This dissertation examines Xicano/a resistance literature within the framework of national liberation theory around the globe and how those Third World anti colonial writings have influenced the ideology and writings of Xicano/as and other indigenous peoples in the United States. The three main sources this dissertation draws upon are the writings of Franz Fanon, Amilicar Cabral, and Mao Tse-Tung. Through discussion of these anti colonial works I will investigate Guillermo Bonfil-Batalla's concept of permanent confrontation, Amilicar Cabral's concept of the return to history, and the importance of literature to the political and cultural development of a national identity. These three concepts are vital to any discussion of how anti-colonial insurgencies are organized, the development of social movements within the structure of national liberation struggles, and the role literature plays in cultural transformation. I examine Xicano/a literature as it relates to the above concepts by situating the emergence of resistance literature within the anti colonial writings of African theorists Frantz Fanon and Amilicar Cabral. By examining Xicano/a organic intellectuals alongside current trends in Xicano/a pop culture production, this dissertation places those writers within a Xicano/a indigenous nationalist paradigm that foregrounds the creation of a Xicano/a national consciousness that is integral to the development of a national liberation movement. For the Xicano/a community, especially those Xicano/as engaged in resistance writing, the story of Aztlán has been at the center of efforts to put into words the idea of Xicano/a national formation. For Xicano/as within the academy, Aztlán has always been an articulation of cultural reinforcement that--by establishing indigenous origins--allows Xicano/as to press colonial oppressors for civil rights and equal treatment under the prevailing laws. This dissertation examines the intersections between these dichotomous ideological positions, as expressed by community-based and academic Xicano/a writers.I examine literature produced by the Xicano/a movement in the United States from 1848 to the present and analyze how Xicano/a literary tropes that originate in pre-conquest culture persist through the centuries, solidifying into themes of cultural resistance for the modern indigenous and ultimately generating a Xicano/a epistemology. I also show how anti colonial history created through literature by the colonized, is fundamentally oppositional to colonial history in the United States. Within this context I analyze insurgency theories of Third World liberationists, as well as the role of literature in national liberation struggles, and apply the results of this analysis in an examination of the Xicano/a movement in the United States.
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