Reading Assignment: Your reply (under Comments) is due before class on Wednesday, February 1. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (91-125)
How were images of Chicanas deployed? Do you agree with Blackwell’s description of how images of Chicanas circulated within the Chicano Movement?
What were / are the Chicana critiques of nationalism according to Blackwell? What is your impression of nationalism?
How does Blackwell delineate the origins and usage of the term “machismo”? What would you add to her definitions? What is the Chicana critique of it?
Who were the original Hija de Cuauhtémoc? Why did the Chicanas at CSULB come to identify with them? How does their identification echo the connections between the Mexican Revolution and the Chicano Movement?
Every time I’ve heard the word “machismo” it’s been used negatively to describe Latino culture and it’s men. However, Blackwell provides some historical background about the word and it’s original purpose. It is interlocked with various other entities like masculinity, nationhood, and revolution. Other examples are pinto, cholo, and pachuco which are also other forms of subaltern masculinities. Pachuco was used in the 1930s and 1940s which referred to the social bandit of the U.S.-Mexico border. In reality, machismo is meant to be a symbol of resistance and a response to colonialism and white supremacy. There was a need to empower Mexican people and especially men who were completely broken down and brutalized. The creation of the word was part of the process to decolonize people and it entailed “recognition of machismo as an important component of the culture, not simply a negative and pathological force, as many social scientists would have us believe, but as positive force that has served to resist cultural genocide”(97). It is a very powerful mechanism but now some see it as inherent in Latino masculinity because it has been described to provoke men to be controlling, jealous, and violent.That strays from it’s true purpose because it has nothing to do with gender, but rather with political practice. Nonetheless, society is accustomed to manipulating words in order, for it to fit with their ideology or fuel stereotypes. I can see how it placed a lot of responsibility on men to lift up their entire family and eventually their nation. Today, the word continues to be used out of context and misinterpreted. Both men and women use it in a way that it creates an immense amount of pressure and expectations for men to fulfill. It has also been used to justify violence in gangs, dominance in the home, and the oppression of women. I think it was really important that Blackwell discussed the tradition and shed new light on something mentioned a lot in our culture.
As we are reminded time and time again, to be oppressed does not mean that one cannot be an oppressor. To combat ignorance of one thing does not mean you are not guilty of ignorance of another. Chicano nationalism is one of the most representative examples of these contradictions. At a glance, the concept of nationalism is liberating. It seems to entail the reclamation of a culture against the hegemony of the colonizer. The reclamation of a history that has been neglected and ignored by White dominance. Chicanos, continually oppressed, were ready to challenge their societal subordination. Upon closer inspection, however, Chicano nationalism in all of its zealous glory was more of a redesigning than a reclaiming.
Discovering stories like those of Senora Flores de Andrade, the Mexican feminist of the early 1900s who militantly shared her meager wealth with those less fortunate, Chicana feminists of the1970s could take heart in the realization that their foremothers had political ideologies and activism in line with their own. They found themselves entrenched in a tradition of women of their culture. If this is indeed, their history, then how is it that male nationalists claiming to represent true Chicano culture casted women as docile, virginal heads of domesticity? Perhaps because Chicano men were rewriting their history to best serve their own needs and their own insecurities. As Maylei Blackwell points out, the machisimo image propagated by the young Chicano nationalists was a reaction against their emasculation at the hands of White, upper-class oppressors. In the frenzy to rise above this subordination and reclaim an idealized heterosexual masculinity, there may have been a subconscious need to then subordinate another group, which in this case were Chicanas. In shedding light on the erasures of Chicano history from the standard telling of Anglo history, Chicanos chose to ignore (or perhaps enforce) the erasure of Chicana history to elevate themselves, and therefore become oppressors as well as oppressed.
It was interesting to read about the first group that took up the name of “Hijas de Cuauhtémoc”. The group really did come full circle with the Chicanas taking up the name in the 60’s and what they were fighting for. To me when I was reading the part where Anna NietoGomez found the paper with information on the “Hijas de Cuauhtémoc” and how she talked about it, made me think of Indiana Jones and finding an artifact. It was such a huge moment for them. Both groups used print to spread information and their opinions and thoughts to people. Even back with the original group there were still people that tried to abuse their power and position. Señora Flores de Andrade encountered men who tried to make her lover by offering her security and money. The Chicanas in the 60’s and 70’s faced similar situations with some EOP members and guys that they met at the different protests. Chicanos looked at Pachucos as there heroes, because they fought and survived persecution and other social problems. Chicanas were looking and connecting themselves to other feminist like the original “Hijas de Cuauhtémoc” and other groups as there own heroes. By doing this they were able to change their political roles. They reclaimed the counternarratives “of revolutionary women and the image of the Soladera through the lens of Chicana resistance” (113). This was used as a rebuttal against the arguments that women in the movement should remain in their places and roles and that them forming other groups was going against the cause. By claiming these heroines, they showed and connected themselves to other women that fought for their rights and against social problems from their own history, thus making what they were doing as legitimate.
On a side note I think that I found a new favorite picture. It’s the image of the Chicana Brown Berets with two bandoleras wrapped around her chest. She has such a serious expression, like she doesn’t want to be messed with. She seems like she could be an extra from the Jay-Z music video “We Run This Town”. She also reminds of the character that Michelle Rodriguez played in “Machete”. The image represents the strong character that can be on the same level as the iconic Pachuco.
Blackwell describes nationalism as away for Chicanos and people from other regions to unite against “white supremacy,” and the historical inaccuracies from the dominant society. But while the Chicano movement projected itself through this idea of unification against a common enemy, it did not allow any room for those who did agree completely with their ideology. It’s because of this that the Chicanas of the time, and Blackwell criticized their nationalism. They saw how it became another tool for the Chicano movement to push their “gendered construction.”
The Hijas the Cuauhtémoc created a sense of national pride for the girls at CSULB. Because they too were revolutionaries against the oppression of their political rights, the publishers of the newspaper by the same name related to them and felt like historical movement served as a foundation for theirs–something their beliefs. According to NietoGomez, the women began to feel as if their problems had more legitimacy and were not “petty,” as women’s problems tended to be labeled. It was a step forward, away from the common feelings of submissiveness and reservation that the women outside of the movement had.
Like many of the modern political movements, the revolutions of the Americas all had a great influence on each other as they spread throughout the continent in the 20th century. The sense of nationalism and civil rights that the movements are founded on are what gave rise to the Chicano movement. Thus, the connections between those events are reflected in Las Chicanas de Aztlan and their inspiration, the original Hijas the Cuauhtémoc.
“Machismo is ultimately a symbol of the resistance of Chicanos to colonial control, both cultural and physical,” (Page 97). To be a man and the man is always glorified because such a statement invokes the idea of strength which a female is “not capable” of encompassing. So for Machismo to be described as a symbol of resistance, it definitely reinforces the idea that our society believes in. However I like how in the reading we also get introduced to the idea that “it is not because his resistance to acculturation and assimilation, but perhaps because his resistance has been more visible and manifest,” (page 97) which Blackwell quotes from Mirandé and “The Chicano Experience”. I feel like this is true even nowadays, I remember running across the idea that even if a classroom is dominated or enrolled with more women than men, the men will still be the first to speak up. They say part of the reason this even happens is because they are the minority in the setting that the teacher wants to make sure their voice is heard. I also believe it is partly because as women we are trained to be quite and to think before we speak so we are care too much for what we are going to say before we say it that ultimately we let the males continue this dominance even if they are not dominating. This is just one example of how even if the male and his machismo are not of the revolutionary nature just their presence and the way they tackle the situation paves the way for such an idea. Machismo and the weight it carries is probably going to be a term that will stick around for a while especially if we don’t change our attitude towards it. My only question is what will happen to Marianismo when this occurs? Especially here at LMU where to me Marianismo is a Marian, a service organization many associate with feminism which is definitely not the definition of Marianismo.
In this section I was most intrigued by the photographs and the newspaper drawing. Each shows a woman in her own frame of light. These two images brought women together and were major contributors to the Chicana movement. I say Chicana because each represented women as strong dominant figures. The figure 3.2 with a young woman with bullets around her neck was cropped so that the men were not shown. This represents women’s power and their will to the cause. I was most surprised by this photo because of the girl bearing the bandoleras, they were meant to signify the historic revolutions but the Chicana movement wanted to promote nonviolence and this counteracts that notion. Also this picture was cropped, shaded, and the coloring was changed and each to help the cause in a different manner. The second image Hijas de Cuanhtemoc was a drawing of a woman with a machete cutting free of oppression. This iconography made its way from organization to organization and ended up in several newspapers, all to promote the Chicana movement. I believe in this case these photos and drawings displayed more for women then many forms of literature. Like many say a picture says a thousand words.
When I hear the word “machismo” I think of prideful, stern men that are the main breadwinners in the household, and whatever they say, goes. It was interesting to see the origin of the word and how the meaning has changed over time. The Chicano movement constructed a kind of masculinity based on the traditions of U.S.-Mexico border bandits, pachucos, and cholos. Machismo was a symbol of resistance; it became a “pathway to resist the gendered implications of white supremacy” (97). Alfredo Mirande stated that it “symbolizes pride, dignity, and tenacity of the Chicano people as they have resisted the onslaught of economic, political, and cultural control” (97). This new kind of masculinity was a result of the oppression of the Chicanos; they needed to show the Anglos a new manhood and nationhood that was not going to be pushed around.
I agree with the comments being made about cultural nationalism and its forms of domination within the Chicano movement. As a response to the dominant perspective of cultural nationalism from Chicanos, Hijas de Cuautemoc attempted to liberate themselves from that oppression through their political organizing and visual culture. Images of Chicanas as revolutionaries placed women in a position of liberation; Blackwell calls this a practice of “disidentification” (120). This art culture “map[s] the migration from suffering, submission, and passivity to active subjects of history and politics” (Blackwell, 122). Chicanas were no longer seen as submissive and passive individuals, as the gender codes reinforced by Chicanos were depicted. This was a process of self-empowerment; a way of turning cultural nationalism around, and include their narratives in the struggle for liberation.
For as long as I can remember the word machismo has always been used with a negative connotation. It is used to refer to an authoritarian male figure that wants to have control over every given situation, except cleaning the house and watching the kids, of course because he is too proud of his manhood to take on the “female roles” around the house. Therefore, to me it was very interesting to learn about the positive things it once symbolized because instead of thinking of it as male pride, it should be thought of as the “political expression of an ethnic identity that transcends gender” (p 96). After learning that this was a “‘tradition’ of masculinity” that was used in opposition to the racism that denied men of color the right to be men under patriarchal norm and that it became a “pathway to resist the gendered implications of white supremacy” I can see how it was an important component of the culture. I also think it is interesting how the application of this word travels throughout generations and saw that in Anna NietoGomez’ telling of how the older men at the Norwalk Senior Citizen Center showed their male identity as being comfortable and part of who they were, while on the other hand younger generations seemed to be role-playing the exaggerated stereotypical macho because if they weren’t then they were criticized as being wimps or Anglicized for being weak. I think this is still true to an extent because for example in a household if a man isn’t the one “wearing the pants” in the house, then he is thought of as weak and called “whipped.” I think the real meaning of the word is important to our culture historically, but the word and the connotation attached to it today are two really different things.
The images of the Chicana women were thought to only represent the women in emotional matters. The Chicana women thought the art that depicted them had them caring for their families or in distress, they didn’t feel this properly depicted what they stood for. The Chicana women believed that the art work that didn’t capture their whole essence was representative of the small box the Chicano men put them in. This small box the Chicano men put the Chicana women in could be due to the cause of “machismo”. Some Chicanos believe machismo was a term that the Anglos forced upon the Chicano men to confuse their motives and ultimately frustrate them. Machismo can be to blame for the men not allowing women to be empowered during the Chicano movement because they feel they need to play the machismo “role” and put women in their “place”. Acting in a machismo way can even encourage Chicano men to suppress the equal rights of their own women, which is contradictory since the Chicano men use machismo to overcome the unequal treatment of a white America. It was very important for the women to see from actual library text that Chicano women were fighting for the same things they were in the 1890’s. The Hijas de Cuauhtemoc really, I think, served as a backbone for the Chicana women movement since it let other Chicanas know they weren’t wrong for fighting for their equality.
Given the fact that I do not speak Spanish I am still familiar with the word machismo or macho. Right away when I hear the word it flashes images of guys trying to be tough and what not. It would seem that in some cases the word has both a positive and negative connotation. For example some people may think its good while others think it may be bad. I believe men in general would think that it’s a good thing to be macho however some may think differently or have a different definition such as it being more of a symbol of resistance. Blackwell does a good job of explaining why men wanted to fill the role of being macho and why women allowed it to happen while quietly sitting by. Blackwell says that it was just being a guy and trying to fit the role of the idealized man, which resulted in everything being more exaggerated. She was also able to compare and contrast the work place with school and the significant difference between them. In the work place she describes the men as being more “normal” however when back in the school setting it would seem that the men were “role-playing” for their macho part. As a result of this not only did it give pressure to most of the guys trying, or having to be macho but also it forced women to continue to be passive. So it would seem that no one was trying to be themselves which in itself is interesting given the fact that this was early in the movement when this observation was made. Also I thought it was a bit strange that the stereotype that Chicana/o’s had about the Anglos and how they were thought to be weak and not stand up for what they believe in. I think maybe only the men were seriously affected by this otherwise women would have been more likely to stand up and speak (Blackwell pg. 91-99).