Not Your Revolutionary Sweethearts: A Survey of Chicana History
Women of Color (WoC) who led the feminist movement of the mid- to late 1960s experienced multiple oppressions while struggling within a patriarchal society inside and outside of their homes. The women’s liberation movement of this time was still largely based on white, middleclass women’s experiences, forcing Black and Brown women to organize feminist coalitions for themselves.
They proposed that Chicanas play the part of either la Adelita (the sexualized revolutionary sweetheart), the mother, or la Virgen (the Virgin Mary.) These were all machismo notions of what the ideal Chicana should be: a quiet, obedient, and domestic angel.
Chicana feminists’ participation in the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (Chicano Movement) has been erased by memories that focus on Chicano men and their struggle for racial equality. Mexican American men accused these women of trying to divide the Movimiento and labeled them as selfish for putting their gender before their race. Chicana feminists were called vendidas (sell outs) and agringadas (white-washed). Some men discouraged women’s liberation mainly on the basis that it was thought to be a white woman’s task and went against traditional/nationalist gender roles. They proposed that Chicanas play the part of either la Adelita (the sexualized revolutionary sweetheart), the mother, or la Virgen (the Virgin Mary.) These were all machismo notions of what the ideal Chicana should be: a quiet, obedient, and domestic angel. Chicana feminists rejected these ideas because as individuals, they did not see themselves as solely their race or gender. For them, their existence was aimed at decolonizing their roles in society.
Prior to the mid-twentieth century, women’s participation in the Mexican Revolution as Soldaderas (female fighters) and within labor unions offered opportunities to fight for their country, family, and themselves. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chicana feminists organized within the Chicano Movement as a response to a racist and sexist society, often arguing against the normalization of European American femininity and the Catholic church’s restrictions on female bodily autonomy. Chicanas organized amongst themselves to fight for all intersecting oppressions for Mexican Americans, focusing on larger issues faced by working class communities. Early organizations and publications like Las Chicanas de Aztlán and the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc sprung up around California college campuses in the early 1970s. In Texas, the Mujeres Por la Raza organized outside of the Raza Unida Party to focus on gender equality with a feminist agenda. Chicana feminist community and university organizations and Chicana publications kept the movement afloat throughout the 1970s. Publications and organizations dedicated themselves to covering topics such as barrio organizing, sexuality, women in politics, police brutality, racism, sexism, the history of Mexican feminist activism, prison reform, welfare, and political and educational events.
From the movement’s formalized conception in the late 1960s, Chicano/a — now also known as Chican@ — feminism has continuously rejected machismo, white supremacy, racism, and traditional Mexican/nationalist gender roles. In the 1980s and 1990s, queer WoC like Gloria Anzaldua made connections between their sexuality, race, gender, and multicultural identity and shared experiences that continue to evolve to this day.
For many young Chican@s, being a feminist is necessary to the continual progress for People of Color within a still largely white supremacist society that feeds off institutionalized racism and class oppression.
For many young Chican@s, being a feminist is necessary to the continual progress for People of Color within a still largely white supremacist society that feeds off institutionalized racism and class oppression. Understanding this Chicana feminist history is important because we cannot understand our futures without understanding the struggles and multiple intersections of feminism in the past. It’s essential that we understand that feminism is complicated. Feminism does not have one definition that fits all, and there are even counterproductive groups within the feminist movement (shouts out to Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) that keep gender equality at bay. But we must not give up our fight for basic human rights that we are owed and deserve as productive members of society.
If this short snippet of feminist history has left you interested in learning more, be sure to check out Maylei Blackwell’s text, ¡Chicana Power!, for a detailed history of Chicana feminism, and chicanapormiraza.org for an amazing and growing digital archive documenting Chicana and Latina experiences within the Civil Rights Movement.
