1) The Mexican War (1846-8) was a successful attempt on the part of the U.S. bourgeoisie, and especially the Southern slaveocracy (which dominated the federal government), to expand the borders of the U.S. at the expense of the nation-state of Mexico. When the war ended, Mexico was reduced to about half its former size. The area encompassing the present states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas came under the state power of the U.S.
Approximately 85,000 Mexicans were living in this area at the time of the takeover, 60,000 in New Mexico. These people became the first members of the Mexican national minority in the U.S., Mexican-Americans or Chicanos. They were separated from their nation, and suffered vicious oppression at the hands of the Anglo-American conquerors, which continues down to this day. An example of this is shown by the fact that even more Chicanos than Blacks were lynched in the years between 1890 and 1930.
The change from national majority to national minority was dramatic in its rapidity in some areas. In California for instance, population figures went from 10,000 Mexicans and 3,000 Americans in 1846, to 13,000 Mexicans and 87,000 Americans in 1850.
The number of Chicanos were (and are) swelled by immigration from Mexico. Many Mexicans migrated north in the 19th Century, but there are no figures to say how many. We do know, however, that there have been major waves of migration in the 20th Century (from 1910-29, from 1942-65 and from 1965 to present) which have added millions of people to the ranks of Chicanos. First generation immigrants are, of course, Mexicans and not Chicanos. Their children born in U.S. soil, however, become Mexican-Americans.
As labor intensive agriculture has been and is being replaced by capital intensive agriculture, the Chlcano people have been giving up their traditional work in agriculture and moving to the cities. Today the overwhelming majority of Chicanos live in cities, and the rate of urbanization of Chicanos is much higher than for Blacks or Anglos. About 80% of Chicanos live in cities presently. Eighty-five per cent of Chicanos live in the Southwest U.S., where they make up about 12% of the total population. These Mexican-Americans are largely proletarian, and their importance in the workers movement in the Southwest cannot be underestimated.
The mass movement of this national minority, the Chicano Movement, has grown up around struggles against the oppression of Mexican-Americans as Mexican-Americans, an oppression that crosses class lines. Fighting back against the attempts of the Anglo-American bourgeoisie to destroy their language, culture, and indeed their very lives, the Chicano people have organized and forced some changes. Objectively, the mass Chicano movement is an important ally of the working class in its struggle for proletarian revolution, because they both have the same enemy. The task of making the workers movement and the Chicano Movement conscious, subjective allies is one that must be taken up by communists. One step in carrying out this task is to win the workers movement to actively support the democratic rights so justly demanded by Chicanos. The other major step is for Chicano communists to struggle for the leading role of the Chicano workers within the Chicano movement, and once the Party is formed, to win the masses of Mexican-Americans to support the proletarian revolution.
2) Democratic Rights and Regional Autonomy: At the heart of the program for the Chicano national minority in the United States is the demand for full democratic rights. In order that these rights may be realized, regional autonomy under the dictatorship of the proletariat should be instituted.
In order to achieve regional autonomy as well as the whole array of democratic rights, the Chicano people must unite with the basic revolutionary strategy of the multi-national working class and its allies to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It is only under the rule of the proletariat, the most democratic class in history, that Chicano people will be able to achieve equal opportunity in housing, jobs, education and freedom to speak their own language and develop their own culture. Only the rule of the proletariat can bring forward the resources to eliminate the national oppression of the Chicano people.
Regional autonomy only makes sense as a form of self-government under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Real regional autonomy is not possible under imperialism, in which monopoly capitalists directly control the state. Under real regional autonomy, the party and the state work to ensure that the working class and peasantry wield political power, and not the national bourgeoisie.
Regional autonomy would apply to Chicano people both in the core region of the Southwest as well as anywhere else that they constitute a large compact mass, such as in Los Angeles or Chicago.
3) White Chauvinism: The main error that has been consistently committed by the communist movement on the Chicano national question has been Great-Nation chauvinism, i.e., white chauvinism. The lack of attention given to the struggle of the Chicano people in the past by the CPUSA is a sad chapter in the history of the communist movement in this country.
The anti-revisionist movement has not succeeded in breaking with this white-chauvinist history. On the contrary, it has almost completely ignored the Chicano national question and relegated it to a back burner both theoretically and practically. If a communist party is going to be built that will be able to lead the multi-national proletariat, then a sound theoretical position and program on the Chicano national question be crucial.
This program must be used to rally the masses of white workers to fight against the national oppression of Chicano people. Lacking this fight, the working class will remain divided along national lines, plagued on the one hand with white chauvinism and on the other hand, as a reaction, Chicano nationalism.
Lately, this lesser danger of Chicano nationalism has taken the form of arguing that Chicano people constitute a nation in the core region of the Southwest. This idealist position downplays the importance of the common struggle of both Chicano and Anglo-American workers for a socialist revolution. Instead, it takes the petit-bourgeois class stand of trying to independently determine its own destiny and put out abstract, idealist calls for “self-determination” when the material grounding for the exercise of such self-determination does not exist. The Chicano petit-bourgeoisie is definitely in contradiction with U.S. imperialism, but what it most cherishes is its own independent market, i.e., nation, separate from both the U.S. and Mexico, where it can have political and economic ascendency.
In arguing for the existence of a Chicano nation, this position takes an abstract, laundry-list approach to the criteria of nationhood and attempts to artificially construct a “new” nation somehow forged independently between the United States and Mexico. But this position ignores the real way in which the Chicano people were historically constituted—namely as a national minority broken off by capitalist penetration and war from Mexico. This approach tends to feed national chauvinism because it helps to build a wall between the Chicano people and the Mexican people.