Cultural Influences On Mexican American Culture

For a majority of cultures in the world, change is inevitable. The influences that lead to change occur along the cultural borders of the given culture. According to Pérez-Torres (211), cultural borders are the differences unique to a culture vis-à-vis other cultures. Cultural changes can occur when other cultures influence a given culture or when it resists the interchange with another culture and instead change emanates from within. The latter explains the changes in the Mexican American cultural identity. The Mexican-American culture has undergone a lot of changes over time. Through the studies by Anzaldúa (530) and Menchaca (45), it can be seen how the culture has changed from ‘Chicano’ to ‘Chicana/o’ and finally to ‘Xicanx.’ Resistance

The term basic here is used to denote the required space and freedom that the Mexican Americans required while living in the U.S. to practice their culture. This is because to the American people the Mexican American were all part of a broader cultural group called the Hispanics. The rationale for this was that they were all colonized by the Spanish powers or was directly influenced by the Spanish culture. The cultural border that existed between the Hispanics and the general American culture, which was at that time dominated by White Anglo-Americanism, was very wide. The American culture was not tolerant as all American policies and society’s unspoken rules did not allow the free integration of the Hispanics with the greater American culture. The interchange that was allowed was one-way; the Hispanic were expected to borrow form the American culture not the other way around. As such, there Hispanic culture had to struggle to be recognized as a culture distinct from the American culture and accorded the needed freedom (Pérez-Torres

The discrimination was perpetrated against them because they belonged to Mexican American culture; rather it was based on their color. Therefore, there were struggles to secure freedom for these women. In this endeavor, the Xicanx struggle aligned itself with the struggles in American and all over the world against segregation on race or skin color. In principle, the Xicanx phase of the cultural revolution asserted new cultural borders for the Mexican American people living in the U.S. (Moraga 224). The borders were well adjusted to cope with contemporary influences and