Chicanismo

Chicanismo is the ideology behind the Chicano movement. It is an ideology based on a number of important factors that helped shape a social uprising in order to fight for the liberties of Mexican-Americans. Chicanismo was shaped by a number of intellectuals and influential activists as well as by the artistic and political sphere, and the many contributors to the ideology collaborated to create a strong sense of self-identity within the Chicano community. Cultural affirmation became one of the main methods of developing Chicanismo. This cultural affirmation was achieved by bringing a new sense of nationalism for Mexican-Americans, drawing ties to the long forgotten history of Chicanos in lands that were very recently Mexican, and creating a symbolic connection to the ancestral ties of Meso-America.

During the early 1960s and 1970s, a great deal of Mexican Americans came together across the United States with the aim to fight for social and political change. This movement became known as the Chicano movement and can be defined as a social movement that emerged in the 1960s to protest the circumstances in which the Mexican American community found itself. This emotional, but predominantly nonviolent reform movement included several concerns of great importance to the community. Among these were the fear of cultural disintegration, the lack of economic and social mobility, rampant discrimination, and inadequate educational institutions. The movement would result in a shift in the way that Mexican Americans saw themselves in society. It was a question that had surfaced in the Mexican American community due to the barriers of oppression they felt once entering the United States. In order to combat these feelings of isolationism, the Chicano movement sought to unite all Chicanos, regardless of class. Communal empowerment was important to the movement because they were minorities in American society. This made it very important for community organizing in order to collectively advance their agenda. The movement was focused around the question of what it meant to be Mexican in American society. Chicano culture focused on a multiplicity of ideas that were held by the Mexican American community. Intellectuals and others involved in the movement, including artists and authors, created new forms of art that encompassed their culture. Examples included virtues of the Mexican indigenous heritage and bilingual, sometimes polyglot, works of literature. Part of the movement's aim was to construct a history questioning the victimization of Mexican Americans by critiquing assimilation to American society and culture.

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