The evolution of chicana feminism at uc santa barbara
By Milena Mills, Karina Lucero, and Stephany Rubio
Professors Cherrie Moraga and Celia Herrera Rodriguez- or Las Maestras as they prefer to be called- sit next to each other as students gather around them. Both Maestras wear their hair naturally and have let the colors fade into various shades of gray.
Some are round, others are square, and some take on a more intricate shape. Different shades of maple, oak, birch, and cherry brown give the wooden chairs a colorful life as if they reflect the melanin from the skin of the women they have served purpose to.
As everyone settles into the mismatched chairs that the Maestras brought from home, an air of safety and comfort surrounds us.
We meet to discuss what the Maestras have been working on for months-- the opening of the new Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought & Art Practice here at UCSB. The possibility of being involved in the opening of a space that is rooted in Chicana Feminism is what brought us students together.
The chairs we sit in vary in shape and size, each with their own history and life.
Some chairs once belonged to Maestra Moraga’s abuela, those had a special type of magic. You can feel the word of every prayer, regañada, risa, and conversation stitched into the interwoven designs of the encaje.
These chairs, like the Maestras, have witnessed a great deal of change throughout their lives.
After we each take a seat in our chosen chairs, everyone starts trading standard introductions. Moraga interrupts. She wants us to be real, she wants to get to know our Maestría and experiences in a more spiritual way. She doesn’t want us to put on our academic faces, but rather share our authentic Chicana and colorful selves.
We ease into more relaxed introductions and as we finish, Maestra Rodriguez begins to unwrap a small bundle of cloth.
Slowly, she unveils a pack of loteria cards. Latinx families play lotería, a bingo-like game, during family gatherings using frijoles pintos to cover each image as a card is called out.
The bright colors and familiarity of the characters are a gentle reminder of home; the plaid grey and white backs of the cards flash and dance as they are shuffled and randomized. The Maestras instruct the students to move to the large wooden tables in the middle of the room.
The tables are heavy, sturdy antiques best used for a ceremonial introduction and loteria card reading. Radical art leans precariously against the wall where some other framed pieces are already hung. The varying brown shades of wood and the random, non-uniform chairs are out of place in the industrialized academic building that is South Hall.
Dado Cabaravdic
Once everyone is seated at the tables, Maestra Rodriguez walks around to each individual student. She fans the cards out face-down. The patterned backs refuse to reveal the characters underneath. The Apache, the umbrella, the cactus, the drunk, the ladder, the rose, the star, the bird, the tree and even the watermelon are all possibilities.
Each student picks three cards, knowing that each card will come to represent their own past, present, and guide that got them to where they are today.
Although UCSB is a newly Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), many Latinx students feel a deep separation from themselves and their cultural identities. The three lotería cards can represent this historical process of Chicanxs at UCSB.
The first card represents the present, where UCSB currently stands as a relatively new HSI. Despite its institutional flaws, there is a persistence and strength in each student fighting to be a member of this academic world, while embracing their culture.
This card reading becomes a moment of healing as students begin to reflect on their past experiences: who they are, what might have brought them to UCSB, and where they’re going. Some write down their personal thoughts while others draw them.
UCSB's Chicanx community has experienced the struggles of assimilation, we change how we speak to navigate through this university to fit the confines of institutional white academia. It’s a different world from the one we may have left behind, with or without our families.
Afterwards, we each share the perspective we gained from the cards; what we read and analyzed about ourselves from the images. The Maestras also participate. At the end of the exercise, everyone shares something deeply personal and genuine about their experiences as people of color, specifically as Chicanxs, on this campus.
Some start to cry after realizing the pressures of an academic institution on their backs and the heavy weight on their shoulders of their responsibilities to their communities back home. But now, everyone seems to know each other a little better, connecting with each other’s experiences.
For decades UCSB has witnessed the gradual process of young Chicanxs combining their indigenous and traditional cultures to comfortably navigate the eurocentric institution of academia.
Internal compromises have always been necessary, and although UCSB was early to integrate programs like a Chicanx institute and doctoral program, it still has a long way to go in creating a safe space for intersectional identities to flourish.
Las Maestras will be a step in creating these spaces for Chicanxs.
The second card represents what got us to this point, referring to the Chicanx movements that paved the way for us to be here now.
Taking in the current state of Chicanx affairs on campus, it’s easy to forget the arduous journey the community has been on since it became academically established in 1970.
In 1994, 24 years after our campus became the first UC with a Chicano/a studies department, that same community advocated for the program, suggesting that it had been severely neglected by higher ups since its inception.
There were upwards of 18,000 students enrolled at UCSB in the spring of 1994. That year, only nine of those 18,000 went on a hunger strike.
They demanded systematically implemented growth in terms of an expansion of Chicanx faculty, in addition to the development of a Chicano studies Ph.D. program.
At the time, the entire department only had three full time professors, the same amount it had at its beginning.
UCSB’s Chicano/a Studies program came into existence after the 1969 “El Plan de Santa Bárbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education” laid out the reasons this course of study needed to exist in higher education.
When your school basically wrote the book on how to build this necessary kind of program, but needed reform only 25 years afterwards, it’s painful to imagine the dismal state these departments were in on other college campuses at the time.
Chicana Feminism has been built upon the intersection of identities. Through connecting with cultural and indigenous roots, various forms of healing have become a part of the movement.
Fighting colonialism and racial oppression has fueled the yearning to return to the ancestral forms of healing for young POC navigating their way through academia. Las Maestras is a perfect example of how these indigenous methods have also been interwoven into the modern day.
LAS MAESTRAS THEMSELVES
Celia Herrera Rodriguez speaking at the Las Maestras opening.
The recent arrival of Moraga and Rodriguez was what kickstarted the interdisciplinarily collaborative efforts that led to this center becoming a reality, and being a space that will incorporate members of the larger Santa Barbara community in addition to UCSB students.
When we visited Moraga's office to talk with her about the center and how she ended up here, her office was still half in boxes, but with the majority of her books unpacked and already spilling out of their shelves. Everything was still very much in transition for her, but she is an English professor, and her literary priorities were charmingly clear.
As an undergraduate in the 1970s at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, Maestra Moraga found that there was little to no work by Chicana writers to read or study.
At a point in history when women of color were largely excluded from the mainstream feminist movement, existing literature by black women and other POC was also excluded limiting the conceptualization of an intersectional feminism in the eyes and within the walls of academia.
Moraga felt that there were valuable perspectives missing.
“For me the process of being a writer was part in parcel of my feminism, my Chicana identity, that’s how consciousness is born. You go ‘what’s missing in the picture?’
and I, we, were missing in the picture.”
This lack of space for an intersectional feminism, especially Chicana feminism, also stemmed from a lack of women of color within academia.
Moraga explained that, “it was feminism that allowed that conversation to surface, but back then it was all white women.” What did exist then and now were the experiences and realities of marginalized women of color.
“In college I was really struggling with knowing I was queer, and there was no way for me to be that in my family.” Despite it being a difficult time in her life, she believes the struggle helped her form and realize who she is as a queer Chicana.
“That struggle is really important, so when I got out of college there was something in me that really longed to be an artist, and writing was inexpensive,” Moraga said.
Maestra Moraga drew from her childhood experiences as a Mexican Chicana growing up in the San Gabriel Valley in her writing. In her undergrad years, “there was no Chicana work to read, so in college as an English major I just read the works of white men with the occasional woman.”
Coming from a working class family there were never books in her parent’s home, but she still had an attraction to writing. “I hadn’t really started to write seriously until I came out, because I felt like I was writing with a secret, and you can’t write well with a secret.”
“And also this concept that you had to write for a heterosexual lens. Sometimes anger is a great motivator--
-- that anger showed me to find how to be a writer on my own terms, and that my own terms meant Chicana feminism."
Cherrie Moraga photographed by Robert Giard
The creation of Las Maestras is part of the ripple effect in the movements and actions of past Maestras like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.
Moraga reminisced on her influences. “Of course I read Toni Morrison. she’s just genius. Toni Cade Bambara, who wrote the foreword for "This Bridge Called My Back" was also so revolutionary."
She continued, "Toni Morrison was a genius of literature, but Toni Cade had the literature and the activism. I also read James Baldwin, who was queer, and you know- as a black man his critical writing was so revolutionary and progressive."
"I was reading all of them to shape our own feminism”
When Maestra Moraga started collaborating with Gloria Anzaldua in creating This Bridge Called My Back, she created something revolutionary for women of color; just like Morrison and Baldwin did for her.
Moraga was continuing to carve a space for minority women in academic spaces where their voices were previously silenced. Combining individual voices through one literary work strengthened the platforms for women of color to uniquely express their experiences in writing.
“When Gloria Anzaldua approached me to work with her... I was 27, it was ahead of me almost. That book put us in contact with feminists of color around the country who weren’t in academics.”
Women of color from colonized countries experience oppression that is rooted in the diasporas that fracture their identities. White feminism has had no intention in including those experiences in the dominant history.
Moraga has brought her past, present, and hopes for the future into her work. Las Maestras will be a way for future generations to have a space to explore their own feminisms and heal from past trauma.
“I define my Chicana feminism as an indigenous struggle. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all Chicanas identify that way at all of course."
“There’s lots of people who identify as Chicana feminists and what they want is what the white man has. And that’s legitimate. Our identities do not define who we are- you can say 'I’m a Chicana feminist and I want to have everything the white man has,' without necessarily having any responsibility to your origins- you just want to break the glass ceiling, and of course that’s legitimate. White women do it all the time, everyone has a right to have access. For some people Chicana feminism is only about having access- there’s many different kinds of Chicana feminism.”
The third and final card is our guide. This card potentially represents the purpose of Las Maestras Center, being a healing space that can provide students with a connection to their ancestral indigenous roots and cultural values, allowing them to exist within and alongside academia.
As we grow older, we will enter different phases of Maestria, or artistry. Each phase is connected to our past, present, and future. Professor Moraga has been exploring and evolving her writing as a sacred path for her authentic self.
She taught for nearly 20 years at Stanford University, then the opportunity for she and Rodriguez to become a part of UCSB’s community as teachers gave them both a new way to explore their artistry.
Celia Herrera Rodriguez and Cherrie Moraga at the opening.
The academics of color from the past have paved the way for us to be here now, in the same way that the Chicanx movements have brought us to this point at UCSB. Our indigenous ancestry is beginning to flourish locally despite the oppression it has undergone for the majority of history.
Las Maestras is a manifestation of the work our elders have put in for us. This goes beyond just academics, but our tías, tíos, primas, abuelas, mothers and fathers that never got the chance to enter the academic world. They too have been paving the way for the next generations.
Hired by the English department, Maestras Moraga and Rodriguez will help draw focus to Indigenous and Latino literature that explore these experiences.
The inclusion of Latinx and indigenous literature will help diversify the English program and include narratives that haven’t been Westernized, but rather authentic representations of our alternative histories.
On the opening day of the Las Maestras Center, the sense of gratitude and excitement was palpable. The room was overcrowded with professors, students, indigenous community members, and small children holding onto their parents as more people came in.
Maestra Moraga opened by saying, “The first thing we want to say is Bienvenidos. Welcome. We’re really really happy to be here, so if I cry at some point- I’m just a big llorona.”
In a moment in which the university and the community came together, Moraga emphasized that “this is a room full of many teachers, on and off campus and in life.”
Both Maestras spoke with such appreciation for the opportunity to open up a space that intends to “help Latino/a/x communities come to remember and acknowledge their origins through the act of art making and critical collective thought.”
The lighting of sage for the Chumash blessing.
The altar at the Las Maestras Center's opening.
As a Chumash indigenous elder blessed the opening of the center, a hush fell upon the room.
She cleansed the space by burning sage, and the presence of our indigenous ancestors reverberated throughout the room.
The sacred ceremony prayed to each direction: North, South, East, West, down to the mother earth and up above to the father sun.
This blessing made the evening a spiritual experience that everyone was welcome to take part in.
“Some of you may know that there was a book that came out in 1981 called “This Bridge Called My Back,” Moraga told the crowd. “It’s a collection of writing by radical women of color, and many of us thank that book for being able to put together and [help us] understand women of color feminism, long before the word intersectionality had come into being. Our work is theory in the flesh.”
Following Maestra Moraga, members of the English department and other esteemed colleagues spoke about their support for the Las Maestras center. Stephanie Batiste, an Associate Professor of English and Black Studies, said she was grateful for the contributors to This Bridge Called My Back.
“I'm grateful to all those sisters who created a bridge and a pathway, so that someone who looks like me could stand in this room at a microphone and have something to say to you,”
- Stephanie Batiste
The evening went on to include indigenous ceremonial song and dance and a Son Jarocho musical performance. Assistant Professor Micaela J. Díaz-Sánchez led this, bringing members of the audience up onto the wooden block to participate in the dance.
Cherrie Moraga and Inés Talamantez speak.
Son Jarocho at Las Maestras Center
To welcome Professor Inés Talamantez and her family, there was an intergenerational gift giving between the Maestras. They gave her a red leather bound journal and sash full of spiritual meaning.
Professor Talamantez graciously accepted the gifts. “My work is really dedicated to all of you, Chicanas. In my heart, when I see you walk across the podium at graduation, I can’t sit there. I have to go up and hug you and tell you how beautiful you look. How wonderful that you made it.”
Maestra Moraga's powerful words also filled the room as she described the creation of the center.
Professor Rodriguez will also be a bridge between the center and the Chicana/o Studies and English departments. This quarter she has already begun to teach in the Chicana/o Studies department directly broadening academic opportunities for students of color.
Professor Inés Talamantez speaking to Chela Sandoval at the opening.
“I wanted to speak to this idea of who we are as Chicanas, as indigenous people. We may be detribalized, we may be deterritorialized, but still present and still in memory. We still remember- that is our task, that is our job, that is what we do. We remember. And in remembering, we recover that trauma and loss of memory. And in doing so maybe we can reclaim ourselves. We can set ourselves right. To reimbody, to be whole again.”
- Celia Herrera Rodriguez
Micaela Díaz-Sánchez dancing to Son Jarocho music at the opening of Las Maestras Center
Cover illustration art courtesy of Maya Sariahmed: mayasariahmed.com Instagram: @maya_yellow
Hand drawn Illustrations by Dado Cabaravdic: dado_cabaravdic@yahoo.com Instagram: @dadolion
Special thanks to Cherrie Moraga & Celia Herrera Rodriguez