Week 3: Shifra Goldman

In Goldman's essay, she explains the Chicano movement during the twentieth century. She does this by touching on issues of race, ethnicity, and class in terms of iconography of Chicano self-determination. With race, Goldman talks about how the Anglo settlers from Europe brought racism over with them as they settled in the new world. She also questions the Indian heritage and how are Hispanics and Indians related. When talking about ethnicity, she defines it as a set of activities, traits, customs, and rituals, relationships, and other images of understanding that are planted in group histories and shared to varying amounts by the members of a given ethnic group. What this means is that the Anglos not only took land away from the indigenous people, they also categorized them into an “Hispanic” ethnic group. Now lastly, she informs the readers on how the working class was formed when New Mexico was being colonized. The upper class was created when Anglos men married women from wealthy Mexican landowning families. In conclusion to her essay, with support from the art drawn by Chicano artist, all three of these categories played a key role in Goldman defying how she identifies herself as a Chicana.

           

This image I chose this image by Yolanda Lopez of her mother in an iconography of La Virgen de Guadalupe because it represents her own Chicana self-determination. This photo Lopez created of her mom illustrates family, power, heritage, identity, and most importantly, Chicana.