Alicia Gaspar de Alba's CARA's Politics of Representation

         In Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s CARA’s Politics of Representation, the misrepresentation of Chicana Artist and the Chicana aesthetic, can be viewed through various avenues, limiting gender roles, betraying cultural notions, and the struggles faced by women during the Chicano Art Movement. Throughout the reading Chicana women could be only seen as either, brides, mothers, and mistresses. During the movement, the liberation of men were ranked over the oppression of women, and though it was not wrong for women to want families and children these reproductive roles did not satisfy the price of subjugation placed on Chicana women. After finding the courage and the desire for liberation, Chicana women struggled in searching for their feminist identity. In lecture, Senora Alicia Gaspar de Alba stated, “If you adhere to feminist ways, you are betraying La Raza.” Through the artwork Las Tres Marias, Judith Francisca Baca, invokes wonder in the viewer by placing a mirror between what appeared to be two kinds of female identity in Chicanismo. Her piece places the viewer in the middle of the conflict between choosing to represent the stereotype of patriarchal culture, or self-affirmation through the social constructs built by others. The question, which is more directed towards women was, what did your image, your identity, bring to the gender codes in Chicano or Mexicano culture? In some reproductions, this piece gives the artist the opportunity to portray themselves in this triptych, as to undermine, defy, or to recode the female identity in the Chicano Art Movement. Through the illustrations and pieces of women in the Chicano Art Movement, feminists are given the opportunity to not only portray their gender limitations paced by their cultural counterparts, but to recode their own identities to fit their passions and desires.