I was recently privileged enough to accompany a group of our school's brightest students to a conference at University of Washington. Our gracious hosts, the students of MEChA de UW, fed us, provided comfortable accommodations, took us on a campus tour, entertained, and programmed a number of other unforgettable experiences for us.
During one of the workshops, a presenter stood before us and made the following argument:
In our organization, we call ourselves Chicanas or Chicanos. We reject labels like Hispanic or Latino/a, because these words come from European Americans who do not have our best interests in mind. The choice of calling ourselves Chicanas and Chicanos is about self determination, about not letting someone else decide our identity for us.
I've known about this particular label for years, and have been more familiar with it as a blanket term for people of Mexican descent who are born in the U.S. The conscious decision to repurpose the word makes perfect sense to me: I absolutely agree with the right to self determination, and one of the recurring lessons I have learned from history is that hegemonic groups seek to cement their position by making their subjects perform a new subservient identity. This is why during the presentation, I found myself nodding my head and glancing at my students in hopes of seeing some resonance in their body language.
But during all of this, my crap detector was stirring within.
I took my time thinking about the word, but it gradually began to slip from my mind until a couple of weeks ago when Angenette sent me a link to a glossary of slang terms from Buenos Aires. Between classes, I casually glanced over the list, and there it was: Chicana.
To Rioplatenses, it appears that Chicana carries the meanings of "trap, snare, deceit, swindle, ruse, fraud...."
With this in mind, the task of persuading at least one huge group to re-label themselves as Chicana/o is suddenly much more complicated. I wonder if MEChIstas have dialogued with Argentinos about this.
I realize, of course that the term Chicano was originally derogatory in Mexico and has since gradually been converted to its modern uses. The origins of the word are disputed, but it is clear that it comes from one of the indigenous tongues of Mexico.
But during all of this, my crap detector was stirring within.
I took my time thinking about the word, but it gradually began to slip from my mind until a couple of weeks ago when Angenette sent me a link to a glossary of slang terms from Buenos Aires. Between classes, I casually glanced over the list, and there it was: Chicana.
To Rioplatenses, it appears that Chicana carries the meanings of "trap, snare, deceit, swindle, ruse, fraud...."
With this in mind, the task of persuading at least one huge group to re-label themselves as Chicana/o is suddenly much more complicated. I wonder if MEChIstas have dialogued with Argentinos about this.
I realize, of course that the term Chicano was originally derogatory in Mexico and has since gradually been converted to its modern uses. The origins of the word are disputed, but it is clear that it comes from one of the indigenous tongues of Mexico.
I welcome the sense of solidarity of purpose that could be achieved through a widespread adoption of a Pan-American identity. But my greatest reservation against using the term Chicana/o is that it is so Mexi-centric, and I simply am not Mexican. Sure Mexicans have borne the brunt experiences on the borderland between the U.S., but it seems that so many other experiences (including my own Chileno/Aymara roots) are swallowed up and assimilated into the Chicano term, and this kind of assimilation is exactly what Chicanas/os are fighting against.
Have any of you experienced trouble or confusion about when to use terms like Latina/o, Hispanic, or Chicano/a? What do you prefer to call yourselves, and in what context?
