This work is intended to provide a synthesis on the development of a political ethos among Mexican Americans during the decades of the 1960s to the 1970s. This political ethos was neither uniformed nor overwhelmingly acceptable, but it nonetheless formed the ideological nucleus of what came to be known as the Chicano Movement. And this author would contend that some of those ideological strains remain important today among Mexican American leaders. This ethos was undoubtedly nationalistic, but it also incorporated race and class as elements of the Mexican American experience. Chicanismo, as it came to be known, would be the unifying theme for diverse groups involved in a myriad of causes and activities. To understand the development of this ethos, it is necessary to understand the generations of Mexican Americans of the post-war years. Also important to understand are those events, organizations and particularly individuals who began to have an impact on the minds of many Mexican Americans who saw a need for change in the way they lived, thought, and in the way they participated in American society. There are at least four phases to the development of the Chicano philosophical strains that guided the movement. First, the Mexican American intellectuals, politicians, students, and others came to be believed that the liberal agenda which had been seen as the solver of the community's problems was simply morally corrupt. It was a failure. This rejection of the liberal agenda led to a searching for new solutions. These solutions would be oriented toward a philosophical separatism. Second, Mexican Americans saw a need to re-interpret the past as it related to their own history and that of the Anglos who lived nearby. New heroes arose, and the community discovered its legacy of struggle. Also, they discarded the stereotypes of the lazy, passive, feebleminded Mexican American. Third, Mexican American activists, intellectuals and artists affirmed a rediscovered pride in their ethnicity and class status. Many found similarities between themselves and African Americans in their struggle for equality; others saw the similarities with Third World liberation movements of peasants and oppressed workers; and others simply saw themselves continue the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Chicano uprisings of the early 20th century. Finally, this philosophy was perpetuated through the individual and collective struggles of the organizations that promoted it as they met resistance or faced external attacks.

Master of Arts / Department of Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work / Robert Schaeffer / This thesis examines Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (M.E.Ch.A), one of the oldest organizations of the Chicano movement. History shows that M.E.Ch.A has been able to reflect on itself and change accordingly; thus, it has been able to stay alive due to internal debates from the 1960s to the 1990s. In the 1960s, male, heterosexual Mexicans dominated the Chicano movement. In the 1980s, Xicanas challenged them to look past their privileges into more intersectional, inclusive identities. My research question is: in 2013, how do Californian MEChistAs view themselves, their political consciousness, and their social justice work? MEChistAs view themselves as an inclusive, diverse, and progressive organization. Chican@/Xican@ is a political identity and ideology that includes women, queers, and non-Mexicans. Women and queers took leadership of the organization, which shows that the revised historical documents made a difference. However, M.E.Ch.A continues a Mexican-centric organization that isolates Central Americans, South Americans, and Afro-Latin@s. M.E.Ch.A has changed since the 1960s in many ways, but the work continues. M.E.Ch.A still needs to address several internal debates as an organization, such as: Aztlán’s meanings, community versus campus organizing, generational gaps, and working with social organizations. Despite these debates, M.E.Ch.A has survived. Using 22 in-depth interviews with contemporary MEChistAs in California from 10 different universities, I examined the identities and politics of M.E.Ch.A activists. I enact Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collin’s standpoint theory to guide the research and apply third world feminism and ideology/utopia theories to analyze the ideas and concepts of the MEChistAs.

Paraíso, Caída y Regeneración en tres novelas chicanas is a detailed literary analysis of three well-known chicano novels: Pocho, Bless Me, Ultima and Peregrinos de Aztlán. The approach is the utilization of the "paradise-fall-regeneration" pattern as a means to study the three stages of the principal characters' development. By identifying and characterizing this process within each of these novels, this writer acquires a better understanding as to what constitutes the characters' self-perception as well as their relation to the reality around them. This fictitious representation of Chicano life in turn sheds light on the three novelists' perceptions of what Chicano reality is and how it is reflected in their works. Pocho is a clear manifestation of the "fall" from Mexican traditional culture. The old characters* geographic and spiritual removal from what they consider the paradisal state and the slow eroding process of their cultural system is what the novel is about. Although the characters make a vain attempt at the preservation of these values, the defeat is clearly manifested in their children's acculturation, especially in the protagonist, Richard. At the end of the novel there is no indication that the characters attain some sort of regeneration. On the contrary, there is only chaos, a disintegrated marriage, and a psychologically disoriented protagonist. Bless Me, Ultima offers a much broader view of the "paradise-fall-regeneration” pattern and appears on various planes. Culture, from the protagonist's point of view, is not seen as conflict or as a fall but as an affirmation of cultural roots. Paradisal remnants of the New Mexican heritage are still manifest in contemporary life; thus, the fall is no more than the protagonist's coming of age. This fallen state is temporary and at the end of the novel the protagonist gathers all the knowledge acquired through his life experience and builds a positive world view. This new stage in life is what represents regeneration. Moreover, the incursion into the ancestral roots of New Mexican culture and the knowledge acquired in the writing of the novel is in itself an act of regeneration for the author. In this manner, the regenerative state in Bless Me, Ultima is also represented outside its fictitious boundaries. Peregrinos de Aztlán is by far the most complex of the three novels. It also represents the extreme "fall" of man. There is no paradise for the characters but a continuous degeneration of humanity on every conceivable plane. For the characters there is no salvation and human life can well be considered hell. Paradise is characterized by dreams and illusions which serve to help tolerate the dehumanizing existence of the characters. The regenerative state, consequently, is non-existent within the world of Peregrinos de Aztlán. Nevertheless, the work itself is an act of regeneration for the author and for the Chicano Movement because it is an act of rebellion. Méndez exposes a realistic condition of the two societies in which Chicanos live and offers the Chicano perspective of himself and his circumstance. His novel's importance is as great as Rudy Acuña's Occupied America in the area of the history of Chicanos in the Southwest. This dissertation has been written entirely in Spanish.

Chicana Literature: A Feminist Perspective of Gloria Anzaldúa's Identity Politics Doctoral Thesis Mgr. et Mgr. Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlová 2017 ABSTRACT In the analyses executed in the present doctoral thesis, Chicana literary production emerges as a complex example of a strategic and reflexive instrumentalization of literature in the form of a political and activist tool contributing to Chicanas' gender and cultural emancipation on the one hand. On the other hand, within the Chicana/o context, literature is employed for perfecting the politics of recognition of the marginalized nation typified by the specificity of its geographic, cultural, and social location on the U.S.-Mexico border where a plethora of socially constructed categories interact and intersect. The doctoral thesis further provides a gender analysis of literary representations of Chicana/o lived experience by Chicana feminist writers in general and by Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and investigates how these representations help shape feminist thought not only in relation to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but within and beyond the United States. Moreover, the thesis supplies an interpretation of Anzaldúa's reconceptualization of the border concept as a pertinent means for comprehending Chicanas'/os' socio-cultural context and for forging a...