Public declarations by African Americans of race pride and
ethnic heritage prompted members of other minority groups to reassess their own
place and backgrounds This was an especially
compelling discussion among American Latinos, who had lived in a world that offered contradictory
messages about their race and culture. Across the country from neighborhoods in
Armando B. Rendon
Being raised as a Latino in the
I am a Chicano. What that means to me may be entirely different from what meaning the word has for you. To be Chicano is to find out something about one’s self which has lain dormant, Subverted, and nearly destroyed.
I am a Chicano because of a unique fusion of bloods and history and culture. I am a Chicano because I sense a rising awareness among others like my— self of a fresh rebirth of self and self—in—others.
I am a Chicano because from this revived and newly created personality I draw vitality and motivation more forceful and tangible than I ever did or could have from the gringo world.
I am a Chicano in spite of scorn or derision, in spite of opposition even from my own people, many of whom do not understand and may never fathom what Chicano means.
I am a Chicano, hopeful that my acceptance and assertion of Chicanismo will mean a better life for all my people, that it will move others into making the same act of will to accept and develop a newfound identity and power….
There is a mystique among us Chicanos, something that we have searched for and now have found. It draws us together, welds from insecure, disparate groups and viewpoints a common focal thought, experience, and power. For so many years we have disclaimed or claimed this or that label, sought leadership even from the Anglo, founded any number of organizations, worried over internal issues, fought for prestige and position within our little groups; and all the while the Anglo kept us in subjugation.
To be Chicano is nothing new; it is as old as our people. But it is a new way of knowing your brown brother and of understanding our brown race. To be Chicano means that a person has looked deeper into his being and sought unique ties to his brothers in la raza.
I nearly fell
victim to the Anglo. My childhood was spent in the West Side barrio of
Spanish was off—limits in school anyway, and teachers and relatives taught me early that my mother tongue would be of no help in making good grades and becoming a success. Yet Spanish was the language I used in playing and arguing with friends. Spanish was the language I spoke with my abuelita, my grandmother, as I ate atole on those cold mornings when I used to wake at dawn to her clattering dishes in the tiny kitchen; or when I would cringe in mock horror at old folk tales she would tell me late at night.
But the lesson took effect anyway.
When at the age often I went with my mother to
When my mother, who speaks both Spanish and English fluently, spoke to m in Spanish, I would respond in English. By the time I graduated from high school and prepared to enter college, the break was nearly complete. Seldom during college did I admit to being a Mexican American. Only when Latin American students pressed me about my surname did I admit my Spanish descent, or when it proved an asset in meeting coeds from Latin American countries.
My ancestry had become a shadow, fainter and fainter about me. I felt no particular allegiance to it, drew no inspiration from it, and elected generally to let it fade away. I clicked with the Anglo mindset in college, mastered it, you might say. I even became editor of the campus biweekly newspaper as a junior, and editor of the literary magazine as a senior—not bad, now that I look back, for a tortillas-and-beans Chicano upbringing to beat the Anglo at his own game.
The point of my “success,” of course, was that I had been assimilated; I had bought the white man’s world. After getting my diploma I was set to launch out into a career in newspaper reporting and writing. There was no thought in my mind of serving my people, telling their story, or making anything right for anybody but myself. Instead I had dreams of Pulitzer Prizes, syndicated columns, foreign correspondent assignments, front page stories—that was for me. Then something happened.
A Catholic weekly newspaper in
It was my own people who rescued
me. There is a large Chicano population in
My job soon brought me into contact
with many Chicanos as well as with the recently immigrated Mexicans, located in
the barrios that
I owe my life to my Chicano people. They rescued me from the Anglo kiss of death, the monolingual, monocultural, and colorless gringo society. I no longer face a dilemma of identity or direction. That identity and direction have been charted for me by the Chicano—but to think I came that close to being sucked into the vacuum of the dominant society.
Chicano is a beautiful word. Chicano describes a beautiful people. Chicano has a power of its own. Chicano is a unique confluence of histories, cultures, languages, and traditions.
Chicano is the one unique word of the Mexican American people. Its derivation is strictly internal; it owes nothing to the Anglo penchant for categorizing ethnic groups. In a way, Chicano is indefinable, more a word to be understood and felt and lived than placed in a dictionary or analyzed by Anglo anthropologists, sociologists, and apologists.
Chicano has the ring of pachuco slang, of shortening a word, which is typical of
our Mexican American experience. It also echoes the harsher sounds of our
native ancestors of the
Chicano is a very special word. Chicano is a unique people. Chicano is a prophecy of a new day and a new world.
[Original source: Armando Rendon, Chicano Manifesto, New York: Macmillan Co., 1971.]