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The nativist Aztlán: Fantasies and anxieties of whiteness on the border

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Abstract

In the late 1960s, the concept of Aztlán became a powerful, temporarily unifying force within the Chicano movement. Chicano nationalists articulated a lineage to the indigenous Aztecs and contended that the Aztec ancestral homeland was located in the US Southwest. This deployment of Aztlán contested central US narratives of white supremacy. Over the past 30 years, Aztlán has increasingly become a fixture within contemporary nativist discourse. Conservative cultural workers have redeployed Aztlán to depict a cultural, racial and geopolitical invasion. This article contends that the nativist Aztlán emerges out of the political exigencies of an era marked by heightened globalization and multicultural gains. Moreover, this article examines how Aztlán, once used to contest white supremacy, has been reconfigured to forge white solidarity through the guise of white victimhood.

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Notes

  1. Despite its unifying function, Aztlán was not charged with a singular meaning during the movement years. For some, actualizing Aztlán was a process of political empowerment. For others, Aztlán's power stemmed from its ability to name the cultural, spiritual and psychological aspirations of Chicanos. Even as these meanings appear disparate, they came together, at least temporarily, through Aztlán.

  2. Since the Chicano movement, Aztlán has come under steady critique by Chicana/o cultural workers. For instance, Cherríe Moraga reimagined a queer Aztlán (1993), mapping the concept of colonized territory onto the colonized queer body. While the various visions of Aztlán seem to indicate a lack of cohesion, Rafael Pérez-Torres has argued that Aztlán is a shifting or empty signifier, filled with multiple, competing meanings (2001, 234). This pliability has allowed Aztlán to remain significant while its significations have shifted greatly over time.

  3. For examples of the nativist Aztlán online, see wnd.com, vadare.com and illegalaliens.us, or search youtube.com.

  4. Arguably, the nativist right is able to appropriate the Aztlán narrative and Chicano nationalist discourse so easily because both deployments of Aztlán rely upon a model of ethnic nationalism. Perhaps, Renato Rosaldo's innovative model of Latino Cultural Citizenship, wherein Latinas/os claim civic belonging through cultural practices of difference, may hold possibilities as a counterforce to the nativist Aztlán and other exclusionary models of ethnic nationalism (Flores and Benmayor, 1997).

  5. Recently, the nativist Aztlán also made its way into the police procedural Chase. In one episode, US marshals hunt down Eduardo “El Lobo” Lopez as he murders people and reclaims his possessions that were seized when he went to prison. Naturally, he uses the Aztlán-reconquista narrative and his understanding of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to justify his actions.

  6. For an example of these scholarly connections, see the December 2010 issue of American Quarterly (62.4)

  7. The term “outmanned” is drawn from Charles Park's forthcoming work on hegemonic white masculinity.

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Bebout, L. The nativist Aztlán: Fantasies and anxieties of whiteness on the border. Lat Stud 10, 290–313 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2012.23

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