orty-five
years ago when I began university teaching after some years as a high
school teacher of French, there was no Chicano Studies. That is, no
Chicano Studies as an organized field of study. To be sure, there were
Mexican American scholars working on various aspects of Mexican
American life and its cultural productions, scholars like Aurelio
Espinosa, Juan Rael, Arturo Campa, Fray Angelico Chaves, George I.
Sanchez, Americo Paredes, and others. Important as this scholarship
was, it emerged amorphously, reflecting independent intellectual
interests rather than a scholarship reflecting a field of study. This
is not to say that some of these scholars may not have considered
their work as part of a field of study conceptualized as Mexican
American Studies. Despite its lack of an under-pinning, it was
a field of Mexican American Studies, its constituent parts subsumed as
American folklore.
This
situation created a critical barrier to the public discussion and
dissemination of information about the presence of Mexican Americans
in the United States and their contributions to American society.
Until 1960 and the emergence of the Chicano Movement, Mexican
Americans were characterized by mainstream American
scholars–principally anthropologists and social workers–in terms
of the queer, the curious, and the quaint. That
is, regarded as a “tribe,” Mexican Americans were categorized as
just another item in the flora and fauna of Americana in precisely the
same way American Indians were categorized.
The
Chicano Movement–that wave of concientizacion that came to
bloom among Mexican Americans in the 60's transforming them into
Chicanos– helped to change American perceptions about Mexican
Americans. While Mexican Americans knew much about Anglo Americans,
Anglo Americans knew little about Mexican Americans. From 1848 to
1912–the period of transition for the conquest generation of
Mexicans who became Americans per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on
February 2, 1848–Mexican Americans were regarded poorly by the
American public. So poorly, in fact, that the territories of New
Mexico and Arizona were delayed statehood until their populations were
predominantly Anglo American.
In
Two Years before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana described the
Mexican Americans as “an idle, thriftless people” who could make
nothing for themselves (1959: 9). And in 1852, Colonel Monroe reported
to Washington that “the New Mexicans are thoroughly debased and
totally incapable of self-government, and there is no latent quality
about them that can ever make them respectable. They have more Indian
blood than Spanish, and in some respects are below the Pueblo Indians,
for they are not as honest or as industrious” (Congressional
Globe, 32nd Con-gress, 2nd Session, January
10, 1853, Appendix, p. 104).
Four
years later, W.W.H. Davis, United States Attorney for the Territory of
New Mexico, wrote a propos his experiences with Mexican Americans that
“they possess the cunning and deceit of the Indian, the politeness
and the spirit of revenge of the Spaniard, and the imaginative
temperament and fiery impulses of the moor.” He described them as
smart and quick but lacking the “stability and character and
soundness of intellect that give such vast superiority to the
Anglo-Saxon race over every other people” (New Mexico and her
People, 1857, 85-86).
In
1874, General William Tecumseh Sherman quipped before a committee of
the House of Representatives that Mexico be prevailed upon to take
back the territory of New Mexico (Arnold L. Rodriguez, “New Mexico
in Transition,” New Mexico Historical Review, XXIV, July
1949, 186). And in 1902, Sena-tor Albert Beveridge of Indiana objected
to statehood for the New Mexico Territory on the grounds that “the
majority of people in New Mexico could speak only [Spanish]. . . .
Illiteracy was high and the arid conditions of the southwest imposed
serious limita-tions on agriculture” (Robert W. Larson, New
Mexi-co’s Quest for Statehood 1846-1912, 1968: 215).
Even
after 64 years as Americans, Mexican Americans were considered
foreigners in their own land. Little thought was given to the fact
that Mexican Americans were not immigrants to the Unied States, that
they were a “territorial minority” cum Americans as a booty of
war, that the border had crossed them, and not the other way around.
By the 20th century, mainstream Americans had forgotten
that as a consequence of the U.S.–Mexico War of 1846-1848 Mexico was
dismembered, giving up more than half of its territory to the United
States: a territory now constituting the states of Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, as well as parts of
Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma, a territory larger than France, Spain,
and Italy combined.
During
the period of Americanization from 1912 to 1960, Mexican Americans
fared little better despite their efforts to become Americans. During
this period, from 1913 to 1930, more than a million and a half
Mexicans made their way north from Mexico to the United States, owing
to the destabilization of Mexico during its civil war from 1913 to
1921. This influx of Mexicans to the United States plus the population
of Mexicans who were part of the conquest generation came to
constitute the primary population of Mexican Americans that has given
rise to their present demographics in 21st century America.
We
have no definitive count as to the numbers of Mexicans who came with
the dismembered territory. Figures range from a low of 75,000 to
300,000. The dismembered territory was certainly not void of
population, considering the cities that were part of the annexed
territory–San Antonio, El Paso, Santa Fe and the San Luis Valley of
Colorado, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis
Obispo, San Francisco, and Pueblo, Colorado, not counting the hundreds
of smaller communities dotting the land-scape.
The
third factor in the demographic growth of Mexican Americans was the 20
year immigration compact between the United States and Mexico that
brought thousands of Mexican “braceros” (laborers) into the
country between 1942 and 1962. This demographic troika of Mexican
Americans (conquest generation, civil war refugees, and braceros)
now numbers some 30 million, its growth due principally to
fertility abetted certainly by a small but steady annual ingress of
immigrants since 1962.
These
30 million Mexican Americans are 66% of the American Hispanic
population. That is, two out of three American Hispanics are Mexican
Americans. These are not undocumented workers; they are American
citizens. But in the current wave of nativist hysteria, American
Hispanics including Mexican Americans are regarded as aliens whose
expedient deportation is desirable in the national interest. As
American citizens, Mexican Americans have been thrown into the mix
with undocumented Hispanic workers not only from Mexico but throughout
Latin America, under the rubric of “illegal immigrants.” This is
“Why Chicano Studies?” Americans need to understand that Mexican
Americans are not a new population. That they have been part of the
American enterprise for 160 years. And this is why after almost 40
years I am still convinced about the need for Chicano Studies.
hen
I joined the English Department at New Mexico State University almost
half a century ago, I was the only Mexican American in the department
and unaware about Mexican American Studies, though I had studied
Spanish literature, Mexican literature, and Latin American literature
as well as English literature and American literature. My parents
taught me about Mexico. I knew that a branch of mother’s family had
settled in San Antonio, Texas, in 1731. But about Mexican Americans in
general, I knew nothing except that we had relatives in Chicago and
Pittsburgh (whom we visited often), as well as in Texas.
In
my comparative studies classes at the University of Pittsburgh between
1948 and 1952, I learned nothing about Mexican Americans except what I
learned from the long-time Mexican American communities there. But
none of that information spurred my curiosity to learn about the
history of Mexican Americans in the United States. The apodictic value
system of the United States held me firmly in its grip, reinforcing
the mantra that I was an American. Later, a Chicano poem would ask: If
George Washington was my father, why wasn’t he Chicano? And later, I
would ask: Why do our teachers and textbooks emphasize a special
relationship between the United States and England as the mother
country. In a country of E Pluribus Unum (One out of many), the
United States has many mother countries. The population of the
United States is the world.
n
1970 I was recruited to be founding director of the Chicano Studies
Program at the University of Texas at El Paso, first such program in
the state (and still there). By this time, I had become conscientized
as a Chicano. From 1967 on, I had become identified as a Quinto Sol
Writer, that is, among the first wave of Chicano writers of the Chicano
Renaissance which had its beginning in 1966 with the creation of
Quinto Sol Publications headed by Octavio Romano. By 1970, I had
written extensively about Mexican Americans and their plight in the
United States. In the Fall of 1969 I had taught the first course in
Chicano literature in the country. By 1970, I was finishing up Backgrounds
of Mexican American Literature, first literary history in the
field (University of New Mexico, 1971).
In
1969, California had organized the first Chicano Studies Program in
the country. In the following two years many more Chicano Studies
Programs were inaugurated throughout the Hispanic Southwest. But all
was not serene in Aztlan–the name Chicanos chose to identify
the Hispanic Southwest, that territory dismembered from Mexico as a
consequence of the U.S. War with Mexico (1846-1848) and annexed by
the United States per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on
February 2, 1848.
The
Handbook for the organization of Chicano Studies was developed in
California as El Plan de Santa Barbara (The Plan of Santa
Barbara). This was the blueprint we used in developing the Chicano
Studies Program at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1970. Our
guiding principal per the Plan de Santa Barbara was: a Chicano
Studies Program not controlled by Chicanos is not a Chicano Studies
Program.
Not
surprisingly, Chicano students, faculty, and community leaders pressed
hard for Chicano control of the Chicano Studies Program at the
University of Texas at El Paso, despite institutional and system
resistance. That resistance was so obstructive, that only a student
takeover of the administration building with the president as
hostage in December of 1971 precipitated the necessary impetus for the
institutionalization of Chicano Studies.
Reluctantly,
the intransigence of the university turned to half-hearted support for
Chicano Studies. Our aim was to embed Chicano Studies courses in as
many departments as we could. Our recruitment efforts were
effective, bringing to the UT El Paso campus Chicano luminaries like
Rodolfo de la Garza in Political Science, Donald Castro in English,
Hector Serrano in Theater, and Tomas Arciniega in Education. We
increased the number of Chicano faculty substantially, but still
nowhere near a percentage reflecting our numbers in the American
population or our numbers in El Paso–a community more than 75
percent mejicano at the time.
More than half the students at the University of Texas at El Paso in
1970 were mejicanos, but Mexican American visibility on campus was
restricted to the maintenance workers, janitors, and gardeners. Our
objectives for Chicano Studies were twofold: not only would Chicano
Studies help us to enlighten both Chicanos and non-Chicanos about
who we were, but Chicano Studies would enable us to promote our
visibility beyond maintenance workers, janitors, and gardeners.
Moreover, Chicano Studies would provide the missing pieces of American
history anent Mexican Americans. Chicano Studies would show Americans
the rich heritage of Mexican Americans and the splendor of their
indigenous past. This was one way to bring Chicanos into the
consciousness of the American mainstream, though Chicano Studies was
not explicitly a mainstream venue. Chicano Studies was the alternative
to the mainstream. That was Octavio Romano’s argument in the
editorial of the first issue of El Grito in 1967. Since the
American mainstream rejected Chicanos, Chicanos would establish their
own institutions and outlets for their cultural productions. Chicano
achievement was not predicated on the approval of the mainstream.
While Chicanos wanted to be in the mainstream they would not be brown
copies of whites in the mainstream.
Now,
almost forty years later, looking back on the progress and evolution
of Chicano Studies I wonder how much mainstreaming has taken place.
And whether mainstreaming has been the ignis fatuus it has
always been for Chicanos. In a recent edition of The American
Tradition in Literature published by McGraw Hill, the 2500 page
anthology did not include one American Hispanic writer (that is, an
Hispanic writer who is of the United States and not from Hispanic
America). Not till page 2299 do we see an Hispanic writer: Isabel
Allende, the Chilean writer who now lives and writes in the United
States. Not one Chicano writer appears in the McGraw Hill anthology
which purports to be the American tradition in literature. This
situation would be like including Chinua Achebe in the anthology as
representative of African American writers.
Five
decades later Chicanos are still invisible to the American mainstream,
although a number of Chicano writers have made their way into that
mainstream. Despite Chicano nationalism, there is a wave of Chicanos
who desperately seek approval of the white mainstream which
progressively validates Chicanos who most reflect its values. In the
background, however, silent running, are those diehard Chicano venues
like Arte Publico Press and The Bilingual Review Press which continue
to nurture the aspirations of Chicano writers still marginalized by
mainstream presses.
In
1968 the absence of minority writers in anthologies of American
literature, especially those antholgies used in colleges and
universities, was so exacerbated that the minority caucuses of the
National Council of Teachers of English banded together as the NCTE
Task Force on Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, issuing a
blistering report entitled Searching for America which
detailed just how bad the situation was. Along with Carlota Cardenas
Dwyer and Jose Carrasco, I was a founding member of that Task Force.
The NCTE Report included the piece on “Chicanos and American
Literature” by Jose Carrasco and me, later reprinted in The Wiley
Reader (1975).
In
1970 I sent a piece on “Chicano Poetry: Roots and Writers” to
Richard Ohman then editor of College English. He returned the
manuscript with a note saying he didn’t think the article would be
of much interest to the readers of College English, besides he
was already considering a piece on Chicano literature for an
upcoming issue of College English. The piece turned out
to be an essay on Chicano literature by a non-Chicano. The following
year I presented “Chicano Poetry: Roots and Writers” at the First
National Symposium on Chicano Literature organized by Ed Simmen at Pan
American University in Edinburg, Texas, and published as part of the
proceedings along with the presentations of Tomas Rivera and Jose
Reyna. In 1972 the piece was reprinted in Southwestern American
Literature. In the meantime, I finished my work on Backgrounds
of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico,
1971), first study in the field.
By
1971 the Modern Language Association had sanctioned a Chicano Caucus,
as had the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
It appeared that the Chicano voice was gaining in volume. It also
appeared that conceptions of Chicanos were changing. Helping that
change along was establishment of La Luz magazine in Denver in
1972, the first Hispanic public affairs magazine in English, organized
by Dan Valdes as Publisher and me as Associate Publisher. Over the ten
years of my tenure with La Luz we published dozens of pieces by
Chicanos in various genres. In 1973 Washington Square Press brought
out my anthology of We Are Chicanos which included many of the
early luminaries of the Chicano Renaissance.
hile
there was headway in making the Chicano presence in American society
more visible, Chicano venues began to shrink as that visibility gave
more prominence to Chicanos who became more attractive to mainstream
purveyors. By the 1990's Chicano venues for literary production had
dwindled to a handful from what had been hundreds of ephemeral
“garage presses” intent on promoting the jinetes of Chicano
literature. By the 1990's there had not been a dramatic integration of
Chicano perspectives into the academic disciplines. The dozens of
Chicano Studies programs (including those that were departments)
dwindled as well to a few, although today there are two doctoral
programs in Chicano Studies. Nevertheless, since the 1990's there has
been a retreat from using Chicano Studies as a disciplinary anchor for
promulgating the story of Chicanos in America.
Chicano
Studies has become a subset of Hispanic Studies and Latino Studies,
seemingly more palatable terms than Chicano Studies much the way the
term Latin American became a more palatable term than Mexican American
when the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was
organized in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1929. The term Chicano
has been lost in the lexicon of Hispanicity and Latinismo. More
attention seems to be paid now to members of Hispanic groups in the
United States with minimal population numbers compared to the 30
million Mexican Americans currently in the U.S. population (not
counting the purported numbers of undocumented Mexicans in the
country). Of the 45 million American Hispanics counted in the Census,
two-thirds of them (66 percent) are Mexican Americans.
The
subalternization of Chicanos in Hispanic Studies emphasizes the
point: Why Chicano Studies? Why? Because Chicano Studies is being cut
off a medio grito (at mid-stride), as it were, aborting its
premise and promise. This does not mean, of course, that the study of
Chicanos cannot go on without academic programs of Chicano Studies.
But rooted in an academic setting of respect and encouragement,
Chicano Studies provides the ground and lens from and through which to
illuminate the historical processes that have brought Chicanos to
this point in American history. These are the same heuristic
considerations that undergird other disciplines.
However,
suspicions about the ideological agenda of Chicano Studies have
wormed their way into the debate over Chicano Studies, raising
questions about objectivity, questions Chicanos raised in the 60's and
70's about the institutional disciplines that did not include the
presence of Chicanos in their purview. This does not diminish the
value of continuing the construction of a Chicano narrative; it just
interposes inhibitions to that construction. The Chicano Studies
programs at the University of Texas at El Paso and California State
University at Northridge have endured because of their academic
rigor and the passion of their faculty. This is not to say other
Chicano Studies programs lack rigor and passion.
Whether
a Chicano Studies program should be disciplinary or interdisciplinary
remains a question of academic inquiry and perspective. At the
University of Texas at El Paso the Chicano Studies Program became
interdisciplinary. But my concern is: without Chicano Studies in the
academy, who will advocate for Chicanos therein? In the current public
debate over immigration we see the growing hostility towards Chicanos
who are perceived as part of the undocumented hordes of Mexicans
invading the United States as Lou Dobbs and CNN characterize the
situation.
he
immigration debate avers the proposition that Americans, by and large,
know little about Chicanos other than what they learn about them
through public media. Everywhere today, Chicanos are being assailed by
nativists and jingoists who see them as progeny of “black”
Spaniards and savage Indians. Chicano Studies becomes, therefore, the
instrument through which Americans can come to see Chicanos in their
own right rather than through the normative view of mainstream
Americans.
For
the past 39 years I’ve taught Chicano literature to undergraduates,
Master’s students, and doctoral candidates. Most of these students
have been Chicanos. The students we also want to reach are
non-Chicanos. But they have not signed up for Chicano Studies courses
in numbers to suggest that we are reaching them with our story. This
is also why we need to keep and strengthen Chicano Studies, why
Chicano Studies must be imbricated into the study of the American
experience.
Last
semester (Fall 2007) I taught on-line the introductory graduate course
to Chicano Studies which is part of our Interdisciplinary Master’s
Program at Western New Mexico University. All the graduate students
were Chicanos. This indicates the work the Chicano Faculty Caucus has
to do in promo-ting to all our students, especially non Chicanos, the
Chicano courses in our embryonic Chicano Studies Program.
Como
una hija querida, tenemos que defender Chicano Studies porque si no,
perderemos nuestro futuro.
That’s too important a future
to lose, too exacting a price to pay. This is the exact moment of
history for Chicanos to rise to the occasion. Inaction sustains the
status quo. Now, more than ever, we must band together in common
cause. Chicano Studies deserves no less.
Everywhere,
there are xenophobic and fascist forces that threaten the existence
of Chicano Studies. Mainstream suspicions about the ideological agenda
of Chicano Studies has become paranoiac. In Arizona there are
legislative initiatives to remove from the schools programs deemed to
be seditious, programs that promote divisiveness and breed revolution,
programs like Chicano Studies–any ethnic studies program that
challenges Western values. One Arizona legislator believes that such
an initiative will restore the image of the United States as a “melting
pot.”
As
Chicanos we must ask ourselves: what is driving this current wave of
xenophobic fear? At this point in time, it is diminution of this fear
that is the essential mission of Chicano Studies.
hirty-eight
years after my initial experience with Chicano Studies at the
University of Texas at El Paso, I have become part
of an effort in Chicano Studies at Western New Mexico
University,
an Hispanic Serving Institution whose student body is about 51 percent
Hispanic. I’m excited by the venture as are my Chicano colleagues
on campus. Our joint efforts as a Chicano Faculty Caucus brought the
Chicano Studies program into being. It’s a nascent program ready to
take on the challenges of the 21st century, secure in the
knowledge of its historical past and antecedents. Chicano Studies has
never been about windmills or revolution; it’s about our place in
the American sun.
Copyright © 2008 by the author. All rights reserved.
Lt.Col. Lon
VomBaur was born on 8 December 1957 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
As a young physician who returned to his home community to practice medicine, Dr. Mario E. Ramirez played a pivotal role in bringing formal health care to Starr County. Located in the western edge of the Rio Grande Valley, Starr County is bordered by Hidalgo County (McAllen) Jim Hogg County (Hebbronville) to the north, and Zapata County (Zapata) to the west. The Rio Grande River serves as its boundary with Mexico to the south.
Motivated by the professional isolation he experienced as a country doctor and the severe shortage of health professionals in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Ramirez proposed the creation of the Med-Ed Program during his tenure as UT Health Science Center Vice President for South Texas Programs. In the latter part of his career, Dr. Ramirez established and nurtured the Med-Ed Program. This program has inspired more than 2,200 students in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo with the message that college and health science careers are attainable. In 2007 Dr. Ramirez celebrated his retirement from the UT Health Science Center, where Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, former President of the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, spoke of the significance of Dr. Ramirez's contributions to the advancement of medical education in South Texas, calling him "one of the greatest heroes that Texas has produced." 
Currently she teaches choreography at 
My mom is by her nature happy, never more so than when she’s cooking for someone. While she was born here, Spanish is her language of intimacy and emotion. It’s her language for times of worry, but also happiness. On this trip, I not only got her recipe, but absorbed in a way I hadn’t before her transformation to my Mexican mom.
LOS
CABALLEROS IS THE FIRST CROATIAN MARIACHI BAND THAT PERFORMS TRADITIONAL
MEXICAN MUSIC. AFTER THE RELEASE OF THEIR FIRST ALBUM "FIESTA
MEXICANA" AND THE SERIES OF SUCCESSFUL CONCERTS, THEY WERE INVITED
TO PERFORM AT THE 7th INTERNATIONAL MARIACHI AND CHARRERÍA FESTIVAL IN
GUADALAJARA, MÉXICO, WHERE THEY WERE HONORED TO PLAY SIDE BY SIDE WITH
THE MOST ADMIRED MARIACHI BANDS OF OUR TIME, LIKE MARIACHI VARGAS DE
TECALITLÁN, MARIACHI DE AMÉRICA AND LOS CAMPEROS DE NATI CANO.
