Chicano

Chicano (masculine form) or Chicana (feminine form) or Chicane (neutral form) is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed among Hispanics in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent (with many using the Nahuatl language or names), known as Indigenismo, which has roots in Mexican state-sponsored policies. Chicano was used in a sense separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into mainstream American culture and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement. The Chicano Movement faltered by the mid-1970s as a result of external and internal pressures. It was under state surveillance, infiltration, and repression by U.S. government agencies, informants, and agents provocateurs, such as through the FBI's COINTELPRO. The Chicano Movement also had a fixation on masculine pride and machismo that fractured the community through sexism toward Chicanas and homophobia toward queer Chicanos. In the 1980s, increased assimilation and economic mobility motivated many to embrace Hispanic identity in an era of conservatism. The term Hispanic emerged from consultation between the U.S. government and Mexican-American political elites in the Hispanic Caucus of Congress. They used the term to identify themselves and the community with mainstream American culture, depart from Chicanismo, and distance themselves from what they perceived as the "militant" Black Caucus. At the grassroots level, Chicano/as continued to build the feminist, gay and lesbian, and anti-apartheid movements, which kept the identity politically relevant. After a decade of Hispanic dominance, Chicano student activism in the early 1990s recession and the anti-Gulf War movement revived the identity with a demand to expand Chicano...