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Book Review
| Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975. By George Mariscal. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. x + 348 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index, $24.95, paper.)
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In 2003, the number of "Hispanics" in the United States surpassed the number of African Americans, a demographic switch caused in large part by increased immigration from Latin America in recent decades. What these new immigrants and their children are likely to learn about the Chicano Movement concerns George Mariscal, director of the Chicano/a–Latino/a Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego, and a UCSD professor of literature. Intellectually complex, the Chicano Movement both built on previous political efforts by Mexican Americans and reflected the tumultuous politics of the Viet Nam War era. In recent decades, however, academics, politicians, and media pundits alike have explored the extent to which movement activists were sexist, racist, and homophobic, and thereby unfairly placed the Chicano Movement in a "narrow nationalistic straightjacket," Mariscal argues (p. 15). |
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He seeks to showcase the movement's "positive contributions" against such interpretations (p. 12). According to Mariscal, cultural nationalism, which looked upon Chicano history and culture as a political resource, was an "organizing tool" that could be used toward "sectarian" and "regressive" ends or toward "coalition building, solidarity projects, and even socialism" (p. 91). The latter forms of nationalism predominated, Mariscal insists, because Chicano Movement participants saw themselves in solidarity with other oppressed groups at home and around the globe. |
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Subsequent chapters illustrate how deeply connected Chicano Movement participants were to broader events of the time. Tracing the influence of the Cuban Revolution upon Mexican American activists, for example, Mariscal adds Che Guevara to the pantheon of Chicano Movement heroes. He also reclaims Cesar Chavez for the Chicano Movement mainstream. While previous accounts had excised the labor leader because, for example, Chavez was a Democratic Party loyalist who refused to back a Chicano third-party effort, Mariscal credits Chavez for promoting a devastating "critique of liberalism," a critique that Mariscal places at the heart of the Chicano and other contemporary liberation movements (pp. 9, 150). Finally, Mariscal tallies many instances of cooperation between African American and Mexican American activists, including the creation of Lumumba-Zapata College at his home campus, a short-lived experiment whose fate, he argues, demonstrated the forces working against the era's progressive impulse. |
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Still, Mariscal wishes to chart the "ideological and discursive fields" of the Chicano Movement, not to write a political history of any part of it (p. 23). That objective in conjunction with his determination to elucidate the "lessons" of the Chicano Movement influenced the book's organization. Most chapters serve as stand-alone essays, each concluding with pointed comments about the present political climate. Mariscal also spends a great deal of time dissecting the work of others whose work more often than not, he believes, has obscured the Chicano Movement's significance for today's activists. Despite acknowledging that certain aspects of the Chicano Movement merit criticism, moreover, Mariscal several times imputes the motives of scholars whose views differ from his own. These passages weaken an otherwise strong book that not only highlights how much of Chicano Movement history has been overlooked, but also why recovering that history is important. |
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| Lorena Oropeza
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| University of California, Davis |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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