CHICANO IS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE AND A BADGE OF HONOR

uprooted Indigenous peoples, colonizaof Salazar, who was killed by a Los Angeles tion and racial mestizaje notwithstanding. County sheriff ’s deputy later that year, As a professor of Chicana and Chicano Focusing on generations, some identify a helped cement an idea of Chicano limited Studies at San Diego State University, I shift from a Mexican American period to a to Mexican Americans. Grab a dictionary often get asked what is a Chicano? HowevChicano period. This is only partially true. today and you will find a variation of the er, I prefer to first outline what a Chicano The reality is more complex, as the same, self-determination and self-naming is not. Chicana and Chicano are not ethnic above assumes Mexican Americans were out the window. identities as they are often misunderstood passive and oriented towards assimilation However, the latter part continues to to be. They are instead chosen political to whiteness, whereas the Chicano was ring true; Chicano today as yesterday is an identities: affirmations rooted in social militant and rejected dominant Anglo act of defiance and a badge of honor that movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and societal norms. In truth, not all “brownforegrounds the historical connection of grounded in a reclamation of the rights, skinned” folks were Mexican American Raza — Mexican, Hispano, Latinx or values, languages, knowledge and lands of exclusively. Some hailed from the Caribbewhatever one calls oneself — to the diverse the Indigenous peoples throughout the an and other Central and South American original peoples of this continent who continent. countries, while others were/are Chuhave migrated in all directions irrespec

Some note a generational shift towards mash, Luiseño, Tongva, O’odham, Tewa, tive of any relatively recent manmade a more radical moment, akin to the transApache and a myriad of other Indigenous borders. Those who carry forth that selfformation from civil rights to Black Power nationalities but were “Mexicanized” or naming of Chicano, or Chicana, or Chiafter Watts 1965. One thing is clear: The read as Mexican by virtue of the existing canx, are inheritors of generations of spiritual and political underpinnings of power dynamics of the last two centuries. resistance, defiance, resilience and digthe Chican@ Movementnity.calledforself-Thegenerationalmodelalsoerasesvery determination — the ability to collectively real community-based, labor, political and While debate rages regarding the afdetermine one’s future. In a context where cultural forms of resistance and expresfixes a/o, x, or @, emerging from a critique most ethnic/racial labels were imbued sion that predate the Chicano Movement of the gendered (a/o) nature of the Spanwith power such that regardless of one’s among the diverse multi-hued peoples ish language, some Chicanas highlight the actual background many with Brown skin who came to call themselves Chicano. difficult battles to get the -a acknowlwould be seen as “dirty Mexicans” or On Feb. 6, 1970, a Los Angeles Times edged. Others note the issue is an intra“dirty Indians,” the notion of self-naming column headlined “Who Is a Chicano? And Spanish linguistic debate further compliwas crucial to self-determination. It is What Is It the Chicanos Want?” by Ruben cating the work of Indigenous language thus that Chicano is often hailed — from Salazar began, “A Chicano is a Mexicanand cultural revitalization. the 1969 National Youth and Liberation American with a non-Anglo image of himHere in San Diego, another “x” is worth Conference in Denver to Chicano Park to self.” Salazar would call the self-identificamentioning. The one in MeXicano from the barrios of Texas — as the first name we tion “an act of defiance and a badge of which comes the Ch- sound in Chicano. gave ourselves recognizing each other as honor.” The opening line, stature and fate Early local movement documents reveal the prevalence of the Nahuatl-inf lected Xicano, whose meaning is an Indigenous affirmation of our connectedness to the Earth. This is one reason, alongside ties to the Kumeyaay and grappling with the border that divides some into “Mexicans” and others into “Native Americans,” that San Diego was an Indigenist epicenter of the Chicano movement.

Many of us continue to struggle against the violence physical and social borders represent — against Brown children being caged and separated from parents as Native children were when sent to Americanization schools. We recognize recent migrant caravans as resulting from displacements of new generations of Indigenous peoples through disastrous economic policies and growing climate catastrophe. Chicana/o/x or Xicano (in its original Nahuatl form without the a/o gendering logic of Spanish) is thus still a constant reminder of the need to decolonize, to indigenize, to strengthen our commitment to, defense of and relationship to our Mother Earth (i.e., environmentally sustainable social and political practices and policies) for the sake of the survival not just of a people or culture, but for the sake of all humanity and all life as we know it on this f loating rock in the cosmos.