Chicano Studies 100
Introduction to Chicano Studies
Instructor: Roberto Sifuentes
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the central concepts and historical experiences that define Chicano culture from its indigenous roots to the present. Emphasis will be placed on the diversity of the Chicana/o experience and the particular existential conditions in Chicana/o life which have shaped cultural reality. This is an introductory course to Chicano Studies.
Lectures, readings and audio visual materials as well as major selected topics are designed to examine the cultural development of the Chicano community. These topics include: the historical expressions of culture, Immigration, gender, music, art, language, folklore and the family. The course combines lecture, videotape and film presentations with reading and writing assignments and library research.
Classes for this course will meet three hours a week, MWF Attendance is mandatory for successful completion of the course.
Course requirements include: regular attendance, timely course readings, class participation, writing assignments and special projects.
There will be occasional quizzes, a midterm exam and a final exam.
REQUIRED
Octavio Paz, The Labirinth
of Solitud
Roberto Sifuentes, Reader for Chicano Culture
- The ChS 100 Reader available at the Northridge
Stationary and Copy Center.
Handouts, Your Class Notes and Lectures
REFERENCES:
Miguel Leon Portilla, Aztec thought and Culture
Miguel Leon Portilla, The Broken Spears
Octavio Paz, The Labirinth of Solitude
Aztlan, Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts
NochiLifo, Northridge Chicano Literary Forum
Luis Leal, ed., A Decade of Chicano Literature (1970-1979)
CARA (Chicano Art, Resistance and Affirmation)
Americo Paredes, With a Pistol in His Hand
Roberto Sifuentes, Reader for Chicano Studies 100
Carey MacWilliams, North From
VIDEOS:
I am Joaquin by El teatro campesino
Los vendidos by El teatro campesino
Chicano, The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, by PBS
Grades: In order to meet the requirements of the course and receive a final grade, students need to do required readings, writing assignments, one midterm exam and one final exam. Class participation and timely attendance are very important requirements of the course.
Chicano Studies 100 is a multi-media course. Videos are presented to enhance lectures and readings and class discussion. Students may be asked to write brief reviews related to videos and are responsible to take all quizzes as required by the instructor.
Chicano Studies 100 is a lower division introductory course, any upper division student (Junior or Senior) registered for this course may beasked to do special assignments, please see the professor on the second week of the semester.
ChS 100, WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Week 1.- I Am Joaquín, Discovery, Conquest and Exploration (1492-1600)
Week 2.- Colonial Period. Development of Mestizage - 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, Explores and
Settlers.
Week 3.-19th Century,
Week 4.-The French Invasion of Mexico, 5 de mayo today.
Hacienda System: Mexicanos Texanos,
Californios, Nuevo Mexicanos.
Social Outlaws in the
Week 5.- The Writers of the Mexican Revolution. Intellectual movement. Muralism. Flores Magon, Martín Luis Guzman
Readings: Octavio Paz, The Labirinth
of Solitude, "Critique of the Pyramid."
Week 6 .- Indigenismo.
the "Buffer State," "
Week 7.- 2nd World War, the Sleepy Lagoon Incident
in
Week 8.- 1960-1980 Resistance, Identity and Affirmation The Chicano Movement. The New Intellectualism. Lecture on the Corrido from Guadalupe Posada to the Mexican Revolution.
Week 9.- MIDTERM R. Sifuentes, "El corrido de los hermanos Hernandez." Video: El Corrido by el Teatro Campesino. Discussion and midterm review.
Week 10.- The Family, Chicano Art.
Week 11.- The Family, Chicano Art.
Week 12.- Chicanos and Latinos as consumers. Language a Reflector of Culture.
Week 13 .- Chicanos Mexicanos and other latinos in 1995. Review for the Finals
Week 14 .- Finals Finals Finals Finals
ChS 100 - Prof. Roberto Sifuentes
STUDY BRIEFS
As noted by Arturo Torres-Rioseco, the conqueror,
whether soldier, priest, or navigator was the representative of a culture
he had brought with him to the Américas, The Western
European Culture. His role demanded that he subdue and civilize-and
interpret in words.
his famous Five Letters (1519-1526), was the first to send his monarch detailed
historical accounts of his work, later conquerors and historians continued the
record, and their writings form the first great type of colonial literature:
The crónica, whose subject matter is American.
Perhaps the greatest chronicler of them all (from a literary standpoint) was
Bernal Díaz del Castillo who gave us his celebrated
book True History of the Conquest of New Spain.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492-1584)
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (1552) By Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492-1584) as a work of literature is
one of the most important legacies left by the Spanish conquest. Bernal Díaz came to the
fortune. He in turn wrote one of the most realistic episodes relating the
tragedy that begun the destruction of the culture of the
His description have the credence of the witness sworn to tell the truth,
after all, he was there, he was there as a veteran
soldier, as a Spaniard who had traveled to the large cities in
either side; the capitulation of Moctezuma; the sham
battle with other spaniards who had been sent to
punish the rebellion of Cortés; the final bloody march back to Mexico, slaying
and branding the inhabitants; and the ultimate surrender of the capital after
85 days of siege. It is hard to imagine a more remarcable
story and no one has ever related it better than Bernal Diaz.
Bernal Díaz merely relates events that he saw and
in which he himself took part. and he tells them with
a freedom from literary
formulas, which gives his style its unusual freshness. His descriptions are
minute, vivid, concrete; everything comes to life in
his
pages-an Indian market, for example, the names and colors of every horse in the
expedition. Bernal Diaz pages are crammed
with unforgettably lifelike episodes. But it is also in his strong,
personalized point of view that he stands out.
He writes with and undisguised vanity about himself, almost a hatred for the
overpraised Cortes, and a passionate conviction
that the conquest was achieved not by the commander, but by the four hundred
soldiers of the expedition. His battle scenes,
in addition to their color and detail, are alive with the doings of the common
soldier, like the scene of the storming of and Indian hill fortress by the
infantry, while Cortés and the horsemen kept watch in the plain. Arturo Torres Rioseco observes that The True History of the Conquest of
New Spain by Bernal Díaz may be considered the most
Spanish and at the same time the most American of all the New world Chronicles.
Fray Bartolomé de las
Casas,
Called "the defender of the Indians," Bartolomé de las
Casas was born in
New World he traveled to the
good treatment of the Indians. Later he joined the order of the Dominicans but
always concerned about the bad treatment of
the Indians at the hands of the encomenderos in
despotism and treatment of the Indians seeking justice by traveling several
times to
In las Casas, the moral and
ethical concepts are more important than the writer. But his writings did have
great influence in the
philosophic and juridical specially in defining the status of the indegenes. He later became Bishop of Chiapas a southern
area
of
The works of Bartolomé de las
Casas are very important for the study of the
Conquest, the early colonization, the
psychological and ideological development of the human condition. the first and most important of his works is the History of
the
documents, letters, reconstruction of dialogs and conversations among the
conquistadors to give it more credibility. He has
many digressions in the areas of philosophy, history and theology, citing the
Bible, religious writings, and important writers of
antiquity. He writes a very detailed conversational history. His writings
always are in defense of the indigenes from the abuse
and exploitation of the whites. He brings out the best human qualities of the
indigenes with excellent descriptions of their
customs, their psychology and their art. His history has a religious tone and
always ties historical developments of the
His writings include Apologética historia, a complement to his History of the
impact in Europe was his Brevísima historia de la destrucción de las
attention to the abuses and injustices suffered by the indigenous people. His
book contributed to the development by
and
period.
Sor Juana Inés de la
Cruz
Octavio Paz on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695)
Sor Juan Inés
de la Cruz- or, by her real name Juana de Asbaje-is
the noblest figure in the colonial poetry of Spanish
America and one of the richest and most profound of our literature. She was
beset by critics, biographers and apologists, but nothing which has been said
about her since the sevententh century is more apt
and penetrating than what she herself tells us in her "Respuesta
a sor Filotea de la Cruz."In this letter is to be found the tale of her
intellectual vocation; a defense sometimes ironical, of her thirst for
knowledge; the story of her struggle and triumphs; and a criticism of her
poetry and also of her critics.
These pages reveal Sor Juana as an intellectual,
that is to say, a creature for whom life is an exercise of the mind. She wanted
to understand everything. Where a religious soul would find proof of the
presence of God, she saw an occasion for hypothesis and questioning. For her
the world was more an enigma than a place for salvation. Symbol of maturity
though she is, the Mexican nun is also the image of society on the verge of
schism. A nun by intellectual vocation, she preferred the tyranny of the
cloister than that of the world, and for years
maintained a precarious balance in a daily conflict between her religious duty
and her intellectual curiosity. Defeated, she lapsed into silence, but her
silence was that of the intellectual, not that of the mystic.
The poetical works of Sor Juana are numerous,
varied, and unequal. The innumerable poems she wrote bear witness to her
graceful ease and also to her carelessness. But most of her work is saved from
this defect, both by its admirable rhetorical
construction and by the truths it expresses. Although she said that the only
thing she enjoyed writing was "a trifle called The
dream'" her sonnets, liras, and endechas are the
works of a great poet of earthly love. For this witty, passionate and ironical
woman, the sonnet became a natural form of expression. In its luminous dialect
of metaphor-she is consumed and delivered,
escapes and surrenders. Less ardent than Louise Labbe,
and also less direct, the Mexican poetess goes deeper and is freer
and more daring in her reticence, as well as more mistress for herself in her
transports. She uses her intellect not to restrain her passion but to intensify
it, and to make it more freely and intentionally inevitable. In its best
moments, the poetry of Sor Juana is something more
than a sentimental confession or a happy exercise in baroque rhetoric. And even
when she is obviously jesting, as in the disquieting portrait of the Countess
of Paredes, her sensuality and love of the body give
life to the erudite allusions and conceits, which are transformed into a
labyrinth of crystal and fire.
"Primero Sueño"
(First Dream) is Sor Juana's most ambitious poem.
Although it was a confessed imitation of "Soledades"
of
Góngora, The profound difference between the two
works is grater than their external similarity. Sor
Juana tries to pierce
reality, not to make it a gleaming surface.
The vision which we are shown in "Primero Sueño" is a dream of universal night where men and the
universe dream and are
themselves fragments of a dream: a dream of knowledge, a dream of being.
Nothing could be further removed form the
amorous night of the mystic than his intellectual night, a night of sleepless
eyes and sleepless clocks. In the "Soledades,"
says
Alfonso Reyes, Góngora sees a man "as an inert
mass in the nocturnal landscape. Sor Juana
"approaches the sleeper like a
vampire enters into him and his nightmare, looking for a synthesis of
wakefulness, drowsing and dream." The substance of the
poem is unprecedented in Spanish poetry and had no influence until recent
times. "Primero Sueño"
is a poem of the
intelligence, its ambitions and defeats. It is intellectual poetry, poetry of
disenchantment. Sor Juana brings to an end the viceregal period.
José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827)
Truly the creator of the Latin American novel is J.Joaquín
Fernández de Lizardi the
most influential narrative writer in
during the XIX Century. He studied Latin and Philosophy at the Colegio de San Idelfonso in
In 1812, when the Cortes de Cadíz
declared freedom of the press, he started the newspaper "El Pensador Mexicano" where
he published aricles related to the most important
events of the viceroyalty and became an efective
spokesman for the liberal
ideas. It was during this period when he was sent to jail by the Viceroy Venegas because of some political commentary. He
founded seven newspapers and dedicated himself to writting
journalistic articles, pamphlets, articles on customs, novels,
fabulas, poetry and drama. Salient in his novels are
his moralizing and pedagogical orientations. There are four important
novels El Periquillo Sarniento
(1816), La Quijotita y su
prima (1818), Noches tristes y dia alegre
(1818), Don Catrin de la Fachenda
(1819). All but Noches Tristes...are
written in the picaresque mode.
This is only a brief guide for your studies, It is important that you associate each element with its related historical event or cultural importance. It is important to understand the scheme established here for ChS review it as soon as possible and become familiar with ideas, concepts and personalities. Bring any question you may have to class and consult with the instructor.
Questions and class discussions, video materials, special events and
conferences, general ideas should be understood these are some examples:
1. Looking at the three essays of O. Paz in
relation to the concept of identity.
2. Analyzing the area of identity of the Mexican people both in the
3. Discussing the concepts of Pendejismo.
Please present your own position.
4. Associating the hacienda and the ranchos with the concept of Social
Banditry
5. Observing Corrido with its
folkloric, musical and historical implications.
6. Looking at the concept of La Raza as an
attempt to define the Mexican and other Latino people and its implications in
society today.
7. Discussing the Mexican Revolution as a very important social,
political and migratory problem for both
8. Discussing the videos by Luis Valdez, Guillermo Gomez Pena, “
9. Looking at the concept of La Raza as an attempt to define the Mexican and other Latino people and its implications in society today including the position presented in the poem “I am Joaquin.” and the article by Deluvina Hernandez.
Items for identification and matching will be chosen from the following materials
Significant years in Mexican history: 1521, 1821, 1921 - 1836, 1848, 1853 - 1810, 1910, 1846-1848.
Places: La Venta,
Deities, peoples and personalities: Ometotl, Tenintzin, Aztecs, Mexicas, Mayans, Toltecs, Olmecs, Quetzlcoatl, Cuauhtemoc, Malintzin, Tonantzin..
Hernan Cortez, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Bartolome de las Casas, Bernardino de Sahagun,
Juan de Oñate, Eusebio Junipero Serra.
Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos, M. Austin, Steven Austin, Jose de Santa
Anna, Benito Juarez, Porfirio Diaz.
Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Jose Vasconcelos,
Octavio Paz, Elena Paniatowska,
Alurista, Rodolfo (Corky) Gonzalez, Burciaga, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro
Siqueiros, Luis Valdez.
Race and caste system: Peninsular, criollo, mestizo, indian,
black, mulato, cuarteron, zambaigo.
Nahual, Matlacihuatl, La Llorona.
Settlements: Hacienda, Ranchos,
Chicano Leadership: Jose Angel Gutierrez, Rodolfo (Corky) Gonzalez, Reyes Tijerina, Cesar Chavez.
Organizations: CSO, The American G.I. Forum, MAPA.MASA, UMAS, MAYO, MEChA. La Raza Unida, The Crusade for Justice, La Alianza de los Pueblos Libres, United Farm Workers, LULAC, MAPA, you may use the findings in the article by David Tirado
Contemporary terms:
Chicano, Latino, Hispanic. Raza, The Chicano
Movement, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,
El Plan de