During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of Aztlán, homeland of the ancient Aztecs, served as a unifying force in an emerging cultural renaissance. Does the term remain useful? This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán weighs its value. To encompass new developments in the discourse the editors have added six new essays.

This book provides a long-needed overview of the Chicana and Chicano movement’s social history as it grew, flourished, and then slowly fragmented. The authors examine the movement’s origins in the 1960s and 1970s, showing how it evolved from a variety of organizations and activities united in their quest for basic equities for Mexican Americans in U.S. society. Within this matrix of agendas, objectives, strategies, approaches, ideologies, and identities, numerous electrifying moments stitched together the struggle for civil and human rights. Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez show how these convergences underscored tensions among diverse individuals and organizations at every level. Their narrative offers an assessment of U.S. society and the Mexican American community at a critical time, offering a unique understanding of its civic progress toward a more equitable social order.

Showcasing over sixty short stories, poems, speeches, and articles, Aztlán and Viet Nam is the first anthology of Mexican American writings about the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. The words are startlingly frank, moving, and immensely powerful, as they call to our attention an important and neglected part of U.S. history. Gathered from many little-known sources, the works reflect both the soldiers' experience and the antiwar movement at home. Taken together, they illustrate the contradictions faced by the traditionally patriotic Mexican American community, and show us the war and the grassroots opposition to it from a new perspective—one that goes beyond the familiar dichotomy of black and white America. George Mariscal offers critical introductions and provides historical background by identifying specific issues which have not been widely discussed in relation to the war, noting, for example, the potential for Chicano soldiers to recognize their own ethnic and class identities in those of the Vietnamese people. Drawing upon interviews with key participants in the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, Mariscal analyzes the antiwar movement, the Catholic Church, traditional Mexican American groups, and an emerging feminist consciousness among Chicanas. Also included are personal accounts: Norma Elia Cantú's remembrance of her brother who died in combat, Bárbara Renaud González's evocative poem about Chicanas on the homefront, Alberto Ríos's and Naomi Helena Quiñonez's moving poetry about the Wall, and the recollections of Abelardo Delgado and others on the August 29, 1970 Moratorium.

This volume includes five full-length collections of Chicano poetry by Alfonso Rodriguez, Leroy V. Quintana, El Huitlacoche, Alma Luz Villanueva, and Carmen Tafolla. Bringing together five divergent voices, the poetry ranges from the feminist to the comic and parodic, the religious and meditative, and the socially committed.

Border Confluences examines how the theme of cultural difference influences the ways that writers construct narrative space and the ways their characters negotiate those spaces, from domestic sphere to national territory, public school to utopia."--BOOK JACKET.

During the early 1940s, young Mateo's favorite pastime is exploring the mountains near his home. He and his friends have heard the rumors about the seven mysterious cities of Cibola where the walls and streets are covered with gold and gemstones and Aztlan, the ancestral homeland of the Aztec. The friends intend to find the treasures buried within the lost cities. Seeking to escape the poverty in his small ranching community, Mateo continues to search the mountains at every opportunity, and he narrowly escapes dying there after finding what he imagines are veins of gemstones and other precious minerals. He also finds a grotto with a strange obelisk and several mummy-like individuals. Since his best friend, Modesto, has moved to California, Mateo confides in the village blacksmith, an old man who has been there for more years than people care to remember. But a greedy villager overhears their conversation, and that person becomes Mateo's mortal enemy.

Whether Thersites in Homer’s Iliad, Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” or Allen Ginsberg in “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” poets have long given solitary voice against the brutality of war. The hasty cancellation of the 2003 White House symposium “Poetry and the American Voice” in the face of protests by Sam Hamill and other invited guests against the coming “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq reminded us that poetry and poets still have the power to challenge the powerful. Behind the Lines investigates American war resistance poetry from the Second World War through the Iraq wars. Rather than simply chronicling the genre, Philip Metres argues that this poetry gets to the heart of who is authorized to speak about war and how it can be represented. As such, he explores a largely neglected area of scholarship: the poet’s relationship to dissenting political movements and the nation. In his elegant study, Metres examines the ways in which war resistance is registered not only in terms of its content but also at the level of the lyric. He proposes that protest poetry constitutes a subgenre that—by virtue of its preoccupation with politics, history, and trauma—probes the limits of American lyric poetry. Thus, war resistance poetry—and the role of what Shelley calls unacknowledged legislators—is a crucial, though largely unexamined, body of writing that stands at the center of dissident political movements.

Aztlán Arizona is a history of the Chicano Movement in Arizona in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on community and student activism in Phoenix and Tucson, Darius V. Echeverría ties the Arizona events to the larger Chicano and civil rights movements against the backdrop of broad societal shifts that occurred throughout the country. Arizona’s unique role in the movement came from its (public) schools, which were the primary source of Chicano activism against the inequities in the judicial, social, economic, medical, political, and educational arenas. The word Aztlán, originally meaning the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples of Mesoamerica, was adopted as a symbol of independence by Chicano/a activists during the movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In an era when poverty, prejudice, and considerable oppositional forces blighted the lives of roughly one-fifth of Arizonans, the author argues that understanding those societal realities is essential to defining the rise and power of the Chicano Movement. The book illustrates how Mexican American communities fostered a togetherness that ultimately modified larger Arizona society by revamping the educational history of the region. The concluding chapter outlines key Mexican American individuals and organizations that became politically active in order to address Chicano educational concerns. This Chicano unity, reflected in student, parent, and community leadership organizations, helped break barriers, dispel the Mexican American inferiority concept, and create educational change that benefited all Arizonans. No other scholar has examined the emergence of Chicano Movement politics and its related school reform efforts in Arizona. Echeverría’s thorough research, rich in scope and interpretation, is coupled with detailed and exact endnotes. The book helps readers understand the issues surrounding the Chicano Movement educational reform and ethnic identity. Equally important, the author shows how residual effects of these dynamics are still pertinent today in places such as Tucson.

"Creating Aztlâan interrogates the important role of Aztlâan in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture. Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being, author Dylan A. T. Miner (Mâetis) discusses the multiple roles that Aztlâan has played atvarious moments in time, engaging pre-colonial indigeneities, alongside colonial, modern, and contemporary Xicano responses to colonization"--