Guerrillera Editorship enacts the decolonial imaginary of Chicana editors

ABSTRACT

This project examines the editorial practices of former Chicana editors of a bilingual, alternative, activist Chicana/Chicano college student newspaper, mapping out the ways Chicana feminist epistemologies shaped their editorial praxis. Grounded in the decolonial imaginary of seven Chicanas, we identify a praxis we call Guerrillera Editorship in which Chicana editors integrate their leadership, advocacy, and written work within a muxerista orientation in order to work communally to honor the testimonio of contributors, strive towards social justice, and draw attention to Chicana issues. This work enhances an existing scholarly record that analyzes the rhetoric of Chicana feminists, but lacks an analysis of Chicana-led media production. By contextualizing the efforts of these contemporary Chicana cultural workers within the history of Chicana feminist print media, and drawing on Chicana feminist theories to guide the methodology and analysis of this project, we offer a Chicana-centered editorial activism whose decolonial underpinnings counter masculinist leadership styles and offset mainstream editorial practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Guerrillera Editorship
• Chicana feminism
• decolonial imaginary
• media activism
• Chicana/o student newspapers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term “Chicana” originally referred to female persons of Mexican origin living in the US, and is a signifier of the ideologies of self-determination, anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-assimilation that emerged during the 1960s Chicano Civil Rights movement. Before that, “Mexican” or “Mexican American” were primarily used to identify this ethnic community. “Hispanic”—a term manufactured by the US government in the 1980s to categorize Spanish-speaking communities—has also been applied to this population. Chicana, Chicanx, Xicana have evolved to include any woman of Latino origin who share similar anti-oppressive political philosophies, and when composed with an “x,” it deconstructs patriarchy and gender binaries. This broader understanding is how the Chicana editors understand and apply it. We use it similarly, interchanging it with Mexican American and Latina (but not “Hispanic,” which is perceived by this group as a term for more assimilated Latinas/Latinos or Mexican Americans) to reflect the labels the women of the study employ.

2. Actual name.

3. All editors preferred to use their actual names.

4. Pocha is a pejorative term used by Spanish-dominant speakers to refer to someone of Spanish-speaking descent who lacks fluency in Spanish.

5. Mestiza means “of mixed-race,” used primarily to identify Mexico’s population of people descended from Spanish colonizers and the indigenous people of the continent.

6. Latinidad is a pan-ethnic term attempting to account for the attributes shared by Latin American people. However, as Jillian M. Báez (2007) points out, the deployment of this term can function to erase the heterogeneity of all the ethnic subgroups and negate their distinctive histories and experiences, especially when used to commodify the Latina/Latino community.

7. Fewer than 50 articles with “Chicana” as a subject keyword published between 1978 and 2015 are archived in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonya M. Alemán

Sonya M. Alemán is an associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio in the Mexican American Studies program. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English/communications from St. Mary’s University, her Master of Arts in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and her PhD from the University of Utah. She studies representations and manifestations of race, racism, and whiteness in the media, as well media representations produced by communities of color. Her work also reimagines journalism pedagogy to better reflect the lives and experiences of communities of color. E-mail: [email protected]

Flor de Maria Olivo

Flor de Maria Olivo is a master’s student in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Utah and is currently researching media representations of women and exploring ways to incorporate communication education concepts into self-empowerment curriculums for girls from underrepresented communities. E-mail: [email protected]