Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image, embracing their Mexican Native ancestry. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of indigenous descent. Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.
Alum Rock is a district of San Jose, California, located in East San Jose. Formerly an independent town, it has been a neighborhood of San Jose since the 1950s, though some portions are still unincorporated as a census-designated place. Alum Rock is one of San Jose's most notable and historic Chicano/Mexican-American districts. It is home to Alum Rock Park, the oldest municipal park in California and one of the largest in the country.
A lowrider or low rider is a customized car with a lowered body that emerged among Mexican American youth in the 1940s. Lowrider also refers to the driver of the car and their participation in lowrider car clubs, which remain a part of Chicano culture and have since expanded internationally. These customized vehicles are also artworks, generally being painted with intricate, colorful designs, unique aesthetic features, and rolling on wire-spoke wheels with whitewall tires.
The Mission District, commonly known as The Mission, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is derived from Mission San Francisco de Asís, built in 1776 by the Spanish. The Mission is historically one of the most notable centers of the city's Chicano/Mexican-American community.
East Side San Jose, commonly called The East Side and less commonly as the East Valley, is the eastern region of the city of San Jose, California. The East Side is made up of numerous neighborhoods grouped into two larger districts: Alum Rock and Evergreen. East San Jose is bordered by the Diablo Range to the east and south, the Coyote Creek to the west, and Mabury Road to the North.
A lowrider bicycle is a highly customized bicycle with styling inspired by lowrider cars. These bikes often feature a long, curved banana seat with a sissy bar and very tall upward-swept ape hanger handlebars. A lot of chrome, velvet, and overspoked wheels are common accessories to these custom bicycles.
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is a Sacramento, California-based art collective, founded in 1970 by Ricardo Favela, José Montoya and Esteban Villa. It was one of the "most important collective artist groups" in the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and the 1980s and continues to be influential into the 21st century.
Chicano Park is a 32,000 square meter park located beneath the San Diego–Coronado Bridge in Barrio Logan, a predominantly Chicano or Mexican American and Mexican-migrant community in central San Diego, California. The park is home to the country's largest collection of outdoor murals, as well as various sculptures, earthworks, and an architectural piece dedicated to the cultural heritage of the community. Because of the magnitude and historical significance of the murals, the park was designated an official historic site by the San Diego Historical Site Board in 1980, and its murals were officially recognized as public art by the San Diego Public Advisory Board in 1987. The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 owing to its association with the Chicano Movement, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016. Chicano Park, like Berkeley's People's Park, was the result of a militant people's land takeover. Every year on April 22, the community celebrates the anniversary of the park's takeover with a celebration called Chicano Park Day.
Chicanismo emerged as the cultural consciousness behind the Chicano Movement. The central aspect of Chicanismo is the identification of Chicanos with their Indigenous American roots to create an affinity with the notion that they are native to the land rather than immigrants. Chicanismo brought a new sense of nationalism for Chicanos that extended the notion of family to all Chicano people. Barrios, or working-class neighborhoods, became the cultural hubs for the people. It created a symbolic connection to the ancestral ties of Mesoamerica and the Nahuatl language through the situating of Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs, in the southwestern United States. Chicanismo also rejected Americanization and assimilation as a form of cultural destruction of the Chicano people, fostering notions of Brown Pride. Xicanisma has been referred to as an extension of Chicanismo.
José Antonio "Tony" Burciaga was an American Chicano artist, poet, and writer who explored issues of Chicano identity and American society.
The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Native American and Latino art and culture. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.The cultural center supports and encourages the creative expression “of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.” It is currently a member of the American Alliance of Museums.
Judith Francisca Baca is an American artist, activist, and professor of Chicano studies, world arts, and cultures based at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California. Baca is the director of the mural project that created the Great Wall of Los Angeles, which is the largest communal mural project in the world.
Galería de la Raza (GDLR) is a non-profit art gallery and artist collective founded in 1970, that serves the largely Chicano and Latino population of San Francisco's Mission District. GDLR mounts exhibitions, hosts poetry readings, workshops, and celebrations, sells works of art, and sponsors youth and artist-in-residence programs. Exhibitions at the Galería tend to feature the work of minority and developing country artists and concern issues of ethnic history, identity, and social justice.
Southside Park is a neighborhood in Sacramento, California, located immediately south of Downtown Sacramento. Its official borders are R Street to the north, W-X Freeway to the south, I-5 to the west, and 12th Street to the east.
Salvador Roberto Torres is a Chicano artist and muralist and an early exponent of the Chicano art movement. He was one of the creators of Chicano Park, and led the movement to create its freeway-pillar murals. He was also a founder of the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, California.
The Chicano Art Movement represents groundbreaking movements by Mexican-American artists to establish a unique artistic identity in the United States. Much of the art and the artists creating Chicano Art were heavily influenced by Chicano Movement which began in the 1960s.
Josephine "Josie" Talamantez is a historian from San Diego, California. She co-founded Chicano Park in 1970 and helped develop it into a cultural National Historic Landmark containing the largest collection of artistic murals in the United States. Talamantez was also the Chief of Programs for the California Arts Council, served as the director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, and was on the board of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.
A Mexican American is a resident of the United States who is of Mexican descent. Mexican American-related topics include the following:
This is an alphabetical index of topics related to Hispanic and Latino Americans.
Mayfair is a neighborhood of San Jose, California, located in the Alum Rock district of East San Jose. It is one of San Jose's most historic Chicano/Mexican-American districts and noted for being a center of the Chicano Movement and grassroots activists like Californian civil rights leader César Chávez.
