Chicano Movement Summary

Professor Cherrie Moraga of Stanford University is considered to be one of the most influential women in the women’s liberation movement. Living in a white, heterosexual man’s world, lesbian Chicana Moraga understood her sexuality would alienate her in a Chicano culture that is highly against homosexuality. She understood her defiant characteristics coupled with her being a woman would naturally raise questions about her sexuality in a Chicano community that has purported strong, defiant women to be unquestionably lesbian. Lying under the stigmatized shade that is Chicano cultural nationalism, she began to understand and examine the identity alliances that shape young, developing Chicanas at such an early age. Chicano nationalism is the ethnic nationalist ideology …show more content…
The bread-winning father and the mother, who is the holder of cultural traditions and values, are roles that are heavily ingrained into the Chicano cultural nationalism ideology. Moraga examined the effects that this nationalistic ideology and how they have limited the role of Chicanas constraining Chicanas to a traditional role. Chicanas who were challenged the ideological patriarchy in the movement were seen as opposing the Chicano Movement. Moraga explains in Traitor Begets Traitor, that the foundation of these effects that have limited the role of and betrayal between Chicanas originates in sexism and heterosexism, the prowl for male approval of or avoid being sexually stigmatized by them under the name of puta, vendida and jota. She states the origin of betrayal between women on the basis of race is “...first learned in the school yard, long before it is played out with a vengeance within political communities.” (Moraga, …show more content…
She states, “I, knowing all along I didn’t have a chance. Not brown enough. And the wrong last name.” (Moraga, 99). Throughout her development as a person, she instinctively began to make choices that led her to stray further away from her culture in the belief that it would break the shackles bounded to her at the hand of her culture nationalistic ideology and grant her more freedom in the future. Even her relationship between her mother always placing her brother first solidified the identity alliances that became immovable and rigid lines of race combined with gender. Intertwined with her experiences, the negative perceptions that are ingrained into Chicanas as sexual persons and the betrayal amongst each other finds its roots in a four-hundred yearlong Mexican history that has perpetuated these