Decolonizing Chicana History

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Decolonizing Chicana History Author(s): Emma Pérez Source: The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 5 (Feb., 2000), pp. 13-14 Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4023320 . Accessed: 25/03/2014 13:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Old City Publishing, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Women's Review of Books. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 157.253.50.10 on Tue, 25 Mar 2014 13:21:30 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Transcript of Decolonizing Chicana History

  • Decolonizing Chicana HistoryAuthor(s): Emma PrezSource: The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 5 (Feb., 2000), pp. 13-14Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4023320 .Accessed: 25/03/2014 13:21

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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  • commitment that a generation of young scholars made to feminist history. Many in this generation are now so respectably en- sconced in privileged academic positions that it is easy to forget that they began as outsiders, more closely affiliated with the women's movement than with academic culture. When the first women's history courses in the early 1970s were dismissed by their critics as "consciousness raising," these critics were right. Those courses were different from history-as-usual: they were designed to promote personal trans- formation rather than to achieve tenure for their instructors. In case after case these scholars risked the equivalent of profes- sional suicide when they researched, wrote and taught about women. Future historical accounts of how they confronted and dealt with that risk will make fascinating read- ing. Bits and pieces are starting to emerge; Linda Kerber has written movingly about her experience in the introduction to her 1997 book, Toward an Intellectual History of Women; I've described my graduate stu- dent and early faculty years in a co- authored introduction to Ruth Bordin's Women at Michigan (1999).

    A third level of change in the process by which the historical profession was transformed by feminism lies in the accep- tance of women's history-history written with women at its center as a valid analysis of the past. This change has been uneven and is still in progress, yet without it feminist history would remain an embat- tled outpost on the margins of the profes- sion rather than the remarkably secure achievement that it constitutes at the cen- ter of historical studies today. Good femi- nist history has been accepted as undenia- bly good history.

    W x sHAT EXPLAINS THIS acceptance?

    Surely not professional good will. Or historians' need to know

    about women. Or even the desire to in- crease departmental enrollments. Even the friends of women's history notoriously fail to incorporate findings about women into their own work. And high enrollments have never constituted a shortcut to pro- fessional esteem.

    Rather, the acceptance of women's his- tory seems to have arisen from a deep con- gruence between the methods used by feminist historians and those used by other historians, a congruence that benefited feminist historians by making it difficult to exclude them from the trade. In their abil- ity to find new evidence and use it to con- struct a convincing argument, feminist his- torians abided by the same rules and spoke the same language as other historians. It became very hard to deny that they were practitioners of the historical craft, very

    hard to close the guild doors against them. The profession as a whole had said that evidence about women just didn't exist, but feminist historians of women had shown that was not true. They beat the pro- fession at its own game. With increasing momentum during the 1 970s, a sea-change occurred that recognized feminist scholars as bona fide members of the profession.

    There was nothing inevitable about this three-tiered process of change; it might have stopped or been stopped at any step along the way. It certainly would have gotten nowhere if a cultural revolu- tion had not occurred on college cam- puses in the late 1960s. And without a vi- brant women's movement to nurture a symbiotic relationship between its early students and teachers, it would never have acquired its first cadre of committed scholars. Its institutionalization in the 1970s might not have happened if condi- tions outside the discipline had helped its members deny or marginalize the field's validity. In fact, however, these three lev- els of change built on one another to cre- ate an impressive alteration in the sociol- ogy of historical knowledge.

    Feminist scholars in other disciplines played a crucial supporting role in this story, for during those early years when historians of women were few and their opponents many, colleagues in other de- partments-especially sociology, English literature, anthropology and psychol- ogy-assisted their survival. The energy with which historians contributed to the creation of women's studies programs on campuses throughout the country ex- pressed their need for institutional support outside departments of history. It wasn't long, however, before feminist historians themselves became life-lines for scholars in other disciplines. Sometime in the late 1 970s historians of women began to stand on stable professional ground. Having won their space within the historical disci- pline, their place within the academy was especially secure.

    We can hope that the first decade of the twenty-first century will witness a cascade of memoirs and oral histories about the pro- cess by which women historians changed the historical discipline. Like other aspects of the past, the historical profession in the late twentieth century was shaped by the choices that individuals made. Those choices-and the costs they incurred for the individuals who made them-deserve to be better known. By telling their indi- vidual stories women historians can docu- ment one of the most improbable transfor- mations of American academic life. Col- lectively these stories will constitute one of the most notable achievements of feminism's second wav e. 0

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    Chicana history by Emma Perez 'THE MODERN WOMAN MOVEMENT and demands for economic independence have left her [the Mexican woman] untouched. Uncomplainingly, she la- bors in the field for months at a time.... The supremacy of the male is sel- dom disputed." So wrote Ruth Allen in "The Mexican Peon Woman of Texas" in 1931.

    The words affronted. "Uncomplain- ingly"? For whom? To whom had this professor spoken in the cotton fields of Texas where my grandmother had la- bored in the 1930s? Not to my grand- mother. Nor to my great-aunts. And not to my mother, sisters and cousins who came after them. I knew that these Mexi- can women from Texas, whom I ad- mired, had complained, commanded, laughed, loved, suffered and quarreled with each other and with the men in their lives. I knew they had transformed their own lives (and mine) as cultural survi- vors in a geographic space that came to be called the Southwest. Their empower- ing voices I would hear again and again throughout my life. In 1976, in an under- graduate women's history class at UCLA, I read Ruth Allen's words. They incited me to study history.

    Now, 23 years after my undergradu- ate days, I remain distressed over the paucity of studies by Chicanas. We have made inroads, but too few. In 2000, we

    can boast that our infinitesimal numbers have soared, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century, only twenty-one Chicanas have earned Ph.D. degrees in history, half of them from UCLA, Ber- keley, Stanford and Yale.

    Those numbers reveal what is not hid- den at all-the problems we face in the academy. The representation of women of color, whether students, professors, administrators, or editors ofjournals and presses, concerns me. Given that ten of the history doctorates were earned by Chicana historians in just the last dec- ade, and that few graduate students are in the pipeline (the majority, nine, are at Stanford), it is not a mystery that only seven books, three in the past two years, have been written by Chicana historians.

    Recently, a young white female col- league who lives in the Southwest asked me whether there is a need for more Chi- cana historians. The question baffled me. The current backlash against af- firmative action permits some moderate

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  • liberals to pose questions formerly asked by conservatives. For many at the univer- sity, affirmative action has already achieved its purpose. Well-intentioned colleagues now stop us in the hallway to ask: Is it fair to spend time and money to train or hire more minority scholars at the expense of white women and men who are better prepared and can remain objective? Is it necessary to consider minority applicants for positions be- yond minority studies?

    It is as if these social and political re- sponsibilities have been met-even though the Mexican American, or Chi- cano/a, population is increasing rapidly in the United States and yet less than one percent of historians in academe are Mexican Americans. The problem of representation lies in universities built upon writing the history of the "other" by the privileged. Many of us dispute es- sentialized notions about race and eth- nicity, about gender and sexuality, to un- ravel these charged controversies. Not only Chicanas can write Chicana his- tory, of course. But the nagging di- lemma-who represents whom-contin- ues to fester in the academy. Postcolo- nial critics have cautioned that if those previously erased from history are re- covered and constructed only by the privileged, then we risk univocal bias. But who has been privileged in the acad- emy to tell the story of the colonized, ra- cialized, gendered others?

    I N MY WORK, I CONTEND that history is devised through power. Knowledge is constructed through and by those

    in power who may erase, empower, si- lence, or privilege that which will be-

    come the official story. Those who have accepted the tradition and its norms, ac- cepting objectivity as science, often ig- nore colonial relations already in place and write history replete with coloniality that has not been disputed. For those of us who divide history into categories like colonial relations and postcolonial rela- tions, what I call' a "decolonial imagi- nary" creates that rupturing space and an alternative to that which is written in his- tory. For me, the historian's political project is to write history that decolo- nizes otherness. Only then will we hear women's commanding voices. Only then will we begin to interrogate who author- izes history and for whom.

    New studies have begun to honor the women erased and silenced. Seven monographs by Chicana historians authorize an otherwise cryptic past. I ap- point the books to temporal categories specific to what I name the Great Events of Chicano/a history. Placing the studies in these categories reveals how much more needs to be done. Simply put, the Great Events are the Spanish Conquest of 1521; the US-Mexico War, 1846-48; the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and post-revolution immigration to the US; and the Chicano/a movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Gendering those Great Events is the work of Chicanas.

    When Vicki Ruiz inaugurated Chi- cana history with Cannery Women, Can- nery Lives: Mexican Women, Unioniza- tion and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (University of New Mexico Press, 1987 ), she gendered Mexican immigration studies. At last, we had a Chicana history text for our classes. In 1990, two monographs were

    published that featured Mexican women prominent in the Mexican Revolution: Elizabeth Salas' Soldaderas in the Mexi- can Military: Myth and History (Univer- sity of Texas Press), and Shirlene Soto's Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman; Her Participation in Revolution and Struggle for Equality, 1910-1940 (Arden Press). Four years later, Camille Guerin-Gonzales presented Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immi- gration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (Rutgers Uni- versity Press). Through 1994, all the books scrutinized the first half of the twentieth century, in which post- revolution immigration was central. Not until 1998 was a comprehensive history of Chicanas across the twentieth century published: Vicki Ruiz' From Out of the Shadows. Mexican Women in Twentieth- Century America (Oxford University Press). In 1999, the nineteenth centuiry received attention in Deena Gonzailez' Refusing the Favor: The Spanish- Mexican Women ofSanta Fe, 1820-1880 (Oxford University Press). Also issued in 1999, my book, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into His- tory (Indiana University Press), pro- poses that Chicanas (and colonized oth- ers) have been caught in a decolonial time-lag in which the colonial must be reinvoked if the postcolonial is ever to succeed. History, after all, is a tool for liberatory consciousness. Ruiz and Gonzalez have furthered such liberatory studies.

    From Out of the Shadows led Ruiz to women formerly eclipsed in the Chi- cano/a social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. She guides us through "Bor- der Journeys," tracking circular and chain migrations for women who trav- ersed boundaries between northern Mex- ico and the US. Her third chapter, "The Flapper and the Chaperone," will un- doubtedly be the foundation for future studies probing the imprints of popular culture on young Mexican American women. In the last two chapters of her book, Ruiz reveres Chicanas who have configured contemporary political movements. In an epilogue, she quotes from an open letter written by activists protesting the beatings of undocumented immigrants in California in1996. Ruiz highlights migrant patterns to warn that Mexicans will not be deterred from crossing geographic borders. Her use of "Mexican" unites all Mexicans who defy political borders, setting them apart from ethnic European immigrants.

    In Refusing the Favor, Gonzalez rein- terprets nineteenth-century New Mexico and paints a new vision for the history of the American West. Spanish-Mexican women were not gentle tamers who ac- commodated those with whom they in- termarried. The women refused to as- similate harmoniously with incoming Euro-Americans. Gonzailez shows that ninety percent of the Spanish-Mexican population living in the region of New Mexico lost their lands to colonizing Euro-Americans after the US-Mexico War. Yet it is curious how historians of the American West have stressed that conquest was "relatively painless."

    Gonzatlez has consciously chosen to tell the story of coloniality in nineteenth- century America, a history often down- played if not negated. Finally, a Chicana historian announces that which some have only whispered-"conquest and colonization impoverished the major- ity... It disempowered women, who had previously exercised certain rights guar- anteed by Spanish law."

    To reintroduce coloniality acknowl- 4dges its lingering consequences. Voreover, just as historians argue that ;he Civil War continues to imprint the Jnited States, Chicana historians like 3onza'lez contend through meticulous -esearch that the US-Mexico War con- ;inues to inscribe relations between and imong Chicanas/os and Euro- kmericans. She sums it up: Spanish- Mexican women "left us a legacy, an in- :lination toward many responses. It seems important therefore to know something about them, to return the fa- vor, and to exorcise their omission from [istory by suggesting patterns, revealing linkages between their society and cul- ture and that of the encroachers, and in- sisting on more complex readings of their lives."

    B EYOND NEW MEXICO, other regional histories beg for revision by Chi- cana historians. Archives, family

    papers, community stories must be lo- cated and sifted through. Interdiscipli- nary studies that cross the boundaries be- tween history and other areas like liter- ary criticism, political theory and cul- tural studies will introduce different in- quiries with fresh perspectives. Mexican immigration to the Midwest since the 1920s continues to require study, while recent immigration to the South and the Northeast will eventually need consid- eration; in New York City alone the Mexican population has jumped from 5,000 in 1990 to 300,000 in-1999. Al- though scholars must continue to re- search twentieth-century topics, atten- tion to pre-twentieth-century studies is crucial. The Spanish-Mexican women who shaped the American West demand more investigation. The new Western history must include interpretive histo- ries by Chicanas, or else the American West will remain the discursive territory of Euro-American scholars.

    Similarly, colonial/Spanish border- land archival research calls for Chicana researchers. Of the 21 Chicana histori- ans, less than a handful conduct research on the nineteenth century; fewer still fer- ret through documents of the Spanish co- lonial period. Among works which do address pre-twentieth-century histories are monographs by non-Chicanas Sara Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on the Anglo- Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1 940 (Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1987), and Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (University of California Press, 1995). Antonia Cas- tanieda's forthcoming book with the Uni- versity of Texas Press (scheduled for 2002) will be the first by a Chicana to feature the Amerindian women of seventeenth-century California. Alicia Gaspar de Alba's historical, novel, Sor Juana 's Second Dream (University of New Mexico, 1999), about the seventeenth-century Mexican nun Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, renders the lesbian interpretation that historians have avoided. This type of historical novel in- vites historians to reassess the lines be- tween history and literature, between fact and fiction.

    To return the favor by honoring our an- cestors, to summon women from the shadows, to decolonize otherness by writ- ing another story, one that will con- sciously remake a liberatory narra- tive-this is what future Chicana histo- ries must accomplish, if our grandmoth- ers and the women who came before them are no longer to be silenced. .0

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    1 The Women's Review of Books / Vol. XVII, No. 5 / February 2000

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    Article Contentsp. 13p. 14

    Issue Table of ContentsThe Women's Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 5 (Feb., 2000), pp. 1-16+A1-A8+17-32Front Matter [pp. 2-A8]Review: Making Change [pp. 1+3-4]Letters [p. 4]Review: Correction: No End in Sight [p. 4]Review: Consuming Desires [p. 5]Review: A Living Monument [p. 6]Review: From Bad to Worse [p. 7]Review: New Frontiers [pp. 8-9]Review: Bread and Roses [pp. 9-10]Review: Witness to Her Age [pp. 10-11]Review: Taking the Road to Ruin [p. 11]Our Histories, Ourselves: Women Historians Assess the Past, Present and Future of Their SubjectTransformation Scene [pp. 12-13]Decolonizing Chicana History [pp. 13-14]Too Soon to Celebrate? [p. 15]From Parts to Whole [p. 16]History's Hybrids [p. 16]Editorial Imperatives [pp. 17-18]Digging Women [pp. 18-19]The Longest Revolution [pp. 20-21]Optical Illusions [pp. 21-22]Essential Reading [pp. 22-24]Color Coded [pp. 24-26]Redrawing the Map of History [pp. 26-27]Forgotten Forerunners [pp. 27-28]Actors and Analysts [p. 29]Ripple Effect [pp. 29-30]

    This Month's Bookshelf [pp. 30-31]Back Matter [p. 32-32]