(2010). Movidas Rascuaches: Strategies of Migrant Resistance at the Mexico-U.S. Border. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n2 p9-36 Fall. In the field of Chicana/o arts and letters, "rasquachismo" refers to the celebration of the sensibility of "los de abajo" (the underdogs), whose resourcefulness and ingenuity permit them to overcome adversity by stitching together the tools needed to survive from whatever materials they have at hand. In this article, I apply the concept of rasquachismo to interpreting the clandestine border-crossing strategies that Mexican migrants pursue as a way of resisting intensive efforts by the U.S. government to police their movements. More specifically, I describe the types of "movidas rascuaches" (rascuache maneuvers) practiced by migrants whom I encountered as I conducted ethnographic fieldwork along the South Texas-Northeast Mexico border in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Drawing upon the theoretical reflections of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that the rasquache sensibility forms an integral part of the habitus of Mexican migrants that… [Direct]
(2010). Repartitioning the National Community: Political Visibility and Voice for Undocumented Immigrants in the Spring 2006 Immigration Rights Marches. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n2 p37-64 Fall. The historic immigration rights marches of 2006 placed the plight of undocumented immigrants in the national spotlight. Competing interpretations of the marches focused in part on the waving of Mexican flags by marchers. While some English-language media critics saw the flags as expressing political disloyalty to the United States, the marchers and Spanish-language media said they stood for cultural identity and familial pride. Both of these interpretations obscured the political agency of the marchers, who sought to create visibility and political presence for undocumented immigrants and oppose their criminalization and political exclusion. This essay uses a performance perspective to analyze the Mexican flag as a visual symbol of the political agency, voice, and visibility of undocumented immigrants. Images of the flag in the media served as proxy for the visual emergence of undocumented immigrants from the \shadows of society\ onto the national broadcast/political stage. Negative… [Direct]
(2010). Shaking Hands and Kissing Babies: The Intersectionality of Ethnicity, Class, and Gender, and Latina Women's Decisions to Run for Judicial Office. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n2 p65-87 Fall. Women often enter judiciary positions through the trial courts, particularly county courts, because they see these courts as a stepping-stone to higher judicial office. As the eligibility pool of experienced female Hispanic lawyers expands, Hispanic women are increasingly taking seats on trial court benches. What political and demographic shifts have fostered this change? Does the intersectionality of ethnicity, class, and gender play any role in shaping Hispanic women's run for the judiciary? I examine the political and personal experiences of three Hispanic women who ran for and won judgeships at the county court-at-law level in Bexar County, Texas. My findings suggest that Hispanic women experience, and often overcome, the triple barriers of ethnicity, class, and gender as they struggle for political incorporation via the judiciary, particularly at the county court level…. [Direct]
(2010). Contemporary Deportation Raids and Historical Memory: Mexican Expulsions in the Nineteenth Century. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n2 p115-142 Fall. The contemporary situation in the United States with respect to Mexican migrants has reached a level of intensity that harkens back to the mass expulsions of the 1930s and the 1950s, when millions were forcefully removed south across the border. Recent deportation raids have targeted food processing plants and other large businesses hiring migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. By portraying the current raids as something new, the U.S. media decontexualizes them and strips them of historical memory. In fact, the current raids can be reconstructed and historicized to the moment when Euro-American settlers first encountered Mexicans in the early 1800s. Evidence taken primarily from Mexican archives reveals that expulsions first occurred in the mid-1830s and continued throughout the nineteenth century, especially in areas where local populations were demographically overwhelmed. This period has traditionally been overlooked by U.S., Chicana/o, and Mexican historiographers… [Direct]
(2010). Lideres Campesinas: Nepantla Strategies and Grassroots Organizing at the Intersection of Gender and Globalization. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n1 p13-47 Spr. Based on a collaborative ethnography with Lideres Campesinas, a state-wide farmworker women's organization in California, this essay explores how activists have created multi-issued organizing strategies grounded in family structures and a community-based social world. Building on Gloria Anzaldua's theory of nepantla, it illustrates how campesina organizers create sources of empowerment from their binational life experiences and new forms of gendered grassroots leadership that navigate the overlapping hybrid hegemonies produced by U.S., Mexican, and migrant relations of power. The author argues that immigrant women's organizing challenges the racialized and gendered forms of structural violence exacerbated by neoliberal globalization and serves as an unrecognized source of transnational feminist theorizing…. [Direct]
(2010). Toward a Borderlands Ethics: The Undocumented Migrant and Haunted Communities in Contemporary Chicana/o Fiction. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n1 p49-67 Spr. By reading Helena Maria Viramontes's "Cariboo Cafe" and Daniel Chacon's "Godoy Lives," this essay argues that Chicana/o fiction articulates what I call a "borderlands ethics." Both Viramontes and Chacon give the undocumented migrant the power to merge the United States and Latin America, self and other, citizen and noncitizen. These mergers demonstrate how a borderlands ethical stance can produce new unauthorized truths and relations outside the law and beyond national borders. However, these stories of ghostly kinship also produce a political imperative: to resurrect borderlands relations and experiences in the public sphere. Through the trope of haunting and an engagement with a borderlands ethics, "The Cariboo Cafe" and "Godoy Lives" help us understand that maintaining a Latina/o ethnic identity is not a simple act of preservation; it is an ethico-political project that challenges the United States to form new visions of democracy… [Direct]
(2010). Framing Peace as Violence: Television News Depictions of the 2007 Police Attack on Immigrant Rights Marchers in Los Angeles. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n1 p69-101 Spr. This study examines two successive days of U.S. television news coverage of the May 1, 2007, immigration rights rally in Los Angeles. As thousands of demonstrators appealed peacefully for comprehensive immigration policy reform, they were assailed by 450 police officers firing munitions and using truncheons. We evaluated fifty-one television news reports from three networks and five local stations using three complementary analyses (framing, visual coding, and critical spoken discourse analysis). News reporters on the ground at the time framed the events as a police attack. On the following day, however, news media blamed the victims by reframing the event as a violent provocation. We argue that the television news seized political agency and manipulated public opinion about domestic immigration policy…. [Direct]
(2010). The Curandera of Conquest: Gloria Anzaldua's Decolonial Remedy. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n1 p135-161 Spr. In this essay I argue that the primary role that Gloria Anzaldua creates for herself as a writer and activist is that of the curandera of conquest, the healer of \la herida abierta\ (the open wound) created by the borders imposed by capitalism, nationalism, imperialism, sexism, homophobia, and racism. After examining Anzaldua's \Prietita and the Ghost Woman\ as both an illustration (in content) and an example (in enactment) of her practice as a curandera, I provide a brief overview of curanderismo and key developments in the theories of decolonization within global indigenous studies since the turn of the twenty-first century. I read Anzaldua's decolonizing work as a companion to this recent decolonization move within indigenous theory and practice…. [Direct]
(2009). Struggling for Opportunity: Undocumented AB 540 Students in the Latina/o Education Pipeline. CSRC Research Report. Number 13. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (NJ1) Assembly Bill 540 (AB 540) was passed into law by the California state legislature in October 2001 and was implemented on January 1, 2002. Under AB 540, an undocumented student pays resident (in-state) fees at California's public colleges and universities if the student 1) attended a high school in California for at least three years (schooling does not have to be consecutive); 2) graduated from a California high school or received an equivalent degree (GED); and 3) files an affidavit with the institution stating that she or he will apply for legal permanent residency as soon as she or he is eligible. The legislation affects all public institutions of higher education in the state: the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community College (CCC) systems. Although AB 540 creates broader access to higher education by offering in-state tuition to undocumented students, for many low-income undocumented students, even in-state tuition is a… [PDF]
(2009). Queering the Cosmic Race: Esotericism, Mestizaje, and Sexuality in the Work of Gabriela Mistral and Gloria Anzaldua. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n2 p 67-98 Fall. Despite their differences in place and time, the woman-centered Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral and the Chicana lesbian feminist writer Gloria Anzaldua both looked to a transnational intellectual American history that frequently connected discourses of esotericism, indigenismo, and mestizaje. My comparative approach shows how both women used these discourses as a way to reconceptualize the subjectivity of the queer, indigenous-identified mestiza in a modern world. Notions of a new cosmic consciousness achieved via racial synthesis echo through twentieth-century Latin American and Chicana/o texts; theosophical ideas about race and spirit were deeply influential in Mistral's writing and beliefs, and theosophy in turn informed the New Age feminist spirituality that helped shape Anzaldua's work. Outlining a history of the connections between these esoteric beliefs and those of mestizaje, and indigenismo, I show how Mistral and, later, Anzaldua inherited and rewrote these notions by… [Direct]
(2009). The Core Ideals of the Mexican American Gang Living the Presentation of Defiance. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n2 p99-134 Fall. Current approaches to designing antigang policies overemphasize the notion that criminality is the defining characteristic of gangs and that solutions require a get-tough approach. As an ex-gang member, I conducted a five-year ethnographic study and a fourteen-year informal study of Mexican American street gangs in two Southwestern states to understand the persistence of gangs. I found that the obstacles that have been imposed on low-income, ethnic minority neighborhoods have led to an adaptive strategy for survival in which gangs play a central, albeit destructive, role. Gangs maintain their cohesiveness and longevity through four core ideals: displaying loyalty, responding courageously to external threats, promoting and defending gang status, and maintaining a stoic attitude toward the negative consequences of gang life. State-sponsored opposition to gangs only further solidifies these ideals. Pragmatic solutions will require rechanneling the collective energy of current and former… [Direct]
(2009). Anti- and Pro-Immigrant Entrepreneurs Labeling Theory Revisited. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n2 p135-154 Fall. Almost forty years ago, noted immigration scholar Jorge A. Bustamante published an article in the \American Journal of Sociology\ applying Howard Becker's labeling theory to the phenomenon of deviantizing and stigmatizing the undocumented. While immigration laws and some of the players involved have changed since his article was published, labeling theory remains an ideal tool for analyzing anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant postulates, arguments, and policies. This essay revisits labeling theory, as seen through Bustamante's lens, in order to understand the debates around the undocumented over the past two decades. Three types of \moral entrepreneurs\ advocating for and against the undocumented worker are examined: the nativist, the economic, and the humanitarian. An expanded moral entrepreneurship model can illuminate social processes affecting a vulnerable population through the insertion of a moral argument component and in this way may act as a catalyst for positive social change…. [Direct]
(2009). Toward a Trans(National) Reading of Ramon "Tianguis" Perez's "Diario de un mojado". Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n1 p13-34 Spr. In Ramon "Tianguis" Perez's "Diario de un mojado", Perez identifies primarily as a "mojado" and a "macuiltianguense" (a person from San Pablo de Macuiltianguis, Oaxaca). The concept of community as elaborated in the diary incorporates macuiltianguenses on both sides of the border. This essay argues that Perez's transnational community must be understood within a framework that addresses both Mexican and U.S. national identities and nation-states. Although the main focus is "Diario de un mojado", the essay also includes a brief analysis of "Diary of a Guerrilla" as a way to place Perez's migration into context. In these texts, Perez does not undo national identities completely; rather, he dialogues with the dominant discourse of "mexicanidad" because he sees that it comes into conflict with his indigenous Zapotec identity, and he specifically rejects a U.S. national identity. The processes that Perez describes can… [Direct]
(2009). Spatializing Sexuality in Jaime Hernandez's "Locas". Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n1 p35-64 Spr. Focusing on Jaime Hernandez's "Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories," part of the "Love and Rockets" comic series, I argue that the graphic landscape of this understudied comic offers an illustration of the theories of space in relation to race, gender, and sexuality that have been critical to understandings of Chicana sexuality. Set in a barrio outside Los Angeles, the comic allows us to understand how this particular urban space shapes the body as both material form and surface entity. It writes a queer Chicana sexuality into visibility, yet refuses to reify it, and thus avoids many of the pitfalls of identity politics. While the heterosexual, patriarchal norms that govern the barrio space attempt to write Hopey and Maggie's queer bodies into the margins of the neighborhood, the girls' bodies also queer the space, disrupting the codes that govern it and remapping the barrio. Attending to both the sociopolitical context of the strip and the formal conventions of… [Direct]
(2009). Identity Theft: Gentrification, Latinidad, and American Girl Marisol Luna. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v34 n1 p65-91 Spr. Released by Mattel in 2005, American Girl doll Marisol Luna quickly provoked controversy. The doll's accompanying narrative depicts her Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen as "dangerous" and recounts her family's move to the suburbs. Pilsen, located just south and west of downtown Chicago, has a long history as a Mexican (im)migrant port of entry. Many Latinos, particularly in Pilsen, perceive the doll and her narrative as a misrepresentation of their community that obscures the economic reality of gentrification and the displacement of poor residents of color. The resulting protest against the doll both exemplifies the contested nature of ownership of space and serves as a lens through which to examine the potential benefits and limitations of "latinidad," or unity among Latinos, in Chicago and elsewhere. Marisol Luna functions as a cultural text on which Latinos, as individuals and as a group, can articulate contestatory ethnic identities and negotiate their place… [Direct]