Mexican American Student Resistance: From Spontaneity to Organization

ABSTRACT

Having challenged student resistance scholarship for glorifying forms of resistance that tend to be self-destructive to students, the field has shifted to supporting and advancing more transformational forms of resistance, such as organizing campaigns for social justice issues. While this is a welcome advance, the conception of transformative employed by researchers tends to be limited to reformist agendas. Situating student resistance in a historical context through a re-reading of Marx and Lenin offers a deeper framework for understanding and organizing student resistance. Making these points, I draw on the Mexican American historical and contemporary context for illustrations.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexican American student resistance
• Lenin
• US imperialism
• critical education

Notes

¹ Chicano is a term that refers to the Mexican American communities created after the U.S. invasion and occupation of over half of Mexico. It is mobilized to acknowledge the European and indigenous heritage of Mexicans living as a colonized people in their own homeland. It is a term endowed with a political consciousness that the term Latino, for example, does not carry.