Chicano Power Today
The Chican@ Movement continues to grow and evolve as it reacts and responds to the social reality that we encounter today. For this we need to put our goals in perspective so that we may build today and guide our future guerrer@s who will continue the struggle for liberation and self-determination for the nation. Today we delve into our predecessors’ actions and previous lessons and ideas that shaped our political line and which guide us into the future. For these reasons it’s crucial that we define what our true objectives are today in our movement that we hope outlines how our movement has evolved and continues to grow into the future.
In the 1960s many within the Chican@ movement of that period sought Chican@ power in the form of better schools, of an end to abuse or the murder of our people in the imperialist wars like in Vietnam. For many others Chican@ Power meant to have community control in some form, of having our own teachers and schools or even a parcel of land. Many Chican@ organizations did not study political theory, even today political education is not promoted in the nation on the level that it should at this stage in the decaying of capitalism.
A true classification today of Chican@ power should push the boundaries and transcend generations in ways that cut the path for our future cadre. For these reasons Chican@ Power today can only be seen as based in a socialist revolution and a communist future less it be reduced to simply a defective label. Seeking more jobs or “funding” for our community which is ultimately strangled out of the Third World by imperialism no longer quenches the thirst we have for justice and liberation.
The pairing of Chican@ power with revolution is the natural cause of development if we are to take a materialist approach. We know that the capitalist State will not hand over power, it will not unseat itself, on the contrary the natural cycle of imperialism demands that it “eats more”, it must in order to continue to exist. In the initial stages of revolution a joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations will ensure the U.$. capitalist state and all of its imperialist lechers are thoroughly stomped out for good, thereby cutting a path for Aztlán and other oppressed nations to finally exercise people’s power in their liberated nations where socialism can blossom.
Today’s Chican@ movement is in agreement for the most part that we the Chican@ Nation are a people who should be free from oppression and who deserve to be free to organize in our own fashion and even our own government. Where the road becomes blurry for some is what Chican@ power should look like as the term Chican@ power can fill many different buckets.
One challenge we have today, to be quite honest, is the rise of the petty bourgeoisie within Aztlán, and as a result, the dominance of bourgeois ideology is taken for granted. Taking a Materialist approach was rarely done in the past where our concrete reality and the ever changing conditions, very material conditions in which we exist as an oppressed nation highlight the terrain in which we are up against. Another challenge is the strong pull towards integration with the oppressor nation and what these two challenges mean or how they affect the activity of the Chican@ nation and its vision for power or what power even looks like to Aztlán especially for those under the influence of Amerikkka or capitalism more broadly. As communists we know that humyn activity and how they move through life affects their production and one’s mode of production. How and what we as Chican@s produce defines how we are developing as people and as a nation. Production is key to assess a people or productive forces but here in the U.S. the “productive forces” are for the most part bourgeoisified.
For Aztlán the most revolutionary elements that push for power would be the lumpen and migrants. The Chican@ lumpen exist in a tribal type of structure within these false U.S. borders with a definite class formation and antagonism between lumpen and the capitalist state. At the same time some of the petty bourgeoisie will ride with the revolution and we should understand these social forces collectively and build with this in mind. All socialist revolutions proved this to be true, including Mao’s Chinese revolution.
Chican@ Power at this stage will not come from a gun. We have much work ahead, mental work, theoretical production to get our gente where they need to be theoretically or ideologically. But consciousness raising cannot elevate a nation if this effort is devoid of practice, and correct practice does not arrive without error in which to learn from. So practice is necessary for us to propel Aztlán onto the stage where Chican@ power is finally realized as without practice we are left with what Marx called “dead facts”. Within U.S. prisons I read of a lot of resistance and theory including new Chican@ revolutionaries and others. Some of this writing is very good but without practice and putting some of these ideas into reality the U.S. prisons can degenerate into warehouses of dead facts. Likewise the semi-colonies can end up as prison houses of dead facts.
Our hystorical conditions as a semi-colony will compel us to obtain national liberation. Our ideology will streamline this process. Our colonizers today control the dominant ideology taken up by the majority of the masses here in the occupied territories, even among the most oppressed we can see and hear them parroting ruling class propaganda. The capitalist state spends a lot of money and time from its many agencies in order to spread its brainwashing on a mass scale. It’s our job to counter this as best we can. Chican@ power relies on how effective we are at this.
We should know and understand that Chican@ Power will be realized in a world lead by the Third World. What’s more is the Chican@ Movement is also part of the International Communist Movement (ICM) and millions of people around the world who are a part of the ICM are also currently fighting for national liberation just like us. They fight against class and gender oppression just like us. We are not alone, on the contrary we are with the majority of the world’s people in our fight for justice.
Today Chican@ organizations should be building Barrio Committees in a hood near you. The Barrios Committee will be the cultural center and political laboratory for Aztlán at a regional level. The Barrio Committee is but the seed for the Chican@ Communes. These are the steps towards dual power and community control. This is the path towards Chican@ Power that needs to be utilized in order to guide the nation towards a society that is free from oppression.
