Amaia Ibarraran Bigalondo Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas (1997): and what about Chicana...
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organization, based primarily on parameters of gender division. In this context, the situation of Chicana women inside the community was akin to the position of the Chicano community within the overall U.S. distribution of social hierarchies. Chicanas were forced to fulfil a set of strongly established roles and norms that had been perpetuated and transmitted within and without the group through centuries of an overtly patriarchal system. The rights of Chicanas, thus, were different and fewer than those of their male counterparts, and their capacity to dismantle such a constraining situation, very limited. Some years after the emergence of the Movimiento Chicano, the women of the community started to define and subsequently develop their own struggle which endeavoured to open up the internal boundaries the community relied upon, and to bring about the ensuing emergence of these women into the realm of society. In this context, the utilization of diverse literary means for the publication of their identity and the thorough redescription and re-definition of the myths that had kept them perpetually subjugated and silenced, was essential, as it had been for their male counterparts. From a contemporary viewpoint, the social and cultural achievements of the Movimiento in general, and the vindications of the female movement in particular, are undeniable. Yet, the advance of a fiercely capitalist society which disregards those who do not fit into the regular, mainstream system, still marks the reality of many of the citizens of the lower income brackets and underprivileged echelons of society, as is the case of many members of the present-day Chicano community. In the light of this, a widely known and recognized community of Chicano writers and artists continue to pursue the equality of the members of their community through the publication of their works. The social situation of both U.S. society in general, and the Chicano community in particular, as well as the overall organization of the world with its increasingly stronger boundaries which are wittingly ill-defined and concealed in the name of a more globalized, democratic and universally shared humanity, have proposed new ways of understanding social, economic and cultural demands. This new structure of the world and the different social organization of societies are the cause of a veiled, more subtle source of hierarchy and discrimination within said societies, as is the case of the U.S., a society, where, theoretically, people of different ethnic, gender and religious
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