Survival Strategies of Mexicanas

Notes

1.In order to understand the internal colonialism that Mexicanas suffer today, one must understand classic colonialism and the history of how the United States’ relationship to Mexicanos/as has shifted from a classical colonialism to an internal colonialism. Classic colonialism traditionally refers to the establishment of domination over a geographically external political unit, most often inhabited by people of a different race and culture, where the domination is political and economic, and the colony exists subordinated to and dependent upon the mother colony. Internal colonialism, on the other hand, is the colonization of a group of people by the “common process of social oppression” that developed out of the imperialist era of classic colonialism. Thus as part of the same process, internal colonialism can be viewed as a distinct extension and form of Western colonialism (Almaguer 1971:10). Although now the Chicano’s relationship to the White society is an internal colonial one, the Chicano’s colonial status came about by a classic colonial conquest.

As is typically the case with European colonialism, the victims of colonization are of a different race and culture and have already developed a social system markedly different from the intruding colonizer. Also true of classic colonial expansion is that the colonizer promoted war for the purpose of gaining control of a geographically external, foreign land. Chicanos were the indigenous people of what are today the Southwestern states and the Mexican-American War was the battle that culminated years of bitter racial strife between the people of Northern Mexico and the United States.

The war’s end brought with it the “formal recognition” of differing powers between the conquered people and the victor. It was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that legally set the future social and political relationship between the two nations. The treaty provided safeguards for the cultural autonomy of the Mexicanos by allowing them to retain their language, religion, and culture, plus providing specific guarantees for the property and political rights of the Indo-Mestizo population. In addition to these colonial mandates, the treaty also stipulated that the citizens of Mexico, within the ceded territory, were to become de facto citizens of the United States within one year after the Treaty’s ratification. Thus it was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that became the document of formal colonization for the Mexican in the Southwest (Almaguer 1971:11). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the North American invasion of Mexico in 1848 and one-half of Mexican Territory was forcibly annexed by the United States. The treaty, among other things, guaranteed the linguistic, cultural, and educational rights of Mexican people who found themselves in conquered territories. Yet like all other treaties with indigenous peoples, this one too has been broken many times over (Villenas 1999:418).