 _ _ Review by Horacio Machín and Nicholas Spadaccini (from their “Afterword,” op. cit. p. 436) _ _ In his essay "Caliban in Aztlan: From the Emergence of Chicano Discourse to the Plural Constitution of New Solidarities," (chapter 12) dealing with Chicano discourse, solidarity, and identity construction, José Antonio Giménez Micó centers on differences between discourses of assimilation and dissent by focusing on axiological and epistemological implications of terms such as Mexican-American and Chicano, keeping in mind the respective autobiographical narratives of Ernesto Galarza and Richard Rodríguez. The struggle over identity construction is also seen through other important documents. One is the Plan de Aztlán (1969), a foundational manifesto of cultural nationalism which is said to "appropriate the well-known Americanist-indigenista topic exalting pre-Columbian civilizations and adapts it to new circumstances of enunciation" (329); another is the Plan de Santa Barbara which attempts to define chicanismo in terms of politics of everyday life-working in the Barrios and serving the community (331). For Giménez Micó the politics of identity is an ongoing process of differentiation, subject to change and redefinition. Thus he is cognizant that the community today cannot be the one imagined by those Chicano intellectuals of the late 1960s who sought to generalize their perception by speaking for the whole group. Moreover he is aware that ambiguity is part of identity politics and is willing to recognize the fact that as the number of US inhabitants originating from Latin America has become increasingly diverse, even the word "Chicano" has become subordinated to more global and heterogeneous identity denominations such as "Latino" or "Hispanic" " (347), terms which are also politically charged, especially the latter which is used for administrative and demographic purposes but is rejected by some because of its ethnocentric European connotation. What is interesting about this essay is that it does not fall into essentialisms, even if the treatment of identity as something unstable could be dismissed in certain quarters as impractical for purposes of cultural and political mobilization.  |
