abstract: In the last three years, a transition from Catholicism to other religious affiliations has been observed of Hispanic Americans. According to a study by the Pew Research Center in 2013, there are now 24% Hispanics who are now ex-Catholics. This dissertation examines the religious trending away of Chicanas and Chicanos from Catholicism in particular. It contributes to the field of Chicano cultural studies by exploring religious expressions and spiritualities that are an alternative to traditional Catholicism from 1960 to 2014. Chapters One and Two are a foundation to this investigation, as they provide a brief historical contextualization of religiosity in Chicano culture, as well as explain the theoretical framework utilized throughout the dissertation. Chapter Three examines the activism of Reies López Tijerina, a Pentecostal preacher, and Ignacio García, a devout Mormon, in the 1960s and 1970s. Their autobiographies are studied, particularly focusing on how their religion became an integral part to in their awareness as they became involved in the Chicano Movement. Chapter Four explores the representation and relationships between spiritual figures of the Chicana mother in the following works: the artworks Housewife Battles Self (1994) by Max-Carlos Martínez, Tonantzin, the Aztec Earth Goddess (2001) by Dolores Guerrero, and the novels So Far from God (1993) by Ana Castillo and Esperanza’s Box of Saints (1999) by María Amparo Escandón. Finally, Chapter Five presents religious expression and spirituality in the borderlands experience. In this chapter several popular saints are studied, including the Texas curandero, don Pedrito Jaramillo, and the images of Jesús Malverde and la Santa Muerte. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Spanish 2016

Known for its fertile soil and ideal climate, California has been one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world. Often left out of this picture are the farmworkers who make it possible. Within this farmworker community, females are a sub-class that has been even more marginalized. This thesis investigates the gendered aspects of fieldwork and exposes female leadership working towards changing these specific struggles, such as sexual harassment in the fields, domestic abuse, pesticide exposure, and the perpetuation of submissive gender roles in the household and workplace. An in-depth case study of Lideres Campesinas, a community- based grassroots organization, is highlighted in order to share members’ stories and explore how an organization run by women farmworkers addresses gendered issues in the fields. A discourse on these obstacles will begin specifically in the fields of Coachella Valley.

While a university education is sold to students as something anyone can achieve, their particular social location influences who enters this space. Mexican American women, by virtue of their intersecting identities as racialized women in the US, have to adopt a particular identity if they are to succeed through the educational pipeline and into college. In this thesis, I explore the mechanics behind the construction of this identity at The University of Texas at Austin. To understand how this happens, I read the experiences of six Mexican American, female students through a Chicana feminist lens, particularly Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness. I discovered that if Mexicana/Chicana students are to “make it,” they have to adopt a “good student, nice Mexican woman” identity. In other words, to be considered good students, Mexican American women must also adopt a code of conduct that is acceptable to the white-centric and middle-class norms that dominate education, both at a K-12 level and at the university level. This behavior is uniquely tied to the social construction of Mexican American women as a threat to the United States because of their alleged hypersexuality and hyperfertility. Their ability to reproduce, biologically and culturally, means that young Mexican women must be able to show to white epistemic authorities that they have their sexuality and gender performance “under control.” However, even if they adopt this identity, their presence at the university is policed and regulated. As brown women, they are trespassers of a space that has historically been constructed as white and male. This results in students and faculty engaging in microaggressions that serve to Other the Mexican American women and erect new symbolic boundaries that maintain a racial and gender hierarchy in the university. While the students do not just accept these rules, adopting the identity of “good student, nice Mexican woman” limits how the students can defend themselves from microaggressions or challenge the racial and gender structure. Nevertheless, throughout this thesis I demonstrate that even within the constraints of the limited identity available to the students, they still resist dominant discourses and exercise agency to change their social situation. / text

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chicanas gradually began to politically organize. Through a significant focus on the political life of Francisca Flores and the CFMN, this thesis analyzes the specific political organizing tools she and other Chicana feminist leaders used during the decade between 1970 and 1980. Rather than evaluate the success or failure of the organizations, it instead examines the political methods they used including individual leadership, coalition building, community engagement, and art. It attempts to demonstrate that prominent Chicana feminist activists such as Flores, NietoGomez of Las Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and later Encuentro Femenil, former Brown Beret Gloria Arellanes, and Los Angeles based artist Judy Baca all used these methods in specific ways in order to promote the visibility of Chicana feminism and their communities, which has had an enduring legacy for the movement. Through a comparative analysis of these methods, this thesis illustrates how each of these figures and organizations developed a Chicana feminist movement that balanced grassroots and national organizing with a conscious commitment to visibility of community, rooted in intersectional theory.

Carlos Morton is a prominent Chicano playwright that has contributed greatly to Chicano theatre, creatively and academically, since in 1970s. This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gender representation in three of his works: Lilith (1977), La Malinche (1984), and Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (1992). The female characters in these three plays possess a unique agency that allows them to challenge oppressive patriarchal standards imposed on their gender identity. The second chapter explores Morton's Lilith, a play based on a Jewish creation myth. In the play, Lilith possesses agency of her gender identity and forms a bond with Eve to fight the patriarchal gender norms used to restrict women in Chicano culture. La Malinche is an adaptation of Eurpides's Medea set in post-Conquest New Spain. Chapter three focuses on the agency displayed by La Malinche through her indigenous roots to fight for her own form of motherhood and freedom from patriarchy. The final play analyzed in this thesis is Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda, a dream-like play that is based on Diego Rivera's mural by the same name. Several female characters in the play demonstrate agency through their androgynous sexual identities as they unite to resist male character's sexualized perceptions and expectations of females within Mexican and Chicano culture.