The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater Mexico: Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics, and Latin American Social Movements

309 Pages·2016·7.354 MB·English

by  Alan Eladio Gómez

The RevoluTionaRy imaginaTions of gReaTeR mexico
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The RevoluTionaRy
imaginaTions of
gReaTeR mexico
Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics,
and Latin American Social Movements
alan eladio gómez
univeRsiTy of Texas PRess   Austin
Copyright © 2016 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2016
Chapter 5 originally appeared, in a different version, as “Por la reunificación
de los Pueblos Libres de América en su Lucha por el Socialismo: The
Chicana/o Movement, the PPUA and the Dirty War in Mexico in the 1970s,”
in Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the
Dirty War, 1964–1982, edited by Fernando Herrera Calderón and Adela Cedillo,
81–104 (New York: Routledge, 2012).
Chapter 6 originally appeared, in a different version, as “Puente de Crystal
(Crystal Bridge): Magdalena Mora and Multiple Feminist Insurgencies,” African
Identities 11, no. 2 (2013): 159–184 (published by Taylor and Francis).
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♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of
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libRaRy of congRess ca Taloging- in- PublicaTion daTa
Names: Gómez, Alan Eladio, author.
Title: The revolutionary imaginations of greater Mexico : Chicana/o radicalism,
solidarity politics, and Latin American social movements / Alan Eladio Gómez.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2015050871 | isbn 978-1-4773-0921-6 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 978-1-4773-1076-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 978-1-4773-1077-9 (library
e-book) | isbn 978-1-4773-1078-6 (nonlibrary e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Mexican Americans—Politics and government—History—
20th century. | Radicalism—Latin America. | Solidarity—Political aspects—
Latin America. | Social movements—Latin America. | Latin America—Politics
and government—20th century. | Chicano movement.
Classification: lcc e184.m5 g59 2016 | ddc 303.48/40980904—dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050871
doi:10.7560/309216
dedicaTed To my moTheR, alicia gallegos gómez; and
To The memoR y of baldomeRo gallegos and esTheR
gallegos zaRa Te, guadaluPe gonzales, eladio gómez,
and RaÚlRsalinas.
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conTenTs
Acknowledgments ix
inTRoducTion. Chicana/o Radicalism, Transnational Organizing,
and Social Movements in Latin America 1
chaPTeR one . Cartographies of the Chicana/o Left 16
chaPTeR Two. Mexico, Anticommunism, and the Chicana/o
Movement 40
chaPTeR ThRee. Nuevo Teatro Popular across the Américas 67
chaPTeR fouR . “Somos uno porque América es una”:
Quinto Festival de Teatro Chicano/Primer Encuentro Latino
Americano de Teatro 94
chaPTeR five . “Por la reunificación de los Pueblos Libres de
América en su Lucha por el Socialismo”: Mexican Maoists,
Chicana/o Revolutionaries, and the Dirty War in Mexico 138
chaPTeR six . Puente de Cristal (Crystal Bridge): Magdalena Mora,
the 1975 Tolteca Strike, and Insurgent Feminism 173
ePilogue. Solidarity/Beyond Solidarity 201
Notes 213
Bibliography 257
Index 281
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acknowledgmenTs
all knowledge is collecTive, even though writers often create
during long stints of isolation and solitude. This absence affects all so-
cial relationships. The particular ways in which each of the following
people contributed to the book—its editing, research, theorization, and
critique, as well as the intimacy, conviviality, and friendship necessary
to reproduce oneself every day—would constitute its own chapter. To
collapse twenty years of relationships into a few lines about specifics
would be to radically mischaracterize and misrepresent the depth of ap-
preciation and humility I have for the continued support and friendship
of these individuals over the years that opened this century.
Without my mother, Alicia Gallegos- Gómez, and my abuelos
and abuelas, I would not be writing these words. Their support and
patience, curiosity and critique—about this book, the political work,
and the politics of the university—have been a solace and refuge as
well as an impetus animating my drive to research and teach. Their
own struggles against racial injustice in South Texas during the post–
World War II Juan Crow regime are partly responsible for the analytical
questions about power, resistance, struggle, and change that structure
this book.
This book was written over ten years, and so my thanks are as much
personal as the personal is place- based. On a basic level, tracing the
cultural politics of a Chicana/o Left was a consequence of a politi-
cal need to know a genealogy that influenced the relationship tying
Chicana/o communities in the United States to the EZLN and other
political movements in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. So,
I have much appreciation and respect for the folks who agreed to be
interviewed for this project and who shared their personal archives.
My thanks, then, to archivists and staff at Stanford Special Collec-
tions, especially Polly Armstrong, Tim Noakes, and Robert Trujillo;
at UT- Austin’s Nettie Benson Latin American Collections, especially
Carla Alvarez, Margot Gutiérrez, Michael Hironymous, Kelly Kerbow-
Hudson, and Christian Kelleher; at the Harry Ransom Center (also at
UT- Austin); and at the Archivo General de la Nación, in Mexico City.
Many thanks to UT Press’s two readers for their invaluable suggestions
and to Kerry Webb, acquiring editor at the press, who helped make this
a stronger, more analytically sound, and more readable book.