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dissertation entitled

Building a Chicane Rhetoric for Rhetoric and Composition:
Methodology, Practice, and Performance

presented by

Kendall Man'e Leon

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BUILDING A CHICANA RHETORIC FOR RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION:
METHODOLOGY, PRACTICE, and PERFORMANCE

By

Kendall Marie Leon

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rhetoric and Writing

2010

 

ABSTRACT

BUILDING A CHICANA RHETORIC FOR RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION:
METHODOLOGY, PRACTICE, and PERFORMANCE

By
Kendall Marie Leon

Chicana rhetoric fiequently begins with the assumption that Chicanas—or
typically women rhetors from Mexicana origins—are altered (or alter) through employing
rhetoric. Studies on Chicana rhetoric generally center on language and the use of
metaphors in Chicana literary writing. While this previous research has been instrumental
in building a richer history of scholarship on Chicana writing, what Rhetoric and
Composition as a field has failed to do is pay attention to what Chicana rhetoric can teach
us about rhetoric in general—both how it occurs in the world and how we must then
study such activity. The questions then that ground this dissertation project are quite
simple: If Chicana identity is self-selected, boundaried, and it has something about it that
is shared—a set of practices, or beliefs—then what is it that makes it Chicana? How does
“Chicana” operate in the world rhetorically? And, methodologically, how do we study
such moments of rhetorical performance?

To address these questions, this dissertation project collects historical moments of
Chicana rhetoric in scholarship and activism. “Chicana” operates in these spaces as it
mediates scholarly activity; is itself a political act of identification; and contributes to the
remembering and revisioning of histories. To collect such moments, this project turns to
the poetic and philosophical writings by Chicanas, interviews with Chicana identified
scholars, and the activist and archival practices of one of the first Chicana organizations. I

first demonstrate that Chicana identity is rhetorical in that it is ideological. Claiming one

 

 

 

is a Chicana carries explicit political implications that mediate performances of what it
means to be a Chicana. One of the invocations of Chicana identity is the use of shared
methodologies for making meaning about experience.

The primary focus of the dissertation is based on archival research on one of the
first Chicana activist organizations, Comisién F emem'l Mexicana Nacional (CFMN).
Utilizing theory in the flesh as a methodological heuristic to analyze documents
contained in the CFMN archival collection, I examine the way Chicanas use experience
to make things: like organizations, histories and practices. By looking at the organization
as an instantiation of Chicana identity, I examine the way that Chicana subjectivity is
evident in the emergence of the organization. Rather than focus on what are perhaps the
more typical and public performances of Chicana identity, experience as shaping Chicana
practice is read in the nuances and mundane details of the organization and in the act of
archiving.

This dissertation demonstrates that Chicana rhetoric when read alongside Rhetoric
studies demonstrates a shift in methodology that accounts for rhetoric collectively and
connectively. This dissertation, then, will prove that learning about the rhetoric of
Chicana is not only beneficial to Chicana scholars but can be used to complicate the field

of Rhetoric and Composition and its conception of rhetoric in the world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is quite satisfying to be able to write the acknowledgements page, not only because it
means I am nearly finished with this part of the journey, but to also be able to thank the
people who have helped me along the way.

I have to first acknowledge the folks in the Rhetoric and Writing program at Michigan
State University. My committee in particular--Malea Powell, Ellen Cushman, Jeff Grabill
and Julie Lindquist, and Dora Ramirez-Dhoore fi'om Boise State—have demonstrated to
me what it means to be a good faculty member, and above all, good people. I want to
thank you for truly teaching me the meaning of agape. I have learned equally from the
students I have been fortunate enough to have met at MSU, including Amy Diehl, Jill
McKay-Chrobak, Angela Haas, Qwo-Li Driskill, Jim Fredrickson, Stacey Pigg, SPC,
Katie Wittenauer, and of course as Jim would say, my COHORT! ll: Collin Craig, Jim
Ridolfo, Martine Rife, and Robyn Tasaka. I also have to thank Judy Easterbrook and
Melissa Arthurton for helping me navigate the logistics of graduate school, and for a
guaranteed good conversation.

My family deserves the biggest thanks of all: my siblings, grandparents, and mom have in
their own ways provided the support, and at least, relief from graduate school. My family
reminds me of what it is truly important in life. ll would like to thank my husband Sean. I
don’t think I could have accomplished any of this without you—at least not with my
sanity in tact. Thank you for being you. Finally, to my baby Lucia Violet: when you are

old enough to read this, I hope you know that you have been the greatest gift of all.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................. vii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
“Marginalized” Rhetorics in the History of Rhetoric ..................................... 4
Chicana Rhetoric in the Field ................................................................ 7
A Note on the Use of the Term “Chicana” ................................................ 11
Features of Chicana Rhetoric ............................................................. 15
Shared Topoi and Symbols to Resist and to Use to Create .................. 16
Use of Poetics to Theorize ....................................................... 17
Recognition and Utilization of Experiential Knowledge .................... l7
Invention and Intervention of Histories ....................................... 18
Connective and Collective ...................................................... 18
Methodology and Methods ............................................................... 20
Methodological Underpinnings ................................................. 21
Theorizing from/about Experience .................................... 21
Theorizing on Connectedness .......................................... 24
Theorizing about History ................................................ 26
Data Collection .................................................................... 28
Why this Organization? ............................................................................. 29
Data Interpretation ................................................................ 31
Structure of the Dissertation ..................................................... 32
Structure of the Chapters ......................................................... 34
Conclusion .................................................................................. 35
CHAPTER 2
CHICANA RHETORIC: EXPERIENCE AND/IN BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION
......................................................................................................... 38
A Case Study of Chicana(s) in Rhetoric ................................................ 38
Episode One: All Chicanas Studying Chicanas Mean the Same Thing. ...38
Episode two: Chicana Identity Means We Can’t Relate ..................... 39
Episode Three: What Does it Mean to Live in a System? ......................... 39
Making the Making of Chicana Visible ................................................. 42
Case Study: The Problem of the “Latin” Woman for the National Organization of
Women ....................................................................................... 44
Using Experience to Connect ............................................................. 57
Case Study: Collective Practices and La Hermandad ................................. 66
Conclusion .................................................................................. 69
CHAPTER 3
CHICANA RHETORIC: MAKING HISTORY ................................................ 72
A Case Study of a Chicana Doing History ............................................. 72
On Invention and Memory ................................................................ 74

 

Chicanas Intervening in Histories ........................................................ 75

The Necessity of Memory ........................................................ 79
Invention of a History of Organizing .................................................... 82
Chicanas Inventing Histories in the Archives .......................................... 90
Conclusion .................................................................................. 97
CHAPTER 4
CHICANA RHETORIC: STRATEGIC ACTS OF CONNECTIVITY ................... 100
A Case Study of a Chicana Presenting on Chicana Rhetoric ........................ 100
Strategic Acts of Connectivity, or the “Pragmatics” of Chicana Rhetoric ........ 104
Differential Consciousness and T echne' ....................................... 104
Being Pragmatic and Organizational Change ................................ 106
Case Study: “Spanish origm' mom are included in the white mpulationl”:
CETA/Manpower and Employee Training Programs... . ....109
Scene One: Chicanas Need Employment Training: Creating a Problem at
Hand ............................................................................... 111
Scene Two: Enter the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act
(CETA): Or, Now we have a Different Problem ............................ 117
Scene Three: A Different Strategy to the Problem at Hand ................ 123
Conclusion ................................................................................. 128
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 132
A Case Study of a Rhetoric Scholar Studying Chicanas ............................ 132
Implications ................................................................................ 135
Stasis Theory ...................................................................... 135
Heuristics for History and Change ............................................. 137
Research on Organizations and Cultural Identity ........................... 142
Pedagogy .......................................................................... 145
Using Experience in Research ................................................. 153
Conclusion ................................................................................. 155
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Interview Questions with Chicana Scholars .......................... 158
WORKS CITED ................................................................................... 159

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Copy of an Organizational Chart ...................................................... 63
Figure 2: Copy of a Drawing of a Chicana Revolutionary .................................... 85
Figure 3: Copy of a Board of Directors Flow Chart ............................................ 93

vii

Chapter 1: Introduction

Whenever a scholar undertakes to study something, she must have a conception of what
her object of study is. In the case of the ethnic studies scholar, who takes as her object of
inquiry groups of people such as “Chicana/os, ” the concept of identity provides the
organizing principle that justifies her scholarly focus. Unless “Chicano/0s ” exist as a
sociologically distinct with identifiable characteristics that can be specified and
described, and unless studying them will help the scholar understand something
important about them and the world in which they are constituted as “Chicano/0s, ” it
makes little sense to engage in studying them as “Chicano/0s. ” What would be the
purpose of studying their conditions of existence, their cultural practices, or their literary
productions unless doing so might yield information that contributes to the scholar ’s
understanding of herself: the others with whom she interacts, or the world in which she
lives? And how can she study that group without a good conception of who they are and
where they fit into existing social structures? The need to have a good conception of her
object of study thus brings her right back to the question of identity, and makes urgent the
necessity of having an adequate theory guiding her as she goes about determining both
who “Chicana/os ” are and what aspects of their lives are most crucial to her study.

Paula Moya, Learning from Experience

In 1971, more than 600 Chicana women met in Houston, Texas to hold the first
national Chicana conference. In a survey administered by some of the founding members
of the newly forming Comision F emenil Mexicana Nacional to the women attending the
conference on the issues that defined and impacted Chicanas, 84% of the respondents
stated that they felt there was a distinction between the problems and experiences of
Chicana women fi'om other women. However, in a follow up question that asked how the
distinction is manifested, all of the respondents left it blank. The same question was also
asked about Chicanas in relation to Chicanos, with similar results1 (Flores, “Women on

the Move”). This survey was reprinted in countless newspaper and journal articles, and

 

1 More respondents, though, could articulate the difference between the problems facing Chicanos and
Chicanas.

l

 

 

was also adapted to be used by other identity-based women’s organizationsz. The
reproduction of the survey, its adaptations and circulations, speak to the importance of
the very act of administering the survey, as well as the responses that were included, as
one definitional moment for the Chicana movement and by correlation the development
of Chicana identity.

The same holds true for countless texts that surround the emergence of Chicana
identity, in which Chicana writers talked about how Chicanisma is different than Anglo
feminism and culturally distinct, but that difference was not thoroughly articulated. And
yet, this felt and later theorized difference has been used to do things—to establish “la
Chicana”, to organize people, and to make visible change. There is a difference that is
perceived, a felt knowledge that exists—albeit mediated—that allows people to incite
transformation. This difference—a difference that is created, sustained, reproduced and
altered through discourse and experience—is Chicana and it is rhetorical.

It is for this reason that I opened this chapter, and more expansively this dissertation,
with the epigraph by Paula Moya. In the epigraph she challenges scholars to explain the
ways we define and identify our “objects of study,” and to make evident what aspects of
our lives are most “crucial” to our scholarly endeavors. In a sense, Moya is asking us to
take a step back and work at the definitional—a type of move that is foundational to
rhetoric, and yet happens infi'equently in Rhetoric studies. This is especially relevant for
those of us who locate our research as investigating Chicana identity and its effects in the
world. Tellingly, in most scholarship on Chicana rhetoric in Rhetoric and Composition,

“Chicana” works to specify the actors performing the otherwise stabilized “rhetoric.”

 

2 See Azizah Cox al-Hibri’s letter to Francisca Flores as an example of such reuse.

2

re“:-

In other words, Chicana becomes the dependent variable in relation to rhetoric, the
independent variable. However, what if we were to treat rhetoric as the dependent
variable—as that which we observe as altering with and through Chicana production?

The purpose of this dissertation then is twofold: to treat Chicana identity as
rhetoric, and to build this rhetoric against the dominating theories and practices in our
field for studying rhetoric and writing. To do this, I focus on the emergence of the
Comisio'n F emenil Mexicana Nacional, one of the first Chicana feminist organizations
that started in 1971, as an instantiation of Chicana identity and rhetoric. Specifically, I
analyze the programmatic writing and actions of the organization, including marginalia,
as well as the movement between documents housed in their archival collection. I do this
to demonstrate that Chicana identity and rhetoric, while evident in poetic writing, can be
articulated and thusly examined in other types of writing as well.

Accordingly, the central ideas motivating this dissertation is that there is a
Chicana rhetoric that needs to be built through the investigation of different moments of
Chicana rhetorical practice and performance; second that Chicana rhetoric is an
especially pertinent area of study as it is an intentional sign of both an ideologically
mediated identity claim and embodied “rea ” referential knowledge; and finally, that this
particular rhetoric aligns with a “post-positivist” realist perspective that opens rhetoric to
a research approach that treats different types of data as connected to a material reality
that is subject mediated, yet objectively defensible (Martin-Alcoff, Visible; Martin-Alcoff
and Mohanty; Sénchez; Moya, Learning). The recognition and utilization of Chicana

identity as a starting point fi'om which to build a rhetoric is useful because it treats

 

identity as rhetorical, meaning that identity is a position from which people in the world
do things: such as connect, incite transformation, or mediate lived experiences. If we can
agree that identity is rhetorical, we can see how beginning fiom this location is beneficial
for our field in considering how rhetoric emerges through this standpoint. In this
dissertation, I focus on Chicana identity as not only reflecting a reality but as an
epistemic that incites correlative actions.

To begin, in this introductory chapter I will do the following: I first locate the way
that “marginalized” rhetorics are conceived in our field and then move to a specific
discussion of Chicana rhetoric; next I explain why identity should be studied in rhetoric
and writing studies and then explain “Chicana” as a domain of research as an identity
marker; and finally, I discuss my methodology and methods for data collection. In other
words, throughout this chapter I make an argument for why identity in general, and in
particular Chicana identity, as a performance and a practice is relevant to Rhetoric. This
dissertation, then, ultimately seeks to address three questions: What is Chicana rhetoric?
How does one study Chicana rhetoric? And what are the affordances of Chicana rhetoric
for Rhetoric and Composition scholars?

“Marginalized ” Rhetorics in the History of Rhetoric

Cherrle Moraga aptly writes, “Ironically, the most ‘universal work’—writing
capable of reaching the hearts of the greatest number of people—is the most culturally
specific” (Last 291 ). Likewise, our field’s popular conceptualization of rhetoric theory
and practice has operated on a notion that what has been treated as canonical is both
universal and comprehensive. Looking at the history of rhetoric as indicated by the

canonical text The Rhetorical Tradition, we can make the following assertions about our

disciplinary identity: that it operates on a linear and [r] evolutionary model of rhetoric
marked by shifts in rhetorical practice that coincide with eras; rhetoricians and their
rhetorical practice is individualized, and primarily discourse based; and rhetorics of
marginalized groups (i.e. Gloria Anzaldua, Henry Louis Gates) are misinterpreted and
located within the postmodern era. Or, more often than not, rhetorics of marginalized
groups remain located in liminal space in the field’s conversations’. As Malea Powell
writes, “. . .we must get beyond our efforts toward inclusion, not because inclusion is
bad. . .but because cultures that do not change cannot survive” (“Down by the River” 40).
What we have failed to recognize is that neither the rhetorics nor their correlative eras are
universal; indeed, they are situated. At the same time, we have not fully treated the
situated accounts from marginalized rhetors as applicable to Rhetoric studies generally.

As others have extensively written, universalizing and normalizing a particular
standpoint or worldview erases the experience and existence of groups of people and
cultures. Within our own field, we can see this as the impetus behind the revisionist
historiographers that argue for a more inclusive rhetorical tradition (i.e. J arratt and Ong;
Johnson; Royster). What this results in is that some rhetorics may be inappropriately read
or classified along a historical continuum that operates on a dissimilar worldview. As an
example, in response to modernism, which attempts to classify and equalize even
discursive practice experience, scholars in our field have adopted a postmodern
perspective. Thusly, we read final conclusions that highlight contextuality, difference and
fluidity of identity and correlative literacy practices. Interestingly, with this turn,

inclusion of rhetoricians of color also occurred, which perhaps unintentionally lumps

 

3 This may happen in special issues like the 2004 College English special issues devoted to rhetorics of
race and class; or in journals outside of our field proper.

5

 

rhetorics of color as a response to modernism, and invites a reading that is used to justify
the need for a postmodern perspective’.

In fact, many theorists of color overtly disagree with and/or caution against
seemingly libratory turn to postmodernism (Christian). For instance, Chicana theorist
Chela Sandoval has astutely pointed out that the angst of postmodernism as theorized is
only novel and troubling for those who can be identified as modern subjects.
Postmodernism is marked by a disaf’finity of subjects, whereas many rhetoric practices of
marginalized groups neither operate on the model of an individual and are replete with
tactics and strategies to build affinities. For third world women, the disunification of the
Subject has been tactically employed as necessary for survival. And yet oddly, Rhetoric
and Composition scholars have heralded the writing of noted Chicana theorist Gloria
Anzaldua as indicative of a postmodern ethos where difference and hybridity are not part
of an embodied and situated experience but instead of the identity free and shifting mark
of the “postmodern condition.” Race and difference is therefore teachable and transgress-
able as we are all treated as equally hybrid subjectss. Further, given the typical realm of
Rhetoric and Composition, race and difference is read linguistically, which obviates the
embodied experiences and situatedness of rhetorical practices.

What I am hoping to make apparent here is that while marginalized rhetorics—or

more specifically, rhetors—have been added as acceptable objects and subjects of study,

 

4 As some Chicana theorists have argued, postmodern theorists like Judith Butler and Donna Haraway,
utilize the theoretical standpoints of theorists of color to support their arguments—to the point of
idealization—without actually engaging with the theory in its complexity, and minimizing the experiential
claims made (see Moya “Chicana Feminism” for elucidation on this point).

5 In “Postmodern Blackness,” bell hooks ofiers similar suggestions for postmodern theory. hooks warns
that postmodernism may eliminate legitimated opportunity for people who have been colonized and/or
dominated to “ to gain or regain a hearing” of voice (515). Her suggestion it to “..critique essentialism
while emphasizing the significance of the ‘authority of experience” (516).

6

how we study these and the impact of this has yet to alter the foundation of Rhetoric
studies itselt‘. This includes not only the rhetorical traditions of particular groups of
people, but also other things—like objects, like groups, organizations, and other less
studied rhetorics and rhetors. What I am not interested in per se is the argument that is
satisfied by the mere inclusion (or addendum) of people of color to what we study, but
instead what I am hoping to do is build different models for rhetoric research and
pedagogy. Furthermore, the grand narrative of our field is not similarly treated as a theory
made fiom experience that likewise has specificity, a groundedness. What has been
marginalized in our field is not just the intellectual contribution and presence of particular
groups, but discussions of methodology and pedagogy that change or at least debate what
these terms encompass. Far too often we have been slighted by the assertion that if we are
included it automatically alters the landscapes of rhetoric. What has resulted thus far fi'om
this trend is that those of us who study these things are deemed as special interests, or
relevant only to other like-minded scholars.7
Chicano Rhetoric in the Field
As you can see, while we have opened up our field to a more expansive repertoire

of actors, what we have not accomplished is developing other rhetorics. What this looks

 

6 This is especially interesting when we consider the manner in which theorists like Anzaldr'la have been
included as individuals and theorized as such. This in actuality contradicts the community-oriented feature
of Chicana rhetoric that has emerged from my data.

7 This mirrors the very treatment of the rhetorical practices associated with identity in general, and the
decades long criticism of identity politics as divisive and not universally applicable. The presumed
universality of particular traditions and subject positions and the divisiveness of activists and theorists
employing and espousing identity based truth claims have been the stasis of “identity politics.” In general,
the backlash against groups of marginalized groups organizing around identity, assert that identity limits
the applicability and transferability of its correlative politics and practices; therefore, “identity politics” are
conceived of an outdated and ineffectual model of organizing that limits collaboration and coalition
building. However, theorizing and acting from identity has been argued as necessary as both a tactic of
survival and organizing (see Sandoval, Methodology; Emma Perez, “Irigaray”) and more recently as
epistemic and a method for realizing a more objective understanding of the world (see Martin-Alcoff,
Visible and Moya, Learning).

like is that Chicanas—or women rhetors from more often than not, Mexicana origins-—
are altered (or alter) through employing rhetoric. Within Rhetoric and Composition, I
could find little scholarship that specifically addressed Chicana rhetoric. What I did find
was work on Latino/a discourses that overwhelmingly fell under two areas:
English/Spanish bilingual discourses (i.e. Kells, Balester & Villanueva) or the difficulties
associated with negotiating Latino/a commitments and identities with academic
discourses and communities (Barron).

Dora Ramirez Dhoore is one scholar who does employ the rhetorical strategies of
Chicana writers like Gloria Anzaldl’ra’s “borderlands” and “mestiza” to rhetorically
analyze a range of creative and political works of Chicanas working with varying
mediums, such children’s books, literature, and new media compositions. In her article
“Cyberborderland: Searching the Web for Xicanidad,” Ramirez-Dhoore examines how
the concept of mestiza operates in the multidirnensionality of cyberspace as both a space
for Xican@s to further enact and explore mestiza consciousness, while simultaneously
negotiating their racialized, gendered, and “othered” discourse, which is both embodied
and linguistic. To do so, Ramirez-Dhoore looks at the online work of several Xican@
web authors, artists and activists. Ramirez-Dhoore moves beyond merely labeling their
work as mestiza, but instead, examines how these Xican@s use mestiza consciousness:
“scholars must consider how the mestiza consciousness is used to explain racial
experiences online for many internet subjects” (1 1).

Similarly in “(B)orderlands’ Rhetorics and Representations: The Transforrnative
Potential of Feminist Third-Space Scholarship and Zines, rhetoric scholar Adela Licona

examines the way that mestiza consciousness and borderlands have been employed by

 

those of us rendered invisible by false binary thinking to theorize and give name to our
experiences (104). Licona then proceeds to trace the Third-space and both/and
subjectivity that can be evidenced in border-crossing of notable feminist scholars
disrupting scholarly boundaries, and in zines.

Jessica Enoch is another rhetoric scholar who researches what she identifies as a
Chicana rhetoric. In both of her valuable articles, Enoch engages in archival research on
the activist rhetorical work of Mexican identified women. Her first article focuses on the
newspaper writings of Mexican and Mexican American women at the turn of the century.
In this research, Enoch’s primary assertion is that these writers made “definitional
claims” about what it means to be a Mexican woman in opposition to previous
constructions of identity. Enoch traces the definitional back to the rhetorical strategies of
Aristotle and Cicero in the use of the topics, or what can be considered the realm and
scope of one’s argument and the tools used. In her later article, Enoch studies a group of
Mexican women’s rhetorical strategies of resistance against forced sterilization during the
1970’s. Overall, Enoch’s primary purpose appears to be to expand the canon of a
[Western] rhetorical tradition by modifying Cicero’s definitional (“Para La Mujer”) and
the “rhetorical moment” (“Survival Stories”). With both of Enoch’s articles, what makes
this conducive to the field’s conceptions of a classical rhetorical tradition is given
primacy over what makes this a Chicana rhetoric to begin with. Ramirez-Dhoore’s,
Licona and Enoch’s work have been instrumental to our field because they are some of
the few scholars that both examines the rhetorical work (and moments) of Mexican

identified women. More importantly, their work moves this work into the realm of

‘5

rhetorical studies rather than the usual terrain of linguistics where much of work on
rhetors of color is placed.

Another place in which features of a Chicana rhetoric can be said to play out in
the scholarship of our field and in other academic circles as well, is in the circulation of
features of a Chicana epistemological fi'amework such as the “borderlands,” or “mestiza
consciousness” (Haraway; Fleckenstein; for criticism see Bost). With the inculcation of
postmodem thought into academic discourse, comes the adaptation of particularized
metaphors from varying intellectual traditions that appear to “fit” the postmodern ethoss.
However, when Chicana rhetorical metaphors that are once (and can be) productive, are
disseminated and begin to stand in the place of Chicana rhetorics in its entirety, than the
metaphors lose their specificity, and their situatedness within an intellectual,
philosophical and imaginative trajectory by becoming an interpretive device; a
hermeneutic as opposed to a productive intervention’. In fact, in an interview conducted
with Linda Martin Alcoff, Afro-Cuban philosopher Lewis Gordon, claims that
communities of color have not only been strategically separated by resources and
geographies in order to divide up resources and power between groups, he also states that
these divisions are furthered in the tropes that become what our communities use to
signify (167). The tropes therefore become a way that unproductive difference is

inscribed between colonized groups. For this reason, then, we need to redirect our

 

8 See Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed for an explanation of why this might be the case—
in short, Sandoval claims that third world women have already developed the “technologies” for survival
within disjuncture.

9 Debra A. Castillo & Maria Socorro Tabuenca C6rdoba (2002) offer a material rhetoric approach to write
a smart critique of the American centered border writing/writers—including Guillermo Gomez-Pena and
Gloria Anzaldr'ra. Their criticism comes from their recognition that using the border to define for example,
Chicano/Chicana identity, erases the location as a physical place where border crossing and transgressions
are afi'orded to those who remain on the “right side” of the border.

10

 

 

attention to Chicana rhetoric and what it is and what it can do instead of limiting its
rhetorics to the metaphoric function").
A Note on the Use of the Term “Chicano ”

For this dissertation, Chicana identity and identification functions as the “domain”
of my data collection. Scholars have argued about who or what is included in the domain
of Chicano or Latino (see for example, Grosfoguel et a1). Some of these names explicitly
center culture within the colonial moment—such as “Hispanic” or even “Latin
American” (Mignolo). This tension in names and naming is evident throughout the
textual artifacts that I examined for this dissertation that were produced by various
members of the Comisién F emenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMV). For example, on
speeches, resolutions and meeting minutes I read hand written notes on the documents
that changed Chicana to “Latina”—or visa verse—based on the rhetorical purpose of the
document, or if the author felt the term violated the concept of la hermandad governing
the organization and its practices.

Nevertheless, all of the terms are inaccurate and exclude the lived experiences of
people. For example, many of the assumed shared connections—Spanish speaking,
Catholic, Native and Mexican originations, brown skin—for most represent a simulacra
of the variance in Latino culture (Slabodsky; Juana Maria Rodriguez). Within our own
country, we generalize the geography, the generation and the class affiliations of Latino/a
people. Most people carry a simulated image of the “Latino/a,” stemming from such

limited depictions in the news of “the immigrant problem,” in movies in which Latino/as

 

10 In the introduction to her PhD dissertation, Dora Ramirez-Dhoore’s poses a parallel concern when she
asks “Do we as Chicana writers, who have had such an antagonistic relationship with what Anzaldr'ra calls
‘linguistic terrorism,’ essentialize ourselves in our writing in order to success in a world that, as Perez
states, privileges a European model?” (3).

11

 

are either gang members or domestic help, or in educational discourse surrounding
bilingual classrooms and English Only initiatives. What these simulations do is establish
“the Latino/a” as an outside presence, uniform and agent-less. It also places Latino/as as
only operating in the backdrop and in service of whitestream culture. This simulation, of
course, has everything to do with rhetoric”.

But “Chicana” is a rhetorical and intentional term. Chicano/a people created
“Chicano” identity to speak to the experiences of living in the United States, with a
connection to a Latino/a background, and for most, recognizing an indigenous connection
as well (which terms like Hispanic and Latin American erase)”. Chicano/a then
acknowledges a mixed blood and cultural background, a reclamation in the face of a
society that privileges mythic “purity.” Foundational to the Chicano movement is a
productive nostalgia for a pre-conquest Atzlan as a response to a literal and metaphoric
displacement fi'om our homelands”.

Chicano also has historical and contemporary connections with the United Farm
Workers (UFW) movement, with its initiation as an independent organization in 1962
often serving as origin moment of the national Chicano movement. As with any “origin”
story, the Chicano movement is constellative. Interwoven with the UFW political

struggles, including the well-known national boycott of grapes, other activist

 

ll Simulations like these parallel the simulations described in Gerald Vizenor’s “Postindian Warriors.”
Vizenor, specifically writing about the literary simulations of Native Americans in literary works writes:
"simulations have never been uncommon in literature, as the simulations of the other are instances of the
absence of the real..." (2). This is an imagined invention, which can also be used tactically (as Chicanas
demonstrate with the productive use of La Malinche stories).

12 This is creation of Chicano/a by Chicanos/as is especially important to juxtapose to other ways that
groups can be made. For example, the creation of the identity and group “Hispanic” which was developed
in the 1970’s for the US. Census.

13 While this is understood to be the Aztec homeland that was taken by the United States in the Treaty of
Hildago in 1848, which is now the American Southwest, Atzlan functions more than just a literal
translation to the geography.

12

organizations and actions emerge. Alongside these emergences, the Chicano movement
also began within academia, with Rodolfo Acufla teaching the first Mexican American
history class in 1966. Chicano therefore connotes an activist and oppositional identity
(Castafieda; for criticism of this narrative see Perez Decolonial).

Chicana was developed to identify the particular gendered experiences of women,
which the Chicano movement was criticized for forgetting, or only admitting to service
Chicanos as helpmates. For those who identify as Chicana, the degree of tangential
relation to the Chicano movement varies. Likewise, the Chicana movement is treated as
distinct from the predominately Anglo-centric feminist movement as being historically
unable to address the particular concerns of women of color. But again, any relation to
the feminist movement varies for each Chicana.

In addition to Chicana as emerging or responding tangentially to other
movements, there are fi'equently similar origin stories for Chicana identity as a distinct
identity. For example, many Chicanas point to Chicana literature as pivotal to Chicana
identity and to the Chicana movement broadly. For her edited “collection,” the Chicana
Cultural Studies Forum, Angie Chabram-Dernersesian interviewed well known scholars
in Chicano and Chicana studies about the relation to Chican@ studies and cultural
studies, and asked them to postulate the way that these intersections could be better
articulated and practiced. Many of the Chicanas in the forum at some point mention the
edited collection This Bridge Called My Back as foundational to their own identities and
to the Chicana studies in general. The writings of Ana Castillo, Cherrie Moraga, and
Gloria Anzaldl'la, among others, are also referenced as pivotal to what it means to be a

Chicana. Other writers associated with the emergence of Chicana identity and of a

13

 

 

correlative movement are the editors and contributors to the Chicana newsletter Hiias de
Cuauhtemoc. Hijas was begun in 1971 by Chicanas demanding an end to sexism in the
Chicano movement”.
In the year prior to the first issue of Hijas, Chicana identity and politics as distinct
from Chicano emerged in another type of writing: the drafting of resolutions.
At the 1970 National Chicano Issues Conference, a group of women present felt that that
their needs or concerns were not being addressed by the Chicano leaders running the
conference. In response, these women physically left and met separately. It was at this
meeting they drafted the following series of resolutions, which would become the start of
the Comisién F emenil Mexicana Nacional (CFlllN). At their Annual Board Meeting in
1975, the CFMN began their minutes with a reminder of their organization’s history:
On October 10, 1970 the following resolution establishing CFMN, Inc. was
adopted at the National Issues Conference in Sacramento, California: ‘ . . .In order
to terminate exclusion of female leadership in the Chicana/Mexican movement
and in the community, be it RESOLVED that a Chicana/Mexicana Women’s
Commission be established at this Conference which will represent women, in all
areas where Mexicans prevail, and: That this commission be known as the
Comisién Femenil Mexicana, and; That the Cornision direct its efforts to
organizing women to assume leadership positions within the Chicano Movement
and in community life, and; That the Comision disseminate news and information
regarding the work and achievement of Mexican/Chicana women, and; That the

Comision concern itself in promoting programs which specifically lend

 

14 There are many, many newsletters, well and lesser known that have amazing articles, poetry and
imagery related to the Chicana movement, that rhetoric scholars have yet to examine.

l4

 

themselves to help, assist and promote solution to female type problems and

problems confionting the Mexican family, and; That the Comision spell out issues

to support, and explore ways to establish relationships with other women’s

organizations and their movements. Viva La Causal (“Annual Board Meeting”)
Based on the above founding resolution, the CFMN originally located itself tenuously as
working apart fi'om yet connected with Chicano movement, and as exploring
relationships with “other women’s organizations and their movements.” Although I am
not sure the extent to which this was achieved, it is apparent that the degree and type of
relationships the CFMN should have with both the Chicano and women’s movements
was a source of productive tension within the CFMN, and for Chicanas in general.

What I want to make evident is that while Chicana origination is a constellative
and contested story, there are several shared foundational moments and commitments. I
cannot imagine that any Chicana would disagree that calling oneself a Chicana is not in
some way political and significant. For this reason, whenever I use the term Chicana in
my dissertation, it is purposeful. First, I employ Chicana when discussing people who
identify as such. Second, in regards to the CFMN, I use Chicana to describe the particular
actions that the CFMN took in response to the constructions of Latina and/or Mexican
women and communities.

Features of Chicano Rhetoric

Although there is variance and difference between and amongst Chicanas in terms
of what it signifies and the way it is practiced and lived, there presumably are
commonalities or repetitious practices enacted by Chicanas. When I say Chicana rhetoric,

then, I am referring to a specific set of practices that are developed and employed within

15

 

a particular context from which Chicana emerges. Based on my research thus far, I have
identified several features of a Chicana rhetoric. While I do not elucidate each of these
practices in the rest of the dissertation, I want to briefly outline these practices below.
Shared T opoi and Symbols to Resist and to Use to Create

One of the most recognizable features of Chicana rhetoric is the use of shared
topoi (both figurative and material) and symbols as materials for invention. These topoi
and symbols are productively used by Chicanas and serve as the basis for much of
Chicana theorizing and writing. This is evident in the numerous recanting and retelling of
stories surrounding two symbolic figures in Chicana rhetoric: La Malinche (Calafell,
“Pro(re-)claiming Loss”; Perez, Decolonial; Arteaga) and La Llorana (i.e. Palancios;
Castillo; Gaspar de Alba). Other material and figurative topoi include the “border” and
“mestiza.” For example, several Chicana rhetors have utilized the “border” to identify a
tactical subject position from which they speak and work against the binaries that have
attempted to write over the existence of the mestizas (Licona; Ramirez-Dhoore
,“Searching”), and for others, the border serves as very literal location from which to
politicize (Castillo and Socorro Tabuenca Cbrdoba). Mestiza and mestiza consciousness
is also invoked as a topoi fiom which Chicanas are said to invent. According to Gloria
Anzaldr’ra: “. . .the new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a
tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican
fiom an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality,
she operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly,
nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns

to the ambivalence into something else” (Borderlands 80, emphasis mine). The

16

production of something new fiom alterity is a primary feature that Chicana rhetoric
enacts”. As you may notice, many of these citations are for literary writers and works, as
the poetics are employed to make sense of and alter Chicana experience.
Use of Poetics to Theorize

For Chicanas, poetics are both productive and imaginative; but, I also include in
this section meaning making that stems from that which ephemeral—such as emotion,
belief, stories, myths, and spirituality—all of which are utilized in the emergence of
Chicana culture. For example, in her introduction to Making Face, Making Soul:
Hacienda Caras, Anzaldl'ra advocates for the employment of “artistic ‘languages,’
spoken from the body, by the bod)?’ that are “still coded with hope,” as well as the need
to occupy theoretical space while at the same time, de-academicizing the theory we do
write and the reader is forced to still participate (xxv-xxvi). Poetics allow for a
theorization about the body and ones experiences living in it.
Recognition and Utilization of Experiential Knowledge

Chicana rhetoric most notably utilizes experiential knowledge—both told through
stories and through bodily semiotics, or embodiment. A Chicana rhetoric acknowledges
that the experiences of Chicanas are a source of knowledge about the world (and
particular to Chicanas); and thusly, Chicanas create or adopt theories to help invent ways
to account for and build upon this epistemology and ontology (see Moraga, La Giiera;

Moya, Learning). This is a valuable method for any cultural group that has experienced

 

15 Another example of this is Maria Lugones’ “From within Germinative Stasis: Creating Active
Subjectivity, Resistant Agency,” she describes her approach to Gloria Anzaldr’ra’s Borderlands. In this
chapter, Lugones writes her engagement with Anzaldr’la’s text as “a journey that enabled me to occupy a
resistant position” (85). I liken her approach to the one that Anmldr'ra lays out in conocimeiento—an
engagement with, and not owning or appropriating the other.

17

 

oppression because most narratives told about them adversely imbricate and mark their
embodied and experiences and textual productions (see Perez, Decolonial).
Invention and Intervention of Histories

It is fiom this adverse telling of their cultural mythos that permits Chicana
rhetoric to emerge through alternate embodied and experiential stories that stand in
contradistinction; indeed, the subject position of Chicana is itself created to stand in
opposition, or to be more precise, operates in strategic tension with historical
constructions of Mexican American and/or Latina. Chicana writers often create new
narratives that interrogate and recast histories to enable activist subj ectivities. Much of
this theorizing works to instantiate Chicanas into history by recognizing rhetorical agency
where it might otherwise be overlooked (Enoch, “Para La Mujer”).
Connective and Collective

Chicana rhetoric works connectively, oftentimes forming new relationships
between that which otherwise appeared disparate or polemical. In traditional Rhetoric
studies, we are taught about the power of tropes such as metaphor, synecdoche, and
metonymyw. Chicana rhetoric employs the Nahua trope of difi'asismo”, or coupling. The
difference is that rather than operating on replacement or minimization, difi'asismo
creates relationships—sometimes spatial, or ideological. What this allows then is the
production of affinities to be formed. Afflnities and relations can also take place textually
by placing different languages and discursive practices next and in between each other. I

do not call this “multi-genre” but instead an act of textual affinities (i.e. Calafell, “Pro(re-

 

16 Victor Villanueva connects the power of metaphors to explicate how racism happens figuratively (“The
New Racism).

l7 Difi'asismo is discussed in much of Latino/a/Chicano/a scholarship because of its grounding in Mayan
cultural production. A well-known difrasr'smo is “flor y canto” (flower and song). See Arteaga (1997) for
firrther information.

18

 

 

)claiming Loss”). Textual affinities may also take place by disrupting subjectivities
based on chronos. A good example of this is Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s “The Politics of
Location of the Tenth Muse: An Interview with Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz”, in which she
creates a dialogic imaginary relationship between Sor Juana, juxtaposing her [de Alba’s]
Chicana lesbian narrative in relation with passages from Sor Juana’s writing to recreate
new narratives for both. As with the previous section, affinities are also produced in
Chicana rhetoric materially. This is best realized through the types of art and aesthetics
enacted by Chicane artists (see Laura Perez for further explanation), and this blending of
the otherwise polemic is also seen in methodology (see Dicochea as an example).

What I want to make evident by outlining these features is that Chicana identity
operates productively: when one affiliates as and with Chicana(s), it shapes the way we
see the world and the way we act in it as scholars and activists. Because the first two
features of Chicana rhetoric are more frequently studied, for this dissertation project I
focus on the latter four features of Chicana rhetoric. As you will see in ensuing chapters,
how Chicana-ness is understood, defined, felt and experienced is actually part of a shared
practice of Chicana rhetoric. To reiterate, I am looking at Chicana rhetoric because, as
you can see, calling oneself a Chicana enacts an intentional chain of ideological and
material signification. Therefore, what this dissertation does is to examine and explain the
how of Chicana identity—how it operates rhetorically in the world, including the world
of texts, histories, and action; and at the same time, the way it operates in the world with
a particular set of outcomes and practices. To arrive at this schema, I took a

methodological approach of building fi‘om the ground up to again respond to Paula

l9

 

Moya’s challenge to Chicana scholars to move back and explain our orientation to
Chicana identity as an object of study.
Methodology and Methods

In order to research how something is made or emerges, such as an identity or an
organization, the ideal approach is to listen and follow those that are part of its
construction; namely the people and things involved. To do this requires a
methodological flexibility. As such, my methodology is grounded in several theoretical
and ethical commitments. While these theoretical frameworks imbue my research
approach and choices, they did not necessarily predeterrnine my methods. Rather, this
dissertation research is best explained as iterative and recursive; the manner in which I
altered and returned to my choices was determined by the Chicanas I researched”.

Taking such a methodological approach in Rhetoric studies can be challenging
due to the nature of what we mean by rhetoric in general, and the associations of
intentionality. More often than not, studies in rhetoric are grounded in interpretations of
purposeful action and intention. What I am describing here then is a methodological
orientation that attempts to avoid making definitional claims about what constitutes our
subjects of inquiry, which requires a type of flexible recursivity in all phases of data
collection and analysis. Such a methodological stance is vital in particular for the
studying the rhetorics of marginalized groups for the historical legacies of the misuse and
misunderstanding of their practices (Tuhiwaii Smith). In the following section, I explain

the theoretical narratives that l interconnect to build my methodological heuristic. I then

 

18 I am aware that my methodological approach sounds similar to grounded theory. However, I opted not
to locate my research within this tradition for several reasons: grounded theory comes with it particular
methods for data analysis that I did not utilize; and grounded theory is not especially grounded in the work
of scholars of color, which would go against my intention to build upon the scholarship of Chicanas. As my
interests lie primarily in methodology, 1 preferred for this discussion to happen throughout my dissertation.

20

move to a discussion of my data collection methods, focusing on my decision to include
archival research on the CFMV. I end this section with an explanation for the structure of
the dissertation, and of each chapter.
Methodological Underpinnings

In a discussion about methodology, Chicana scholar Rosa Linda F regoso
describes hers as a bricolage, a “mestizaje methodology,” that she pieces together from
Chicana and Cultural studies in order to do the type of scholarship that interrogates the
intersections between race, class, and gender through the situated lens of US. Third
World feminism (as quoted in Chabram-Dernersesian, Chicana Cultural Studies 21).
Likewise, my methodological heuristic is constructed from multiple sources. What
connects all of these frameworks is that they are all concerned with methodology to study
what is not typically included in scholarly enterprises, whether it be about coalition
building, cultural rhetorics, or poetics; and all are deeply concerned with the purposes
and consequences of theorizing and research”. As you will see in my data chapters, the
heuristics I employ while are not generally the focus of the chapter, nonetheless guide my
interpretations.
Theorizingfrom/about Experience

In their short introductory essay for a section in the edited collection This Bridge
Called My Back, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldr’la develop a theory of identity that
stems fiom lived experiences from which a “politic” is built: “A theory in the flesh means

one where the physical realities of our lives . . . all fuse to create a politic born out of

 

19 You may also note that these frameworks align with some of the features of Chicana rhetoric that I
outlined earlier in the chapter. This is related to the recursive nature of this project, in which I developed
my methodology while doing my research.

21

necessity” (22). Theory in the flesh is thusly a recognition of our lived experience, which
includes the way that we are articulated given the skin and positionality we inhabit. This
Bridge Called my Back is considered a material enunciation of this politic: The poems
and essay written by women of color to theorize about their experiences, particularly in
response to a felt heterosexism and racism in the women’s movement, serves as catalyst
for the recognition of shared alliances between women of color. Moraga describes the
collection as an instantiation of theory in the flesh, as it demonstrates her “trying to
recreate my own journey of struggle, growing consciousness, and subsequent
politicization and vision as a woman of color” (xiii). Theory in the flesh then has been
used as heuristic for a theorizing a coming to critical consciousness.

In “I Have Dreamed of a Bridge,” Moraga further elucidates theory in the flesh as
a coming to critical consciousness about our embodied experiences, and makes the
connection between the material and writing. Moraga writes, “[t]he materialism in this
book lives in the flesh of these women’s lives: the exhaustion we feel in our bones at the
end of the day, the fire we feel in our hearts when we are insulted, the knife we feel in our
backs when we are betrayed, the nausea we feel in our bellies when we are afraid, even
the hunger we feel between our hips when we long to be touched” (xviii). In this way,
writing reflects a reality that is material, felt, and for many, painful.

What Moraga does that I focus on in my dissertation is her contribution to this
theory in the flesh; namely a theory of existence that works in tandem and tension with a
correlative action: “Our strategy is how we cope—how we measure and weigh what is to
be said and when, what is to be done and how, and to whom and to whom, daily

deciding/risking who it is we can call an ally, call a fiiend (whatever that person’s skin,

22

sex, or sexuality)” (xix). Despite what might be the painful experiences we encounter as
women of color, Moraga asks us to consider our rhetorical ability to read our experiences
alongside others and to connect as a strategy for survival.

Theory in the flesh involves the recognition of our lived experiences and coming
to a critical consciousness about this, coupled with our responses, or actions to alter the
worlds that produce such conditions. However, aside from a modeling of responses
through the writing of poetic texts, there is little written that either connects theory in the
flesh to action through organizational or programmatic writing, or to research of such
written materials. As a Rhetoric and Composition scholar, I am interested in a visibly
marked expansion of theory in the flesh that accounts for other ways to make meaning in
tandem with experience. In other words, an attenuation to the acting and doing given on
our lived conditions.

Paula Moya is another scholar who focuses on Moraga’s writing in This Bridge
Called my Back, in particular her astute connections between identity and a physical
reality that while subject mediated, is real. It is for this reason that Moya criticizes some
Chicana writers for not providing concrete tools and methods for acting and surviving in,
well, a concrete world. Unlike postmodern theorists, Moya and other post-positivist
realists understand the material limitations and influences of the world. Therefore, they
“replace a simple correspondence theory of truth with a more dialectical causal theory of
reference in which linguistic terms (and identities) both shape our perceptions of and
refer (in more or less partial and accurate ways) to causal features of a real world”
(Learning 15). What this means is that Moya, like other post positivist realists,

understand identity not as limitless or linriting, but rather as mediating yet grounded; and

23

more importantly, as epistemic. My theory of identity stems fiom Moya’s articulation of
identity as a vehicle through which we learn about the world we live in, and how to then
act in the world. Moya argues that it “is precisely because identities have a referential
relationship to the world that they are politically and epistemically important: indeed,
identities instantiate the links between individuals and groups and central organizing
principles of our society” (Learning, 13). In other words, as rhetoric scholars, we should
be studying identity because it connects people and incites people to action. Moya thusly
argues that written language about identity can be read as a realist in a way that connects
language with lived realities. To demonstrate this, she turns to literary writers and argues
that their texts theorize about material reality.

While both theory and the flesh and its offshoot post positivist realism understand
identity to be connective and grounded in reality that can be articulated and read through
writing, the emphasis has been on literary writing, or what is more corrrrnon with
phiIOSOphy, anecdotes. In my dissertation, I extend the reading of the reality and
epistemic of identity in the programmatic writing of an organization. Furthermore, while
theory in the flesh and post positivist realism has apparently been a useful heuristic for
both one’s own production but also how we analyze the production of writers of scholar,
what is less focused on is action of the collective. It is for this reason that I intentionally
opted to study an organization rather than the writing of a particular Chicana.

Theorizing on Connectedness

In interpreting the data for this dissertation, I ended up not doing a deep rhetorical

analysis of the written texts, and instead opted to focus more on the connective work of

the organization that the documents conveyed when read across and between texts, and

24

the files in which they were contained. Through some of these exchanges one can see that
a purpose of the CFMN as an organization was to be connected, and to help other
Chicanas in making connections as well. The importance of connectivity can be
considered a requisite practice of survival in a world that attempts to construct one as
disconnected. A Chicana scholar that I turn to for a theory of connectedness and for
researching connective movement is Chela Sandoval and her articulation of a differential
consciousness.

In Methodology of the Oppressed, Sandoval constructs a different methodology
and epistemology of the “oppressed.” Part of this methodology includes what she calls
the “differential consciousness” that is employed and enacted by third world women.
Sandoval relays that the differential develops as part of a condition of fragmentation that
occurs as result of oppression, which allows for coalition and affinity making to occur.
Sandoval thusly describes the differential consciousness “like the clutch of an
automobile,” as an “activity” that “enables movement ‘between and among’ ideological
positionings. . .considered as variables, in order to disclose the distinctions among them”
(58). Sandoval writes that the differential is an intentional act of influence and “depends
on the practitioner’s ability to read the current situation of power and self-consciously
choosing and adopting the ideological stand best suited to push against its configurations,
a survival skill well known to oppressed people” (60). This is a rhetoric that requires
flexibility, reading power formations, and a tactical adaptability. The theory of the
differential is necessarily grounded in issues of power and oppression, and can be both
collective and individual. Although Sandoval does not show specific examples of the

differential as an action in the world, I utilize this concept for understanding some of the

25

is

practices of the CFMN as a type of work that “marginalized” groups must enact as a
tactic for survival, and as necessitating a type of connectivity through difference. This is
especially useful for my analysis in Chapter 4 of the shifting strategies developed by the
CFMV to counter an inability to determine the problems at hand given a historical erasure
of Chicanas in public spaces.
Theorizing about History

Developing methodologies and practices to respond to an erasure of Chicanas in
history is another facet of Chicana rhetoric, and therefore, my methodology. As scholars
of color know, history matters. It matters a great deal for those of us whose histories are
often constructed for us. And it matters even more for Chicanas as it is a “contemporary”
identity and thusly, histories must be invented and re-remembered. Chicana scholar
Emma Perez understands the importance of history as making realizable future
subjectivities and actions imaginable, but also history making as a political act in which
some people’s histories are silenced through the way we do historical scholarship.
Therefore, in the Decolonial Imaginary, Perez constructs a methodology for locating the
interstitial subjectivities of Chicanas in history. According to Perez, traditional history
follows a spatio-temporal story of linear progression, where colonialism frames the story,
and gender and sexuality are not considered in its construction. Perez outlines an outline
of her theoretical framework, the decolonial imaginary, to enable spaces of movement
and negotiation for the decolonial subject. Perez asserts that it is “[t]hrough the
decolonial imaginary, the silent gain their agency” (33).

What I adopt fi'om Pérez in building my methodology is her articulation of the

relationship between history and change. Change, according to Perez, “is formed

26

discursively, in the past, by the present” (32). We make change then in our present acts to
produce histories. In this way, I also turn to Perez as a model for challenging the
uncomplicated ways that history is made. Pérez turns her critique to Chicano studies. She
argues that our story of Chicano history has been constructed with colonial tools and
origins, which includes focusing on the sensational and stories that writes Chicanas as
silent. Like Perez, I am concerned with the ways that we make history in rhetoric studies,
in particular, our focus on the interpretation of “great” texts, and perhaps more obvious
scenes of rhetorical action to conceptualize change.

In order to pay attention to perhaps small acts of rhetorical work in history, I turn
to Bruno Latour. Specifically, I turn to Latour not because I want to claim that I am doing
an actor-network theory in this dissertation—indeed, I am not—but rather, for his
articulation of the importance of telling stories about details, what would otherwise be
considered the mundane, and the way he values the materiality of the archives for telling
such stories. For instance, Latour writes in regards to studying the failure of a project to
come to fi'uition that a “transportation system is no better than its smallest link. Ifit is at
the mercy of a vandal or a programmer or a parasitic spark, it isn’t a transportation
system—it’s an idea for a transportation system” (Aramis 71). Therefore, Latour pays
attention to “the smallest link,” the mundane that mediates the inventional process. To do
this, Latour studies archives, as they often are the place where memory of the “smallest
link” is recorded. As you will see in the ensuing chapters, I pay attention to small details,
including marginalia, and the stapling together of documents, to conceptualize the

rhetorical action of the CFMN.

27

It is the combination of these frameworks—frameworks that denaturalize our
“points of view” in research, and foreground the consequences of doing so—that I used
to construct my methodological heuristic for this dissertation. Each of these fiameworks
enabled me to be responsive and led to a recursive approach to data collection and
interpretation. In each of my data chapters, while I highlight one aspect of my
methodological heuristic: in chapter 2, I foreground theory in the flesh and experiential
knowledge in reading the emergence of the CFllflV as a responsive organization; in
chapter 3, I consider Chicana methodology for studying history to explore the CFMN as
an organization that made (and makes) history; and in chapter 4, I invoke differential
consciousness as an approach to understand the way that the Chicanas of the CFMN
made change through methods that are not aligned with space but with a strategic
movement. However, all of these fiameworks are interconnected in each chapter so that I
am always looking at connectivity, history and experience.

Data Collection

For this dissertation, I focused on moments where Chicana rhetoric happens: in
scholarship, activism and history. I collected data from a variety of sources explicating
the how and why of Chicana, and all data sets are treated as equal sources. My data
sources were determined based on where Chicana seemed to operate—in scholarly and
activist practice. I am by no means presuming that this is an exhaustive and
comprehensive collection of Chicana rhetoric. As with any methodological endeavor, I
hope that other scholars can build on and revise these findings through adding other
moments. Nevertheless, the data collected include two interviews with Chicana identified

scholars in Rhetoric and Composition (interview questions reproduced in Appendix A),

28

Chicana philosophical writing”, a recorded oral history interview with one of the
founders of the Comisio'n F eminial Mexicana Nacional (CFMM, Yolanda Nava, and
archival research on the CFMN, focusing on their programmatic writing While I utilized
these different methods for data collection, the current iteration of the project is primarily
historiographic. The archival collection I focus on is the one created by the CFMN and
more specifically the programmatic writing of the organization.

The archival component is a crucial component, because as you will later read,
history and historicizing both a practice and an effect of Chicana rhetoric. Many of the
ideological arguments produced by this organization as well as the documents themselves
serve as foundation texts for the Chicana movement that are later reproduced and used to
invent what it means to be a Chicana. Although several of the documents located in the
CFMN collection are included in edited collections (i.e. Chicana Feminism) I include the
text as found in the CFMN collection because of the affordances of archival research to
tell stories about the placement of these documents in the collection, and to see the drafts
and revisions made. These data choices are indicative of the theory driving my work
This theory is most important because it orients my research in a way that supports one of
my dissertation goals: to make visible to scholars how experience shapes rhetorical
production.

Why this Organization?
This organization—the CFMN—knew the importance of Chicana history and

history making. I chose to focus on them for several reasons. The first reason is that the

 

20 My collection of philosophical writing by Chicanas is in no way exhaustive; instead I attempted to
examine most of the pinnacle texts that appeared to greatly influence Chicana identity formation, and
writings that explicitly discussed Chicana identity.

29

CFW is frequently historicized as one of the first Chicana organizations. Many of the
ideological arguments produced by this organization as well as the documents themselves
serve as foundation texts for the Chicana movement that are later reproduced and used to
invent what it means to be a Chicana. Their testimonies, newsletter articles and activist
writings are anthologized and referenced in Chicana studies. They are well known
amongst Chicanas and non-Chicanas for their participation in the cause to stop a Los
Angeles county hospital from routinely performing involuntary sterilizations of Mexican
women”. Their participation culminated as co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit in 197 8. Their
leaders are well known as activists, academics, government and public officials.

In the early stages of this project, it was because of their well-known orators and
their involvement in such highly publicized cases that I became interested in their
organization. As I began my research though, my particular interest shifted elsewhere. I
redirected my attention to the very fact that they were and are an organization instead of
individual people. This is an organization that accomplished, amongst other things,
significant documentation of their growth as a Chicana organization and what that meant
for themselves and for other Chicanas. I noticed the prolific notes and cards, nestled
amongst their pro grarnmatic writing, fiom people wanting to know the CF MN’ 3 opinions
on matters—matters ranging fiom legislation to a recently released movie. People were
inquiring—what should I think about this movie in which Paul Newman paints his face
brown to play a Mexican, as and characterized as a “brute” (Alpodeca)? How should I act
given this issue going on in our community—as a Chicana? In other words, they

contributed to and recorded an emergence and formation of La Chicana.

 

21 Their participation culminated in the landmark case Madrigal v. Quilligan in 1978. This case has been
written about in and outside of rhetoric studies.

30

 

Data Interpretation

As I mentioned, my data interpretation was recursive. The project actually began
with my readings of Chicana philosophical and literary writings. My initial question was
exploratory: is there something that is shared amongst the writing and scholarship of
people who identify as Chicana? In this early stage, I read these writings and began
noting shared features and rhetorical tropes and commonplaces.

From the features and commonplaces I noted in the philosophical and literary
writing, I devised my initial “questions” for my archival research. I also used these
questions for my interviews with Chicana scholars. These questions are included in the
appendices. The interviews with Chicana scholars contributed a living realization of some
of the productive use of these commonplaces as well as what an articulation of what
Chicana means in scholarship, specifically the way that identifying as a Chicana said and
did something for their scholarship. In the initial round of archival data collection, I had
focused on collecting symbols and commonplaces of Chicana identity; as a result of these
interviews, I learned more about the importance of experience and history making, and
thusly, I redirected my attention to this in the second round of archival data collection,
and in my interpretation. 1 also used this to reread the literary and philosophical writing.

As might be typical of archival research, some of the interpretation happens in the
moment you are collecting of data at the archives as you consciously or not decide what
to take notes on, or what to copy. And much of the work happens in the moment you
return to the copious archival notes. When I was collecting my notes, I was too much in
the moment, operating on the level of the document and the text it contained, to see the

movement between the individual documents, and the series in which they were

31

contained. When I was originally doing data collection, I was really focusing on the texts
that were most visible to me given my orientation as a rhetoric scholar: the speeches, the
newsletter articles, and the political commentary. But when I came home and opened the
notes I took, I noticed that most of the collection was comprised of texts that documented
a reality of making of an organization that appeared to be decidedly less rhetorical (for
lack of better words). I was also able to start to read across the files in a way that the
CFMN had intended when they designed the structure of the collection. The CFMN did
not organize their collection chronologically, nor by document type or by person. Instead,
they arranged the collection to mirror the structure of the organization (Guide 2). The
CFMV intended for readers to interact with the collection in a way that embodied their
actions, to read across and expansively to build any given rhetorical moment (Guide 2).
In rereading my notes, I began to do just that, writing down the range of actions that were
associated with any given issue or development that constituted the work of their
organization. I also allowed the repetition in the documentation of these different types of
rhetorical action to guide the focus of my analysis, which I then coupled with the
methodological considerations that I built fiorn theory and Chicana writing, working back
and forth to write my methodology and my interpretation approach at the same time. To
put this plainly, I wrote my methodology after my data chapters.
Structure of the Dissertation

In each of the three data chapters (2, 3 and 4) I focus on the CFllflV organization
and its practices. Each chapter highlights an implication for studying rhetoric. While I do
not have a distinct chapter on methodology, each chapter has a methodological

orientation.

32

In Chapter 2, I begin my data interpretation with a focus on Chicanas’ strategic
use of experience, specifically to make an organization. In this chapter I begin by asking
the following question: if Chicana is an identity that is constructed, and its emergence has
been traced in poetic writing (Demersian, “The Earth Did Part”), then can it be traced in
and through the formation of an organization as well? To address this, I connect a
document written by the National Organization for Women (N .O.W.) that constructs “the
Latina woman,” as ineffectual and disconnected. I argue that being a Chicana meant
productively utilizing this construction to build the CFMN, which is evidenced in the
development of a practice of connectedness that is invoked to direct their organization’s
trajectory: La Hermandad.

Chapter 3 moves to another practice of Chicanas as evidenced by the CFMN: the
invention and intervention of histories. In this chapter, I build on the previous chapter’s
exploration of the building of a Chicana organization and its practices, to examine the
way that the CFMN instantiated Chicana organizing as part of their history. In other
words, they invented a history to make possible an activist present. At the same time, the
organization was intentionally building its own history of the making of an organization.
I also examine then this act of making the memory of an organization as part of their
rhetoric and legacy.

Chapter 4 is also about history making, namely the heuristics we utilize to study
change. To do this, this chapter presents a “case story” that occurs over three scenes. The
story focuses about CF MN’ 3 involvement in the Comprehensive Employment and
Training Act (CETA) employee- training initiative. The CFMN’ s involvement in CETA

makes visible the way these Chicanas intervened in historical absences and strategically

33

 

worked both externally in public addresses and internally through connective
organizational work to redress a problem at hand. To understand their work toward this
end expansively requires looking away from the public acts of individuals and to the
nuances of their internal organizational work.

In Chapter 5, I outline several implications for this dissertation research, which
will be explored in later projects. In this chapter, I flip reading Chicana through the lens
of rhetoric, to reading rhetoric through the lens of Chicana. By this I mean I discuss what
research would look like in rhetoric studies broadly, including rhetoric history and
professional writing theory. I end the chapter with pedagogical implications for teaching
students to complicate understandings of the “public,” of activism and change.

Structure of the Chapters

Each chapter has an intentional organization structure that reflects my methodological
orientations. As scholar employing theory in the flesh as part of my interpretive heuristic,
I incorporate my own experience in my research and theory making. I consider not only
my own experience, but also the experiences of the archive’s creators. In fact, similar to
the structure of the edited collection Hacienda Cams”, the archiving and the collection
of the CFMV requires an active participation in the act of interpretation to understand the
complexity and movement of the organization’s experiences: one must actively bring
oneself to the archives.

As such, each chapter begins with my own experiential narrative. In the opening

narratives, I recount a story about being and doing as a Chicana scholar. These stories

 

22 In the introduction to the edited collection Making Face, Making Soul, Gloria Anzaldr’ra explains that the
focus on the creation of theory is mirrored in the placement of the writings in the collection, which follow a
poetic association. The association and connection between readings is left up to the reader, as the texts and
the order they appear “reflect our fragmented and interrupted dialogue which is said to be a discontinued
and incomplete discourse” so that experience is invoked and realized (xvii).

34

focus on the ways Chicana scholars and scholarship are articulated by a field (rhetoric
and composition), by a methodology (historiography) and by activist expectations.
Throughout the chapters I also account for my experience in doing this research in the
following archival cases. Finally, I conclude each chapter with a return to the initial case
study of being a Chicana in rhetoric and suggesting the ways that doing Chicana archival
research on the CFMN teaches me to act similarly as a Chicana scholar.

Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, I want to reiterate that Rhetoric and Composition, and
more specifically, the writing of the discipline, has not truly validated the experiences
and theories of Chicana rhetors. Because we have not changed what we count as rhetoric
and rhetorical action in the world we perpetuate the signification of some rhetorics while
relegating the limited applicability of others. The definition of Chicana rhetoric that I
offer above is one that I hope demonstrates the results from the shift the point of view on
the contribution of Chicana rhetors from amendments to the stabilized disciplinary
narrative to contributors to its actual construction.

Ultimately, this dissertation makes a layered and recursive arguments. One
argument is methodological; another is definitional; and a third is philosophical.
Methodologically, this dissertation posits a way that rhetoric research can be utilized and
useful for investigating how it occurs, in particular for marginalized groups, expansively.
The definitional deliverable for this dissertation is to outline what Chicana rhetoric is by
collecting instances of its occurrence; in other words, to define Chicana rhetoric by
looking at Chicana rhetoric. Finally, philosophically, this dissertation mirrors the

argument of identity politics in general by applying it to the field of Rhetoric and

35

 

Composition. While identity politics historically have been criticized for being limiting
and exclusively “subjective”, identity theorists have argued otherwise; that in fact
researching and understanding identity garners a more objective understanding of how
the world operates. Likewise, looking at identity in relation to rhetoric is not divisive or
limited to the affiliated group. Rather, such examination can expand our understanding
and definitions of rhetoric in general, with the hope that rhetors and rhetoricians and
color are no longer placed in the afterthoughts of our field’s discourses or misread and
interpreted within inappropriate fiameworks, but instead change the terrain of the
discipline itself.

Now, this probably all seems very simplistically recursive, analyzing what may be
right in front of our eyes. And, sometimes I think that is what we need. To take a step
back. Convene and collect. I think collecting can be useful, useful like an archive can be
useful, not for its modernist and colonialist implications of ownership and
exhaustiveness, but for its symbol of the possibilities that comes fi'om its existence. In
other words, I am hoping that folks might be able to do something with this amassing,
with this cataloging of Chicana practices and performances—something that might be
utilized to enact change in our work as scholars, as activists or at the very least, change
how view the boundaries of both identity and rhetoric. Specifically, I hope that this
contribution may be useful to other scholars as well for doing research who are interested
in investigating and collecting moments of rhetorical performances and practices.
Second, this dissertation can be employed practitioners and activists as a model for
rhetorical action by outlining how Chicana activists have worked to be transformative

agents.

36

I also think it is valuable in general to begin to collect experiences that build
marginalized rhetorics because “those of us who address issues of liberation and
transformation of oppressive social and cultural conditions can never really be certain
when and under what circumstances our efforts actually have something of the effect on
ourselves and the commrmity that we hope we will” (Martinez ix). We need to be able to
make definitive claims in order to incite change, even if it is within a discipline, by
clairrring that there is a shared and transformative rhetorical practice enacted by a
particular group of people. Ultimately, I argue that there is something that connects this
rhetorical identity in patterns that can be found in the discursive and material practices
and experiences of people writing and acting from and with Chicana, through the texts
and tropes they produce and reproduce that alternatively interact with and transform lived

experiences and conditions.

37

Chapter 2
Chicana Rhetoric: Experience and/in Building an Organization

In the current theoretical climate within US. literary and cultural studies, the feminist
scholar who persists in using categories such as race or gender can be presumptively
charged with essentialism, while her appeals to ‘experience’ or ‘identity’ may cause her
to be dismissed as either dangerously reactionary or hopelessly naive. If on the contrary,
she accepts strictures placed on her by postmodernism, the concerned feminist scholar
may well find it difi‘icult to explain why some people experience feelings of self-hatred
while others feel a sense of racial superiority, some people live in poverty while others
live in comfort, and some people have to worry about getting pregnant while others do
not.

Paula Moya, Learning from Experience

A Case Study of Chicana(s) in Rhetoric

Episode One: All Chicanas Studying Chicanas Mean the Same Thing...

Sitting in the last row at the RSA summer institute, I scan the backs of the other
thirty or so participants. With the exception of myself and a couple of other attendees,
none of the other participants are visibly raced—and this includes the participants in the
other seminar. When it is my turn for introductions, I quietly say that I am studying
Chicana rhetoric, knowing I will need to further clarify what I mean: that I am studying
Chicana rhetoric expansively, that I am starting from what Chicanas say and do, and that
I am not beginning with the tropes that have defined Chicana experience (although these
tropes do mediate the former). This research is more than just about Chicanas, but about
rhetoric. It is about how rhetoric scholars do research and how we define our work. But
before these thoughts can materialize, the scholar leading the discussions interrupts: “Oh
I have a student who is already doing that” and moves on. Now I know who this student
is, and no, we are not studying the same thing. Our “objects” of inquiry are related—we

are both studying Chicanas—but we are focusing on different types of rhetorical work.

Aside from a shared desire to increase scholarship on Chicanas, our outcomes are

38

different. Our research methodologies are also dissimilar. Yet, these “objects” of inquiry,
for some scholars, define and limit us. The underlying thoughts seem to go something
like this: They study people of color; they must all be alike. Do we need another person
studying Chicana writers? I mean. . .we already have a couple. That scholar never asks
me for further explanation. I stop talking the rest of the session.

Episode Two: Chicano Identity Means We Can ’t Relate...

A generous senior scholar in our field, also sitting in the back of the room during
these introductions, approaches me during our workshop break to ask me more about my
research. I start to explain, talking about how I look at Chicana identity in different
historical moments as a rhetoric. He stares off, contemplatively. I feel like I am talking in
circles and therefore not being clear about what is I am hoping to accomplish with my
research project. I mean. . .I must not be making myself clear because he does not said
anything in response. Finally, he turns to me and explains he finds those kinds of identity
markers to be limiting. He explains that he is more interested in people who move beyond
this, like the people using world systems theory. It allows for alliances.

Episode Three: What Does it Mean to Live in a System?

When I return to Michigan after the institute, I revisit the world systems theory I
have encountered to try to make sense of the scholar’s perspective on Chicana identity.
Based on his scholarly goal to explode the myths and misconceptions that construct
people fi'om “Latinidad,” Walter Mignolo might not be too interested in Chicana identity
either. According to Mignolo, people who have been created through categorizations like
“Hispanic” have been falsely connected with other people who may have different

histories (“Huntington’s Fears”). I read, and I read, and I see the big picture of Mignolo’s

39

argument. Affiliating people in reductive ways eliminates difference in a way that
falsifies and erases histories: accordingly, identity markers placed on people might do
just that. However, stories told on such an expansive scale as Mignolo’s theories invoke
also sweep away our stories of living, eradicating our ability to find a ground upon which
to stand and connect. I am left senseless, not knowing what it means to occupy these
world systems, which are visible, bounded, and ineffectual.

These three moments in my scholarly history allude to the rhetorical problem to
which Chicana identity exists in order to respond: a reduction of complexity, a
misunderstanding of what it means to claim a Chicana identity, an absence of experiential
stories and the spaces to tell them, and a subject position marked by non-action. To be a
Chicana in the world carries an ontology23 of what it means—or, to be more precise—
what it feels like to live and act in the world. To be visibly marked, to live in a skin that
carries connotations, histories and stories—some told by you, and others, about you.
These stories also relay the rhetoric of Chicana in Rhetoric studies. In other words, they
reveal what studying Chicanas signifies in Rhetoric studies, and perhaps more
importantly, what it does not. When one identifies as studying Chicana rhetoric, that
work is more often than not, constructed as studying Chicana poetics, and operating

within a limiting framework of identity. While many Chicana theorists and writers have

 

23 I rely on historian Ann Laura Stoler’s definition of ontology. Stoler defines ontology as “that which is
about the ascribed being or essence of things, the categories of things that are thought to exist or can exist
in any specific domain, and the specific attributes that are assigned to them” (4). What this means is that
while there is a real essence of “things”, that essence is not stabilized and shifts based on time and space.
So, while I claim that we can read Chicana identity as ontological does not mean that the definition of
Chicana identity—and what it responds to, and the way that it reflects and reflects a material world—does
not change. When discussing what is included in the archival collection, we see shifting definitions of what
it means to be a Chicana as an epistemic, responding to external political and social shifts. Shifts that
shaped how activist organizations could function in general and the fluctuating “wei t” of identity for
activism.

40

exploded the way that identity has been treated reductively, what needs to be further
researched in Rhetoric studies is Chicana rhetoric expansively, both in terms of the types
of writing and actions we study and how we study it. More specifically, we need to direct
our attention away from individual Chicanas and Chicana action to that of groups. This is
important for understanding Chicana rhetoric because of its connective movement, and
because it makes visible the way that Chicana means not only a coming to critical
consciousness about experience, but a correlative action as well.

Expanding on the features of Chicana rhetoric as the utilization of experience as a
source of knowledge about the world and at the same time as a catalyst for action, in this
chapter, I demonstrate that the emergence of a resistant and connected Chicana identity is
articulated and instantiated in an organization. Specifically, I focus on the way that
Chicanas used experience to make an organization, the Comisién F emenil Mexicana
Nacional (CFMNZ’), one of the first Chicana feminist organizations, and its associative
practices. To do this, I first briefly discuss Chicana theorists who have traced the
emergence of Chicana identity and subjectivity in texts and actions. I extend this
framework to connect the making of La Chicana with the building of an organization. I
then present a case study of a document produced by the National Organization for
Women (NOW), which the CFMN included in their archival collection. I argue that this
document and its particular placement in the organizational files, when also read
alongside other documents included in the collection, speaks to the experiential exigency

fi'om which the CFMN emerges. In the next case study, I focus on the action of

 

24 It should be noted that when I abbreviate Comisién F emenil Mexicana Nacional, I maintain the
italicization in the abbreviation (CFMN) to make visrhle the Spanish language. However, in the excerpts
from the CFMN’s documents, they are usually not italicized. This might be due to the medium the
documents were written in, an oversight, or author choice.

41

collectives by examining an organizing practice of the CFMN, La Hermondad, which
responds connectedly to a construction of Latina women as isolated and ineffectual.

Ultimately, the NOW document represents a set of material conditions, and the
creation of experiential knowledge that are strategically employed by Chicanas to build
an organization. This document, along with the way Chicanas exist(ed)25 to respond to
these conditions, demonstrates the following: like Chicana scholarship, Chicana activism
is born fiom the flesh; and a feature of Chicana rhetoric is to makes things—such as
organizations, identities, and archival collections.

Making the Making of Chicano Visible

Before I begin the case studies, I want to add to the brief discussion in Chapter 1
on a feature of Chicana rhetoric, namely, the strategic use of experience to make things.
In addition, I want to touch upon a couple of key Chicana scholars who not only discuss
the emergence of Chicana identity as coming fi'om experience, primarily as a critical
consciousness, but also the ability to see this emergence happening in writing and
actions. An intention for this chapter is to add to this scholarship by extending the unit of
analysis to an organization.

Some of the writings that many Chicanas associate with Chicana writing and
action, and that shape Chicana theory and scholarship, are included in the edited
collection This Bridge Called My Back. This publication has been referred to as an origin
moment for Chicana scholarship and by association, Chicana studies (see the

conversations in Chabrarn-Demersesian’s Chicano Cultural Studies Forum for examples

 

25 A difliculty in writing this chapter stemmed from the complexities of being a Chicana as a positionality
marked in part by being actively in between presents and pasts (a facet I explore in Chapter 3), and by an
interconnectedness of perspectives. I attempted to maintain that complexity at times by obfuscating the
location or chronos of a moment, action or perspective.

42

of this association). Two of the notable selections fi'om this collection that are perhaps
more frequently treated as pinnacle to articulating a Chicana consciousness are Gloria
Anzaldt'la and Cherrie Moraga’s introduction to the section on “Theory in the Flesh,” and
Moraga’s “La Giiera.” While I discussed these selections in the previous chapter, I want
to remind us of a couple of a key aspect of Chicana rhetoric these two pieces elucidate.
Namely, the way that identity and a correlative theory means and does something: It
means we have a semblance of a shared reality and that we then choose to associate and
act in particular ways. By association then, we can consider the process of coming to an
identity, or in the case of a Chicana identity, a coming to a resistant critical
consciousness, to be tangible and traceable.

It is in this vein that Angie Chabram-Demersesian studies poetry as a physical
manifestation of the separation of Chicana subjectivity fiom Chicanos. In the essay “And,
Yes... The Earth Did Part: On the Splitting of Chicana/o Subjectivity,” Chabram-
Dernersesian explores the ways that Chicanas challenged the Chicano subjectivity
through art and writing, and then acted to create their own subjectivities of resistance.
Focusing on poems written by Chicanas between the 1960’s and 1980’s, Chabrarn-
Demersesian argues that they develop new semantics, mimetic modes, and collective
identities from which Chicano/a cultural production can occur through content as well as
form (36). In these and other Chicana poems Chabram-Demersesian argues we can trace
the development of Chicanas from “complacency to action, from social dislocation to
political groundedness, and fiom individual action to collective memory” (37).

While a purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that the Chicanas of the CFMN

strategically used the experience to make an organization and its practices, an

43

overarching question expands the premise set forth by Chabram-Dernersesian: If Chicana
is an identity that is constructed, and its emergence has been traced in poetic writing, then
can it be traced in and through the formation of an organization as well? In other words, I
am shifting the unit of analysis of a coming to and acting as a critical, resistant
subjectivity from the individual to a group. This is an important methodological move to
make for the following reasons”: it adds organizational work and writing to the ways that
Chicanas theorize about experience and act, while speaking to the connectivity of
Chicana identity.

Case Study: The Problem of the “Latin ” Woman
for the National Organization of Women

Do all in your power to “MAKE THEM FEEL AT HOME.

National Organization for Women, Untitled Brochure

Before I started this research project, I naively thought that studying an activist

organization meant that most of the documents would be politically charged. I thought
the documents and the arguments in them would mirror the archetypical representation of
an activist: the performances would be public, the speech acts would be punctuated by
exclamation points, and to read them would most assuredly require the use of a
microphone in order to truly recreate the moment But, as anyone who has ever done any
activist work with an organization knows, much of the real work is small and rarely

makes the news.

 

26 What is interesting to notice in tracing the emergence of Chicana subjectivity in a group is the evident
tension between adaptability and memory in an organization that is based on a resistant subjectivity; and
yet part of an organization that demands a memory to be sustained.

Forgetting this reality of activist work, I arrived at UC Santa Barbara where the
Comisién F emenil Mexicana Nacional collection is housed and opened the first of many
boxes that comprised the CFMN collection. Series I happened to be the one comprised of
administrative documents”. Upon opening the initial files in this series, I was affronted
by an explicitly performative document. The document was a version of the resolutions
that were drafted at the Chicano National Issues Conference in 1970. This set of
resolutions was one of the first written that established the organization in response to the
feelings of exclusion from other movements: “. . .In order to terminate exclusion of
female leadership in the Chicana/Mexican movement and in the community, be it
RESOLVED that a Chicana/Mexicana Women’s Commission be established at this
Conference which will represent women, in all areas where Mexicans prevail...”
(“Resolution”)28.

This resolution, as well as the series of resolutions of which it is a part, operates
as a discursive origination of the CFMN and an instantiation of Chicana identity through
a shared recognition of exclusion. Tellingly, this document appeared in the
“Administrative” series in the CFMN archival collection. This series included documents
that the CFMN understood as fundamental to understanding their organization. Given its
placement in the collection, the document clearly contributed to a definition of a Chicana

activist as it was realized in the organization. And, through the outlining of resolutions,

this document created a Chicana categorization of the world.

 

27 As I previously mentioned, the CFMN divided their archival collection into series. According to the
guide to the collection, the “archives are subdivided into series according to the structure of the
organization itself’ (“Guide”).

28 While the finalized version of the “Resolutions from a Chicana Workshop” is reprinted in multiple
CFMN documents, it also appears in scholarly historicizing of the Chicana movement (see Garcia, Chicano
Feminist Thought).

45

When reading the document, with its repetition of “BE IT RESOLVED,” written
in bold, over and over, it was impossible to not be imbued with the furor and conviction
with which it was written. I pictured myself at the conference with other Chicanas,
conring up with strategies for how to intervene in a world from which we were excluded.
This is the type of document that I had expected and hoped to find: such an explicit and
inspirational declamation. I lost myself in the charged language and doing this research at
that moment was exciting. I took notes and continued flipping through the files. Several
drafts of the resolutions appeared. With each draft, the finding became less monumental.

After that first resolution draft, the drudgery began to set in. Following that
thrilling incitation, the remainder of the vast Administrative series were, well, dull: drafts
of the organization structure conveyed in narrative form through various flow charts; by-
laws; edits of those by-laws; meeting agendas; and then minutes of those agendas. No
longer encapsulated by the excitement of “RESOLVED,” I became painfully aware of the
physicality of this research, with my pregnancy induced swollen ankles from sitting too
long, and my body devoid of food and water lest I spill on the documents. The worst part
of it all was that in the past couple of days all I had “found” were what I would consider
to be very typical of any activist organization. How in the world was I going to write a
dissertation on this...

I pulled open another file, half paying attention and half wondering when it would
feel right to take a break, or when my researcher duties for the day would be fulfilled,
when out fell a document that seemed out of place. Amongst these mundane
organizational artifacts were some odd documents. Unlike the overwhelming majority of

other administrative documents, these documents were not produced by the CFMN, but

46

instead by the National Organization for Women (NOW). These two NOW documents
were loosely nestled in the CFMV Administrative files between meeting minutes and
agendas. These documents in my view were extremely charged, and I immediately
reacted with knowing anger, aware of the criticisms of the feminist movement as
traditionally an Anglo enterprise. What made the charged nature of these so interesting,
in part, was that the documents that surrounded them were very not charged.

The first document, Historio de lo Organization Nacional de Mujeres [NOW’s
History], was a Spanish translation of the organization’s mission and history. Attached to
this was another document, presumably written for NOW’s leadership, that detailed how
to introduce and integrate “Latin” women into their organization. While these documents
nright not have been produced at the same time, whoever included these documents in the
collection related the two by stapling them together. The Chicana archiver asked us to
read these documents as associated. Based on the documents’ contents, it would appear
that the Chicanas of the CFMN saw the translation of NOW’s history in the brochure as
an attempt to integrate the “Latin” woman”.

On the attached document, several suggestions are given to achieve this
integration. One recommendation made is to establish Latino American Committees in
every NOW chapter. The writer(s) of this document then state that each committee
should be headed by one, two or three women “who can handle both languages (English

and Spanish) at the same time, in order to introduce Spanish speaking women into the

topics and concerns of the National Organization for Women.” Evident in this statement

 

29 The way to respond to this was presumably a point of contention. In an oral history recording with
Yolanda Nava, one of the CF MN founders, she recollects that there was disagreement about whether they
should try to form alliances with Anglo feminist organizations (Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive).

47

is a distancing between NOW, its leadership, and its mission from “Spanish speaking
women.” The text sets up a relationship in which NOW speaks to the uniform “Spanish
speaking women”; by which language is presumed the only difference (and commonality
between them) and it is the NOW representatives who are represented as the speaking
agents. What this renders is a positionality for the women who are spoken about in these
documents; a positionality that categorizes people with particular linguistic and cultural
heritages as monolithic and unspeaking.

A subsequent section comprised of a numbered list of mandates for NOW leaders
produces a rhetorical situation by outlining steps for dealing what I imagine to be an
answer to a vexing problem that NOW has identified: a lack of attention to its “Latin
sisters.” While these steps reveal blatant stereotypes of their “Latin sisters,” they also
provide an experiential account of living as visibly markedwith connotations of silence
and servitude. For example, #3 proclaims: “The Committee will welcome Latin sisters in
the meeting of the Chapters. Don’t forget that they are shy in the beginning and many
have handicaps with the language. Help them to overcome the idea that language and
CULTURE is a barrier” (emphasis in original). This statement composes “Latin sisters”
as linguistically “handicapped” and locates the problem of noninvolvement in the
feminist movement as residing with their “Latin” sisters who must not be participating in
the feminist movement via this organization because they perceive themselves to be
inferior or inadequate. In turn, in its time this construction presumably must have affected
the actual involvement of such interpellated people from participating, thereby creating a

feminist movement that proclaimed universality and sisterhood, yet was not felt.

48

As a result, in tenet #4 the NOW author(s) suggest that the “task of each
committee will be: Raise consciousness in the Latino American communities. Public
Speeches in Spanish centers, Feminist Group, PTAs in certain areas. Advertising in
Spanish Magazines, Newspapers, Cable TV, Radio, etc.” To achieve this, #5 states,
“Each committee will get ready to form consciousness raising groups in Spanish, in the
same way that has been done in English. The purpose and main goal of the CR. Groups
will be not only F EMINISM but to bring our sisters into the learning of English as a
second language for better communication with their speaking English sisters” (emphasis
in original). Again, this statement positions the Spanish-speaking woman as the deficit:
the problem and the source of the barrier to participating in the feminist movement.
Further separating themselves from their “Latin” sisters and casting themselves into a
savior position, the NOW author(s) for tenet #6 write, “[t]he committee will find the way
to make our Latino American sisters understand that OUR OPPRESSION is not a
question of CULTURE. ALL WOMEN are SISTERS, it doesn’t matter where they are
coming from” (emphasis in original). This tenet demonstrates the disavowal of difference
again by implicitly placing the “barrier” to sisterhood in the Latin sisters who presumably
argue that culture takes precedence over sisterhood.

The next tenet (#7) gives suggestions for recruiting others to assist the NOW
leadership committee, again separating out Latin women from their existing ranks:

The committee should try to find F EMINIST SISTERS to help in their
task, who also speak both languages. They can bring in women of Latin

background. Find centers for them where they can learn English. Please

49

don’t stress the LANGUAGE problem fi'om the beginning. (emphasis in

original).
Here language and more specifically, the language of Spanish speaking women, is a
notable problem to which NOW leaders must be sensitive. The solution, according to
NOW, in addition to “translat[ing] articles and LITERATURE of NOW,” is to schedule
“C.R. Groups to gather during the afternoons” as “Latino American Women have never
been exposed to meeting during the evenings for women only. They are not ready yet to
defy their husbands, although this is not the general rule. They are very much afraid of
going at night in certain areas. Eventually they will be able to do this after a while, when
they realise [sic] that we have car-pools, etc.” In this tenet (#10), “Latino American
Women” are depicted as possessing a childlike quality, scared and in need of reassurance
from NOW women so that they can attend meetings.

The documents show that assrnnptions about the experiences of “Latino American
Women” impacted NOW’s practices, as they recommended hosting meetings during the
day in order to accommodate the presumed restricted life of the “Latino woman,” whom
they understood to be married and to stay at home during the day”. Here we have a
disjuncture as a problem of stasis. In other words, there is not a shared understanding of

what the actual problem is at hand3 1. The NOW representatives indicate a problem with

 

30 This difference between how NOW constructs Latin women and their actual lived reality is realized in
other documents collected by in which CFMN members give testimony to the actual lived reality of women
of Mexican descent who are working and head of households. In a speech given by Anna Nieto Gomez, she
argues that the misrepresentation of women as not working has a direct material impact in the world in such
ways that funding for work related programs are not targeted toward women of Mexican descent (“Labor
Force”). The lack of statistics and its material consequence is part of the issue identified in the Manpower
case, which I will explore in the next chapter.

31 I am not convinced that this is necessarily the correct term to encapsulate what is happening with this
case. The problem I think is that stasis is correlated with invention, and more precisely an invention process
whereby the actors at hand work to come to an understanding of the issue at hand and the means to address
it But, in this case, I think that CFMN was more interested in utilizing this experience for their purposes. In

50

“Latino women’s” lack of involvement, or more precisely, recognition that they are
indeed similarly oppressed and therefore should support their organization; and the
origination of this problem resides with the “Latino American woman” who cannot speak
English. Aware of this deficiency, the “Latin woman,” is hesitant, and presumably too
shamed, to participate: difference is reduced to language with the mission, purpose and,
indeed, rhetorical practices of NOW seemingly able to transgress this language barrier
through translation.

Accordingly, also included in the archival collection is a NOW brochure titled
“ Viva la Diferencia.” In this brochure, NOW provides an overview of the discrepancy
between the treatment of men and women in regards to pay, education, job opportunities,
and access to legislative power. While the information is conveyed in Spanish, attention
is not given to the particular obstacles or specific needs of “Latino women.” Instead, the
message is presumed to remain constant and applicable regardless of language. There are
two things happening here that are interesting to note. First, the realities of both the
subject position and the issue at hand that are constructed in this document are not in fact

the lived realities of those whom this presumably constructs”. The subject position

 

addition, I am not so much interested in invention here as I am about the differing realities this conveys and
how the CFMN includes these disparate renderings in their files as a record of how they used experience.
32 I use the term construction here to describe the phenomenon in which a subject position of the “Latin
woman” is created. This creation has both material and ideological effects in the world. One effect is that
Chicana identity is created in response to this construction whereby both the constructed “Latin woman”
inhabits the same space. Construction though falls short in describing the productive relationship between.
One term that perhaps comes close to this conception is Stuart Hall’s discussion of articulation. Hall
describes articulation as a connection, or linkages of elements that need not be inevitable. Specifically, Hall
describes this as the process by which “ideological elements come, under certain conditions, to cohere
together within a discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific
conjunctures, to certain political subjects” (53). Hall uses the example of Rastafarians who use the language
of the Bible and “turn it upside down” to speak to their experience (54). However, Hall seems most
interested in the relationship between ideology, discourse and subject position, and while Hall professes to
be interested in the “anchored-ness” of this occurrence, he feels less grounded in the embodied
inhabituations, like race, that might play into these linkages. Interestingly, the linkages of elements is

51

constructed is one of an ineffectual and isolated woman due to the linguistic and cultural
heritages of Latinas. Yet, Chicanas produced a position (Chicana identity) that is
effectual and connected; a fact that will be made evident in the next section. Second, in
this construction, NOW’s whiteness goes unrecognized as the norm from which feminist
practice operates; any difference from that is depicted as the problem, and the associated
group with the problem is the one who needs to be taught to adapt.
Likewise, in a letter to Francisca Flores, one of the CFM founders, Judi Stewart,
a NOW member, wrote:
Today I saw a copy of CF M Report, for the first time, I was not until now
aware of a Chicana feminist Movement and am so very pleased to know
that one exists. I, am not a Chicana but am in contact daily with Chicana
women and know personally how desperately they are in need of the
Women’s Movement. Is there a person in Orange County that I can get in
touch with that is a Chicana Feminist? I would like to get someone to help
me, or to take over, which would more reasonable, the chore (?) of making
the Chicana women in our groups more aware of their rights as persons
and their lack of rights as women. I belong to NOW in Orange County,
which has only a very few Chicanas. I also belong to the El Medeana
Head Start State Pro-School, which is almost all Chicana’s and Chicano’s
and has no Feminist’s except myself and my neighbor. Neither of us

Chicana’s. Looking forward to hearing fi'om you soon. Thank you.

 

similar to the concept of difrasismo, the linking together of two disparate concepts to form a new unit, that
is trope utilized by Chicane rhetoricians (see Laura Perez for an example of a Chicana who employs this
methodology to do her work and as an interpretive heuristic).

52

For Women’s Sake, Judi Stewart.

In this letter, Judi Stewart conveys a sentiment that characterized Chicana women again
as needing the intervention of the Women’s Movement to illuminate the oppressed lives
they lead. Additionally, underlining Stewart’s letter is a misinformed understanding of
what being a Chicana means. In Stewart’s construction a Chicana by definition, or more
precisely, ontologically, cannot be a feminist. The two identity constructions are treated
as mutually exclusive by definition. Furthermore, like the NOW documents, Stewart’s
letter again defines the problem at hand as with the uninformed Chicana, and not,
perhaps, with what participation in an Anglo feminism might feel like for some women
of color or with the particular construction of the Chicana she articulates. Ultimately,
such constructions contribute to an exigency from which a Chicana feminist organization
emerges, responding to the subjection of Latino women as timid and inadequate.

Admittedly, claiming that second wave feminist organizations like NOW (and
mainstream feminist organizations in general) have historically ignored and marginalized
women of color (amongst others) is nothing new. And my intent in including these
documents is not to charge NOW with exclusivity. As a researcher utilizing theory in the
flesh as a heuristic, I include these documents for two reasons: first, as a material witness
to the experience of Chicanas, in particular the ones associated with the CFMN; and,
second, as an indication that Chicanas built an organization and its practices utilizing the
experience of living as marked by others. The inclusion of this document in the archival
collection serves as evidence that Chicana is rhetoric in that it works in tandem with the

construction of the “Latin woman” as ineffectual. Further, while this document might

53

result in a construction of the “Latin woman,” the construction is a simulation. Being a
Chicana means productively using this simulation.

There is no indication that these document were ever commented upon or directly
acted upon, and the location in the archival collection can tell us whether these NOW
papers were discussed or even considered. But, they are nevertheless included in the
Administrative series. The inclusion of these documents in the Administrative series is
telling in that the typical documents included are more visibly programmatic: for
example, there are several renderings of the organizational structure charts, drafts of
resolutions, by—laws and business plans for their various projects. The placement of these
documents alongside the other programmatic files leads me to consider the experiences
rendered through these documents as they contributed to the construction of the CFMN
specifically, and help build a rhetorical argument about identity as experientially shaping
activist practice. The subtle inclusion of what is arguably a contentious document in the
Administrative files speaks loudly to how reading such material must produce the
practices of their organization.

The CFMIV archival creators, in turn, leave the connection building to the archival
researcher. Through the slippage of the documents contents without remark enables me to
recreate what it must feel like to have received the NOW brochures, to have read them
and their construction of Latina women against my own experiences. By not explaining
the relationship, by not providing a discussion in meeting minutes or in the handwritten
commentaries that are present on other document, the creators of the archive expanded
the response we rrright have to these writings. For example, in one file the CF MN

includes a member’s notes that were taken during a conference attended on sexism in the

54

workplace. The attendee has the notes divided, with some falling under the header:
“sexism and racism: A Chicane perspective 1974.” Under that heading the attendee has
written, perhaps in response to the way sexism was represented at this conference:
“racism 1St Then women/Mexican Revolution/feminists cant be racists” (“Note on
Conference”). On another document entitled “The Functions and Services of the
Women’s Bureau” a CF [WV member wrote, “Tokenism—does not serve the needs of
women” (“Note on The Functions”). These represent just a few of instances of the
commentary that took place on these texts that is not present on these renderings of
Chicana women produced by NOW. In this way, the CFMN activists, through their
inclusion of the NOW document written about their “Latin sisters” and their marginalia
on other documents that likewise construct Latinas that are nestled in between meeting
minutes and agendas, utilized their experiences for action as an organization.
Paradoxically, while Chicanas’ existence as effectual actors is made invisible in
the NOW documents, when our experiences and differences are represented they become
reductive tropes used to hide the backdrop of the unmarked. Our stories then become
merely metaphoric; our lives are told through simple narrative constructions depicted in
archetypes. These archetypes function reductively, like the images that CFMN president
Gloria Moreno-Wycoff protests in her letter to the Times:
On behalf of Comision Femenil do Rio Hondo, we are writing to express
our disappointment with the article ‘Chicanas: Breaking Out is Hard.’
(Los Angeles Times, Southeast Edition, Oct 7-8, 1978). As Chicanas, we
feel this article did not reflect our best interest. Changing our roles and

changing our image has been difficult, and this article did not recognize

55

the progress we have made (nor did it enhance the Chicano male image).
While Ms. Roxanne Arnold’s intentions may have been positive in writing
this article, a negative impression prevailed. Ms. Arnold’s perception was
Anglo-oriented and tended to perpetuate the stereotype of the Chicana,
e.g. dark-skinned, plump, pint sized, doe-eyed, unwed mother. The
president of our organization was misquoted as saying she was a ‘reborn
woman’ when actually her reference had been made to her political and
ethnic identity as a ‘reborn Chicana.’ Also positive pertinent quotes fi'om
other members of our organization were omitted. We are aware that
Chicanas presently are the least educated and the least meaningfully
employed women in the United States. However, many of us are taking
positive steps to elevate our status and reflect a strong Chicana image. We
value and respect our Mexican heritage and culture, and we hope future
articles will acknowledge these efforts” COMISION FEDERAL DE RIO

HONDO/Gloria Moreno-Wycoff, president

Moreno-Wycoff concedes that perhaps Ms. Arnold (the original article author) might

have had good intentions in lending coverage to the Chicana movement, but her reliance

on archetypes, even if rooted in some glimmer of reality, does not accurately depict its

complexity.

How, then, does one act in a world in which you are deemed a non-actor; perhaps

invisible in some cases, but very visible in others where any difl"erence is used to explain

away agency? This is the rhetorical problem that Chicana identity and an associative

rhetoric emerged to redress.

56

Using Experience to Connect

The real power, as you and I well know, is in the collective.
Cherrie Moraga, “La Giiera’

As demonstrated in the above case study, theory in the flesh as a heuristic begins
with the acknowledgement of a “materialism. . .[that] lives in the flesh [of] women’s
lives” (xviii). Equally important is using this experience to do something. Moraga
explains “[o]ur strategy is how we cope” (xviii). While there are ample discussions and
examples of production from the flesh of individual writers and scholars, such heuristics
similarly can be extended to groups”. Indeed, it can be argued that NOW’s rendering of
the “Latin woman” in fact incites the creation of the Chicana. As a rhetoric it operates in
a world that interconnects experience and materiality; building, connecting, and
responding through these aspects of Chicana-ness of shared experience and/or shared
physical realities. Chicana as a rhetoric demonstrates explicitly the way that rhetoric is
situated as it operates in response to knowledge of a world that is connected with visible
bodies but that constructs those bodies as non-actors.

Experience is therefore important to Chicanas because it connects people.
Affiliation also occurs by recognizing shared histories and shared experiences of living in
similarly visible bodies. This recognition is a foundation of Chicana rhetoric. It is with
this experiential knowledge, as well as the practices that are associated with it, that
Chicana identity does something in the world. In this section, then, I will outline how

Chicanas responded to the types of misconstructions created in the NOW documents by

making an organization and producing connectivity.

 

33 It am not trying to imply that these individual writers and scholars are not operating as connected;
instead, I am simply hoping that we can utilize this heuristic with the specific intention to see what
collectives are formed through experience and use of that experience.

57

While the CFMN as an activist organization accomplished change in public
spaces, much of its work was internally focused. Part of that internal focus was
establishing the definition of Chicana through its practices. Therefore, as an organization
it both served as an instantiation of Chicana as a connected identity and demonstrated
how Chicana should be enacted in the collective. This, in fact, established the impetus for
involvement or action in the CFMN. According to several intake surveys of the CFMN’ s
membership, when asked what they hoped to gain from involvement in the Comision and
secondarily, what the Comision should do for its members, many of the responses
centered on establishing relationships with other Chicanas:

o “It is important to meet and interact with other Latinas,’

“..keep me informed of Chicana issues & how to be involved in
these issues and how to mentor other Chicanas. . .”

0 “I needed to relate to other women with initiative, be an active
network and support system to fall back on; wanted to become active
member in such an organization for Chicanas, to provide a supportive
and encouraging environment where I can be with other Latinas...”

0 “..because I wanted to meet other Latinas and be able to learn from
others as well as to share my knowledge; to become more involved in
community activities and to be more aware of my culture.”

0 “I did volunteer work at NOW and noticed one summer and I saw

there was a noticeable lack of contact with the Chicana community so

I looked up Chicana organizations and decided to join...”

58

0 “..allow me to work with other like-minded women on projects,
campaigns, etc which benefit the Latina and her community, seeking a
means by which I can utilize my energies in constructive ways.”
0 “to have an impact in my community and not be so isolated from

it..” (Member Surveys)
Tellingly, many of these responses demonstrate both an expectation that a Chicana
organization would serve to create and maintain relationships between Chicanas. At the
same time, this expectation incited people to join and participate in this organization. As
in the previous case study of the NOW document, experience, especially of isolation, is a
centralizing motivation common in these responses. One particular member commented
on working with NOW and noticing a “lack of contact with the Chicana community” that
directly motivated her to join the CFMN. We can imagine that she was perhaps one of the
only people like her in NOW—meaning inhabiting a particular raced body— and we can
presume that perhaps no one else noticed this missing connection to her community.
Working in tandem with the construction of the isolated “Latin woman” of the NOW
document, this document shows how being a Chicana operates as a positionality of a
connected person34 that is instantiated in an organization.

The sentiments conveyed in this list also indicate that a primary purpose of the

CFMN as a Chicana organization was definitional. For instance, in the quote in the
second bullet point, the prospective CFMN member stated that she was interested in

joining in order to “keep me informed of Chicana issues & how to be involved in these

 

34 While the reasons outlined in this list for joining the CFMN may sound similar to reasons one would
join any organization, they are distinct in their dual focus on its internal focus to foster relationships
between members and as well as to remain connected to their communities. Further, it is also telling that
the experience of feeling disconnected when working at NOW led to one member to join.

59

issues and how to mentor other Chicanas. . .” It was through affiliation with this
organization that people hoped to find out what was important for Chicanas, how to act
and ostensibly, and how to treat people. Affiliation to this identity then mediated even
day-to-day actions. As I will later discuss, part of this mediation involved changing the
methods for activist practices. The Chicana then exists then in part to define what
Chicana means35 .

When the responses to these surveys are traced through the archival collection
within the Administrative series, it is apparent that maintaining these feelings of
connectedness became part of the organization’s practice”. A document labeled “Board
Retreat,” written ostensibly as an outcome of the retreat, gives a concrete example of
interconnectedness as central to the CFMN purpose:

Define Values: Emergence of Latina Leadership as policy makers—to improve

the quality of life for the Latina. Continue to address national and state and local

issues through Latina perspective. Maintain cultural values as part of the
community. Establishing and maintaining linkages (networking). Enhance Latina
image. (“Board”)

The very purpose or effect of the organization was seen as a mechanism through which

people with a shared identity could incite change. But more importantly, the organization

 

35 The definitional component is directly connected with an additional exigency for Chicana rhetoric: to
build histories of not only what it means to be and act as a Chicano but to do something with that meaning.
36 This practice is visible even to people not associated with the organization. Asked to perform an audit of
the organization as an outsider to give a “male perspective,” in a memo to the CFMN board of directors,
lawyer Steven J. Crosby describes the organization as such: “CFMN is the tool whereby a woman can give
to her community time and effort. The organization allows women to pick their area of interest and work
towards its final resolution. CFMN gives women the opportunity to improve themselves and it they want to
change their personal focus-it gives them direction and a promise for a better future. The CFMN offers the
woman a restructuring of her ideals or at least a way to refocus those ideals to benefit the Chicana/Latina
community” (Crosby). A purpose of Chicana organizing as characterized in this audit report then is a desire
to shape Chicana “ideals” to better impact the Chicana community.

60

envisioned its work as providing an experiential accounting of issues fiom a “Latina
perspective.” In fact, in a CFMN questionnaire administered to the members in each
CFMN chapter, in response to the question “What do you think is the role of CFMN,”
one chapter responded with “Create and cultivate the ‘Latina experience.”’ (“Retreat and
Questionnaires”). Again, as an organization, this seemingly benign act of addressing
issues fi'om their perspective was a performance that in turn mediated what it meant to
inhabit this positionality.

For the CFMN, connectivity under the premise of shared identity meant more than
just a matter of terminology. The CFMV operated on the principle of connectivity both
amongst its members and within its organizational structure. This connectivity centered
on a commitment to redressing and altering the experienced conditions described in the
previous section. Interestingly, this commitment was shared regardless of whether or not
the term Chicana was “present.” Several of the organizations that were affiliated with the
CFMN as a national Chicana organization did not identify with its name, or even with the
term “Chicana.” For example, the CFMN archived an annual report fi'om Los Mujeres de
la Rozo de San F emondo, which is a chapter of the CFMN. The organization
interestingly remained affiliated to the CFMN despite its name difference. Because it is
not realized in language this affiliation must be realized through Chicana as an unspoken

connectivity”.

 

37 The act of not invoking the name of the CFMN, or of Chicana may not seem noteworthy. Yet, it does
stand out against other national organizations whose individual chapters all bear the national affiliation. For
example, perusing the National Organization for Women’s website and click on chapters. Each of the
chapters are identified as NOW and are differentiated by its geography (i.e. Contra Costa County NOW).
While some of the CFMN chapters do bear the CFMN name, some don’t. And some don’t even have
Chicana in the name.

61

To explain, included in the archival collection is a newspaper clipping of an
interview with a then CFMN president Chris Fuentes. In the interview she explicated the
CFMN’ s objective:

Creating Chicana self-awareness and recognizing their achievements are

principles on which the CFMN was founded. Fuentes says members tend to be

women committed to the community, and the activity evident in even small
chapters attests to a dedication and energy that seem the only common factors of
the diverse membership. While the focus of the Comision F emenil is political
feminism, each chapter is flee to involve itself in the issues pertinent to its
community. (Article on Comisio'n)

And, each chapter did just this. Some acted more or less as student organizations, with
concerns relevant to university settings; others appeared to be perhaps more radical,
others more bureaucrat, or more philanthropic. Some focused on hosting cultural events,
while others pushed for the inculcation of an activist agenda into government boards.

Arguably, the relationship between the actions and goals of each individual
chapter, and with the national organization, seem tenuous. Based on the contents of the
archival collection, a considerable amount of time and materials were spent determining
the relationship. For example, the CFMN structure was outlined at multiple moments,

with varying relationships established between the chapters and the national board.

62

ORGANIIATIOIAL CHART

C0115!“ FEKNIL KIICMA MCIMAL. INC.
1985-1986

BOARD 0‘ DIRECTORS

Executive Col-ittae Standing Countee. Chairs
Illldlltc Past Pres. Chapter Representatives
. tonal Directors Parliamentarian l

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER REPRESENTATIVES

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2nd Vice President IreaSurer CF dc Pasadena/SGValley
CF de Kern County
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CF do Sacramento
CF ggjeres de la fiaza/CSUN

Public 1 l 1

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Figure 1: Copy of an Organizational Chart

As with the other organizing writing produced by the CFMN, creating the structure must
have been considered an important practice because of the amount of documentation the
CFMN included of the creation of this diagram in their archival collection. Further, an
entire series was devoted to the chapters, as they were seen as broadly related to the
organization’s mission yet distinct enough to be separated from the national
organization’s documents. And, while the UC Santa Barbara CFMN collection contains
folders for each organization under their chapter series, some chapters have additional
collections devoted to their specific organization housed at other institutions”.
Underlying their organization’s history was a tension between the chapters and

the CFMN (the national organization), which was partly constituted by differences in

 

38 For example, the CFM Los Angeles chapter collection is housed at UCLA.

63

localized goals and in the expectations for the relationship between the national board
and the individual chapters”. Leading up to a CFMN retreat primarily devoted to
discussing this relationship, the CFMN sent a questionnaire to the local chapters,
inquiring about the role of CFMN in relation to the chapters and what the chapters
wanted from the national board, among other things. The responses ranged from wanting
the CFMN to be “a quasi dictatorship from while concentrating on developing our
infiastructure” to facilitating more opportunities for the chapters to meet and giving each
chapter more recognition, as well as “. . .mostly to be left alone” (“CFMN
Questionnaire”)4°. A retreat then was organized to address these concerns and “determine
accountability and commitment of chapters to CFMN and vis-versa [sic]” (“CF MN
Retreat”).

. While admittedly distinct fiom the national organization in terms of practices or
concerns, the chapters fell under the scope of the CFMN because of a recognition that
their members shared a history and goal. The different chapters and their projects ranged
widely but were all connected through Chicana identification, again, regardless if the
label “Chicana” was present. In “Nacional Network Committee: Administrative
Proposal,” an established goal of the national organization to establish a Latina network
under an associate organization was to “foster communication among Latina

organizations and build a national CFMN network.” The term “Chicana” itself was less

 

39 Another point of contention expressed by the chapter organizations is geographically based. The CFMN
collated responses to the questionnaires sent to its chapters and then used these responses to write their
agenda for a board retreat. Written on the agenda under “DEFINED WHAT IS CFMN TODAY,” is
“Perceived as LA based” (“Retreat and Questionnaires”). This observation mirrors a general critique
leveled at Chicana identity in general as it is primarily seen as affiliated with and speaking to Chicanas in
California.

40 For writing researchers, it is interesting to note that several responses focused on the newsletters
produced by the CFIlflV and its chapters as they equated recognition of chapters with the placement of
chapter news in the national newsletter (“Retreat and Questionnaires”).

64

important than the connection that it instantiated. While Chicana is ideological in the
sense that claiming this identity means something, at the same time, there is a shared
recognition of connectivity that extends beyond language.

The connective work that is built from experience as an invention material
becomes more removed from “Chicana” itself when we see that it extends to other groups
as well. For example, Azizah al-Hibri Cox writes in a letter to Francisca Flores“:

Dear Ms. Flores, The President of the Organization of Arab students has asked me

to try and obtain a copy of the questionnaire that Chicanas passed out in Houston

to study the Chicano attitudes towards women and feminism”. We would like to
modify the questionnaire and use it to tackle the same issues among Arab men.

The questionnaire was first mentioned in your magazine (Vol. I, no 10) and I

wonder whether you may not be able to send me a copy of the questionnaire or at

least tell me where to find one. I would be very grateful for your help. In

solidarity, Azizah Cox.
A note written at the end of the letter in red ink indicates that it was “sent.” The survey
developed by Chicanas to ascertain the perceived differences between Chicanas and
Chicanos and white women was used as a vehicle to develop an affiliation between the
experience of Chicanas as raced and gendered with other raced and gendered people.
What this points to is again that the Chicana practice of connectivity is built from living
in raced bodies. This practice is therefore a result of this material condition; in response,

Chicanas emerge to do something—to be an instantiation of connectivity in a world

 

41 Francisca Flores was the editor of Regeneracién, and also one of the founding members of the CFMN
and the CSAC.

421discussthissurveyinChapter l.Asareminder,thiswasareprintofthesurveyadministeredto
Chicanas at the National Chicano Issues Conference asking about the issues that defined and impacted
Chicanas.

65

where particular people are constructed as disenfranchised and distanced. Utilizing
experience to connect is indeed a strategy shared by other groups and, in fact, is
indicative of what rhetoric does in the world broadly. While other groups participate in
similar acts of collective meaning making, the concept of La Hermandad is unique to
Chicanas. Specifically, I will discuss the use of La Hermandad as a mediating concept
that was used to incite change in activist practice in the CFMN”.
Case Study: Collective Practices and Lo Hermandad
Lo Hermandad is a concept of Chicana sisterhood employed by the CFMN. In an article
for Encuentro F emenil‘ 4, the authors reflected on the production and subsequent impact
of La Hermandad as produced at the first Chicana national conference:
“Chicanas expressed a dire need to establish a national means of communication
among women. This communication system would strengthen a new feeling of
‘Hermondod’ (sisterhood) among Chicanas. This communication system and the
new philosophy of hermandad would motivate Chicanas to identify, understand
and work against the racist and sexist economic social forces adversely affecting
the Chicana and her people. (Chicana Service Action Center 5)
Note that the “Philosophy of La Hermandad” is described as inciting change in Chicanas

and Chicana activist practice. This philosophy and way of communicating is described as

 

43 The development and deployment of La Hermandad can be places in relationship with Anzaldr'ra
concept of La facultdad as both centered on the development of a critical consciousness, yet differ in the
process and realizations. The shift I am arguing for then is to account for the acts of collectives.

44 Encuentro F emenil was a Chicana feminist journal started by Chicanas such as Anna Nieto-Gomez,
Adelaida R. Del Castillo, Cindy Honesto, among others. Francisca Flores (one of CFMN’s founders)
worked closely with Nieto-Gomez. The CFMN also included copies of Encuentro F ernenil in their archival
collection.

66

responsive to outside forces yet inwardly focused in its production and employment45 .
For the CFIlflV, this concept is used most frequently to redress and then redirect action.
One example is in a response to a series of memos amongst members regarding
tension between the members of the national board and chapter leaders. The memos
decried member behavior that is seen as antithetical to connectedness and as unsupportive
of the CFMN, and by association, the Chicana movement in general. In one memo
written by a past president (Christine Fuentes) and circulated amongst its members,
Fuentes reminds the CFMN members that the organization’s foundations were:
...built on such concepts as unity, goodwill and hermandad. Achieving these
goals calls for a tremendous amount of work and dedication fiom all members.
Obviously this cannot be accomplished if the present leadership elects instead to
focus its energies on the negative. . .One cannot help, but question the leadership
capabilities and moral judgment of a Board displaying conduct, which is divisive
and alienating. At a time when unity is imperative for success, Comision members
must insist on being guided by a Board sensitive and responsive to the needs of all
Chicanas. Let us seek to work together in constructive and positive ways.
Comision’s survival is dependant on this.
This memo is included in the Administrative files, which again points to this concept as
an organizing mechanism. It is useful to note here that divisiveness and alienation are
precisely the conditions constructed by the NOW document in the previous chapter that

former CF MN president Fuentes worked to redress.

 

45 Similar change resultant fi'om Chicana in the world takes place in academia as well.

67

Not only did lo hermandad essentially create an organization, it was also used to
redirect action. When it is used in this way, it becomes embedded into the repertoire of
Chicana rhetoric. In a follow up memo to Fuentes’ regarding the behavior of the CFMN
board, the Pasadena chapter board wrote to CFMN president Gloria Moreno-Wycoff to
convey their disappointment in the circulated memos, primarily because La Comisio'n
should be dedicated to promoting Chicanas and their welfare:

Should not such a sensitive information be dealth [sic] with by the CFMN board

in a more discreet manner? 2. Are we (Comisién) not as a whole supportive of all

our members and does not the letter make reference to the CFMN taking action
against one of our sisters? 3. Does sending out such letter suggest that the CFMN

Board cannot handled [sic] its private matters? 4. In its accusations, it not the

letter somewhat slanderous to one of our members reputation? 5. Are we as

Chicana women striving for all Chicana women not contradicting ourselves by

attacking one of our own? (Pasadena Board).

The understanding that Chicana identification implied a shared commitment to lo
hermandad became a lens through which the activists interpreted and altered their
actions. This sentiment to redirect activist efforts reflected the understanding that Chicana
action should operate on the unit of the community. The invocation of their commitment
to sisterhood, which was sent out via the above memo to the organization, served to shift,
or perhaps remind the organization members of the way that Chicanas should be: in
essence, reestablishing its ontology and epistemology. As a result then of being
compelled into a position of non-action, Chicana identity emerged as a position of action;

more specifically, of a particular type of action that not only builds on experience, but

68

was instantiated each time that lo hermandad was invoked. Therefore, through its
invocation of this concept, it can be assumed that the CFMN hoped that la hermandad
would become a habituated practice of its members, and by association, of those who
affiliate as Chicana. Lo hermandad becomes then part of the positionality of Chicana as
built from the flesh. It serves as heuristic through which Chicanas view change or the
purpose of their work“.

Chicana rhetoric then emerges from experience and uses this experience to make
change. Researching the CFMN as an instantiation of Chicana rhetoric makes visible how
theory in the flesh as production from experience is not only applicable to the study of
individual writers and scholars but to the making of groups, and group making, as well.
Likewise, through examining the use of lo hermandad to produce activist practice, we
can also see these particular habituations are realized collectively.

Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, I want to revisit the episodes detailed in the first section,
to the first “case study” of what it means to be a Chicana in the world. The three episodes
are punctuated with an ethos of not listening, of relying on assumptions about the
simplicity or limiting operations of Chicana rhetoric, or of rhetorics constituted by
identities in general. Like the constructions of the Latin women in the NOW documents,
these moments produce constructions of Chicana scholarship, and by association,

Chicana scholars, that have real and tangible consequences. What can we as Clricana

 

46 “Alicia Garcia,” a contemporary Chicana scholar, also invokes this sense of connectedness to negotiate
how she produces scholarship. She states that she questions “how much do we do as educated Chicanas that
are not part of community,” and, to redress this sometimes forgetting of our community ties, she “tr-[ies] to
use language that can be used by larger audiences.” For Garcia, being a Chicana means taking the
knowledge she has learned as a Mexican American in the academy and sharing it with her community
(Interview).

69

scholars do to exist in tandem with such constructions? It is necessary to turn these
constructions into something else, to change the very conditions of these discussions so
that studying Chicana writing is not immediately treated as a scholarly synecdoche,
whereby Chicana rhetoric is reduced to particular parts of its rhetorical actions and
acting, or particular concepts, or writers, stand in the place of its complex entirety.

As a Chicana scholar then, I place my experiences alongside the CFMN in order
to add to the continuum of Chicanas who identify with and use these experiences.
Learning fiom my archival research on the CF MN organization and its responsive action,
I build a repertoire of similar practices, such as producing scholarship that makes visible
the expansiveness of our rhetoric and seeking out scholarly spaces that would normally
not be associated with Chicana theory in our field. I use these multiple experiences built
from localized practices in attempt to alter the fields’ constitutive epistemologies and
ontologies". Equally important, through the organizing concept of lo hermandad, I learn
from the CF MN what it means to inhabit and practice connectivity in a way that obviates
the criticisms of theorists who treat identity as limiting alliances.

The experiences realized by my archival research point to the significance of the
CFMN collection and the documents they contain as a material instantiation of Chicana
rhetoric. If Chicana rhetoric entails a responsive action, then we must consider this act of
making history. In the next two chapters, I focus on history and history making. In
Chapter 3, I continue my discussion of the Chicanas of the CFMN employing experience
to make organizational practice. I couple this with the CFMN’s intervention in and

invention of history in order to construct Chicanas as organizing subjectivity to enable

 

47 These connections are made in Chapter 5 of this dissertation project.

70

the work of the CFMN, and to effectively create a history of Chicana organizing for
future Chicanas to build upon. This happens both in the rhetorical moment of the

CFMN’ s emergence as well as through the creation of the archival collection itself.

71

Chapter 3
Chicana Rhetoric: Making History

Coming to Imow the past has been a port of the critical pedagogy of decolonizotion. To
hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges. The pedagogical implication
of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis of alternative ways
of doing things.
Linda Tulriwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies
And thank you, Bea, for typing up your notes because we all can refer to it when dark
days loom large and we wonder why we are involved anyway.
Eva Couvillon, from the CFMN ’3 “President’s Message”
A Case Study of o Chicano Doing History
In San Antonio, Texas in 193 8, Emma Tenayuca, a worker’s rights advocate
known as “La Posionaria de T ejas,” participated along side pecan shellers in a six-week
strike against the pecan-shelling industry leaders. These industry leaders attempted to
lower the price per pound of pecan meat earned by the shellers by 15% and refused to
make needed changes to the working environment (Dublin et al)“.
In my research on the strike”, I stumbled upon an interview with Tenayuca in the
mid 1980’s about the pecan shellers strike and worker unionizing in Texas. In the
interview she was asked about her involvement in leading the strikes, and the

speculations that riddled the newspapers about her involvement with the Communist

party. In response to this line of inquiry, Tenayuca made what seemed to be an off-

 

48 To give you an extremely brief glimpse into that moment, one of the largest pecan companies started in
the Civil War by Gustave Duerler, who capitalized on an exploitative cycle in which he bought pecans
from indigenous peoples and hired Mexicano/as to extract the meat. In 1936, his company grossed 3
million dollars, while shellers were paid $2.00 per week in sweatshop conditions. Owners refused to
extend the minimum wage standards established through the National Recovery Administration (1933-
1935) and then the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) to pecan shellers in San Antonio (Dublin et al). The
poor working conditions and low wages were justified by the Anglo industry owners because they “ate
pecans while working... shellers would not work the necessary hours if the shelling company paid them
more...Mexicans would earn 75¢ and go home, whether it was 3 pm. or 6 pm... shellers had a pleasant,
warm place to work and could visit with friends. . .if Mexicans earned more, they would just spend it on
‘tequila and on worthless trinkets in the dime stores’” (Acufia 226).

49 This research was part of an archival project I conducted in a Contemporary Theory course.

72

handed remark: “I wish somebody, someday, from somewhere, would come in here and
write the history of [the] articles...” (Poyo). What Tenayuca alluded to is the importance
of making a history. But what Tenayuca indirectly pointed out in the comment is the
importance of the type of histories we tell: in particular, a history that instantiates
Mexicanas as organizing.

Likewise, the Chicanas of the Comisio'n F emenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMN) as
part of their rhetoric as a Chicana organization also enact[ed] history and history making.
Building on the previous chapter in which I argue that the Chicanas of the CFMN used
experience to make an organization and its practice, in this chapter I focus on the
intervention in, and invention of, history as a responsive action. To do this, I analyze
archival data from the CFMN organization”. I first provide a brief overview of history
making as it is related to invention and memory. Next, I describe the documents that
Chicanas included within the archival collections that instantiates them in history,
creating positionality that enables organizing and action. I argue that this strategy of
Chicana rhetoric to operate at the productive nexus between past, present and future
complicates our understandings of history as a linear progression. I then analyze the
CFMN’ s invention of an organizing history through the establishment of an archival
collection, which creates a material instantiation of Chicanas in history as actors that
incite change. The archival collection also serves as a material witness to lived conditions

from which Chicanas emerge to respond. By providing the details for responsive action,

 

50 I need to clarify the data that I am working with here. The documents that I cite in this chapter come
from the CFMN’s archival collection. However, not all of the documents were written by the CFMN
themselves. Yet, these documents are intermingled with the CFMN authored writings. Because of the
attention that the CFMN gave to creating their collection, and the intentionality of the CFMN to include
these documents in their collection, I consider as part of their work to establish a Chicana history of
activism and the ability for future generations to recreate the rhetorical exigency.

73

which are often overlooked in our historicizing, the archival collection lays a productive
“blueprint” for Chicanas on how to act in a world that constructs us as non-actors.
0n Invention and Memory

While I am using the term “invention” to discuss the creation of histories, in the
case of the CFMN, it is not only about the strategic creation of history, but about a
necessary establishment of a memory: a memory of organizing, and a memory of the
exigency for doing so. The statement I opened this chapter with by Eva Couvillon
demonstrates the care the CFMN took to document not only their organizational
strategies and the coming to be as an organization, but also the rhetorical moment in
which Chicana emerged. The documentation of this moment is done in order to
remember: to remember the way we were erased, the way we were constructed, and
therefore, the purposes for Chicana identity.

While the CFMN’ s intervention in and invention of histories is indeed strategic, it
is also inwardly focused, and at the same time concerned with the sustainability of an
organization and a memory of the rhetorical moment in which it was created. This
sustainability of an organization is realized through the archiving of the formation of an
organization. It is about creating and sustaining a shared memory of a lived experience
that is realized through the inclusion of documents that are not only written by the CFMN
itself, but ones that attempt to construct Chicanas as not organizing. An example of such
a document is the N.O.W brochure I analyzed in the previous chapter.

I want to be explicit about why I am connecting invention and memory to discuss
the CFMN’s history making. As others have pointed out, the classical schema ignores

memory in favor of logos and invention. Memory in the classical schema is understood as

74

“something that could be improved by treating it as a system of visualized locations,
somewhat similar to the ways the commonplaces are imagined to reside in actual mental
locations that one tours during the invention process” (Bizzell and Herzberg 7). Unlike a
conceptualization of invention in classical rhetoric that is future oriented, when coupled
with memory, this is a particular type of invention that is not always only forward
looking; instead, it is simultaneously forward, inward, and backwardly operative. In other
words, it is about establishing a memory to build possibilities. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith
articulates in the other opening quote for this chapter, to “hold alternative histories” is to
hold “alternative knowledge’s.” What this means is that creating histories of doing and
being is a type of teaching that we can learn flour in order to become5 I. This is an
invention of history then that is really about memory: a memory that is connective
between people and the past, and a will not to forget.
Chicanas Intervening in Histories

The ownership over the making of a history— of cataloging experiences and the
emergence of Chicana activist identity and its effects on action—is one way that history
and historicizing is part of a Chicana rhetoric both in terms of what is valued and what is
practiced. History is even more valuable when considering that for many people from
marginalized groups, histories are made for them. While this is a salient practice for any
rhetoric of people and things, this is especially true for Chicanas. Chicana is a recent and
intentional identity, meaning that any history must be constructed. Moreover, Chicanas
understand that their interventions in history mediate present and future positionalities

and their associative rhetorical actions.

 

5] One might notice that such an understanding of history complicates a linear model of chronos.

75

The importance of both creating a history and being aware of that history is a
topic woven throughout the CFMN’s archival data, and in Chicana theory and writing
broadly. Chicanas read and recreate history in a way that reflects and produces practices
and intervenes in historical narratives. By intervening in narratives that either erase or
minimize the active presence of Chicanas, they are able to make new moves and
positionalities viable for Chicanas. This action works in relation to a construction of
Mexicanas as neither part of history, or as constructed in particular ways that mediate
their present and future subj ectivities as actors, makers, or rhetors.

Chicana literary and philosophical writers, for example, have examined and
reirnagined the rhetorical functions of historical figures such as Malintzin, La Virgen de
Guadalupe, or La llorana, to reposition these Mexicanas as positive contributors to
cultural narratives (see for example Calafell; Castillo; Gaspar de Alba). In disciplinary
history, Emma Pérez notably intervenes in the construction of Chicano studies grounded
in a history that follows a spatio-temporal story of linear progression, in which
colonialism fi’ames the story, and gender and sexuality are not considered in its
construction. Perez invents a new methodology, what she calls a “decolonial imaginary”
which enables “silent to gain their agency,” thereby producing a Chicana subjectivity in
history (Decolonial Imaginary 33).

Likewise, in activism Chicanas have had to intervene in historical narratives that
have produced a subjectivity that is decidedly not organizing, or are constructed as
supporters to the real actors in a movement, such as Chicanos. This experience, of being

constructed as not organizing and effective, conflicted with a Chicana reality of their

76

activism. The confliction served as the impetus for the formation of the CFMN in 1971 as
the first Chicana organization. The organization’s formation was a literal response to this
confliction as the CFMV began by physically splitting from activists in the Chicano
movement at the National Chicano Issues Conference because of their refirsal to
acknowledge Chicanas as organizing leaders. In one draft of their forming resolutions”,
the CFMN pointed to this dissonance between the experience of being constructed as non
existent as leaders, and the reality that they were numerous and active. In the document
“Resolution Adopted by the Women’s Workshop 10/10/70 Sacramento, California;
[A]Proposal for a Comision Femenil Mexicana,” the CFMN wrote:
The effort and work of the Chicana/Mexicana women in the Chicano movement is
generally obscured because women are not accepted as community leaders either
by the Chicano movement or by the Anglo establishment.
The existing myopic attitude does not, however, prove that women are not able to
participate. It does not prove that women are not active, indispensable
(representing over 50% of the population), experienced and knowledgeable in
organizational, tactical and strategic aspects of a people’s movement.
THEREFORE, in order to terminate exclusion of female leadership in the
Chicano/Mexican movement and in the community, be it

RESOLVED, that a Chicana/Mexican Women’s Commission be established at

this conference which will represent women in all areas where Mexicans prevail.

 

52 Although I include one version of their resolutions in Chapter 1, it behooves me to remind us of this
document as it not only marks a metaphoric and literal formation of a Chicana movement as realized in an
organization, but also because this version mentions a reality of a Chicana existence that is being ignored
by the Chicano movement. I should also note that there are multiple versions of this resolution that the
CFMN includes in their collection. I am not quite sure which is the “official version.”

77

As we can see at the beginning of the resolutions, a purpose of the CFMN was to create
an organization that mirrors the reality that Chicanas are in fact “tactical” and
“organizational.” As such, the CFMN broke away from the Chicanos at the National
Conference to create their own organization.

A similar (and literal) splitting coupled with a subsequent productive response is
repeated with the construction of one of the material results of the CFMN’ s actions: the
creation of a bilingual childcare center. Yolanda Nava, one of the early founders of the
CFMN, tells a story of attending an organizing meeting with Chicano activists. According
to Nava, there were three women at the meeting, including herself. The purpose of the
meeting was to address issues going on in their communities, and to develop strategies
for addressing these issues. At the meeting, Nava recollected, that the women in
attendance “fought to get child care on the agenda” (Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive).
Prior to the meeting, childcare was supposed to be agenda item #12; during the meeting,
the men present “manipulated the agenda,” and it became item #40. Irene Tovar, one of
the other three women and a founding member of CFMN, asked: “what about child
care?” Without getting the response they desired, they agreed to they were not going to
“get anything done with these men” and therefore, they decided to “just do it ourselves”
(Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive).

Accordingly, the CFMN members would meet everyday after work and write
proposals. Nava said that they “knew nothing about child care,” but they would meet and

would “move things” by writing these proposals”. While they knew nothing about child-

 

53 It is interesting to note, as Rhetoric and Composition scholars, how these formative moments are
evidenced and realized through writing: the drafiing of resolutions, writing grant proposals for a daycare
center. As anyone who has ever worked with an organization in its emergence that much of it really

78

care, they enlisted the help of people who were child-care workers. Through this writing
work they were able to successfully acquire the funds to start a child-care center; and
because they were able to secure funding to build a center they had to figure out how to
actually run the place. As Nava explained, once the funding came in, they turned to each
other and said, we have “got this job now how are [we] going to work?” (V OAHA).
Therefore, they had to create bylaws, and organizational charts to figure out how to run
the center. What these stories demonstrate is Chicana responsive action and a correlative
creation of a history of organizing and making organizations.
The Necessity of Memory

The importance of creating and remembering this history, while strategic, can be
understood as born out of necessity. What the CFMV and its members realized was that
this forgetting was having material effects on Chicanas. For example, in an article in the
Chicana journal Encuentro F emenil“, the authors, who were representatives of the
Chicana Service Action Centerss, discuss a study they conducted on college-aged
Chicanas. The purpose of the study was to find out why so many of them seemed to be

dropping out of college in their third year. According to the article, many of the reasons

 

happens in writing. Here I think back to my involvement with the formation of a community media center.
In its early stages, we were a group of people talking about a community media center and why it should
exist. In order to become, we had to move an idea of organization into action through textual production:
we made flyers, we created a website, we wrote a 501c3 and funding proposals; in other words, we were an
organization because we made writing. Although it of course cannot be fully encapsulated in documents, it
is nonetheless an interesting to point to consider if one is interested in studying emergence.

54 Francisca Flores was the publisher, editor and frequent contributor to Encuentro. Flores was also one of
the founders of the CFMN and the Chicana Service Action Center (CSAC). The CSAC, along with El
Centro de Niiios and Casa Victoria, was an organization that originally operated under the umbrella of the
CFMV, and in its beginning, shared many of the same leadership. The CSAC, along with Flores, eventually
splits and becomes its own entity. But, because of Flores’s deep (and ongoing) personal ties with the
CFMN, the CFMN includes copies of the journal as part of their Publications series. I think they also
include the journal because one can trace a Chicana activist history in Flores’ editorials.

79

cited were not about low grades, but instead, the primary reasons were marriage,
pregnancy and motherhood (4). In response, the CSAC representatives assert that at their
center they decided to incorporate looking at Mexican history books as part of their
practice—which many of these Chicanas were not encountering as part of their
education—to show these young women that women’s suffrage was not unique to
Anglos. Rather, there was a history of Mexican feminist organizing. In realizing this
history, the article claims, these Chicanas were “[i]nspired and reassured that ‘speaking
out’ was not alien to the Chicana’s [sic] culture” (“Chicanas in the Labor Force” 4).

The CSAC knew that they had to redress a material reality that young college
aged Chicana women were dropping out of school because of presumably gendered
expectations for women. Understanding that many Chicanas did not see tenets of
feminism as applicable to their lives, the CSAC members decided to show these Chicanas
that it was indeed part of their history as Mexican women to be active. This was done in
the hopes that it might enable Chicanas to understand their subjectivity as one who
“speaks out.” This type of tactical work by the CSAC can be considered an action of
survival, created out of a need to connect ideology with a material reality. A Chicana
rhetoric then emerges from the experience of realizing a “forgotten” history and at the
same time, involves the action of responding to this historical absences“.

This action of survival can also be characterized as a response to being

constructed as non-actors in a social movement. Such renderings of Chicanas non-actors,

and a correlative production of Chicanas as oppositional to these constructions, are found

 

56 While explaining about the emergence of her Chicana identity and activism, one of the CFMN’s
founding members Yolanda Nava recounted visiting the pyramids and museums in Mexico. She
experienced a disjuncture between this construction of Mexicans as contributors to culture and the way that
Mexicans were portrayed in the United States as “maids or prostitutes” (Virtual Oral/Aural History
Archive).

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throughout the CFMN’ s archival documents. For instance, the CFAflV included in their

collection a non-dated letter addressed to “Mexican-American women,” or “Chicanas if

you wish.” According to the letter, Chicanas:
are tired of being pushed around and made the butt of jokes regarding
Women’s liberation; but, what are we going to do about it? We continue to
work and to support the established organizations and activist males
because we realize that without us la CAUSA would collapse and “La
Raza” would become people without fuerza”. The times ahead, especially
during an election year, will see many demands made upon our strength
and commitment. This, by organizations which are for the most part male
oriented and dominated, and whose policies have been developed by male
chauvinists. The role which we play can no longer be that of the
subservient female preparing ‘cenas’ and ‘banquetes’ so that ‘los macho’
can preen themselves in their male finery, throw out their chests and say
“nosotro hacemos por la causa” (1 of 3).

This excerpt demonstrates the historical construction of Mexican-American women in La

Causa as only beneficial to support to the “real” actors in the movement. In response

then, Chicanas operate in tandem with the experience of living with such constructions

yet acting in a way that troubles these historical subjectivities.

One way this is achieved is through creating and telling histories that instantiate
Chicanas as organizing. While this may seem perhaps simplistic, it is nonetheless
revolutionary. Whereas in the previous chapter we saw the way that the CFMN emerged

as an organization in response to constructions of Latinas as ineffectual, here we see

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CFMN as an instantiation of Chicanas as leaders and actors. However, Chicanas had (and

have) to invent histories of organizing as part of their subjectivity; in this way we see that

the contemporary identity of Chicana is an epistemic for the creation of histories.
Invention of a History of Organizing

Returning to the introduction of the CFW s founding resolutions, the
organization emerged as a response to not being treated as “experienced and
knowledgeable in organizational, tactical and strategic” (“A Proposal”). Therefore, the
CFMN understood that part of their role as an organization was to be just that. But, we
must note that they were not saying in the resolutions they drafted that they have to
become these things. Rather, they indicated that they were already knowledgeable about
organizing. The problem they identity is that this history and their current activism were
not being recognized. What the CFMN did was to remind their members that Chicanas
were always already organizing.

While part of Chicana identity is to be responsive and to incite change, this
happens in dialogue with a past that has either been forgotten or misread. Therefore, the
Chicanas of the CFMN incorporated history to legitimize activism and its purposes. More
ofien than not what this looked like was using histories of Mexican American women as
precedents for activism. The purpose was to demonstrate to other Chicanas that their
concerns and involvement were both warranted and, in fact, part of what it means to be a
Chicana.

Several examples of the strategic use of history can be found in the documents
contained in the CFMN archival collection that demonstrate Chicanas turning to a

forgotten history of active women to create a productive lineage with contemporary

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Chicanas. Some of this remembering took place in the rhetorical moment; others took
place in the recounting of these events as an interpretive framework. For instance, in
“The Woman of La Raza”,” Enriqueta Longauex y Vésquez reads a Raza conference
through a history of women who have been active, but were often overlooked when
recounting the history of revolutionizing:
While attending a Raza conference in Colorado this year, I went to one of
the workshops that were held to discuss the role of the Chicana woman.
When the time came for the woman to make the presentation to the full
conference, the only thing that the workshop representative said was this:
‘It was the consensus of the group that the Chicana woman does not want
to be liberated.”
As a woman who has been faced with having to live as a member of the
‘Mexican-American’ minority as a bread winner and a mother raising
children, living in housing projects and having much concern for other
humans leading to much community involvement, this was a blow. I could
have cried. Surely we could have at least come up with something to add
to that statement. I sat back and thought, why? Why? I understood why the
statement had been made and I realized that going along with the feelings
of the men at the convention was perhaps the best thing to do at the time.
Looking at our history, I can see why this would be true. The role of the
Chicana woman has been a very strong one, although a silent one. When

the woman has seen the suffering of her people she has always responded

 

57 This document was a column written by Vésquez for one of her columns in the Chicano newspaper, El
Grito Del None. A typed copy of this without the article references was included in the CF MN collection.

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bravely and as a totally committed and equal human. My mother told me
of how, during the time of Pancho Villa and the revolution in Mexico, she
saw the men march through the village continually for three days and then
she saw the battalion of woman [sic] marching for a whole day. The
woman [sic] carried food and supplies; also, they were fully armed
wearing loaded ‘carrilleras.’ In battle they fought alongside the men. Out
of the Mexican Revolution came the revolutionary personage ‘Adelita,’
who wore rebozo crossed at the bosom as a symbol of revolutionary
woman [sic] in Mexico. (1)
In this recollection of Raza conference, Longauex y Vasquez uses history both as a way
to understand the experiences at the conference in Colorado, as well as to subtly support
yet question the actions taken given the history of Chicana women in the revolution in
Mexico.
The construction of Chicanas as always a part of revolutionary action is also made
evident in the use of revolutionary symbols and images. For example, the below figure

found in CFMN’s archives is a very familiar image of the Chicano movement.

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Figure 2: Copy of a Drawing of a Chicana Revolutionary

The face is a skull, reflective of reclamation of death as a productive trope in Mexican
culture and associated with El Dia de Los Muertos. The horse is a symbol associated with
the Mexican Revolution. But, this particular rendering includes a skirt on the figure,
thereby instantiating Chicanas a part of the Mexican Revolution, and as reclaimed
symbol of the contemporary Chicano movement. The implications are that women have
always fought “alongside men” and perhaps this is the reason why Chicana women do
“not need to be liberated”; we have always been equals, and the problem is that we have
forgotten our history. The purpose then was to remember this lineage.

Likewise, in an article about the CFMN, “La Chicana Organizes: The Comisio’n
Femenil Mexicana in Perspective,” Gema Matsuda narrates a lineage of Mexican women

as active contributors in and to histories. This lineage is used not only as a heuristic to

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interpret the CFMN as an organization Matsuda also then locates the CFMN’s leaders as
part of this history of women who make change:
Recorded history of the Mexican woman goes as far back as the Indians
who first populated our continent. In Chichén-Itza Mayan gods were
appeased with the lives of young maidens. And many scholars agree that
the conquest of Mexico City by Cortéz was possible only because of the
invaluable help of La Malinche. At first glance, one may not see the
connection between the above named incidents because the lesson learned
is a philosophic rather than historical one. . .The importance of the women
in both of these cases was of a crucial, if not indispensable, nature. Their
contribution to history extends beyond their recognized role as child
bearers” (25).
In this opening Matsuda begins by demonstrating that Mexican women have played an
instrumental role in shaping history, but this role “at first glance” may not be recognized
or recognizable. Matsuda then traced the involvement of Mexican women/Chicana
women, noting names of leaders in historical struggles, leading to “a few women who
have risen above the type-casting to which we are all subjected and have become
valuable leaders of the [Chicano] movement” (26). A pivotal move in this recounting
happens next.
After demonstrating that Mexican women contributed to change in history that
has not been recognized, Matsuda uses this illuminated history as a way to both establish
the exigency for the CFMN, and to place the leaders of the CFMN as part of this history

as agents of change. As such, Matsuda’s narrative turns to an introduction of Francisca

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Flores, one of the founders of the CFMV. Matsuda specifically describes Flores as an

interventionist, responding to and altering the cultural frameworks that were preventing

Chicanas from seeing themselves as effectual:
Francisca Flores saw this problem and recognized the cultural trends
which perpetuate it—matemal overprotection, male chauvinism, lack of
incentive for female higher education, and, by extension, lack of Chicanas
in the professional fields. With the purpose of combating these very
problems, she and other women who, like her, had learned the art of
organizing got together in order to discuss the feasibility of forming an
organization which would promote Chicanas in all professions.
(Regeneracién, 25)

In this case, Matsuda narrated the historical involvement of Mexican and Chicana women

that serves to establish a legacy to the CFMN’s endeavors; Flores in turn becomes part of

that historical legacy.

The strategy to remind audiences of a historical legacy that the CFMN ’s leaders
were building upon garnered a type of legitimacy for the leaders, and for the Chicana
movement more broadly. It normalized activist practices as a way to compose Chicana
subjectivity as always already effectual, or rhetorical. While in the above case this
strategy is employed for establishing the CFMN leaders within a legacy of activist
women, a similar strategy is extended and used in order to make available a particular
practice on the organizational level. In the previous chapter I discussed the use of la
hermandad as a concept that mediates and redresses Chicana action. The Chicanas of the

CFMN invoked la hermandad as a method to incite change in their organization when

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practices were seen as incongruent with a subjectivity grounded in a connectedness that
was respectful.

Similarly, in response to constructions of Chicanas as not capable or organizing
that we saw in the CFMN’ s resolutions, the CFMN had to productively invent—or rather,
remember— their legacy of organizing. This legacy of being organized and organizing
had to also coalesce with an activist and resistant subjectivity. As Chicana theorist Gloria
Anzaldt'ra writes: “. . .the new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions,
a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican
from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality,
she operates in a pluralistic mode” (Borderlands, 80). Mestiza, and by association,
Chicana then is grounded in the ability to operate at a contradictory nexus. This
framework can also be applied to the CFMN organization. When one considers that an
organization exists through stability and often “rules” or routine procedures, as an
organization that was based on an identity of resistance, it presumably operated as a
contradiction. In order to conceptualize Chicana activism as legitimately achieved
through organizational practice, some members of the CF W instantiated organizing into
a pre-colonial history.

Throughout the CF MN’ 8 history, there was contention. One source of contention
was the extent to which the CFMN should adopt rules and regulations as an organization
without going against the premises of Chicana identity. To respond to a need for
organizing, some members of CFMN, called upon particular organizational practices as

historically already part of their rhetoric:

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A number of women present have seen and have experienced previous
meetings where the group has been split and the sessions ‘busted’ so there
was natural concern, that some present were there to break rather than
build. On the part of the Comision there was over reaction and on the part
of the challengers, they still have not learned the history of the movements
or of their own people. . .They claim that rules and parliamentary
procedure is the ‘man’ bag. This claim, although used very successfully to
divide meetings of Mexican Americans and Chicanos, time and again, is
false, because Mexicans and Mexican organizations have their ‘reglas’ and
know how to use them when someone does not observe them. So, rules
and procedures, by-laws and constitutions are not the exclusive property
of the ‘white man’ . . .The Aztecs had their judicial system and their order
to their society. They had a system of laws. And the Spanish came along
with theirs, so the Mexicans have a longer history of parliamentary
procedures than do the Anglos of the United States. As a matter of fact,
fiom the Spain, whose law dates back to Roman law, we have a longer
history in this respect than does the ‘melted pot American.’ Young people,
and some of the older folks should learn their history and quit falling for
the wrong ‘cliché’ such as the ‘white man’s bag’ because we have a longer
history or can compare our history with anyone else’s on any aspect of

social organization, etc. (“The Experience” 1)

As evidenced in the above excerpt about a tense Comisio'n meeting, problems arose when

Chicanas forgot a pre—colonial history of “reglas.” Having such rules is what enables the

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continuity of organization, and the ability to act. As the above article notes, such
divisiveness within the organization planning sessions “busted” up planning meetings; it
appeared that people were intent on breaking rather than building. In response then,
seemingly to “build,” the article reminds the readers (presrunably the CFMN members,
who may in fact have been the people mentioned in this article) that the Aztecs, and the
Spanish, had rules before the colonizers ever came. Remembering a history of rules and
regulations here is used by the CFMV to redress divisive actions. The CFMN leaders
intervened in an idea of history that some Chicanas held that reglas were only part of the
“white man’s bag” which rendered themselves as not part of a legacy of rule makers in
order produce a construction of Mexicans as organizing.

In these instances, the Chicanas of the CFMN demonstrated a rhetorical use of
history that is productive and connective: the result is that both the history and the present
circumstance is recast and therefore becomes something new. The particular relationship
to history of Chicanas challenges a construction of history as chronological and in the
past. This invention of histories as a strategy of Chicana rhetoric in order to alter the
present and futures for Chicanas can be seen in the weight given to this practice for the
CFMN, as well as materially through the creation of objects like their archival
collections.

Chicanas Inventing Histories in the Archives

People like organizations, rivers, mountains and valleys, all have their

beginnings, their turns, their ups and their downs. However, one characteristic

common to all things physical, is that they leave their mark in spite of the changes

which occur over the years.
Francisca Flores, “Chicana Service Action Center”

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Based on the attention given to the establishment of the archival collection as well
as evidence of discussions contained within the collection on the topic of history, it can
be surmised that inventing histories is a valuable strategy of Chicana rhetoric. As Eva
Couvillion wrote to Bea Stozerss, “And thank you, Bea, for typing up your notes because
we all can refer to it when dark days loom large and we wonder why we are involved
anyway” (1). The invention of history, and the documentation of it—namely, the history
of Chicana feminism broadly and of the CFMN more specifically—is treated as pinnacle
for future generations to understand the rhetorical purposes and exigencies for La
Chicana.

As an organization, the CFMN was in part responsible for an invention of Chicana
history; in fact, creating that history was a primary and visible role of the CFMN.
Throughout the collection they have included several requests from a wide range of
people and organizations for the CFMN to contribute to histories. For example, in a letter
to Francisca Flores, Martha Cortera59 wrote:

Estimada Sra. Flores: Although I have yet to receive an answer from you
on any of the letters I have written to you since 1968, here I am an
unfaltering fan, writing to you again. We are at the University of Texas
trying to develop Chicano archives which will serve to document the
history and contribution of men and women who have been active
participants in the development of our people. We are extremely interested

in gathering from your personal files any materials, letters, manuscripts,

 

58 Stozer was one of CFMN’s presidents and the person who appeared to spearhead the establishment of
the CFMN archival collection.

59 Cortera was the lrhrarian and special consultant of the Mexican American library Project at the
University of Texas at Austin.

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photographs, publications, which will serve for us to begin a Francisca

Flores Collection as part of the Mexican American Library Project archive

collection. (1)
This letter represents one of many requests to help establish histories that the CFAflV, and
individual leaders in the CFMN, received. While it is interesting to note the status
afforded to the organization to partake in such endeavors, it is also noteworthy that the
organization elected to include such requests in their collection. This implies that the
CFMN saw their organization as fundamentally responsible for participating in the
production of the physical history of the Chicana movement.

Creating archives then became an integral part of the work of the organization.

The establishment of the archival collection was included in multiple meeting minutes as
an agenda item. One set of meeting minutes specifically notes “Acting president Yolanda
Nava, was given two boxes of CFMN documents and papers from files of Anita Ramos”
(“National Board” 5). The sharing and handling of the files between generations of
leadership was not without contestation, which is also included in the files. In fact, one of
the bi ggest sources of contention in the early years centered on determining the
relationship between the CFMN and the other organizational entities that many of the
CFMN leaders also founded, like the Chicana Service Action Center, and the bilingual
child care centers. This contention can be seen materially in the multiple drafts of the
organizational structure, such as in the below figure, through which the leaders attempted

to visualize the relationship between the organizations.

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Figure 3: Copy of a Board of Directors Flow Chart (Handwritten)

Because the organizations were started by the same Chicanas, they originally appeared to
fall under the CFMN as the umbrella organization with the CSAC and El Centro de Nirios
treated as the materialization of the CFMN’s Chicana activist theories. Yet, some of the
leaders appeared to affiliate with one of the particular organizations. While they were all
understood to be equal in their leadership abilities, there was not a clear understanding
about how to govern the organizations. For example, it was contended by the CSAC that
the CFMN leaders were undermining their ability to run the Service Center effectively,

and indeed, undermining their roles as leaders in general“). A consensus could not be

 

60 In 1975, the CSAC board of directors ended up hiring a lawyer to enable them to become a separate
entity. The lawyer, Ilbert Phillips, wrote a report for the CFMN of his experience attending a tense meeting
between the CSAC and the CFMN. In the letter, Phillips wrote: There is virtually no ‘goodwill’ between
the center and the commission because of this whole mess” (6). This letter is stapled with another letter
from the CSAC stating their disagreements with the CFMN and Yolanda Nava, the CFMN president:
“Yolanda moved without consultation with the center in regards to checking letter of transmittal or any
business with the county and city concerning chicana center business. She merely informed the center of
her unilateral decisions afier the fact, thereby undermined the status and six months of work put into
establishing funding for the center and retarded the development of the program” (2). The CFAflV stapled
both of these documents to a board of director meeting minutes during which they attempted clarify their
role to their chapters and other organizations.

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reached between the organizations, and therefore, the CSAC took the necessary steps to
become an independent entity61 in 1975.

While organizations that grow out of an affiliation is pretty typical, what is
noteworthy about this split is the subsequent consideration spent to determine the
appropriate archiving practices given the CSAC’s separation from the CFMN. After the
CSAC officially split from the CFMV, there ensued a lengthy discussion and exchange
between the leaders about what should happen to the files related to the CSAC. For
example, in a letter to Yolanda Nava, Amelia Camacho wrote:

If you have any suggestions about these boxes you left with me, I would
be most appreciative to receive them. What I have begun is to separate all
and anything relating to CSAC.; It’s beginning and transfer. It will be in a
separate box. I plan to cut off the files at 1974. Otherwise, all else will be
in our archives. Please indicate to me if there is something I should truly
be concerned with relating to the files. (1)
In this letter, Camacho relayed that the treatment of the archives in regards to the
organizations’ splits is an issue that warrants consideration as the creation of the archival
collection is treated as a physical manifestation of the CFMN’s history. This letter is also
significant in that it demonstrates that maintaining the organization’s files, and by

association its history, is a charged and rhetorical act. As such, it also illuminates a

 

61 It is interesting to note that the actual leaders still strategically communicated and worked together after
the split. Looking at the records, it seems to be that part of the split was not just differences in opinion and
leadership personalities, but were rather more pragmatically about the CSAC not able to access funding
because of decisions made by the CFMN.

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contentious history62. These historical contestations are productive though as they are

utilized for invention. In the following letter to Rosemary Quesada-Weiner, Gloria

Moreno-Wycoff reflected on the usefulness of such histories:
Hi Companera, Just sent Hope Corenjo a short, terse note asking her for
any and all copy and photos from “La Mujer” for this year’s Annual
Report/In dredging through my boxes of CFMN papers, I came across the
enclosed which I had been requested to draft for Maryanne Montenegro,
(that is, we were asked to submit our thoughts to her relative to the
vulnerable, shaky ground CFMN was treading on at that time). She used
our perspectives as a basis for her presentation at the 1977 Annual
Business Meeting which she centered around communication and all the
good things we need as a diverse group. . ..It’s also such a trip to look at
the 1978 Report! Anyway, enough sentimentality. I have umpteen reports
to prepare for Fresno, June 13. . .where you won’t be! But, Rosemary, have
you had an opportunity to gather photos for this year which we can use for
the annual report?. ...Carifio, Gloria Moreno-Wycoff, President Comision

Femenil Mexicana Nacional

 

62 Inventing a contentious history as part of Chicana rhetoric can also be read in the handwritten notes that
are included in the archival documents. For example, included in the folder for board meeting minutes for
August 19, 1979 is a document titled “Sandra Serrano Sewell: what she has done for women and
minorities.” Included were actions that the unidentified author felt Sewell had taken against Chicanas. On
the back of the document it was handwritten: “This sheet was sent to National Women’s Political Caucus
California Members. Sandy was a candidate for National Vice Chair in that Organization.” Although
Sewell was a leader in the CFMN, they still elected to include this inflammatory document in their archival
collection thereby demonstrating that the Chicana movement was not without contention. Other ways this is
made visible in the archival collection are the documents, such as article drafts, speeches, meeting minutes,
and so forth, that include an author crossing out Chicana and replacing it with Latina or visa versa.

95

The organization did indeed tread on “shaky ground” throughout its history—between its
leadership, particularly that of the CSAC before it became an independent entity, and
between the national board and its chapter members. However, what is interesting to note
is how they shared with Maryanne Montengero the record of this tension between its
members to be used as material for her presentation.

In this case, Chicanas invented history in order to do something with it, which
includes creating new possibilities for the future in hopes of inciting change. For the
CFMN, this knowledge was fundamental for their organization. By looking at the care
taken to create a history of the organization by including hundreds of pages of writing
materials they complied that document their organization building and the exigency for
doing so, it can be surmised that the CFMN leaders must have known that inventing this
history mattered to enable future Chicanas. Indeed, this was the impetus for establishing
the archival collection.

In a letter to the past national presidents, Beatrice Olvera Stotzer wrote of establishing
the archival collection: “This will in effect give historians a legitimate research
mechanism which can be added to the data on the Chicana feminist movement. We can
only speculate on the immense value of the information that Comision will contribute”
(1). This immense value is recognized as Bea recruited past and present members to serve
on a committee to decide the location and organization of the archival collection, and
created and distributed a survey for its membership to weigh in on the matter. The
intentional and deliberate cataloging of not only their internal workings but also of other

organizations at the time, signifies that the organization saw value in a particular way of

96

making history that demonstrated the intentionality of this act, the steps taken to establish
an organization, and the rhetorical context for doing so.

The attention given to the creation of their archival collection and the level of
documentation the CFMN included in their archival files demonstrates that history for
Chicanas matters a great deal. History of course matters for everyone, but as we see, part
of claiming a Chicana identity means that you are aware of a history, claim an affiliation
to it, and commit to sharing and teaching histories—or at the very least the mechanism
through which to question and intervene in histories that forget our presence.

While many Chicanas point to a history of archetypal figures, symbols, and writers as
influencing their practices and self-conceptualization, I argue that knowing the histories
of everyday practices of organizational work is an equally important part of Chicana
rhetoric: It is not just about a recounting of fantastic trials and tribulations, of public
struggles and defeats, but of the oft times everyday details of making as a Chicana and
the making of Chicana through very real and tangible things like archival collections, like
memos, handwritten edits, and meeting minutes. By establishing an archive of an
organization and its becoming, what the CF MN also effectively establishes is a history of
an organizing Chicana in the collective, as well as the oft forgotten details of change that
occur internally in an organization and externally as a result of their endeavors.

Conclusion
To return to the opening scene for this chapter, as a person making history, by
studying activist practices of Mexicanas, my methodological heuristic is punctuated by
the remark made by Tenayuca. That remark decentered the construction I made of this

rhetorical moment, one that placed Tenayuca in center stage, the active rhetor persuading

97

workers to unionize. I took a closer look at this moment, the moment, which I as a
researcher had made. I looked back at those photographs. And I looked at those
newspaper clippings. Instead of scanning for references of Tenayuca as I had before, I
began to listen to the other narratives comprising this moment.

What was most striking were the constructions of group subjectivties in these
newspapers. Anglo identified or upper class Mexicano/as—an affiliation, which
Tenaycua noted, had a lot to do with claims to Spanish lineage and/or a denial of
indigenous heritages—were written as speaking, as having commentary on the events,
however far away they may have been from the actual action of the moment. The voices
of the Spanish-speaking workers were only allowed to give witness to bodily injuries, or
what was done to them, and not permitted to give witness to ideologies, beliefs, or their
narratives. If I had focused on Tenayuca as the locus of rhetorical action, I would have
missed these very subtle narrative moves that constituted the way this particular moment
was historicized. This moment in my experience of doing history illuminates the shift I
made from doing history on a Chicana rhetor to doing history in a way informed by
Chicana rhetoric, which I will demonstrate redirects attention away fiom individual acts
and toward the nuanced details of collective action.

I listen again, then, to what Emma Tenayuca called for researchers to do, as she
redirected her interviewer from questions about her to questions about that moment. I
think that she asked us not only to pay attention to the construction of the event, but more
importantly, to not pay attention to her. What I mean is that researchers like myself,
historians, and the newspapers writers at the time of the strike often myopically focused

on her and her actions as the history so that the complexity of the situation and the

98

continuance of the conditions that ignited the actions were reductively contained in the
interchanges between the Anglo owners and her fiery public speeches, and thereby
constructed in a static past63.

The CFIWV also made change as a collective following a type of strategic
timing—not like a kairotic or even tactical timing that is understood as timeliness and .
disruptive, but as a slow and eventual undoing that takes place in a chronos that is always
in a productive flux between history, present and future. I therefore write in a way where
chronos is blurred, in which my engagement with positionalities in histories is treated as
present. I also pay attention to the little things—to the boring—knowing that these
mundane details will probably never be included in an anthology that chronicles the
history of our field. This is how change often happens, must happen, especially for
groups whose rhetoric emerges to enact positionalities of connectiveness and action in
response to conditions that articulate them as otherwise. Those of us who study rhetoric
can learn from how Chicana rhetoric as born from experience, works connectively,
intervenes in and creates history, and is positioned in less visible spaces. Paying attention
to these features might broaden our understanding of rhetoric and, by association, how
we research it. In the following chapter, then, I will take this rendering of Chicana
rhetoric as also happening in ways and spaces we might not normally consider to
constitute this rhetoric: namely, by the strategic intervention into institutions as realized
through connective work that is made visible in what might be considered the internal,

mundane work of an activist organization.

 

63 In an interview, Tenayuca several times refuses to locate the pecan shellers strike as solely relevant as a
historical matter, but rather, makes connections to contemporary lived conditions.

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Chapter 4
Chicana Rhetoric: Strategic Acts of Connectivity

[I] he dzfi’erential depends on a form of agency that is self-consciously mobilized in order
to enlist and secure influence; the diferential is thus performative.
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed

[G] ive me something fimctional, give me a goal and we can get it done. . .
Yolanda Nava, founding member of the Comisio'n F emenil Mexicana Nacional

A Case Study of a Chicana Presenting on Chicana Rhetoric

Nervous as all get out, I am presenting a version of this chapter from my
dissertation project as part of my job talk. I scan the room of people present, most are
graduate students, smiling encouragingly, or in anticipation of a performance they know
they will to have to endure themselves during their job market year. I am more nervous, I
think, not because of the audience per se, but because of the content of my presentation.
As someone doing a job talk for a Rhetoric and Composition position on a Chicana
activist organization, I perhaps overly anticipate the audience expectations. I assume that
they will be expecting to hear about in your face activist practices, stories, in other words,
of Chicanas kicking ass. And, as I have written elsewhere, when I originally started this
research project, I had also expected to tell these same stories. But, alas, here I am, telling
a story that is decidedly not at all that exciting: however, this is the type of story that my
archival research on the Comisién F emenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMN) compels me to
tell. I begin my talk by introducing my research, and explaining the importance and
infamy of the organization. I then state that what I am going to talk about is not the fiery
spwches that the women of the CFMN were known to give, and are more well known
for, but instead, I was going to make a perhaps less common move in Rhetoric studies: to

pay attention to the internal work of the organization.

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I anticipated the Rhetoric and Composition crowd would be less than enthusiastic
of this account of the organization and its practices. Indeed, at my previous talks it has
really only been oddly the medieval scholars who seem most interested in the research
project. During the presentation, I am getting encouraging nods, and people taking notes.
I think to myself, this is going better than I had expected. No rolled eyes. That’s good. I
finish the presentation with an overview of future research projects and say that I would
be happy to answer questions. One hand shoots immediately up. The hand belonged to a
visibly Latino man. Older than me, long hair pulled back. Not a part of the Rhetoric
program, because I did not recognize him from the faculty website. I say, yes, looking at
him. He does not look happy.

He begins. “I just have to say that I am very disappointed in your presentation.” I
am stunned and don’t know how to respond. “Oh, how so?” I ask. “Well, I don’t see what
is Chicana about this. What you are talking about is working in the institution. You said
that they delivered fiery speeches. But you did not analyze those. That is what you should
have done.” I stumble out a response, saying that I wanted to focus on their
organizational work and not the rhetorical acts of the individual women, or of these
speeches that are normally examined. He crosses his arms and shakes his head. “Well, I
just want to say that I am very disappointed.”

This audience member’s comment reminds me of a primary purpose for my
research project: while the CFMN is most known for their activist work protesting the
forced sterilization of women, based on the composition of their archival collection,
much of their work was actually about documentation, and what might be considered

policy work. This work included the internal strategizing to become part of government

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boards. Interestingly, this is rarely studied, nor as in the case study in the opening scene,
is this considered part of Chicana rhetoric because it appears institutional. I include the
above case study not as an attempt to be critical of the commenter. Rather, I include it
because it taught me the rhetoric of doing Chicana rhetoric. In other words, how it is
read, and conceived of, and what “counts” as rhetoric, or in this case, as Chicana. What
the comments insinuates is that Chicana rhetoric happens in a certain place, and not
others, such as institutions.

A primary consideration of this chapter is the way that the Chicanas of the CFMN
accomplished change through strategic acts of connectivity. These acts were not defined
by a particular space, but instead were learned as a type of knowing that was adaptive to
the current situation at hand. While not seeming activist or to constitute the rhetoric of an
oppositional identity, these acts were nonetheless effectual and should be included in this
account of Chicana rhetoric. Therefore, in this chapter, I provide a descriptive account of
the CFMN making change through a rhetorical savvy learned from experience. In
particular, the experience of one’s lived reality as historically absent in policy making
and amongst policy makers.

To make this argument, I first ground the account in Chela Sandoval’s articulation
of differential consciousness as part of the repertoire of Chicana rhetorical action.
Sandoval’s differential consciousness provides a lens through which we can read and
interpret rhetorical activity as born from particular conditions fiom which one learns an
adaptable knowing to alter power configurations. While Sandoval’s description of the
differential has been criticized as not grounded in a material reality, I attest that this type

of movement is visible in the CFMN. Specifically, this is evidenced in the CFMN as a

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strategic “pragmatism” that involved the CFMN taking action to instantiate problems
affecting Latinas into public matters. The CFMN accomplished this in a way was
responsive to the construction of these problems, and of Chicana presence in general, in
public matters.

To illuminate these strategies for making change, in the remaining half of the chapter
I focus on a story told through the archival collection. The story centers on the CFMV
and their affiliate organization, the Chicana Service Action Center’s (CSAC),
involvement with accessing and developing employment training for Chicanas,
specifically with the California Employment and Training Act (CETA). I examine this
case in two ways: first, in the moment as indicative of the ways that Chicanas responded
to a historical absence of their experiences in employment training discourse; and second,
as indicative of a strategy of action which demonstrates the movement of collective
change as working slowly, in the nuanced internal work of an organization and in less
public acts of connectivity. I argue that this type of rhetorical work is less frequently
theorized in Rhetoric or Chicana studies, but nevertheless, is part of the rhetoric of
Chicanas as they work/ed to make change in spaces in which Mexicanas or Latinas were
(and are) not normally constructed as constituting—namely institutional and public
spaces. I demonstrate that this type of rhetorical work can be evidenced in programmatic
writing and marginalia, both of which are realizable through the affordances of archival
research. I conclude this chapter with a return to the opening “case study” of my
experiences sharing my research on Chicana rhetoric. Ultimately, this chapter
demonstrates that to study the rhetoric of Chicanas making change, we must shift the

heuristics we employ for studying such histories of rhetorical action.

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Strategic Acts of Connectivity, or the “Pragmatics ” of Chicano Rhetoric
Diflerentiol Consciousness and T echne'

As I outlined in Chapter 1 of the dissertation, Chicana rhetoric operates on
connectivity. This happens both through the metaphors employed, like the concept of
difrasismo, and through the movement enacted. The theorization of this movement
contributes to the basis of Chela Sandoval’s groundbreaking philosophical writing,
Methodology of the Oppressed. In Methodology, Sandoval, among other
accomplishments, articulates what she calls “differential consciousness.” As Sandoval
explains, differential consciousness is a developed ability to “read the current situation of
power” and to choose how to respond in a way to push at, or transform the situation. This
tactical ability, according to Sandoval, is “a survival skill well known to oppressed
people” (60). In other words, it is a know-how that is born out of necessity and from
conditions of disempowerment. What is also important to consider is that while
differential consciousness is a survival skill, it is also a productive ability: what the
differential enables is coalition between and within fragmentation and disjuncture.

Based on Sandoval’s articulation of the differential, those of you in Rhetoric might
be scratching your head, thinking that it sounds similar to our field’s conception of
techné, a know how defined by contingency on time and situation. A perhaps analogous
sounding adaptability of responding to exigencies, techné is a process, a way of making
and using, that is not a codified “body of knowledge” (Atwill 2). Because techne’ is not an
immutable knowledge, it likewise “resists identification with a static, normative subject”

(Atwill 2). While there are shared characteristics in these ways of knowing, namely in the

104

contextual contingency and its shifting nature, there are some very important distinctions
between the types of knowing (and acting).

The distinctions between differential consciousness and techné lie in the following:
the origins, purposes, subjects, and ends. Perhaps the most apparent difference is where
this knowing comes from, or how it is developed. Differential consciousness, as Sandoval
writes, is a survival skill that is about reading and responding in a situation, or world, in
which one is oppressed. It thusly emerges out of “crisis and breakages” (60). Techné' on
the other hand, does not necessarily emerge from necessity nor does it have a similar
urgency. Techne', as it is articulated with its contingency on time and situation, assumes
perhaps a transfonnative potential. However, differential consciousness is predicated on
resistance and opposition. Analogous to techne', differential consciousness does not
assume a “static subject”; however, unlike techne’, the development and deployment of
differential consciousness depends on a grounded subject. Finally, techné' does not
necessarily operate beyond the individual, nor does it enable connection between people.
As Sandoval theorizes, differential consciousness is precisely a knowing that enables
coalition building despite disjuncture.

It is important to distinguish the two ways of knowing because in this chapter, I
want to build on the idea of a type of knowing that the CFMN produces in their efforts to
acquire funding for employment training for Chicanas, and as a Chicana organization in
general. This is also less overtly a disciplinary argument about the way we conceive of a
knowing ability, especially as it applies to the power structures that form spaces that
Rhetoric holds dear to its heart (or mind if you are Plato): publics and institutions. What I

also want to make clear though is that while I am building on Sandoval’s theory, I am

105

 

adding to her theory in two ways: I am providing a tangible example of this theory in
action, and an example of it in action in the collective.

Being Pragmatic and Organizational Change
What is interesting to note is that the CFMN leaders in subtle ways do name this

way of knowing, but I think they called it simply being “pragmatic.” From the

experiences the CFMN leaders had trying to get their experiences included as part of
public policy discourse, or accessing material things like federal funding to support their

programs, they had to learn to act given the power situation. At the same time, they were
working with and against the construction of a Latina that was decidedly not about
organizing and action. As Yolanda Nava aptly put it: “Francisca Flores [a founder of

CFMN and CSAC] could have been radical but she was damn pragmatic . . . she knew

how to network and how to get things done” (V OAHA).

Again, this is a knowing and acting that emerges from an awareness of power

situations. As an example, in 1970 and 1972, members of the CFMN and CSAC testified

before the Commission on the Status of Women, primarily about employment issues
facing the Latina community. They noticed that while they saw a problem facing their

community, the commission did not seem to agree. What the CFMN and CSAC learned

then was that they needed to get statistics in hopes that showing numbers would
demonstrate their experiences (N ava,). What they also realized was that the Commission

was made up entirely of white women who were also older than most of the women the

CSAC assisted (Nava, VOAHA).

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It is no wonder then, that part of the founding resolutions for the CFMN drafted in
1970 at the National Mexican American Issues Conference included a resolution to
acquire representation on decision-making boards“:

Resolution No. 1

Whereas: The problem unique to the Mexican-American woman/Chicana have to

be articulated in a meaningful way. and

Whereas: The Federal and State governments have set up the Commission on the

Status of Women as a vehicle for the upgrading of the status of women in general.

and

Whereas: Positions on these commissions are filled by appointment.

Therefore Be It Resolved: That the general assembly of the National Mexican-

American Issues Conference go on record as supporting the demand made by the

Women’s Caucus that proportionate and representative appointments be made to

the Commission on the Status of Women at the State and Federal levels; and that

such names be selected fiom a list of names submitted by the Steering Committee
de la Comision F ernenil (Resolutions-Women’s Workshop)

Not only did the CFMN come to a critical recognition that there needed to be
representation of Chicanas on boards like the Commission on the Status of Women, they
also acted on this recognition. The strategies invoked to achieve this are purposeful,
pragmatic, and enacted. Even on this resolution draft we see that action was taken toward

this end, as someone handwrote in the margin next to the second “Whereas”: “Call for

 

64 In other documents I identified the Conference that the CF MN emerged at as the National Chicano
Issues Conference. I do this because the CFMN labeled this conference differently in various writings.
Also, as I have previously written, there were multiple versions of the resolutions drafted. I draw on these
different versions throughout the dissertation.

107

nominations for March meeting.” While it may seem institutional and commonplace, it
does nonetheless exhibit a tactical knowing and understanding of power formations,
along with the best way to “push against those configurations” (Sandoval 60).
Interestingly, a handwritten note in the margin is often the place where I saw evidence of
the political and tactical. For example, on an article, “Hispanic Women’s Council
Celebrates fifth year,” someone from the CFMN wrote to a Katherine (presumably also
from the CFMN): “write to them on shelter + ask for donation.” Such a note is an -
indicator of rhetorical activity, much like the commentary that CFMN members wrote on
documents they included in their files—such as writing “T okenism—Does not serve the
need of women” on the government publication “The Functions and Services of the
Women’s Bureau,” and “RS.” on a policy publication detailing approaches to sex
education to address teen pregnancy rates. However, such rhetorical activity, while it may
lead to change, is not typically theorized about in scholarship on activist organizations.
Yet, in doing this archival research, I began to hear stories of the everyday,
mundane details that constitute the rhetoric of organizations. Although the archival
collection is comprised of much of these details, they are frequently omitted in our
historicizing on the CFMN, or historicizing in general. I imagine that part of this
omission stems fi'om Chicanas’ heuristics for production that account for experience,
which may focus on a coming to critical consciousness. I imagine that many of us in the
humanities employ heuristics that similarly historicize the rhetorical production of
individuals as the progenitor of action and change—a very romantic notion of the rhetor
and author. This individualized account may be coupled with an incomplete or perhaps

biased notion of rhetorical change as happening in exciting performances, what I can only

108

 

call “obvious rhetoric happening.” It is through these heuristics that we set the stage for
certain stories to be told, while others are not.

But, change is often achieved through subtle shifts in behind the scenes practices
that in order to be recognized require adopting different heuristics. I believe this is
especially true for groups like Chicanas who, in enacting a differential consciousness,
utilize our experience as constructed as non-actors in the world of this “obvious rhetoric,”
or what we might label as “public rhetorics,” as if to denote that there is something
inherently accessible about such spaces. In other words, being a Chicana means
strategically responding to constructions of Latina/Mexican women as arhetorical in these
public and institutional spaces. As many scholars have demonstrated, the ability to
participate in these spaces, or to determining the problems at hand that are solved or
debated in these spaces, are historically not realizable for everyone. The inaccessibility of
such spaces has very real and material consequences. This speaks to the necessity that
prompted the CFMN to act for employment training, and to act in a way that
demonstrated a tactical rhetoric of connectivity.

Case Study: “Spanish origin persons are included in the white population!
CE T A/Monpower and Employee T raining Programs

..just recently, in looking, for example, at publications that the Employment Development
of the State of California puts out, over I 50 publications for this past year, only three or
four had any kind of statistics relating to minorities period. And some of those didn ’t even
have statistics for minority females. 1 ask you, how can ojob training program such as
CE T A, such as the Job T raining Partnership Act be developed around the needs of these
women when we don ’t even know what they are. What are their characteristics?
--Maria Rodriguez, MALDEF attorney and collaborator with the CFMN,
Testimony before the California Legislature Senate Committee
on Health and Welfare and Assembly Human Services Committee,
“In the matter of: The feminization of poverty”

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In the above epigraph, taken from a document in the CFMN files, Maria
Rodriguez65 alluded to another vexing rhetorical problem that Chicana existed to address:
a historical erasure of the experiences of minority women in employment data as
manifested in a lack of statistical data. In turn, this altered the ontology of what
“minority women” can be and do. To be more specific, as you will see in the following
case study of the CFMN’ s involvement with employment training programs, this absence
of statistical evidence of the experience of “minority women” resulted in a lack federal
fitnding for employee training programs for “minority women” because an exigency had
yet to be established. The CFMN and their partner organizations existed to redress such
absence.

As with the rhetoric of the NOW document in Chapter 3, in the following case
study of the CFMN’ s involvement with employment training programs, we see that
Chicana rhetoric builds on experience from living in the world and works connectively.
The CFMN members made visible the physical reality of their lives, which thereby
shaped the public discourse on employment. These interventions took place though the
invention of public issues, in debates about defining the problems at hand, and through
strategic behind the scenes work that slowly redressed the physical absence of Chicanas
in public spaces. Their strategic complexities are made visible when we follow the less
public rhetorical acts and redirect our attention to the connective work that happened

internally.

 

65 The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) worked with the CFMN on
several issues, including filing the lawsuit against the forced sterilization of poor women of color during the
1970’s in Madrigal v Quilligan.

llO

 

To tell the story about the CFMV ’s involvement in employment training
initiatives, I am going to set up three scenes for you“. To construct each scene, I did not
adhere to a strict linear chronology; instead I drew upon documents that were included in
the collection and connected them thematically. Scene one provides some context,
exigency if you will, for pursuing employment training as a Chicana organization. This
scene relays the way that being such an organization meant inventing the issue to begin
with. Scene two also provides some context and it relays the “crisis” of this moment for
the CFMN. In scene two I focus on a representative sample of texts and actions that are
more public and involve what would normally be considered typical for a rhetoric scholar
to study. In other words, I examine the activist performances that are externally focused
and attempt to respond to misconstructions of Chicana identity. Several of the documents
I draw upon in this scene have been written about and historicized in Chicana studies.
Scene three follows a different story that happens as the time as the first two scenes.
While the CFMN continued a more public strategy to address an issue, at the same time
they enacted a rhetorical knowing of how to work strategically to address the source of
the contention itself. This is the scene in which I see evidence of differential
consciousness in action.

Scene One:
Chicanos Need Employment Training: Creating a Problem at Hand

During the 1970’s, Chicana identity becomes more widely circulated; its
emergence and circulation is a response to the realization that there is a lack of

experiential stories told that have real consequences. At the same time, there was a

 

66 It should be noted that I have constructed this story based on the archival research only. Therefore, as
with any story of history, this is constructed by the documents the CFMN included; in other words, this is a
historiography, with an emphasis on the “ography.”

lll

growmg need for employment training programs to be created in the country, with a push
to train workers in the skilled trades. Prior to the inception of the Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act (CETA) the Department of Labor begins collecting and
distributing statistics on the employment needs of their populace. In their needs
assessment, the Department of Labor noted in fine print in their report, that “Hispanic
populations are included in the white population” (as cited in Flores, “Speech”). As
Maria Rodriguez pointed out in her testimony that I used to introduce this case study, the
experiences of Hispanic populations, and more particularly of Latina women, were not
being specified in the data collection and reporting on employment training programs.
According to the CFMN, having their lives collapsed within a category of people who are
not visibly or linguistically marked in the same way meant that their concerns were not
seen as issues. As a result, a need, or a problem, of the availability of jobs or barriers to
securing jobs was not seen as a problem for Latinas because their experiences were not
accounted for in data collection. Materially, without these statistics the CFMN was
unable to obtain federal funding without an identified need.

Chicanas affiliated with the newly formed CFMN recognized a need to tell stories
about accessing employment for their own communities. They knew they had to respond
to a historical absence of numerical accounting, with the hopes to be able to later redress
the issues that they would reveal with their own data collection specific to their
communities. In other words they needed to invent a problem that seemingly did not
exist. The CFMN made the invention of this problem part of their organization’s mission,

which in turn built a trajectory for the organization.

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As such, the CFMN decided to conduct their own needs assessment that targeted
Latina women. Included in the CFMN files is this lengthy questionnaire dated April 1 1,
1972. The questionnaire included, amongst others, questions about children (when born
and how many); about marital and employment status; formal education received; current
childcare arrangement; if the respondent had dropped out of school and the reasons for
this; past participation in a job training program and the success of this participation;
interests in receiving training and in what field (Mexican/Chicana women’s survey). Now
these questions were very strategic—they asked about their experiences accessing
employment and being employed. They asked about their lives holistically—as women,
as mothers, and as wage earners. From their needs assessment, they created two related
physical centers that were affiliated with the CFMN: the Chicana Service Action Center
(CSAC) and El Centro de Nifios, a bilingual and bicultural childcare center.

As I explained in previous chapters, The Chicana Service Action Center“,
founded in 1972, is an organization with a physical location in Lost Angeles. In its
earliest iteration, on paper the CSAC was a project of the CFMN, but in its operation was
presumably, the CFMN until it later split into a separate entity due to disagreements
between staff and board members, and the realization that the center would best exist on
its own. Although it became a separate entity, a relationship persisted due to shared
people, and historically because the CSAC files are part of the CFMN archival

collection“.

 

67 The CSAC still operates in Los Angeles. Researching this entity as a physical manifestation or product
of Chicana rhetoric, and its practices that are developed to provide culturally appropriate employment and
education services, would be an interesting project on its own right, especially as part of and responsive to
a particular geographic place.

68 Because there is such a significant overlap and sharing of resources (including peOpIe) between the
CSAC and the CFMN during this time period, it is difficult to distinguish boundaries between the

113

 

As a result of building these two centers, the CFMN were able to talk to the
clients these two centers served. They listened to women relay stories about prevalent
assumptions that were effecting members of their communities to obtain employment:
one was that the model utilized by the employment training services that were available
which were presumably accessible to all, were really geared toward Anglos and more
frequently, Anglo men. For example, when accessing employee training, women in their
community were being referred to secretarial and office work—which posed a problem
for some monolingual and/or bilingual women as it relied on particular language use and
on unspoken cultural norms about office behavior.

Further, the only apprenticeship training programs that paid apprentices were in
the skilled trades—carpentry, plumbing and so forth. As former CSAC director Francisca
Flores pointed out in a later letter to an Edna Olivia, a research associate at the University
of Texas, that the clients they worked with at the CSAC were unable to access the
apprenticeship programs that were federally or state funded. Flores wrote, “these
programs are restrictive and ‘controlled’ by the employers hiring the persons (men or
women) that are eligible to be trained by the unions in the various industries. It cannot
honestly be said that the unions are waiting breathlessly to receive women into the
various crafts” (1 ). In this same letter, she shared some startling statistics on women in
the Department of Labor sponsored programs: “Total number of women in California

Apprenticeship Program as of January 1980 is 4.1%. Hispanic and Black women, each

 

organizations, and therefore, the locus of rhetorical action. In addition, the leaders appeared to intentionally
elect to speak on behalf of one of organizations based on an awareness of ethos and audience. Whenever
these boundaries are made clear, I will use the appropriate organizational attribution; however, when the
boundaries are not made clear I will use CSAC as the identifier when it is clear that the physical
employment-training center is being discussed; everything else will be identified as the CFMN.

114

group, constitute .004%. Total number of minority women in this program are .008+%!
(2 of 3)”.

Accessing these apprenticeships were proving to be impossible for women in
general. This was compounded by the very fact that Latina women needed paid
employment training was not even considered an issue because of the stereotypical
construction of Latina women. As CFMN representatives pointed out in their publication
“Chicanas and the Labor Force,” that unlike the construction of Latina women as the
submissive housewife being supported (and controlled) by her Machismo husband, that
many of the women they saw were single heads of household. In a subsequent lawsuit
filed by MALDEF, government intake forms used for tracking labor statistics did not
even permit women to list themselves as heads of households (as cited in “CETA: An
Economic Tool for Chicanas”). As was the case with the Department of Labor data
collection that enveloped the Hispanic population into the White population, intake forms
used in employment training programs prevented a reality to be told that women, and
more precisely, minority women, faced as they sought employment.

For example, in a later given testimony at a Department of Industrial Relations
Fair Employment Practice Commission hearing, F rancisca Flores responded to guidelines
the Department intended to implement to remedy sex discrimination. Flores argued that
the guidelines did not address the institutional myopia on employment as only about
labor: “I stand before you to contend that the employment discrimination which exists

toward women, particularly Mexican and Chicana, will not necessarily be affected solely

 

69 Although almost a decade after the CFMN and the CSAC began working to address employment issues,
I think the numbers are telling. Flores also must find the statistics to be shocking, as evidenced by the
exclamation mark. We can only surmise how much lower the numbers would have been in the early
1970’s.

115

by these guidelines because discrimination affecting employment practices begins at the
institutional level which discriminate against our women when they fail to prepare and
train the bicultural child equally. This inequality has been systematically practiced, as
shown, year after year, by the low reading ability of children living in East Los Angeles
and the high rate of high school dropouts” (l ). Attached to this presentation were various
newspaper clippings that discussed high drop out rates in East Los Angeles schools.
What the CSAC and the CFMN did then was to shift an invisible issue in
institutional discourse on employment into existence due to a lack of statistics. These
findings were also presented by Yolanda Nava to the California Commission on the
Status of Women, “The Chicana and Employment: Needs Analysis and Recommendation
for Legislation.” In this document, the CFMN identified a disjuncture between a
reductive stereotype and construction of Latina women and the reality that many Latina
women were working outside of the home. The CFMN and the CSAC as organizations
were being built around the contention that employment statistics did not even include
information on women and minorities (let alone minority women); secondly, that training
programs did not make available “non traditional” jobs to women in general that would
allow for large number of Latina women who were heads of household to support
themselves on one wage; and thirdly, that training programs geared toward women did

not factor in language or cultural differences or expectations in workplace settings”. In

 

70 It is important to note that the CFMN/CSAC also explained the difference between an Anglo feminist
approach to employment counseling, and that developed by and for Chicanas. In “Employment Counseling
and the Chicana,” CF MN leader Yolanda Nava outlined this difference. She explained that the CSAC built
transitional steps for employment training (i.e. place in small oflices where Spanish is spoken), and
addressed other issues like family planning. One example was mothers of some of the young women they
worked with indicated to the CSAC staff that they were not comfortable talking about family planning but
said they were fine with the CSAC employment counselors discussing it with their daughters as long as

116

response then the CFMN created a public problem through their data collection, and by
writing about these research findings in various reports. As a result, they garnered the
ability to argue for federal funding.
Scene Two:
Enter the Comprehensive Employment and T raining Act (CE TA): 0r, Now we have a
Difi’erent Problem

The CFMN then, effectively created a public problem at hand: that Latinas were
employed outside of the home and needed to access employee training programs. Alas,
the problem at hand shifted. In 1973, the Federal government passed the Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act to provide funds for employment training programs as
well as job opportunities in the public sector. The implementation of the CETA Act
opened up the ability to have a discussion about employment training, as well as
available funding to start to collect statistics more broadly. The CFMN acted on this
exigency by submitting a request for funding for a special survey of female, Spanish
speaking participants in programs authorized under CETA. On the back of a letter in
response to their request, a CFMN member left a record of their research and action plan:
“1. get L.A. statistics on monolingual women who work in L.A./on welfare/heads of
households 2. on some groups who have limited English who need ESL 3. US. school
young women—poor language skills/to identify/outreach/recruit/refer/and/or/train—one
year/place on jo ” (Note on back of letter to Pierce Quinlan).

Using this research and action plan, the CSAC secured Department of Labor contract

#4047-06. One purpose of the contract was to collect statistics on female-Spanish

speaking participants in CETA funded programs, specifically ones administered by the

 

they were able to “use discretion.” In other words, employment training for Chicanas was much more
expansively addressed by the CSAC (Encuentro F emenil)

117

Manpower project“. The CSAC and CFMN shared these statistics in multiple texts—
such as presentations making legislative recommendations at legislative hearings, and
booklets, as well as in the well known and reprinted presentation: “The Needs of the
Spanish Speaking Mujer in Woman-Manpower Training Programs.” Anna Nieto Gomez
delivered a version of this report as a presentation at a Manpower symposium. Gomez
began her presentation of this report by stating that the initiative was brought by women
attending the Manpower seminar in response to the fact that the “federal programs are
only sensitive to minority groups or to women, it was felt that the needs and issues of
Spanish speaking women have not been addressed” (1 ). If women are addressed, Gomez
claimed, it was only along a white/black breakdown, without considerations for other
minority women. Accordingly, Gomez called for further research to study the
“socioeconomic factors related to the Spanish Speaking women in the labor market” and
to develop effective policy that included utilizing community resources (1). Gomez
pointed out that many of the training programs developed by Manpower required little
English speaking abilities, such as in the skilled trades. As such, Gomez posited that it
would make sense to create bilingual and bicultural curriculum to train women in
traditional and non traditional jobs for women, since, given their statistics, there was a
“heavy concentration of Spanish speaking women” in “low-paying traditional jobs” that
require little or no English speaking language abilities (2).

What Gomez subtly made apparent was the interesting “logic” of the Manpower
training programs. If most of the programs did not require English-speaking abilities,

then why don’t they use bilingual trainers? Also, the jobs that these women were able to

 

71 The Manpower project was an employment staffing and job training provider that received federal
CETA funding in the 1970’s.

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access were interestingly paid a lot less than the traditionally male jobs that required the
similar level of English speaking abilities. Thusly, Gomez argued, it would behoove the
Manpower project—a project dedicated to providing employment training for everyone
to improve their lives—“ to train and/or upgrade monolingual women into both
traditional and non-traditional jobs for women” (2).

In addition to distributing statistics and recommendation to government agencies,
another purpose of the CFMN’ s Department of Labor contract was to recruit women
“through personal contacts, clients who came in [and] referred neighbors” as well as
using their connections with other community organizations and Spanish oriented media,
to participate in a pilot program (Department of Labor Contract). As described in her
presentation to the Manpower project, the pilot program would create
“bilingual/bicultural Spanish speaking, self-development program designed to increase
positive attitudes towards women in the labor force and to also expose myths of working
women as well as identify the socio-economic importance of women’s roles in society”
(Gomez 3). This program would approach employment training for Chicanas holistically,
meaning that they would include, among other things, a staff of bilingual trainers, access
to bicultural child care, vocational training in the trades, communication skills
development, and counseling for families and co-workers to facilitate their understanding
of the “cultural and economic work patterns of the Spanish Speaking woman” (Gomez 6).

Using the data from their own research and the recommendations they made to
the Manpower project, the CSAC ran a pilot program in which they provided culturally
appropriate training to meet the needs of Chicanas. The results of their pilot program was

that 46% of the women they worked with were placed; 18% were pending placement in

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jobs or training programs; 9% were referred to agencies; 19% of the cases were closed,
and 8% were still pending (MAPC proposal). The CSAC sent the evaluation of their pilot
program and the statistics that established the success rates of their program to the local
Manpower Area Planning Council along with a request for funding through the CETA
ACT to have culturally appropriate trainers given the identified need. In the proposal, the
CSAC/CFMN identified to the planning council that current Manpower employment
training programs did not meet the needs of Chicana women in terms of employment
training: “Skills training and supportive manpower services tailored to the needs of
Chicanas are almost non-existent. A lack of skills, age, testing, stereotypes, racial and sex
discrimination, all contribute to the plight of the Mexican American woman/women”
(MAPC Proposal, “Statement of Problem” iv). The CFMN further contended that the
trainers that CETA funded through the Manpower project that the Chicana Service
Action Center could access for their clients were all Anglo men. Therefore, they applied
for CETA funding from the Los Angeles Manpower Planning Council to work with
Manpower to design employment-training program geared toward Chicanas, using
trainers who could deliver culturally appropriate training.

The result? The CFMN/CSAC were denied further funding”. The reason? Not lack of
success, and not inability to establish a need (what used to be the problem). Rather, the
Manpower Council denied them funding because the term Chicana was deemed
“discriminatory.” The Council argued that because the CSAC identified Chicanas as the

community they would be serving, and that they were operating as a Chicano Service

 

72 The CFMN were welcomed to access to use the job trainers provided by the Manpower program—these
trainers, CFMN charged, were all white men. Further, access to job trainers alone would not
comprehensively address all the web of conditions that mediated access to employment for Chicanas.

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Action Center, that they could not give them funding because they were discriminating
against other groups.

A flurry of rhetorical activity ensued. Testimonies at various government committees,
and a general public outcry by the CFMN and CSAC took place: much of this in public
hearings, and others in the front-page editorials of their newsletters". In one newsletter
column titled “A Rose by any other Name. . .74” CSAC director Francisca Flores shared
with her reading audience that the Manpower board felt the use of the term Chicana was
discriminatory. She wrote that at a later meeting with Manpower’s appeals committee
they expounded on their decision stating that their proposal only “singles out Mexican
women to be served. . .They said, fmthermore, the CSAC proposal was fimflsfi”
(emphasis in the original, 1). What is interesting here is that according to the article, the
CSAC and CFMN explained to the commission that 80% of the people in their
geographic neighborhood were Mexican American or Chicano so they were reflecting the
background of people who live in the area. In rebuttal, the Manpower Council committee
pointed out that Anglos also lived in the surrounding area and were thusly being
discriminated against. Therefore, Flores wrote, “With that little stroke of statistical genius
the CSAC contention was dismissed” (1).

Whereas before the Anglo population was previously deemed the universal norm to
collect statistics on their employment needs—and it was statistically sound to subsume

Hispanic populations in the white population, the Anglo population were pulled out as the

 

73 See Flores’ testimonies “Joint Committee on Legal Equality” and “Regarding Proposed Guidelines for
the California Fair Employment Practices Commission on Sex Discrimination,” as well as CSAC published
booklet titled “Chicana Status and Concerns,” as just a couple of moments where these issues were
explicitly or implicitly discussed.

74 I must comment on the title of this article. There is a double meaning: first, that the naming of Chicana
should matter less than the realities of the community they are working with; but, Flores knew that the
naming had everything to do with it.

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population being excluded. We can assume based on histories of controlling access in
public spaces through details like the definition of who receives federal funding and
based on what criteria—oftentimes found in the small typeface of government forms and
other professional writing documents—that the implicit issue was about not wanting to
give money specifically to the organization because of the people they served. While the
training programs funded by the government up until that point were in fact exclusionary
and catered to English speaking Anglo males as the CFMN had proven, they appeared to
be inclusive, unmarked and cohered to the govemment’s guidelines.

In response, the CSAC and CFMN wrote appeals to representatives in Sacramento
with the claim that traditional Manpower training programs were not prepared to
effectively train bilingual women, particularly in the skilled trades, that Chicana was not
discriminatory, and the naming was not as relevant as the actual services provided. At
some point, it is noted that the CSAC employed the ACLU to work on their behalf.
Included in the archives are various letters written by the ACLU and publicly presented
to government officials, in which they argued that the Manpower committee had a
“mistaken notion of discrimination.” In one letter they wrote that if “if such legally
erroneous and uninformed view were prevalent among the members of your council,
serious damage could be done to the Los Angeles County participation in the
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act” (Ripston, l of 2).

Further, the CSAC asked the CFMN members and supporters to attend CETA related
meetings whenever possible (Letter to Comision Femenil Members”). In another

newsletter column titled “Sequel” Francisca Flores details one such meeting with the city

 

75 Sent internally December 2, 1974.

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of Los Angeles to discuss their denial of funding from the city Manpower Advisory
Board. According to Flores, the majority of this meeting was spent discussing
“terminology” and not the reasons why they were denied funding. At these meetings then
the definition—or perhaps more accurately, the signification— of Chicana, and of
discrimination, continued to be a source of contention. In other words, consensus over the
meaning of Chicana, or what constituted the actual problem at hand, could not be
reached.

Scene Three:
A Different Strategy to the Problem at Hand

Now, it is not clear to me, based on my archival research, if the aforementioned
lawsuits filed were successful, or if the public debates were resolved about the meaning
of Chicana and if it was discriminatory, or what constitutes a discriminatory term to
begin with. To be honest, I am not interested in following their outcomes. Because what
we do know is that something shifts—we see it in the fact that the CFMN have in their
records receipt of CETA funding received after having been denied it because of the
usage of “Chicana.” To see this though, as a researcher, I had to adopt a different
methodological heuristic. What I did was turn away from following the actions of the
individual and the exciting rhetorical performances to notice the behind the scenes
connective work of the CFMN that eventually un-does the public problem at hand. This
connective work, I argue, displays a type of knowing that Sandoval articulates as the
differential: a knowing of how one is read as a Chicana and an ability to respond in a way
to undermine power configurations.

Betwixt the rhetorical activity mentioned that is documented in the public arena, it

becomes apparent in the collection that the CFMN employed a different type of strategy:

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to circumvent the issue of the term Chicana to begin with. This work happened less
publicly and more in the nuances of their organizational work. In a 1972 press release
fiom the Women’s Bureau of Labor about the secretary of labor working to open up jobs
to women, names of representatives are listed. The list includes the name of one woman
with a perhaps visibly Latina name. The name is underlined—Carmen Maymi—with a
phone number written next to it (“Brennan Pledges”). A few months later, a letter is sent
from Yolanda Nava of the CSAC and CFMN to Carmen Maymi. The letter appears to be
a follow up to a conversation they have had. In the letter, Nava inquired again whether
the CFIWV can have input on the “above matter” (presumably the Bureau of Labor
working to increase employment opportunities for women). She also asked about the
chances for getting a Chicana appointed to one of their boards.

At the end of the letter Nava includes a “CC”——to the Secretary of the Department
of Labor along with a note (for Mayrni to also read) which states that she just wanted to
make sure that their office had statistics with the numbers of Mexican and Latina women
to demonstrate why they should have representatives on their board (November 2 Letter).
A very tactical way I think of pointing out the absence of Mexican and Latina women on
the board, and then alluding that this absence must be an ill informed decision due to a
lack of research on their part. Because, surely if they knew the numbers, someone would
have been appointed.

We can infer the effectiveness of such a not-so-subtle hint by a later letter fi'om
Yolanda Nava to Alan Cranston, forwarding resumes of women to appoint to the
Women’s Advisory Committee to the Department of Labor, and an additional letter sent

the following week to a Pamela Faust of the Commission on the Status of Women with

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the resumes of 17 qualified Chicanas to recommend for appointment (August 30 and
September 1 Letters). There are several other examples of such work in the archival
collection—of newspaper clippings reporting on various government happenings or
issues related to employment76 to reports fiom US Department of Labor. Many of these
documents include some kind of notation of rhetorical activity—names underlined in
newspaper articles, stars next to names, someone has written, “call.”

Some of these connections are visibly recorded in memos and letters sent that
were copied and included in the CFMN archival collection; others were not. We can
however surmise their effectiveness. After being denied funding from Manpower, an
internal memo was sent between the CSAC and CFMN board members. In the memo, the
board members raised questions about the members of the Manpower Area Planning
Council Board of Directors”. In this memo, the board asked about the composite of the
Manpower Council, specifically in regards to the selection process and who made the
selections. The purpose of this memo was to begin to strategize within their organization.
Publicly they were continuing their outcries in response to being deemed discriminatory;
inwardly they were developing a plan that worked at the foundations of the Manpower
Council.

Following this internal strategizing, the CFMN sent a letter to Carlotta Mellon of
the California State Govemor’s office. Mellon was apparently in a position to

recommend people for appointment to government boards, including the boards that

 

76 One such example was a newspaper article that the CFIlflV had cut out from the Minneapolis Tribune.
The article, “Women’s Rebellion Against ‘Dick and Jane’” described a research study conducted by the
Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL) of WACO Texas. The results of the study showed that minority
women were being trained to be maids and waitresses in their high school home economics. The names of
the WEAL members that are mentioned in the article are underlined.

77 Nov. 1974, “Memorandum re: Refunding of the Chicana Service Action Service a project of the
Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional.”

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neglected to include statistics of Mexican/Latinos in their accounting, and including those
that determined firnding requirements for employment issues. In response, Mellon sent a
memo to the CFMN. In it, Mellon summarized a discussion she had with the Govemor’s
office on behalf of the CFMN. She stated that there was “a commitment to bring many
Chicanas into government” and to do this they “wanted to receive resumes so that we
could consider Chicanas for appointment.” Furthermore, Mellon wrote that she also “had
receive[d] loud and clear their [the CFMN’ s] message of retaining Chicanas in their
existing positions and that if any were to be replaced it would be with other Chicanas”
(3).

It should be noted that the people the CFMN contact are not the actual elected
official, or the chairs of these committees; rather they are more often than not the
assistants or secretaries to the officials. The assistants were the people responsible for
previewing the mail and forwarding necessary mail—including resumes—up the chain of
command. What the CFMN and CSAC leaders did was to develop relationships with
these people who then would work as allies on their behalf. Through this relationship
they were able to get government officials to agree to not only appoint Chicanas to
boards, but if any current Chicanas were already on government boards, should they need
to be replaced, it would only be with other Chicanas which ensured Chicana
representation.

With this strategy in play, there is evidence of later notes sent from Mellon to then
CFMN president Chris Fuentes thanking her for recommendations for appointments to a
range of government boards. One board mentioned is the California Employment

Training Act Council, the very group who funded the Manpower Planning Area Council,

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and the same Council that denied funding to the CFMN for being discriminatory. We
then see in an editorial for the Chicana Service Action Center newsletter a
congratulations to Corinne Sanchez, Administrative Assistant to the CSAC, for being
appointed to the board—and she will not be the last Chicana from the CSAC or the
CFMN to gain access to the CETA council”. In other words, these Chicanas strategically
gained access to the board governing the allotment of CETA funds. Tellingly, CETA
funding is later reinstated to the CFMN. In a Sept/Oct newsletter column, it is noted,
“[o]n October 15, 1975, the Chicana Service Action Center, Inc. met with the State
Manpower Council to officially sign the state CETA contract which has been awarded
them” (“Chicana Center Signs State Contract”). This funding reinstatement happened
even without them changing their name from a Chicana Action Center. The members of
the CFMN must have known that an agreement over the definition of Chicana could not
be reached because of a historical absence of Chicana women on these government
boards. Instead of arguing about whether “Chicana” is exclusionary, these Chicanas
worked connectively get appointed to the boards, thereby ascertaining power to actually
change the terrain of the discussion. The result is that they effectively made an issue
(exclusionary terminology) a non-issue.

Their strategies for accomplishing this happened within their organization and
between people and can be realized through paying attention to the marginalia—a type of
rhetorical activity that is made evident through the affordances of archival work. During

these less public moves, moves that are not visible in any other recounting of this issue

 

78 In fact, in May 1975, Francisca Flores was appointed as a chairperson for the newly formed Chicana
Coalition’s Manpower Committee (CSAC Newsletter).

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other than through the archives, these Chicanas operated with government officials, to
imbue spaces with Chicana ideology and Chicana presence so that Chicana became an
active part of the policy making and makers. What is clear is that, while they may have
lost the public battles of employment training programs, Chicana as a point of contention
has less of a rhetorical impact in regards to access to CETA funding. This was achieved
fi'om a different approach to activism, through practices that are perhaps equally explicit
but operated in less public spaces. The Chicanas of the CSAC and the CFMN began to
focus on leadership development, and by doing so, placed other Chicanas or like-minded
people on the boards and commissions that made decisions that had real impacts on
whether or not the CSAC and CFMN could provide the services the knew were vital to
their community.
Conclusion

Such strategizing evidenced in the CFMN’ 5 work to address employment training
for Chicanas can be understood as a way of knowing and acting that emerged from a
positionality that was configured as disempowered in institutions. But, the CFMN and
CSAC were also aware that they had to be able to access govermnent fimding for their
services. Knowing that a shared understanding of what the actual problem was that
needed to be addressed could not be reached, the CFMN had to enact what Sandoval
might identify as differential consciousness, by adopting a movement to respond to the
situation at hand. To do this, the CFMN must have had an astute awareness of the way
that Chicana, and their Chicana selves, were being read in the eyes of those on
government boards; they then must have also had an awareness of what would be an

impossible and a more probable approach to this disjuncture between definitions of

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Chicana. To respond in a way that would allow them to access the funding they needed,
out of necessity the CFMN had to be adaptable and work internally in their organization
and connectively between people in institutions.

This is not to say that the CFMV and CSAC stopped their public protestations
against the discrimination claims, or that their testimonies and fiery speeches did not
continue to be part of their Chicana activist repertoire. Rather, they developed a rhetoric
that was at once responsive and effectual; public and internal; activist and institutional.
And they effectively made these seeming contradictions productive as it worked toward
an end of garnering federal funding to redress an absence of employment training
programs for Chicanas, as well as an absence of Chicanas on federal and state labor
boards. In other words, to quote Yolanda Nava of the CFMN again, they were indeed
“damn pragmatic.” Similar then to the way that we saw particular practices of the CFMN
emerging from experiences of being constructed as non actors in a movement (Chapter
2), and as historically not organizing (Chapter 3), we see a Chicana rhetoric emerging in
an organization through a recognition that their realities were not included in public
discourse on employment. In sum, these practices are evident of a Chicana subjectivity as
instantiated in an organization: they are built from experience, responsive, tactical and
they incite change.

Further, for rhetoric researchers, what this chapter demonstrated is that the CFMN
altered practices marked by the individual as the locus of rhetorical action who seeks to
persuade an audience, to a connective movement between people. While the testimonies
they gave at various hearings were presumably given on behalf of a community, as a

rhetorical scene they are enacted as an individual performance act of persuasion. In fact,

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many of the testimonies I cited in this chapter are circulated and reprinted in collections

under the name of the individual and not under the name of the organization (Alma

 

Garcia). Thusly, while included in the description that these individuals were part of an
organization, it is still the individual who is essentially historicized. By contrast, these
letters and other acts of connectivity and strategizing, which also include CFMN
members doing things like stapling together newspaper articles with speeches, are a type
of rhetorical activity that also warrants attention when studying rhetoric and
organizations: despite the fact that it not seem exciting or all that revolutionary, this
strategic activity reflects a rhetorical ability to “read the current situation of power” and
respond in a way that “pushes” these configurations (Sandoval 60).

To return to the opening scene of this chapter, this rhetorical activity is not
considered to be Chicana, or I would imagine, to be considered rhetoric—or rhetoric
enough to study. The sentiment of the faculty member in the opening scene I believe
indicates that to be Chicana, and more precisely, to be revolutionary, it must look a
certain way, and operate in particular spaces. In a way, this creates a reductive binary
between institutions and activist organization that is based on a static subject and space,
which precisely counters a notion of tactical know how. Therefore, I argue that this view
is limiting and limits the expansiveness of what it has meant to be and act as a Chicana.
Further, as a scholar, it would be irresponsible of me to not pay attention to the care the
CFMN took to construct Chicana rhetoric as it is realized in their organization as
including a sawy awareness of the way that institutions work and how change can be
achieved when working as an organization. Had I only sought out the performances of

Chicana rhetoric that seemed Chicana, or activist, I would have overlooked a significant

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portion of what the CFMN archived, and what they considered to be an important part of
what it meant for them to become and act as a Chicana organization, which included
making connections, often within institutions.

Tellingly, then, these less visible practices of connective work are not included in
discussions of what it means to be a Chicana, or to do rhetoric from a particular
positionality. Yet, these acts of connecting with people whom they assmne, or hope, to
share an understanding of their experiences—who share at the very least an appreciation
of the consequences of lives represented—are integral to Chicana rhetoric. What we learn
fiom this is that what has perhaps been naturalized methodologically in our field
produces certain landscapes where some peoples rhetorics, like Chicanas, may not be
visible in all of its complexities; or other stories, perhaps less exciting, less romantic,
remain part of the invisible backdrop to the more recognizable action. Building on this
argument about our methodological heuristics we employ in Rhetoric and Composition,
in the next chapter I outline the implications for my dissertation research, primarily in
terms of methodology. In other words, what Chicana rhetoric teaches us about rhetoric—

and how we study it—in the world.

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Chapter 5
Chicana Rhetoric: Implications for Rhetoric and Composition

Our strategy is how we cope—how we measure and weigh what is to be said and when,

what is to be done and how, and to whom and to whom and to whom...
Cherrie Moraga, “I Have Dreamed of a Bridge’

9

A Case Study of a Rhetoric Scholar Studying Chicanos

I am in the hotel room for one of my interviews. I described this dissertation
project, and for the most part, as with my other interviews, I focused on the
methodological heuristic. I explained that I was looking at a Chicana feminist
organization. Rather than only closely examine the writing of the Chicanas in individual
documents, I was looking at movement between documents and people, focusing instead
on actions. One of the interviewers turned to me, moving her arm dismissively, as if to
try to wave away her disappointment for my research. Now, she says, I don’t understand
how this is a dissertation about rhetoric. She continued, I mean, you are not examining
language, the language used by the Chicana women”. I respond with my definition of
rhetoric, as being more than just about language. She appeared to have already made up
her mind as her eyes shifted away to look out at the view of the city fi'om the hotel
window. For that matter, she continued, I do not see how this rhetoric is different than

any other rhetoric from other oppressed groups. How is this unique to Chicanas?

 

79 Another comment 1 received was that because I was not being “critical” of the organization that it was
not a rhetoric dissertation. For example, I was asked why I did not talk about the making of the collection
as a political act, with the CFMN making decisions about what to include—or not include. Therefore, I
should have been talking about what they left out of their collection, as well as being “critical” of the
decisions and actions they made. As a researcher, I never felt that it was my job to be critical of the
organization. I am also more interested in what is there, what the CF MN decided was important to include
in the making of their organizational memory. I would never say it is “comprehensive,” but rather, tells a
story worth listening to.

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This final “case study” of Chicana and the signification of Chicana in Rhetoric
studies, leads me to the implications for this research in the field broadly. As the
comments above indicate, Rhetoric studies can be perceived as inextricably bound up
with linguistic analysis of writing. Even though studies have extended the realm of
rhetoric to look at other types of meaning making, the expectations for close textual
analysis still persist. Arguments about the realm and scope of rhetoric as including
meaning making outside of language is becoming commonplace and has been well
articulated by Rhetoric and Composition scholars (see Driskill 2008, Hawhee 2005,
Villanueva 1996, and countless scholars in Computers and Composition such as Kress
2005, Hooks 2003, Hawisher and Sullivan 1999, to name just a few).

What I want to focus on in these comments to this research project is the
expectation for Chicana rhetoric to be unique, or to distinguish it as a rhetorical practice
as separate from others. What this opening scene also demonstrates is that while Chicana
rhetoric is assumedly unique, that its characteristics, or the manner in which we study it,
is narrowly presumed. In other words, when we identify as a scholar who studies Chicana
rhetoric, we (and our research) are constructed with pre-deterrnined significations that
locate this research within a “proper” space or sphere of study. One such articulation is
that studying Chicanas, or Chicana rhetoric, means one studies language. This may stem
from an unspoken expectation that language rights and politics is the space that has been
demarcated for scholars of color as “legitimate”8°.

In response, what I have demonstrated in this dissertation is that there are some

aspects of Chicana rhetoric that are perhaps distinguishable from other rhetorics. As a

 

80 It is not my intention to minimize the importance and value of scholarship and teaching that scholars by
color on language rights and politics that have been groundbreaking and foundational.

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rhetoric, it is born fi'om exigencies, among other things, of being constructed as
ineffectual or invisible that is particular to a Chicana lived experience. Because it is a
self-selected identity, it is epistemic in a way that shapes its rhetoric. Further, as it is a
fairly recently emergent identity, there is a particular compulsion to create a history and
memory of Chicana subjectivity. I cannot say that this makes Chicana rhetoric unique, as
much as it is, distinguishable.

The comments the interviewer made in the opening scene also brings me back to
Chapter 1. In Chapter 1, I argued that some rhetorics are interestingly treated as
universally applicable. With this in mind, I want to argue that indeed, Chicana rhetoric
may not be “unique” as it is indicative of a rhetoric that is born from a necessity for
survival. If then, this is a rhetoric shared by other groups, it begs the question of why we
rely on foundational theories to conceptualize the way rhetoric is practiced in the world
that are only applicable to the few. Along with the presumed universality of certain
rhetorics comes the minimization of the applicability of the relevance of Chicana
rhetoric.

In response to these assumptions and articulations, in this final chapter of my
dissertation, I will discuss the implications from this dissertation research investigating
Chicana rhetoric. I will talk about these implications in terms of the heuristics or
terminology we employ for studying rhetoric that did not hold up as applicable or
achievable when studying Chicana rhetoric: namely, stasis theory, history making on the
unit of the individual and identity in professional writing. Although this dissertation did
not have a pedagogical focus, this does not mean that I have not made pedagogical

revisions based on what I have learned from doing this research. Therefore, I include a

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section in which I discuss pedagogical implications, specifically the way that I have
altered my heuristics for course design and practice for the way that students learn about
rhetoric, change and culture. Throughout I will also postulate future research projects that
stem from this disconnect between our theories, and studying the CFMN as a Chicana
organization and an instantiation of Chicana subjectivity.

Implications
Stasis Theory

When I first started writing this dissertation, I tried to employ terminology we
invoke in our field to study rhetoric, and particularly, rhetorics that constitute
organizations working toward change, to understand the CFMN’ s practices. What I found
was that many of our commonplaces did not hold up when studying the rhetoric
employed by the CFMN. One such commonplace is stasis as a realizable and desirable
result of public engagement. Stasis is described as “the basic issues in dispute resulting
from the positions taken by adversaries in a debate” (Conley 1994). Stasis then is an
invention strategy with an expectation that consensus can be reached about the definition
of the issue at hand. However, as theories of invention often go, stasis theory is often not
grounded in a material reality. In other words, there are material and historical conditions
that impact the ability to come to an understanding of the actual problem at hand.

For example, as I detailed in Chapter 2, Chicanas conceived of an absence of
Chicanas in the Anglo dominated feminist movement differently than the way that the
National Organization for Women (N .O.W.) identified and located “the problem.” The
disjuncture in their definition of the problem at hand stemmed from the differently held

constructions of Latina women, with N.O.W. describing Latina women as in need of

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assistance of the N.O.W. organization, and as decidedly in-active rather than conceiving
of the feminist movement itself as accessible to Latina women. In Chapter 4, we saw an
inability to arrive at the actual terms of the debate surrounding the CFMN’ s attempt to
secure funding for their employment training services. To the members of the Manpower
Planning Council, the issue was defined by their seemingly objective funding guidelines
that compelled them to deny the CFMN funding because they identified as a cultural
group and thusly provided services that were being defined as discriminatory. The
Manpower Area Planning Council articulated the issue at hand as a violation of funding
guidelines due to discriminatory practices resultant fiom the use of Chicana to identify
their organization. The CFMN though understood that engaging with the Council to come
to a consensus about the meaning of Chicana would not achieve the result they needed
and thusly took a different approach that led to an eventual undoing of the points of
contention.

By examining the practices of the CFMN as a Chicana organization as they
addressed historical absences and redressed debilitating articulations of Latina/Mexicana
subjectivity, we see that unlike the way Rhetoric and Composition theory might conceive
of stasis as a problem of invention, or how to respond to the problem at hand, that for
some, perhaps coming to a consensus is not only not desirable but is not possible because
of our histories and experiences that create conditions that make stasis an unrealizable
goal. What the CFMN does demonstrate is an ability to use this disjuncture productively
to make an identity, an organization and practices. While consensus may not be desirable
or achievable, this does not mean that it is not productive. In fact, it is this disjuncture

from which Chicana identity is said to emerge: to put it plainly, it is useful. Perhaps then

136

what we need are different vocabulary for imagining the rhetoric of groups that does not
rely on the assumptions that public rhetorics are grounded in; namely consensus building
and access to the processes for doing so. In this way then, we could alter our association
of the rhetoric of groups as necessarily grounded in public rhetorics or Community
Literacy studies.
Heuristics for History and Change

As a result of this dissertation being written as primarily a historiography, much
of what I learned has been about history and history making. Arguably, change is enacted
in the way that history is made, or at least produced by Chicanas. Chicana
historiographers have made tremendous accomplishments in changing history as a
discipline and its reliance on official documents and constructed accounts that make
invisible the acts of particular interpellated subjects (see Emma Perez 1999).
Historiographers like Pérez redirect our attention to examine the interstices in history in
order to make history about subjectivities either not included or are made silent in
traditional historiography. As I demonstrated in Chapter 3, much of what the CFMN
accomplished was making histories, or memories of the conditions from which Chicana
identity and their organization emerged. The CFMN also productively instantiated
Chicanas into history to enable an organizing subjectivity. This attention to and use of
history as vital to Chicana rhetoric behooves us to consider history (and memory) as both
a method and purpose of affiliation.

In addition, I have implicitly argued in this dissertation, that one of the

subj ectivities that are fiequently not included in history—at least in Rhetoric and

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Composition—are groups“. There persists in the methods for historical research and the
way that we do rhetoric history (or at least, how it is chronicled) that compels us
researchers to historicize in a way that we trace rhetoric through the actions of a
particular person.

When researching the CFMN, I could not overlook the way that the emergence of
and survival of this organization depended on the determination, savvy, public presence,
and will of certain individuals in their leadership”. For that matter, I do not think anyone
who has ever been a part of a community organization can deny the role of personality,
and at times celebrity, of certain individuals in impacting the effectiveness of an
organization. And, of course, several of the CFMN leaders were (and are) well known as
activists, academics and public officials. These individuals assumedly had great influence
over the organization and its direction. This is evidenced in the fact that the names of
some of the members were frequently referenced in documents that historicized the
CFMN. Many of the documents that the CFMN ended up including in the archival
collection were written by or about this group of women that played a pivotal role in the
organization. This explains why a lot of the documents I cite seem to be written by some
of the same Chicanas. This also explains why the documents written by these well known
rhetors are the ones that are historicized. The recurrent presence of the names of certain

of the CFMN leaders in the archival collection stemmed from a combination of their

 

81 I want to also touch upon the attention to the mundane as evidenced in marginalia and “small” acts of
rhetoric, like stapling together documents that appear unrelated, as also infrequently attended to in history
making in Rhetoric. My reliance on studying marginalia has made me wonder about digital archival
research, and where we notice this type of work when the affordances of material texts are not available.
82 I should add to this list the visual signification of CFMN members. As Yolanda Nava recounted, she
was often asked to attend certain meetings or to serve as a representative of the CFMN and CSAC because
she did not look radical. On the flip side, some members who more “looked the part” (as Nava put it)
would serve as the representative for other firnctions (V OAHA).

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leadership personality (both negatively and positively), if they were involved during a
volatile or particularly effectual moment in the CFMN’s history or history of the Chicana
movement broadly, or their notoriety as Chicana leaders associated with or apart from the
CFMN as an organization 83.

Following one of these prolific and accomplished writers and orators and
performing a rhetorical analysis of the textual stream left in their activist and political
wakes would have been an appropriate and interesting research endeavor, and one that I
could imagine myself also doing. Such a research project would have coalesced with a
tradition of Rhetoric to historicize around individual people as the progenitor of rhetorical
thought and action. Such a dissertation would also make visible writing by Chicanas that
are in general lesser studied in a field in which scholarship on (and by) Chicanas is
statistically few and far between. However, as I have alluded. to throughout this
dissertation, it is important to study groups and collectives in Rhetoric studies to
understand how change happens, and to redirect our attention from a conceptualization of
the rhetor as a disconnected individual. The latter would bring a type of groundedness
back to rhetorical theory when we remember the exigencies for the development and
deployment of rhetoric.

For Chicanas, studying groups also allows us to see the creation of a Chicana
subjectivity in the collective, and through the articulation of it in practice. We can add to
our understanding of the development of a critical consciousness that we normally see

articulated by the individual and through poetic writing, through descriptive accounts of

 

83 For example, many of the founding leaders, like Yolanda Nava and F rancisca Flores, figure prominently
in the collection. This is also because they appear as some of the early producers and contributors to the
Chicana movement broadly. Other members like Gloria Moreno-Wycoff and Gloria Molina both became

well known as public officials.
l 39

Chicana subjectivity as it is enacted and modeled in collectives. In this instance, I chose
to focus on the making of an organization as an important memory to maintain for
understanding Chicana rhetoric, and more specifically, an important memory to learn
fi'om about how to make change in and through collectives.

Wanting to continue to pay attention to collectives has left me with an interesting
methodological conundrum as I plan my next stages to continue this dissertation research.
A suggestion I have received by audience members when I have shared versions of this
research is to collect oral histories of some of the CFMN members. This makes sense as I
draw upon experiential stories to build a conceptualization of Chicana rhetoric. It also
makes sense given that the CFMN is a relatively recent organization that is still in
existence. There are many questions to ask about the connections that the members saw
between Chicana identity as an epistemic for making the organization and determining
the way it would operate. More importantly, oral history as a methodology has been
discussed as vital as an act of memory making for communities, particularly in response
to traditional academic, disciplinary research methodologies that marginalize story telling
and everyday ways of knowing and acting (see Cruikshank 2002). Oral history
methodology though is not frequently employed by feminist scholars, particularly in
rhetoric studies, which may “stem fi'om implicit assumptions that history lives in the past,
in archival documents, and not in memories and communities” (Monberg 90).

While I intend to follow up with my archival research with oral histories for these
reasons, this leads me to a question about the “unit of analysis” for this methodology.

As there are recorded oral histories of some of the leaders in the CFMN, these oral

histories focus on their coming to a critical consciousness and to a lesser extent with a

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reflection on their personal involvement with the CFMN. The oral histories follow a
trajectory of a life history, where the CFMV is one step in that history. However, I think
these histories are valuable to hear. Oral histories tell us stories about experience that are
“embedded in social life” and also “provid[e] guidelines for understanding” and enacting
change (Cruikshank 13). According to Terese Monberg, “Oral histories also give us a
view into the arena of lived experiences where subjects actively make rhetorical choices,
where categories are created, refused, and negotiated—if we are willing to really listen”
(90). Similar, then, to the way the CFMN archival collection functions as a story to turn
to in order to understand the exigency for Chicana subjectivity and methods for
associative action, oral histories are reflective of shared experiences and they are at the
same time collectively epistemic.

One way to maintain the emphasis on the collective is in the writing and framing
of such narratives. One scholar I plan to turn to in this additional phase of my research as
a model for how to do oral history of a group is Terese Monberg. In her essay “Listening
for Legacies,” Monberg examines the rhetoric of Filipina American Dorothy Cordova,
more specifically her of times behind the scenes work with the Filipino American
National Historical Society (F AHNS). More broadly, Monberg’s research challenges the
methods for recuperating and revisionist work done of feminist historiographers in
Rhetoric and Composition, methods that according to Monberg employ paradigms that
make invisible Asian Pacific women in their accounts (85).

Toward this end, Monberg argues “that while most feminist historiographers in
rhetoric use the term listening, most forms of listening have largely rested in seeing—

seeing women at the podium, seeing women’s texts, seeing women’s words in print

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before they can be heard. But seeing is only one part of the dynamic equation when
listening for/to women’s voices that have been institutionally marginalized in multiple,
intersecting ways” (87). Monberg asserts that our privileging of “sight” leads us to also
privilege “historically significant documents” which renders invisible other activities—or
people for that matter—that perhaps might not be included in archival collections (87 ).
As a response then, Monberg turns to oral history as methodology that enables one to
make sense of “social memory” and to actively negotiate one’s location within and
understanding of histories. While Monberg focuses on Dorothy Cordova though, her
intent is to demonstrate is to demonstrate the way that methodologies enable—or
disable—“ an entire legacy of Asian American women rhetoricians from being hear ”
(85).

Building on Monberg’s study and its implications for oral history as a
methodology for doing research on the rhetoric of groups, in another phase of this study I
intend to do an oral history project of the CFMN. The purpose of this oral history project
will be to hear stories of experience, with an attention to the experience of making an
organization in tandem with the making of an identity. It would also be interesting to hear
stories of the organization as an entity. While I will begin talking with the perhaps more
well known former members, I am especially interested in hearing stories from people
who were not the prolific writers and documenters of the organization. As Monberg
discusses in her oral history project, my interpretation and flaming of the histories would
similarly be written so the focus is not on the individual person per se but read within the
systems of belief that constitute Chicana consciousness coupled with beliefs about

organizations. Although this would be a project of history, I understand this project to

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also be about organization building with implications for the way we study these in our
field.
Research on Organizations and Cultural Identity

At the beginning of this research project, I had not anticipated aligning my work
or its implications with professional writing, or with studies of community organizations.
I saw my work as residing within cultural rhetorics and historiography. Yet, as I
progressed farther along with the data collection and interpretation, it became apparent
that the primary focus of this dissertation was on writing that perhaps we would not
normally associate with cultural rhetoric and identity—organizational writing. What I
find useful in regards to professional writing scholarship is the attention to programmatic
writing, and writing that otherwise be considered “boring” by rhetoric scholars broadly.
Further, professional writing scholars are also obviously studying the rhetoric of groups
and organizations. For these reasons, I have become increasingly interested in further
exploring the implications for this research for professional writing theory in Rhetoric
and Composition.

A trajectory for other iterations of this project is to explore the possible
intersections between studying organizations like the CFMN as part of professional
writing. To study the emergence of organizations often requires that we pay attention to
mundane, programmatic writing. For example, in a note to Francisca Flores, Yolanda
Nava of the CFMN/CSAC wrote:

I think we should pass on this information in the CSAC newsletter. Somehow we

will have to set the men straight on the structure of CFM* (i.e. your intro

yesterday by Frank). No wonder we get into ‘trouble’ when we speak as

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individuals! Thought Saturdays meeting went well and your points about structure

will do alot [sic] to make the by—laws more useful and clear.

In this brief message to Flores, Nava relayed both the tension between acting as a
Chicana (singular) and speaking as an organization, as well as the attention to structures
and other organizational writing as part of the process of becoming as an organization.

While this process can be investigated in organizations broadly, I am interested in
understanding the way that Chicana—as it was expressed, constructed, and signified—
plays a part in this process. For example, in Nava’s remarks about getting into “trouble
for speaking as an individual,” in what ways does this have to do with the use of
collective experience and politic to make their organization? Therefore, a question I have
held and will continue to explore is whether we can trace that being a Chicana shaped
their organizational practices; and simultaneously, the way that being an organization
shaped their Chicana practices and performances. This is a question that can be adapted
to studying any organization that is built upon what could be considered a strategic
essentialism (Pérez 1998), or a tactical and epistemic use of identity to make that
organization. Looking to professional writing theory though, little discussion (if at all)
examines cultural identity as produced through, and producing, organizational writing.

In other words, when identity is discussed in professional writing, it is normally
made manifest in the “worker” or the community member. This focus then is on the
individual as part of a system learning to become as it relates to one’s professional
identity, with frequently a linear trajectory of development (see for example, Schryer et al
2003 and Spoel 2008). Or when cultural identity is discussed, it focuses on intercultural

communication on a global scale (for example, Hunsinger 2006). With this framing, these

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studies place the individual along a projected path of development and assimilation that
often disregards an active production of identity in relation to organizational making.
Frequently, the organization is constructed as predetermining the identity that one fits
into. Culture becomes broadly defined as something to consider when writing for
audiences or when working in and with communities—it is not something we produce
from. On the flip side though, when we talk about cultural identity and tracing its
emergence in writing, we focus on the production of individuals or on the poetic. So,
what I am calling for then is attention to the way cultural identity—or organizations—
reciprocally shape each other. With this mind, I am also interested in studying
organizations that center on identity as their epistemic with a particular attention to
effectiveness and ineffectiveness.

To do this, I want to return to the use of oral history as a possible methodology for
doing such a study, coupled with archival research, for studying professional “writing,”
or rhetoric. Coupling to these approaches I believe could tell complex stories about being
in and becoming through an organization, as well as creating narratives about change and
adaptation—and the reasons for this—in strategizing as an organization grounded in
cultural identity as an epistemic for their practices. Both oral history and studying the
programmatic writing would also relay different tensions inherent in building an
organization around identity, in particular an identity that historically has been realized

4

through poetics and the coming to critical consciousness as a Chicana8 .

Pedagogy

 

84 In this study, I would also like to trace shifts in organizational practice and structure in relation to the
changing beliefs about the usefulness (or not) for identity as an epistemic for an organization.

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When I first imagined my chapter outlines, I did not anticipate including a
discussion of pedagogical implications. As you may have noticed by now, I don’t talk
about teaching anywhere else in this dissertation. But, I want to talk about pedagogy
because I realized, after sharing this project in different moments, that what I learned
from researching this organization not only changes the way I do research, but my
teaching as well. Now, it would probably be expected for me here to talk about the way I
would design a course in terms of content, namely, a course on Chicana rhetoric and
writing. Thinking about the implications for this research in terms of content only though
would belie the very point 1 hope I have made in this dissertation.

Instead, I want to talk about the impact on this course in terms of the way it
changed my theory of a course I have always imagined I would teach, and also in terms
of a learning objective for any courses focused on rhetoric, or organizations.

Before writing this dissertation, I knew I would someday teach a course on Community
Literacy. It was part of my concentration, and in many ways, this dissertation ended up
arguably feeling like it fit squarely in Community Literacy as a sub discipline. After all, I
am looking at the writing of a community-based organization.

However, literacy does not encapsulate the many reasons and ways that people
(and things) affiliate. As I discussed in Chapter 1, and made visible in Chapters 2-4, that
Chicanas of the CFMN affiliated through writing, such as the writing of resolutions,
newsletter writing, and meeting minutes. But they also affiliated through a shared lived
experiences, a similar consciousness about these experiences, and an understanding about
what it means (or at least should mean) to act as Chicana. The affiliation then also

includes memory of experience. This memory, as I have demonstrated in this dissertation,

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is a memory that is in part recorded through written texts, both poetic and programmatic,
and assembled in archival collections. This memory, though, is also felt and embodied.
As Moraga explains this material connection as it is evidenced in the writing of the
women who contribute to This Bridge Called my Back. “The materialism in this book
lives in the flesh of these women’s lives: the exhaustion we feel in our bones at the end of
the day, the fire we feel in our hearts when we are insulted, the knife we feel in our backs
when we are betrayed, the nausea we feel in our bellies when we are afraid, even the
hunger we feel between our hips when we longed to be touched” (“I Have Dreamed of a
Bridge, xviii). It is through this shared memory, a feeling that extends beyond literacy,
through which Chicanas affiliate and act.

My original solution to get outside of the bounds of literacy then was to call such
a course and type of research as community rhetoric. Community rhetoric was a
discursive way to account for the felt, embodied, or actions. Community rhetoric though
still does not encapsulate the type of rhetoric I described in this dissertation. I see two
limitations with the term “community.” First, when the label community is applied it is
usually used to describe an activity, person or space that is decidedly disconnected from
institutions (see Cushman 1998; Grabill 2001 for criticism on this binary). Yet, as we saw
in Chapter 4, Chicana rhetoric operated not through particular spatial boundaries but
instead with movement that intersected and connected these spaces. This movement was
necessary to alter the conditions, oftentimes created by institutional policies that resulted
in the shared lived experiences. Further, community also presumes disconnect from
others who perhaps do not share the similar lived experiences. While there were

boundaries that demarcate who can identify as Chicana, the articulation of this identity as

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an epistemic of responsive to lived conditions and a subjectivity of acting, enabled
connections with other people.

It is for the above reasons that I want to build a course on coalition rhetorics.
Coalition rhetorics I believe would open up discussion and learning to examine internal
strategic use of identity, and at the same time, identity as a way to connect and act with
difference. There are several scholars who have theorized coalition building whose
writings would be usefirl to begin such a course (i.e. Sandoval, Perez, Alcoff, Lugones).
Coalition building as a way to make change is necessary as Moraga cites Goldman at the
beginning of her essay “La Giiera”: “It requires more than personal experience to gain a
philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to
the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives
and experiences our own” (27). Coalition building then would be treated in this class as
rhetoric85 .

What I am interested, then, is helping students to read and build studies in which
we pay attention to the intersections between these movements in their emergences and
development of organizational practices, and traces these practices over space and time in
order to demonstrate that our issues continue as do the communities involved—a living
movement. Likewise, asking students to work to develop frameworks for studying the in
between or the work that happens both internally within the organization and then the
work that builds relationships between organizations and communities—in other words,

how, in tangible and ephemeral ways, are coalitions built between organizations

grounded in a strategic use of cultural identity? So, looking to affinity and coalition

 

85 Jolivette Mecenas is one scholar who has argued for such an approach to studying global movements
and change in our field (2008).

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building is both a debilitation and a transformative potential of a type of rhetorical
essentialism“. Students could examine case studies of coalition rhetorics as well as
partake in their own investigations into the ways that people work across and with
difference. These case studies could include examining similar exigencies from which
identities, organizations and movements are formed.

Let me give you a tangible example. One of the pressing issues that the CFMN
built its trajectory around was the routine sterilization performed on Mexican and
Mexican American women in Los Angeles county hospitals. These women would for
example, go to the hospital to deliver a baby and then would be sterilized then without
consent. If consent was given, it may have been in English, obviously an issue for
monolingual Spanish speaking women. Or perhaps more deceptively and, well just plain
evil, doctors would tell the women that it was reversible, that they were doing a different
type of surgery, or that their husbands had told them to do it. This was a practice of
eugenics, of systematically killing a culture, a people. So, to point out the obvious, there
was a need then for activists to stop this abuse. Out of necessity, this material need
became then one focus of the CFMN. As Jessica Enoch has written about, the CFMN ’s
participation culminated as co-plaintiffs in a well-known lawsuit in 1978 against a Los

Angeles County hospital”.

 

86 I recognize that identity is just one epistemic that has been used for coalition building and thusly other
epistemics like land and space would also be useful to explore.

87 See Enoch’s “Survival Stories: Feminist Historiographic Approaches to Chicana Rhetorics of
Sterilization Abuse.”

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I quote at length from the statement of interest section of the arnicus curiae of the
CFMN and of The Women for Equal Health Care, written in support of plaintiffs-
appellants in the sterilization abuse case #78-3187:

The Comision Femenil Mexicana (Comision) is a non-profit association duly

incorporated under and existing by virtue of the laws of California with offices

located in a number of cities throughout California. Its membership is comprised
primarily of Spanish Speaking Chicanas. A major goal of the organization has
been to focus on issues of important to Mexican American women. Thus the

Comision, whose purposes include protecting the right of its members to quality

health care, is especially concerned about the problem of sterilization abuse. One

of the most significant problems faced by Mexican American and other minority
women is that of sterilization abuse. As part of the Coalition for the Medical

Rights of Women, the participated in the drafting, issuance and implementation of

the informed consent regulations governing sterilization in California. The

Comision was a successful intervener in California Medical Association v.

Lackner, wherein CMA sought to enjoin the state informed consent regulations

 

regarding sterilization. The Cornisién also as a named plaintiff in the case at bar
until the district court failed to certify the class, at which point Comision
withdrew. The instant case raises the issue of whether the plaintiff-appellant
Chicanas, surgically sterilized at the USC-Los Angeles Medical Center, were
sterilized in a manner which contravened their rights secured by the United States

Constitution and applicable federal statutes and regulations. The resolution of this

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important issue will have significant impact on the issue of informed consent and

sterilization of minority women. (1 , italics added)

Their participation in this cause and legal battle created notoriety for their organization
and in part built a strong foundation for their organization. This was a tangible and
pressing issue around which people could become involved and incited activity. What I
want to draw your attention to are the two parts that I italicized in the above statement.
While this particular case was about the sterilization of specifically Mexican women in
Los Angeles County, there is a subtle allusion and connection to other minority women
who were also being sterilized.

What is interesting to note, then, is that similar groups were also forming around
the same time that had similar exigencies. For example, in the mid 1970’s, the Women of
All Red Nations (WARN) group was formed. Many of the women involved were part of
the American Indian movement. While CFMN was formed more as a direct response to
not being constructed or treated as leaders in the Chicano or Anglo women’s movements,
WARN was also formed to allow Native women to take on leadership roles, as well as a
result of a strategic understanding of what they could accomplish perhaps less
conspicuously as women in a movement (Wittstock and Salinas)”. Similar to the CFMN,
one of the stated strategies of their Women of All Red Nations was to make relationships
with other women’s organizations, and to also connect with indigenous women in other
countries. Finally, like the CFMN, one of the pressing issues they were facing was

sterilization abuse.

 

88 Their mission statement also reads similarly to the CFMN’s as they stated their purpose was to address
issues relevant to Native women and their families.

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There is arguably a rhetorical moment89 of sterilization abuse against minority
and indigenous women—and rhetorical in the sense that is it both ideological and
material. As WARN and their supporters recognized rampant sterilization abuse of native
women in tribal and public hospitals. For example, one story that was told is young
native girls would go to the tribal hospitals and were told that they were having their
tonsils removed, but they were in reality being sterilized without their consent
(LibertadLatina). It has been estimated that “of the Native population of 800,000 (in the
US), as many as 42% of the women of childbearing age and 10% of the men...have been
sterilized... The first official inquiry into the sterilization of Native women...by Dr.
Connie Uri...reported that 25,000 Indian women had been permanently sterilized within
Indian Health Services facilities alone through 1975... “(LibertadLatina).

What I am interested in is that that these two organizations—WARN and
CFMN—are formed roughly around the same time and around cultural identity—and the
strategic use of this to organize. They are also in part formed through a shared
experience—the pressing and real need to address sterilization abuse. Both organizations
also indicated that one of their strategies and purposes was to connect with other similar
organizations”. Given these similarities, in a class in coalition rhetorics, I would ask
students the following: can we see these connections (between organizations), either

through shared practices, beliefs, or actual tangible connections made? And in what ways

 

89 I intentionally call this a rhetorical moment to make apparent the expansiveness of sterilization as a
colonial method of eugenics that spans space, times and cultures. For example, indigenous women in other
countries are still routinely sterilized against their will and/or consent. Also, while some of these lawsuits
filed about this abuse in the 1970’s may have been effective and “successful,” the conditions that made
sterilization abuse possible remain.

90 I want to also note that the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian organization, which
began in 1974, also had similarities with the WARN and CFMN, in regards to their stated objectives of
working with other groups and addressing sterilization of black women. One of their collective writings,
the “A Black Feminist Statement,” is included in This Bridge Called my Back.

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can these similarities or connections be used to teach us more about the way rhetoric and
change happens and is experienced? Such a course could also open up discussions about
coalition building between sub disciplines or ways of doing rhetoric research.

In general though, this dissertation has challenged the way that I talk about
organizational rhetorics and change. I feel compelled now to talk with my students about
the work of making change that perhaps might be less exciting, or less documented, or
documentable. In my experience, it is often the ability to maintain and teach the smaller
acts of making an organization that lead to sustainability. When we see the more public
acts, comes the expectation that activism happens only in these moments”. As a teacher,
I would focus less on asking my students to rhetorically analyze these public acts.
Instead, I would ask what leads to these moments, to these group formations—what are
the exigencies and what were the strategies employed to make such moments possible?
Moreover, what is “change”? How would one determine the “effectiveness” of an
organization like the CFMN? In what ways does experiential knowledge serve as the
invention material and outcome of movements?

Using Experience in Research

The thread that binds each of the implications I have described in this chapter is
the relevance of studying experience. In doing so, it disrupts the heuristics we use when
we study and theorize rhetoric, history, professional writing, and the perhaps narrowly
perceived usefulness of theory in the flesh as a heuristic for production. As I stated in my

introduction, experience matters. It matters not just to tell descriptive stories of what it

 

91 I am thinking of scholarship like Kevin DeLuca’s work on the bodily rhetorics of Earth First and other
organizations that rhetorically employ their bodies in public argument. I find this work to be extremely
valuable and intriguing, but as a scholar I would be more drawn to studying the internal strategizing than
these public arguments.

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feels like to be and act in a world in which we are constructed as perhaps arhetorical. The
problem, then, resides when our theories of rhetoric that come from situated experience
are treated as applicable to the many when in reality our theories do not presume our
lived conditions that may mitigate our abilities to access that which our field is built
upon. A primary purpose of this then dissertation has been to argue that experience
matters for telling stories that while are subjective, are nonetheless real, defensible and
therefore rhetorics that are clearly identified as situated should not be treated as auxiliary
to our field.

But, perhaps more importantly, experience matters because it is from experience
that rhetorics are made. Building a Chicana rhetoric as a research project has really been
an investigation into Chicana experience. And it has also meant that as a rhetoric it is
grounded in lived experience, it nonetheless is alterable and adaptable as our conditions
and articulations shift, often in response to our enacted rhetorics. As I have demonstrated,
Chicana rhetoric emerged as a set of situated practices that developed as a productive use
of the articulation of Latinas, Mexicanas, or other similarly constructed peoples as not
visible. Chicana identity is an embodiment of a rhetoric of action and effectiveness and at
the same time it has served as a mediating topoi from which those who affiliate as such
draw upon when negotiating their place in the world and how to act given these
conditions. In other words, it is rhetorically effectual. The result of its effectiveness has
been that lived conditions have changed—perhaps not to the extent that we would hope,

but to the extent that being a Chicana means, by definition and construction, being

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rhetorical”. Reflecting on the epigraph that I opened this chapter with, in this passage
Moraga compels us to not only be rhetorical through our identifications, and to also
consider what we then do with our identities, with our consciousness, and with our politic
as we strategize connectedly and connectively.
Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, and consequently, this dissertation, I want to reflect
again on the case study that I used to open the chapter. I see this scholar’s questioning as
representative of a field that treats the rhetoric of some groups as necessarily distinct,
unique and thereby only relevant to the few of us who study those particular groups.
Were I to respond to her line of inquiry now, I would have to say, as I have previously
contended, that the answer is both yes and no. Chicana rhetoric is distinct and yet
relational, unique in the cultural topoi employed, but connected by lived conditions that
we all share. I think that we should care about and strive for is not uniqueness and
distinctions—which I think leads to reductive thinking—but building a more complex
and relational understanding of rhetoric.

Toward this end, some scholars may not read this dissertation as being grounded

in Rhetoric and Composition, especially as you may have noted, throughout my

 

92 My thinking here is that perhaps the epistemic of Chicana has altered, or its associative practices.
Perhaps the usefulness of building action centered purely on identity is not as effective for coalition
building as issue based movements that seem relevant and necessarily to Chicanas, and are built again on
lived conditions. In an organizational assessment of the CF 110/, Steven J. Crosby indicated that the
organization while worked on issues, needed to have a clearer, “project” based focus in order to get funding
from corporations or other entities who might be scared off from a “position” based organization (Memo,
“re: Organizational Structure”). It is also worth noting that Crosby indicates that he switches between
Chicana and Latina in his report as the most appropriate term to use is debated within the organization. As I
have mentioned, the CFMN does still operate as an organization, but in a different, perhaps more
philanthropic manner. I am speculating about the relationship between identity as an epistemic built from
experience and issues that are raised that perhaps more clearly relate to lived experience, and the
sustainability of an organization. For pragmatic reasons, I know that funding is often earmarked for “new
projects” which result in organizations altering their focus to access funds. For philosophical and rhetorical
reasons, I wonder if identified issues enable coalition building.

155

dissertation I rely less on Rhetoric and Composition theory to form the basis of my
methodology. Sometimes though I think it requires that we put one foot outside of
disciplinary boundaries to see what we might be missing. This is why I have maintained
as a question throughout this dissertation: what am I not hearing in the story that this
archival collection is telling me? Asking this question allowed me to see Chicana rhetoric
as it is expansively realized in action. Not only an identity that operates as rhetoric to
others in its signification, but also as an identity that is a rhetoric in that it is born from
experience, theorizes our lived realities, and compels action in the world.

In this way, I want to return to the epigraph that I used to begin this dissertation
and Chapter 1. To remind you, in the epigraph Paula Moya challenges scholars to
articulate their conception of their “object of study,” or how we define Chicana when we
say we are studying Chicanas. While I have attempted to locate Chicana from the ground
up by beginning with people who identify as Chicana and following what that means as
an epistemic, what resulted was a redefining of the way that I conceived of rhetoric as
grounded and the same time conditional. From studying this organization and the rhetoric
of Chicanas, l have learned to make use of disjuncture, and to make productive
associations between that which has been treated as normally disconnected.

As rhetoric and writing scholars and teachers, we can learn a great deal fi'om this
“small” glimpse into the expansiveness of the CFMN’s work as an activist organization.
This glimpse alters the way we understand and look for rhetorical activity, or locate the
progenitors of rhetorical action. Tangential to the way that Angie Chabram Dernersesian
demonstrates the visibility of the emergence of a critical, resistant Chicana subjectivity

the content and form of Chicana poetry, we likewise see the ways that identity operates in

156

the collective of the CFMN as a physical instantiation of the emergent Chicana
subjectivity in an organization, and its beliefs and practices as they are articulated in

relation to being and acting as a Chicana.

157

10.

APPENDIX A
Interview Questions with Chicana Scholars

. What does “Chicana” mean to you?

. In what ways does Chicana theory inform your work?

. In what ways does Chicana identity inform your work?
. What are the purposes or goals of your work?

. What do you think your writing, or Chicana scholarship in general, does in the

world?

. What kind of cultural symbols do you rely on or figure into your work? Into your

identity?

. What kind of histories, or historical symbols, do you rely on or figure into your

work? Into your identity?

. One idea I am working with is the idea of grounded theory built from experience,

akin to the Anzaldt’ra and Moraga’s “theory in the flesh’: “A theory in the flesh
means one where the physical realities of our lives . . . all firse to create a politic
born out of necessity” (22). If you can, talk with me about how your experience
and the realities of your life impacts your politics and scholarship.

. Given my research topic and purpose, who would you recommend that I read?

(texts or authors)

Given my research topic and purpose, who else would you recommend interview?

158

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