CHICAN@ STUDIESWHO ARE YOU? THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND A DECOLONIAL SHIFTDR. IRIS D. RUIZ

DECOLONIALISMIn learning Chican@ Studies, one is learning a type of decolonial knowledge that should be uplifting and positive while remaining true to historical events that brought unfortunate consequences to many indigenous and African people.

Decolonialism should be a process of peacemaking and regaining that which was lost: in this case knowledge and history. Some would argue that decolonial knowledge can be empowering while helping to regain a sense of dignity. It is non-violent, non-threatening and non-combative.

DECOLONIALISM CONT.Now we will enter into an conscious decolonial mindset. We will question, critique, learn and unlearn. We will explore The Coloniality of Knowledge The Coloniality of Being The Coloniality of Politics and Economics The Coloniality of Religion trapping Spirituality The Coloniality of Gender and Sexuality The Coloniality of Ethnicity (from which race sprung) The Coloniality of Food (the tortilla example)

“DECOLONIAL" DEFINEDFranz Fanon: Afro-French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary…(1925-1961)

was the most influential figure in introducing and adding to the theory of decolonization.

First used it as a literal representaion of physical and geographical decolonization

Then used it to emphasize and create: a theory of decolonization that was more figural (i.e. Decolonization of the mind).

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?A commitment to the individual human dignity of each member in populations typically dismissed as “the masses”

Emma Perez: Currently an Ethnic Studies professor at U of Colorado, Boulder Wrote The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas in

History Her goal is to decolonize race and sexuality She uses it as a tool to uncover hidden voices of

Chican@s that have been relegated to silences, to passivity, to a third space where agency can be gained.

INDIGENOUS PRIDE

ANAHUACThe ancient Aztec term Anahuac (Land Between the Waters) and the phrase Basin of Mexico are both used at times to refer to the Valley of Mexico. The Basin of Mexico became a well known site that epitomized the scene of early Classic Mesoamerican cultural development as well.

MAP FOR LOCATION

map

OLMECS1500 BCE TO ABOUT 400 BCE

Known for their Colossal HeadsThe name "Olmec" means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec, and was the Aztec name for the people who lived in the Gulf Lowlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, some 2000 years after the Olmec culture died out. The term "rubber people" refers to the ancient practice, spanning from ancient Olmecs to Aztecs, of extracting latex from Castilla elastica, a rubber tree in the area. The juice of a local vine, Ipomoea alba, was then mixed with this latex to create rubber as early as 1600 BCE.[97]

ZAPOTECSContinuation of the Olmec culture…The first Zapotecs came to Oaxaca from the north, probably in about 1000 BCE. While never displacing other peoples entirely, they became the predominant ethnic group. They built many important cities, the most renowned of which are Monte Albán and Mitla.

The name Zapotec is an exonym coming from Nahuatl tzapotēcah (singular tzapotēcatl), which means "inhabitants of the place of sapote." The Zapotecs call themselves Be'ena'a, which means "The People."

The earliest inscriptions in an American script are those of the Zapotecs, from about this period. (150 BC)

ZAPOTECS CONT.Their highly developed writing system that was logographic in nature, wherein each symbol represented a word. According to one theory, the Zapotec system of writing was the precursor to all the later systems that developed in Mesoamerica.Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/zapotec-civilization-facts.html

Meanwhile…..

The Maya introduce a calendar which has a cycle of fifty-two years, known as the Calendar Round. (50 BC)

TOTONACS

The term "totonaca" refers to the people living in Totonacapan, some authors had translated the term "totonaco" as a Nahuatl word meaning "People of Hot Land". The translation for this word according to the Totonaca Language is "tutunacu" meaning "Three Hearts" signifying their three cities or cultural centers; Cempoala, Tajin and Teayo. The Totonac /ˌtoʊtoʊˈnɑːk/ people resided in the eastern coastal and mountainous regions of Mexico at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519. Today they reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the Pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán (a city which they claim to have built). Until the mid-19th century they were the world's main producers of vanilla.

http://totonac

WHERE ARE WE???

TOLTECS The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology (ca 800–1000 CE).

The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tōllān /ˈtoːlːaːn/ (Nahuatl for Tula) as the epitome of civilization; indeed in the Nahuatl language the word "Tōltēcatl" /toːlˈteːkat͡ ɬ/ (singular) or "Tōltēcah" /toːlˈteːkaʔ/ (plural) came to take on the meaning "artisan".

The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec Empire, giving lists of rulers and their exploits.

TULA

MIXTEC

The major Mixtec polity was Tututepec which rose to prominence in the 11th century under the leadership of Eight Deer Jaguar Claw - the only Mixtec king to ever unite the Highland and Lowland polities into a single state.

Like the rest of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Mixtec were conquered by the Spanish invaders and their indigenous allies in the 16th century. Pre-Columbia their numbered 1.5 million Mixtecs.[3]

Today there are approximately 800,000 Mixtec people in Mexico, and there are also large populations in the United States.

AZTECSThe Aztec /ˈæztɛk/[1] people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries. The Nahuatl words aztecatl /asˈtekat͡ ɬ/ (singular)[2] and aztecah /asˈtekaʔ/ (plural)[2] mean "people from Aztlan",[3] a mythological place for the Nahuatl-speaking culture of the time, and later adopted as the word to define the Mexica people. Often the term "Aztec" refers exclusively to the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan (now the location of Mexico City), situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who referred to themselves as Mēxihcah Tenochcah /meːˈʃiʔkaʔ teˈnot͡ ʃkaʔ/ or Cōlhuah Mexihcah /ˈkoːlwaʔ meːˈʃiʔkaʔ/.

The Aztecs settled on an uninhabited island in a lake, which they name Tenochtitlan — the site of the modern Mexico City. 1345

AZTEC EMPIRE

aztec fire dance

TENOCHITITLAN

aztec music

TENOCHITITLAN

THE CONQUEST1519: The Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes lands on the coast of Mexico with 600 men, 16 horses and about 20 guns.Cortes and his tiny force capture Montezuma, ruler of the mighty Aztec empire, in his palace at Tenochtitlan.1520: Cortes loses control of Tenochtitlan and has to escape in haste with his men during 'the Sorrowful Night‘1521: After a little more than a year Cortes recaptures Tenochtitlan and finally establishes Spanish control over Mexico1525:The conquistadors, settling on land granted to them after the conquest, begin the long process of European emigration to AmericaConquistadors

CONQUEST, GENOCIDE AND COLONIALISM TO 21ST CENTURY DECOLONIALISMFILL IN THE GAPS FROM 1500-1800

MESTIZO/AMestizo (/mɛˈstizoʊ/;[1] Peninsular Spanish: [mesˈtiθo], American Spanish: [mesˈtiso]) is a term traditionally used in Spain and Spanish-speaking America to mean a person of combined European and Native American descent. The term was used as a racial category in the casta system that was in use during the Spanish Empire's control of their American colonies. In the United States, Canada and other English-speaking countries and cultures, mestizo, as a loanword from Spanish, is used to mean a non-white of mixed European and Amerindian descent exclusively, generally with connection to a Latin American culture and/or of Latin American descent, a concept much stricter than that found in Romance languages (especially Portuguese, possessing terms that are not cognate with mestizo for such admixture, and thus in which the concept of mestiço is not seen as particularly connected with Amerindian ancestry at all). It is related to the particular racial identity of historical non-white Amerindian-descended Hispanic and Latino American communities in an American context.

CHICAN@ PRIDE

CHICAN@ CONT.The terms Chicano or Chicana (also spelled Xicano or Xicana) is a chosen identity of Mexican-Americans in the United States. The term "Chicano" is interchangeable with Mexican-American. Both names are chosen identities within the Mexican-American community in the United States. However, these terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the Southwest. The term became widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexicans-Americans who wanted to express an identity, of cultural, ethnic and community pride.

CHICAN@ CONT.Chicana And Chicano Etymology (history of the word)Chicana and Chicano comes from the word Mexica (Meh-shee-kah). In Spanish if you are a Mexica you become a Mechicano.Mechicanos was the original way that the Spaniards called our people of the city of Tenochtitlan, which in turn became a way to refer to all of the people of Anahuac, which at that time and for four thousand years had culturally included what is called “Central America” and Aztlan-Chicomoztoc (the rest of what is called “North America”).In the late 16th century the pronunciation was of Mechicano was changed to Mejicano due to a change in the pronunciation of the letter “x” in Spain.Chicana and Chicano are just a shortened version of Mexica.

CHICAN@S TODAYhttp://Sandra Soto on Chicanao/

My queer performative “Chican@” signals a conscientious departure from certainty, mastery, and wholeness, while still announcing a politicized collectivity. Certainly when people handwrite or keystroke the symbol for “at” as the final character in Chican@, they are expressing a certain fatigue with the clunky post-1980s gender inclusive formulations: “Chicana or Chicano,” “Chicana and Chicano,” or “Chicana/o.”

CHICAN@ CONT.The ethnic signifiers “Chicana,” “Chicano,” and “Chicana/o” when they are used as nouns and not adjectives announce a politicized identity embraced by a man or a woman of Mexican decent who lives in the United States and who wants to forge a connection to a collective identity politics. I like the way the nonalphabetic symbol for “at” disrupts our desire for intelligibility, our desire for a quick and certain visual register of a gendered body the split second we see or hear the term. “Chican@” flies under or over the radar of what Monique Wittig calls “the mark of gender”

-Sandra Soto from “Disidentifications”

LATIN@S

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Collectivity of Saint Martin, Uruguay, Venezuela

HISPANICSThis term is controversial because it really only acknowledges the Spanish language as an identifying trait for people who are colonial products of Spanish colonization or from Spain. It, thus, denies any particular ethicity from all of the Latin American countries and, as a result, grossly overgeneralizes the experiences of individual Latin American communities. For example, what does a Mexican and a Guatemalan have in common? A Mexican and a Spaniard? A Totonac and a Mexican-American? Why is this last question problematic? What does Hispanic mean, really?

HISPANICS CONT.

Calling ourselves Hispanic is like African-Americans calling themselves British because the speak English, have British surnames, and have some white blood in them.

Mexica Movement

FRIDA KHALO