After UCLA voted to change the name of its Chicano Studies program to include Central Americans, some accused the group of co-opting the Mexican struggle. By: Ester Trujillo
I was 19 years old when I frantically demanded that my University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Chicana/o Studies professors explain to me why there was only one book in the school library on U.S.-based Central Americans. My professor, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, explained that it takes time to produce published research and that if there was a book I could not find, I should consider writing it. That day a fire sparked inside of me. My Chicana/o Studies professors pointed me in the direction of social inquiry and before I knew it, I was in a Chicana and Chicano Studies doctoral program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I was able to conduct research on the Central American experience in the U.S. that was rooted in social justice and cultural resilience.
I am a U.S.-born Salvadoran-Mexican. I am a scholar of Central American Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies and immigrant integration. All three of my degrees – my B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. – are in Chicana and Chicano Studies from UCLA and UC Santa Barbara.
Recently, faculty at UCLA’s Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies voted 15-1 to change the name of the department to the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana, Chicano and Central American Studies. The amendment is a reflection of work that has taken place within the department for at least 10 years – if not longer.
Since I graduated from UCLA in 2010, the Latino student body has grown and diversified, mirroring demographic changes in the city overall. Los Angeles is now the second-largest Salvadoran city by population in the world, outside of San Salvador, the Central American country’s capital. The name change is reflective of the institutional urgency to address the needs of a shifting urban reality. Not unlike the young scholars of the past who advocated for Chicana and Chicano Studies departments, undergraduate and graduate students at UCLA wrote letters in support of the new name and listed their reasons for the push toward inclusivity.
However, a recent op-ed on The Daily Chela argues that the name change is due to pressure from a “faction of students” who are demanding that their Central American heritage be included in the Chicana/o experience. In the piece, author Brandon Loran Maxwell contends that altering the name of a department or an organization with “Chicano” in its title contributes to the erasure of the specific history of that space and to the eradication of the contributions made by activists who worked hard to establish those spaces.
The fear of erasure of specific Mexican cultural history that Maxwell expects will come from changing the names of institutions is a fear all too familiar to Central Americans. But including Central American Studies is not co-opting Chicana/o Studies or otherwise eradicating it.
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