Do Chicanos Have an Inferiority Complex?

By Ilan Stavans, The Chronicle of Higher Education

 The etymology of Chicano is surrounded in mystery. I’ve seen its roots traced to Nahuatl, specifically to the term Mexica,as the people encountered by Hernán Cortéz and his soldiers conquering Tenochtitlán in the early quarter of the 16th century where known. In Spanish, the word is pronounced Meshika:the x functions as sh. Mexico, as a nation, opts to look at the Mexicas as their defining ancestors. Curiously, when first registering the name, the missionaries spelled it Méjico, with a j. It transitioned to an x when the country ceded from Spain, becoming independent in 1810.

In any case, Chicano might be an abbreviation of Mexicano, although Chicanos prefer to see themselves not as Mexico’s children but as its ancestors. According to legend, Aztlán, their Xanadu, located in either present-day northern Mexico or somewhere in the American Southwest, or maybe as far as Oregon, was the place where the Mexicans originated in their journey for a promised land, which they ultimately found in a region of five lakes where Mexico City was built. In their mythology, an eagle sitting on a rock in a lake, devouring a serpent—the symbol at the center of the Mexican flag—was a divine sign for them to settle there.

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