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Essay about The Birth of the Chicana

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In 1959, the Vietnam War severed to prove that not only had the Mexican American generation had failed to accomplish equality for Mexicans, but also failed to get the Anglos to view the actions in 1836 as an injustice as they began to parallel the expansion in their takeover of the Vietnamese. As a result of this failure, a new generation of Mexican activists, Chicanos, decided to take a new approach towards striving for equality; one that was based on achieving political justice for their own unique culture hoping Anglos would be forced to recognize their equal citizenship and that of other minorities. Yet despite these noble implications, many insisted that the fight for racial equality took precedence over that of gender. Thus, feeling …show more content…

That, however, was the result of American policy. What of the policies of the movement? Well they too were similar, in restrictionist organizations such as LULAC women were forbidden from holding in major positions. This was because the Chicanos feared that if they were too liberal they would become victims of the Red Scare and squashed out of existence and deported to Mexico as ANMA for being dubbed communist and a danger to the security of the nation as a whole. To them it alright to sacrifice successes towards gender equality if it meant that they could still be around to fight another day for the greater cause of racial equality.
Yet, Chicanos chose to ignore the fact that they were putting race before gender as males still continued to tell their female counterparts “the gabacho is oppressing us!” (Zamora). Nowhere in Zamora’s poem does she point out the males giving a nod to making the decision to place the fight for their equal citizenship before that of a woman. Nowhere does it mention the further oppression of women by not only Anglos but also their own race. The men wonder why their wives are spouting their “’women’s lib trip’” and because of this arrogant blindness that women begin to fester a resentment towards their counterparts. They are writing the movement’s “thesis” or in other words they are doing most of the work and still they have no fruit to show for their labor. Why is it that they are claiming to be a Chicanos if they are getting

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