CHS168BLecture1_CentralThemesinChican0HistoryandtheOriginsofChicanoCommunities.pptx

Chicano Studies 168
Dr. Raúl Moreno Campos
UCSB

Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
Readings Weeks 1: Almaguer (2018)
Readings Week 2: Ruiz (2009), introduction and chapter one.
I. Overview and central thematic preoccupations of Chicana/o History.
Understanding of what history is (inquiry)
Understanding of the interplay between structure and agency in the shaping of historical processes.
Understanding of the term “Chicana/o”, and the distinction to “Hispanic” and Latina/o”
Central structural forces that have shaped Chicana/o history
Central themes in Chicana/o history

Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
II. The Mexican American War of 1846-1848
Background of the Spanish Empire and the “first colonization”
Understand the centrality of racial difference to Spanish colonial administration and society
Understand the concepts of limpieza de sangre, castas, and mestizaje in the context of colonial Mexico
Background of U.S. imperialist expansion and the economic, political, and ideological reasons behind the war of 1846-1848 with Mexico.
The “second colonization” and the origins of Chicano peoples.
Understand the concepts of race and racialization.

Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
IIIII. The Legacies of the War
Economic, political, and social marginalization
The creation of early Chicana/o communities

Agenda

Chicano Studies and Chicano History: Central Thematic Preoccupations
Racial Fault Lines: Conquest, Colonization, and the making of Chicanos in the U.S. Southwest
The Legacies of 1848

I.
Basic Framing
History (Gr. historia “ a learning or knowing by inquiry”- generally entailed an account of one’s inquiries, record, narrative. Derived from historein “inquiry” )
Sense of narrative record and relation of past events.
Entails
1) Process of examination into past events and the narrative of a record
“The archive”- vast array of documents, artifacts, oral narratives, etc. that comprise a record
2) Understanding of change and continuity over time

I.
3) Structure and Agency
“[Human beings] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted form the past.” – Karl Marx
Agency- volition and the power to think and act independently and freely in to shape experience and life history
Structure- set of existing complex of social relations, forces, and institutions that synergistically shape (or limit, constraint) thought, behavior, choices, and overall life histories of people

I.
The central task of narration, as storytelling, is a principal component of how we make sense of the world around us.
Implies relations of power and interests involved in the creation of disciplines as ed bodies of knowledge
Eminently political
At the outset, therefore, we must ask: if we are concerned with Chicano history, what then is the task at hand?
1) Who are the Chicana/o peoples?- the definition of a collectivity is a historical process in itself, and it is not self-evident.
2) What forces have shaped the individual and collective life trajectories and everyday lives of Chicana/os, and what is the change and continuity in these processes?
3) Given the above, what are the central thematic preoccupations of Chicana/o history, and what is their political praxis, in particular in reclaiming and reframing the histories that have been erased by the colonial enterprise?

I.
A word about words…
1) Who are Chicana/os?
Chicana/o is, preeminently, a nation (group of people) and a political identity defined by:
A) The self-awareness of Chicanos people’s rich Pre-Columbian history/culture, and a shared history of struggle against European and U.S. colonialism.
Entailed exploitation, impoverishment, and marginality.
B) An emancipatory praxis for the self-determination of the native peoples of the Americas, particularly Mexican-descendant populations in the U.S. Southwest.
Chicana/os- and by extension Mexican and Mexican-descendant populations, are native to the U.S. Southwest.

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Mesoamerica
Trade networks (Pueblo people imported macaws and other precious items from Central America; Mexica Empire and CA)
Linguistic evidence: Uteo-Aztecan family
New political emancipatory project recognizing historical and political commonalities

I.
“Chicanismo draws its faith and strength from two main sources: from the just struggle of our people, and from an objective analysis of our community’s strategic needs. We recognize that without the strategic use of education, and education that places value on what we value, we will not realize our destiny…For these reasons, Chicano studies represent the total conceptualization of the Chicano community’s aspirations that involve higher education.”
-Plan de Santa Barbara (Drafted here at UCSB in 1969; blueprint for the development of Chicano Studies across the nation)

I.
“At this moment, we do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people” – Jose Vasconcelos
In addition, Chicanismo has a broad conception of the Chicano nation, the bronze People of the Sun. As El Plan de Aztlán remarks:

“We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers in the bronze continent.” Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, 1969, Denver, Colorado

I.
How does this contrast with other terms used to define collectivities of Latin American descent within the U.S.?
Hispanic (Lt. hispania – Roman name for the Iberian peninsula): Term derived during the Nixon administration that was intended to homogenize Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S.
Hegemonic- previous use “Spanish origin”
Problematic- homogenizing, imposed by U.S. Gov and semantically tied to Spain

I.
Latina/o: derived from the French l’Amerique Latine, coined from the 18th to 19th centuries, particularly reign of Napoleon III, to denote the peoples of the Americas united by a common use of romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese).
French political project of cultural contestation vis-à-vis British Empire
Regions of the former Spanish colonial world adopted the name as part of national identity in 19th and 20th centuries an cultural distancing from Spain.
Latina/o is now used to define populations of Latin American descent in the U.S. (includes Mexicanos)
All these terms have political implications

I.
2) What forces have shaped the individual and collective everyday lives and historical trajectories of Chicanos?
While there is a wide array of forces and elements that have shaped the dimensions of Chicana/o history, there a few our that are particularly relevant
A) The “double conquest” and colonization
As noted Political Theorist Ray Rocco (2014) remarks “ the reality of conquest and colonization defined not only the political relations between Mexicans and the U.S. state apparatus, but also the pattern of social relations between Mexicans and the newly arrived but expanding population of Anglos, particularly after the Mexican-American War of 1848.” (Rocco 2014, 74).

I.
We cannot understand the quotidian reality of Chicanos without understanding these processes and their legacies
Indeed, as noted Chicana law Professor and critical race scholar Laura Gomez has pointed out, the region and peoples that now comprise the U.S. Southwest underwent two colonizations:
Spain (e. 1500s-1821)
U.S. (1848- Present)

I.
B) “Manifest Destiny” and political and economic imperatives of U.S. westward expansion
Heavily driven by the expansion of slave plantation economy
Ideologically buttressed by the vision of the U.S. as a “white nation” in a “civilizational mission”
(Ex. Immigration and Naturalization Act 1790- restricted citizenship to “free white persons”, effectively baring Native Americans, Black folk (despite some states laws granting suffrage to free Black folk), and later Asians)
Basis for the imposition of white supremacy on non-white populations

I.
White supremacy: not just merely “color prejudice”, but the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today (Charles Mills).
“…A social and political of domination and subordination that systematically generates and upholds inequalities of wealth, power, and prestige by privileging racialized whiteness over and above all categories of racial identity.” Nicholas De Genova, 2007

I.
C) US Capitalist Development and attendant regimes of labor and population controls
Development of U.S. productive forces- agriculture and industry
Relegation of Mexicanos to menial and expendable labor force
Development of “immigration enforcement” and citizenship regimes to manage racialzied labor markets
Creation of “guest worker” programs to supply cheap labor since the early 20th century
Ex. Bracero Program (1942-1964)
“Revolving-door” nature of U.S. immigration law

I.
D) US racial regimes
Jim Crow segregation
Marginalization and exclusion
Definitions of belonging as normative basis for all rights claims and politics

I.
3) Central thematic preoccupations Chicana/o Studies and Chicana/o History:
Mesoamerican Prehispanic origins and civilizations
European colonialism (legacies of Spanish conquest- colonial subjects and post-colonial societies)
Mestizaje (hybridity, liminality, nepantla; but also mestizo nationalism and indigenismo)
U.S. Colonialism and Imperialism

I.
Central thematic preoccupations Chicana/o Studies and Chicana/o History:
Racialization, otherness, and marginality
Popular political organization and resistance (e.g. El Movimiento and CA popular organizations).
Migration and transnationalism

II. Racial Fault Lines
Historical Antecedents: “The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets”
The territories that comprise the Southwestern U.S. were first colonized by the Spaniards in the early 16th century.
Dawning in 1492, the Spanish Empire was the most powerful in the globe by the mid 16th c., stretching from Madrid to Manila.
Perhaps the most egregious case of genocide in the history of mankind (70 million+ indigenous people decimated by the conquest; Ex. Aztec empire at time of conquest in 1521 approx. 5-6 million; by end of 16th c. less than 1 million )
Indigenous population of the Americas had dropped by 80% at the end of the 16th century

II. Racial Fault Lines

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Spain/s early imperial ambitions driven by two primary objectives: spices and specie
From 12th to 17th century, spices constituted the most profitable and dynamic element of European trade
Why?
A) Culinary uses- delight, social fashion and prestige)
B) luxury commodity- Spices were expensive ex. In 15th century England, it took nearly 5 days of a master carpenter’s wage to a lb. of cloves, nearly 3 days to a lb. of pepper.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
Specie (gold and silver)
Why? Desire for precious metals as money (precious metals universal medium for payment in all commercial dealings in the early modern period)
Ex. Spanish silver utilized as form of payment in the entire Spanish colonial world, North American British colonies, Western Europe, South Pacific and trade ports to China and Far East.
Unfathomable wealth extracted from what is today Latin America- between 1503 and 1660 alone, 185,000 kg. of gold and 16,000,000 kg. of silver (3x greater than entire European reserves; does not count contraband to China, the Philippines, and Spain)
Todays dollars $8.3 billion in gold and $7.8 billion in silver

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However, land and human labor became just as important- and perhaps even more profitable.
Production of a whole range of commodities, food, and raw materials that sustained Europe and led to European population growth and expansion.
Result: establishment of forced and tributary systems of labor (Ex. Economienda system, hacienda system, racial slavery)
Required a logic for their justification: Civilizational discourse steeped in religion

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II. Racial Fault Lines
Indeed, as the conquest progressed, Christianization under the Catholic faith became the main justification for empire.
Tied to the legacies of Spanish unification under Fernando II de Aragón and Isabel I de Castilla.
Reconquista and expulsion of the “Moors” and Jews from Spain (1492)
Limpieza de Sangre and beginning of modern period: racial state.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
Limpieza de sangre (Portuguese: Limpeza de Sangue) “purity of blood”: was a concept developed in early modern Spain and Portugal (15th c.) that was closely linked to the development of ideologies of national unification after the reconquista. These ideologies centered not only on ideas about cultural authenticity (religion and customs) but also ancestral lineage as a way to authenticate members of these nascent nation-states and write their historical narrative and myth of founding
Reconquista and the expulsion/conversion of Jews and Muslims from the Iberian peninsula.
Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused not only on religious practice but also on lineage, “purity of blood”
Lineage used to determine ability to become part of various powerful civil and political organizations (public and ecclesiastical office)
Concerned with religious matters, but also saturated by discourses of virtue and chastity.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
The central logic behind limpieza de sangre is reflected in the development of the sistema de castas in the Spnaish colonies during the 16th century
Management of the colonies’ social on the basis of categories of descent.
How and why did a concept dealing manifestly with religion shape racial thinking in the Americas?
Not solely an Iberian preoccupation: interrelated nature of discourses of purity of blood in Iberia with racial discourses in the American colonies
Mediated by religion and linked to ideas of lineage, legitimate birth, and honor
Legacies shaped Latin America’s notions of race, regional and national identities, and a long-standing cultural preoccupation and obsession with lineage/bloodlines.
See: Martínez, María E. 2008. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Historically, the sistema de castas was developed as a way to account for the colonies’ racial diversity.
Used to manage labor systems and structure the hierarchies of the Spanish colonial world.
It was primarily a porous system of racial classification based on a person’s proportion of Spanish blood.
Three important components: Christian bloodlines, Spanish ancestry, skin color
Secularization and dynamic interaction with class
Spain posited as having a single caste (race): Homogeneity (sameness) constructed as a defining feature of colonial centers.
Heterogeneity (diversity) externalized as a characteristic of the colonies. Race mixture, and by extension racial “Otherness”, posited as a defining feature of the colonial condition.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
Categories used in baptismal registries
Castas paintings were didactic/instructive documents
Ambiguities and paradoxes
Processes of resistance and negotiation beyond the colonial system’s imposed racial categorization.
Some categories based on skin color are still used today in state documents, even if they are no longer used in official census records (Ex. Salvadoran birth certificates used skin color despite the fact that racial/color categories no longer used in national censuses).

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The social, economic, and political legacies of this conquest had a profound effect in the future development of these territories.
Change and continuity in social relations, economic production, and organization of former colonial societies.
The Spanish empire crumbled in the first decades of the 19th century.
By 1821, the colonies in the Americas had declared their independence, led in particular by powerful criollos, mestizos, and in some cases mulatos.
For instance, Vicente Guerrero, a leading General during Mexico’s War for Independence, and the first Black president of the Mexican Republic. You can see his picture in the next slide.

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By the eve of Mexican independence (1821), the Spanish crown had developed a complex society in the northern frontier of New Spain
Premised on a system of missions, pueblos, and haciendas.
These territories, part of the areas known as Alta California, Nuevo Mexico, and Texas would now grapple with a new colonization- from the U.S.

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The War of 1848 and colonization of the southwest
Aggressive U.S. territorial expansion between 1800-1819; ex. Louisiana Purchase 1803; 1819 aggression in Florida and “annexation”
1819- Adams-Onis Treaty- after U.S. invasion, Spain cedes Florida, in exchange U.S. renounced any claim to Texas.
However, Euro-American settlers continued to attempt to colonize Texas since the 1810s.

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Motives for War of 1848
1) Colonization of new lands ripe for the expansion of plantation slavery (land and labor).
2) Profiteering by a few at the expense of others who were violated in the process (denied their lands, language, culture- various forms of cultural expression and modes became no longer acceptable and illegitimate)
3)Economic refuge from panic of 1819- new economic opportunities opened by westward expansion.
Violence, appropriation, expropriation

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II. Racial Fault Lines
The Spanish crown gave Moses Austin permission to settle in Texas in 1819.
After independence in 1821, the Mexican government gave his son Stephen Austin permission to settle.
Led to the settlement of over 20,000 colonists (who did not have permission to cross into Mexico), many of whom were fleeing from the Great Depression of 1819.
Brought 2,000 slaves, and did not intend to follow Mexican laws that interfered with their property rights (Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829)
Dawn of populism and Jacksonian era.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
Did not follow Mexican law over the abolition of slavery, despite being permitted to stay.
Did not honor agreement to covert to Catholicism.
Jackson and his populist rhetoric of westward expansion exacerbated tensions.
Mexico prevented further Euro-American immigration after 1830.
By 1835, the native Mexican population of Texas was 5,000, compared to nearly 30,000 Euro-American colonists.
Austin declared war and independence for the Republic of Texas
Many in the U.S. saw the war as a despicable affair promoted by slaveholders and land speculators.

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II. Racial Fault Lines
1835-36- hostilities erupt as Mexican troops march to Texas to defend Mexican territory against the aggressions of S. Austin, who had declared war.
Mexican troops triumph, but battles became a rallying cry for U.S. intervention in favor for the colonists.
1845- Mexico and U.S. plunged into war over disputed territories.
U.S. pop 17 million = 3 million slaves in 1840s- compared to Mexico’s 7 million total pop.- unbalanced war.

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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (came into force July 4, 1848).
Article IX : made for the provision of full rights of citizenship for native Mexicans remaining in the conquered territories; protection of property rights, language and cultural rights.
Eventually not honored (by the 1870s)
Imposition of a new racial , that had to be adopted to the legacies of the old Spanish colonial

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Displacement of once powerful Mexicanos (Californios), who were initially given honorary white status, and later placed in a subordinate position.
Mexicans social displacement and subsequent subordinate racial status- reinforced by migrations of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Contestation of Mexican’s meaningful and full access to rights of citizenship continues to this day- struggle over belonging

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Why was 1848 important?
As almaguer states: “The conquest of Western America through the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848 forged a new pattern of racialized relationships between conquerors, conquered, and the numerous immigrants that settled in the newly acquired territory” (1)
Aside from the economic imperatives, colonial enterprise ideologically driven by:
1) White Supremacy (Cf. De Genova definition earlier in the lectures)
2) Manifest Destiny: widely held 19th century belief that it was the providential (God defined) destiny of the U.S. and Anglo-Americans to colonize North America from coast to coast.
3) White Man’s Burden: A hemispheric (continental) expansion of the ideology of Manifest Destiny used to justify imperial conquest as a “civilizational” mission to be carried out by the U.S.
(Cf. Almaguer, pg. 13)

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Broadly, three main groups (in the case of CA and the former Northwestern Mexican territory):
Native American nations indigenous to these territories.
Native Mexicanos (who were descendants of both Spaniards- who initially conquered the Southwest in the early 1500s through the 1700s- and indigenous groups).
Immigrants (Chinese, Japanese, Black folk)

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What is racialization? How is it different from race?
Race: initially developed as a concept for the purposes of human classification in the context of European colonial expansion from the 17th to the 18th centuries, and was based on alleged physical characteristics/traits of different groups of mankind. Race, however, does not have any basis on biology. Rather, is a preeminently ideological construct which indicates a socially conferred status defined by prevailing power relations in a specific historical and social context. (Cf. Almaguer, pg. 9)

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Racialization: an historically specific, ideological process that involves the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group (Cf. Almaguer 3)
“[Racialization] constitutes a configuration of social, culture, and political processes by which specific perceived visible differences are imbued with racial significance and meaning than then are incorporated in a racial hierarchy both within the macro-level of economic, state, and cultural institutional structures, and within…[everyday] experience and relations that take place…in civil society” (Rocco 2014, 71).

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Racialization thus involves:
Categorization- creation of new category or relationship based on alleged or perceived physical (even cultural) characteristics.
Creation of social/political meaning for new category/relationship
Culture constitutive of this process- not merely reflexive (think of how popular culture shapes our knowledge of race, class, gender, sexuality- in sum, the politics of difference)
Extension of that meaning to the category, thus creating meaningful patterns in social relationships and politics.

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Why was 1848 important? (continued)
By the end of the 19th century/early 20th century, the ultimate racialization of Mexicanos as “non-white,” racially inferior, and thus unfit for formal political and social inclusion (citizenship) into the U.S., and their resultant marginalization and relegation to the status of menial laborers is one of the primary legacies of 1848.
Racialization of Mexicanos aa “mongrel race” and as perpetual foreigners-
Tied to exigencies of colonizer’s material interests and ideology.
Contestation (struggle) for emancipation, self-determination, and recognition (inclusion) rages to this day.

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Aftermath of 1848- Southwest (Centers CA, AZ, TX, NM)
Dynamic interplay between economic, political, and social forces.
1) Economic (material) interests shaped:
Central imperatives for conquest
Social-property relations afterward- landed/wealthy agro-industrial and commercial elite vs. dispossessed wage earners
2) Political forces (domination- force)
Legislatures, courts, coercive apparatuses function to create the hierarchies necessary for social control
Racialization process a key feature of domination

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Social/Cultural forces (creation of “common sense” and “consent”)
Socialization according to the imposition of a new social , world view, value system, etc. (think of what was acceptable to learn and what not to learn, how to talk, what language to use, how to dress, how to worship, etc)
Intellectual justification
Cultural buttressing- prevailing values, norms, etc…(important role that culture plays in the racialization process)
Naturalization of imposed and hierarchies

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Thus, racialized categories and identities served to protect economic interests of new Anglo elite and established social .
But it is not to say that race “mapped” neatly onto class.
Rather, as Almaguer states there was an “Affinity between material interests of whites at different class levels and racial ideologies that simultaneously structured the new Anglo-dominated society in California.” (3)
Simultaneous interaction of structural (material factors) and ideology that shaped the new hierarchies and social of CA.

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Privileged social status of conquerors (Euro-Americans/whites)
Result of struggles with Mexicans, Native Americans, others over:
1) Land ownership
2) Labor-market positions
Struggles over these two things- direct consequence to the development of CA white-supremacist discourses.

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Comparative racialization and class: the case of the Mexican rancheros in CA.
Mexicans- initially granted white status under U.S. regime as a consequence of previous Spanish colonization (Christianity, social status and skin color of elite- sistema de castas)
Particularly true of the rachero landed elite
Ranchero gentry given land grants by the Spanish crown (and later Mexican governments) in Alta California (now CA) beginning roughly in the late 18th century to 1821, Mexican period- 1821-1846.
About 588 grants totaling over 8.85 million acres of land during this period

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Devoted to cattle raising, not agro production.
Rancheros came from relatively humble origins- Spanish soldiers or administrative officials- “new money”- flaunted their wealth as a reminder of their social status. (Cf. Almaguer, chapter 2, esp. pgs. 52-53)
Seen as unproductive, thriftless spend drifts by protestant Euro-American colonizers in the mid 19th century.
After 1848- squatting on Mexican ranchos by Euro-American colonizers led to multiple tensions and court battles over land claims
Land claims frequently rejected by CA courts under U.S. rule- rancheros lost their lands, mainly in costly legal battles.

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However, throughout the southwest another strategy of cementing U.S. colonial rule was employed- Euro-American settlers marrying into the powerful Mexican families (similar strategy employed during Spanish colonial period)
Led to cementing of influence, access to land and wealth from old rancheros.
By the 1870s to late 1890s- most rancheros had lost their lands.
White status declined, particularly with Mexican immigration in the late 19th century.
Even more so for working classes that depended on wage labor
Rancho system’s land use patterns still recognizable in CA, lending their name to its main cities (along with the missions)

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How did other groups fare?
Indians- considered fundamentally “savage” and “unchristian”- decimated through a variety of policies- relegated to the bottom of racial hierarchy.
Asians- seen as fundamentally non-white- used as laborers, later banned (Chinese Exclusion Act)- seen as “half civilized”
Blacks- seen as “half civilized” but racially inferior (legacies of racial slavery)
Long historical trajectory- economic and political advantage of some groups over others as a result of the dynamic interplay

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Complicated “white-black binary” of U.S. race relations.
Case Study: Ventura County.
After 1848- military occupation and disposession
Only 12 of the original 20 land grants for racheros in Ventura County upheld in CA courts 1950s-1970s.
Anglo settlers used legal intimidation to make Mexican elite part with estates in the 1860s and 1870s (Thomas A. Scott- former Assistant Secretary of War under A. Lincoln).
Acquired Rancho Ojai, Rancho Simi, Rancho Las Posas, and …