Chicana feminism
Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.
Chicana feminism encouraged women to reclaim their existence between and among the Chicano Movement and second-wave feminist movements from the 1960s to the 1970s. Chicana feminists recognized that empowering women would empower the Chicana/o community, yet routinely faced opposition. Critical developments in the field, including from Chicana lesbian feminists, expanded limited ideas of the Chicana beyond conventional understandings.
Xicanisma formed as a significant intervention developed by Ana Castillo in 1994 to reinvigorate Chicana feminism and recognize a shift in consciousness that had occurred since the Chicano Movement, as an extension and expansion of Chicanismo. It partly inspired the formation of Xicanx identity. Chicana cultural productions, including Chicana art, literature, poetry, music, and film continue to shape Chicana feminism in new directions. Chicana feminism is often placed in conversation with decolonial feminism.
Background
Some Mexican American women were involved in the early women's suffrage movement. In the early twentieth century, this included women such as Adelina Otero-Warren and Maria de G.E. Lopez. Otero-Warren was born in an elite Hispano family. Most Mexican Americans, especially of low-income and non-white complexion, who did not grow up in elite families were subject to much different conditions.File:Sylvia Mendez.jpg|thumb|Mendez v. Westminster overturned de jure racial segregation in schools. The case was initiated when Sylvia Mendez was turned away from enrolling at a "white school." Mexican American children, especially of darker skin, were only permitted to learn manual skills education, while white schools taught academic preparation. At the "Mexican schools," girls were only taught sewing and homemaking.|leftPrior to the late 1940s, Mexican American children often grew up in segregated colonias in company towns for the agricultural industry. Mexican children, especially of darker skin, were only allowed by the U.S. government to attend segregated "Mexican schools." While white schools taught academic preparation, girls at "Mexican schools" were only permitted to be taught homemaking and sewing, while boys were taught gardening and bootmaking. This maintained class and income divisions. De jure racial segregation was overturned in 1947 with Mendez vs. Westminster, yet segregation still continued in practice in many areas because of continuing racist attitudes and anti-Mexican sentiment.
File:Dora Barrios, Frances Silva, and Lorena Encinas.png|thumb|Pachucas are often ignored in narratives of Mexican American history because of their challenge to gender norms and were treated as "dangerously masculine monstrously feminine."
Pachucas, who were the counterpart to Pachucos in the 1940s, have sometimes been reframed through a feminist lens because of their challenge to gender norms, especially during World War II. The Pachuca is often not a celebrated figure in Mexican American history, in Chicano cultural production, or even in Chicana feminist discourse, which has been ascribed to the way Pachucas challenged the role of the woman in the traditional family. Pachucas would often arm themselves with self-defense weapons, prepared to ward off potential attackers. The Pachuca was treated as "dangerously masculine monstrously feminine." Women who reject Chicana identity and prefer to identify themselves as Hispanic may "not see or want to recognize herself" in the Pachuca figure.
Unlike women of color, white women rarely had to deal with racism. European-American or white women combated sexism in the white community through waves of feminism; the first wave addressing women's suffrage, and the second wave addressing issues of sexuality, public vs. private spheres, reproductive rights, and marital rape. However, women of color were largely excluded from these movements. This urged Chicanas who were feminists and sought to empower women to offer critiques and responses to their exclusion from both the mainstream Chicano nationalist movement and the second wave feminist movement, which formed the basis of Chicana feminism by the 1960s.
Timeline
Chicanas in the ''Chicano Movement'' (1960s–1970s)
Although the Chicano Movement was organized toward empowering the greater Mexican American community, the narratives and focus of the Movement largely ignored the women that were involved with organizing during this period of civil disobedience. Throughout these events, Chicana feminists collectively realized the importance of connecting issues of gender with the other liberatory aims of the Chicano Movement.Chicanas also renounced the mainstream second-wave feminist movement for its inability to include racism and classism in their politics. Chicanas during this time felt excluded from mainstream feminist movements because they had different needs, concerns, and demands. Through persistent objections to their exclusions, women have gone from being called Chicano women to Chicanas to introducing the adoption of a/o or o/a as a way of acknowledging both genders when discussing the community.
Alma Garcia wrote that the Chicana feminist movement was created to adhere to the specific issues which have affected Chicana women, and originated from their treatment in the Chicano Movement and second-wave feminist movements. They sought to be treated equally and be respected. The Chicana feminist movement influenced many Chicanas to be more active and to defend their rights not just as single women, but as women in solidarity who come together forming a society with equal contribution.
Chicana walkout organizing (1968)
On March 1, 1968, approximately 15,000 students participated in what became known as the East Los Angeles School Blowouts. Chicano students across seven high schools in the East Los Angeles marched out of their schools in a coordinated protest. Students organized over shared complaints about racism, inadequate funding, and the neglect of Mexican history and culture within current education systems. Male participants of the walkouts received most of the media attention, primarily the thirteen male student organizers who were detained and imprisoned on conspiracy accusations. Dolores Delgado Bernal, a Chicana researcher, claims that by concentrating only on male students, the participation and leadership of girls and women were severely reduced and the efforts required to organize the walkouts were minimized.Later in the mid-1990s, Dolores Delgado Bernal interviewed eight significant female walkout participants or leaders, bringing attention to the women the media had ignored: Celeste Baca, Vickie Castro, Paula Crisostomo, Mita Cuaron, Tanya Luna Mount, Rosalinda M. González, Rachael Ochoa Cervera, and Cassandra Zacarías. The oral histories of these women revealed that they organized community meetings, established connections, between students across various schools and organizations, and published underground newspapers to spread the word of the movement and recruit more student participation and support.
National Chicana Conference (1971)
A year after the walkouts, the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was held in 1969. About 1,500 Mexican American teenagers from throughout the country attended the conference, which led to the branding of the words "Chicanismo," "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," and MEChA, the nationwide student organization. At the conference, a workshop was arranged to discuss the role of women in the movement and to address feminist concerns. However, the workshop concluded that, "It was the consensus of the group that the Chicana woman does not want to be liberated." Many scholars such as Anna Nieto-Gómez, find this statement to be one of the decisive actions that sparked the Chicana Feminist Movement.Following this statement, the first National Chicana Conference was held in Houston, Texas in May 1971. The conference attracted over 600 women from all over the United States to discuss issues regarding equal access to education, reproductive justice, formation of childcare centers, and more. The conference was organized into nine different workshops: "Sex and the Chicana: Noun and Verb," "Choices for Chicanas: Education and Occupation," "Marriage: Chicana-Style," "Religion," "Feminist Movement - Do We Have a Place in It?," "Exploitation of Women - The Chicana Perspective," "Women in Politics - Is Anyone There," "Militancy/Conservatism: Which Way Is Forward," and "De Colores y Clases: Class and Ethnic Differences."
While the event was the first major gathering of its kind, the conference itself was fraught with discord as Chicanas from geographically and ideologically divergent positions sparred over the role of feminism within the Chicano movement. These conflicts led to a walkout on the final day of the conference. According to Anna Nieto-Gómez, "the walkout distinguished the conflict between Chicana feminists and loyalists."
Viewed as traitors to the Movement
Described as "vendida logic" by scholar Maylei Blackwell, Chicana feminists were often accused of being "vendidas" or traitors to the Chicano movement, described as anti-family, anti-man, and anti-Chicano movement. Alongside vendida, Chicana feminists were called "women's libber," "agringadas," or lesbians. Chicanas who prioritized the Chicano movement and cause were known as Loyalists.Women also sought to battle the internalized struggles of self-hatred rooted in the colonization of their people. This included breaking the mujer buena/mujer mala myth, in which the domestic Spanish Woman is viewed as good and the Indigenous Woman that is a part of the community is viewed as bad. Chicana feminist thought emerged as a response to patriarchy, racism, classism, and colonialism as well as a response to all the ways that these legacies of oppression have become internalized.