Building new roads to liberation: a growing critique of Chicana/o Studies and the Chicano movement is leading to some genuine breakthroughs and new ideas about how to learn from the past and build on it.

As movement activists and intellectuals seek new strategies for transforming U.S. society, people of color have been facing a special set of challenges. The challenges take us back to the '60s and forward to new approaches, together with the ideological development they require.

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Thinking in new ways, for example, about what Black Power meant then and means now is no small challenge. One symptom: five books published in the last five years discussing the work of Amiri Baraka and Black Power. The brown version of that challenge--call it Chicano Power, or Chicanismo--is at least as complicated.

In the 1960s, "Chicano" was affirmed as a political term: not just a nationality or ethnicity, but a counter-hegemonic worldview. The term, never simple, is even less so today. Attempts at redefinition have been sparked by the massive increase in Latinos from Central and South America, as well as Mexico, by re-examining nationalism and its relationship to internationalism and other questions.

No challenge has been more persistent and more profound than those presented by women's and feminist demands to correct the prevailing male-dominated definition of Chicanismo. The same can be said of demands to reject heterosexual-dominated definitions. When the National Association for Chicano Studies had to change its name in 1995 to the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies and not long afterward recognized an official Lesbian Caucus, it was just one of many signs of the times.

Terminology battles rage on campuses such as the University of New Mexico, where officials recently changed the name of Chicano Studies to Chicano/Hispano/Mexicano Studies. The original proposal to name the department Southwest Hispanic Studies led to an uproar from students and some faculty. (This was hardly surprising, since the prospect of being defined as of Spanish origin only--forget the millions of Indians and enslaved Africans who comprise Latin America's heritage--can certainly be called racist.)

On other campuses, including the University of California at Berkeley, moves were made to change the name to Latino Studies, which was at least more understandable in today's society, though troubling to many Chicanos/as. Along with honest searches for redefinition has come just plain opportunism, especially in academia, where new definitions can mean new courses to teach, new departments to head and other personal goodies.

But hold the cynicism! All the debate, all the upheaval, adds up to much more than careerist navel-gazing that takes working-class folks nowhere. It speaks to a growing awareness of limitations in the original definition of Chicana/o Studies and in the Chicano movement itself. There are genuine breakthroughs and new ideas about how to learn from the past and build on it, not just reject it outright.

One example comes to mind of young people generating new understandings of old movements and saying: "We will neither romanticize nor dismiss. We just see the need to think bigger than the customary definition of Chicanismo. Move forward, go global." At best, their worldview embraces an inspiring internationalism. That example, called "Beyond Chicanismo," is happening at Metropolitan State College Denver in Colorado.

"Beyond Chicanismo" has roots in Chicano Studies, the program that emerged in the wake of intense Chicano student protest against racist curriculum, staffing and priorities. The walkout by 10,000 Chicano high-schoolers in Los Angeles in 1968 carried an unmistakable message. Those years saw powerful struggles for Ethnic Studies on many campuses as a key demand by all the communities of color. Chicano (not yet Chicana also) Studies affirmed that college students should not see their education as the road to strictly individual advancement but rather as an asset to "take back to your community" for its benefit.

Chicano Studies would empower the community by teaching the true history of Chicano experience and culture in terms of repression by and resistance to Anglo colonialism. It would affirm the identity of a people long denied respect and recognition by Eurocentric history and values, it would delineate the essence of Chicanismo. That goal still lives, and it draws new strength from efforts like the one in Denver.

Student-Inspired, Student-Driven

Metro State's Beyond Chicanismo project originated in 2000 out of intellectual and political ferment within Chicano/a Studies. On the college's Auraria campus, as at other schools, students were increasingly expressing frustration with the limits of the traditional curriculum.

Majors and minors in Chicano/a Studies asked, for example, whether the long-standing focus on farmworker leader Cesar Chavez, land-rights activist Reies Lopez Tijerina, the recently deceased Crusade for Justice leader Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales and La Raza Unida Party's Jose Angel Gutierrez--the four main figures of the movimiento--adequately captured its multi-dimensional history or related to today's political landscape. The goal was not to reject the work of any one person but to evaluate the larger picture and to identify the unknown blank spots that needed recognition.

Daniel Salcido, a student at Metro State who is active in Beyond Chicanismo, put it this way: "We needed to re-examine Chicana/o Studies itself and look at its tendency to operate within a historical vacuum. We were challenged to look more critically at how the 1960s struggle evolved and its inherent contradictions. Without looking at these factors, as well as the changes taking place in the world and how these changes affect movements for social change and peoples, Chicana/o Studies runs the risk of becoming irrelevant."

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Simultaneously, leading Chicano/a Studies scholars were taking a fresh look at their curricula and pedagogical approaches. Faculty from many campuses speculated aloud that Chicano/a Studies had drifted away from its original mission of serving the Chicano community and that the discipline was in a state of crisis.

At Metro State, such probings led in fall 1999 to a series of discussions involving politically active students and Chicano Studies professor Nick Morales. These led to agreement that a new paradigm for intellectual exploration and political engagement was needed and that both students and faculty had key roles to play in its development. Morales took the lead in drafting a mission for the new project, as well as a program of action. Beyond Chicanismo was launched as a new project, linking theory, research, politics and activism.

Globalize the Movimiento Experience

Morales describes the effort's overall perspective as "an attempt to globalize the movimiento experience. It affirms the spirit of resistance among Chicana/os. Chicanismo is the foundation on which to construct the new strategic contours of struggle against a transnational elite that ... perpetuates Great Power hegemony and privilege ... Chicana/os can recover and/or maintain their humanity by standing in solidarity with oppressed peoples in the developing world in worldwide struggles ... against Neo-liberalism."

The goal of serving the people, serving one's community, had been the heartbeat of Chicano Studies as originally defined. Now it was reaffirmed and with new strength. Beyond Chicanismo is about nothing if not a commitment to work for social justice. "The future society," Morales writes in describing this project, "begins by creating a liberatory space and steadily expanding outward by forging links with other resistance communities or nations."

Students organized themselves into a campus group, Los Herederos of Change and Esperanza (Heirs of Change and Hope) launched an ambitious, ongoing Oral History Project and produced two impressive books. They also host an ongoing speaker series. Students are the program decision-makers and administrators, as well as fundraisers for the projects.

The Oral History Project has focused on understanding past movements and filling in the blank spots, particularly in Colorado. Interviewing many activists and community members, student researchers have compiled the stories of the all-too-often unrecognized individuals who made up the heart and soul of local and national freedom struggles. In its more than five years of operating, the project has compiled videotapes of more than 90 presentations and interviews.

This grassroots spirit infuses the two books produced by Beyond Chicanismo with exceptional dynamism. Both are circulated in the community and used as supplemental texts in Chicano/a Studies classes. The first, Symbols of Resistance, recounts the life stories of Ricardo Falcon, a leader of the Colorado movimiento who was murdered by a racist gas station owner while on his way to the 1972 National Convention of La Raza Unida Party; of "Los Seis de Boulder," six Colorado activists who died in mysterious car bomb explosions in May 1974; and of Luis "Junior" Martinez, shot to death by Denver police.

Beyond Chicanismo's second book, The Struggle for La Sierra, tells the story of a 40-plus-year battle by impoverished Chicano residents of the San Luis Land Grant in Colorado to recover longstanding rights to use the land for grazing animals, cutting firewood and other vital needs. Los Herederos explain: "The story of San Luis ... is more than a simple struggle between right and wrong, justice and injustice, good and evil; it is a story about culture, tradition, land, lifestyle, family, money, politics, power and the future." We can add: It is above all about the land, an issue at the heart of so many anti-imperialist struggles, an issue often not understood by urban activists. The San Luis story is ongoing--a historic Colorado Supreme Court decision in 2003 gave it new life by affirming the residents' rights and ordering a lower court to sort out matters of implementation.

Like the first book, this one is built around participants of all ages in the struggle speaking in their own words, supplemented by photos, poetry, art and background analysis, all in a colorful, handsome volume. The book is entirely the product of efforts by students at a non-research, open-enrollment state college, with minimal faculty or staff help.

Breaking down Barriers

Beyond Chicanismo's Conscious Journey speakers series has mainly featured veterans of Colorado's Chicano/a movement. But it has also included figures from the Puerto Rican, Black and Chicano/a freedom movements, and Anglo radicals from outside the state (among them both authors of this article).

Acknowledging the need to give more recognition to the role of women, Beyond Chicanismo launched a Women of Principle Speaker Series in February 2003. Participants have included Georgia Congress-woman Cynthia McKinney and Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author and professor, along with locally based Dr. Mary Lou Salazar, daughter of the former head of Colorado's Communist Party, Robert Trujillo.

A major goal is to include more women from the barrio who have worked in and for their community for years but are almost unknown outside it. This was in line, Nick Morales said, with one of the contributions of Crusade leader "Corky" Gonzales when he spoke about the need to "take it back to the community"--meaning education, resources of all kinds and recognition of community richness. Born in the era that also saw the birth of Chicano Studies, that concept lives on.

We can hope that Beyond Chicanismo opens new space for women in its basic politics, participation and leadership. The lack of such space was one of the most notable weaknesses of that old Chicanismo, and although there has been progress (largely by women's insistence) to a great degree, more change is needed.

Students in Los Herederos of Change and Esperanza, not content to rest on their significant accomplishments, are looking ahead to break new ground in the future. As one student, Dave Mason, said, "In a rapidly transforming world, Beyond Chicanismo is the hope that the energy created with liberatory educational approaches of several decades ago can now be used to open new spaces for liberation not compromised by old wounds and older, circular arguments."

In that spirit, Daniel Salcido said they hope to see a healing process in relations between groups within the movimiento that have clashed in the past, or, as he said, "find better ways to deal with the many 'land mines' that exist in old histories." He added, "Part of being critical of Chicana/o Studies could include addressing these old conflicts in a more politically mature way. This means looking at how the movimiento in its various stages of transformation struggled with concepts such as the shift from civil rights to human rights, cultural vs. revolutionary nationalism and then internationalism, possibly with a socialist objective. There is so much to deal with in understanding the movimiento as lived experience. Oral history can be a useful tool in the healing process."

In Symbols of Resistance, Los Herederos collectively declared: "This work is the first step in our becoming researcher-activists. We must continue to critically evaluate our histories and ourselves to begin the transformation into a selfless existence focused on activism for change."

Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez, an activist-organizer for social justice these past 50 years, has published six books on Chicano issues and other subjects; she currently directs the Institute for MultiRacial Justice in San Francisco.

Max Elbaum, active in antiwar and anti-racist movements since the 1960s, is the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso, 2002).