“Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in” Michael Corleone in The Godfather III.
According to Carlota Cardenas quoted by Alicia Gaspar de Alba in the book that reviews the CARA Exhibition named “Chicano Art†she says, that . [sic] to apply (the word chicana) [sic] to oneself is a political act.
Chicana Feliz a.k.a Zulma Aguiar.
I refuse, or resist in this case, to render my identity to to a political act. Being Xicano is beyond a political statement. Perhaps it is so for my brethen under that Damocles’s sword called USA. I, on the other hand, long ago moved to another post. Heck, said sword proved beyond me. I am beyond the Star and Spangle. If anything, I am beyond any political ideology. Long I discovered that I need not stress to be that which my land gave as a birth right. I am, to certain extents, beyond Xicano rethoric. I am beyond the recruiting offices of Aztlán and their zealous drive to impose the ideology of this or that. I am simply a desert Xicano which claims the Southwest as its birthplace, nothing more.
I am the first to stand on my own two feet. I shame not for my accent when I utter my tongue. I shame not for my past or ancestors. I shame not for that which I am.
I will not let ignorance dictate the course my forefathers, my foremothers, treaded upon. Words will not destroy me nor will they lay out the course of my destiny. I am beyond that and more.
This fight sort of reminds one of the one the Swedish-Finish folk stride for in Finland.
The Swedish text reads as follows:
The Finish can never take care of the Swedish language and the Swedish culture. Only we, the Swedish-Finish, can do that.