I. Please choose one example from the readings for Weeks 8 and 9 that demonstrate how intersectional resistance is imagined and how it operates. I’m not asking you to define intersectional resistance. I’m asking you to show how it works in the example you select. Be specific and provide context for the example you are describing.
Zinn’s “Political Familism: Toward Sex Role Equality in Chicano Families” expresses the idea that patriarchy dominates the Chicano family. Through this, women are portrayed as submissive; however, the men remain assertive. However, as a way of opposing the changing Anglo family structures, Chicanos used an emphasis in loyalty and family. Those ideas of loyalty and family shifted into organizations for social change, like El Movimiento. Throughout Zinn’s essay, she reiterated the importance of Political Familism- which is also a method of intersectional resistance. In Political Familism, The familial like structure of organizations fight against the external oppressions, like racism or classism, while they also also resist against patriarchal oppression within the Chicano culture.
In the movement for Chicano progress, there were protests for equal rights in various institutions, but what they also did was make progress within the Chicanas themselves. The more they were educated about their history, the more they realized their potential and importance. So, these organizations meant for Chicano Progress (El Movimiento), not only resisted against the may institutions that oppressed them, but also resisted against the internal oppression from patriarchal ideals in the Chicano family. This made the organizations that fought in the Chicano movement, as well as the chicano movement as a whole, forms of intersectional resistance.
II. The Chicanx experiences represent a truth worth knowing and living. It offers us a model for human liberation. Please choose one example from contemporary Chicanx life that we have discussed throughout the course, that you believe is a model for human liberation. Present your example (tell us what it is and the context) and how it contributes to a vision of justice and democracy. You can draw from your peers’ presentations you saw or did on Monday, if you’d like.
An example of from contemporary Chicanx life that has been discussed throughout the course has been art. Art is a form of self-expression for individuals. Murals, to Chicanos, signify a recovery of heritage and identity. This makes murals a model for human liberation. In the essay written by Goldman, “Mexican Muralism: its social-educative roles in Latin American and the US”, Goldman states that Mexican muralism was created as a tool in the post revolutionary era of modern Mexico. The muralism was a form of advocacy and was intended to change public consciousness, as well as a tool to promote political action. Goldman then went on to talk about the Chicano Muralism in the 1970’s, she states that the meaning behind the recovery of Mexican muralism was part of a bigger recovery of identity, as well as heritage. It came after a centuries long purposeful absence of culture by America’s dominant society.
Muralism continued to spread throughout the United States, as a form of “retrofitted memory”, all painting the picture of contemporary urban problems. The murals range in location, from the southwest to the midwest; They are all unified not with their aesthetics, but their chicano point of view which aligns itself with life experiences of Chicanos in the contemporary United States. Those of which are Chicanos who’s consciousness of their history on both sides of today’s border is expanding, educating today’s Chicanos. As the contemporary Chicanx life goes on, we learn more about our identity and our history, which gives us ideas of justice and a true democracy, because we learn how we have been treated with unjust and a lack of a true democracy.