So I'm at Cal State LA with the Chicano Rountable who are a group of individuals that range from Agustin Cebada and David Sanchez from the Brown Berets in the late 1960's to Saul Figueroa and Xihuan Montalvo both Chicanos from the South LA area and one generation younger than the Brown Berets. Saul and Xihuan represent the Mexican Americans that tend to be forgotten because they don't originate from East LA but as all should know, Mexican Americans don't just come from East LA though another compa Ruben Lopez does and he was also in attendance.
We were all there meeting with the Dean and chair of Chicano Studies, Henderson and Soldatenko attempting to prevent the destruction of the departmental name to the guilt ridden inclusive word of Latino. I decided to help because I believe that Mexican Americans, are spat on and stepped on while others benefit and we are ignored. The first issue is simple the administration hired 4 non Mexican Americans which is really part of the problem which is why they would push to change the name because they are not Mexican Americans and the others of one is also a non Mexican American but Mexican national who has been there so long everybody assumed he was but me. The other two females who are Mexican Americans don't have a pedagogical background in Chicano Studies or even a cultural relevant approach: Education and English is not Chicano Studies and the only qualification seems to have been some matching system the college liked.
So we argued not to change the name and the chair defended the name change and the notion that the Chicano Roundtable had a different definition to what Mexican American means which has always meant US born. And there we were being told by a non Mexican American that our definition was wrong, he's Ukrainian by his own admission, that us who are Mexican Americans by birth were wrong. I couldn't believe his arrogance and the dean arguing that Mexican American Studies should be more inclusive of other Latinos with the assumption we were being exclusive. When the continued life for Mexican Americans is that others are not inclusive of us.
Finally, our elder Luis Garcia who comprehends our argument asked him, "can you tell me what your definition of a Mexican American is". A silent reply and then a Che Guevara answer that the author of Occupied America would not fit our definition because he was not US born. And our answer was yes because those of us US born have no legal definition in Mexico and as we argued we were the ones outside looking in asking non Mexican Americans to keep the word Chicano for the department.
Whose really not included?
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