The Revolt Of The Chicano Movement Analysis

Mexican Americans in Texas have a long and detailed history spanning from the arrival of Cortez all the way to the present day. Through historical events, the culture and identity of Mexican Americans have shifted, diverted, and adapted into what people chose to identify as. The rise of the Chicano identity during the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement was an adaptation as a culture to oppressive and unjust treatment from white, Anglos that had almost all political and social power over all minorities. To stop the oppressive voices from silencing and oppressing the Mexican Americans, they had to stand up to fight for their rights as American citizens that also had Mexican or Spanish heritage to be proud of. In Oscar Zeta Acosta’s novel,

The revival of the traditional roles gave Chicano men the desire to assert themselves as the dominate gender to conquer the past oppressions from whites. Traditional roles for men in Anglo, Spanish, and Mexican cultures dictate the men as the protectors of the women and children. There is a feeling of a loss of masculinity with being conquered and forced to accept lower living standards for their families. After such a loss of masculinity, the men feel that it is their job to provide a better life for their families and to fight for better treatment. In The Revolt of the Cockroach People, Acosta rarely mentions women in a positive or helpful light, instead he focuses on how the men are the ones on the front-line of the movement. When he does mention a woman, her actions are often dismissed by his over sexualizing thoughts of her body and looks. In the scene of the protest at the church, the woman, Gloria who swings a golf club around while yelling “Chicano Power!”, is diminished in the novel by Acosta’s description of her, “…beautiful knockers and…her big zoftig ass…” (Acosta 18). The impact of that moment is completely lost. However, Acosta does give readers a depiction into the Chicano movement through the eyes of a man. It is important to remember that during the Chicano movement, men were rising up and becoming more organized with the goals of collecting

Acosta clearly demonstrates this idea of diminishing the actions of women by focusing mostly on their looks and what pleases him. Throughout the novel, Acosta continuously praises the actions of the men and portrays them as brave heroes fighting for what is right. His description of the genders is generalized but not entirely wrong. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) founded in February 1929 out of four other political groups (Orozco 151). Now the primary function of organizations such as LULAC was to promote desegregation and push for rights as American citizens. The organizations originally did not focus on class or gender rights (Orozco 180). The constitution of LULAC did not specifically exclude women, “…the political culture, organizing methods, and references to brotherhood did in practice,” (Orozco 180). Women were not thought of as leaders in a cultural standpoint as well as in political culture. Sexism was ultimately ignored by manners thought to be more pressing. Not all women were happy with the gendered segregation they faced from both American society as well as from their own sub-culture. To challenge these ideas, “…women recognized LULAC’s worth even if men had not fully recognized women’s worth,” (Orozco 218). Women were becoming more politically active in numerous ways.