Viva la Raza : revisiting Chicana/o identity formations and cultural understandings

This project investigates and critically engages the legacies of mestizaje within Chicana/o identity productions and interrogates the limitations, complexities, and subjectivities emerging out of these constructions. I am interested in discussing how mestizaje as a repurposed racial ideology among the Chicana/o movement appropriated and incorporated indigeneity while simultaneously erasing and obscuring Black historical and cultural influences. Through a textual analysis of pinnacle Chicana/o movement newspapers El Grito del Norte and Hijas de Cuauhtémoc, I discuss the multiple ways the discourses of mestizaje, Chicana/o identity, cultural and historical formations within these newspapers become intertwined with and informed by larger political, historical, and cultural systems, such as colonialism, White supremacy, and nationalism