Contemporary Latino Cultures MIDTERM 2

NYU (Does not include the politics of language or anti-immigrant politics within U.S. Latino citizen populations)

Descriptive Representation

“One thing or person can stand for another, be subsituted for that other, if they are sufficiently alike, on the basis of their resemblance…What qualifies a man is his representativeness,—not what he does, but what he is, or is like.” (Pitkin 10)

Substantive Representation

Acting for others, not depicting, not making oneself a symbol…but the real substance behind that formality: “the activity of representing…Thus we may say of a legislator that he ‘represents Texas oil interests’…that the substance of his activity furthers those interests.” (Pitkin 14)

Symbolic Representation

Resemblance is not the only basis for standing for something absent. “An idea or a person can be made present, not by a map or portrait, but by a symbol… A piece of cloth may in that sense represent a vast power complex, or the Stars and Stripes the United States of America.” (Pitkin 13)

Mandate-Independence Controversy

“Should (must) a representative do what his constituents want, or what he thinks best? (Pitkin 17)

“His obligation to do what they expect of him, to act as if they were acting themselves. On the other side are those who maintain that the representative must act…on his own judgement, that he is selected precisely for this special abilities, that his job is to adapt and enlarge the constituents’ special separate needs into the national welfare.” (Pitkin 18)

Both sides “reject the opposing position as being manifestly incompatible with what representation is.” (Pitkin 19)

Representation as claim making

Developed by political theorist Michael Saward

Argues for “seeing representation in terms of claims to be representative by a variety of political actors, rather than (as is normally the case) seeing it as a…a given, factual product of elections.” (Saward 298)

“Precarious” and part of a “dynamic relationship.” (Saward 298)

For Saward, focusing on a representative claim helps us:

• Link aesthetic and cultural representation

• Grasp the importance of performance to representation

• Take non-electoral representation seriously

• Underline the contingency and contestability of all forms of representation (Saward 297)

Aesthetic

There is an indispendable…moment in political representation because the represented is never just given, unambiguous, transparent. A representative…has necessarily to be creative. He or she has to mould, shape, and in one sense create that which is to be represented. She has to be an artist…to operate aesthetically, to evoke the represented.” (Saward 310)

Representative claimants, elected or otherwise “construct verbal and visual images about their constituencies, depicting their constituents as
hard working” or “good honest folks” or “angry” etc. This also applies to enemies.

El Plan de Aztlán Program

Sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronze) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and orginization. Once we are committed to the idea and philosophy of (this), we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and our political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society—the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional—to La Causa.

Nationalism

Is the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.

Cultural Nationalism

Exhibited in the Chicano Movement: “What are the common denominators that unite the people? The key common denominator is nationalism…If Tony is a socialist, if my brother here is an independent, if my sister is a Republican—she might hit me later—if one of the others is a Democrat and one is a communist, and one from the Socialist Labor Party, what do we have in common? Nothing. We’ve been fighting over parties across the kitchen table, wives are Repunlicans and husbands are Democrats, sometimes, and we argue over a bunch of garbage. And the same Republicans and Democrats are having cocktails together at the same bar and playing golf together and kissing each other behind the scenes.

So you tell me, what is the common denominator that will touch the barrio, the campo and the ranchitos? Are we going to go down there with some tremendous words of intellectualism which they cannot erlate to…the revolution of 15 or 20 years from now is not going to feed a hungry child today.

So what is the common denominator we use? It is nationalism.” - Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez”

Revolutionary Nationalism

Exhibited in the Puerto Rican Movement: "Now, there are some people who would say that there’s a contradiction in being a revolutionary nationalist—in fact, they say you can’t be a Nationalist and a Socialist at the same time. Well, that’s wrong. See, for these people I would quote Mao, where he says that loving your people and your country and fighting to liberate your people is the best way to aid the struggle of all peoples around the world. It’s ridiculous to say you’re an internationalist and you’re going to struggle for all oppressed people, without picking a particular segment of people you’re gonna work in. Because the people, you know, are divided along national and class lines, and we have to recognize both. In this country for example, racism is like a stick that the pigs are clubbing you on the head with. Now you got to grab the other end and hit them back with it—and the other end of the stick is nationalism…” - Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman

Chicana Feminism

Women’s activism in the Chicano Movement

Throughout the movement, Chicanas were writing, meeting, and organizing to discuss the changing role of women. At times, these questions led to mass action, such as when the women of the East Lost Angeles chapter of the Brown Berets resigned en masse to form a new organization, dubbed Las Adelitas de Aztlán. The newly formed Adelitas criticizing the male leadership for treating them as “nothings, not as Revolutionary sisters.”

Loyalists

Anti-Feminists when it comes to Chicana Feminism

“I am concerned with the direction that the Chicanas are taking in the movement. Words such as liberation, sexism, male chauvinism…plus the theme of individualism is a concept of the Anglo society; terms prevalent in the Anglo Woman’s movement. The familia has always been the strength in our culture. But it seems evident…that [you] are not concerned with the familia but are influenced by the Anglo Woman’s movement.” - Mirande and Enríquez

Characteristics of the Chicano Movement

• Issues of self-identity, personal experience, and historical memory were understood as crucial components of a progressive politics.

• Frustration with the ongoing discrimination and slow pace of change over previous decades. Frustration at the failures of achieving equal rights and inclusion through emphasizing one’s ‘Americanness’

• Critique of Assimilation and an emphasis on cultural pride.

• Less focused on Electoral Politics. Instead, a focus on mass participation and public protest

Sought to transcend social and class divisions by emphasizing a shared history of racial discrimination and extolling the virtues of a shared indigenous past.

Characteristics of the Puerto Rican movement

• 1960s and 1970s

• Consistent calls for a radical transformation of U.S. society while simultaneously promoting the independence of Puerto Rico.

• The Young Lords ledt the most lasting legacy of the various organizations that constitued this movement.