BREAKING THE SILENCE: CHICANA FEMINISM

I.1 Feminism and the diversity of women Feminism is a term that has many different uses and its meanings are often contested. For example, when using the term feminism some writers refer to a historically specific political movement in the USA and Europe while other writers use it to refer to the belief that there is injustice against women, though there is no consensus on the exact list of these injustices. Although the term feminism has a history in English connected with women's activism from the late 19th century to the present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from feminist political movements, because even in periods when there was no significant political activism concerning women's subordination, individuals have been concerned with justice for women and theorized about it. The term feminism was used in the mid-1800s. After the First International Women's Conference in Paris in 1892 the term, following the French term fministe, was used regularly in English for a belief in equal rights for women and in the idea of the equality of the sexes. Despite the fact that the term feminism in English has its roots in the mobilization for woman suffrage in Europe and the USA during the late 19th and early 20th century, the efforts to obtain justice for women did not begin or end with this period of activism. Some people think that the womens movement in the USA occurred in waves. Hence, following the wave model, we can say that First Wave feminism represented the struggle to obtain basic political rights during the period from the mid-19th century until the approval of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Between the two world wars feminism decreased but it was revived in the late 1960's and early 1970's as Second Wave feminism. Along with the second wave, feminists went further with their quest for political rights and they fought for greater equality across the board in education, at the workplace and at home. Different transformations of feminism took place and it was clear that the movement would not stop here. As a result the Third Wave appeared. It seemed that Third Wave feminists were even more powerful and more confident in their ideal. Highlighting identity as a symbol of gender struggle, they would often critique Second Wave feminism for the lack of attention to the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion (Rampton 2008).

I.2 Feminism and oppression The goal of feminism is characterized by some people as the ending of women oppression. If we think about the fact that women are oppressed not just through sexism, but in many ways, including classism, homophobia, racism etc, then we can say that the goal of feminism is to end all oppression that affects women. In his article Feminism: A Movement to End sexist Oppression, Bell Hooks claims that defining feminism as a movement to end sexist oppression is crucial for the development of feminist theory

because it represents a starting point which indicates the direction for further exploration and analysis (240). Accentuating the link between feminism and oppression, Susan James claims that:

Feminism is grounded on the belief that women are oppressed or disadvantaged in comparison with men, and their oppression is in some way illegitimate or unjustified. Under the umbrella of this general characterization there are many interpretations of women and their oppression, so it is a mistake to think of feminism as a single philosophical doctrine, or as implying an agreed political program. ( 576)

It is clear that opinions are divided when the matter of feminism and feminists is put into discussion. Without sustaining the idea that the mission of feminism is to end all oppression, many people think that feminists ought to work hard to end all forms of oppression. Oppression is indeed unjust and it is thought that feminists, like everyone else, have a moral obligation to fight injustice. Some people believe that in order to accomplish feminist goals it is necessary to combat racism and economic exploitation, but also they think that there is a more limited set of specifically feminist objectives. In Talking back: Thinking feminist, Thinking Black, Bell Hookss opinion is that

feminism, as liberation struggle, must exist apart from and as a part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms. We must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact. This knowledge should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and practice. ( 22)

We can find a variety of interpretations of what exactly oppression consists in, but, as Frye points out, the leading idea is that oppression consists in an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of people (10-11). Any kind of socialization process will create a structure that both limits and enables all individuals who live within it. So, as a result, we can say that not just any enclosing structure is oppressive. In the case of oppression the enclosing structures in question are part of a larger system that unfairly disadvantages one group and gives advantage to another. Even though sexism compels the opportunities available to both men and women, we can say that women are the ones who suffer the greater harm.

I.3 The emergence of Chicana feminism

Chicana feminism represents a group of social theories that analyze the historical, social, political and economic roles of Mexican American, Chicana and Hispanic women in the United States. For a better understanding of the Chicana feminism, it is essential to relate this movement to the meaning of the word chicano/a. The people who live outside the Southwest dont understand the word Chicano very well. Even those who live in the areas populated by the ten-million Mexican-Americans in the United States do not fully understand the word. Even though there are various theories elaborated by scholars, the origin and the meaning of the word Chicana are very imprecise. According to Edward A. Stephenson, this term was used in print for the first time by Mario Suarez, a Mexican-American writer from Arizona in a sketch entitled El Hoyo. The sketch was published in the summer of 1947 and described a Mexican-American ghetto in Tucson, called a barrio, whose inhabitants were chicanos who raise hell on Saturday night (qtd in Simmen-Bauerle 225). Even though Suarez does not explain the origins of the word, in his opinion the term Chicano represents a short way of saying Mexicano. In his article Chicano: origin and meaning, Stephenson presents the theory of Philip D. Ortego of the University of Texas at el Paso, which is similar to the one offered by Suarez. Ortego ascribes the word to Nahuatl Origin, suggesting that indians pronounce Mexicanos as Me-shi-ca-no (qtd in SimmenBauerle 225). According to the article The meaning of Chicano, the word Mexicano was used in ancient Mexico to identify a member of the Aztec Indian tribe. In modern usage, anyone who is born in Mexico, regardless of ethnic heritage, is considered a Mexicano. If the letters m and a are dropped from Mexicano the word becomes xicano. The letter x is pronounced sh in Nahuatl and Xicano is pronounced Shicano or Chicano (Sinmadera 2004). Even though the definition of Chicano is not universal, usually a Chicano is considered to be someone of Mexican descent who is living in the United States. In Retro/Space: Collected Essays on Chicano Literature: Theory and History, Juan Bruce-Novoa states that *a+ Chicano lives in the space between the hyphen in Mexican-American (26). Depending on the context, the word has both negative and positive connotations. In the past, some of the negative connotations of this word were related to the fact that for many Americans, the name Chicano was associated with persons who were poor, unskilled, uneducated, ignorant and lazy. Additionally, the newspapers from United States popularized the notion that Chicanos or Mexicans came from a country where almost everyone was an unprincipled, immoral bandit. As a result, the individuals of Mexican descent born in the United States were very influenced by this propaganda and didnt want to associate themselves with the recent immigrants. Because of these problems, some accepted to be known as Spanish Americans or Early Californians, rather than be seen as the undesirable Mexicans or Chicanos (Sinmadera 2004). This denial on the part of many native born Mexican Americans tended to further hinder the newcomers acceptance into the American mainstream.

Rubn Salazar, a broadcast and print reporter in California wrote about the human and social conditions of Chicanos, saying that the Chicano people become veritable strangers in their own land. Also he stressed the fact that Chicano meant looking at oneself through ones own eyes and not through Anglo bifocals (Sanchez 1988). Over the years the negative view of the word changed into a positive one. Nowadays, the Chicanos see it as a link to the past and as a way to identify with their heritage. To many Chicanos, the word means bringing together the best of the two worlds: feeling at home in the United States , while still respecting the Mexican culture and recognizing their roots. As Sarah Sales points in her article What is Chicano?, the most important for us is to realize the history that goes into the word before judging it (2012). As a distinct social movement Chicana feminism firstly appeared in response to the sexism Chicanas experienced within the Chicano civil rights movement. The Chicana/Mexican-American women from the 1960s and 1970s who were fighting for the civil rights, engaged together with their fathers, husbands, and brothers in a struggle towards the various forms of oppression and discrimination that their Chicana people have historically experienced. Following the same pattern as their Mexicana and Chicana foremothers, Chicanas active in el movimiento did not distinguish their empowerment as women from the empowerment of their families and communities. Both in their activism and their writings they stood for welfare rights, governmentfunded child care, nondiscriminatory health care, expanded legal rights, and control over their own reproductive capacities. Chicanas engaged in a struggle for better working conditions and attacked racial and sexual stereotypes, frequently highlighting the connections between the discrimination they faced as women, as workers, and as members of a racial minority group. Because the rights for which they were fighting continued to be unfairly distributed along gender lines within their own communities throughout the 1970s, Chicanas became extremely vocal about their dissatisfaction and problems. Even though they showed commitment to la causa, it became clear to Chicana feminists that their interest in achieving gender equality within the Chicano community stood in direct opposition to a discourse of nationalism that accentuated the value of family loyalty in the project of cultural survival. As a response to what they perceived as cultural genocide, Chicano cultural nationalists promoted a series of Mexican cultural icons in order to project an alternative, and most of all, the Mexicano/Chicano cultural reality. As a result, the icons of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona appeared and we can say that these were the images which shaped the boundaries of traditional Chicana womanhood. But the problems were still there. The Chicanas who would stand up for their feminist convictions or who dated or married white men were criticized as vendidas and malinchistas. These invocations of La Malinche, the mistress and translator for the Spanish conquistador Hernn Corts, were designed to make the unfaithful Chicanas responsible for perpetuating the legacy of rape which started with the conquest of Mexico. This standard was applied only to Chicana women, while mens relations with white women were seen as correcting an unjust legacy of emasculation at the hands of white men (Moya 64). Chicana feminists were offended by the nature of this problem and quickly demonstrated its

hypocrisy. Unlike men, Chicanas in the movement were under greater pressure to conform to more traditional models of conduct. Chicana feminists continued their struggle and when the Chicano nationalists attempted to induce that they should get back to their traditional roles as biological and cultural reproducers, they stood up and defended their rights as women. Even though some were pushed out of Chicano organizations or left to form their own autonomous groups, most Chicana activists continued their fight within Chicano movement organizations. As a result, the earliest expressions of what would come to constitute the origins of Chicana feminism were expressed as a criticism designed to strengthen el movimiento. In the book Learning from Experience, Paula Moya talks about the fact that Chicana critiques of macho attitudes were presented as contributions to an ideological self-critique while the Chicana struggles against gender oppression were undertaken in the service of destroying a serious obstacle to women anxious to play a role in the struggle for Chicano liberation (65). In The Labyrinth of solitude, Octavio Paz analyses the nature of machismo. Trying to interpret the machos attempt to dissociate the self from the loss of power, Paz offers the following description:

The macho is the gran chingon. One word sums up the aggressiveness, insensitivity, invulnerability and other attributes of the macho: powerThe essential attribute of the macho power almost always reveals itself as a capacity for wounding, humiliating, annihilating. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than his indifference toward the offspring he engenders. (qtd in Todorova 23)

While most Chicanas put their participation within the Chicano movement first, in the late 1970s some started to get involved in the white womens liberation movements. The fact that many white feminist organizations primarily focused on gender was a problem for Chicanas who were simultaneously struggling against race and class-based forms of oppression. As a result, in the 1980s, Chicana feminists, together with feminists from other non-white racial groups who experienced similar issues within their own ethnic nationalist movements and within the white womens movement, turned to their own experience as a base for theorizing their multiple forms of oppression. In this way, a new political identity emerged and this was the woman of color. Trying in different ways to challenge both the racism of Anglo-American feminism and the sexism of ethnic nationalist movements, Chicanas joined African-American, Asian-American, Latina, and other third world feminists. Some of the most significant writings of the women of color movement include the anthology edited by Cherre Moraga and Gloria Anzalda This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, the one edited by Gloria Anzalda Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color, and the other anthology Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres.

The development of a women of color identity and politics had a great importance, and even though it was somehow supplementing and not replacing the Chicana identity and politics, it allowed Chicana feminists to engage in coalitional politics even as they retained at the center of their politics an analysis of the interrelationship of race, class, gender, and sexuality in explaining the particular conditions of their lives in the United States.

I.4. Chicana and American feminism According to Snchez, in the 1960s Chicanas found themselves at the intersection of two parallel, and opposing movements in the USA: the mainstream womens movement and the Chicano movement (Jacobs 28). While men dominated the Chicano movement, the womens movement was primarily white and middle class. Chicanas system of ideas was similar to those of both movements so they wanted to declare their devotion to the struggle against racism and also their support for the political goals of feminism. Even though they put a lot of effort into organizing their political activity, their own Chicano groups were characterised by a restrictive hierarchy that excluded their participation. In the same manner, the womens movement with its insistence on individualism and Eurocentric perspectives was often seen as denying the rights of Chicanas. Some people felt motivated to challenge the prerogatives accorded to men by Chicano culture and to white middle-class women by feminism. Hence, Chicanas were actively supporting some of the causes adopted by Chicanos, focusing mostly on womens issues. Concerning these fundamental problems, Nieto Gomezs opinion is that

autonomy led to issues of birth control, welfare rights, child care, sexual discrimination in employment, access to institutions of higher education and womens position within the Chicano movement itself. (qtd in Jacobs 28)

Having a specific relevance to Chicanas, these issues put into discussion the categories of feminism as defined by the more mainstream feminist movement at the time. This was stated more clearly by the editors of the first edition of the Chicana Studies publication entitled Encuentro Femenil. As a Chicana feminist journal, they admitted Chicana feminists struggle to be necessarily distinct from the popular feminist movement of Anglo women (Garcia 115). According to Segura and Pesquera, this journal, together with Regeneracin, which was named after a Mexican womens underground newspaper published during the 1910 Mexican revolution, provided Chicanas with a means to frame their local agendas within a larger critique of race, class, and gender domination (Jacobs 28). Some believe that before the publication of such journals, in many ways Chicana feminism resembled American feminism and was organised in a similar way. Being influenced by the politics of the movement, this position was soon directed towards a collateral awareness of their race and class situation.

According to Garcia, at the First National Conference of La Raza Women in Houston it was stated that 84 per cent of the women there felt that there was a distinction between the problems of the Chicana and those of other women (23). The conclusion was that Raza women suffer a triple form of oppression: as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers, and as women (Garcia 23). If we take these factors into consideration we can say that the developments in Chicana feminism had only a vague resemblance to the feminist movements in the USA and northern Europe at that time. It was clear for almost everyone that the normative subject of American feminist theories was totally different from that of the Chicanas. As Alarcn emphasizes, the main feminism excluded the native female or woman of colour from its discourse (Jacobs 29). Neglecting to focus on issues of race or poverty, the mainstream American womens movement initially revealed its indifference to Chicanas and other women of color in the USA. In spite of this fact, Chicana feminists were even more determined to be a part of the movement of each social location that enframed womens experiences. Pesquera and Segura argue that the social position of a Chicana is influenced by the multiple axes of class, race, ethnicity as well as gender and sexuality (Garcia 295). Gloria Anzalda, a great feminist who emerged from the generation of Chicana writers of the 1980s, debated this problem in a more explicit way. In Borderlands/La Frontera, using a phrase normally linked to the mainstream feminism, she says that she is every womans sister. Furthermore she tries to qualify this by highlighting the internal differences within the category of woman itself. Concerning this matter, Alarcn states that: the strategic invocation and recodification of the native woman in Chicana feminist discourse has the effect of uniting the historical repression of the so called noncivilised dark woman with the present moment. (qtd in Jacobs 29)

I.5 Chicana and Mexican feminism Even though the worlds of Chicanas and Mexicanas are different, their strong cultural ties make emphatic the exchange of ideas, experience, and information. While Mexicanas had the opportunity to write within a national discourse that included them, for the Chicanas the situation was quite the opposite. When it comes to their nations, their positions differ but it is obvious that the narratives of Mexicanas and Chicanas have similar experimental forms and thematics. The theoretical and political agendas of Mexicanas and Chicanas which challenge dominant ideologies are included within their narratives.

Also, we can make another comparison between Chicanas and Mexicanas regarding the way in which they articulate their political and theoretical positions through representations of various figures and cultural symbols of resistance. Unlike Mexicana literature, the one written by Chicanas seems to be more critical, using traditional cultural symbols such as La Llorona, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and La Malinche (Paz 14). Chicana and Mexicana feminisms have developed in very different circumstances and have gone in very different directions in their respective countries. Even though Mexico has a long history of struggle for womens liberation, were few things were written about the history of feminist movement in Mexico. One of the first and few texts that outline this development is Against All Odds by Anna Macas . Bringing together Chicana and Mexicana feminism represents a great challenge. One of the reasons could be the fact that the two histories have been disconnected in many different ways for over a hundred years. Yet, as part of an international feminist community, and particularly a third world feminist community, the two have shared in the same larger struggle for liberation, not only individual liberation but one of social justice and democratization (Sandoval 11). The history they shared creates strong ties that are highlighted in the contemporary literary expressions of both groups.