"until lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter' (Rudolfo Anaya quoted in Campbell, The Cultures of the American New West, p. 100).
Rudolfo Anaya, Alburquerque (1992)
"The
other is in you, the other is in me. This white culture has been internalized
in my head. I have a white man and woman in here, and they have me in their
heads, even if it's just a guilty little nudge sometimes. [...] Both traditions
are within me. I can't disown the white tradition, the Euor-American tradition,
any more than I can the Mexican, the Latino, or the Native, because they're
all in me. [...] We all of us find ourselves in the position of being simultaneously
insider / outsider. [...] We're becoming a geography of hybrid selves --
of different cities or countries who stand at the threshold of numerous
mundos. Forced to negotiate the cracks between realities, we learn
to navigate the switchback roads between assimilation / acquiescence to
the dominant culture and isolation / preservation of our ethnic cultural
integrity. [...] Navigating the cracks between the worlds is difficult
and painful, like going through the process of reconstructing a new life,
a new identity. (Gloria Anzaldua)
Hispanic Designates the peoples of Latin America. Some have rejected the term because it aligns Latin American people with a white European point of origin -- by suggesting 'Spanishness' it erases the indigenous and African roots of Latin American identity.
Latino/a An alternative to 'Hispanic' (but which the 'Hispanic' embedded within it) that suggests a less Eurocentric emphasis and embraces the Latin-Indian and Latin-Black racial mixture that in fact is part of Latin American racial identity.
Chicano/a More specific: refers to people of Mexican ancestry who have resided permanently in the United States for an extended period. Chicano/as can be native-born citizens or Mexican-born immigrants who have adapted to life in the United States.
Mestizo/a Mixture
Aztlan Aztlan is the mythic place of origin of the Aztecs. For Chicanos, Aztlan is the Southwest, the part of Mexico taken by the US after the Mexican-American War. It is sacred ground, mother, nourisher, the place of origin now lost that must be regained.
La Llorona
Further Reading