May 29, 1988-San Antonio Express-News
The meaning of 'Chicano'
All peoples are resilient and sentient, and culture is their shaping and honing element.
Everyone carries a sense of one's people, and the name that evolves through a people's cultural history is a precious and sacred symbolic talisman.
Chicanos are no different from other groups that impress their nomenclatures upon time and space.
Rubén Salazar, a broadcast and print reporter in California, wrote about the human and social condition(s) of Chicanos.
He wrote of a people that had become veritable "strangers in their own land," yet he stressed that Chicano meant looking at oneself through one's "own" eyes and not through Anglo bifocals.
Those words were a godsend to many of us, for those words of simplicity and rationality were spiritually and intellectually liberating.
Salazar was killed by the Los Angeles Police Department, and the speculation persists that he was assassinated for his stands on behalf of a voiceless people.
Others say it was accident
Others claim that it was an accident on Aug. 29, 1970, when the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War caused to be unleashed a police department bent on subjugating a much-maligned and oppressed community.
Salazar's words still find a hospitable space among those who cherish Chicano culture and arts.
Though many former proponents of Chicanismo have retreated from the notion of a people having the right and responsibility to name its "real" world, there still remain those who savor the name Chicano as an authentic expression evolving from a history of struggle and creativity.
Like the phoenix arising from its ashes, the term has resurfaced in the arts.
A group of San Antonio artists has an exhibition at the Art Cellar, 119-B Alamo Plaza South, that speaks to that notion - Ondas Chicanas. It will hang through June 5.
There is a sound cross-representation of the different nuances in Chicano arts, from the works of Jesús "Chista" Cantú, who has been involved as artist-activist since the 1960's to younger voices like Raúl Servin, Jim Valdez and Leonardo Terán.
Victor Tello and Flavio Treviño bridge the poles of the time and space spectrums, giving balance to the show. "Onda is like our bag, our thing," Valdez said. "It means our way of seeing and saying our way of life."
Authentic expression
According to Chista, Chicano is the expression that truly speaks to those who are from this land, yet excluded from complete participation in the social arena.
Chicano, by its very definition, is a politically charged name, but all names are so.
It is a word created in the cultural foundry of a people who believe in their right to name themselves. Other names are labels that are superficial at best.
Hispanic means someone who is Spanish or of Peninsular culture, but Chicanos are mestizos whose bloodlines are much more índio than español.
Arnoldo Carlos Vento, professor of Spanish and Chicano cultural studies at UT-Austin as well as a creative writer, speaks to the importance of people naming their own world.
"Too many of our incoming Chicano students have been kept from a real knowledge of their history and culture," Vento said, and upon studying their cultural history, some of these students express anger and a willingness to probe into our culture.
"Chicano is a valid, historic term, and not some media creation nor a government-imposed definition.
"In teaching Mexican-Chicano literary thought, I want students to know and understand history.
Modern and pre-Hispanic
The word is both modern and pre-Hispanic, and comes from the Maya Quiché, coined during nearly prehistoric times.
"It was not a pejorative term. It meant a person who emigrates for a better life.
"Another era which also saw the word gain popular usage was during and after the 1910 Revolution, and it was a concept attacked by middle-class Mexican-Americans, perhaps due to fear of repression.
"A third period of popularization was the advent of the Chicano Movement, and it was hailed as a positive consciousness-raising world view," Vento said.
In his recent novel "La Cueva de Naltzatlan," published by Fondo de Cultura Económica in Mexico City, Vento speaks out to that nomenclature.
Reimundo "Tigre" Pérez, a poet-activist originally from Laredo, wrote during the first Canto al Pueblo about authenticity's being a primary value and responsibility for poets and artists; that people as a group or as individuals, should care about their personal and collective vision(s).
"Pueblo/cultiva lo tuyo/y defiende/lo tuyo," "Tigre wrote, lovingly asking people to cultivate what is theirs and also to defend it.
Those notions of defining one's world while seeking creative means to impress one's name and legacy upon the fabric of human cultural history are important.
Much to celebrate
I marvel at the creativity of all people for there is much to celebrate in every culture, language and people.
The nuances of value we share undergird us as we struggle from day to day.
It is that sparkle that emanates from realizing the humanity in and of one's people and culture. It is the force and empowerment of Chicano poetry and literature celebrating a people and the world at large.
The word Chicano sings to the right of all beings to define their world and in so doing learn to respect and appreciate our wonderful and life-giving differences.
Qué viva la raza humana in all our human hues and nuances!