La tropa chicana biography meaning

Ethnic identity of some Mexican Americans

"Chicana" redirects here. For the wrestler, see Sangre Chicana. For other uses, see Chicano (disambiguation).

Chicano (masculine form) or Chicana (feminine form) is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement.^[1][2][3]Chicano was originally a classist and racistslur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture.^[4][5]

In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed among Hispanics in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent (with many using the Nahuatl language or names).^[6][7]

Chicano was used in a sense separate from Mexican American identity.^{[6][8][9][10]} Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into mainstream American culture and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance.^[11] The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.^[12][13]

The Chicano Movement faltered by the mid-1970s as a result of external and internal pressures. It was under state surveillance, infiltration, and repression by U.S. government agencies, informants, and agent provocateurs, such as through the FBI's COINTELPRO.^{[14][15][16][17]} The Chicano Movement also had a fixation on masculine pride and machismo that fractured the community through sexism toward Chicanas and homophobia toward queer Chicano/as.^[18][19][20]

In the 1980s, increased assimilation and economic mobility motivated many to embrace Hispanic identity in an era of conservatism.^[21] The term Hispanic emerged from consultation between the U.S. government and Mexican-American political elites in the Hispanic Caucus of Congress.^[22] They used the term to identify themselves and the community with mainstream American culture, depart from Chicanismo, and distance themselves from what they perceived as the "militant" Black Caucus.^[23][24]

At the grassroots level, Chicano/as continued to build the feminist, gay and lesbian, and anti-apartheid movements, which kept the identity politically relevant.^[21] After a decade of Hispanic dominance, Chicano student activism in the early 1990s recession and the anti-Gulf War movement revived the identity with a demand to expand Chicano studies programs.^[21][25] Chicanas were active at the forefront, despite facing critiques from "movement loyalists", as they did in the Chicano Movement. Chicana feminists addressed employment discrimination, environmental racism, healthcare, sexual violence, and exploitation in their communities and in solidarity with the Third World.^{[26][27][28][29]} Chicanas worked to "liberate her entire people"; not to oppress men, but to be equal partners in the movement.^[30]Xicanisma, coined by Ana Castillo in 1994, called for Chicana/os to "reinsert the forsaken feminine into our consciousness",^[31][32] to embrace one's Indigenous roots, and support Indigenous sovereignty.^[33][32]

In the 2000s, earlier traditions of anti-imperialism in the Chicano Movement were expanded.^[34] Building solidarity with undocumented immigrants became more important, despite issues of legal status and economic competitiveness sometimes maintaining distance between groups.^[35][36]U.S. foreign interventions abroad were connected with domestic issues concerning the rights of undocumented immigrants in the United States.^[34][37] Chicano/a consciousness increasingly became transnational and transcultural, thinking beyond and bridging with communities over political borders.^[37] The identity was renewed based on Indigenous and decolonial consciousness, cultural expression, resisting gentrification, defense of immigrants, and the rights of women and queer people.^[38][39]Xicanx identity also emerged in the 2010s, based on the Chicana feminist intervention of Xicanisma.^[40][41][42]

Etymology

The etymology of the term Chicano is the subject of some debate by historians.^[44] Some believe Chicano is a Spanish language derivative of an older Nahuatl word Mexitli ("Meh-shee-tlee"). Mexitli formed part of the expression Huitzilopochtlil Mexitli—a reference to the historic migration of the Mexica people from their homeland of Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico. Mexitli is the root of the word Mexica, which refers to the Mexica people, and its singular form Mexihcatl (/meːˈʃiʔkat͡ɬ/). The x in Mexihcatl represents an /ʃ/ or sh sound in both Nahuatl and early modern Spanish, while the glottal stop in the middle of the Nahuatl word disappeared.^[43]

The word Chicano may derive from the loss of the initial syllable of Mexicano (Mexican). According to Villanueva, "given that the velar (x) is a palatalphoneme (S) with the spelling (sh)," in accordance with the Indigenous phonological system of the Mexicas ("Meshicas"), it would become "Meshicano" or "Mechicano."^[44] In this explanation, Chicano comes from the "xicano" in "Mexicano."^[45] Some Chicanos replace the Ch with the letter X, or Xicano, to reclaim the Nahuatl sh sound. The first two syllables of Xicano are therefore in Nahuatl while the last syllable is Castilian.^[43]

In Mexico's Indigenous regions, Indigenous people refer to members of the non-Indigenous majority^[46] as mexicanos, referring to the modern nation of Mexico. Among themselves, the speaker identifies by their pueblo (village or tribal) identity, such as Mayan, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huastec, or any of the other hundreds of Indigenous groups. A newly emigrated Nahuatl speaker in an urban center might have referred to his cultural relatives in this country, different from himself, as mexicanos, shortened to Chicanos or Xicanos.^[43]

Usage of terms

Early recorded use

The town of Chicana was shown on the Gutiérrez 1562 New World map near the mouth of the Colorado River, and is probably pre-Columbian in origin.^[47] The town was again included on Desegno del Discoperto Della Nova Franza, a 1566 French map by Paolo Forlani. Roberto Cintli Rodríguez places the location of Chicana at the mouth of the Colorado River, near present-day Yuma, Arizona.^[48] An 18th century map of the Nayarit Missions used the name Xicana for a town near the same location of Chicana, which is considered to be the oldest recorded usage of that term.^[48]

A gunboat, the Chicana, was sold in 1857 to Jose Maria Carvajal to ship arms on the Rio Grande. The King and Kenedy firm submitted a voucher to the Joint Claims Commission of the United States in 1870 to cover the costs of this gunboat's conversion from a passenger steamer.^[49] No explanation for the boat's name is known.

The Chicano poet and writer Tino Villanueva traced the first documented use of the term as an ethnonym to 1911, as referenced in a then-unpublished essay by University of Texasanthropologist José Limón.^[50] Linguists Edward R. Simmen and Richard F. Bauerle report the use of the term in an essay by Mexican-American writer, Mario Suárez, published in the Arizona Quarterly in 1947.^[51] There is ample literary evidence to substantiate that Chicano is a long-standing endonym, as a large body of Chicano literature pre-dates the 1950s.^[50]

Reclaiming the term

Main articles: Pachuco and Pachucas

In the 1940s, "Chicano" was reclaimed by Pachuco youth as an expression of defiance to Anglo-American society.^[4] At the time, Chicano was used among English and Spanish speakers as a classist and racist slur to refer to working class Mexican Americans in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.^[5] In Mexico, the term was used with Pocho "to deride Mexicans living in the United States, and especially their U.S.-born children, for losing their culture, customs, and language."^[52] Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio reported in 1930 that Chicamo (with an m) was used as a derogatory term by Hispanic Texans for recently arrived Mexican immigrants displaced during the Mexican Revolution in the beginning of the early 20th century.^[53]

By the 1950s, Chicano referred to those who resisted total assimilation, while Pocho referred (often pejoratively) to those who strongly advocated for assimilation.^[54] In his essay "Chicanismo" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures (2002), José Cuéllar, dates the transition from derisive to positive to the late 1950s, with increasing use by young Mexican-American high school students. These younger, politically aware Mexican Americans adopted the term "as an act of political defiance and ethnic pride", similar to the reclaiming of Black by African Americans.^[55] The Chicano Movement during the 1960s and early 1970s played a significant role in reclaiming "Chicano," challenging those who used it as a term of derision on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border.^[52]

Demographic differences in the adoption of Chicano occurred at first. It was more likely to be used by males than females, and less likely to be used among those of higher socioeconomic status. Usage was also generational, with third-generation men more likely to use the word. This group was also younger, more political, and different from traditional Mexican cultural heritage.^[56][57]Chicana was a similar classist term to refer to "[a] marginalized, brown woman who is treated as a foreigner and is expected to do menial labor and ask nothing of the society in which she lives."^[58] Among Mexican Americans, Chicano and Chicana began to be viewed as a positive identity of self-determination and political solidarity.^[59] In Mexico, Chicano may still be associated with a Mexican American person of low importance, class, and poor morals (similar to the terms Cholo, Chulo and Majo), indicating a difference in cultural views.^[60][61][62]

Chicano Movement

Main article: Chicano Movement

Chicano was widely reclaimed in the 1960s and 1970s during the Chicano Movement to assert a distinct ethnic, political, and cultural identity that resisted assimilation into the mainstream American culture, systematic racism and stereotypes, colonialism, and the American nation-state.^[63] Chicano identity formed around seven themes: unity, economy, education, institutions, self-defense, culture, and political liberation, in an effort to bridge regional and class divisions.^[64] The notion of Aztlán, a mythical homeland claimed to be located in the southwestern United States, mobilized Mexican Americans to take social and political action. Chicano became a unifying term for mestizos.^[63]Xicano was also used in the 1970s.^[65][66]

In the 1970s, Chicanos developed a reverence for machismo while also maintaining the values of their original platform. For instance, Oscar Zeta Acosta defined machismo as the source of Chicano identity, claiming that this "instinctual and mystical source of manhood, honor and pride... alone justifies all behavior."^[18] Armando Rendón wrote in Chicano Manifesto (1971) that machismo was "in fact an underlying drive of the gathering identification of Mexican Americans... the essence of machismo, of being macho, is as much a symbolic principle for the Chicano revolt as it is a guideline for family life."^[67]

From the beginning of the Chicano Movement, some Chicanas criticized the idea that machismo must guide the people and questioned if machismo was "indeed a genuinely Mexican cultural value or a kind of distorted view of masculinity generated by the psychological need to compensate for the indignities suffered by Chicanos in a white supremacist society."^[19]Angie Chabram-Dernersesian found that most of the literature on the Chicano Movement focused on men and boys, while almost none focused on Chicanas. The omission of Chicanas and the machismo of the Chicano Movement led to a shift by the 1990s.^[19]

Xicanisma

Main article: Xicanisma

Xicanisma was coined by Ana Castillo in Massacre of the Dreamers (1994) as a recognition of a shift in consciousness since the Chicano Movement and to reinvigorate Chicana feminism.^[31] The aim of Xicanisma is not to replace patriarchy with matriarchy, but to create "a nonmaterialistic and nonexploitive society in which feminine principles of nurturing and community prevail"; where the feminine is reinserted into our consciousness rather than subordinated by colonization.^[68][69] The X reflects the Sh sound in Mesoamerican languages (such as Tlaxcala, which is pronounced Tlash-KAH-lah),^[70] and so marked this sound with a letter X.^[43] More than a letter, the X in Xicanisma is also a symbol to represent being at a literal crossroads or otherwise embodying hybridity.^[68][69]

Xicanisma acknowledges Indigenous survival after hundreds of years of colonization and the need to reclaim one's Indigenous roots while also being "committed to the struggle for liberation of all oppressed people", wrote Francesca A. López.^[33] Activists like Guillermo Gómez-Peña, issued "a call for a return to the Amerindian roots of most Latinos as well as a call for a strategic alliance to give agency to Native American groups."^[32] This can include one's Indigenous roots from Mexico "as well as those with roots centered in Central and South America," wrote Francisco Rios.^[71] Castillo argued that this shift in language was important because "language is the vehicle by which we perceive ourselves in relation to the world".^[69]

Among a minority of Mexican Americans, the term Xicanx may be used to refer to gender non-conformity. Luis J. Rodriguez states that "even though most US Mexicans may not use this term," that it can be important for gender non-conforming Mexican Americans.^[8]Xicanx may destabilize aspects of the coloniality of gender in Mexican American communities.^[73][74][75] Artist Roy Martinez states that it is not "bound to the feminine or masculine aspects" and that it may be "inclusive to anyone who identifies with it".^[76] Some prefer the -e suffix Xicane in order to be more in-line with Spanish-speaking language constructs.^[77]

Distinction from other terms

Mexican American

In the 1930s, "community leaders promoted the term Mexican American to convey an assimilationist ideology stressing white identity," as noted by legal scholar Ian Haney López.^[6] Lisa Y. Ramos argues that "this phenomenon demonstrates why no Black-Brown civil rights effort emerged prior to the 1960s."^[79] Chicano youth rejected the previous generation's racial aspirations to assimilate into Anglo-American society and developed a "Pachuco culture that fashioned itself neither as Mexican nor American."^[6]

In the Chicano Movement, possibilities for Black–brown unity arose: "Chicanos defined themselves as proud members of a brown race, thereby rejecting, not only the previous generation's assimilationist orientation, but their racial pretensions as well."^[6] Chicano leaders collaborated with Black Power movement leaders and activists.^[12][13]Mexican Americans insisted that Mexicans were white, while Chicanos embraced being non-white and the development of brown pride.^[6]

Mexican American continued to be used by a more assimilationist faction who wanted to define Mexican Americans "as a white ethnic group that had little in common with African Americans."^[78] Carlos Muñoz argues that the desire to separate themselves from Blackness and political struggle was rooted in an attempt to minimize "the existence of racism toward their own people, [believing] they could "deflect" anti-Mexican sentiment in society" through affiliating with the mainstream American culture.^[78]

Hispanic

Etymologically deriving from the Spanish word "Hispano", referring to the Latin word Hispania, which was used for the Iberian Peninsula under the Roman Republic, the term Hispanic is an Anglicized translation of the Spanish word "Hispano". Hispano is commonly used in the Spanish speaking world when referring to "Hispanohablantes" (Spanish speakers), "Hispanoamerica" (Spanish-America) and "Hispanos" when referring to the greater social imaginary held by many people across the Americas who descend from Spanish families. The term Hispano is commonly used in the U.S. states of New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, as well as used in Mexico and other Spanish-American countries when referring to the greater Spanish-speaking world, often referred to as "Latin America".

Following the decline of the Chicano Movement, Hispanic was first defined by the U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Directive No. 15 in 1977 as "a person of Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South America or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race."^[23] The term was promoted by Mexican American political elites to encourage cultural assimilation into the mainstream culture and move away from Chicanismo. The rise of Hispanic identity paralleled the emerging era of political and cultural conservatism in the United States during the 1980s.^[23][24]

Key members of the Mexican American political elite, all of whom were middle-aged men, helped popularize the term Hispanic among Mexican Americans. The term was picked up by electronic and print media. Laura E. Gómez conducted a series of interviews with these elites and found that one of the main reasons Hispanic was promoted was to move away from Chicano: "The Chicano label reflected the more radical political agenda of Mexican-Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, and the politicians who call themselves Hispanic today are the harbingers of a more conservative, more accomadationist politics."^[24]

Gómez found that some of these elites promoted Hispanic to appeal to white American sensibilities, particularly in regard to separating themselves from Black political consciousness. Gómez records:^[24]

Another respondent agreed with this position, contrasting his white colleagues' perceptions of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus with their perception of the Congressional Black Caucus. 'We certainly haven't been militant like the Black Caucus. We're seen as a power bloc—an ethnic power bloc striving to deal with mainstream issues.'^[24]

In 1980, Hispanic was first made available as a self-identification on U.S. census forms. While Chicano also appeared on the 1980 U.S. census, it was only permitted to be selected as a subcategory underneath Spanish/Hispanic descent, which erased the possibility of Afro-Chicanos, Chicanos of Indigenous descent, and other Chicanos of color. Chicano did not appear on any subsequent census forms and Hispanic has remained.^[80] Since then, Hispanic has widely been used by politicians and the media. For this reason, many Chicanos reject the term Hispanic.^[81][82]

Other terms

Instead of or in addition to identifying as Chicano or any of its variations, some may prefer:

• Latino/a, also anglicized as "Latin." Some US Latinos use Latin as a gender neutral alternative.
• Latin American (especially if immigrant).
• Mexican; mexicano/mexicana
• "Brown"
• Mestizo; [insert racial identity ] mestizo (e.g. blanco mestizo); pardo.
• californiano (or californio) / californiana; nuevomexicano/nuevomexicana; tejano/tejana.
• Part/member of la Raza. (Internal identifier, Spanish for "the Race")
• American, solely.

Identity

Chicano and Chicana identity reflects elements of ethnic, political, cultural and Indigenous hybridity.^[83] These qualities of what constitutes Chicano identity may be expressed by Chicanos differently. Armando Rendón wrote in the Chicano Manifesto (1971), "I am Chicano. What it means to me may be different than what it means to you." Benjamin Alire Sáenz wrote "There is no such thing as the Chicano voice: there are only Chicano and Chicana voices."^[81] The identity can be somewhat ambiguous (e.g. in the 1991 Culture Clash play A Bowl of Beings, in response to Che Guevara's demand for a definition of "Chicano", an "armchair activist" cries out, "I still don't know!").^[84]

Many Chicanos understand themselves as being "neither from here, nor from there", as neither from the United States or Mexico.^[85] Juan Bruce-Novoa wrote in 1990: "A Chicano lives in the space between the hyphen in Mexican-American."^[85] Being Chicano/a may represent the struggle of being institutionally acculturated to assimilate into the Anglo-dominated society of the United States, yet maintaining the cultural sense developed as a Latin-American cultured U.S.-born Mexican child.^[86] Rafael Pérez-Torres wrote, "one can no longer assert the wholeness of a Chicano subject ... It is illusory to deny the nomadic quality of the Chicano community, a community in flux that yet survives and, through survival, affirms itself."^[87]

Ethnic identity

Chicano is a way for Mexican Americans to assert ethnic solidarity and Brown Pride. Boxer Rodolfo Gonzales was one of the first to reclaim the term in this way. This Brown Pride movement established itself alongside the Black is Beautiful movement.^[80][88] Chicano identity emerged as a symbol of pride in having a non-white and non-European image of oneself.^[1] It challenged the U.S. census designation "Whites with Spanish Surnames" that was used in the 1950s.^[80] Chicanos asserted ethnic pride at a time when Mexican assimilation into American culture was being promoted by the U.S. government. Ian Haney López argues that this was to "serve Anglo self-interest", who claimed Mexicans were white to try to deny racism against them.^[89]

Alfred Arteaga argues that Chicano as an ethnic identity is born out of the European colonization of the Americas. He states that Chicano arose as hybrid ethnicity or race amidst colonial violence.^[90] This hybridity extends beyond a previously generalized "Aztec" ancestry, since the Indigenous peoples of Mexico are a diverse group of nations and peoples.^[90] A 2011 study found that 85 to 90% of maternal mtDNA lineages in Mexican Americans are Indigenous.^[91] Chicano ethnic identity may involve more than just Indigenous and Spanish ancestry. It may also include African ancestry (as a result of Spanish slavery or runaway slaves from Anglo-Americans).^[90] Arteaga concluded that "the physical manifestation of the Chicano, is itself a product of hybridity."^[90]

Robert Quintana Hopkins argues that Afro-Chicanos are sometimes erased from the ethnic identity "because so many people uncritically apply the 'one drop rule' in the U.S. [which] ignores the complexity of racial hybridity."^[92] Black and Chicano communities have engaged in close political movements and struggles for liberation, yet there have also been tensions between Black and Chicano communities.^[93] This has been attributed to racial capitalism and anti-Blackness in Chicano communities.^[93][94] Afro-Chicano rapper Choosey stated "there's a stigma that Black and Mexican cultures don't get along, but I wanted to show the beauty in being a product of both."^[95]

Political identity

See also: Chicano nationalism and Chicana feminism

Chicano political identity developed from a reverence of Pachuco resistance in the 1940s. Luis Valdez wrote that "Pachuco determination and pride grew through the 1950s and gave impetus to the Chicano Movement of the 1960s ... By then the political consciousness stirred by the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots had developed into a movement that would soon issue the Chicano Manifesto—a detailed platform of political activism."^[96][97] By the 1960s, the Pachuco figure "emerged as an icon of resistance in Chicano cultural production."^[98] The Pachuca was not regarded with the same status.^[98] Catherine Ramírez credits this to the Pachuca being interpreted as a symbol of "dissident femininity, female masculinity, and, in some instances, lesbian sexuality".^[98]

The political identity was founded on the principle that the U.S. nation-state had impoverished and exploited the Chicano people and communities. Alberto Varon argued that this brand of Chicano nationalism focused on the machismo subject in its calls for political resistance.^[63] Chicano machismo was both a unifying and fracturing force. Cherríe Moraga argued that it fostered homophobia and sexism, which became obstacles to the Movement.^[20] As the Chicano political consciousness developed, Chicanas, including Chicana lesbians of color brought attention to "reproductive rights, especially sterilization abuse [sterilization of Latinas], battered women's shelters, rape crisis centers, [and] welfare advocacy."^[20] Chicana texts like Essays on La Mujer (1977), Mexican Women in the United States (1980), and This Bridge Called My Back (1981) have been relatively ignored even in Chicano Studies.^[20] Sonia Saldívar-Hull argued that even when Chicanas have challenged sexism, their identities have been invalidated.^[20]

Chicano political activist groups like the Brown Berets (1967–1972; 1992–Present) gained support in their protests of educational inequalities and demanding an end to police brutality.^[99] They collaborated with the Black Panthers and Young Lords, which were founded in 1966 and 1968 respectively. Membership in the Brown Berets was estimated to have reached five thousand in over 80 chapters (mostly centered in California and Texas).^[99] The Brown Berets helped organize the Chicano Blowouts of 1968 and the national Chicano Moratorium, which protested the high rate of Chicano casualties in the Vietnam War.^[99] Police harassment, infiltration by federal agents provacateur via COINTELPRO, and internal disputes led to the decline and disbandment of the Berets in 1972.^[99] Sánchez, then a professor at East Los Angeles College, revived the Brown Berets in 1992 prompted by the high number of Chicano homicides in Los Angeles County, hoping to replace the gang life with the Brown Berets.^[99]

Reies Tijerina, who was a vocal claimant to the rights of Latin Americans and Mexican Americans and a major figure of the early Chicano Movement, wrote: "The Anglo press degradized the word 'Chicano.' They use it to divide us. We use it to unify ourselves with our people and with Latin America."^[100]

Cultural identity

Chicano represents a cultural identity that is neither fully "American" or "Mexican." Chicano culture embodies the "in-between" nature of cultural hybridity.^[101] Central aspects of Chicano culture include lowriding, hip hop, rock, graffiti art, theater, muralism, visual art, literature, poetry, and more. Mexican American celebrities, artists, and actors/actresses help bring Chicano culture to light and contribute to the growing influence it has on American pop culture. In modern-day America you can now find Chicanos in all types of professions and trades.^[102] Notable subcultures include the Cholo, Pachuca, Pachuco, and Pinto subcultures. Chicano culture has had international influence in the form of lowrider car clubs in Brazil and England, music and youth culture in Japan, Māori youth enhancing lowrider bicycles and taking on cholo style, and intellectuals in France "embracing the deterritorializing qualities of Chicano subjectivity."^[103]

As early as the 1930s, the precursors to Chicano cultural identity were developing in Los Angeles, California and the Southwestern United States. Former zoot suiter Salvador "El Chava" reflects on how racism and poverty forged a hostile social environment for Chicanos which led to the development of gangs: "we had to protect ourselves".^[104]Barrios and colonias (rural barrios) emerged throughout southern California and elsewhere in neglected districts of cities and outlying areas with little infrastructure.^[105] Alienation from public institutions made some Chicano youth susceptible to gang channels, who became drawn to their rigid hierarchical structure and assigned social roles in a world of government-sanctioned disorder.^[106]

Pachuco culture, which probably originated in the El Paso-Juarez area,^[107] spread to the borderland areas of California and Texas as Pachuquismo, which would eventually evolve into Chicanismo. Chicano zoot suiters on the west coast were influenced by Black zoot suiters in the jazz and swing music scene on the East Coast.^[108] Chicano zoot suiters developed a unique cultural identity, as noted by Charles "Chaz" Bojórquez, "with their hair done in big pompadours, and "draped" in tailor-made suits, they were swinging to their own styles. They spoke Cálo, their own language, a cool jive of half-English, half-Spanish rhythms. [...] Out of the zootsuiter experience came lowrider cars and culture, clothes, music, tag names, and, again, its own graffiti language."^[104] San Antonio–based Chicano artist Adan Hernandez regarded pachucos as "the coolest thing to behold in fashion, manner, and speech."^[107] As described by artist Carlos Jackson, "Pachuco culture remains a prominent theme in Chicano art because the contemporary urban cholo culture" is seen as its heir.^[108]

Many aspects of Chicano culture like lowriding cars and bicycles have been stigmatized and policed by Anglo Americans who perceive Chicanos as "juvenile delinquents or gang members" for their embrace of nonwhite style and cultures, much as they did Pachucos.^[109] These negative societal perceptions of Chicanos were amplified by media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times.^[109] Luis Alvarez remarks how negative portrayals in the media served as a tool to advocate for increased policing of Black and Brown male bodies in particular: "Popular discourse characterizing nonwhite youth as animal-like, hypersexual, and criminal marked their bodies as "other" and, when coming from city officials and the press, served to help construct for the public a social meaning of African Americans and Mexican American youth [as, in their minds, justifiably criminalized]."^[109]

Chicano rave culture in southern California provided a space for Chicanos to partially escape criminalization in the 1990s. Artist and archivist Guadalupe Rosales states that "a lot of teenagers were being criminalized or profiled as criminals or gangsters, so the party scene gave access for people to escape that".^[110] Numerous party crews, such as Aztek Nation, organized events and parties would frequently take place in neighborhood backyards, particularly in East and South Los Angeles, the surrounding valleys, and Orange County.^[111] By 1995, it was estimated that over 500 party crews were in existence. They laid the foundations for "an influential but oft-overlooked Latin dance subculture that offered community for Chicano ravers, queer folk, and other marginalized youth."^[111] Ravers used map points techniques to derail police raids. Rosales states that a shift occurred around the late 1990s and increasing violence affected the Chicano party scene.^[110]

Indigenous identity

Chicano identity functions as a way to reclaim one's Indigenous American, and often Indigenous Mexican, ancestry—to form an identity distinct from European identity, despite some Chicanos being of partial European descent—as a way to resist and subvert colonial domination.^[87] Rather than part of European American culture, Alicia Gasper de Alba referred to Chicanismo as an "alter-Native culture, an Other American culture Indigenous to the land base now known as the West and Southwest of the United States."^[112] While influenced by settler-imposed systems and structures, Alba refers to Chicano culture as "not immigrant but native, not foreign but colonized, not alien but different from the overarching hegemony of white America."^[112]

The Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (1969) drew from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961). In Wretched, Fanon stated: "the past existence of an Aztec civilization does not change anything very much in the diet of the Mexican peasant today", elaborating that "this passionate search for a national culture which existed before the colonial era finds its legitimate reason in the anxiety shared by native intellectuals to shrink away from that of Western culture in which they all risk being swamped ... the native intellectuals, since they could not stand wonderstruck before the history of today's barbarity, decided to go back further and to delve deeper down; and, let us make no mistake, it was with the greatest delight that they discovered that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the past, but rather dignity, glory, and solemnity."^[87]

The Chicano Movement adopted this perspective through the notion of Aztlán