Tales From Aztlantis
We explore Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history, archaeology, and culture, and combat the spread of disinformation about these very topics. Your hosts Kurly Tlapoyawa and Ruben Arellano Tlakatekatl invite you to join them on a fascinating journey through Mesoamerica's past, present, and future!
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Tales From Aztlantis
Throwback: How Old is the Word Chicana?
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In this throwback from Season 2 – Episode 35, we discuss the origin and antiquity of the words “Chicana” and “Chicano.” We start by explaining the origin of the episode which began many years earlier as a blog response to a commentary piece by acclaimed author and scholar, Ilan Stavans. We then explore the history of the term, its evolution as an identity for Mexican Americans, and its deep Indigenous Mesoamerican roots. Que viva la Chicana!
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Your Hosts:
Kurly Tlapoyawa is an archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and filmmaker. His research covers Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the historical connections between the two regions. He is the author of numerous books and has presented lectures at the University of New Mexico, Harvard University, Yale University, San Diego State University, and numerous others. He most recently released his documentary short film "Guardians of the Purple Kingdom," and is a cultural consultant for Nickelodeon Animation Studios.
@kurlytlapoyawa
Ruben Arellano Tlakatekatl is a scholar, activist, and professor of history. His research explores Chicana/Chicano indigeneity, Mexican indigenist nationalism, and Coahuiltecan identity resurgence. Other areas of research include Aztlan (US Southwest), Anawak (Mesoamerica), and Native North America. He has presented and published widely on these topics and has taught courses at various institutions. He currently teaches history at Dallas College – Mountain View Campus.
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SPEAKER_02Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Astlantis. We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa. And Rubenariano Tlacateka. So how are you doing, man? Still uh still hot. Still hot out there in Tehastlan.
SPEAKER_03Still trying to keep cool over here in Tehastlan. Man, I remember. Triple digits. We got a little bit of rain yesterday. Um that's good. Maybe 10 minutes, and it wasn't downpour. It was short. I mean, it was steady and and it cooled things off for a Saturday uh afternoon. So it was nice, but it was short-lived and we're back to triple digits.
SPEAKER_01Damn.
SPEAKER_03And it's triple digits uh in the foreseeable future for here on out in the next couple of weeks. August tends to be the hottest month, the hottest month of the summer. So I remember we are just like halfway the summer. So more more triple digits to come for sure.
SPEAKER_02Tell you what, man, I miss you, homie, but I do not miss the weather in Texas. Crazy weather. Yep. So today we've got a pretty cool uh pretty cool episode. I'm very excited about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this is actually one that dates back to 2014, uh what, eight years ago now? Yeah, yeah, when we first uh first addressed this this issue that you know, and in all honesty, I thought it was gonna gain more traction within the Chicana Chicano community, at least within academia. Back then I was part of a listserv, which I mean I'm still uh on it because I get emails every now and then, but the the person who who runs it, um, he's um you know older gentleman, you know, senior scholar who's uh I think uh on his way to retirement, and so he hasn't been doing much, and a lot of people just kind of dropped off of it. But I remember back then, um it was very active, and and I remember posting a link to my blog, and um I had like maybe one or two people reach out to me, not because of Stavans and the controversy that that I thought he would have set off, but more about the term itself. They wanted to know if they could use it in in their classes, and I was like, sure, go ahead, you know, just give me credit, you know, at least. But that was it. So there wasn't at least from what I saw, there wasn't a huge buzz around this topic. I don't know about about your end.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, on on my end either. I mean, there was a little bit of discussion like on the um uh Facebook or yeah, it was Facebook. We weren't doing um MySpace anymore on Facebook.
SPEAKER_03There was some I think I was already off of Facebook.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean there was a little bit of discussion, but yeah, like you said, it didn't um catch on. So hopefully we can kick this hornet's nest a little bit and get some uh get some discussion going. Because it's odd how that happens. Like topics that I think will be big just kind of go to the wayside, but then they come back.
SPEAKER_03Well, this one came back because one of our premium supporters on the Discord channel brought up the topic and we sort of started talking about it, and then we we posted a link to your blog post or my blog post. We actually talked about this. So shout out to the premium supporters. Thank you for for your generous donations and for continuing to support the work that we do.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So let's get into it, shall we? The origin and antiquity of the words chicana and chicano have been debated from the halls of academia to the streets of the barrio. The advent of social media has certainly added fuel to the fire, but nobody seems to have a clear answer. Some claim that the word comes from chicanery and is reflective of the untrustworthy nature of the people it describes. Those people being us, of course. Others claim that it means children of the earth in the Nahuat language. This is just not true, by the way. However, neither of these claims is supported by evidence, and as far as I can tell, Chicano and Chicana are simply truncated forms of the word mehicano. This would of course indicate that the words have a Nahuat origin as Mexicano is derived from the word Mexica. So, just how old is the word Chicana? Well, I've seen individuals claim to have found the earliest appearance of Chicano or Chicana dating to the 1940s, to the 1920s, and even the late 1800s. In an embarrassingly misinformed piece written in 2014, notorious non-chicano Ilan Stavans claims that the earliest claims that the earliest appearance of the word was in 1947, but as we will soon see, this simply isn't true. So, what was the earliest appearance of the words Chicana or Chicano outside of the United States? Well, as fate would have it, both Tlacateca and I share a passion for this particular subject, leading us to independently make a very cool discovery several years ago. In our research, we came across a set of maps from the 1500s, each showing a location marked Chicana in what is now Western Mexico. So strap yourselves in, dear listeners, as we explore the question, how old is the word chicana?
SPEAKER_03About eight years ago in 2014, I made a note on my blog about finding a 16th-century map called The Senno del Discoperto de la Nova Francia, published in Venice in 1566 by Bolognino Saltieri. The fascinating thing about this 16th century map is that it contains the term Chicana. Yes, you heard that right. The name Chicana is on a map that dates to the mid-1500s. But Saltieri's map is not the only one. There are others. As it turns out, several 16th century maps also contain the term. This is an important fact for many reasons, one of them being the continued debate over the etymology and antiquity of the terms Chicana and Chicano. Which leads us to the topic of today's episode. Back in 2014, the renowned author and academic Ilan Stavans had an article published in the Lingua Franca section of the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled Do Chicanos Have an Inferiority Complex? This was a blog, by the way, yes, we do not. The article or blog post drew a lot of attention from the Chicano-Chano community when it was published because Stavans attempts to trace the etymology of the term Chicano while simultaneously using it to psychoanalyze that community, a la mode of the famed Mexican author Octavio Paz. Unfortunately for him, he fails at both. I won't address the bigger issue with his assessment here. Instead, let's put to rest the erroneous notion repeated by Stavans that the terms Chicana and Chicano are no older than the mid-20th century. In his piece, Stavans claims to have researched the origin of the term chicano and discredits the accepted explanation among many chicanas and chicanos that it's derived from the Nahuatl pronunciation of Mexicano or Mexicano. The fact is that the letter X was substituted for SH by the early chroniclers due to the absence of that sound in Spanish. In time, some words with the X were Hispanicized with the letter J, while others were transformed by the Spanish equivalent of SH to CH in the Ch sound. Hence, me chicano is thought to have been shortened to Chicano over the centuries. Stavans is skeptical of that story, and perhaps rightly so. However, he ignores the principle of Occam's razor and proceeds to complicate it even further. You really have to read his convoluted analysis, which I don't recommend by the way, to get a sense of his fallacious line of argument.
SPEAKER_01What's even more incredible is that Stavans, a scholar and Ivy League professor, states with absolute confidence that the original appearance of Chicano in print is traced to 1947 in a story by Mario Suarez that was published in the Arizona Quarterly.
SPEAKER_03Well, that may be true. I mean, in fact, that is one of the early uh instances of Chicano, but it is not the first one, and there's others. And this is a stunning pronouncement and a troubling thing to read from someone with his educational background. Had he dug a little deeper, Stavans would have discovered that the earliest known example of the term Chicano in print, at least in what is now the United States, dates to 1926, which is almost a century ago, by Daniel Venegas, who was a former immigrant laborer who became a writer. Shout out Daniel Venegas. And that doesn't even include the term's usage in Spanish language newspapers in the US from the early 1900s, and there are some indications that it goes beyond the 1900s. So much for research. While conducting actual research on this, I came across a little known book by Arnoldo C. Vento. We've talked about him before on this podcast and his connections to the MCRCA, and he's also connected to Alurista, connected to Juan Luna Cárdenas. In 98, he published a book called Mestizo: The History, Culture, and Politics of the Mexican and the Chicano, The Emerging Mestizo Americans. In that book, Vento discusses the early explorer maps of the 16th century in relation to the etymology of the term Chicano.
SPEAKER_02One only has to look at a map to discover the archaeological ruins of Chicana in southern Mexico to verify its pre-Columbian origin.
SPEAKER_03Which is astounding. To his credit, he publishes this book and he mentions the term Chicana with two ends, but he doesn't provide a map or a source for his claim, which, you know, it's kind of disappointing because I would have liked to have traced that and made some connections. I mean, have you found that specific term? I have.
SPEAKER_02I have, and we we could get into it after you know in the next portion.
SPEAKER_03But his statement shows that at least since 1998, someone was aware that the term chicana had deep origins dating prior to 1848. Although, contrary to my findings, he places chicana in southern Mexico. Later I had a conversation with my good friend and co-host Curly Tlapoyawa. Shout out to Curly Tlapoyawa. Shout out. About the 1566 map with the term Chicana, and he told me that he'd also found a 16th century map of the term as well. What's more, his map dated to 1562, so you beat me by four years with that map. Great minds. Upon further inspection, the map Curly found was called the America Cive Porti Orbis. I don't know, it's a long name. It's in Latin. It's known as a Diego Gutierrez map, those of you that want to research it, uh, because it was done by Diego Gutierrez, obviously. But it is almost certain that Saltieri's map from 1566 was based on Gutierrez's 1562 map, which was something that was common back then given the propensity for cartographers to copy each other's work back in those days. The cartographic style differs. Many of the place names uh for Nueva España are virtually identical. So the placement of the name Chicana is roughly um the same on both maps and falls somewhere on the northwestern edge of the Mexican state of Sonora. I've compared the antique maps with a Google map of the same region, and the Chicana on the maps falls somewhere just north of what is now modern-day Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, for those of you that are familiar with that area. At this location, there is a natural park called Parque Natural del Gran Desierto del Pinacate, which is named after that largest peak that's there called El Pinacate. And the following quote is from the park's Wikipedia page.
SPEAKER_02It is in the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico, east of the Gulf of California, in the eastern part of Grande Sierto de Altar, just below the border of Arizona, United States, and north of the city of Puerto Penasco. It is one of the most significant visible landforms in North America seen from space. A volcanic system known as Santa Clara is the main part of the landscape, including three peaks, Pinacate, Carnegie, and Medio.
SPEAKER_03Could the name Chicana on the maps be referring to the site and those peaks? Given its importance to the various indigenous peoples that have inhabited the region, like the San Dieguito and the Um I'm no I'm gonna butcher this and I'm sorry, is it Hia said o'odam? It's certainly a possibility. So there's there's definitely indigenous connection to Grampinacate Peak and that area, dating back, you know, at least a millennia. Further research led me to Roberto Garcia Rodriguez's doctoral dissertation from 2008 entitled Senteo Cintli Sacred Maze, a 7,000 year ceremonial discourse. Garcia, who is known as Dr. Cintli, also references the Saltieri and Gutierrez maps. As far as I can tell, he's the only other person other than Vento who's ever mentioned the old maps and their inclusion of the term Chicana. However, slightly different from my observation, Dr. Sintli proposes that the Chicana site is near the mouth of the Colorado River, which is west of Alpinacate Peak. About the Diego Gutierrez map, he says.
SPEAKER_02Perhaps the first fully illustrated map of North and South America, this shows the site of Chicana at the mouth of the Colorado River, near present-day Yuma, Arizona. This may be the earliest recorded use of the word Chicana anywhere. Other 16th century maps have Chicana in a nearby location, and an early 18th century map of Nayarit missions places Chicana at the top center of the map, near the same place. This too may be the oldest written reference to the word chicana. A little to the south of Chicana is the region of Astatlam and the site or city of Astatlam. While this may not be the actual mythic slash historic Astlan, it may be the earliest attempt to depict on a map the purported point of origin of the Azteca Mexica.
SPEAKER_03Thus, contrary to Ilan Stavans's erroneous conclusion, there's no doubt that the term Chicana has been around since at least the mid-16th century. Those maps clearly demonstrate the term's antiquity. Furthermore, the maps serve as conclusive evidence that the name Chicana predates the 20th century and that it's of obvious indigenous origin. In sum, it remains to be seen whether the place name on the maps is a direct ancestor of the modern day term that gained popularity during the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 70s, but that's a story for another time. What's important here is that the term predates European invasion, and our duty as indigenous Chicana, Chicano, Chicanex peoples is to preserve and maintain our culture and history for future generations.
SPEAKER_02So what does this mean? Well, without getting into etymologies, ethnic identities, and word origins, it means that the word Chicana appears in print at least as far back as 1562. Now I don't know about you, but I find this fact fascinating. Why this is not common knowledge in the field of Chicano studies remains a mystery to me, but I leave an examination of the utter failure that is Chicano Studies for a different time. Damn, I came with the heat on that one. Suffice it to say, Chicana is truly an old school term. Que viva La Chicana.
SPEAKER_03Que viva.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a trip because when we first brought this up and we were looking at these maps, and it's it's it's clear as day. You look at these maps, and there's this little town, right, with the name Chicana. And it's like wow, holy shit. And you know, and and I'm not claiming that this is the direct ancestor of how we know the term, right? But it's just saying, like, well, the word, we have actual evidence that this word, whatever its origin, it existed. And I think that's very cool. And I think it's worth talking about.
SPEAKER_03It is, it is definitely definitely worth talking about. When I was doing research, I don't know if it was for the term Chicana Chicano for something else, but there was there was uh what do you call it? A historical thesis that was that was done by a student in an ethnic studies program out in I think it's somewhere in California. And from the very beginning, right off the bat, like this individual poses a question in the in the opening and in the introductory paragraph. Uh, not even a question, it's more like a statement, like it's like it's a matter of fact, like no one knows where the term Chigana uh Chigano comes from. And I'm like, are you serious? This is at an ethnic studies program that is focused on Chigano studies, and you can't even get that right. But it goes to show because people like Stavans, and here's this professor who you know he's he's at an Ivy League and he's been to all the Ivy League schools and gotten his masters and PhDs, and not even that guy can get it right. You know, it's like it's not as that's not what he focuses on, so you can't really blame him. So, in a sense, and you know, we're not really picking on Stavans necessarily, although it was kind of unfortunate that he wrote that misguided article. This is a broader problem that even our very own so-called Chigano scholars have an issue with, and the easy way out, I think it's a cop-out, uh, honestly, if you ask me, is that oh well Chigano means different things to different people. No, yes, maybe, but it has a specific origin where it comes from and what it meant. And yes, as a historian, I understand that even identities change over time because I talk about this in my classes, but this is kind of like lazy intellect, I call this intellectual laziness, right? Like not even wanting to dig deep enough to really find the source and the origin and trace the evolution and just kind of jumping to conclusions and you know, because you don't want to do the the the work, because it takes a lot of work to do research, and I get it, you know, but you can't just go around saying stuff and just because you think it feels good and and you and you think is right without actually having resourced it. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, and and and yeah, you know, Chicano it it carries different significance to different people, right? Like it resonates with people differently, but it has a definite origin and a definite meaning. And when people play that very postmodern game of like, well, it just means this because you know, it doesn't really matter where it comes from because it means this to me. It's like, well, I I disagree. I think it does matter where things come from. Um, call me crazy, but I like to know, right? It's just my inquisitive nature. I want to know how did this come, you know, how did this term come about? Where does this identity come from? Where how old is this word? How was it first utilized? When did it first appear in print? These things are important to me just because I at one, as a Chicano, but two, you know, as as a a researcher, as somebody who's an ethno. Historian who's an archaeologist who cares about their community and who cares about the origins of where ideas come from. Because otherwise, then you just might as well just make shit up, right?
SPEAKER_03Call yourself any, yeah, exactly. And especially when we're trying to to ground, you know, our history, our culture, our people to this land. If we can't even agree on terms like very basic identifiers for our people as Chiganos, then that also kind of lends credence to to people who will criticize Chiganos and say, Well, see, you don't you don't even know what the word means. You're just kind of making it up as you go as well. You don't even know what you are. So are you really indigenous? And by extension, I know it's it's not quite the same, but it's almost along the same lines. Um, where you have people who don't call themselves mexica, right? But you look at everything that they do, and almost everything is stuff that has been filtered through the Mexicayot movement from Mexico, but yet they don't call themselves Mexica because they're they're above that, they're beyond that. They they've they've transcended that identity. And I'm thinking, okay, that's that's fine. But just so you know, the things you're doing were first originated through the Mexicayot movement in Mexico. So whether or not you accept it or whether or not you want to call yourself a mexica or not, those things have an origin. That's fine, but you know what you're doing is literally mexicayot.
SPEAKER_02But don't tell them that. Holy shit. Well, the thing that got me was, and this was recent too, this was within the last two years, because it was during the pandemic. Um, there was a discussion going on online about the word chicano, and I I saw somebody bring up the whole chicanery thing, and and not in a critical way, they were just repeating it like, well, you know the word comes from chicanery, and I'm like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_03But just to parrot that, and then the other uh tell them go read a book. Exactly. But what book, right? Like you can't even point to a book that can adequately define the term for you. Like where where is that book? No one has bothered to the only person that attempted to really do an uh critical analysis of the term Chicano was um I want to say Jose Limon? Let me let me look at the.
SPEAKER_02Well, Sintley did a lot, you know, with his who declared war on the word Chicano, um, not going into like the history and and etymology of the origins.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say that he does he do the defending the term etymological analysis of valid and legitimate for our people. So that's a very important piece, you know. Jose Limon.
SPEAKER_03Yes, Jose Limon, 1979. He he did an article that at the I believe it's published in the book as well, but the version that I have was one that was published through a government publication where he presented a paper, I believe. And it's called The Folk Performance of Chicano and the Cultural Limits of Political Ideology, Jose I. Anyone that's really looking to find a good paper, a good publication that looks at the term Chicano, and you know, he traces some of the earliest publications or mentions of the term Chicano all the way back to I believe the earliest is 1911, according to his research, but this is in 1979, so it's hard to summarize and synthesize what he says in this article because it would take me uh 30 minutes to do a good job of that. I'm gonna have that kind of time. But if anyone really is looking for that, you should try to find this article. The main takeaway from what he says about the term Chicano is that the term chicano, it wasn't an identity as much as it was sort of more like an adjective to describe someone who was, according to his research, uh, who was a recent immigrant from Mexico in in the early uh 20th century, who wasn't necessarily someone from the city, it was something that was mainly used for like day laborers, for people who worked in the fields and and things like that. And so it wasn't used as an identity, like, oh yeah, like we say today yo soy chicano, right? Like what he's saying is that the term was used more in in reference to to call someone, oh yeah, esos son chicanos, like they're Mexicans. It was another way of saying they're Mexicans, and it was a way to distinguish Mexican Americans, which now the term Chicano means Mexican American, which is kind of odd, right? And this is what I mean about there are origins for the term and it has roots, and the identity and what it means changes over time. This is a perfect example of that. It changes from being a term that is used to label someone who is an immigrant to one where now Mexican Americans are the Chicanos. That's and so what happened was in in the 1960s and 70s, a lot of the the children of those farm workers and and the and the and the immigrants were now saying, Yes, I'm proud of being Chicano, that's my identity, that's who I am, yo soy Chicano. And by that point, they were Mexican Americans, and so over time the term Chicano became conflated with just saying Mexican American, right? And that's the art, and whether or not he he's correct in his assessment, the point that I'm trying to make is that outside of Limon's, and and I've researched this, outside of his article, no one has really done a deep dive into the term Chicano in the way that he did. And so you can agree or disagree with what what he has to say in that article about the term Chicano, but I think in my opinion, he does a very good job of at least uh laying out his his argument and supporting it and and explaining uh at least um some of the origins of the term. He doesn't really pinpoint exactly where and when it emerges, he just knows that it just kind of organically you know grew out of uh this interaction between native-born Mexican Americans and recent immigrants uh at the turn of the 20th century.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Well, if we can get that, do you have that as a PDF? I do have it as a PDF. Maybe we could throw it on the Discord for the premium supporters. So they could take a look at it themselves. I'm reminded of the scene in Zootsuit where he's like, you know, don't wear these clothes. And he's like, Come on, pops Chicano style. Chicano style. It's like, didn't I tell you not to use that word? It means you're trash.
SPEAKER_03And so that's another I mean he does talk about that too in the article where it it also can be used as a as a way to demean someone by calling them a chicano. And it also has like this playful connotation as well, like joking around among friends. Ah, esos chicanos, you know, or if you're being critical of someone, but in a in not in a negative way, but in a like in a uh playful way, you can call yeah, esos chicanos, you know, but it's like the word chingalo, right? Depending on the context, yeah, it can mean various things and how you stress it and the intonation and and the accent that you place on it and you know things like that.
SPEAKER_02And so that the term chicano was kind of like the original earlier um oh and and also Vento's book, right? I'm surprised how many people have not read that book in the field of Chicano studies because it's funny when the first time somebody turned me onto that book, hell, I don't even know if it was it might have been you because whoever turned me onto it was like, Have you read this? Because this book sounds a lot like your book. I'm like, No, I haven't. And then I picked it up and I was like, damn, yeah, it does. And uh I mean I wouldn't have called my book Mestizo because that's not my jam, but I'm I'm shocked that a lot of people haven't read that book. And then when you th you thumb through that book and it's mentioning by name, you know, Juan Luna Cardanas and uh and the stuff that he brought to to educate people and his ideas and and his teachings, who you know, we covered Juan Luna in in one of our earlier episodes of the podcast, but people not even knowing who he is, so there's like this whole missing history, you know, whether you agree with these guys or not, if you're really interested in this in the field of Chicano studies and Mexican American studies, whatever you want to call it, you should know who these people are. You should be aware of their writings and what they put out. In my opinion. I I would I would think so.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and you know, in fact, I don't know this to be true, and and Dr. Sintli is welcome to come on the show and then talk with us and we can have the discussion with him about this. But I suspect that it was through Juan Luna Cárdenas, through Vento, that people like uh Dr. Sintli and others became aware of these maps because Juan Luna Cárdenas, like you said, whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions and analysis, he was a true academic and scholar and researcher, and he had a wealth of knowledge and and a deep breath of it as well. And when he came up, as if you recall the conversation that we had with Juan Tejeda and how he told us that he had taken a class with Juan Luna Cárdenas, who had been brought up to teach as a visiting scholar in the Chicano Studies program, because of Arnoldo Vento, who at UT Austin, right? At UT Austin. And so I suspect that it was it was Juan Luna Cárdenas who first introduced these ideas to Vento and Tusinki and others, right? And so, I mean, I could be wrong, but it just seems to me because of those deep connections that people in the Chicano movement in general, and especially those people in the Michigan tradition, Danza Azteca, and other indigenous uh centered Chicano movements, there's a lot of connections that run through these various circles uh in Texas, um, New Mexico, and all the way to California. There's a lot of connections.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Well, speaking of Vento, he references a map that has the name Chicana, right, with two ends. And so I did some digging around and I found a place, a town, it's a Maya town, built during the classic period, which is like 600 AD to 830 AD. And the site is called Chicana, and it's named after the main building of this archaeological site. Structure two was named Chicana. And according to uh what I found, and I don't speak any Mayan language, so this could be totally wrong, but the word Chicana with two ends uh means house of the serpent mouth, and it's this uh building, uh structure two in this Maya site. And the way that they broke it down etymologically or linguistically is chi means mouth. Gan means serpent, which that much I know, right, because of and na meaning house. So qi gan na house of the serpent mouth. The site is located two kilometers west of Becan in the Mexican state of Campeche on the Yucatan Peninsula, and it is one of forty-five other sites located in that area. And then it goes on to give some history of the region and so I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I mean, absolutely, you know, not saying that we get the word Chicana from this town, but that's there was a word, you know, a place name in Maya that pr is pronounced the same, right?
SPEAKER_03Well it's it's kinda like the same thing that we're saying with the town that's uh named by the Saltieria and uh Gutierrez maps, right? Like we're not saying that that's where the modern day Chicana Chicano comes from. Yeah. But that we know that at the very least the term or those sounds put together. Yeah, that this word existed existed, right? And so for all we know, maybe chicana in the uh the Sonoran context and the indigenous people from that area means something completely different, like the way it does in the Maya.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Or for like even um, for example, even in Nahuat, just speaking about things that sound similar, if I were to hand you something, and I would tell you in Nahuatl Chikana, I'm I'm telling you, uh, like here, take this. Oh chicana. Um yeah, so it's cool, right? Like all these indigenous languages making these sounds that are just so natural to our mouths. And so when you say chicano and chicana, it's like it resonates with this power of coming from our ancestors, even you know, not not the the meaning necessarily, but that right these sounds were so common to our mouths that we make these noises with our mouths. Chicano, chicana. I think it's cool, I think it's awesome. Yeah. But one thing I wanted to ask you, Dr. Ariano, um, not put you on the spot, but how do you like because you know there's that joke, right? You get 10 Chicanos and you ask them, hey, what does being a Chicano mean? So not necessarily the word, what does the word mean? But what does being a Chicano mean to you?
SPEAKER_03Or like how does it how does it connect with well to me the term Chicano, you know, uh as a historian, I appreciate its evolution historically and how it's changed meaning over time, going from one thing to what it is now, and in my opinion, unfortunately, also this uh like you were saying, this postmodern uh interpretation of anything goes for the term Chicano. I disagree personally. I think the term Chicano is an identity that is specific to people of ethnic Mexican extraction. And if we're gonna be more direct about it, it it is something that emerges in the United States because no one in Mexico was calling themselves a chicano. It wasn't until they crossed over to what is now the US and they crossed that border that they became chicanos. And because in Mexico, the term that they use for Chicanos is bocho, it's a completely different word, has a different etymological origin, and it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. A bocho is an Americanized chicano, but it's usually in sort of a derogatory sense, like yeah, doesn't it mean like a spoiled Mexican?
SPEAKER_02Like spoiled, like gone bad.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, I guess that would be a good way to synthesize it. And and so Chicano is completely different, it has a different origin, has a different meaning. And to me, the essence of what it means to be a Chicano is that you acknowledge not only your ethnic Mexican roots, um, but you also acknowledge that history that you have uh in what is now the United States, especially the Southwest in New Mexico and in Texas and California, uh Arizona, and and you acknowledge not only your indigenous roots to Mexico, but you also acknowledge the fact that there's been that connection with indigenous people of those places as well, and a lot of mixture that has gone on in the last three to four centuries since you know um our peoples have have mixed the ethnic Mexican people with the indigenous peoples of of the various locations. And so to me, yeah, and uh as it was as well for many Chicanos who were attuned to their uh indigenous connections back in the Chicano movement days, you know, from the very beginning, uh the the term Chicano was associated with rejecting whiteness, with rejecting Latino, with rejecting Hispanidad. It was about embracing your indigenous identity. But I think that there's weight to saying that we are indigenous Chicanos. To me, Chicano itself is indigenous, it's to say you're it's like saying I belong to the indigenous people, the indigenous nation called the Chicano nation or Chicana or whatever iteration if you want to call it the Chicanex nation, by all means go ahead. It's the root of what that word means is still there. It means that you are rooted indigenously to the land, to the place, to to the culture and of this place that is not foreign, that is from here. You know what I'm saying? Like that's that's what it means to me to be an indigenous Chicano.
SPEAKER_02That's dope. Yeah, and I agree. I think, and we've had this discussion before, you know, um privately, I think Chicano is as an identity, it's it's enough, right? It's it's good enough to just to say no, we're Chicanos. That is who we are as indigenous people. We are Chicanos because our experience is very unique in that you know, not being either being neither, you know, Mexican, right? Being nationals of Mexico, Mexican citizens, and not really being American because they just look at us as being Mexicans, right? And so our experience, the Chicano experience is unique. Chicano indigenity, you know, doesn't follow the same norms as Mexican indigenity, and it doesn't follow the same norms as, you know, indigenity in the United States. The way native people are defined in the United States, those rules don't really work with Chicanos. And the way that indigenous communities are defined in Mexico, those rules don't really work with Chicanos because we were displaced as a result of colonization. And that's the thing that gets me when people are like, well, no, Chicanos can't can't reclaim their indigenity or they can't claim their indigenity. Because to me, that's just saying, well, then fuck it, right? Then why bother do any then you know colonization is permanent and irreversible, so fuck it. If we can't be who we are or reconnect in a meaningful way. And the people who are saying this, this anti-Chicano rhetoric is coming from people who are always like hashtag decolonize, or you know what I mean? Like decolonize this, decolonize that. But yet when it comes to Chicanos, they have like the most colonized mentality that you could possibly have.
SPEAKER_03Well, but I think it's also um due to this notion of what it means to be indigenous. For a lot of people, it means that you are stuck in time, that you have a static culture that didn't change, that did not evolve to all indigenous people. It is, right? Because if you go to any reservation, and I mean, you know, I've visited reservations. We have the Calpuli here in Dallas, we've been to Pine Ridge, we we've been to Alaska, you know, some of us have been to different parts in Mexico and the United States. And we go to these places, and when we filter through our lens as Chicanos, we're like, man, we're back in the barrio, we're back with our people. It's like, you know, it's another neighborhood with people that are just like us in a sense. Their culture is different, they have their their own uh indigenous languages, but you look at them and it's like, man, these are my people. This looks like if I was back in the barrio with my people. But if you go there, people don't live like they lived 100 years ago or 200 years ago, they live in the present moment, right? They live in the present moment, they've adapted and and they've uh assimilated, acculturated to a certain degree. Just because someone says that they're 100% American Indian doesn't mean that they don't have uh some kind of admixture in them. They're just saying that according to the protocols of their tribe, they have been uh designated someone who is 100% of that tribe. It doesn't mean that they're 100% pure of anything. No one in this planet is 100% pure. Perhaps maybe only the uncontacted tribes of South America are possibly the closest that we have to people who are not mixed, right? But outside of those people, everyone in this planet has some kind of mixture. And so to say that you can't be indigenous because you're Chicano, because you your your culture has evolved and has shifted so far away from what people think of when they think of indigenous people, is just limiting in their scope of imagination and their lack of understanding of how historicity works.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it that's what I was gonna say. It's a complete lack of understanding of how history plays out because our experience under colonialism is different than somebody else's. Like, that's just how colonialism works. Like, sorry, you know, I I can't go back and change time, but colonization has affected indigenous peoples different ways. We be indigenous. Um but to say, like, you know, there's only one authentic indigenous experience, and it just so happens to be mine, by the way, right? That's the way people approach it, and they judge everybody else because your experience is different.
SPEAKER_03It's like, nah, man, we've all had different experiences. But if you think about it, that is the precise definition of being tribal. I mean, so can you really blame them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right. I mean, that is a tribal mentality.
SPEAKER_02Well, one of the things that I I hear a lot and I see it on the internet a lot and in books and you know, lectures and stuff. When people uh shit on Chicanos for asserting our indigenity, they'll say, Well, what indigenous people accept you? And I'm like, other Chicanos, dumbass? Like We're indig like what part of that don't you get? We are the indigenous people, our own communities, we accept each other.
SPEAKER_03And so you can only be indigenous if other indigenous nations acknowledge you? I mean, is this like a nation state argument being made? That's what it sounds like, right? Like you can't be a nation until other nations acknowledge you as a nation, like Chale, consehale.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying? And it's like I like to um every every now and then I'll tweet out the same thing. I like to tweet out, you know, Chicanismo is a form of indigenous kinship. Because it is. You know, we have our own social norms, our own form of kinship, our own relationship to the land, our own ties to each other, our own sense of who we are as a community, as indigenous people, and that's good enough.
SPEAKER_03And our indigenity is different from your indigenity, but we can both be indigenous together. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't make it any less valid or authentic. Man, it's been a good talk. I'm all fired up. But you know what I like to say, homie.
SPEAKER_03What's that, homeboy?
SPEAKER_02The truth, well, it's like medicine. It doesn't always taste good, Elon Stavans. But it's always good for ya. Chicana. Power Tiboitas. Yeah. Addendum slash correction. Right after this episode first dropped, I was notified by a few individuals, so shout out to Kalmecak and Chris Quautli for reaching out to me about a mistake that we made in the episode. Turns out that we were repeating a misconception, a commonly held misconception, in the episode, and I just wanted to clarify what we got wrong. In the episode, we state the fact is that the letter X was substituted for the letters SH by the early chroniclers due to the absence of that sound in Spanish. Well, it turns out that that sound did exist in Spanish at one point. And for this, I'm gonna go ahead and refer to the Burgas Institute in an article written by Nelson Navarrete, in which they explain why the letter X has such an odd sound in the Spanish language. He begins with, have you ever wondered why Mexico is written in Spanish as M E X I C O, but we still say Mexico pronoun you know, which is the way that you would pronounce M E J I C O. He goes on to explain that the letter X has its origins in ancient Greek and was called chi and pronoun pronounced as a k sound, as in Christos, meaning the anointed one. So this is where we get the word Christ, right? He goes on to say now you know why we use the contraction Xmas for Christmas in English. He continues in medieval Spanish, the letter X was a very common one, and it was originally pronounced as the English sound sh like in the word shame. Later, in the mid seventeenth century, so around sixteen fifty, its pronunciation morphed into the Spanish sound J, which sounds like a hard H in English. This phonetic change, among others, provoked a readjustment in the Spanish consonant system, causing various orthographic reforms. So there you have it. Uh we were repeating a commonly held misconception uh that I'd heard a lot as a young Chicano growing up in the movement later on in college, that the X in México, that that X was placed there, because México is supposed to be pronounced Mexico. The X makes that SH sound. But the thinking was that the X was placed there to denote a sound that was unfamiliar in the Spanish language, and therefore that is why it got changed to the J sound as in México rather than mexico. Uh, this is something that I grew up understanding to be true, but it turns out that it was not factual. So once again, shout out to Kalmeca and Chris Quautli for pointing out this mistake. It doesn't change the substance of the discussion that we were having, but we want to provide accurate information. That's uh, as you know, if you're a listener to the podcast, that is one of the main goals of the podcast is to promote learning accurate information and also admitting when you get something wrong and making that adjustment so that you don't get it wrong in the future. So, thank you once again for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
