Relational Histories, Inter-Ethnic Alliances:

Chican@/x Coalition Politics in Tejas

The conference situates race as a starting point for examining the multiple oppressions that have governed life in Texas. It builds on the idea that citizenship, sexuality, gender, labor organizing, class, pop culture, politics, and religion serve as modalities through which race is lived and performed in Texas.

Chican@/x Studies is an expansive and growing field. Our collective histories, our testimonios, offer stories of Mexican and Mexican American life in Texas that illuminate the broader realities of racism, heterosexism, violence, colonialism, and extreme nationalisms. As Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, we have a history that has struggled alongside other aggrieved groups and pushed back against the indignities of an unequal and oppressive system, even as the  irregular political ground that has rooted these movements has challenged notions of a collective “we.” There is an urgency today for scholarship to reflect the history of inter-ethnic organizing, to better explain the ways racism manifests itself and how it is sustained and/or promoted in Texas, and how Chican@/x communities—from El Paso to Dallas/Fort Worth to the Rio Grande Valley—continue to be engaged in political and artistic struggles to combat precisely such racism. It is the historical struggle that reflects the dignity, quest for justice, and the soul of the Chican@/x community.