Chicano and Latin American Studies: Key Concepts and Historical Movements

Vocabulary flashcards covering historical terms, political concepts, and key figures related to Chicano history, colonial systems, labor movements, and Central American conflicts.

Epistemologies

The branch of philosophy that studies the nature, origin, scope, and limits of human knowledge. Examining how different cultures and historically marginalized racial groups define truth, construct knowledge, and validate evidence.

Casta paintings

An art genre from colonial Mexico (New Spain) that peaked during the 18th century and visually categorized complex racial mixing and social hierarchies.

U.S.–Mexican War (1846–1848)

A war motivated by a border dispute where the US claimed the border was the Rio Grande while Mexico argued it was 150 miles farther north at the Nueces River; ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

A treaty signed by Mexico in return for 15 million dollars that gave the US almost half of Mexican territory, ended the US–Mexican War. White Mexicans were accorded full legal rights of US citizenship while non-white Mexicans like mestizos were treated as inferior.

Manifest Destiny

A 19th-century belief that the US had the sacred duty to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Colonialism

A system in which one state or people establishes and maintains control over another territory and its population, often through political domination, economic exploitation, and the imposition of its institutions and cultural practices.

Colonial Racial Capitalism

A framework interconnecting colonialism, racialization, and capitalism, in which race was used to justify colonialism and take control over land, wages, and agricultural production.

Settler Colonialism

A form of colonialism in which outsiders move into a territory with the intention of establishing a permanent society there.

Coloniality

The invisible, underlying logic and cultural legacy that domination persists in modern daily life, global capitalism, and knowledge production.

Racialization

The construction of Mexican and Indigenous workers as cheap, exploitable, replaceable, or suited for agricultural labor, alongside the use of the legal system to confer privilege upon whites and discriminate against people of color.

Mestizaje

A powerful racial ideology that naturalizes a person's transition from indígena to mestizo, obscuring the national, political, and economic forces behind this transition.

Assimilation

The process by which individuals or groups are expected or pressured to adopt the language, customs, and cultural norms of a dominant society.

Bracero Program (1942–1964)

Mexican men could legally enter the US as temporary contract agricultural workers. Mexican men were seen as undesirable human beings while being viewed as desirable workers.

Zoot Suit riot

Groups of US servicemen attacked Mexican American youth and other Zoot Suit wearers, beating them and stripping off their clothing in an attempt to humiliate them.

Farmworkers Movement

In 1962 when farmworkers set out to organize a union to improve workers' wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Dolores Huerta

A teacher who saw poverty firsthand, organized Mexican American communities, and faced resistance to her leadership simply because of her gender.

Larry Itliong

He immigrated from the Philippines and worked in agricultural harvest. He was the co-founded multiple labor organizations, like the Filipino Farm Labor Union, demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and more.

El Teatro Campesino

Was created by Luis Valdez, focused on depicting the real/live conditions of farmworkers through theater acts or commonly known as “actos” to rally support, and educate.

Artivism

The practice of using creative expression as a direct tool for social, political, environmental, or economic change.

Luis Valdez

The son of a migrant farmworker who joined the farmworker struggle, helped build the farmworker movement, and founded El Teatro Campesino.

Sal Castro

A Mexican American teacher and civil rights activist who encouraged generations of students to speak up for their rights and helped organize demands for better schools.

Chicano Movement (1960s–1970s)

Developed in response to socioeconomic and political inequality, through which people of Mexican descent fought for farmworker labor rights, education reform, and women's rights.

Blow Outs

Mexican American students walked out of classes for better schools regarding academic, student rights, pathway to college and more.

Chicano/Chicana, Chicanx

Chicano went from a slur to identity. It embraces indigenous roots, rejects assimilation, unites a fragmented community, and represents a political consciousness.

United Fruit Company

In 1899 that heavily influenced or co-opted local Latin American governments and dictatorships to protect its land and tax monopolies.

US Imperialism

A state policy, practice, or doctrine of extending political and military power, economic control, and unequal relationships, justifications, ideologies, resistance, and negotiation.

Cold War Anticommunism

The Cold War ideology of opposing communism, which led the U.S. to prioritize stopping communism over protecting democracy.

Guatemalan coup of 1954

CIA operation that elected President Jacobo Árbenz, who pursued democratic reform, and economic modernization. He also implemented land reforms that threatened the massive agricultural holdings of the United Fruit Company.

Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996)

The US provided millions of dollars in military aid, weapons, and equipment to the Guatemalan military government to suppress leftist guerrilla movements.

Indigenous Genocide in Guatemala

200,000 individuals were killed or disappeared, there was sexual violence and village destruction; concluded with 1996 peace accords but justice and accountability remain incomplete.

Óscar Arnulfo Romero

An archbishop of San Salvador who challenged growing political violence and inequality. He also defended the poor, and spoke out against poverty, repression, and human rights abuses.

Visual Disobedience

A state-sanctioned visual language of Indigeneity that condemns current racial, class, and gender oppression.

Criminalization

The process of treating people as criminals based on their ethnicity, clothing, or appearance rather than their actual actions.

Sanctuary Movement

provided protection and support to Central American refugees in the us while challenging how the us government treated them

Refugee

A person outside their country of nationality who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, region, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

Asylum Seeker

A person who leaves their home country, arrives in another country, and formally applies for international protection and the legal right to stay as a refugee.