(2007). All Roads Lead to Rust: How Acculturation Erodes Latino Immigrant Trust in Government. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v32 n2 p21-46 Fall. Political trust is an important determinant of individual political behavior and government effectiveness and an indication of the health of civil society. Declining trust among Americans is well documented. Surveys of Latino immigrants indicate that they are also cynical about government, but it is not clear whether this distrust takes the same form or is distinctive due to a racialized outlook and experience. This essay analyzes a set of 56 interviews with California immigrants of Latino (mostly Mexican) descent. The results indicate that some Latino immigrants distrust the government because they believe the government is racist, suggesting they have acculturated into an ethnic minority subculture. But others are more like Anglo Americans in their cynicism, citing concerns such as lying politicians; this suggests they have socially incorporated into the American mainstream. Still other responses are less predictable, the result of a nuanced acculturation process. These findings… [Direct]
(1974). Supreme Court Opinion, The Lau Case. Chicano Education Digest, 1, 1, 5-9, Aug 74. A suit by non-English speaking Chinese students was filed against officials of the San Francisco Unified School District seeking relief against unequal educational opportunities which were alleged to violate the 14th Amendment. (NQ)…
(1974). The Exclusionist Melting Pot Ideology of the United States. Chicano Education Digest, 1, 1, 16-21, Aug 74. …
(2006). Schizopolis: Border Cinema and the Global City (of Angels). Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n1 p7-31 Spr. The films "Star Maps" and "El Norte" reveal the real political, socioeconomic, and psychic costs of divided cities by bringing the simulated realities of mass media to their logical end, thereby sacrificing each character to the disorder of the city. In "Star Maps", Carlos dreams of becoming the next major Latino star, but this dream is rendered delusional by the racist ideology of the corporate studio system. Moreover, his only shot at landing a role requires that he traffic in a fetishizing racial fantasy about Mexican men. The protagonists of "El Norte" aspire to the free upward mobility promised by the media-induced mythos of el norte, yet the reality they find is one of stark division and stasis: they live in the peripheral zones of the city and work in the iconic and cinematic Los Angeles. The borderizing psyche of the United States is as relentless as it is enduring: there is no fantasy, no dream, no image beyond its colonizing reach…. [Direct]
(2006). The Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon: A Convergent Struggle against Fascism, 1942-1944. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n1 p33-62 Spr. The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee originated as an ad hoc committee and evolved to a broad-based movement for legal justice on behalf of seventeen youth convicted of murder and assault charges in connection with the Sleepy Lagoon case in Los Angeles in January 1943. This essay chronicles the multidimensional organizing to shift public opinion in the case, in which activists skillfully utilized the specter of a fifth-column element made up of Mexican Sinarquistas and fascist sympathizers to achieve their goal. A diverse array of individuals and organizations, including those in the Mexican community as well as prominent writers and activists of other ethnic backgrounds, contributed to the successful effort to win public support and finance the appeal that ultimately overturned the convictions and won the release of the young men who were behind bars. (Contains 5 figures and 43 notes.)… [Direct]
(2006). Social Exchange Practices among Mexican-Origin Women in Nogales, Arizona: Prospects for Education Acquisition. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n1 p63-94 Spr. This paper summarizes quantitative and qualitative findings from a 1999 study of Mexican-origin households in Nogales, Arizona. It finds that women's educational progress is facilitated by social support and, even more important, that a household's investment in the education of its members is significantly raised with an increase in the education level of the female head of household. It argues that systematic efforts to build on existent cultural frameworks of social support will promote women's educational progress and thus help improve educational opportunities for all people of Mexican origin. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure and 10 notes.)… [Direct]
(2006). Mexican Americans and the American Nation: A Response to Professor Huntington. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p7-23 Fall. This essay is based on a talk I delivered at Texas A&M University on December 10, 2005, in response to an earlier lecture at the university by Professor Samuel P. Huntington. It relies on social science evidence to first address Huntington's contention that Mexicans are overwhelming American borders. It then turns to evidence that Mexican Americans are in fact assimilating culturally but still have been less economically successful than the descendants of earlier European immigrants. The essay examines factors that have differentiated the Mexican American trajectory of incorporation and are likely to continue to do so. Finally, it calls for the American public and policy makers to make well-informed choices about what levels of immigration are desirable and who should be admitted, to improve immigrants' economic opportunities through education, and to embrace a multilingual and multi-ethnic future for the country. (Contains 4 figures and 1 note.)… [Direct]
(2006). Theses on the Latino Bloc: A Critical Perspective. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p25-53 Fall. Increasing anxieties about the growing Latina/o population in the United States have fueled virulent xenophobia toward immigrants. This essay proposes the need to forge strategic political alliances by constructing this population as a bloc, a nexus of diverse groups that differ at the level of national origin, race, residential status, class, gender, and political views. Only in full awareness of our multiple contradictions and commonalities, presented in this essay as eleven theses, can we as Latina/os come together, construct our own fluid identities, and more effectively address the hostile political environment and polemics of the current moment…. [Direct]
(2006). Youth, Evidence, and Agency: Mexican and Mexican American Youth at the Whittier State School, 1890-1920. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p55-83 Fall. Using case files of the Whittier State School, California's leading reform school in the early twentieth century, this essay examines the possibilities of gleaning the historical agency of Mexican and Mexican American youth who found themselves confined to an institution that granted them little, if any, decision-making power. As scholars have shown, escapes and attempted escapes from such institutions provide evidence of agency, that is, of real and symbolic moments of resistance to authority. This study demonstrates that, despite the odds against them, youth of Mexican descent had the courage to run away and did so repeatedly, more often than their Euro-American and African American counterparts. Sometimes they formed multiracial and multiethnic groups to plan escapes, and occasionally they used violence. Although Whittier State School staff eventually foiled the plans of most escapees, a significant number of them managed to stay away indefinitely, enabling them to take control of… [Direct]
(2006). The Politics of Drug Trafficking in Mexican and Mexico-Related Narconovelas. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p85-110 Fall. This essay traces the emergence of the Mexican and Mexico-related narconovela. It examines perspectives on drug trafficking and traffickers expressed in novels by Elmer Mendoza, Leonides Alfaro, Gerardo Cornejo, Homero Aridjis, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Paul Flores. The variety of positions taken refutes the tendency of the Mexican mainstream media to define all narconarratives as sympathetic to drug trafficking. Nonetheless, the writers are unanimous in critiquing the corruption in the Mexican police and government. All the authors are eager to expose the symbiotic link between narcos and state officials, as well as to denounce the duplicity of Mexican officials who publicly repudiate drug trafficking while privately reaping substantial rewards from narco bribes. (Contains 21 notes.)… [Direct]
(2006). Performing the Archival Body in the Robert \Cyclona\ Legorreta Fire of Life/El Fuego de la Vida Collection. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p113-125 Fall. This article features the life of Robert \Cyclona\ Legorreta and his Fire of Life/El Fuego de la Vida Collection. In this article, the author critically deploys \homosexual\ not only to capture Legorreta's self-identification but also to argue for the importance of \situated knowledges\ about same-sex desire in relation to art, political action, popular culture, and cultural identity. His collection, Fire of Life/El Fuego de la Vida, charts his narrative from an accidental drag performer to perhaps one of the most largely unknown artists to sashay down Whittier Boulevard. It demonstrates his passion for collecting meaningful materials of the past and evidencing artifacts, objects, and memorabilia that symbolically represent the racist, anti-immigrant stereotypes plaguing Chicana/o and Mexican-\indigeno\ manifestations in U.S. popular culture. As a primary source of original material, his archive speaks to the greater importance of Chicana/o cultural preservation and heritage and… [Direct]
(2006). The Homies in Silicon Valley: Figuring Styles of Life and Work in the Information Age. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p139-148 Fall. The dot-com crash of 2000-01 provides unique opportunities for historicizing what Manuel Castells calls the information age. This age is characterized by the dominance of information capital, a regime of accumulation organized around networks of computers and other information technologies whose production is partly centered in Northern California's Silicon Valley. However, the information age reproduced historic contradictions between capital and labor. How has Chicana/o popular culture responded to the contradictions of the information age? Although the author addresses such question from a series of perspectives in a longer work, in this article the author focuses on the Homies, a popular line of small plastic figurines representing the largely Chicana/o inhabitants of an imaginary barrio in East Los Angeles. These finely detailed and painted figures of various barrio "types," with names like "Smiley," "Shy Girl," and "Spooky," are widely… [Direct]
(2006). Aztlanscape. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v31 n2 p150-152 Fall. "Aztlanscape" is a painting that explores the notions of history, migration, and cultural exchange. It depicts various places with significant relationships to one another, reconfigured into a new landscape. The specific locales used in this painting are Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oakland, California; and Mexico DF, Mexico. These cities have a personal significance because the author has lived in all three. Much of the author's work takes place between two societies and cultures, Mexican and American. Between these spaces, notions are challenged, negotiated, and combined. Identities both personal and cultural begin to evolve. Through these images, the author explores ideas of history, memory, and migration on both personal and cultural levels. He uses landscapes with shared political, economic, and cultural histories to illustrate both the cohesion and disjuncture created by migration and cultural exchange…. [Direct]
(1975). Retention of Semantic, Syntactic, and Language Information. Atisbos: Journal of Chicano Research, 1-7, Sum 75. Twenty bilingual 5-year olds were read stories in English and Spanish. Using variants of the second sentence in each story, recognition memory was tested for semantic and syntactic information. The children were also asked to identify the language of the third sentence in each story. (Author/NQ)…
(1975). Development of Spanish/English Bilingualism in a Dominant Spanish Speaking Environment. Atisbos: Journal of Chicano Research, 31-51, Sum 75. A Spanish/English oral-proficiency test battery was administered to 40 Spanish-surnamed pupils equally divided by sex at grade levels 1, 3, 5, and 7. (Author/NQ)…