Forty Years of Chicana/o Studies
When the Myth becomes a Legend
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña
This year, the fortieth anniversary of Chicano studies, will revive the
debate as to which college or university was the first to establish a Chicano
studies department or program. Tragically, the debate will be a superficial
exercise and not explore the epistemological roots of Chicano studies.
Instead the debate will spin new myths. Wikipedia which today appears to be
the fountainhead of knowledge, states that “Chicano studies is an academic
discipline dealing with the study of Mexico. Like most branches of Ethnic
studies, it incorporates aspects of various disciplines, including history,
sociology, psychology, and literary and textual analyses from the academic
studies of the English and Spanish languages.”1 Wikipedia also alleges that
most “Chicano studies departments are at public universities in the
Southwestern United States, particularly in California…” which is also not
true. Further, it says that “Some universities, particularly outside the
Southwest, offer similar courses of study under the titles of Latino studies or
Latin American Studies” which is true and not true. Wikipedia claims that “To
this day, many Chicano studies departments maintain a strong commitment to
campus and community activism.” True and not true.
Wikipedia says of the origins of Chicano studies that “Mexican
Americans and other Latinos have always studied themselves,” mentioning
Fray Angélico Chávez, George I. Sánchez, Américo Paredes, Ernesto Galarza,
Julián Samora and others as the founders. While it is true that Chicanos and
others have always studied them, Chicano studies are not about individual
scholars; they are about the scholarly and systematic study and teaching
about Mexican origin peoples in the United States. The study of Mexico is
important to this development; but only in so far as how it influences the lives
of Mexican origin people in the United States. The main focuses of Chicano
studies are about Mexican Americans. As such, Chicano studies are not ethnic
or Latino studies.
Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans have not lived in a vacuum; they
have left footprints in terms of history, literature, and interactions with the
legal and educational systems. These footprints have created a corpus or
body of knowledge that is distinguished from other groups. How they are
studied is called Chicano studies. It is not a single discipline as Wikipedia
assumes. Chicano studies houses disparate disciplines which test their
methods using disparate documents. When Chicano subject matter is studied
outside the area of Chicano studies, for instance, in a history department, the
study is called Chicano history etc.
Unlike the mainstream disciplines Chicano studies were not spin offs of
mainstream disciplines. Chicano, Black, and Puerto Rican studies share a
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicano_studies
common genesis; they are the products of the civil rights movement and the
turmoil of the sixties. Chicano communities literally muscled their way onto
college campus across the Southwest and parts of the Midwest and
Northwest. The most intense activity took place in areas where the Mexican
origin population was the most concentrated; in 1970 the census showed that
there were at least 4.53 million Mexican Americans nationally, mostly living
along the 2000 mile border separating Mexico and the United States.
Disciplines such as sociology and political science evolved from
history. In contrast Chicano studies rolled their own. No Chicano history
textbook existed, for example, in 1969. Only a handful of classes nationally
dealt with the Mexican American experience. Several research programs
existed, e.g., Dr. Paul M. Sheldon, the director of Occidental College’s
Laboratory in Urban Culture in the late 1950s, and the Ford Foundation funded
study of the 1960 census during that decade. Their research underscored the
inequality of Mexicans in the United States. The 1960 census showed the
median education of Spanish-surnamed citizens over 25 in the Southwest was
7.1 years versus 12.1 for white people and 9.0 for non-whites. The data
encouraged a cry for educational curricular reform that addressed the
pedagogical needs of Mexican American students. These studies encouraged
Mexican American teachers to form groups; they added to the awareness of
the separate and unequal status of Mexican American students.
In this sense, the teaching and research on Mexican Americans
evolved from the field of education. For example, there was the call for
bilingual education, more Mexican American teachers, and reform of the
educational system. It coincided with a population explosion among Mexican
Americans and increased political activity. Hundreds of workshops on how to
teach Mexican American students sprang up, each repeated horror stories of
how the participants were punished for speaking Spanish in school. All of
these grievances came to a head in the1968 high school walkouts in Los
Angeles that spread independently throughout the country. Student
organizations such as the United Mexican American Students in California and
the Mexican American Youth Organization in Texas formed in 1967. Because
of the size of the Mexican American population in California and Texas, the
student activity there got more attention. However, the student turmoil was
also mirrored every Mexican enclave in the country. Identity or nationalism,
inflamed by Euro-American racism, contributed to a moral outrage and
militancy.
Throughout 1968, the Mexican American student groups on disparate
campuses merged with the civil rights and anti-war movements. The creation
of Black and Chicano studies came about because of this turmoil. Pressured
numerous colleges granted the protestors the right to begin the process of
forming departments and programs. Los Angeles State College and Fresno
State began the process the year before but were not certified and were
wracked by internal problems. The universal emergence of Chicano studies
coincided with the Crusade for Justice Chicano Youth Conference and the
meeting of scholars and activists at Santa Barbara in April 1969.
Like so many Chicano educators, I became involved with the
development of Chicano studies through activism and teaching. A public
school teacher for eight years, I taught at the junior college and state college
levels before landing at San Fernando Valley State College (SFVSC) in 1969. A
committee composed of students, faculty members, and community
representatives hired me in response to six months of intense confrontations,
and the signing of a 12-Point Agreement by Black and Brown students and the
administration that called for the recruitment of minority students and the
establishment of a Pan African and Mexican American Studies departments.
At the time, there were fewer than a hundred Chicano students on campus
and about three hundred black students. The Education Opportunities Program
(EOP) played a huge role on most California campuses in recruiting and
guiding students. The EOP directors and peer counselors were idealists,
committed to bringing about change.
San Fernando Valley was the most unlikely place for a Chicano studies
department. A white bedroom community, SFVSC was once a satellite of Los
Angeles State College. Many LA State professors had transferred to SFVSC in
1958. I remember one of my professors at LASC taking an entire class period
to talk about the orange groves and the tile roof house he was building. He
wanted to get away from the smog, a euphemism for minorities. I walked onto
a polarized campus in February of 1969. It had been a battlefield. The Valley
News of November 4, 1968 bannered, “Valley State Demonstrators Hold
Building for 4 Hours,” adding that Black students had “Herd[ed]
Administrators, Workers into Room Students Seize Upper Floors, Show Knives
Amid Threats of Violence.” Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty red baited
supporters of the black students. This confrontation was followed by mass
demonstrations where students and faculty engaged in massive civil
disobedience. The prospects of establishing a department seemed dim,
although as part of the 12-Point Agreement, SFVSC committed itself to recruit
350 black and 350 new Chicano students per year.
Still gun shy, the campus faculty committees passed the new major
without much scrutiny. Our curricula adopted an area studies approach, not
one based on a single discipline. The fact that we were a teaching institution
allowed pedagogy to be at the core of our courses. Unlike centers where
courses are scattered in disparate departments, the area studies department
gave coherence to the progress of Chicano studies, allowed us to build a
constituency, and bank institutional capital derived from over enrolled
classes. For instance, at a state college enrollment generates positions and
resources; once you have a tenured faculty member it is difficult for the
administration to cut back. Moreover, the area studies model allowed us to
compete on monopoly boards that control the university and pass out rewards
by requiring students take designated courses. Our history classes counted
for history, literature for literature and so on. We could also compete in the
liberal arts arena for courses that were compulsory for elementary school
credential candidates. Our success at playing these boards lessened our
reliance on majors and insured enrollment.
While I could recite a litany of factors that made the CSUN department
successful I have chosen to discuss selected reasons for its success. First it
was based on a sound academic model. We had no illusions that we were
creating a revolutionary reality. Our mission from the beginning was to give
students skills to seek out their own identity. Next, we resisted the fate of
most programs that were forced into ethnic studies programs, Latino studies
and other university market constructs. Third, great credit has to be given to
MEChA (el Movimiento Estudiantil de Aztlan) that over the years has provided
stability and support for the department. Along with EOP, it has reminded us
why students sacrificed to establish Chicano studies. MEChA has been the
most militant organization on campus with little if any internal student
dissention. Its strong presence has prevented the factionalism common to
other campuses.
A fourth factor for the success of CSUN Chicano (later Chicana/o)
studies is that it was compatible to the charter of the college. SFVSC was
and is a teaching institution, and we prioritized the training of teachers for the
barrio. The purpose of Chicano studies was not esoteric; in the first two years
its mission was to teach Chicano students skills and to build a positive
identity. That was one of the reasons why we still teach writing and other
communication skills. The first duty of Chicano studies was the Chicano
student not the subject. We never considered pride to be negative; it is
everyone’s right to feel like someone.
To this end, in the second year of the department’s life, we initiated an
internship with schools in Ventura County to train Chicano teachers; in 1970
there were no Chicano teacher candidates at SFVSC. Credit has to be given
to Jorge García and Oxnard School Board member Rachel Wong. The
internships set the stage for a $375,000 Ford Foundation grant for teacher
training. Universities commonly skim 20 to forty percent off the top of grants
for administrative costs. We insisted that the monies go to student stipends of
$1000 a fellow paying for 225 students over three overlapping cycles. In
cooperation with EOP we got funding for an additional 150 students who we
also called Ford Fellows. This allowed us to enter the university conversation,
rewarding those departments that offered classes at the times we wanted
them and staffed by instructors of our choice. The program was called
Operation Chicano Teacher (OCT). We graduated literally hundreds of
teachers who are today a force in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura
County. OCT also shot up our enrollment figures, and by 1976 we had sixteen
positions.
Lastly, we initially hired instructors without terminal degrees. Most
were hired for their teaching skills. From the beginning, we emphasized that it
was an entry level opportunity, and that for the good of students and the
department faculty members had to enroll in graduate studies and get their
terminal degree. Our music professors met the same standard as professors
in music, and hence had different criterion. This happened in every case
except for a female faculty member who refused, after being admitted, to
continue graduate school although she was given release time to attend
classes. The dean had voiced qualms that she only had a bachelor of arts with
no scholarly articles (as defined in the Faculty Handbook). When she was not
granted tenure by a committee comprised of Chicano studies faculty and
students, some sources outside the institution accused us of sexism; they
expected CSUN to hire a person with a bachelor degree although their own
institutions would not hire anyone who did not have a terminal degree. At
CSUN, MEChA reacted to the criticism by forming the strongest Mujeres
groups in the nation led by chairs such as Norma Solis. As a consequence, we
came out of it stronger with two-thirds of the faculty members being women
and all have terminal degrees.
Despite resistance from the campus community, the department
thrived. Today we have twenty-two tenure track professors, two-thirds of
whom as mentioned are women, and we offer 166 sections of Chicano studies
per semester, and have been instrumental in graduating more Chicano
teachers than any institution in the country. 2 With this said, over the years,
the CSUN administration has done little to help grow the department. What it
cares most about is keeping enrollment high. As a consequence, Chicano
studies have subsidized other departments. Based on our success, our dean is
encouraging other studies departments to adopt the area studies model,
which is academically disingenuous because they do not have qualified
professors to teach courses, for example, in American history. The course
has to meet specific criteria as to subject matter; the instructor must be
qualified to teach this subject matter, and use the prescribed methodology.
When you stretch disciplinary boundaries too far, you compromise the
integrity of the offerings.
A lot has changed over the years. The culture of the department is
different – it is more diverse than it was in 1970, going from under a hundred
Mexican Americans to over ten thousand Latino students. Upward of one-fifth
of the CSUN student population is Latino, the majority of who are of Mexican
extraction. This is not overwhelming considering that a 2007 count showed
that Latino/Hispanic students compose 56 percent of the high school students
and 30 percent of the community college students in the San Fernando Valley.
They are some seventy-five percent of the mammoth Los Angeles Unified
School District. Today, a majority of first graders are Latino.
Despite the dramatic rise in Latino and Mexican American students, the
CSUN culture has changed little. Two thirds of the departments do not have a
single Chicano/a faculty member, and if you take the Chicano studies faculty
out of the equation about 3.9 percent of the faculty members are of Mexican
origin. Sadly Chicanos/as faculty members have changed more than the
2
The institution has failed to replace six professors who have retired.
university, and they no longer prioritize activism and focus on scholarly
production. Trained in disciplines outside Chicano studies, they have more
affinity with the discipline in which they were trained than Chicana/o studies.
It is not unusual that they attend meetings of the Modern Language
Association, the American Historical Association or the American Sociological
Association and ignore the National Association for Chicana/o Studies. Their
academic training within narrow disciplines has contributed to this
socialization as has the absorption of Chicana/o studies into Ethnic, American
and Latin American studies structures. .
In the years to come, the departments that in the past shunned
Chicana/o and Latino students will compete for them. Witness that as of July
2007 Latinos comprised an estimated 45.5 million or 15.1 percent of the
national population of 301.6 million. California alone had 13.2 million Latinos
followed by Texas with 8.6 million and Florida with 3.8 million. An estimated
two-thirds to 70 percent of these are of Mexican origin. If U.S. Latinos were a
nation, they would constitute the third largest Latin American nation; the
second largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world. Mexicans alone would be
the sixth largest Latin American nation and the fifth largest Spanish speaking
nation. Hence, it would seem reasonable that the academy, entrusted with
the search for the truth, would want to study the group -- if for no other reason
but to learn its impact on the identity of the nation. However, this will not
happen without extreme political and physical pressure; Chicana/o studies
have never come about through reasonable means.