A Revolutionary Nationaist Perspective:

This writing emanated from attendance at a UCLA-based meeting (06/14/93) where discussion was had regarding the strategies to put into place the Cesar Chavez Center (the negotiated Raza learning facility). With regards to the struggle at UCLA, it is our observation that, while a major battle has ended, the war is not over. The first task needs to be consolidation of the same force which, after 23 years of struggle, mandated Chancellor Young's half-ass concession: the combined efforts of community, students, and university faculty and other personnel to demand a Chicano Studies Department.

A significant focus at the June 14 meeting was placed on the need for a strong "Chicana feminist curriculum" and a strong "Chicana feminist" coordinator. It is our assertion that this position demands a meaningful definition of:

1. The profound oppression of Raza women under gringo colonialism;

2. That feminism is, by its very nature, a bourgeois and regressive phenomenon;

3. And, what ideology provides the essential means for confronting

sexism among Raza in general and within the struggle for national liberation.

A little over a year ago, we were invited to participate at a university-based conference of Raza students and power. Among other speakers there was a professor who identified herself as a Cubana, a lesbian and a feminist. During a question and answer period, this professor asserted that, "...as a former resident of Cuba, I participate in every election that I can." Such an assertion epitomizes the petty bourgeois and reformist agenda of all too many "Latina educators" and other professionals. It illustrates the reality that feminism provides a means to securing middle class status, token roles, and petty reforms within the status quo. It brings focus to the reality that whether one is talking about the UCLA-based struggle to bring about the Cesar Chavez Center, or seeking to carry out any other form of Raza mobilization, the measurement of how progressive - or how regressive - an initiative is can always be found in how it corresponds to Revolutionary Nationalist ideals.

We have no interest in electing one imperialist over another; as a Revolutionary Nationalist organization we elect to reject gabacho sham democracy, demand more than regressive reforms, and to take part in building the organization needed to one day end gringo colonialism.

We can no more be a "feminist" organization than a "maleist" organization... for we know that biological factionalism can only hinder our being a true Revolutionary Nationalist organization and, in turn, cripple the only force which can bring about the liberation of La Raza, and thus destroy sexism - and all other manifestations of capitalism.

Unión del Barrio stands against the political repression, social oppression and economic exploitation of Chicana Mexicanas. Point X of our Eleven Point Program reads:

"THE ABSOLUTE AND UNEQUIVOCAL LIBERATION OF RAZA WOMEN IS A FUNDAMENTAL COMPONENT OF OUR STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION AS A PEOPLE."

"We recognize that the oppression Chicana Mexicanas face in this colonial society is a part of our oppression as a people. We recognize that sexism is an integral part of the vicious system forced upon our people and that it must be combated both within our movement and throughout our community.

Fundamental to any revolutionary organization and pro-independence conscious movement is the absolute political, social, and economic equality between men and women. As part of developing a progressive consciousness among our gente, we must work to combat sexism in all its forms and manifestations."

However, Unión del Barrio feels it is necessary to differentiate between the struggle of revolutionary Chicana Mexicanas, and those women who mouth a feminist rhetoric designed to mask the rankest form of career-climbing, bourgeois academics and gender/lesbian elitism. To resist such counter-revolutionary posturing, it is necessary to utilize a Revolutionary Nationalist perspective on the need to truly challenge sexism through National Liberation-focused Chicano Mexicano struggle.

It is also necessary to challenge feminism for the two following reasons:

1. Beyond the late 60's and early 70's military defeat of the revolutionary struggles of oppressed nationalities here in the confines of the U.S., and the subsequent neo-colonial (vendido) funding of poverty pimp programs within our communities, the gringo establishment has also reinforced its counterinsurgency (A war created by the gabacho colonizer that attempts to take away Raza's ability to fight for liberation.) by attempting to liquidate national liberation struggle with the reformist platforms of "women's liberation" and "gay/lesbian emancipation." The shallowness of these agendas is clearly seen in the recent (08/17) anti-Mexicano border show of democrats Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Janet Reno (whose elections or appointment were seen as victories for feminists), plus the ridiculous struggle of homosexuals to enter the imperialist armed forces of Tio Sam. Therefore, it is critical to fully expose the counter-revolutionary attempt to replace the liberation efforts of La Raza with the gabacho dominated and reformist agendas of women and gay/lesbian "activists".

2. The most bullshit and pig-like slander campaigns have been carried out against Unión del Barrio, and Raza organizations it has worked with, beginning with Unión's principled confrontation of the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS or Liga). The stigmatizing accusation of sexism, or male chauvinism, has been a favorite tactic of forces which have been confronted for their attempts to trivialize or diminish Raza struggle into something pro-gringo, safe, and self-serving.

Thus, it is important to shed some honest and clear focus on Unión del Barrio's perspectives on the causes of sexism, its basis in national and class oppression, and the means to eradicate it by successfully overthrowing gringo colonialism and all of its present day manifestations.

Readers of this article are asked to compare it to the polemics of certain "Chicana writers". Compare it to Emma Perez's Sexuality and Discourse: Notes From a Chicana Survivor. Perez asserts that there exists an "unhappy marriage between Marxism and feminism" because there is no other alternative. One must question why Perez then doesn't provide one and, more importantly, set about putting it into practice. She criticizes Marxists and avoids referring to revolutionaries and their positions, which exposes the reality that she is addressing a bourgeois reformist movement and not revolutionary struggle. Perez constantly refers to men "refusing" to give up the power (political, social, economic and sexual power), but fails to define what class or group of men she is referring to. She refers to "men of color" (a non-revolutionary expression used mostly by vendidos or liberal-types) as being "eager to please the white man", as it this was a new discovery or not a part of colonization. Furthermore, aren't colonized "women of color" also "eager to please the white man?" In reality, aren't many of these so-called Chicana feminist "intellectuals" pleasing the white man by pushing this biological factionalist cagada, engaging in safe "political" pursuits (selling-out) and steering young Chicana Mexicanas away from liberation focused activism (revolution).

Perez writes, "to invert all power... to love myself and other Chicanas and women of color, to revere the Chicana... is the revolution I speak of now." She continues, "I prefer to think of myself as one who places women, especially Third world and lesbians, in the forefront of my priorities." What about prioritizing struggle for a revolution which will get rid of all forms of oppression by doing away with gringo colonialism? What about imperialism and the counterinsurgency; are these things O.K. with Perez? What about men and little boys; they not part of Perez's "revolution"?

In Anzaldua's Borderlands, mythology, personal opinions, and selective doses of history are used to veil her egotism and lesbian elitism. She makes constant references to and comments about "...me, myself, and I..." in an exercise of petty bourgeois individualism, as if all mujeres were passive pendejas except Anzaldua. Anzaldua indulges in "gender semantics" (changing around certain words or phrases to make them "woman centered"), a petty practice relative to the severe poverty, daily violence, and national oppression which face the great majority of Chicano Mexicanos. She demonstrates her lesbian elitism when she calls on all Raza to recognize her "joteria" and asserts that homosexuals have been in the forefront of struggle (in and out of the closet).

Anzaldua attempts, in a non-scientific or non-provable mythological fashion, to relate what she understands to be the struggle between male and female indigenous gods as to what is presently occurring. She blames the whole community for her problems with comments such as, "...not I betray my people, but they betray me." Anzaldua seems to be turning the imperialist's racism into inward-turned hatred as does the homeboy who would kill a Raza brother who lives across an imaginary line or the Mexican cop who targets Raza youth for violence. She engages in the same propping up of false divisions and targeting of her own kind; instead of a gringo system that instills, profits from, and survives because of such self-hate. Anzaldua even blames the Aztecs for defeat at the hands of the Spaniards by explaining that this occurred because the Aztecs were an imperialist and sexist society (as if the Europeans weren't the invaders, weren't arch-imperialists and sexists, and as if the Mexicas of the late 1400's did not exceed renaissance Europe in terms of scientific achievements, government, and philosophic thought).

The most injurious role that Raza feminists play is that they infect Chicana Mexicana students with biological factionalism (a belief that what kind of sex organ you have has something to de with how progressive you are), provide them a self-justifying rationale to avoid meaningful involvement in the comunidad, and attack National Liberation struggle with invalid, slanderous arguments. How such counter-revolutionary babosadas is parroted at the student-level can be seen in Fall '92 M.U.J.E.R. (Mujeres Unidas para Justicia, Educación, y Revolución) insert within Voz Fronteriza. A Raising of Consciousness by Graciela Anguiano is especially revealing. It is pockmarked with female/masculine petty references to language as if history literally meant "only men's history" or "EL" Movimiento projects male domination (what about "LA" Unión, "LA" Revolución, "LA" Causa, etc.?). Anguiano identified herself as a "proletarian femenista" yet was a university student with no known history as an industrial worker nor no known involvement mobilizing with industrial workers. She utilized the confusing term "male-privileged power" as if real power in these "United States" was not the exclusive privilege of the gringos and, somehow, Raza men shared in that power with the gabacho to keep her down.

Anguiano diminished women in the liberation movement as being "tokens" who play complacent roles (What kind of response would there be to a male saying that?), never challenge issues that are relevant to mujeres (National Liberation is not relevant to mujeres?!), and provide an illusion of gender balance and serious addressing of women's issues (A chicken-shit attack against hermanas en lucha.). Such a blanket statement is, in itself, sexist and untrue with regards to many meaningful mass-based and advanced Chicano Mexicano formations. She continues in the article by demanding that movement groups "give up half the positions of power and decision-making to women." Such a demand is extremely counter-revolutionary; in struggle, activists earn leadership positions through proven successful practice, ideological clarity, and commitment (and not what sexual organs one happens to possess). The bourgeois agenda of M.U.J.E.R. (a Chicana Mexicana student organization) and A.CH.A. (an association of Chicana Mexicana educators and students) can be seen in their having the participation of Senator Diane Feinstein in a conference (even before Feinstein's recent fomenting of "immigration" hysteria, she was a gringa elected official within this imperialist system) and explaining their participation in voter registration drives as a valid form of liberation struggle. Such bourgeois contradictions were not raised by Anguiano - as she was too busy trying to make movement organizations accountable, while failing to hold M.U.J.E.R. and A.CH.A. to even a token level of progressive political practice. Not once in Anguiano's piece did she identify Revolutionary Nationalism as the ideological means to counter sexism and destroy its root source of gringo colonialism.

The Struggle for Women's, Gay or Lesbian Rights is Nothing but Another Form of White Power

Therefore, "sisterhood" disguises, and negates, class and national liberation struggles as the foremost avenues to bringing about liberation. The "radical feminist" line that "men are the enemy" is not radical, but a reactionary ideology of vengeance that simply reacts to male chauvinism and is not seeking eradicate its base of colonialist capitalism. It incorrectly targets men and not the true imperialist oppressor. Many Raza women who claim to be feminists also put fourth "machismo" as the "ultimate evil among Mexican men." This concept of "machismo" as being some kind of genetic defect in Mexican men, or something organic to Raza cultura, is no different than the neo-nazi concept that Mexicanos are an inferior race of people, and our inferiority is the root of our oppression. The concept of "machismo", as it objectively puts down the Mexican man, subjectively upholds the gabacho male as a "more evolved" form of human, simply because of their whiteness.

Feminism creates separatism and elitism based in gender and/or sexual preference, plus it often upholds a false vanguardism (the idea that women are more "human" or more progressive simply because they are women and/or gay), that gays/lesbians are engaged in advanced struggle - as if Act Up, N.O.W., or M.U.J.E.R. could ever be put in the same realm as the Alianza ; the land rights organization once led by Reies Lopez Tijerina, the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, and other formations that engaged in revolutionary action. "Femenistas" promote a psychological movement of middle-class professionals and would-be professionals (i.e. students - "Chicana femenistas" are most often found hanging around college campuses) versus a force that contends with issues impacting the Raza Community in general (immigration, police brutality, barrio violence, etc.). Such an agenda allows an excuse not to struggle as it is promotes creating "safe" (sell-out) havens for women to dialogue in, and for avoiding organizing ("I don't want to participate, it's male-dominated...").

In short, feminism (and all of its manifestations) is a rhetoric-centered, anti-working class, counter-revolutionary, and petty bourgeois reformist tendency.

Vladimir Lenin, in his (1920) Dialogue With Clara Zetkin, succinctly identified the self-indulgent and bourgeois nature of feminism:

"...I mistrust sex theories expounded in articles, treatises, pamphlets, etc. - in short, the theories within that specific literature which sprouts so luxuriantly on the dung heap of bourgeois society, I mistrust those who are always absorbed in the sex problems, the way an Indian saint is absorbed in contemplation of his navel. It seems to me that this super-abundance of sex theories, which for the most part are mere hypotheses, and often quite arbitrary ones, stems from a personal need. It springs from the desire to justify one's own abnormal or excessive sex life before bourgeois morality and to plead for tolerance towards oneself. This veiled respect for bourgeois morality is repugnant to me as rooting about in all that bears on sex. No matter how rebellious and revolutionary it may... appear, it is in the final analysis thoroughly bourgeois. Intellectuals and others like them are particularly keen on this. There is no room for it in the Party, among the class-conscious, fighting proletariat."

Over seventy years have past since the above dialogue was engaged in and, with regards to "abnormal or excessive sex life", Unión del Barrio would concur with African Peoples Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela that, "... What people do between their sheets is their own business." A more significant concurrence with Yeshitela is his declaration that the struggle for women's, gay/lesbian rights that liquidates national liberation struggle is nothing but a another form of white power.

Another key statement regarding feminism was made by APSP Secretary Junis Wilson in her presentation The Role of African Women in the African Revolution, it is as relevant to question of the revolutionary role of La Mujer as it is to that of the African woman, "...The task of African women is take full part in our people's struggle for liberation as leaders, teachers, organizers, and freedom fighters. Our women must participate in revolutionary organizations... under the leadership of poor and working class African people... Our enemies have worked overtime to have us believe that we are our own worst enemies. That is what bourgeois feminism is all about. But the enemy for colonized African people and women must be imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. In other words, the enemy must be the social system which oppresses African women as well as African men and children. Our protests as African women and our struggles as African women against the inequalities, injustices and oppression perpetuated against us which creep into bedrooms and into our relationships must be directed at the kind of society which produces and practices exploitation, frustration and chauvinism. The enemy must be imperialism!"

Compañera Wilson's insightful statement serves as an excellent example of how, from a Revolutionary Nationalist perspective, it is necessary to put all important concerns or contradictions into a political context. Do these in some manner contribute to Revolutionary Nationalist struggle - for Chicano Mexicanos, do they help build towards national liberation here in Aztlán - or do they serve to perpetuate national oppression?

From Puertoriquena Lolita Lebron to African Asata Shakur to Native American Norma Jean Croy - Within the Confines of AmeriKKKa - Militant Compañeras Have Risked Their Lives and Suffered Incarceration in Struggling to Overthrow Gringolandia

Under gringo colonialism, Chicana Mexicanas who meaningfully struggle against injustice find themselves among the executed, disappeared, and jailed. The imperialists and their lackeys show no restraint in terrorizing or eliminating Raza sisters who actively reject oppression. In fact, imprisoned sisters-in-struggle may find that their gender is used to further victimize them through jail house rapes or state-induced loss of children. From Puertoriquena Lolita Lebron to African Asata Shakur to Native American Norma Jean Croy - within the confines of AmeriKKKa - militant compañeras have risked their lives and suffered incarceration in struggling to overthrow gringolandia.

Under gringo colonialism, Mexicanas are utilized as a source of cheap labor in industries where drudge-work and often dangerous employment are the only options: for example, sweatshop, tourism-related, and home-based employment as domestics. Dangerous working conditions can be found in work carried out for too many hours, often with outdated machinery or equipment in overcrowded and otherwise inappropriate facilities, under unsanitary conditions, with nonexistent or insufficient safeguards, and generally without the most meager form of health benefits or disability/retirement pay.

Under gringo colonialism, Raza women are seen as sex objects to be taken whenever the overseer sees fit. Such rapes occur daily in factories, hotels, and private homes where our sisters work. Raza women are forced to choose between losing employment or being unwilling receptacles for lust. Women who have to make this "choice" - and often choose to maintain a needed source of income. They often say nothing, keep their shame to themselves, and save the community from having to confront such crushing dehumanization.

Under gringo colonialism, the sex objectification of Chicana Mexicanas becomes so distended that the women of entire neighborhoods, cities, regions and countries are viewed as non-persons to be fornicated with at will. Rape is a common - and often institutionally promoted - element within imperialist military aggressions. Colonialism or neocolonialism invariably includes the prostitution of colonized sisters. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, tourism is all too-often promoted with the implicit understanding that local non-white women are available for sexual entertainment in nightclubs, dance halls, bars, brothels, and prostitute delivery services (i.e. Tijuana).

Under gringo colonialism, the family unit is fragmented and often destroyed by various forms of employment which cater to a specific gender and require long-term separations. Another factor which devalues and destroys families is the "welfare" systems in the U.S. which cultivate crippling demoralization and dependency. The colonized male - indoctrinated that his primary role is as a breadwinner - finds himself stripped of that role. The outcome can be the violent acting out of the male... often within the family, his transient stay within or total departure from the home front, and the absence of positive male role-models. These realities, coupled - as it is - with the complex elements of a growing counterinsurgency result in an increasing incarceration of both Raza males and females.

It must be clearly understood that male-centered dysfunctional dynamics that exist today within the Chicano Mexicano Colony are not based in some biological imperfection. They are essentially rooted in centuries of colonization and contemporary oppression within imperialism. Female-male frictions among our gente are essentially the symptoms or manifestations of gringo colonialism, and have nothing to do with genetics.

Any Valid Response to the Mistreatment of Chicana Mexicanas Must be Rooted in the Understanding that the End of the Oppression of Chicana Mexicanas can Only be Brought About Through National Liberation

By placing the exploitation of Chicana Mexicanas within a Revolutionary Nationalist perspective, it becomes very clear that any valid response to the mistreatment of Chicana Mexicanas must be rooted in understanding that the end of the oppression of Chicana Mexicanas can only be brought about through national liberation (the destruction of colonialism). Chicana Mexicana-centered struggle cannot be true to this cause if it is primarily shaped by professionals and would-be professionals whose essential interest is "accessing" the system, and not destroying all forms of gringo colonialism.

A choice has to be made between petty, self-serving reformism, and a critical form of activism which demands and mobilizes for the total emancipation and equality of all peoples worldwide through Revolutionary Nationalist struggle. Feminism must be seen for what it truly is: a form of settler colonialist-rooted reactionary domination. The Revolutionary Nationalist fully understands that the issue of sexism is a serious matter that must be consistently addressed, but she or he understands that this cannot be done in a factionalistic manner that pits sectors of a oppressed nation, or colony, against each other. The main contradiction confronting the Chicano Mexicano People is colonialism; we will have no freedom and no valid progress until Gringo colonialism is smashed.

The Revolutionary Nationalist must be thorough in her or his ideology and practice: these must be directed towards ending gringo colonialism through national liberation. Therefore, a truly progressive movement within the Chicano Mexicano Colony:

1. cannot mirror the gringo's one-dimensional and negative depiction of the Mexicano People. It is the gabacho agenda to portray our population as being backward and, therefore, requiring control. Such a false portrayal is furthered by any blanket depiction by Chicana "feminists" of Chicano Mexicano men as being violence-prone, immature, and regressive;

2. cannot overlook the key reality that the dialectics of political struggle within the occupied territories is firmly planted in the parasitic (gabacho live off of our poverty and oppression) relationship that the U.S. oppressor nation has forced upon the Chicano Mexicano. For the Chicano Mexicano People, it is the struggle between the European settler colonist empire and its internal colony of Aztlán - a life-or-death struggle to maintain gringo colonialism, and that of bringing about national liberation.

3. cannot be in favor of women's inclusion into combat service within the U.S. armed forces, when we really should be struggling for total non-inclusion of Raza within the military service of our enemy;

4. cannot promote women's expanded role within the U.S. law enforcement, justice, and penal systems, when we really should be focusing on confronting the gabachos' growing counterinsurgency and their criminalization of Raza youth as a pretext for military actions within our barrios;

5. cannot advance the maintenance of a Hispanic vendido sector as a buffer zone between the Anglo ruling class and a growing underclass of Raza which is sliding into further economic despair and political marginalization;

6. cannot support a Chicana "feminist" agenda of Chicana Mexicana professionals and would-be professionals who, beyond a cover of polished rhetoric, promote their advancement within the status quo, have completely united with our oppressor, and do not, in any way, have the interests of the Raza masses (female or male) at heart, and have not committed class suicide by becoming part of Revolutionary Nationalist struggle.

In order to foster a concerted movement which will bring about true equality between Chicano Mexicano sisters and brothers, La Raza must reject biological factionalism, drop the petty opportunism of "gender politics", and take part in the Revolutionary Nationalist struggle for the liberation of our people through National Liberation of our Tierra.

Once we have concretely placed Revolutionary Nationalism as the guiding force within the Chicano Mexicano Movement, we will then begin to develop the means to challenge sexism and all other forms of exploitation as we march to a Free Aztlán.