In this week reading of Next of Kin we read about the film industry and a lot about Joaquin and being the first Chicano poem and film. What caught my attention in this reading was Sylvia Morales ideas, and thoughts of the exclusion of women in Chicano history. “Chicana” by Sylvia, Morales has different approach to the meaning of Chicano, it’s Chicana.

I took an interest on this topic, it made me think back, and try to recall a history book (besides college) that would include Chicana’s in History. The film begins to explain the root of women’s history and how it ties to Mexican culture. And how that ties into our culture here in the United States and the Chicana’s. Her film is still pictures of all types of women, working, stay-at-home etc. But Morales also mentions activist like Francisca Flores, Alicia Escalante and Dolores Huerta. She acknowledges that there can be two types of women, but none is better or worse than the other.

Morales goes on with mentioning patriarchy, and how it ties with the women of these times. In the film there were no men mentioned or involved. All these women stood alone, which represented absence of a man, and the need of no man. She goes into Mexican revolution era, and the demand for full right citizenship and independent economic based rather than dependence on marriage for survival. There was no need to have women only have economic stability to get married. It wasn’t and isn’t fair that women would only have a steady income through their marriage. This radical thinking is the reason why women like others and myself, have the opportunity to go to school, have a career and be independent.

From reading this part of this chapter, made me reflect a lot of women and our history. We learn in high school about the Civil Rights Movement, and may even watch films like “Walk Out”, but we never really have information about radical women involved in the movements. As a college student, I had never heard of Cherrie Moraga, or Angela Davis. Why is it that women that influenced us today are only mentioned in Chicano/a classes or in Women’s Studies? Chicana women influenced our times regardless whether you’re African America, Latina, Chicano/a, Asian or White. The Civil Rights Movement, The Women’s Movement, the Chicano/a movement and all movements, have affected our lives. And to go with all the movements there weren’t only men behind these movements but women as well. Strong women who had their own ideas and what they believed to be fair for all women. This patriarchal system embedded amongst Latinos marginalized strong women to be part of our History books.

This chapter motivated me (as you can read) to really reflect on my history as a Latina and to be first generation. There were so many women who impacted our lives and I agree with Sylvia Morales, that there is not enough women written down in history in regards to Chicano/a history. The message in regards to patriarchal system rising from years ago in Mexico, is also an affect that women took on and also brought on to the America.

In Rodriquez’s Next to Kin and Noriega’s Imaged Borders: Locating Chicano Cinema in America/América, discussed the emergence of Chicano awareness in mainstream media through cinema and television. Both reads agree that the “Chicano cinema” arose out of the Chicano Rights movement and were inspired to develop a piece that would show their experience, identity, and expression. Both authors agreed the poem I Am Joaquin and the film Joaquín, as the first Chicano film and poem because they are the first to display “political, historical and poetic consciousness about the ‘Chicano Experience.’

I was intrigued to learn about the development of the New Communicators Incorporated, a federally funded program that gave Chicano and black kids about the cinema business. This opportunity allowed for students to use the camera, becoming an outlet of expression for them. One of those students was Jesús Salvador Treviño, and he was determined to change the stereotypical image of Latinos.

Noriega’s article explains that after the New Communicators, these students went out and documented the high school Blow Outs of 1968 in East Los Angeles. They were specifically documenting the Sal Castro hearings, the organizer of the walkouts, was arrested for his involvement. The Chicano filmmakers were able to incorporate their community and issues through an “artistic expression within the movement.” This lead to the explosion of various films during the late 1960s and 1970s, La Raza Nueva, Ya Basta!, In Ya Basta!, and Yo Soy Chicano. The students were motivated from their community activism to “become filmmakers able to work within the mass media itself,” producing Chicano films illustrating issues and objectives of the Chicano movement.

Rodriguez examines the film Mi Familia/ My Family, to show Chicano cultural nationalism recreated with a western “American” national family concept. Other films are discussed to explain the conflicts between mainstream cinematic productions and independent Chicana/o films. Rodriguez concludes questioning the recent productions that continue the “Western family-centered,” and whether it has a “positive Latino imagery” or not. He is looking at specific films and media, whereas Noriega’s article focuses on the phases of Chicano cinema.

Noriega illustrates the transition of amateur films to the mass media production, he examines Treviño’s work with Ahora! series that was funded by the Ford Foundation and PBS.It was interesting to learn that the Chicano community was not supportive of the series at first. Yet, Treviño was successful as providing instant coverage for planned protested and other events. This lead to a creative development of informing not just their Chicano community but others about the cultural awareness and one effective strategy was using a mask of “folk ethnicity” through theatrical performances.Another strategy was “treatro based programs that relief on Spanish-speaking dialogue and code switching,” becoming the first process of the “development of pan-Latino advocacy and organization at the national level.”

After the protests of the 60s and 70s, Chicano/ Latino filmmakers established national institutions within the industry. These institutions were a noticeable shift from “social protest strategies to professional advocacy within the industry and independent sector” and an interesting statement Noriega said, “Chicano cinema both juxtaposed and straddled two locations: America and América,” the fight between ‘nationalism and assimilation,’ allowed for Chicano cinema to flourish.

The readings of this week focus on the representation of Chicano/a families in the media. The readings talk about how Chicano/a families are portrayed on television and in movies. Of the two readings I found Chapter 2 “Shooting the Patriarch” of Next of Kin by Richard T. Rodríguez to be the one to catch my interest the most. I found this reading to be interesting because I felt there was an emphasis on recent representations of the Chicano/a family.

“Shooting the Patriarch” talks about the origins of Chicano/a film and how it has progressed and is still progressing. In the second part of the chapter Rodríguez focuses on the film Mi Familia/My Family and this is the part I found to be the most interesting. This part was the most interesting to me because it focuses on a film that I have seen many times. The analysis that is presented about the film made me realize that I had not really fully understood the message. I had never seen the film as a representation of patriarchy. I actually had never even thought about it in that way. Rodríguez’s analysis helped me understand what the film represent. Rodríguez uses the role of the sons to show patriarchy. Chucho is the son that always goes against his father and Jimmy is the son who listens and respects his father. These two are the representation of the “good son/bad son” (78) in a Chicano family. Chucho represents the “bad son” and he is the one that ends up being killed. On the other hand, Jimmy is the “good son” who ends up having a son and adding to the family genealogy. Chucho serves as a risk to the patriarchy and he “must literally be shot.” (78) The message that Rodríguez is trying to convey is that Mi Familia presents the idea of a patriarchal system found in Chicano families. If it wasn’t for this reading I don’t think I would have ever noticed this idea. Every single time I watched it before I never about what kind of a representation it presented. However, next time i watch this film I will definitely be on the lookout for things I would have never noticed if it wasn’t for the analysis by Rodríguez.

Do you think that Chicano/a families will continue to be represented as patriarchal in movies and television? What kind of change can Chicanos/as involved in the film and television industry make in order help bring change to the representations of our families?

The article “Imagined Boarders: Locating Chicano Cinema in America”  details how Chicano cinema was highly influenced by the Chicano Movement and was an outlet for expression. The Chicano cinema started with the United Farm Workers and the Teatro Campesino and how the acts reflected the social movement that was trying to organize the Chicano community. It was mainly promoting the farm workers strike and pushing for social change while mainly reaching the oppressed minorities within a local community. As the grass roots politics gained momentum the audience shifted from small local communities to larger audiences nation wide. Luis Valdez in the Teatro Campesino and Jesus Trevino in Ahora! used cinema to discuss and critic issues impacting the Chicano Movement. Chicano Cinema aimed to help build unity within communities and to spark social change, their work “wove together current events, history, culture and entertainment”. As one can imagine their was a lot of push back from the dominant culture, Chicano Cinema was highly scrutinized, censored, underfunded and deemed incoherent and unprofessional. Eventually the Chicano Cinema was pushed for a pan-american unity and striving to empower the expression of other cultures as well.

On a side note the article referred to code switching as a way to get around the fact that the Chicano programming was highly scrutinized and censored. At first I was not really surprised by the notion, virtually anywhere you go now code switching is rather common. What did surprise me however was that a show like Ahora! was able to use code switching to say things that would have been censored out had they been said in English. This means that in those major networks like PBS no one spoke Spanish, reason why code switching worked in the first place. It is hard for me to imagine a show getting away with that now.

Week three readings and videos covered the culture of Aztlan and the Chicano family. The issues that were discussed included the topics of motherhood, family issues, community, reformation, and poverty.

I feel like “I am Joaquin” and El Plan de Aztlan go hand in hand. They are both fighting against American influence in their land and culture. Joaquin is the man made to lead the people of Aztlan.  El Plan de Aztlan was pushed in order to find justice and equality for the people of Aztlan. Their main goal was to get political, economical, cultural, and social power back to its people. They did not want Americans to take over something that was never theirs.

Chicana Activist mothers found it difficult to be both a good mother and a voice in the community. There was too much demand on them to fulfill all the roles assigned to them. Patriarchy and the machismo culture played a huge role in the struggles of Chicana women. Women had to fight for rights in order to get assistance because they were living in poverty. Women had to fight to be treated more than a second class citizen. Women had to fight to make the education system better for their children. Women had to fight against the system of patriarchy in order for their women families to have the same opportunities as the ideal Chicano family.  Another issue that a Chicana found hard to deal with was coming out to her mother. Being homosexual was not exactly welcomed in Mexican culture. She said that she wished her mother would have seen her more and notice just how much she was suffering. Mothers and families were in need of help especially since some mothers were left raising a family on their own.

Do you think the efforts to help women families are exhausted or do you believe there is still a breakthrough that needs to take place? If you believe women families are still in need, what can we do to better the lives of this community?

El Plan de Aztlan, was one of the reading that caught my attention. The mission of this plan enforced the Nationalism belief amongst the Mestizo nation.  While declaring independence for the Mestizo Nation, the people clearly and strongly established what it meant to be freeand what it took to be free.

Nationalism was defined as “the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries” and this definition could be identified in the quote “por la raza toda, fuera de la raza nada”, this meant that anything that had to do with the people would fought for, but anything that did not belong with the people would be ignored. I believe that this is what nationalism is all about. Fighting for what with our own hands has been built and fight against those who wish to destroy that.

Another very important message sent through the El Plan de Aztlan was the organizational goals which included social, economic, cultural, political independence, independence from all of these meant true liberation. El Plan de Aztan identifies Unity, Economy, Education, Institutions, Self-defense, Cultural and Political as organizational goals that help accomplish liberation from oppression. These seven organizational goals serve the people as guidance for independence.

Can this plan be used as guidance for machismo liberation? Can this plan be applied to other issues around the world besides liberation from invasion of territory? In this essay, Awareness was very important. Do you believe that awareness is the key to true liberation? If everyone knows there is a problem, can the issues be solved completely?

El Plan De Aztlan  http://classes.sscnet.ucla.edu/00W/chicano101-1/aztlan.htm

Back in the day, I used to be a major “Gleek,” a term used for big fans of the television show Glee. Though the show ended two years ago, I began to binge watch it again on Netflix. Recently, I re-watched the episode of the show in which the Latina character, Santana, comes out as being lesbian to her (“traditional”) abuela. The reason I’m bringing this topic up is because while I was reading this week’s assigned readings, that very scene was freshly playing in my mind.

What I took from this week’s readings was that Chicanos must use their nationalism as a means for mobilization and organization; yet, in order for them to mobilize and organize, Chicanos must first embody la familia, or la raza, arrangement, even if la familia has been romanticized. In the past, during the Chicano movement of the late ’60’s, la familia was seen as traditional. It was romanticized as being a heteropatriarchy in which the Chicano family was comprised of a strong husband-father that supportef the loving wife-mother, both of whom supported their kind children. Comsquently, if this Chicano family romance becomes disrupted in any way, la familia would become defective, and in turn, the impact la familia has on the Chicano cultural nationalist sentiment would become disrupted as well.

What could disrupt this romanticized notion of the nuclear Chicano family, you say? Well, anyone who is believed to be antifamilia, of course. Someone who is antifamilia would be someone who is not heterosexual nor a man who has strong machismo traits. Many people, like the poet Abelardo Delgado, believe that machismo is needed in order for la familia to function within the Chicano culture because machismo allows heterosexual men to be able to run his house, to control his women, and to direct his children. Without machismo, the idea of la familia would dismantle. Delgado claims that women are not able to run a household on their own. In other words, they are not able to embody both the mother and father roles. If women try to, they run the risk of becoming “feme-macho” by liberating themeselves from men. Although he does not state it exactly, I did get the idea that perhaps Delgado was making negaitive comment against not only independent women, but homosexual women as well since they usually liberate themselves from men and tend to have this idea of the feme-macho label.

Now, going back to that episode of Glee I was referring to earlier, when Santana told her abuela that she is a lesbian, the abuela became disappointed in Santana and ended up disowning her own granddaughter. I question whether the writers of the show made the only Latina character gay on purpose or not because it sure demonstrates Delgado’s agrument. Although Santana does not have a family of her own, she is still considered someone who is antifamilia because when she does have a family, it will not be run as a heteropatriarchy.

By comparing the readings with the episode of Glee, I became aware of how much we have grown as a society today. La familia has changed a lot since the Chicano movement of the late ’60’s, even though many people today still wants to keep things traditional. However, one question I have to ask is whether the Chicano nationalism has been affected by how la familia is today?

In the poem Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway by Lorna Dee Cervantes highlights the way women are not given credit for the work they do. We live in a patriarchal society and are taught that women are to be submissive to the men. In one of the stanzas in her poem she talks about how she hears the way women get beat by their partner, and other women say it was her fault for getting beat. This made me feel so angry because we are taught to blame the women for what happened to her, and letting the man slide. In my opinion women should not be blamed for anything because it was not there fault for falling into a bad place. I also do believe that as a woman we should be acknowledged for the work we do because it takes us twice as much to get to the position we are then it does to a man. In the Chicano! PBS Documentary, Quest For A Homeland we are shown the hard work Chicanos did in order to claim their rights in the labor field. Women were also not being credited during that time and there were field workers. The work that Dolores Huerta did was not taken into consideration. This demonstrates how male dominance and patriarchy are highly institutionalized in our society. What are your thoughts in regards to this? Why is it so difficult to credit women for the work they do?

Hello class! As some of my other classmates have already posted, a theme that was seen in this week and last week’s readings/podcast has been family structure and also the mention of the role that women play in this family structure, and living in this patriarchal family unit. I was really inspired by the podcast perspectives especially the one titled Enduring Feminist Wisdom of Cherrie Moraga. She is a feminist of color which is important to me because I feel like I can relate to WOC more than i can with white feminist. Cherrie herself mentions the importance of WOC leaders in activism because these strategies need to come from people who are experiencing it. I was wondering if any of you felt the same way? and if so who are some of your favorite WOC feminist such as Cherrie Moraga? She also talks about the relationship between men and women in her household and how she wanted to be her brother because he was “free”. In my household it’s all women and my father so the women are in charge so i’ve never felt that before, but i know some of my chicana friends who have brothers have told me similar things about wishing to have the same freedom as their brothers. Was hoping to get more insight about this dynamic between how siblings are treated differently based on gender? Thinking about my own family and the way its more matriarchal made me connect with Beneath The Shadow Of The Freeway,because it mentions that they are a woman family. I learned in my women’s studies class about how a matriarchal society isn’t a feminist society because it oppresses men, what do you all think about that? do you think that a matriarchal society could be a feminist society?