Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: Ethnic Consciousness in Chicano Literature: The Voice of "La Raza".

conditions of the Southwest and operate in the buffer zone between Anglo and Mexican culture. These ballads with a staunch anti-Anglo message reveal a cultural rupture between Euro and Mexican-Americans brought on by opposing production and value systems. Besides the sense of liminality, a definite attempt is made to coopt or empower the marginalized Hispanic culture. Furthermore, anticipating the postmodern yet feminisminspired slogan: "the personal is political," Cortez and Trevino's defiance of Anglo authority, or César Chávez's spiritual conviction, becomes a political statement. The corrido also deconstructs the traditional Anglo-Hispanic framework, reversing the order of privileging, undermining "previously unquestioned postulates of order" (Holman and Harmon 125). The time of transition between 1849—1910, or the era during which the Chicano is forced into the role of a second-class citizen is the second period in the development of Chicano literature. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the corrido remained a popular mode of literary expression, but besides the Anglo-American conflict, such heroes of the Wild West are commemorated as Billy the Kid (Leal and Barrón 19). The American Southwest had three major cultural centers, New Mexico, Texas and California and out of the three New Mexico remained relatively impenetrable to the Anglo cultural invasion. As Paredes argues, a new culture, neither Mexican, nor Anglo, but a mixture of the two emerged, making it the forerunner of Chicano culture. "1848" also meant the transformation of "the homeland into borderland" as Mexicans remaining in territories ceded to the U.S. confronted the dual pressures of preserving their culture and accepting American mores. Mexican-American literature responded to the cultural, political, and economic deterritorialization by following the corrido tradition; perpetuating events of a cultural conflict, or by emphasizing elements of Spanish culture and using the Spanish language (Paredes 47—48). 69