Mexican Americans/Chicana/os/Chicanx form a majority of the Latino population in the United States. Focusing on the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest, multidisciplinary papers examine how Chicanxs have challenged racialization, marginalization, and isolation in the northern borderlands.

Mexican Americans/Chicana/os/Chicanx form a majority of the overall Latino population in the United States. In this collection, established and emerging Chicanx researchers diverge from the discipline’s traditional Southwest focus to offer academic and non-academic perspectives specifically on the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. Their multidisciplinary papers address colonialism, gender, history, immigration, labor, literature, sociology, education, and religion, setting El Movimiento (the Chicanx movement) and the Chicanx experience beyond customary scholarship and illuminating how Chicanxs have challenged racialization, marginalization, and isolation in the northern borderlands.

Contributors to We Are Aztlan! include Norma Cardenas (Eastern Washington University), Oscar Rosales Castaneda (activist, writer), Josue Q. Estrada (University of Washington), Theresa Melendez (Michigan State University, emeritus), the late Carlos Maldonado, Rachel Maldonado (Eastern Washington University, retired), Dylan Miner (Michigan State University), Ernesto Todd Mireles (Prescott College), and Dionicio Valdes (Michigan State University).

Winner of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: We Are Aztlán!
Jerry García

Part One--Empire and Borders
1. Empire, Colonialism, and Mexican Labor in Greater Aztlán
Dionicio Valdés
2. Gaagegoo Dabakaanan miiniwaa Debenjigejig: No Borders, Indigenous Sovereignty
Dylan Miner

Part Two--El Movimiento in the Northern Borderlands
3. Democratizing Washington State’s Yakima County: A History of Latino/a Voter Suppression since 1967
Josué Q. Estrada
4. The Struggle for Xicana/o Studies in the Northern Borderlands: War of the Flea in [Azt]lansing Michigan
Ernesto Todd Mireles
5. El Movimiento in Washington State: Activism in the Yakima Valley and Puget Sound Regions
Oscar Rosales Castañeda
6. Stories of Remembrance and Resistance: María Alanís Ruiz, Chicana Activism, and the Chicano Movement
Norma L. Cárdenas

Part Three--Community, Labor, and Immigration
7. The Mexicanization of a Northwest Community:
The Case of Woodburn, Oregon
Carlos Saldivar Maldonado and Rachel Maldonado
8. Norteada/Northed: My Tears Created the Great Lakes
Theresa Meléndez
9. Becoming Aztlán in the Northern Borderlands
Jerry García

Contributors

Index