Чикана феминизмі: тарих, теория және әлеуметтік-саяси қозғалыс

Sociopolitical movement

Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community. Chicana feminism encouraged women to reclaim their existence between and among the Chicano Movement and second wave feminist movements from the 1960s to the 1970s. as an extension and expansion of Chicanismo. It partly inspired the formation of Xicanx identity. Chicana cultural productions, including Chicana art, literature, poetry, music, and film continue to shape Chicana feminism in new directions. Chicana feminism is often placed in conversation with decolonial feminism.

Some Mexican American women were involved in the early women's suffrage movement. In the early twentieth century, this included women such as Adelina Otero Warren and Maria de G. E. Lopez. Otero Warren was born in an elite Hispano family.|left]]
Prior to the late 1940s, Mexican American children often grew up in segregated colonias in company towns for the agricultural industry. Mexican children, especially of darker skin, were only allowed by the U. S. government to attend segregated "Mexican schools." While white schools taught academic preparation, girls at "Mexican schools" were only permitted to be taught homemaking and sewing, while boys were taught gardening and bootmaking. This maintained class and income divisions.]] Pachucas, who were the counterpart to Pachucos in the 1940s, have sometimes been reframed through a feminist lens because of their challenge to gender norms, especially during World War II. The Pachuca was treated as "dangerously masculine [and] monstrously feminine." Unlike women of color, white women rarely had to deal with racism. European American or white women combated sexism in the white community through waves of feminism; the first wave addressing women's suffrage, and the second wave addressing issues of sexuality, public vs. private spheres, reproductive rights, and marital rape. However, women of color were largely excluded from these movements. This urged Chicanas who were feminists and sought to empower women to offer critiques and responses to their exclusion from both the mainstream Chicano nationalist movement and the second wave feminist movement, which formed the basis of Chicana feminism by the 1960s.

Although the Chicano Movement was organized toward empowering the greater Mexican American community, the narratives and focus of the Movement largely ignored the women that were involved with organizing during this period of civil disobedience. Throughout these events, Chicana feminists collectively realized the importance of connecting issues of gender with the other liberatory aims of the Chicano Movement. Chicanas also renounced the mainstream second wave feminist movement for its inability to include racism and classism in their politics. Chicanas during this time felt excluded from mainstream feminist movements because they had different needs, concerns, and demands. Through persistent objections to their exclusions, women have gone from being called Chicano women to Chicanas to introducing the adoption of a/o or o/a as a way of acknowledging both genders when discussing the community. The Chicana feminist movement influenced many Chicanas to be more active and to defend their rights not just as single women, but as women in solidarity who come together forming a society with equal contribution. Students organized over shared complaints about racism, inadequate funding, and the neglect of Mexican history and culture within current education systems. Later in the mid 1990s, Dolores Delgado Bernal interviewed eight significant female walkout participants or leaders, bringing attention to the women the media had ignored: Celeste Baca, Vickie Castro, Paula Crisostomo, Mita Cuaron, Tanya Luna Mount, Rosalinda M. González, Rachael Ochoa Cervera, and Cassandra Zacarías. At the conference, a workshop was arranged to discuss the role of women in the movement and to address feminist concerns. However, the workshop concluded that, "It was the consensus of the group that the Chicana woman does not want to be liberated." Many scholars such as Anna Nieto Gómez, find this statement to be one of the decisive actions that sparked the Chicana Feminist Movement. Following this statement, the first National Chicana Conference was held in Houston, Texas in May 1971. The conference attracted over 600 women from all over the United States to discuss issues regarding equal access to education, reproductive justice, formation of childcare centers, and more. The conference was organized into nine different workshops: "Sex and the Chicana: Noun and Verb," "Choices for Chicanas: Education and Occupation," "Marriage: Chicana Style," "Religion," "Feminist Movement Do We Have a Place in It?," "Exploitation of Women The Chicana Perspective," "Women in Politics Is Anyone There," "Militancy/Conservatism: Which Way Is Forward," and "De Colores y Clases: Class and Ethnic Differences." According to Anna Nieto Gómez, "the walkout distinguished the conflict between Chicana feminists and loyalists."

Emma Tenayuca was an early Mexican American labor organizer and Dolores Huerta was a major force in the labor organization of farmworkers. The testimony of the migrant farm worker activist Maria Elena Lucas reveals the enormous difficulties of organizing farmworkers. The Farah Strike, 1972–1974, labeled the "strike of the century," was organized and led by Mexican American women predominantly in El Paso, Texas. Employees of the Farah Manufacturing Company went on strike to stand for job security and their right to establish and join a union.

One of the first Chicana organizations was the East Los Angeles Chicana Welfare Rights Organization, founded by Alicia Escalante in 1967. She became a vocal representative of East Los Angeles at campaign meetings where no one else from the neighborhood was present. She spoke out against the dehumanization of welfare recipients, particularly of Chicana and Black women. In a 1968 article for La Raza newspaper, she wrote that the state believed that welfare recipients "should be ashamed of yourselves for living." They heavily valued strong bonds between women, stating that women Berets must acknowledge other women in the organization as hermanas en la lucha and encouraging them to stand together. Membership in the Brown Berets helped to give Chicanas autonomy, and the ability to express their own political views without fear. An important Chicana in the Brown Berets was Gloria Arellanes, the only female minister of the Brown Berets. The Hijas de Cuauhtémoc began as an activist rap group and would later become a feminist newspaper by 1971. There was a focus on Mexican feminism that would stand for people on either side of the border. The newspaper included topics such as: “gender equality and liberatory ethics to relationships, sexuality, power, women’s status, labor and leadership, familial bonds, and organizational structures.” The concept for the CFMN originated during the National Chicano Issues Conference when a group of attending Chicanas noticed that their concerns were not adequately addressed at the Chicano conference. The women met outside of the conference and drafted a framework for the CFMN that established them as active and knowledgeable community leaders of a people's movement. The Chicana Rights Project was created in 1974 as a Chicana feminist legal organization to defend the legal rights of Mexican American women. It was initiated by Vilma Martinez and addressed issues of employment, health, education, and housing rights for Chicanas. The X in Xicanisma refers to this colonial encounter between the Spanish and Indigenous peoples by reclaiming the X as a literal symbol of being at a crossroads or otherwise embodying hybridity. Resilience is an overarching theme of Chicana feminism: the strength it takes to not only divide but bring forth a new mindset of equality. These archetypes have prevented Chicanas from achieving sexual and bodily agency due to the ways they have been historically constructed as negative categories through the lenses of patriarchy and colonialism. Shifting the discourse from a traditional (patriarchal) representation of these archetypes to a decolonial feminist understanding of them is a crucial element of contemporary Chicana feminism, and represents the starting point for a reclamation of Chicana female power, sexuality, and spirituality. Gloria Anzaldúa's canonical text Borderlands/La Frontera addresses the subversive power of reclaiming Indigenous spirituality to unlearn colonial and patriarchal constructions and restrictions on women, their sexuality, and their understandings of motherhood: "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white."