Submit the name by which to identify us indigenous-hispanic Americans to the U.S. Census Bureau for inclusion in the 2030 Census. Generate varied efforts to gain support from appropriate sectors, elected officials, national organizations, local community groups, etc.
Update June 5, 2019
Martha Cotera, a widely known and honored Chicana activist going back to the years of the Chicano Movement, raises the societal facet of cultural citizenship, an aspect of the prospective goals set out in the Blueprint Paper that speaks to Mexican Americans finding “our own voice.” She shows how the power of an idea can break down cultural and ethnic walls to attract and embody other peoples from the Americas. Her insights deepen the thinking we must jointly exercise to flesh out the socio-political esqueleto of words presented in the Blueprint.
−Armando Rendón
MY FUTURE IDEAL
Presentation for Blueprint Panel, USCCR conference, November 17, 2018
By Martha P. Cotera
As we incorporate more diverse indigenous and mestizo primos from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean into our communities going forward, I am incredibly energized by the prospect of a brighter political future and our empowerment to gain social/economic rights leading to full citizenship through substantial rights (social/economic). Currently my activist work is primarily on electoral issues, local policies, and with the feminist and immigrant communities, and I’m proud to say that many indigenous and mestizo immigrants from throughout the Americas now claim the term Chicano which to them represents pride in indigenous and mestizo cultures.
Our more concientizado primos realize that the Civil Rights and Chicano movements empowered us to practice cultural citizenship wherein we “constructed, established and affirmed our human, social and cultural rights based on our individual and collective identities,” values and practices. We asserted the right to maintain our culture even as we become politically active and incorporated into the electoral process in the United States.
Our newly incorporated primos have brought with them experience in cultural citizenship (communitarian values and community building), and also they are not shy about accepting neoliberal political practices when they are favorable to their needs (like Chicanos have done forever). They are pragmatic about pledging allegiance to an adopted nation as legal residents or not, and aware like us, that this does not rob them of the right to practice cultural citizenship, even when they are undocumented.
As new activist allies they share the knowledge and gut feeling that the U.S. pro-civil rights policies and the related Chicano Movement, Black Movement, Feminist, and other progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s have promoted the expansion of cultural citizenship and the empowerment to practice it in different forms through organizations which sustain native languages, values and cultures. At the same time, we are helping our primos accelerate the process of acquiring citizenship status and/or regularizing their undocumented condition because they and we realize the urgency to participate in the electoral process.
This urgency and fervent desire reminds me of our work with the Raza Unida Party which in my opinion championed cultural citizenship and then actively practiced substantial citizenship by participating in electoral politics. Although short-lived, RUP is an excellent model for transitioning from cultural citizenship to substantial citizenship. It can happen!
Today, we can regroup. As experienced activists, we are challenged to work with our communities on incorporating social/economic rights into our LUCHA for civil rights and social justice. Theorists on the origins of citizenship in the United States agree that unless civil rights and social justice include social rights, meaning social welfare, economic, legal and political guarantees, SUBSTANTIAL RIGHTS AND FULL PARTICIPATION IN THE ELECTORAL PROCESS are beyond our reach. In that case, we will remain forever in the limbo we face today; total lack of control over our lives in this nation, contrary to Constitutional guarantees. We cannot exercise our civil and social rights if we’re homeless, without health care, and if we are enslaved by two and three jobs, without capital to sue for voting rights in the courts. In other words, without social rights/capital, we have no resources to enable our full participation in the electoral process.
Just as we created the Raza Unida Party and strategies for gaining substantial citizenship and participating in the electoral process, today we can build on this experience, and accelerate the process by focusing on the following:
We also need to:
And most important:
THIS IS HUGE, however, we have models in place in all except the last (although Raza Unida is an excellent model), and we do have groups that are now organizing to work on this last recommendation. The fact is, that despite much pessimism, the CIVIL RIGHTS, THE CHICANO AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENTS HAVE PRODUCED political dividends and we now have “legacy” emergent leaders like Julian and Joaquin Castro, Avina Gutierrez, Chito Vela, and the rest of our children now leading institutions intent on protecting and expanding our legacy of civil rights to include SOCIAL (ECONOMIC) rights and eventually SUBSTANTIAL RIGHTS in the future.
Viva la Raza!!!
Martha P. Cotera is a librarian, writer, and influential activist of both the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and the Chicana Feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Cotera was one of six women featured in a documentary, Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana, which recounts the experiences of some of the Chicana participants of the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas.
−Armando Rendón
MY FUTURE IDEAL
Presentation for Blueprint Panel, USCCR conference, November 17, 2018
By Martha P. Cotera
As we incorporate more diverse indigenous and mestizo primos from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean into our communities going forward, I am incredibly energized by the prospect of a brighter political future and our empowerment to gain social/economic rights leading to full citizenship through substantial rights (social/economic). Currently my activist work is primarily on electoral issues, local policies, and with the feminist and immigrant communities, and I’m proud to say that many indigenous and mestizo immigrants from throughout the Americas now claim the term Chicano which to them represents pride in indigenous and mestizo cultures.
Our more concientizado primos realize that the Civil Rights and Chicano movements empowered us to practice cultural citizenship wherein we “constructed, established and affirmed our human, social and cultural rights based on our individual and collective identities,” values and practices. We asserted the right to maintain our culture even as we become politically active and incorporated into the electoral process in the United States.
Our newly incorporated primos have brought with them experience in cultural citizenship (communitarian values and community building), and also they are not shy about accepting neoliberal political practices when they are favorable to their needs (like Chicanos have done forever). They are pragmatic about pledging allegiance to an adopted nation as legal residents or not, and aware like us, that this does not rob them of the right to practice cultural citizenship, even when they are undocumented.
As new activist allies they share the knowledge and gut feeling that the U.S. pro-civil rights policies and the related Chicano Movement, Black Movement, Feminist, and other progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s have promoted the expansion of cultural citizenship and the empowerment to practice it in different forms through organizations which sustain native languages, values and cultures. At the same time, we are helping our primos accelerate the process of acquiring citizenship status and/or regularizing their undocumented condition because they and we realize the urgency to participate in the electoral process.
This urgency and fervent desire reminds me of our work with the Raza Unida Party which in my opinion championed cultural citizenship and then actively practiced substantial citizenship by participating in electoral politics. Although short-lived, RUP is an excellent model for transitioning from cultural citizenship to substantial citizenship. It can happen!
Today, we can regroup. As experienced activists, we are challenged to work with our communities on incorporating social/economic rights into our LUCHA for civil rights and social justice. Theorists on the origins of citizenship in the United States agree that unless civil rights and social justice include social rights, meaning social welfare, economic, legal and political guarantees, SUBSTANTIAL RIGHTS AND FULL PARTICIPATION IN THE ELECTORAL PROCESS are beyond our reach. In that case, we will remain forever in the limbo we face today; total lack of control over our lives in this nation, contrary to Constitutional guarantees. We cannot exercise our civil and social rights if we’re homeless, without health care, and if we are enslaved by two and three jobs, without capital to sue for voting rights in the courts. In other words, without social rights/capital, we have no resources to enable our full participation in the electoral process.
Just as we created the Raza Unida Party and strategies for gaining substantial citizenship and participating in the electoral process, today we can build on this experience, and accelerate the process by focusing on the following:
- As with RUP, we should prioritize voter education and concientización on issues of citizenship
- Protect immigrants, and assertively demand legalization of communities now living and working under peonage conditions and “Jim Crow” laws.
We also need to:
- Expand education on civil and social rights as we are doing by advocating for Mexican American and Latino Studies statewide
- Develop cultural community academias K-12 to teach civil rights and social justice as we have done through Academia Cuauhtli at the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin to educate our children until ethnic studies reach them
- Continue outreach to the immigrant communities in collaborative activist work, and to ensure that collaborations include education in civil and social/economic rights
- Continue work on citizenship programs and follow up on electoral participation
And most important:
- Develop models for incorporating current cultural citizenship initiatives into the electoral process
THIS IS HUGE, however, we have models in place in all except the last (although Raza Unida is an excellent model), and we do have groups that are now organizing to work on this last recommendation. The fact is, that despite much pessimism, the CIVIL RIGHTS, THE CHICANO AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENTS HAVE PRODUCED political dividends and we now have “legacy” emergent leaders like Julian and Joaquin Castro, Avina Gutierrez, Chito Vela, and the rest of our children now leading institutions intent on protecting and expanding our legacy of civil rights to include SOCIAL (ECONOMIC) rights and eventually SUBSTANTIAL RIGHTS in the future.
Viva la Raza!!!
Martha P. Cotera is a librarian, writer, and influential activist of both the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and the Chicana Feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Cotera was one of six women featured in a documentary, Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana, which recounts the experiences of some of the Chicana participants of the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas.