The Chicanx movement, along with the very closely related Latinx movement, is a model for liberation in that it arose in opposition to the ostensibly male-dominated culture of the Chicano movement. This movement began in the late 1960s, when activists began to embrace their identity in the face of institutionalized oppression. They rejected the title of "Mexican American" and instead looked to a past that emphasized their history in the American Southwest. The Chicanx movement went beyond this in order to promote a non-gendered approach to liberation. One scholar and activist noted that the Chicano movement was "male-defined . . . sexist, misogynist[ic], and homophob[ic]." It promoted a vision of the family that was centered around men as breadwinners and heads of household. The Chicanx (sometimes "Chicana/o" is used instead) movement was a rejection of all of this, emphasizing that sexism and misogyny intersect with oppression as a result of race and class structures. It also reflected a more fluid understanding of gender, which like race, is a social construct. Today, the term is mostly used among scholars who point to the importance of language as a marker of identity. This term was used by the late Gloria Anzaldúa, whose work on Chicanx identity revolutionized the field, and Rodolfo Acuña, whose book Occupied America became a staple in identity studies courses even beyond Chicanx reading lists. In short, Chicanx scholarship attempts to incorporate the broadest possible array of identities and experiences to help understand what was once known as Mexican American studies.
https://books.google.com/books?id=y786DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&dq=Chicanx&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjN9aiSy7TYAhVL54MKHRJiCI8Q6AEIRDAF
https://jsri.msu.edu/upload/occasional-papers/oc07.pdf
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/google-recognizes-queer-chicanx-scholar-gloria-anzaldua-new-doodle
The Chicanx Movement is a bold effort, aimed to attack the root of Latin dominator culture; namely, the fact that the default (and all-inclusive) pronoun is the masculine. Though we do not have the same gendering of nouns in the English language, one might compare the Chicanx Movement to the ways we have begun to replace the words Man and Men with human and humans in Western philosophical language ("All Men are created equal," "The Rights of Man," "Man and Superman," etc).
The movement has not walked an easy path. Much of the world discredits the Chicanx phenomenon as a way for pretentious Americans to subvert the structure of a language that they have no business interfering with. Still, proponents of the movement stubbornly defend its attempts to challenge a form of linguistic imperialism that dates back to 1492. The famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said "the limits of my language are the limits of my world." By this, he meant that one can only be as empowered as one's language allows themselves to be. And along these same lines, the Chicanx Movement believes that restructuring the gender binary of the Spanish language is the first step toward disempowering the harmful patriarchy.
The Chicanx movement is a movement for civil rights for Mexican American people. It uses the gender-neutral "Chicanx" to embrace chicanos, chicanas, and people who identity with other genders. There are many examples of the ways in which the Chicanx movement has furthered justice and democracy.
For example, the movement started with the activism of Reies Lopez Tijerina, a Texas-born activist who was referred to as the "Malcolm X of the Chicano Movement." From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, he led a grassroots movement to reform land grants in New Mexico that dated back to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War. He led Chicanos to seek land that had been marked for Anglos by surveyors and that contravened the terms of the treaty. In addition, he fought for the recognition of Chicano/a culture and for economic opportunities for Chicanos/as. He also joined with the 1968 Poor People's Campaign led by Martin Luther King and served as its Chicano leader.
The movement continues today in organizations such as the Southwest Voter Registration Project (see the link below), whose slogan is, "su voto es su voz," or "your voice is your vote." This organization seeks to increase the participation of Latinos/as and other minorities in the democratic process. They host voter registration drives around the nation and, through the Latino Academy, train people for community leadership positions through courses in public speaking, political activism, and other areas. This organization promotes democratic values by seeking to involve all Americans, even those who have historically been disenfranchised, in the process of voting and carrying out community organization projects. There might be other similar organizations or efforts within the movement that have inspired you.
http://svrep.org/about_svrep.php
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