Chicano Nationalism: Fighting For La Raza Analysis

Texts clearly in opposition of a single group because of the actions of some of its parts are commonplace throughout history. Often, in times where a single group finds itself attacked or oppressed it can be easy to pin the blame on the entirety of a single group pinned as “the cause,” this is seen especially so in many cases where a minority group is struggling to achieve equality, like the speech Chicano Nationalism: Fighting for La Raza by Rhodolfo “Corky” Gonzales. However the blame for events such as those described does not often lay solely on one group and even less often are all parts of said group responsible, more often then not smaller parts of a multiple larger groups are responsible for the current condition. Even yet with this …show more content…
In nearly every case seen in Chicano Nationalism, Gonzales avoids referring to those who he fights against as people, using “them” and “they” and only ever referring to an individual person once, referring to them as “The Gringo Captain”. This is seen best in contrast when compared to who he is trying to reach, he tries to unite those from the Barrio with those from the campo and ranchito, using three very specific denominations of people against simply “the exploiters” this difference in language used to describe who he is trying to reach creates several impacts on the text. The main impact had by this specific feature of the text is the removal of humanity from the opposing force. By describing those who you want to support you with terms rather specific to them and then trying to describe a very large group with inhuman terms referring to all of them under the same negative title their individual humanity is removed and they become a collective, with each one becoming a part of the problem where many people are still