In the opening of his treatise “Discourse on Colonialism” Amie Cesaire wrote concerning this attitude on the part of the colonizer “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.” Although it may not seem the case nations are not judged great solely on their ability to conquer other nations by force of might. The truly great nation will be like the truly great people of this world and conquer with ideas, with truth and the power of that truth. The United States has fallen very short of that reality especially in its dealings with the indigenous inhabitants of this land.
As indigenous people we have languished as colonial subjects in the shadow of the greatest military power the world has ever known for the past 500 years. By all accounts it appears we are permanent guests on our own land a nation that exists now as a pseudo-mother colony centered on Anglo-Saxon values, culture and history translated first through military conquest, then through the force of law and finally the ongoing educational subjugation of indigenous people. The concern for Xicano studies scholars both in and out of the academy must re-center on providing a real philosophical and theoretical framework for an ongoing discussion of national liberation. In doing so it is important, to consider at all times the words of Frantz Fanon in imagining an organized pan-African and in our case a pan-indigenous response to colonialism in the Americas when he wrote, “Colonialism did not dream of wasting its time in denying the existence of one national culture after another. Therefore the reply of the colonized people will be straight away continental in its breadth” (Fanon, 212).
There are powerful arguments for joining our oppressors, taking our place next to the colonizer of our land and marching out to conquer the rest of this world. Indeed, many of our indigenous cousins have chosen that course and in viewing the success some have achieved as collaborators to the U.S. colonial system in creating a safe space for themselves others might logically question the wisdom of continued resistance. Also, these are not easy questions; in terms of any type of resistance we must be able to determine through that resistance and defiance whether or not it is possible or even desirable to restore authenticity to indigenous people? Likewise, what does it mean to be authentic as indigenous people and when we speak of authenticity, we must ask ourselves, how can this state be accomplished if not through the restoration of some long gone culture? Is that our goal?
Canadian Metis author/scholar Howard Adams writes on this saying “Red nationalism revives those native cultural traditions that give stability and security to the nation and discards those that oppress the people … since the cultural awakening is only one stage of liberation, steps must be taken to ensure that the national consciousness will develop political aspects as well.” How then can this conversation about nationalism and indigenous authenticity establish new forms of culture and resistance to Anglo-American hegemony in the Americas if we as a people will not loosen our death grip on ever fossilizing customs?
It is inevitable many individuals who we would like to count as allies in this struggle will take a discussion about nationalism and immediately dismiss it as paternalistic, homophobic and closed minded. Their experience with nationalism and so-called nationalists might give them the right to take that stance. However, just because we have allowed these types of people to dominate the nationalist discussion and capture the vocabulary of that ideology does not mean that these qualities are inherent in the concept of nationalism or that using nationalism as an ideology and organizing tool will result in these divisions.
Many of the foundational anti-colonialist scholars and soldiers saw the nation and before the nation the ideal of the nation as paramount to the solidification of a liberation movement for them the “living expression of the nation is the moving consciousness of the whole of the people” this helps us to understand radical and revolutionary nationalism as tool of liberation for colonized people can be the means of exploding awareness that is “activated through a deepening of social and political consciousness.”
There are many who will think this ridiculous. They believe the idea of Xicanos being able to exert collectively the necessary force to form a sovereign, indigenous nation within the boundaries of the Continental United State is a pipe dream. There are others though who will read this and believe it is a dream that someday must be a reality. The academy and traditional Chicano Studies programs and scholarship in particular are not talking or writing a lot about physical or political liberation.
In fact as Adams (himself having a PhD from Berkeyley) argues “Higher education cannot be considered as a solution … it firmly entrenches white supremacist attitudes and the white ideal in the minds of native students.” However, many “organic intellectuals” in the Chicano/Xicano community, as well as a small but growing body of scholars within the field continue to attack the issue of physical colonization in the Americas. Part of this paper will be to examine and define an emerging Xicano liberation ideology, which could push traditional Chicano Studies pedagogy toward its logical next step in the evolution of Indigenismo and the concept of Aztlan as a physical place.
Across the country there are individuals who consider themselves revolutionaries, persons of influence within the currently very fractured Xicano liberation movement. As a result of these fractures and the inability of Xicano Liberation groups to build a broad based movement (also known in Maoist/Marxist terminology as a popular front ) in competition with the many different versions of what “Xicano Liberation Movement” exactly means continue to complicate matters. While this diversity of opinion is good in terms of it providing a variety of ideological foundations from which to chose their comes a moment in any struggle when the over arching principles of that struggle must be agreed upon in order for the movement to go forward.
Xicano academics write and theorize constantly about being a colonized people and the effects of colonization through hybridity or mestizaje. But we never discuss in a meaningful way the physical dismantling of the colonized mentality . We talk, debate and speak of our oppression and displacement in historical terms and academic fact. Never in terms of it being the living and ongoing system of economic exploitation so entrenched in our national psyche, a system the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre defined by writing “we must be clear about what we mean. It [colonialism] is not an abstract mechanism. The [colonial] system exists, it functions; the infernal cycle of colonialism is a reality.” Now we debate not only the existence of colonization in the Americas but the sanity of withholding total collusion from our subjugators and in many circumstances those who argue against it are ridiculed and labeled unrealistic.
A logical discussion of a Xicano national identity has value within the academy and certainly outside of it. The current and ongoing discussion of Chicano identity has a merit within the confines of today’s academic multiculturalism that is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to maintain control over a faltering fatherland. There are many who will say it is lunacy to write and talk about Xicanos forming their own nation. You will find them to be mostly Xicanos. White America does not think Aztlan is a pipe dream. Any more than they consider the United States, a country formed after a revolution to throw off their colonial master, to be a pipe dream.
The words of Samuel P. Huntington chairman of the Harvard Academy of International and Area Studies sums up the centuries old and current position of white European domination, in protecting the Anglo European hegemony he has so valiantly defended over the course of his career when he writes concerning the fusion of a primarily Mexican (Mesoamerican) culture into the mainstream of the modern United States,
“There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society if they dream in English.”
This is a dramatic statement. It draws boundaries and set limits on who can belong (or not belong) to American society and illustrates how colonized people are constantly under attack and forced to defend their oppression (which is the nature of colonialism) by insisting on their right to participate fully in the system that oppresses them.
Fanon warns us as a result of these attacks that instead of working for national liberation “for a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses” it is part and parcel of the current professionalization/image struggle so many of us engage in although “because native people did not create these images, and they should not be concerned with trying to improve them … society would simply create new racist images for us to work at and we would be continuously involved in image betterment while remaining colonized.”
Huntington is wrong.
Chicano/Mexicanos as indigenous people are a part of the fabric of this society. It would not be the place it is if not for the blood of our ancestors spilled building it. There is a debt to be paid and Huntington’s true worry is that someone close has the bill.
“We must contend, and we must confront,” writes Taiaiake Alfred an Onkwehonwe scholar from the University of Victoria on the necessity of being prepared to take action “we must be prepared to shoulder the burden of conflict.”
Although Alfred is writing about his own Onkwehonwe nation the lessons and admonishments to be prepared are applicable to the Xicano struggle for indigenous within the US where questions around land, indigenous identity continue to grow as they are debated by an ever increasing group of people – both pro and con.
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